Cause for Alarm v-2

by Eric Ambler

  “I can’t say that I know of him.”

  “No? It was mentioned in the trade papers. But perhaps a man of your age doesn’t read the obituary notices.” He chuckled and pulled so violently at his collar that I thought the stud would snap. He became serious again. “Poor Ferning! A nervous, sensitive sort of fellow I always thought. But then you can’t always judge by appearances. He made an amazingly good thing of the Milan office. With an order we got from Turkey, we’ve sold practically the whole of our present output of S2 automatics for the next two years. It’s a nice machine. Naturally, that is only on our present production basis. We’re putting up a new shop, and as soon as that is going we shall be in a position to accept all the orders we can get. Bad luck about Ferning. The poor chap was run over a few weeks back. A very sad affair. As far as we can gather it was foggy and he was walking home when it happened. Killed outright, fortunately. The driver of the car, whoever it was, didn’t stop. Probably didn’t even know he’d hit anybody in the fog. They’re sometimes pretty thick in Milan, you know. Unmarried, thank goodness, but he leaves a sister who was dependent on him. Very hard lines.”

  “Yes, very.”

  “Ferning’s assistant, Bellinetti, is carrying on at the moment. But we are not regarding that arrangement as permanent. A good assistant, no doubt, but not yet ready for responsibility. Besides, he’s not a trained engineer. That’s what we need, Mr. Marlow. A trained man, a man who can go into the works and show the customer how to get the best out of our machines. With the Germans so active at the moment, we’ve got to keep well in with the people who matter, and”-he winked broadly-“and co-operate with the Italian officials. However, Mr. Fitch will tell you more about that.” He lifted the telephone again. “Hullo. Is Mr. Fitch coming over, Jenny? On his way? Good.” He clawed at his collar and turned to me again. “Naturally, Mr. Marlow, if we were to come to terms we should want you to spend a week or so here in the works before you left. But there again, that’s something we can discuss later. Of course, you may not like the look of us ”-he chuckled as if at the idea of such a fantastic possibility-“but I must say I feel that we might profitably discuss the matter in more detail first.”

  I laughed politely, and was about to intimate that more detail, and in particular more detail in connection with the financial aspects of the job, was precisely what I should like, when there was a knock at the door.

  “Ah!” said Mr. Pelcher, “here’s Fitch.”

  Mr. Fitch was a very tall man with a long, thin head and a way of holding himself that made him look as though he were standing under a low, leaking roof on a wet day. He surveyed us from the door with the mournful air of an elderly borzoi being teased by a pair of fox terrier puppies.

  “This, Fitch,” said Mr. Pelcher briskly, “is Mr. Marlow. He is a trained engineer and he can speak Italian.”

  Mr. Fitch shambled forward and we shook hands.

  “I was just telling Mr. Marlow,” pursued Mr. Pelcher, “some of the circumstances of our Italian connection.”

  Mr. Fitch nodded and cleared his throat. “The bottom’s out of the export market,” he asserted gloomily.

  Mr. Pelcher laughed and twitched at his collar. “Mr. Fitch has been saying that for ten years now, Mr. Marlow. You mustn’t take his pessimism too seriously. Nothing less than doubling our turnover every year would satisfy him.”

  Mr. Fitch looked at me doubtfully. “Do you know Italy very well, Mr. Marlow?”

  “Not as well as I should like to,” I replied evasively.

  “Play golf?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Fitch,” said Mr. Pelcher fondly, “is a scratch golfer. Hits a terrific ball and as accurate as the devil. However”-he dragged his thoughts back to earth with a visible effort-“to business! Perhaps you’d like to have a look round the works, Mr. Marlow? Fitch, do you mind showing Mr. Marlow round? When you’ve done, come back here and we’ll have another chat.”

  Whatever the shortcomings of the Spartacus offices, they were nowhere visible in the works. The Works Manager, to whom I took an instant liking, was obviously competent and the standard of work being turned out was extraordinarily high. “Pelcher,” said Mr. Fitch, as we crossed from one shop to another, “likes everything just so. He’s a fine engineer. If he had his way and we hadn’t got a Board of ex-Generals and Members of Parliament with a titled nitwit thrown in, this place would be twice the size. He’s a damned smart business man too. But did you ever see anything like his office? He’s a lousy golfer as well. The last time I played with him he took a slide-rule out to deal with problems of drift and wind resistance. Not that it made any difference to his game. On the first tee he spent two solid minutes with the slide-rule and then pulled his drive somewhere round the back of his neck.”

  As if to make up for this burst of confidence, Mr. Fitch maintained an unhappy silence for the rest of the tour; but it was with slightly more zest that I ascended for the second time the stairs to Mr. Pelcher’s office.

  Back in London that evening, I gave Claire a resume of the day’s findings. “I think,” I concluded, “that they’ll probably offer me the job. Of course, I shan’t take it. The money they’ve got in mind is ridiculous. The lira may be in our favour, but that’s nothing to do with what the job is worth in pounds sterling. And Italy, too! The whole thing is out of the question.”

  “Of course, darling,” said Claire.

  We said no more about it.

  Two letters arrived for me next morning. One was from Mr. Pelcher, formally offering me the post of manager of the Spartacus Milan office. The other was from Hallett. His new job did not start for another fortnight. He thought I would probably be fixed up by now. Could I possibly lend him five pounds?

  I went for a short walk, smoked a couple of cigarettes, sat down and replied to both letters.

  Three weeks later I caught the Folkestone boat-train.

  To my intense relief there was nobody at the station to see me off. I had said good-bye to Claire the previous night. She was, she had said with somewhat emotional practicality, too busy at the hospital to spare time to come to the station. Later on she had wept and explained, unnecessarily, that it wasn’t that she couldn’t spare the time, but that she didn’t want to make a fool of herself and me on the platform. “After all,” we kept on assuring one another, “it’s only for a few months, a temporary job until things get better here.” By the time it was time for me to go back to the hotel into which I had moved, we had managed to evolve an atmosphere of bright camaraderie that spared both our feelings and our pocket handkerchiefs.

  “Good-bye, Nicky, darling,” she had called after me as I had left, “don’t get into trouble.”

  And I had laughed at the idea and called back that I wouldn’t.

  I actually laughed.

  3

  THE PAINTED GENERAL

  It is on my second evening in Milan that General Vagas comes on the scene.

  Looking back now, the whole story seems to begin with that meeting. What had happened to me apart from that seems of no significance. Yet if it is easy to be wise after an event it is easier still to let that wisdom colour an account of the event itself, to the confusion and irritation of the reader. It is as if he were listening to a joke being told in an unfamiliar foreign tongue. I must tell the story in a straightforward manner. General Vagas must, so to speak, take his place in the queue.

  At eight o’clock that evening I sat down in my room at the Hotel Parigi to write to Claire. She has kept the letter and as it describes in a more or less condensed form what had happened to me since my arrival and the impressions I had formed of the Milan staff of the Spartacus Machine Tool Company, I have incorporated it. It was my original intention to omit the more intimate passages, but as Claire’s only comment on this suggestion was a blank “Why?”, I have left them in.

  Hotel Parigi,

  Milano,

  Tuesday.

  Dearest Claire,

  Already, I am
gripped by the most excruciating pangs of nostalgia. It is, I find, just four days since I saw you. It seems like four months. Trite, I know; but then the plain, ordinary, human emotions nearly always do seem trite when you put them down on paper. I don’t know whether or not triteness increases in direct proportion to the number and intensity of the plain, ordinary, human emotions experienced. It probably does. My present P.O.H.E.’s are (a) a profound sense of loneliness and (b) the growing conviction that I was a fool to leave you no matter what the circumstances. No doubt I shall feel a little better about item (a) in a day or two. As for item (b), I’ m not quite sure if a conviction, even a growing one, can possibly be described as an emotion. In any case, if I start talking about it now I shall end by running amok, and I don’t think that the management of the Parigi would care much for that.

  I remember that at this point I stopped and read the paragraph through. What nonsense it sounded! a ghastly attempt to smile through imaginary tears. Claire would despise it. The smile was an arch grin. The tears were crocodiles’. And that bit about emotions and convictions. Piffle! I screwed it up and threw it in the wastepaper basket and then, when I had made one or two desultory attempts to start again, I retrieved it from the basket and copied it out on a fresh sheet of paper. Hang it all, it expressed what I felt. I went on.

  You are probably wondering why on earth I am staying here and whether, for Pity’s sake, I propose to go on staying here. It is along story.

  It wasn’t a long story. It was quite a short one. However…

  I arrived yesterday afternoon at about four o’clock (3 p.m. to you in England, my love), and was met at the Centrale Station by Bellinetti, who was, you may remember, my predecessor’s assistant.

  He is rather older than I had expected from the way Pelcher and Fitch talked about him. Picture a small, stocky Italian of about forty with incredibly wavy black hair, greying at the temples, and the sort of teeth that you see in dentifrice advertisements. He is a very natty dresser and wears a diamond (?) ring on the little finger of his left hand. I have a suspicion, however, that he doesn’t shave every day. A pity. He is an enthusiastic reader of the Popolo d’Italia, and has a passion for Myrna Loy (“ so calm, so cold, such secret fires ”), but I have not yet discovered whether he is married or not.

  I considered this description of Bellinetti for a moment. It wasn’t quite right. It was accurate enough as far as it went, but there was more to the man than that. He wasn’t so theatrical. He had a way of leaning forward towards you and dropping his voice as though he were about to impart some highly confidential tit-bit. But the tit-bit never came. You received the impression that he would have liked to talk all the time of momentous and very secret affairs, but that he was haunted by the perpetual triviality of real life. His air of frustration was a little worrying until you became used to it. But I couldn’t put all that in a letter. I lit a cigarette and went on again.

  As I told you, I wasn’t anticipating a great deal of active co-operation from Arturo Bellinetti. After all, he was expecting that Ferning’s death would mean that he got Ferning’s job. Fitch told me that in a weak moment and to encourage the man, Pelcher had hinted that he might possibly be appointed. It was scarcely to be expected that he would fall on the neck of the Sporco Inglese with cries of enthusiasm. But I must say that he has been extraordinarily helpful, and I shall tell Pelcher so.

  As soon as we had got over the preliminary politenesses, we went to a caffe (two f’s and a grave accent here, please), where he introduced me to his pet tipple which is a cognac with a beer chaser. I wouldn’t like to try it with English bitter, but here it doesn’t seem too bad. At all events it took the edge off that interminable journey. The next thing was to make my living arrangements. Bellinetti suggested that I might like to take over Ferning’s old place which was in an apartment house near the Monte di Pieta. This seemed to me a good idea, and we piled my luggage into a taxi and drove there. Little did I know, as they say in books, what was in store for me.

  Imagine the Ritz, the Carlton and Buckingham Palace rolled into one, a dash of rococo and a spicing of Lalique, and you will have some idea of what I found. Not a very large building, it is true, but decidedly luxurious. Manager in attendance, we went up to the second-floor front. This, said the Manager, had been signor Ferning’s apartment. A very liberal and sympathetic Signore had been the signor Ferning. His death was nothing short of a tragedy. But he would be delighted to serve the so sympathetic signor Marlow. The price of the apartment was only six hundred lire a week.

  Well, darling, it was probably worth the money. In fact, I should say that it was cheap. But six hundred lire a week! Either the manager was trying it on (it is still a popular illusion here that all Americans and English are millionaires), or the late lamented and so sympathetic signor Ferning had made a better bargain with Spartacus than I had. The Manager was dumbfounded when I turned it down so promptly and, with a hearty misunderstanding of the situation, tried to show me something even more luxurious and expensive on the first floor. We retired in disorder. I shall have to get Fitch to tell me more about Ferning when he writes.

  I did not tell Claire of the suspicion I had entertained that my assistant might have arranged to take a commission on the deal. The idea had crossed my mind as soon as the Manager mentioned the price; but as Bellinetti had not seemed at all put out when I had refused the offer and as, on reflection, I had not seen how even a generous commission could account altogether for such a price, I had quickly abandoned the notion.

  By this time, the effects of the brandy and beer were beginning to wear off and I was feeling rather tired. Bellinetti, bounding with energy, was all for going on an intensive apartment hunt; but I decided that the best thing I could do was to put up at a hotel for a day or two and find a place at my leisure. Bellinetti knows the management here, so here I came.

  It is not quite as expensive as the note-paper might lead you to think. It appears that the present vogue is for “ modernity ” a la Marinetti. The only really modern aspect of the Parigi is the hot-water system which gurgles a great deal and makes the place like an oven. The rest is, I should say, a relic of Milan under Napoleon. The corridors are shadowy, the ceilings are high, there is much green plush and dull gilt plaster work. In the restaurant (nearly always two-thirds empty), there are long mirrors with the silvering turning black near the edges. My bed is an enormous mahogany structure with a plush canopy impressively edged with tarnished gold braid, while the chair in which I am sitting now is more uncomfortable than I should have thought possible. The Parigi is not, I should say, a very paying proposition for the owners. But then I haven’t yet seen the extras on the bill.

  Milan, as a whole, has proved something of a surprise. I don’t know why it should have done so; but you know how it is. You get an imaginary picture of a place in your mind, and then are upset when the reality doesn’t fit. I had always pictured it as a collection of small houses in the Borghese manner grouped round an enormous rococo opera house peopled by stout, passionate tenors, sinister-looking baritones and large mezzo-sopranos with long pearl necklaces. Vociferous international audiences thronged the streets. Actually, it is nothing more nor less than an Italian version of Birmingham. I haven’t yet set eyes on La Scala, but a poster told me that they are doing ballet there-not even opera. The only “ sight ” I have seen so far is the offices of the Popolo d’Italia, from which Mussolini is said to have set out on the March to Rome. Bellinetti pointed them out to me. He is an enthusiastic adherent of Fascismo and tells me that Italy will “ wade through blood to an Empire.” He didn’t tell me whose blood, but I gather that he does not expect to be called upon to supply any part of it.

  I was afterwards told that Mussolini’s participation in the glorious March on Rome was confined to arriving in the Eternal City three days later in the luxury of a wagon-lit. But it is quite true that he set out from the offices of the Popolo. That, however, is by the way.

  I have spent most of to-day l
ooking into things at the Via San Giulio. The offices themselves are on the fourth floor of a comparatively recent building and, although small, are quite clean and light. My staff consists of Bellinetti and two typists, one male and one female. The male is aged about twenty-two, fair, very self-conscious. His Christian name is Umberto, but so far I have not discovered the surname. Bellinetti says that he reads too many books. He looks to me as though he needs a square meal. It is possibly only my imagination but I fancy, too, that Bellinetti may be a bit of a bully.

  The female help is astonishing. Her name is Serafina, and she has two dark pools of mystery where her eyes ought to be, a complexion like semi-transparent wax and clothes that would make your mouth water. Unfortunately she is also very stupid. A protegee of Master Bellinetti’s, I fear. The girl cannot even type. The sight of her blood-red finger-nails twitching uncertainly over the keyboard of her typewriter, I found irritating. Our Serafina must be discussed in the near future. I haven’t really had a chance yet to go very far into the actual business workings of the office. I had a long memorandum from Fitch on the subject. I shall begin the inquest to-morrow. Bellinetti assures me that everything is fine. I hope he’s right.