Cause for Alarm v-2

by Eric Ambler

  The only extra-office contact I’ve made so far was with an American, whose name I don’t know, but who has an office on the floor below us. He is an odd-looking blighter with a large, pugnacious nose like a prize-fighter’s, brown, curly hair that stands up at an angle of forty-five from his forehead, surprisingly blue eyes, and a pair of shoulders that look all the heftier because he’s slightly shorter than I am. Sorry to be so pernickety about what he looks like, but he impressed me rather. We met on the stairs this morning. He stopped me and asked if I wasn’t English. He explained that it was my clothes that had given him the idea. We made a vague arrangement to have a drink together some time. He says he knew Ferning.

  If I had known just how much of an impression this “American” was going to make on me in the very near future, I doubt very much whether I should have dismissed him quite so easily from my thoughts. But I was feeling very tired. I decided to finish.

  Well, darling, I’m going to stop this letter-writing now. It’s too long, anyway, and, even though it’s only nine o’clock, I can hardly keep my eyes open. I haven’t said any of the things I meant to say and very little of what I’m really thinking-about you and me, I mean. Possibly you can guess all that. I hope so, because, with all this replanting of roots going on, all I seem to be able to get down on paper is something between an inter-departmental memo and a particularly dull book of memoirs. I shall go now and soak myself in a hot bath and then go to bed. Good night, and a sweet sleep to you, darling. Write to me as soon as you can. I keep consoling myself with the thought that you’ll be coming here for your summer vacation, but it’s a terribly long time to wait. Let me know as soon as may be when it will be. Bless you.

  Nicky.

  I looked it through. It took up six sides of the hotel note-paper. Far too long and far too plaintive. Still, it was the best I could do under the circumstances and Claire would understand.

  I had stuck down and addressed the envelope when I remembered that I had meant to add a postscript. There were no more envelopes in the rack. Then I did something which I was to remember later. I turned the letter over and wrote the postscript across the back of the envelope.

  P.S.-Do you mind sending me a copy of Engineering each week? We get it here but not until Fitch has finished with it. Love. N.

  That was that. I would post it in the morning. I yawned and wondered whether to turn the bath on straight away or smoke a final cigarette.

  The question was decided for me. The telephone by the bed rang sharply and the voice of the reception clerk informed me that a signor Vagas was asking to see me.

  My first impulse was to say that I was in bed and unable to see anyone. I did not know a signor Vagas, I had never heard of a signor Vagas and I was feeling too tired to do anything about it now. But I hesitated. The fact that I personally did not know the name of Vagas was beside the point. I knew nobody in Milan. The man might conceivably be an important buyer, a Spartacus customer. I ought not to take any risks. I ought to see him. The name did not sound particularly Italianate, but that was beside the point. I certainly ought to see him. What on earth could he want? With a sigh, I told the clerk to send him up.

  I have wondered since what would have happened subsequently if I had yielded to my aching desire for a hot bath and refused to see him. Probably he would have called again. Possibly, on the other hand, he might have made other arrangements. I don’t really know enough about what went on behind the scenes to say. In any case, such speculations are unprofitable. My only reason for raising the point is that it seems to me that a state of society in which such trivialities as the desire of one insignificant engineer for a hot bath are capable of influencing the destinies of large numbers of his fellow-creatures, has something radically wrong with it. However, I did postpone my bath and I did see General Vagas. But if I had known then what the consequences of that piece of self-denial were going to be, I should, I am afraid, have been inclined to let my fellow-creatures go hang.

  He was a tall, heavy man with sleek, thinning grey hair, a brown, puffy complexion and thick, tight lips. Fixed firmly in the flesh around his left eye was a rimless monocle without a cord to it. He wore a thick and expensive-looking black ulster and carried a dark-blue slouch hat. In his other hand he held a malacca stick.

  His lips twisted, with what was evidently intended to be a polite smile. But the smile did not reach his eyes. Dark and small and cautious, they flickered appraisingly from my head to my feet. Almost instinctively my own eyes dropped to the stick in his hand, to his fat, delicate fingers holding it loosely about a third of the way down. For a minute fraction of a second we stood there facing one another. Then he spoke.

  “Signor Marlow?” His voice was soft and husky. He coughed a little after he had said it.

  “Yes, signor Vagas, I believe? Fortunatissimo.”

  The small eyes surveyed my own. Slowly he drew a card from his pocket and presented it to me. I glanced at it. On it was printed: “ Maggiore Generale F. L. VAGAS,” and an address in the Corso di Porta Nuova.

  “I beg your pardon, General. The clerk did not give me your name correctly.”

  “It is quite unimportant, Signore. Do not concern yourself, I beg you.”

  We shook hands. I ushered him in. He walked with a slight limp over to a chair and put his coat, hat and stick carefully on it.

  “A drink, General?”

  He nodded graciously. “Thank you. I will take cognac.”

  I rang the bell for the waiter.

  “A chair?”

  “Thank you.” He sat down.

  “A cigarette?”

  He looked carefully at the contents of my case.

  “English?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, then I will smoke one.”

  I gave him a match and waited. His eyes wandered for a moment or two round the room, then they returned to me. He adjusted the monocle carefully, as if to see me better. Then, to my surprise, he began to speak in tolerably accurate English.

  “I expect, Mr. Marlow, you are wondering who I am and why I have come here to visit you.”

  I murmured something about it being, in any case, a pleasure. He smiled. I found myself hoping that he would not consider it necessary to do so a third time. It was a grimace rather than a smile. Now that I knew him to be a General it was easier to sum him up. He would look better in uniform. The limp? Probably a war wound. And yet there was a quality of effeminacy about the way he spoke, the way he moved his hands, that lent a touch of the grotesque to the rest of him. Then I noticed with a shock that the patches of colour just below his cheekbones were rouge. I could see, too, on the jaw line just below his ear the edge of a heavy and clumsily applied maquillage. Almost at the same moment as I made the discovery he turned slightly in his chair. In the ordinary way I should have seen nothing in the movement but a desire for greater comfort; now I knew that he was avoiding the light.

  In answer to my polite disclaimer he shrugged.

  “How odd it is, Mr. Marlow. We on the Continent spend half our lives in the belief that all Englishmen are boors. And yet, in truth, how much more polite and sympathetic they are.” He coughed gently. “But I must not take up too much of your time. I come, so to speak, in a spirit of friendliness and to give myself the pleasure of meeting you.” He paused. “I was a friend, a great friend, of Mr. Ferning.”

  I said “Oh” rather foolishly and then expressed my sympathy.

  He inclined his head. “His death was a great tragedy for me. Poor man. Italian drivers are abominable.” It was said smoothly, easily and entirely without conviction. Fortunately, the arrival of the waiter made it unnecessary for me to reply to this. I ordered the drinks and lit a cigarette.

  “I am afraid,” I said, “that I never had the pleasure of knowing Mr. Ferning.”

  For some reason, he chose to misinterpret the statement.

  “And neither did I, Mr. Marlow. He was my dear friend, it is true, but I did not know him.” He gestured with his c
igarette. “It is, I think, impossible to know any man. His thoughts, his own secret emotions, the way his mind works upon the things he sees-those things are the man. All that the outsider sees is the shell, the mask-you understand? Only sometimes do we see a man and then”-his eyes flickered towards the ceiling-“it is through the eyes of an artist.”

  “There is probably a lot in what you say,” I pursued stolidly; “I meant, however, that I had never even met Ferning.”

  “How unfortunate! How very unfortunate. I think you would have liked him, Mr. Marlow. You would, I think, have had sympathies in common. A man-how do you say? — sensible.”

  “You mean sensitive?”

  “Ah, yes, that is the word. A man, you understand, above the trivialities, the squalor of a petty existence-a man, Mr. Marlow, with a philosophy.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Yes, Mr. Marlow. Ferning believed, as I believe, that in such a world as this, one should consider only how to secure the maximum of comfort with the minimum of exertion. But, of course, that was not all. He was, I used to tell him, a Platonist malgre lui. Yes he had his ideals, but he kept them in the proper place for such things-in the background of the mind, together with one’s dreams of Utopia.”

  I was getting tired of this.

  “And you, General? Are you too interested in machine tools?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “I? Oh yes, Mr. Marlow. I am certainly interested in machine tools. But then”-something very nearly approaching a simper animated him-“but then, I am interested in everything. Have you yet walked through the Giardini Pubblici? No? When you do so you will see the attendants wandering round like the spirits of the damned, aimless and without emotion, collecting the small scraps of waste-paper on long, thin spikes. You understand me? You see my point? Nothing is too special, too esoteric for my tastes. Not even machine tools.”

  “Then that was how you met Ferning?”

  The General fluttered a deprecatory hand. “Oh dear, no, no. We were introduced by a friend-now, alas, also dead-and we discovered a mutual interest in the ballet. Do you care for the ballet, Mr. Marlow?”

  “I am extremely fond of it.”

  “So?” He looked surprised. “I am very glad to hear it, very glad. Between you and me, Mr. Marlow, I have often wondered whether perhaps poor Ferning’s interest in the ballet was not conditioned more by the personal charms of the ballerinas than by the impersonal tragedy of the dance.”

  The drinks arrived, a fact for which I was heartily thankful.

  He sniffed at his cognac and I saw his lips twist into an expression of wry distaste. I knew that the Parigi brandy was bad, but the grimace annoyed me. He put the drink down carefully on a side table.

  “Personally,” he said, “I find this city unbearable except for the opera and ballet. They are the only reasons for which I come. It must be lonely here without any friends, Mr. Marlow.”

  “I have been too busy so far to think about it.”

  “Yes, of course. Have you been to Milan before?”

  I shook my head.

  “Ah, then you will have the brief pleasure of discovering a new city. Personally I prefer Belgrade. But, then, I am a Yugo-Slav.”

  “I have never been to Belgrade.”

  “A pleasure in store for you.” He paused. Then: “I wonder if you would care to join my wife and I in our box to-morrow night. They are reviving Les Biches, and I am always grateful for Lac des Cygnes. We might all three have a little supper together afterwards.”

  I found the prospect of spending an evening in the company of General Vagas singularly distasteful.

  “That would be delightful. Unfortunately, I expect to be working to-morrow night.”

  “The day after?”

  “I have to go to Genoa on business.” This, it afterwards turned out, was perfectly true.

  “Then let us make it next Wednesday.”

  To have refused again would have been rude. I accepted with as good a grace as possible. Soon after, he got up to go. There was a copy of a Milan evening paper lying on the table. Splashed right across the front page was a violent anti-British article. He glanced at it and then looked at me.

  “Are you a patriot, Mr. Marlow?”

  “In Milan, I am on business,” I said firmly.

  He nodded as though I had said something profound. “One should not,” he said slowly, “allow one’s patriotism to interfere with business. Patriotism is for the caffe. One should leave it behind with one’s tip to the waiter.”

  There was a barely perceptible sneer in his voice. For some reason I felt myself reddening.

  “I don’t think I quite understand you, General.”

  There was a slight change in his manner. His effeminacy seemed suddenly less pronounced.

  “Surely,” he said, “you are selling certain machinery to the Italian Government? That is what I understood from my friend Ferning.”

  I nodded. He gazed at my tie.

  “So. That would seem to raise a question in the mind.” He raised his eyes. “But, of course, I appreciate the delicacy of these affairs. Business is business and so logical. It has no frontiers. Supply and demand, credit and debit. I have myself no head for business. It is a ritual which I find bewildering.”

  He had lapsed into Italian again. We moved towards the door and I picked up his coat to help him on with it. We both bent forward simultaneously to pick up the hat and stick; but he was still settling his overcoat on his shoulders and I forestalled him. The stick was fairly heavy and as I handed it to him my fingers slid over a minute break in the malacca. He took the stick from me with a slight bow.

  “On Wednesday then, Signore.”

  “On Wednesday, General.”

  At the door he turned. By the hard light of the electric chandelier in the corridor, the rouge on his cheeks was ridiculously obvious.

  “Shall you be remaining here at the Parigi, Mr. Marlow?”

  “I don’t think so. It is a little too expensive for me.”

  There was a pause. “Mr. Ferning,” he said slowly, “had a very charming apartment.”

  “So I believe. Mr. Ferning could probably afford it. I cannot.”

  His eyes met mine. “I wouldn’t be too sure of that, Mr. Marlow.” He coughed gently. “To a man of intelligence, a business man, there are always opportunities.”

  “No doubt.”

  “It is a question only of whether he has the will to take them. But I must not take up any more of your time with these ideas of mine. Good evening, Mr. Marlow, and thank you for a pleasant meeting. I shall look forward to seeing you again next Wednesday.” He clicked his heels. “ A rivederci, Signore.”

  “Good evening, General.”

  He went. I returned to my room but, for the moment, I had forgotten about my bath.

  General Vagas puzzled me. I had, too, an uncomfortable feeling that there had been a point to his conversation that I had somehow missed. I found myself wishing that I had known more about Ferning. There had obviously been something odd about him. His apartment, Vagas’ veiled hints… but Ferning was dead, and I had more important things to think about than effeminate Yugo-Slav generals. In a day or two I would write to the man and tell him that a business engagement prevented me from meeting him and his wife on the Wednesday. It would probably be true, anyway. I should have to present the letters of introduction that Pelcher had given me and make myself agreeable to the company’s excellent customers. Yes, that was my job-to make myself agreeable. If Spartacus were willing to sell shell-production machinery and someone else were willing to buy it, it was not for me to discuss the rights and wrongs of the business. I was merely an employee. It was not my responsibility. Hallett would probably have had something to say about it; but then Hallett was a Socialist. Business was business. The thing to do was to mind one’s own.

  I had turned my bath on and was beginning to undress when there was a knock at the door.

  It was the Manager of the Parigi in person.

 
; “I must apologise profoundly for disturbing you, signor Marlow.”

  “That’s all right. What is it?”

  “The police, Signore, have telephoned. They understand that you intend to stay in Italy for some time. It is necessary to deposit your passport for registration purposes. The passport is retained for only a few hours and then returned to you.”

  “I know. But I gave you my passport. You said that you would arrange these formalities.”

  He fluttered uneasily. “Quite so, Signore. In the ordinary way-in the case of a tourist-but in the case of the Signore it is different. I have your passport here, Signore. If you would be so kind as to present yourself personally at the Amministrazione in the morning, the matter will arrange itself.”

  “Oh, very well.” I took the passport. “I suppose this is usual?”

  “Yes, yes, Signore. Certainly it is usual. The regulations, you understand. If the Signore were a tourist then it would be simple. In the case of a resident there are certain formalities. Quite usual, Signore, and according to the regulations. Good night, Signore.”

  “Good night.”

  He went and I put the matter out of my mind.

  It was not until I was soaking blissfully in the steaming water that it occurred to me to wonder why General Vagas thought it necessary to carry a sword-stick.

  4

  BLACK WEDNESDAY

  It used to be the custom to commemorate moments of national humiliation or disaster by applying the adjective “black” to the day of the week concerned. The pages of European history are, so to speak, bespattered with the records of Black Mondays and Black Thursdays. It may be that, in this twentieth century, almost daily acquaintance with large-scale catastrophe has deprived the custom of its point. Black and white have tended to merge into a drab grey.