They say the unknown is the worst thing to face; but I would have stood any unknown danger better than this known evil that was coming to me. I knew it all: the cellar and the rubber truncheons and the weakness of the flesh. In that last awful summer in Vienna I had sat behind two storm troopers on a tram and one had complained that his shoulder was stiff. The other said, why? And the first man, with a boyish grin, had answered: I was beating up lousy Jews all night.
Nausea had been assailing me on and off ever since I woke, and now it had its way: I was sick in the corner, in the darkness, like an injured dog. When it was over I fumbled in my pocket and felt with relief the pencil Dwight had given me.
The approaching taxi had stopped about fifty metres away. The reason was plain: on the other side two women were passing. There must be no observers; the thing must not be bungled again. Two men got out of the taxi.
A last instinct of escape awoke in me again. I backed into the shop porch, pencil still in hand, rattled the handle of the door, beat on the door. An iron grille was down and this rattled and shook. No answer. I jerked and wriggled at the handle. The women were just passing on the other side of the street.
Beside the shop was a narrow alley. I went down it, blindly, not reasoning now. It was a cul-de-sac—at the end a door. It might in some way be connected with the shop. As I hammered on it two figures appeared at the mouth of the alley. They must have sprinted, thinking I might get away. Now, seeing me trapped, they stopped, waiting for the taxi to come up.
I thumped and hammered again, hurting my injured fist, pencil raised to my mouth.
The door opened. In the half darkness a shrivelled old woman peered angrily up at me.
“How dare you make such a noise! What do you want?”
I half stumbled, pushing at the door, but she held it firm.
“Lorenzo & Co!”
“They are shut.” She was stronger than I was and the gap was narrowing.
“Manuel Lorenzo!” I said choking. “I wish to see him!”
“Come round in the morning. We open at eight.”
“To-morrow will not do! I must see him to-night!”
“You cannot see him … Wait. I will ask.”
“Let me in!” I said. “I am not well: I am going to faint.”
“It’s after shop hours. We don’t admit people after——”
Footsteps behind me: I pushed again and this time I was stronger or she weaker, for I forced a clumsy way in, past the old woman who was proclaiming shrilly, stumbled in a dark passage against a bicycle, caught on to a shelf to save the fall. Heard the door shut behind me. Really shut. For a moment a breathing space.
I stuffed the pencil away. “Signora, I implore you——”
“Be quiet,” she said. “ Can you walk?”
A complete change in her voice. “A little way. You see——”
“Follow me, then. But have a care for our stock.”
She led the way to the end of the passage and up stairs. I made these noisily, kicking against the steps. At the top she said: “ Hush, be quiet,” and led me across a wide showroom full of dummies and rolls of cloth. Twice she had to stop for me, because only a tiny pilot light burned.
We went into a lighted office with a roll-top desk and a safe. Two men were counting money. The old woman said something I could not catch and I sat heavily in a chair.
“I told you he was not to be let in!” one of the men said harshly.
“I know, I know. I gave all possible hints. But look at him? In extremis. What could I do!”
The man came across. He was small, middle-aged, with cheeks like canyons.
“Manuel Lorenzo,” I said with difficulty, repeating my lesson. “Via Monte Rosa, II. I wish to see him.”
“I’m afraid we cannot oblige, signore. You should have gone to the Monumental Cemetery.”
“The——”
“Manuel Lorenzo has been dead ten years. Perhaps, as his son, I can oblige.”
“But I was …”
“How did you come by that injury?”
It was past time to consider whether anything would be lost by telling the truth. “The German secret police tried to kidnap me. I escaped with the injuries you see. I only left hospital at six-thirty.”
“So that was why you were so late for your appointment. It has made things very difficult for us.”
The other man came across carrying a glass. He was younger, with spectacles, close cropped fair curly hair.
“Drink this.”
Cognac. I had wanted water but the cognac went down, burning all the way.
“Manuel Lorenzo,” I said.
“Forget about him. Tell us what happened.”
I tried to. I gained strength as the words strung themselves together.
When, it was over the elder man rubbed a furrow in his cheek. “It will be very dangerous now, Ricci. Are you still willing to try?”
“Of course. It may divert suspicion from us.”
“Not if you put bandages about your head and your hands.”
“The diversion will make it easier for you to get him out of the house.”
“I cannot take him now. Maria will have to go.”
“Well, it will be easier for her, then.”
“Oh, have it your own way. But we can’t help you if you ran into trouble.”
The fair-haired man turned to me. “ How long before you feel able to walk?”
“I can move now.”
“Come with me, then.”
I pushed myself up from the chair and moved towards a door he held open. Within was a small fitting-room with mirrors.
“I want your hat and your suit and your tie,” said Ricci. “I’ll fetch you a new suit to wear.”
I was to have come to the shop and asked for Manuel Lorenzo, a sufficient guide to my identity. I was to have been taken to the tailoring department and fitted for a ready-made suit. In fifteen minutes a man dressed in my clothes would walk out and leave the shop. Anyone waiting would recognise the superficial likeness and follow. In the meantime I would have left by another entrance in a new suit.
“But why,” I asked, “was this only to be effective during the last half-hour of business? Why could I not have come earlier in the day?”
“Because after six the light begins to fail. If this were done in bright day the deception would be likely to be seen.”
The scheme had a touch of brilliance because it could all have happened without incriminating anyone in the shop, Now everything had gone awry. I had come after closing time and hammered on a side door. The man who took my place was clearly acting as a decoy and was in much greater danger; and Lorenzo & Co. were incriminated.
“This is not good,” I muttered, as I watched Ricci go. “He is simply taking over the risks I ran.”
Signor Lorenzo shrugged. “ Ricci is a fit man and you are not. He will not be knocked on the head at the first corner. So long as the deception is not immediately seen through. Are you ready to go?”
I had two more gulps of cognac and put the half empty flask in my pocket. The old woman was tying a scarf over her grey head.
“I must sincerely thank you for this,” I began to Lorenzo. “If——”
“We do not do it for thanks,” was the dry answer.
“I am waiting,” said Maria from the door.
I followed her downstairs to the door by which I had entered, then down again. She had a torch, and we picked our way through two cellars stocked with piece-goods. In the second cellar was a large cupboard. We entered, this, and as she shut the door the back of the cupboard opened and we stepped out into another cellar. Through this and up a flight. Head throbbing again.
A door. “Careful now,” she said.
Another alley. She peered out, her breath coming quickly like a fox. It was dark.
I followed her through the door, and we hurried down the alley keeping close to the wall; came to a cross-way and took the left turn.
She touched my aim. “ You would draw
attention in a tram. We will go by taxi from the end here. There is a rank on the corner. Say to the driver Santa Maria Grazie.”
We came out on a busy street. Three taxis. We chose the middle one, and is a moment I was sitting back, the curt old woman at my side. The relief threatened to bring back weakness again. As the taxi crawled through the centre of the city I recognised the turn down the Via Meravigli, and in a few minutes I was paying off the man outside the fine old Bramante church where da Vinci painted his great fresco.
Before the car had started again the old woman was pulling at my arm. I stopped for a gulp of cognac and thea went with her through two or three poor streets until we reached the back entrance of a warehouse. She took out a key and unlocked a wicket door. We went up steps.
“Ricci,” I said, breaking a long silence between us. “ I should wish to know that he comes to no harm. Perhaps you will be able to send word.” We went through another storeroom. Her torch showed up the
name Lorenzo on one bale.
“We do not send word in this business,” she said. “If you wish
to know anything ask the people in here. I must get back.”
She had knocked at a door. A tall man opened it. Major Dwight.
Chapter Fourteen
It would be an understatement to say I was relieved to see him. I had been too long on my own, making decisions in a vacuum, struggling just to stay alive. It seemed like a month, not two days.
He was alone in a little office place, not unlike the one I had just left. I collapsed in a swivel chair, while the old woman went into voluble explanations. When she had done she hitched her shabby black knitted cardigan round herself and left.
Dwight bit at his pipe with long yellow teeth and looked me over impersonally, like a vet with & sick horse on his hands.
“Groggy?”
“Not bad.”
“Dead beat?”
“More or less.”
He put a hand on my arm. “Come along. I’ll show you what you need, old man.”
He led me into a bare little room with a radio set, a divan bed, some photographic negatives curling in a wash-basin. He pointed to the bed.
“Get undressed and put out the light. A spot of shut-eye. I’ll give you three hours. We’ll have a full pow-wow then.”
“I could do with a drink—just cold water, if you have it.”
“The tap’s there. Entirely potabile. I’ll wake you at ten-thirty.”
I had craved sleep so much while fighting off the effects of the sedative that now perversely it seemed far away. Nerves were too much an edge …
He was shaking my arm and telling me it was nearly eleven. I dressed again, still shaky; sliced face and hands, and the sting of the cuts seemed to revive me. I drank another glass of water and went into the office, to find them all there.
Quite a reunion. Andrews, apparently feeling the heat, had flung off his coat and wore a setta pura emerald green shirt with a long loose the showing green gondolas on a red background. A broad grey velour belt kept his striped trousers up.
And Jane … well, I did not take in all that about Jane except that she was here. My face had, I think, flushed on seeing her, and the expression in her eyes startled me and lit up my mind.
Now I told them everything that had happened, and was glad Dwight had insisted on the extra rest before hearing me. When I had done they asked endless questions, chiefly Dwight walking up and down and swearing quietly from time to time under his breath. Andrews sat quietly twine-toed biting at his thumb-nail.
“It means,” said Dwight, ‘ the complete destruction of our system in Milan. Damned bad luck, old man; it wasn’t your fault, but there it is. It means the virtual break-up of Lorenzo & Co. Unless——”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Unless,” said Jane, “ these men don’t tell the Italian O.V.R. A. about Lorenzo.’
“We couldn’t risk it.”
“They’ve acted on their own so far.”
“Luckily for Mencken, otherwise he would hardly have stood a chance.”
“Robert’s hands ought to be seen to,” Jane said. “ They’re bleeding.”
I looked down. “It’s nothing. I took the bandages off to wash.” I was feeling better at last.
“I’ll get them and put them on again,” she said.
There was silence while she was out of the room. Andrews was whistling lightly between his teeth. She came back and began to bandage my hands.
Dwight said: “ I doubted all along if the gallop was going to be worth while. We’ve sacrificed one of our best bloody systems for absolutely nothing.”
“What about Ricci?” I said.
“He came to no harm.”
“That at least I am thankful for.”
“No harm so far, at least. One doesn’t know where the ramifications are going to end.”
“Some of these cuts are quite deep,” Jane said. Her hands were cool and slightly caressing.
Andrews twisted a lighted match so viciously that it hummed as it flew out of the window.
“We do not know yet if we have sacrificed one of out best systems for absolutely nothing. This is what Dr Mencken has yet to tell us. Will you explain, Mencken, please, a little more of what you learned of Professor Brayda’s work and why you think as you do about von Riehl.”
I tried to. When I had finished Dwight said: “I think he’s right. Dorio, who is keeping tag on von Riehl, said he had made arrangements to stay in Milan for five days—with an occasional trip to Garda no doubt thrown in. Now he’s cancelled his arrangements here and has wired Fräulein Volkmann to tell her of the change.”
“Who is Fräulein Volkmaan?” I asked.
“His Strength through Joy,” said Dwight. “You know, old man.”
Andrews got up and hitched his trousers over his stomach. “You got a pretty good idea, from what Brayda said in your presence, what he had been working on?”
“Oh, yes.”
“A new gas?”
“Not new,” I said. “But a rather startling development of an old. He is using chlorovinyl di-chlorarsine as a starting point. He also frequently mentioned bromo-benzylcyanide, but I was not able to follow whether this was to be developed as as alternative or whether some amalgamation was in his mind. The first result of the improvement, so far as I could make out, would be to have an effect similar to chlorovinyl di-chlorarsine but with a much heightened persistency figure.”
“Very fascinating,” said Andrews. “What does it all mean?”
Jane took my other hand.
“Chlorovinyl di-chlorarsine is a vesicant,” I said. “Somewhat like mustard gas, you understand. These gases are the most useful in modern warfare because of their persistency. That is, they can linger two or three weeks in favourable conditions.”
“And this improvement?”
“I gather he claimed the increased persistency might leave the components active for months. It would make decontamination very difficult.”
Dwight began to cough. Perhaps talking of it had nudged his body’s memory.
“But I never gathered whether this persistency wonld be constant in all conditions. It might—I would guess—be most useful in the summer months when high temperatures are likely.”
“This chloro stuff,” said Dwight gasping. “ Do we know about it?”
“Yes, the British invented it.”
He drew back his lips. “What sort of military potential would this improvement have?”
“In actual battle, do you mean? It would depend on the tactics. I suppose for shelling or bombing rear yes it would have great advantages, but for use in a—in what you would call a mobile war, I would think it might defeat its own object by making a place as untenable for an advancing army as for a retreating one.”
Andrews laughed sardonically.
“This question of military potential is a hang-over from Dwight’s last war training, Mencken. Forget about battles. In total war the gun that blows up a pill-
box is much less important than the man who spreads dirty stories about the commandant’s champagne orgies. So with gas. What I want to know is its effect if dropped on a city—what effect would it have on the morale of the people living there?”
“Well, you cannot live and work in gas masks and special protective clothing for weeks on end. It might, if used in sufficient quantity, make a town quite uninhabitable. But there is one other effect that would nave a much mere dangerous influence on civilian morale. It was this side-effect that I understood was worrying Brayda …”
“Well?”
“He had been experimenting on mice and rats, you know. He found the blisters caused by this gas had a tendency to recur even after months.”
“You mean they wouldn’t heal?”
“They would heal but then break out again in the surrounding tissues. They tend to ulcerate and become fatal.”
There was a silence.
“The blisters would become cancerous?” Andrews asked.
“I am not a medical man. But an ulcer which will not heal might be called that. At least it could very easily give rise to such a belief in a population subjected to it.”
“My God!” said Dwight “That’s pretty. That’s really pretty.” I had never seen such as expression on face before.
“That is the extent of your information?” Andrews said.
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s enough. Perhaps our system has not been broken up in vain.”
“What can we do?” asked Jane.
Andrews got up. “ I think we have to assume that von Riehl has enough information—or believes he has enough—to carry back to Germany. Right? Was Dorio able to make a copy of the telegram von Riehl sent to his Fräulein?”
Dwight looked up. “ Eh?”
When the question was repeated: “I’ll get it.” He went out.
Jane had finished my hands. “ Thank you,” I said.
Andrews rubbed his chin. You could hear the scrape of his thumb.
Dwight came back. “Fräulein Volkmann, Hotel du Lac, Garda. Am Enable return Garda. Urgent business cuts our holiday short. Meet me Milan station to-morrow evening to leave by seventeen-fifty train for home. A.R.”
Andrews took the copy and read it himself to make sure. Then his eyes went from one to another of us. “Well, that is the position. Any suggestions?”
Night Journey Page 11