After fifteen minutes of steady driving, Si Hanson murmured, “We turn off here, Sam. This is it. It’s a well known place. The Count doesn’t use it much, though.”
Durell nodded and sat up. The road twisted up from the lake by a number of steep switch-backs, and after another minute Si braked and halted. A guard rail loomed against a sheer drop of several hundred feet to the moonlit water below. The wind soughed in the pines and sheltered them in deep shadow. Durell got out and closed the door soundlessly. Si snapped off the lights. It was 11:46. The night sang with the pressure of the towering Alps around them.
The road had been built for a series of elaborate villas here. Lights glowed a hundred yards above them on the next bend of the road. But the Swiss-style house just ahead squatted in total darkness behind a high cement wall. Si stood beside Durell, breathing quietly. The sound of an occasional car on the highway far below blended with the whisper of wind in the surrounding woods.
“The gates are probably wired—the Count is famous for demanding privacy, Sam. But nobody seems to be here now.” Si paused. “But somebody must have been here recently for Jack to have noted the telephone number. Do we both go in?”
“You cover the outside,” Durell said. “I’ll give it a quick sweep.”
They walked silently along the eight-foot wall, ducking under the low pine branches until Durell selected a spot in deep shadow. Then he jumped, caught the coping, hauled himself up, flattened on top of the wall, and dropped lightly inside the chalet grounds. Si Hanson followed a moment later. At a nod from Durell, Si settled down on watch from this vantage point within the estate.
The house perched with an air of emptiness on the steep lawn ahead. Durell turned left to the driveway inside the ornate iron gate where moonlight glimmered on scuff marks, indicating that a car had been driven on the grounds at least within the last day or two. Crickets sang in the shrubbery. Shadows brooded under the wide Swiss eaves, but the moonlight that shone through the pines was too bright to please him.
The place looked clean. He circled the house, his footsteps soundless. A series of stone steps led up the embankment behind the garage. The chalet boasted the usual Swiss scrollwork under the eaves, and a porch on the second floor overlooked the lake. Lights gleamed from the boats down there, and the other villas nearby scattered yellow gleamings along the shore to accent the dark loom of the mountains.
A painted coat of arms was carved over the rear door that opened into the second level from the back of the house. The moonlight traced a Bourbon lily below three prancing goats that cavorted in a wooden frieze against a symbolic golden sun. Durell considered the steps going up and away from the back door. Nothing moved up there, except the thick sweeps of the pine branches.
Count Bernardo Apollio was something of a legend in modern Italian society; a nobleman of taste and wealth and Norman ancestry dating back to the Crusades. Durell had seen his picture in the Rome society papers—a narrow, handsome face with pale yellow or gray hair. The face had impressed him as being haughty, with anger in the dark eyes directed at the impudent photographer. Count Apollio was an anachronism in this modem world, Durell thought, living in the past and resenting the tides of unrest that rocked the globe these days.
Only two minutes had passed since he left Si Hanson. He turned from the back door, curious about the stone steps here, and mounted the hillside above the chalet. A wooden rail curved beside a road that also approached the chalet from above, and a glint of metal shone from a small Opel sedan parked just above the rear ornate gateway.
He stood still, shocked that he had almost walked straight into the car. No one seemed to be in it; but he watched it patiently for several long breaths, eliminating the shadows that moved in the pines behind it. Then he walked quietly forward and put his hand on the hood. The metal was warm. The car had arrived on this back access road only a few minutes ago.
He opened the driver’s door and looked in. There was a pungent odor of cigar smoke. A man had come here. And was still here. He sought for the scent of a woman in the car, too, but there was nothing to show that the man wasn’t alone. A sticker on the windshield showed that the Opel was from a Geneva auto rental agency. Durell withdrew and turned his head to consider the chalet.
He was on an eye-level with the roof from this point and could look down into the rear windows. It let him glimpse a faint light that flickered and went out in one of the back rooms. It came from a small flash probing the floor in there, and it would have been invisible from the ground level.
Durell turned and circled the chalet, drifting like a shadow under the pines. At the gate he checked the bolts and then followed the wall inside the grounds until he silently approached Si Hanson, watching the house from the darkness under a huge pine near the driveway. Durell touched him and
Si jumped and turned with appalling speed, his arm starting a karati blow. Durell was faster, checking him with a grip on his wrist. He whispered quickly, “Take it easy.”
The FBI man grunted. “You were asking for a broken neck, friend.” He wrung his wrist slightly. “Find anything?” “Somebody beat us inside. An Opel is parked on the back service road. One man, I think. Smokes Italian stogies.”
“Count Apollio? He owns the joint.”
“Apollio wouldn’t " smoke those cigars. And he wouldn’t sneak in and search his own bedrooms. I don’t think it’s Jack Talbott, either. Stay here a bit longer and cover me, Si.” Hanson started to protest, then shrugged. Durell returned to the chalet, circling the immaculate flower beds, and tried the rear door. It was not locked, and there were no signs that it had been forced. So the man inside had a key. He paused, orienting himself in the darkness. Waiting, he heard a soft footstep above, presumably from the same bedroom where the light had flickered briefly.
He crossed the tiled kitchen that gleamed with Swiss brass and ceramics around a copper-hooded stove. A carved set of stairs led up from the large living room, furnished with Italian provincial, decorated with the white tactile shine of marble busts and a stone fireplace. The air smelled of lemon oil. Durell halted on the gallery at the head of the stairs. Silence and darkness brooded around him.
A hall led to the back rooms. There was an open door to the left, another large bedroom behind him that took up the entire front of the chalet, with a magnificent view of the moonlight on Lake Geneva. His nerves tightened. He could smell the other man here—an odor compounded of sweat and cigar smoke.
He was about to start forward when the door at the back of the hall burst open and the man charged out. He was not surprised, but the ferocity and strength of the other’s rush, after the brooding quiet, was almost too much. He tried to ride the impact as the man crashed into him. He stepped back and took the weight on his hip and thigh. His foot slipped slightly on the waxed floor, and the fine adjustment of balance needed to make the man’s momentum work against him was lost. He felt an instant of shock. The other grunted, lurched to the head of the stairs. He was not a professional, Durell thought or this moment of off-balance might have been disastrous. Instead of following it up, the stranger tried to escape while Durell was still on his feet.
But he did not anticipate the knife.
The man whirled at the head of the steps, and Durell glimpsed a square, coarse face twisted with rage. The heavy brows were arched, the eyes wild. The knife ripped up with a gutting motion. Durell jumped back, not wanting to use his gun because of the questions he had to ask.
“Put the knife away,” he said softly in Italian. “I am not from the police.”
The man’s breath hissed. The knife swept up again as he crouched, stocky legs flexed, an inexorable menace in his squat body. Then he suddenly threw the knife with a quick, underhand motion that came from long practice. Durell jumped and felt the blade flick at his coat sleeve. The man plunged downstairs, running fast, his short legs driving him toward the front door.
Durell leaped after him, but the loss of a moment to avoid the knife gave the other man a long l
ead. He darted out the back door, started toward the parked Opel, thought better of it, and plunged into the pine woods. He was quick and silent. Durell deliberately made his pursuit noisy, to alert Si Hanson.
He wanted to capture this man. They might get some answers, and they needed answers because there was nothing else to go on except the word that Jack Talbott had boarded a plane for Rome. He moved quickly, descending under the pines with the chalet at his left. He did not see Hanson. He took his gun out and held it ready, but he hoped he wouldn’t have to use it.
An owl mourned somewhere in the woods. The crickets were silent. Traffic hissed on the highway far below, beside the lake. But it seemed a long way back to civilization.
The man was about forty feet ahead, moving along the edge of the lawn where the shrubbery offered concealment. Durell was careful. An amateur could be more dangerous, in some respects, than someone in the business. There was need for quiet, too. It wouldn’t do to interest the Swiss police.
He had left Silas at a point where the FBI man could watch the front of the big chalet. The fugitive had stopped in the shadows near the iron gate. Durell stepped into plain sight. He did not think his quarry was armed now, after throwing the knife. And he wanted Silas to know where he was.
It turned out to be unnecessary. A thud came from the dark slope, and he ran across the lawn, watching the shrubbery thrash in violence. Then the bushes were still.
“Si?”
The FBI man rose from the shadows, his hands open, fingers splayed wide. “Got him, Cajun. A tough old bastard.” “Let’s have a look at him.”
“How come he got away from you?” There was the faintest rebuke in Si’s voice. “He’s not all that mean.”
“I wanted to give you the pleasure,” Durell said.
There was tension in Hanson, an aftermath of the shock from Ellen’s death. Durell knelt beside the man sprawled on the fine sod under the shrubbery.
He was about forty, heavily muscled, with a weathered face and thick black hair peppered with gray. The man’s blue suit was cheap; his dark shirt and flowered necktie went with the coarse face. He lay on his side, one leg doubled, his mouth open, eyes partly closed. The whites glittered blankly. Durell felt for his pulse.
“I don’t like the way he’s breathing, Si. What did you do to him?”
“I didn’t want him to get away.”
“You hit him pretty hard. Was it in the throat?”
“You wanted it quick and quiet, didn’t you?”
Durell lifted the man’s hands. The fingers were calloused and stubby and dirty. There were rope marks on the homy palms. He sniffed at the fingernails.
“He’s a fisherman. You can smell the fish.”
“Let’s see if he has any papers,” Si suggested.
Just then the man made a strangling sound and shuddered in reflex. Durell flipped open the cheap suit and found a worn wallet and a passport. The passport was Italian, unused except for a recent entry and departure stamp from the French border and an entry date into Switzerland for yesterday.
“Bruno Bellaria,” he read. “From Isola Filibano.”
“That doesn’t tell us much.”
“Isola Filibano is Count Apollio’s private domain, Si. An island. Filibano is his, and so is this chalet. He only uses this house in winter, but the island has belonged to the Apollio clan for a thousand years. There’s a fishing village on it, and I’d bet this man came from there. It fits, doesn’t it?” “It’s beginning to look easy,” Si Hanson said.
“Too easy. I don’t like it.”
There was an unsealed envelope in an inner coat pocket, containing about thirty thousand lira in crisp notes, presumably the man’s traveling expenses. There was no letter
inside, no other papers. But the imprint on the envelope was that of the Hotel Sentissi, on the Via Partenope, 142, Naples. Durell returned the money and envelope and passport, careful to leave no fingerprints on anything.
“See if you can bring him to, Si. I think friend Bruno is on his way out.”
“Hell, I didn’t hit him that hard,” Silas protested.
“Some men aren’t as strong as they look. He’s going into shock. I’ll dust the house again, meanwhile.”
“Maybe the Dwan Scrolls are there,” Si said hopefully.
“It never comes that easily.”
He re-entered the chalet by the rear door. His examination of the lower floor was swift and expert. There was no sign of the stolen paintings, and only a few points to indicate the chalet had recently been occupied. A woman had lived here for a day or two, he guessed. The count’s wife? Had Jack visited here for a few clandestine nights of love? He went upstairs and checked the big front bedroom. The huge, four-poster bed was stripped and unused. He moved down the hall to where Bruno Bellaria had been searching the back bedroom.
It was small and feminine, yet touched by a mood of austerity. White curtains gleamed at the windows. There was a tester bed in ivory and gold with the Apollio sun crest carved on the headboard, a dainty carpet, a small tiled bath. The gilded closet doors stood open. Inside there were only two simple cotton frocks on padded hangers, with labels from D’Ingredi of Roma. The dresses were size twelves, he judged. A faint scent of soap and violet sachets touched him. He searched the floor, because Bruno Bellaria had been shining his flashlight here when Durell first spotted him from the back road. But he found nothing.
He straightened, pinched his nostrils, frowned in the scented darkness of the bedroom. On one wall was an oil portrait that had to be that of the Contessa d’Apollio. He considered it carefully for a long minute, absorbing the dark hair that fell thickly to shoulder length. She had a Modigliani throat, long and pale; a rather wide mouth; pale greenish eyes. The nose was prim, the eyes were wanton. She looked young—in her twenties—but the eyes were older. It would be interesting to check cut the Countess Francesca. She was supposed to be an American, half the count’s age. The portrait, a half-figure, indicated firm breasts, a slender waist, a hint of ripe hips. He thought of Jack Talbott meeting this woman in Rome, moving in the rarified social strata of Italian society with her. It didn’t jell. From what he knew of Jack, the man was rough, an adventurer, self-tutored in social grace. This woman looked elegant and refined, the wife of one of the richest men in Italy. Had Jack actually met her here in this isolated chalet the last two nights? And where was she now? And why was Bruno Bellaria, who could be employed by Apollio, searching the place? Had he been sent by a jealous husband to check on an errant wife?
Durell shrugged. The answers would come, sooner or later. He checked the bathroom routinely, considered the gilded tub with swan’s heads for legs, the tall Venetian mirror, the scent of perfume. He ran his finger around the marble wash basin. A drop of water clung to his fingertip. A long, dark woman’s hair was also in the basin.
The Dwan Scrolls were not in the chalet. He spent a total of ten minutes inside, then left the house for the last time, walking quickly. Si Hanson and the Italian were still where he had left them on the lawn.
But there was a small difference.
In the ten minutes he was gone, Bruno Bellaria had died.
chapter seven
IT WAS a maxim in Durell’s line of work that it was always better to keep things quiet and detached from local police interference. Silence was essential. You could not afford to lose time, and publicity could mean a disastrous delay. No delay was permitted here, although the dead man spelled all these things, and more. He looked at Si Hanson.
“What happened?”
“He suddenly choked and died.”
“You ruptured his throat?”
“I guess so. Maybe I did hit him too hard.” Si scrubbed his short white hair. His face was blank, offering no plea or apology. His pale eyes were hard. “It’s too bad.”
Death was always at your elbow, Durell thought. He did not know Bruno Bellaria. But he would have felt better if the dead man was in the profession, knowing the risks and accepting them. He w
as sure that Bruno had been an amateur, perhaps not even aware of the enormity of what he had stumbled into so briefly. He’d been a fisherman accustomed to the sun and sea, probably poor, perhaps with a stout wife and six children in a stone hut by the beach where he dried his nets. His wants would be simple—red wine, pasta, a card game with friends as rough and earthy as himself. But he lay inert now, the sun and the sea gone forever, the taste of wine souring in his broken throat, on a Swiss mountainside under an autumn moon.
“He could have told us a lot,” Durell said.
“Maybe. I didn’t intend to kill him, Sam. I was thinking of poor Ellen, and maybe I hit him too hard, that’s all.”
The object of the dead man’s visit here would have to be learned somewhere else. Durell looked at his watch. It was 12:05. At one o’clock, he and Hanson were due to board the Rome plane, after Jack Talbott.
He had the feeling this was a dead end, and there was not enough time to nail things down in Switzerland. He felt the pressure to go on with the hunt. And he had something to work with, now. He had Count Apollio, the wife with the sexy eyes, and Jack Talbott. They formed a pattern, of sorts. He wondered how much of the pattern was known to Anton Pacek. There was no sign that Pacek had been here. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything. The problem was to find Talbott before Pacek made a deal with him. Talbott had a club to use, however, in the stolen information about the Fremont apparatus; it would have to be handled delicately. The man was dangerous, in more ways than one. “Sam?” Silas Hanson said. “I’m really sorry, Sam.”
“For this man?”
“Well, yes. He could have told us what he was doing here, as you say. I guess I’m off to a pretty bad start.”
“It’s just one of those things,” Durell said.
“You can throw me out of it, and I’d understand. But listen, I guess I loved Ellen. Tomorrow I’m going to have a hard time believing she’s dead—and it’s a nightmare to think of how she died. Let me go on with it. I want Jack Talbott. I promise I won’t do anything without your okay. But I want him. One way or another, I’ve got to get him.”
Assignment - Sorrento Siren Page 6