she'd had an affair with Palestrina in her girlhood. She would be constantly haranguing visitors with fond reminiscences about 'Giovannino,' these being mostly colorful allegations of sexual eccentricity in the composer. If these two were in on Vogt's espionage activities, no one was aware of it, not even Ferrante, who made it his business to spy on his colleagues as well as any more appropriate quarry. Vogt, however, being Austrian, could probably be given credit for discretion. Ferrante had no faith in covenants, he regarded them as temporary and more often than not farcical. But he reasoned that as long as you'd made an alliance in the first place you might as well comply with its rules as long as was expedient. Since 1882, then, Germans and Austrians had been temporarily acceptable. But English most assuredly not. Which had given rise to his joke about the cuckolded husband. He saw no reason for cooperating with London on this matter. It was a plot, he suspected, on Britain's part, to force a wedge into the Triple Alliance, to divide the enemies of England, so that England could deal with them separately and at her leisure.
He descended into the kitchen. Horrible screeching noises were coming from inside. Naturally leery of anything deviating from his private norm, Ferrante dropped quietly to hands and knees, crawled cautiously up behind the stove and peered around it. It was the old woman, playing some sort of air on a viola da gamba. She did not play very well. When she saw Ferrante she put the bow down and glared at him.
'A thousand pardons, signora,' Ferrante said, getting to his feet. 'I did not mean to interrupt the music. I was wondering if I might borrow a skillet and some oil. My supper. Which will take no more than a few minutes.' He waved the squid at her placatingly.
'Ferrante,' she croaked abruptly, 'this is no time for subtlety. Much is at stake.'
Ferrante was taken aback. Had she been snooping? Or merely in her son's confidence? 'I do not understand,' he replied cautiously.
'That is nonsense,' she retorted. 'The English know something you did not. It all began with this silly Venezuelan business, but by accident, unaware, your colleagues have stumbled on something so vast and terrifying that they are afraid even to speak its name aloud.'
'Perhaps.'
'Is it not true, then, that the young Gadrulfi has testified to Herr Stencil that his father believes there to be agents of Vheissu present in this city?'
'Gadrulfi is a florist,' said Ferrante impassively, 'whom we have under surveillance. He is associated with partners of the Gaucho, an agitator against the legally constituted government of Venezuela. We have followed them to this florist's establishment. You have got your facts confused.'
'More likely you and your fellow spies have got your names confused. I suppose you are maintaining as well this ridiculous fiction that Vheissu is a code name for Venezuela.'
'That is the way it appears in our files.'
'You are clever, Ferrante. You trust no one.'
He shrugged. 'Can I afford to?'
'I suppose not. Not when a barbaric and unknown race, employed by God knows whom, are even now blasting the Antarctic ice with dynamite, preparing to enter a subterranean network of natural tunnels, a network whose existence is known only to the inhabitants of Vheissu, the Royal Geographic Society in London, Herr Godolphin, and the spies of Florence.'
Ferrante stood suddenly breathless. She was paraphrasing the secret memorandum Stencil had sent back to London not an hour ago.
'Having explored the volcanoes of their own region,' she went on, 'certain natives of the Vheissu district were the first to become aware of these tunnels, which lace the earth's interior at depths varying -'
'Aspetti!' Ferrante cried. 'You are raving.'
'Tell the truth,' she said sharply. 'Tell me what Vheissu is really the code name for. Tell me, you idiot, what I already know: that it stands for Vesuvius.' She cackled horribly.
He was breathing with difficulty. She had guessed or spied it out or been told. She was probably safe. But how could he say: I detest politics, no matter if they are international or only within a single department. And the politics which have led to this worked the same way and are equally as detestable. Everyone had assumed that the code word referred to Venezuela, a routine matter, until the English informed them that Vheissu actually existed. There was testimony from young Gadrulfi, corroborating data already obtained from the Geographic Society and the Board of Inquiry fifteen years ago, about the volcanoes. And from then on, fact had been added to meager fact, and the censorship of that single telegram had avalanched into a harrowing afternoon-long session of give-and-take, of logrolling, bullying, factions and secret votes, until Ferrante and his chief had to face the sickening truth of the matter: that they must league with the English, in view of a highly probable common peril. That they could hardly afford not to.
'It could stand for Venus, for all I know,' he said. 'Please, I cannot discuss the matter.' The old woman laughed again and began to saw away once more on her viola da gamba. She watched Ferrante contemptuously as he took down a skillet from a hook in the wall above the stove, poured olive oil into it and poked the embers into flame. When the oil began to sizzle, he placed his squid carefully in it, like an offering. He suddenly found himself sweating, though the stove gave off no great heat. Ancient music whined in the room, echoed off its walls. Ferrante let himself wonder, for no good reason, if it had been composed by Palestrina.
IX
Adjoining the prison which Evan had recently vacated, and not far from the British Consulate, are two narrow streets, Via del Purgatorio and Via dell'Inferno, which intersect in a T whose long side parallels the Arno. Victoria stood in this intersection, the night gloomy about her, a tiny erect figure in white dimity. She was trembling as if she waited for some lover. They had been considerate at the consulate; more than that, she had seen the dull pounding of some knowledge heavy behind their eyes, and known all at once that old Godolphin had indeed been wrung by a 'terrible need,' and that her intuition had once more been correct. Her pride in this faculty was an athlete's pride in his strength or skill; it had once told her, for example, that Goodfellow was a spy and not a casual tourist; more, had revealed to her all at once a latent talent of her own for espionage. Her decision to help Godolphin came not out of any romantic illusion about spying - in that business she saw mostly ugliness, little glamour - but rather because she felt that skill or any virtu was a desirable and lovely thing purely for its own sake; and it became more effective the further divorced it was from moral intention. Though she would have denied it, she was one with Ferrante, with the Gaucho, with Signor Mantissa; like them she would act, when occasion arose, on the strength of a unique and private gloss on The
