on the desk-“do you card-index all your acquaintances?”
He shook his head. “No, not all of them, Mr. Marlow. Only some of them. It’s a sort of hobby with me, you see. Some people collect sea shells. I collect photographs.”
He leaned forward suddenly, his jaw thrust out pugnaciously. “Mr. Marlow, this evening is, to all intents and purposes, the first time we’ve met and I’ve spent most of it so far in telling you a pack of lies. You’ve probably guessed that already, because you’ve caught me out in one that I hadn’t meant you to catch me out in. I didn’t know that that photograph wasn’t fixed properly. Well, all right. That’s about as bad a way of starting up a life-long friendship as I can think of off-hand. There’s a nice atmosphere of skulduggery and mistrust about it. You realise that you don’t know who the Hell I am and decide that you don’t want to know. You’re probably thinking that I must be some sort of crook. Splendid! And now I’m going to ask you to let me give you a piece of advice. I’m going to tell you that it won’t cost you a cent, that, on the contrary, you stand to make big money by taking the advice, and you’re going to wonder what my game is. And now, the whole thing is sounding to you about as phoney as a glass eye, isn’t it?”
“It is,” I said firmly; “what is it to be, a vacuum cleaner or a refrigerator? I don’t need either.”
He frowned. “Do you mind being serious for a moment, Mr. Marlow?”
“I’m sorry. All this disarming candour has been a little too much for me.”
“Well now, I’m going to ask you to trust me and take the advice.”
“I’m always ready to listen to advice.”
“Good. Then my advice to you is to accept General Vagas’ invitation. He might have a proposition for you.”
I faced him squarely. “Now look here, Mr. Zaleshoff. I don’t know what you’ve got in the back of your mind and I really am not interested. Furthermore, I quite fail to see what on earth an invitation issued to me has to do with you.”
“I still ask you to accept it.”
“Well, it may interest you to know that I have already decided to refuse it.”
“Then change your mind, Mr. Marlow.”
I rose. “I feel sure you will excuse me, Mr. Zaleshoff. I’ve had a tiring day and I’m not very fond of round games, even in the morning. Thank you for your dinner and for your very pleasant brandy. Perhaps you will allow me to return your hospitality some time. At the moment I’m afraid I must go. Good night to you.”
He stood up. “Good night, Mr. Marlow. I shall look forward to seeing you again soon and having another chat.”
I went to the door.
“Oh, by the way.”
I turned. He picked the card up from his desk and flicked it with a finger-nail. “You may have noticed,” he said slowly, “that at the foot of this card there is a note. It says: ‘See V. 18.’ Card V. 18 is in one of those filing cabinets. If, after you see General Vagas next time, you would like to inspect that card, I shall be delighted to get it out for you.”
“Why should I want to inspect it?”
“The V, Mr. Marlow, stands for Vagas.”
“That’s very interesting; but as I shan’t be seeing General Vagas…” I shrugged. “Good night.”
“Pleasant dreams, Mr. Marlow.”
I went.
My dreams that night were far from pleasant. I remember waking up at about half-past three from a nightmare in which Bellinetti was smothering me with huge stacks of photographs of General Vagas. But when I finally went to sleep again I was thinking of Claire. It was, after all, only a question of a month or two before I would see her again. Dear Claire.
5
I did not see Zaleshoff again for over a week.
The gods, like most other practical jokers, have a habit of repeating themselves too often. Man has, so to speak, learned to expect the pail of water on his head. He may try to side-step, but when, as always, he gets wet, he is more concerned about his new hat than the ironies of fate. He has lost the faculty of wonder. The tortured shriek of high tragedy has degenerated into a petulant grunt. But there is still one minor booby-trap in the repertoire which, I suspect, never fails to provoke a belly-laugh on Olympus. I, at any rate, succumb to it with regularity. The kernel of the jest is an illusion; the illusion that the simple emotional sterility, the partial mental paralysis that comes with the light of the morning, is really sanity.
The morning after that first curious evening with Zaleshoff was fine. It was cold, but the sun was shining and lighting up the faded green plush hangings of my room so that they looked more tawdry than they really were. The effect heightened the deception, coloured the illusion that now I was seeing clearly. Over my coffee I cheerfully pooh-poohed my sneaking apprehensions of the night before. The card index, this American’s mysterious hintings- what a lot of nonsense! I must have been crazy to think of taking it seriously. It was all, I assured myself, due simply to my ignorance of the Continental business atmosphere. I must not forget to make allowances for that factor. Fitch had warned me of it. “Over there,” he had said, “they approach business as if it were a particularly dirty game of politics. They’d sooner play politics really; but if they can’t do that they play business in the same spirit.” Zaleshoff the American had evidently caught the infection. He was probably working up to a proposal that Vagas should introduce me to a man with an order to place, and that a substantial commission (payable in advance) would secure adequate representation of Spartacus’ interests. Well, he wouldn’t get the chance. I had too much real work to do to permit me to waste time with such childish nonsense.
I see now that it was a piece of self-deception that was very nearly conscious; but semi-conscious or not, it was thoroughly effective, almost too effective, for I forgot General Vagas and the fact that I had to put off my appointment with him until practically the last minute.
After an acrid morning with Bellinetti and his files, I went to the Amministrazione to collect my passport. After half an hour in the waiting-room, I wrung an admission from the attendant policeman that the signor Capitano was not in the building, and that he had left no instructions about either my identity card or my passport. If I would return later, all would arrange itself. I returned later and waited for a quarter of an hour. This time the policeman was more helpful. The signor Capitano had not returned, but he himself had made inquiries. The passport had been sent to the Foreign Department. It would, doubtless, be available on the following day. If I could call in then…
But I did not call in on the following day. I did not call in until the following Tuesday. The reason for this was that on the Thursday night I went to Genoa.
As Pelcher had explained, one of my principal duties was to maintain personal contact with the users of Spartacus machines. Thursday’s post had brought a letter from one of these users, a big engineering firm with works near Genoa, and, as the letter raised points of technical importance, I had decided to make it an excuse to visit them. I should, in any case, have gone, as I had found that my Italian, though equal to most ordinary demands upon it, was as yet far too sketchy to permit me to commit my thoughts on technical subjects to paper.
I spent Friday, Saturday and Monday in the customer’s works, and arrived back in Milan early on the Tuesday morning.
It had been my first direct contact with a customer, and I had been impressed by the evidence I had had of Mr. Pelcher’s earlier activities. There had been some trouble over Bellinetti’s lack of attention to their interests, but they had been notified by signor Pelcher of my arrival and all was now well. On Sunday the works manager had driven me to Portofino in his car, and had permitted me to buy him a very expensive lunch. There had been talk of an order for six more S2 machines. I had received veiled but precise instructions concerning the method of paying the secret commission, and learned that my German competitors were obtuse and parsimonious when it came to the arrangement of such affairs. It was understood, however, that Spartacus were a sympathetic company to deal with. Their machines, too, were of the best. The Government inspectors would be in the works on the Monday. If I
