“I left it at the station.”
“Mr. Somerville has a diplomatic passport so that he can get it through with his own things at the frontier without examination if you like.”
“I have very little, a few suits and some linen, but perhaps it would be as well if Mr. Somerville would take charge of it. I bought half a dozen suits of silk pyjamas before I left Paris.”
“And what about you?” asked R., turning to Ashenden.
“I’ve only got one bag. It’s in my room.”
“You’d better have it taken to the station while there’s someone about. Your train goes at one ten.”
“Oh?”
This was the first Ashenden had heard that they were to start that night.
“I think you’d better get down to Naples as soon as possible.”
“Very well.”
R. got up.
“I’m going to bed. I don’t know what you fellows want to do.”
“I shall take a walk about Lyons,” said the Hairless Mexican. “I am interested in life. Lend me a hundred francs, Colonel, will you? I have no change on me.”
R. took out his pocketbook and gave the General the note he asked for. Then to Ashenden:
“What are you going to do? Wait here?”
“No,” said Ashenden, “I shall go to the station and read.”
“You’d both of you better have a whisky and soda before you go, hadn’t you? What about it, Manuel?”
“It is very kind of you, but I never drink anything but champagne and brandy.”
“Mixed?” asked R. dryly.
“Not necessarily,” returned the other with gravity.
R. ordered brandy and soda and when it came, whereas he and Ashenden helped themselves to both, the Hairless Mexican poured himself out three parts of a tumbler of neat brandy and swallowed it in two noisy gulps. He rose to his feet and put on his coat with the astrakhan collar, seized in one hand his bold black hat and, with the gesture of a romantic actor giving up the girl he loved to one more worthy of her, held out the other to R.
“Well, Colonel, I will bid you good night and pleasant dreams. I do not expect that we shall meet again so soon.”
“Don’t make a hash of things, Manuel, and if you do keep your mouth shut.”
“They tell me that in one of your colleges where the sons of gentlemen are trained to become naval officers it is written in letters of gold: there is no such word as impossible in the British Navy. I do not know the meaning of the word failure.”
“It has a good many synonyms,” retorted R.
“I will meet you at the station, Mr. Somerville,” said the Hairless Mexican, and with a flourish left them.
R. looked at Ashenden with that little smile of his that always made his face look so dangerously shrewd.
“Well, what d’you think of him?”
“You’ve got me beat,” said Ashenden. “Is he a mountebank? He seems as vain as a peacock. And with that frightful appearance can he really be the lady’s man he pretends? What makes you think you can trust him?”
R. gave a low chuckle and he washed his thin, old hands with imaginary soap.
“I thought you’d like him. He’s quite a character, isn’t he? I think we can trust him.” R.’s eyes suddenly grew opaque. “I don’t believe it would pay him to double-cross us.” He paused for a moment. “Anyhow, we’ve got to risk it. I’ll give you the tickets and the money and then you can take yourself off; I’m all in and I want to go to bed.”
Ten minutes later Ashenden set out for the station with his bag on a porter’s shoulder.
Having nearly two hours to wait he made himself comfortable in the waiting-room. The light was good and he read a novel. When the time drew near for the arrival of the train from Paris that was to take them direct to Rome and the Hairless Mexican did not appear Ashenden, beginning to grow a trifle anxious, went out on the platform to look for him. Ashenden suffered from that distressing malady known as train fever; an hour before his train was due he began to have apprehensions lest he should miss it; he was impatient with the porters who would never bring his luggage down from his room in time and he could not understand why the hotel bus cut it so fine; a block in the street would drive him to frenzy and the languid movements of the station porters infuriate him. The whole world seemed in a horrid plot to delay him; people got in his way as he passed through the barriers; others, a long string of them, were at the ticket-office getting tickets for other trains than his and they counted their change with exasperating care; his luggage took an interminable time to register; and then if he was travelling with friends they would go to buy newspapers, or would take a walk along the platform, and he was certain they would be left behind, they would stop to talk to a casual stranger or suddenly be seized with a desire to telephone and disappear at a run. In fact the universe conspired to make him miss every train he wanted to take and he was not happy unless he was settled in his corner, his things on the rack above him, with a good half-hour to spare. Sometimes by arriving at the station too soon he had caught an earlier train than the one he had meant to, but that was nerve-racking and caused him all the anguish of very nearly missing it.
The Rome express was signalled and there was no sign of the Hairless Mexican, it came in and he was not to be seen. Ashenden became more and more harassed. He walked quickly up and down the platform, looked in all the waiting-rooms, went to the consigne where the luggage was left; he could not
