to appear. His fair hair stood up in agitated tufts.
Making the other guy speak first is an old ploy in diplomacy. The Indians knew the psychological advantages of it, and modern business executives use the same trick when they tell their secretaries to get the other person on the line before they pick up the phone. Smythe and I might have stayed there for days trying to outstare one another if I hadn’t realized that my hand was smarting. I sucked at the cut, and then glanced down at the rough metal track, almost hidden in the grass, on which I had scraped it.
‘You’re not hurt,’ Smythe said; and then, realizing he had lost that round, he went on angrily, ‘Serve you right if you were. People who poke their noses into other people’s business often get hurt.’
‘You aren’t trying to tell me these things go off automatically,’ I said.
He hesitated for a moment – wondering if he could get away with that claim – and then shrugged.
‘No. The mechanisms are operated from the grotto behind this wall. There is a series of switches. Someone must have turned all of them on.’
‘Someone?’ I inspected my bleeding hand.
‘I turned them off,’ Smythe said indignantly. ‘Why should – ’
‘I can think of several reasons.’ Since he didn’t offer to assist me, I stood up all by myself. ‘But if you think a silly stunt like this one is going to scare me away . . .’
‘Are you sure it was only meant to frighten you?’
‘I cannot imagine why we continually converse in questions,’ I said irritably. ‘Like one of those abstract modern plays . . . These sick stone nightmares couldn’t hurt anybody, unless they toppled over on him. They look stable enough.’
I reached out and pushed at the stone dragon. I didn’t have to reach far.
‘Of course they aren’t stable,’ Smythe snapped. ‘They are mounted on wheels. And, although they are bottom heavy and unlikely to fall over, I don’t know what would have happened if you had fainted, or hit your head in falling, with that thing bearing down on you.’
‘The heroine tied to the railroad track?’ I produced a fairly convincing laugh. ‘Nonsense. It was just a joke. Somebody has a weird sense of humour. Who? Pietro?’
‘I shouldn’t think so.’ His hands in his pockets, the picture of nonchalance, Smythe strolled towards the entrance to the garden of grotesques. I followed him.
‘Pietro has no sense of humour,’ Smythe went on. ‘He never operates these monstrosities. You must have noticed how rusty they are.’
‘Then who wired them for electricity?’ I asked, walking wide around a groping, man-sized lizard. ‘That wasn’t done in the sixteenth century.’
‘No, but they moved then, by an ingenious system of weights and compressed air, pulleys and iron rods. The sixteenth-century sense of humour was rather brutal, and the Count Caravaggio of that era was definitely a man of his time. Pietro’s grandfather was the one who wired the monsters. Cute, aren’t they?’
He patted the protruding rear end of a saber-toothed tiger that had its head buried in the throat of a screaming peasant.
‘Adorable,’ I agreed. ‘How did you happen to come on the scene at such an appropriate moment?’
‘The count sent me to look for you. It’s almost lunchtime. One of the gardeners saw you heading in this direction.’
‘Oh. Well, thanks for rescuing me.’
‘Pure accident,’ Smythe said coldly. ‘Don’t count on it happening again.’
After lunch Pietro went back to bed and I continued my inquiries. The morning had been entertaining but unproductive. What I needed to find were the service areas of the villa. I had not seen many of the staff who worked out of doors, only an occasional gardener, and I had a hunch that I might recognize a familiar face or voice among that group. I also wanted to investigate the outbuildings. If the mystery goldsmith’s workshop was somewhere on the estate, it wouldn’t be open to the public, but at least I could scout out possible places and search them later, after the workmen had gone home. I was beginning to get an odd feeling of urgency about that search. I suppose I had come to think of the unknown master as a potential victim rather than a member of the gang. I saw him as a sweet little old grey-haired man with spectacles on the end of his nose, like the shoemaker in Grimm. Maybe the gang was holding him prisoner, forcing him to turn out masterpieces . . .
It was a fantasy worthy of Professor Schmidt at his most maudlin. I had been working for that man too long. I was beginning to think the way he did.
First I found the garage – or perhaps I should use the plural. The building held five cars and had room for half a dozen more. The silver Rolls Royce shone in lordly splendour, looming over a low-slung red sports car. There was also a dark-green Mercedes, a station wagon, and a tan Fiat.
I did a double take on the Fiat, and then decided it must be Luigi’s. Maybe he was going through the same sort of reverse snobbism that affects well-to-do American teenagers. That’s why they dress so sloppily, in T-shirts and jeans; they are being one with the oppressed masses. It’s rather sweet, I think. Silly, but sweet. Or maybe Luigi’s daddy was teaching him how the rest of the world lives. Parents are funny. The poor ones sweat and strain to give their kids all the advantages they lacked, and the rich ones preach the virtues of adversity and tell long, lying stories about how they had to walk ten miles to school every day.
In addition to the garage I found stables, a greenhouse, dozens of assorted sheds and cottages, and a carpenter’s shop. This last establishment kept me occupied for some time, but the tools were the usual saws and hammers and things. I found lots of buildings, but no people except for an elderly gardener asleep under a tree. I had picked the wrong time of day to check up on the employees. Like their master, they were all sleeping off their lunches. So I gave up and returned to the house, and put through my call to Schmidt. It was early, but I figured he would be waiting, all agog and full of questions, which he was.
He hadn’t received my letter yet. That wasn’t surprising, since the Italian mail service is erratic at best, so I gave him a brief rundown on the latest developments, which didn’t take long, unfortunately. I had plenty of time to dress and get ready to go down for cocktails, anticipating another tedious evening with Romberg and Rudolf Friml and the Great Pietro, master of illusion.
The evening started innocently enough. As I approached the door of the drawing room I was greeted by a rippling cascade of notes. Someone was playing Chopin, and playing quite well.
The ivory drawing room was Pietro’s favourite. It was a lovely room, done in white and gold, with a great crystal chandelier and gilded stucco cherubs chasing one another around the ceiling. The furniture was upholstered in ivory brocade. The grand piano was gold too, but it was a Bechstein, and the paint hadn’t affected its tone.
When I entered the room Smythe cocked an impudent blue eye at me and switched from the ballade he had been playing to a more romantic etude. The footman on duty offered a tray. I took a glass of champagne, and went to the piano.
‘Not bad,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you take up music as a profession, and stop leading a life of crime?’
‘Not good enough,’ Smythe said briefly. His hands chased one another up and down the keyboard. ‘I do better with a harpsichord, but I’m not professional at that either.’
‘I’d like to hear you. Surely Pietro has a few harpsichords scattered around.’
‘The harpsichord is in the green
‘At least play something sensible,’ I insisted. He had switched to one of the more syrupy themes from a Tchaikovsky symphony.
‘I play mood music,’ Smythe said, nodding his shining golden head towards a sofa in the corner of the room.
The light of early evening suffused the room, leaving the corners in blue shadow. I hadn’t noticed Pietro and his lady; they were sitting side by side, holding hands and whispering sweet nothings.
‘What happened?’ I asked in a low voice. ‘I thought they were about to break up.’
‘So did I. Someone must have given the lady good advice. I thought it was you.’
‘I gave her some advice, yes. But I didn’t think she’d apply it so literally. By the way, I know you checked up on me, but I didn’t realize you had done such a thorough job. That crack about my experience with ghosts – ’
‘I’d love to hear the details of that story sometime,’ said Smythe, energetically pounding out chords.
‘I doubt that you ever will. How did you – ’
‘My dear girl, your friend Schmidt has told half Munich about his brilliant assistant.’
