In The House Of Secret Enemies

front of a metal plate that read Chief. The other end of him was hidden behind a newspaper. I went and stood in front of the desk. The paper didn't move.

'Who's in charge here?' I asked in Italian.

'I am,' came the muffled reply.

'I want to report a missing person.'

The paper came down slowly to reveal a pair of ice-cold black eyes. A jagged scar ran from his hairline down across the bridge of his nose to the left side of his mouth. The scar tissue that had formed over the lip had puckered up his mouth into a perpetual leer. His name was Luciano Petrocelli, and he was an unlikely candidate for police chief; I'd last seen his picture in the New York Times in connection with an article describing how the Italian police were banishing certain suspected mafiosi to a small fishing village on an island off the coast of Sicily. Petrocelli was to have been the leading resident. The climate apparently hadn't agreed with him.

'How'd you get away from the circus?'

I repeated that I wanted to report a missing person.

'There aren't any missing persons in San Marino, buddy. Everybody is accounted for.'

'Well, I don't think he's so much missing as kidnapped.'

The brows came together and the eyes focused on my chest, like the cold, black barrels of guns.

'There ain't nobody been kidnapped in San Marino, dwarf. You're talking crazy.'

'As long as I'm here, I'd like to visit a prisoner.'

Petrocelli grunted and put the newspaper back up to his face. I had the feeling he was able to watch me through it. 'We don't have any prisoners in San Marino.'

'I'm talking about the man called Jandor. He's supposed to have killed somebody. Don't you have him here?'

Petrocelli put the paper to one side and leaned forward in his chair. 'He a friend of yours?'

'Yes.'

'You've got some pretty dangerous friends, dwarf. Also, you ask too many questions. Why don't you take my advice and get out of San Marino?'

'I can't. You've got the country sealed off, remember? Also, there's a small matter of my missing partner selling a circus that's half mine. What are you going to do about that?'

A vein in the side of Petrocelli's neck was beginning to throb. I'd have ducked if he had a gun in his hand.

'If you're not out of here in one minute, dwarf, I'm going to throw you in the can with your friend.'

I was out of the police station in something under a minute, and in the Marinello's souvenir shop in less than ten. Molly greeted me warmly and took me into living quarters in back of the shop to have some cognac with her husband. I passed on the cognac and offered a question instead.

'This is a nice little country you've got here,' I said. 'What's to prevent somebody from taking it over?'

John Marinello tossed down one slug of cognac and poured another. His eyes were glassy.

'The law,' he said. 'We have a constitution, like in the United States. We elect our leaders. If they do not obey our laws we get rid of them.'

'By voting them out of office, like in the United States?'

John put his glass down. He had a puzzled expression on his face. 'That's right. Why?'

'Let's suppose for the sake of argument that someone, for reasons unknown, was in a hurry and didn't want to be bothered with a formality like an election. Let's suppose this person or group wanted to fill all the key posts in San Marino with their own men. How would they go about it?'

Marinello shrugged. 'They couldn't. The Regents, with the grand council, appoint all the officials who aren't elected.'

'Men can be bought or blackmailed. There are many ways.'

'Here that is impossible.'

'But what would you do about it?'

'The Italians would help us.'

'But only if they were officially asked, right?'

'Yes. What are you getting at?'

I thought I'd been making myself clear. I decided to hit him over the head with the whole package. 'I think somebody's already taken over San Marino.'

John put his glass down. His cheeks were still flushed, but his eyes cleared a little. 'You're not making any sense.'

'For openers, your chief of police at the moment is a mafioso who was supposed to have been locked up by the Italians. There are hired guns all over the place. You've got no phone service, and the country's sealed off. It seems to me that you've got a problem.'

'There's sickness in the country,' John said weakly. 'That's why we've been isolated.'

'Really? Do you know of one single individual who's come down with this sickness?'

'I took it for granted.'

'Like everybody else in San Marino.'

Marinello put the cork back in the jug of cognac and pushed it away. 'I read in the paper where a new chief had been appointed, but I didn't give it much thought. It was a new appointment, and it was made by Albert Vaicona himself.'

'There's a second Regent, Arturo Bonatelli. He's supposed to be on vacation. Can Vaicona make appointments by himself?'

'Yes, but the Grand Council has to approve.'

'And the Grand Council approved a mafioso?'

John shook his head. 'Even if what you say is true, why would anybody want to take over San Marino? Our country is a joke to most people.'

'I don't know. But I'm convinced that the brains behind it is a man by the name of Victor Fordamp. The circus comes into it somewhere, but I don't know how. It doesn't make any sense for a man like Fordamp to take over San Marino just to give your police chief a place to hide. Petrocelli is a big gun, but I don't think he rates a whole country. In any case, the big question is why your government is going along with it.'

'That's assuming this whole plot isn't in your imagination.'

'A man was killed while he was talking to me over the telephone, from here, asking for my help. That wasn't my imagination.'

John mulled it over, then frowned. 'We will have to fight.'

'A lot of people could be killed.'

Marinello flushed. 'We are not cowards.'

'Of course not. But I hope you're not fools either. Fordamp and his men probably have enough firepower to outfit a battalion. They haven't used it because they haven't had to. That doesn't mean that they won't start firing if they're pressed. You can't fight bullets with your bare hands. How many guns do you have in San Marino?'

'We have a few hunters with rifles. And the police have their pistols.'

'The men I've seen would eat you for breakfast, and all the police are playing follow the leader to Fordamp's men. Somebody has to go for the Italian authorities. It's risky, but not that bad. I got up here by walking through a vineyard. There's no reason someone can't go down the same way.'

'I'll gladly do that.'

'Not yet. We'll need more to go on than my suspicions. With the way things are in the world today, the Italian government probably won't be too anxious to send troops up the mountain unless we can prove there's a good reason.'

John's eyes were cloudy with barely controlled anger. 'I will take this man Petrocelli myself. And Fordamp.'

'And you'll get yourself killed. You sit tight until you hear from me.'

'Where are you going?'

'To look for something to back us up.'