Mediterranean Nights (15 page)

I wrote the story when I was on holiday in Rome in 1938 and it was only the unusualness of the request from the Editor of the
Daily Sketch
which intrigued me into sitting down to work in a distinctly warm hotel bedroom. He wrote to me that he was planning a series of six stories each by a different author but all having in common the same situation for their opening.

A pretty girl comes out of an hotel and gets into her waiting car. As she is about to drive off the hotel porter comes running after her with a small parcel in his hand exclaiming ‘Hi! Miss, you've forgotten this!' Instead of taking the parcel the girl gives him a startled glance and, jamming her foot down on the accelerator of the already moving car, dashes off down the street leaving the astonished porter still clutching the parcel in his hand.

What story-teller worthy of his salt could possibly have resisted such an invitation? I was not in the least surprised to learn that several of my most distinguished contemporaries in other fields of fiction had already accepted it.

I forget now if I did my brooding over the plot on the dusty floor of the Senate House where Caesar died—which I was one of the first privileged few to see after some eighteen hundred years' accumulation of refuse had been evacuated from it—while wandering among the ruins of the Imperial Palaces on the Palatine hill, where once Nero had supped off larks' tongues and watched Rome burn; in the sacred precincts of the Vatican among the Raphaels and Michelangelos; or while eating Alfredo's superbly cooked spaghetti, which
in its own way was as great an artistic creation as any other in the Eternal City.

Wherever I spent my day the fact remains that I returned with the story fully thought out in my mind and wrote it in my room that night, lubricating the works meanwhile with a bottle of well-iced sparkling Asti.

Among the other participants in this delightful game were Ethel Mannin, P. G. Wodehouse and, I think, Agatha Christie—I forget the other two. But you can well imagine how widely our stories differed from each other after our common kick-off. I only wish that I could reprint the whole series for your enjoyment, but laws of copyright which, thank goodness, protect us all from such piracy, force me to confine myself to my own version of the circumstances which led to a pretty girl deliberately driving off without the parcel she had left behind.

DEATH AT THREE-THIRTY

T
HE
blue waters of the Mediterranean lap the tumble-down quays of Decastzban. It is a little town, old when Rome was young, smelly, picturesque; nestling at the foot of craggy, sun-scorched mountains.

Its normally sleepy Plaza was thronged with a murmuring crowd; the Dictator had honoured the small port with a one-night visit and was to leave again for the capital that afternoon.

From the entrance of the old ‘Three Angels' Hotel a girl suddenly appeared. Soldiers held back the crowd as she hurried to a waiting car. Some trunks were strapped upon its grid and a tall gaunt man sat hunched in the passenger seat.

Police Chief Sperantze waved her forward. He knew Sabina Tovorri; had known her since she was a little girl. Who did not know her haughty profile and regal carriage in Decastzban? Her family had possessed great estates in the neighbourhood—until the Revolution. Since, she had made good as a journalist on the local paper; her foreign education
had helped her in that—and her looks. Sperantze was mildly surprised that she neglected to give him her usual smile. Her olive face was clouded and the corners of her shapely mouth turned down. He assumed, quite wrongly, that the ‘Great Man' had refused her an interview.

As Sabina wriggled into the driver's seat, the porter came running from the hotel. Over his outstretched arm was slung a camera and in his hand he held a small square package. ‘
Contessa
!' he cried. ‘
Contessa
, you have forgotten this!'

She gave him one startled glance, jammed her small foot on the accelerator and the car, gathering speed, raced away down the troop-lined street.

The man beside her had noticed nothing. He turned his gaunt face towards her and stared for a moment at the finely cut features, pale under their tan. His eyes were dull, half-filmed like those of a snake or drug-taker, but his question was curt. ‘Well?'

‘An utter failure,' she almost choked. ‘We might have known.'

‘What! He refused to see you after all?'

‘No, I saw him; and he was charming. Whatever he may have done he has an air, that one, and his eyes. Wise, understanding, kind. I felt like a sneak thief trying to pick the pocket of a saint.'

‘You little fool.' The gaunt man's mouth worked furiously. ‘How like a woman to fall for that mountebank. I warned you to keep your eyes away from him because his gaze is known to be hypnotic. Yet you must stare at him so that scruples overcame your determination at the last moment.'

‘They might have!' she exclaimed bitterly. ‘He's not evil—an unscrupulous brigand—as I've always been taught to believe. I know that now—but there
was
no last moment. Yours agents are hopelessly incompetent, Korto. They should have told you—we should have realised, ourselves. His people are prepared for such attempts. I had no chance to leave the parcel in his room. Before I entered it everything was taken from me. The bomb, my camera, even my bag—and when I came out I was too dazed to think….'

Sabina lied unconsciously. She had been thinking, hard, fast, furiously, from the very second she had been compelled to relinquish her belongings. A wiry, forceful-looking young
officer had courteously but firmly relieved her of them in the ante-room. She had recognised him at the first glance. It was Ruran: her childhood friend and girlhood lover. No! That was not true. He had kissed her once, only once, on a hot summer night heavy with thunder. The storm had broken and driven them indoors. Next day he had gone off to begin his military service.

So much had happened since; a dozen different men had occupied her interest; there had been the Revolution and the confiscation of her father's property; the new necessity to carve a career for herself. She had scarcely given Ruran a thought in half a dozen years, but no woman ever forgets the first time she receives a kiss and gives it back with meaning.

She did not think he had recognised her. The formalities had only occupied a matter of seconds before she was ushered into the Dictator's room. The people at the hotel knew her real name, but that under which she wrote her articles would have conveyed nothing to Ruran. Vaguely she remembered hearing that he had become one of the Dictator's most vigorous supporters, but to meet him face to face after all those years at such a tense moment had thrown her completely off her balance.

‘What happened to the bomb?' asked Korto suddenly.

‘It's still there. The porter came after me with it, but I lost my head and drove away.'

‘Good,' he said quietly. ‘With luck it may still settle one or two of those swine even if we've failed to get the arch-traitor himself.'

She swung upon him furiously. ‘D'you think I'll chance it killing innocent people?' As she spoke she swung the car into the kerb and braked viciously, bringing it to a halt outside a small pâtisserie.

‘What are you going to do?' he grunted, grabbin at her wrist.

Her eyes snapped at him. ‘Telephone, of course. Tell them to put it out of action. It's only ten past three and the thing's not timed to explode until half past.'

‘Listen,' his voice was urgent. ‘Our getaway's all fixed. I hate to exercise pressure on you yet again, but I still have your father's papers. He doesn't like being poor, but he'll
like prison far less. I told you what I'd do if you double-crossed me, and I'll do it yet if you get us caught through telephoning some damn-fool warning.

With a sudden unexpected wrench, Sabina tore her arm away and flung herself out of the car. He made a swift movement to follow her, then thought better of it. Three minutes later she rejoined him, and the car sped on through the narrow twisting streets towards the west gate of the old town.

‘Hell!' exclaimed Korto as they came in sight of the ancient arch flanked by squat battlemented towers. ‘See where your crazy warning's landed us. They've telephoned the garrison.'

A double file of Caribineers barred their progress. Korto's hand slid up to his armpit holster, but he withdrew it as a young officer, flourishing an automatic, jumped on the running board.

‘Turn your car round,' he snapped at Sabina. ‘You're wanted at Headquarters—quick now.'

Sick with fear and apprehension, she obeyed. If only she had waited to telephone until they were outside the town—but it was too late to think of that now. Tales of the Dictator's prisons flashed through her mind. She would probably suffer unspeakable degradation—unless they shot her—which was even more likely. In a mist of misery she automatically steered the car back to the ‘Three Angels' and noticed subconsciously that the clock in the Plaza showed it to be twenty past three.

The Lieutenant shepherded them straight upstairs to the ante-room. Ruran sat there behind a desk table; on it reposed her bag, camera and the package containing the infernal machine: a small alarm clock attached by a fuse to a pound of gelignite and set to go off at three-thirty exactly.

Ruran dismissed the Lieutenant of Caribineers with a nod, glanced at Korto, and signed to two troopers standing at the door. ‘Take this man away. Put him below in the courtyard and keep him under observation from the gateway. No one is to be allowed to speak to him or go near him.'

With a baleful glance at Sabina, Korto turned, but Ruran called after him. ‘Here, take this trash away—your girl friend's not likely to need it from now on.'

He held out the camera and handbag. With a sullen shrug
Korto took them and left the room between his guards. Ruran and Sabina were alone.

‘Have you anything to say?' His eyes were hard as rocks, his voice flinty.

‘You—you don't remember me?' Sabina loathed herself even as she spoke for attempting to soften him by recalling their old friendship, yet they were the only words she could think of.

‘Perfectly,' he replied coldly. ‘You are Sabina Tovorri, daughter of Count Tovorri, the Liberal leader whose estates were confiscated for having opposed my great Master's ordinances for saving our country from anarchy. Now, it seems, you have turned anarchist yourself. What have you to say about this?' He tapped the square package on the desk before him.

Sabina stared at it in sudden horror. ‘Good God, you haven't opened it?' she gasped. ‘It—it's timed to go off at half past three.'

‘So you told the porter on the telephone,' Ruran observed. ‘It is now twenty-three minutes past. His Excellency is not original in desiring that, wherever possible, punishment should fit the crime. I shall not touch the infernal thing, but propose to leave you with it.'

Her eyes flickered towards the window, but he caught her glance. ‘Oh, no!' he smiled sardonically, as he stood up. ‘I do not intend that you should throw it outside and kill somebody else.'

With a swift movement he opened the top drawer of the desk, slipped the package inside and, locking the drawer, pocketed the key. ‘It will shatter the desk, of course, but I doubt if it will kill you. Your chance of surviving will be slightly better than His Excellency's would have been.' Before Sabina had time to collect her wits he had gone, locking the door behind him.

With a gasp of dismay she flung herself on the heavy desk and wrenched at the drawer. A brass handle came away in her hand, grazing her knuckles. Her eyes distended by terror, she stared frantically round for some implement with which she might force the lock. It was a sparsely furnished hotel sitting-room and she could see nothing which would serve her purpose. She ran to the window, but a wire mosquito screen
was nailed across it. As she stared out she saw Korto, the cause of her desperate plight, sitting hunched up on the edge of a fountain in the empty courtyard. By banging on the wire she endeavoured to attract his attention, but he was sunk in torpid gloom. A clock showed above the stables opposite; it was twenty-six minutes past three. Swinging round she attacked the drawer again with renewed frenzy. For three ghastly minutes, each of which seemed an age, she stabbed at the lock with the splintered end of a bone paper-knife. Her hands were bruised and bleeding. She glimpsed the clock again, it was twenty-nine minutes past. In another moment the desk would shatter in a searing sheet of flame. Its jagged splinters would pierce her flesh. She would be stunned, perhaps killed, by the force of the explosion. Wildly she stared round for cover; but the room held no cupboards, only the desk and a few chairs.

Suddenly the door opened. Ruran and the ‘Great Man' stood there.

‘Your Excellency,' said Ruran, ‘you have met this lady as a journalist; I now wish to present her as the Countess Tovorri. Her father's estates were confiscated, you will remember, but today she has rendered you a great service. She warned us by telephone that the anarchist Korto was about to attempt your assassination with a bomb.'

‘Korto!' exclaimed the Dictator. ‘Where is he?'

‘Down there in the courtyard,' said Ruran pointing.

For one second Sabina withdrew her terrified gaze from the desk. The clock above the stable stood at half past three. There was a blinding flash, a cloud of smoke, windows rattled violently; and when they could see again, Korto's mangled body lay on the flagstones by the fountain.

.      .      .      .      .

A few minutes later Ruran was giving Sabina a badly needed cognac; his eyes had softened to their old friendliness and humour.

‘I had to give you a lesson,' he said softly, ‘but I have memories too. It was quite simple to transfer the bomb from the package to your camera case before you came in and send Korto out there with it.'