Street of the Five Moons (25 page)

“You need a stimulant,” she said, handing me a glass.

“Thank you.” I took the glass, but I was literally too bushed to raise it to my lips.

“Now tell me.”

“I don’t know where to start,” I mumbled. “There’s so much to tell you…. And I’ve got to tell it right, you have to believe me. They have him. They’ll kill him, if we don’t stop them.”

“Him?” Her arched brows lifted. “Ah, yes. Your lover.”

“He’s not my lover,” I said stupidly. “We never — I mean, there wasn’t time!”

“No? What a pity. I assure you, you have missed a unique experience.”

Her lips tilted up at the corners…. The Dragon Lady, the primitive goddess smiling her strange archaic smile.

All at once my exhaustion and confusion vanished. I was wide awake, enjoying a kind of mental second wind. It was a pity it hadn’t happened just a few minutes earlier.

She was a canny lady. She saw my face change, and her smile stiffened.

“Ah, so you know. How, I wonder?”

“I should have known a long time ago,” I said disgustedly. “I kept telling myself to sit still, stop rushing around, think…. I did figure most of it out. But I ignored one signal. I should have stopped to think it through all the way.” I raised the glass to my lips, then did a silly double take and put it carefully down on the table. She found my caution amusing.

“I haven’t tried to drug you.” She smiled. “Tell me how you knew.”

“It was the apartment,” I explained. “John said he had never taken Helena there, and there was no reason for him to lie about it. He made no bones about the fact that… But somebody knew about the place. If he didn’t take Helena there, he might have taken some other — let’s say ‘lady,’ shall we, just for laughs?”

“But why me?” she asked, smiling. “I don’t imagine I am the only — do let us say ‘lady’ — whom Sir John has distinguished with his attentions.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I said irritably. “He may be the greatest lover since Casanova, but there are only twenty-four hours in a day. He’s been in Rome for less than a week, and he has had other things to do. You and Helena — how many others could he work into his schedule? Besides, you fill a great gap in my speculations, Bianca. I wondered who the mastermind could be; you are the only person I know who is smart enough and selfish enough to organize this swindle. It had to be someone in Rome, someone close enough to the Caravaggios to know about Luigi’s talent. Besides, it isn’t fair to have a villain whom the reader doesn’t meet till the very end. What have you done with John?”

“He is here.” The amusement had left her face. She studied me curiously. “We had thought of using him as a hostage to ensure your silence. Who would have supposed you would be foolish enough to come of your own free will? Why in God’s name
did
you come?”

I thought I knew the answer to that one, but it was too complicated to explain. My good old useful unconscious mind had been working again, supplying the missing answers, but working as it was against a superstructure of solid stupidity, it had only succeeded in conveying a partial message. I had thought of Bianca, but didn’t realize why her name came to my mind. In the future I might do better to stop thinking altogether, and operate on sheer blind instinct. If I had a future…

“You don’t suppose I came here like a lamb to the slaughter without taking precautions,” I said, hoping I sounded more confident than I felt. “Ha, ha. Nobody would be that stupid, my dear principessa. If I don’t walk out of here in five minutes, with John, you will be in trouble.”

She didn’t seem to be listening to me. She was sitting straight and rigid in her chair, her head slightly tilted, as if she heard sounds I couldn’t hear.

“I said, you had better let us go,” I repeated. “We’ll give you time to make your escape. I bet you have a tidy sum stashed away. You can get halfway around the world in a few hours. You’re a sensible woman, Bianca; you must realize you can’t keep strewing the landscape with dead bodies.”

“That is true,” she murmured.

“Then…”

“I am sorry.” She shook her head. “But I am afraid you don’t understand. You have committed one serious error, my dear.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I am not the one who decides your fate.” She leaned forward, flinging out her thin hands in a gesture that was oddly convincing in spite of its theatrical quality. “Oh, yes, I began the scheme. It was mine from the start. Can you believe that a mind of such subtlety, such — forgive my immodesty — such intelligence could commit the unforgivable blunder of destroying that poor little fool of a prostitute? That was stupid, brutal, unnecessary. You must suspect—”

“That is enough, Bianca,” said a voice.

The sea-green draperies near the fireplace billowed and parted. There was a door behind them. Out he stepped, beautiful as a Michelangelo sculpture, holding his little gun. Luigi.

Twelve

HE LOOKED SO YOUNG. THE SULKY FROWN on his face made him appear like an unhappy child, several years younger than his real age. I couldn’t believe what I had heard. If it hadn’t been for the gun, I wouldn’t have believed what I was seeing.

“You had better stop calling me stupid,” he said, glowering at Bianca. “That was how she spoke to me. Stupid child, infant, innocent… me, the most important of all! Without me you could not have done it. The rest of you can be replaced; but without me, there was no plan! It took me too long to realize that. But now I am in control, I take my rightful place. And none of you will laugh at me again, do you understand?”

She was no coward, I’ll say that for her. She was in greater danger than I was at that moment; he was as unstable as a two-legged table, his adolescent ego smarting and hurting. But she didn’t cower or cringe or try to apologize. She gave me a twisted smile.

“Like other tyrants, I have been supplanted, you see. A palace coup. Behold the new ruler.”

“He’s right, of course,” I said smoothly. “Without him, you couldn’t have done it. He’s a genius. You know, Luigi, you could be the greatest jeweler the world has ever seen.”

He liked the first part of that disingenuous speech. His scowl smoothed out as he turned toward me. But at the last sentence he shook his head.

“Jewelers are artisans, craftsmen. I am an artist. If my father had not tried to crush my talent, this would not have been necessary. I am no stupid craftsman!”

“Cellini was a maker of jewelry,” I said. “Holbein designed jewels for Henry the Eighth.”

“That is true,” he said thoughtfully.

It was like trying to cross rotten ice; a false move, a single wrong word could break through the flimsy rapport that lay between us. He was thinking, too. He wasn’t stupid, that boy, even if he was crazy.

“What was it you said to her just now?” he demanded. “About letting you go away from here? You have laid a trap. What is it?”

I hesitated. His eyes narrowed and his finger tightened on the trigger of the gun.

“I didn’t understand,” I said quickly. “I didn’t realize you were involved, Luigi — not like this. I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

“Wait,” he said, as if to himself. “Let me think a moment. You have some scheme…. Ah! The telephone calls you made. My father told me, it was to some man in Munich. That is your plan, is it not? If you don’t telephone this person, he will send the police. You see, I am more clever than you thought!”

His young face beamed with pleasure. My brain knew this handsome, charming boy was a killer, but my emotions just wouldn’t take it in.

“You are clever,” I said. “Yes; that was my idea. But I won’t—”

“Make your call.” The gun dipped toward a low table that held a telephone. “Go on, make it. You will be very careful. You will say all is well. And to be sure you are careful—” He turned. “Bruno! Bring him here.”

I looked at the principessa. She raised slim shoulders in that ineffable Italian shrug.

“Fat lot of help you are,” I said bitterly.

The door through which Luigi had come was still open, the draperies flung back. I heard footsteps, very slow and dragging. Then John appeared, supported by Bruno. His face was bruised, and he had the makings of a magnificent black eye.

“I was questioning him,” Luigi explained simply. “I wanted to know where you were hiding, with the information he had given you.”

John and I contemplated one another across the length of the room. He was leaning heavily on his captor. I couldn’t read his expression, his face was too battered, but his first words left me in no doubt as to his state of mind.

“You’ve really mucked it up this time, haven’t you?”

“You might have warned me,” I said, stung to the quick. “You knew — damn it, that’s why you looked so funny, in the apartment, when I said—”

“Warned you! I didn’t have time to take a deep breath with those gorillas battering at the door. I have heard of stupid heroines in my time, but you are the prize. I risk my life and limb to save you from violent death, and you turn right around and walk back into—”

Luigi, who had been listening with a disapproving frown, put an end to John’s tirade — which I had to admit had some justice behind it — by pointing the gun at him.

“Enough,” he snapped. “That is no way to talk to a lady, especially when she has risked herself to save you. You should be ashamed.”

I thought for a minute John was going to laugh, and I made a horrible grimace at him. Luigi seemed to be very sensitive about being ridiculed.

“You are right,” John said, after a moment of struggle. “I apologize. Maybe we ought to try something more in keeping with this hideous farce we seem to be involved in. How about this? Oh, darling, how brave and how foolish of you! Don’t you know I would rather die a thousand deaths than see a single hair of your silly little head in jeopardy?”

“But, sweetheart,” I said. “I couldn’t go on living if your unfortunate habit of reticence had cost you your life. I had to come, if only to die with you.”

John had that effect on me anyway, but there was some method in our madness — at least, there was in mine. Maybe if we stalled long enough, Luigi would forget about the telephone call. It was an awfully dim chance. Even if Schmidt called the police promptly at five, it would take them a long time to get rolling, and even longer to extract an admission from Pietro that the principessa was one of the conspirators. In fact, the chance was so dim as to be nonexistent. If I could have thought of any sensible alternative, I would have tried it.

John had launched into another speech. I turned my wandering wits back to him in time to catch the last part of it.

“…. the memory of your courage and unthinking devotion. Fear not, my dearest, we will not die in vain. The minions of the law will avenge us, and as my last request I would like to compose a suitable epitaph, which I feel sure our gallant adversaries will have carved on our tombstone. ‘They were lovely and beautiful in their lives, and in their deaths — ’”

I might have known he would get carried away and go too far. Luigi finally caught on that he was being kidded. His face darkened ominously.

“You mock me!” he exclaimed.

“Impossible,” said John. “I mean, I wouldn’t dream of it, Luigi.”

“The telephone,” said Luigi. “Call. Bruno—”

Bruno let go of John, who promptly collapsed onto the floor. Luigi snapped out an order; Bruno picked John up and dumped him into a chair. Luigi pressed the gun to John’s forehead.

“Do watch your words, love,” said John.

There was nothing for it but to place the call. With the perversity of things in general, this one went through as smoothly as silk. I didn’t even have to penetrate the impenetrable wall of Gerda’s chitchat. Schmidt answered the phone himself.

“Ah,” he squeaked, as soon as I had identified myself. “There you are, Vicky. Gerda told me you had called. I am sorry I was not here. What is the emergency?”

“Oh, it’s still here,” I said heartily, wishing Schmidt’s voice wasn’t quite so shrill and penetrating. I wondered whether Luigi knew any German. The principessa probably spoke it quite well.

“You don’t understand me,” Schmidt said. “I hear you quite well; can you not hear me?”

“Oh, yes,” I said, laughing hysterically. “I can hear you just fine. But I’m afraid you can’t understand me.”

“But it is an excellent connection.”

“Oh, no, it isn’t,” I said.

“How is the case proceeding?”

“Not too well. You might even say disastrously. At the moment, that is.”

“I am so sorry,” Schmidt exclaimed. “But I have great faith in you, Vicky. You will solve it; I know you will.”

I felt like biting the telephone. I had been as direct as I dared. I thought of referring obliquely to Herr Feder of the Munich police, but I was afraid to risk it; the principessa might know who he was, and Luigi was already uneasy; he was mouthing suggestions at me from across the room, and the muzzle of the gun was pressed so hard against John’s head that it dented the skin. John didn’t dare move, not even his lips, but his eyes were eloquent.

“It’s all right,” I said feebly. “I — good-bye, poopsie. Auf Wiedersehen. I hope.”

The phone clattered as I put it back onto the stand. My hands were shaking.

“Poopsie?” Luigi repeated incredulously.

The principessa stirred.

“It is the name given him by his intimates,” she said.

It took me a minute to realize what she had said, and what it meant. She met my surprised stare with a slight shake of her head. Her back was to Luigi. Her lips silently shaped a word.

I put a hand to my forehead.

“Oh,” I said weakly. “I feel so strange. I think I’m going to faint.”

It wasn’t all an act. My knees were getting very shaky. I couldn’t see what good this was going to do, but at least Bianca was on our side. Maybe she had something in mind. Mine was an absolute blank.

I fluttered lithesomely onto the sofa, and Bianca bent over me.

“She is ill,” she exclaimed. “My smelling salts, Luigi — in my bathroom cabinet. And fetch a blanket from the closet, she is in shock, I think.”

“Bruno—” Luigi began uncertainly.

“No, I will not have that ape touching my things! Give him your gun, if you don’t trust me.”