The Adventures of Hiram Holliday (30 page)

^‘
E
vero!
But yes! Brilliant! You are the expert then,
un Professore?'

'N-no,' said Hiram.
'I
want it. What is the price
?'

He had been shaken by the sensation of utter, brutal strength, truculence and power that had flooded him, a swaggering fearlessness, a picture of a man with a bursting gorge who cared for nothing that walked on two legs, a vitality and indomitable will. Every nerve in his body told him that the weapon had belonged to a fighter such
as
there are few left on earth today.

'Hah! My friend. I
am afraid It is a piece of the
museum....
I could not under seven thousand lira. The reproduction I can give you for six hundred lira. So well made, one who is not like yourself could not tell the difference
...'

'No....
No
...'
cried Holliday. He had the weapon in his hand again and it transformed him somehow. Behind the steel-rimmed spectacles his strange-coloured blue eyes were burning weirdly, he seemed inches taller. He raised the sword aloft and in a strange voice cried out:
'Marcus
...
Marcus Severix, ave !'

Something very much like a chill ran through Signor Salvelli.

'I
must have it. Never mind the price. I will pay you each week,' said Hiram. ' I must have it.'

'In that case, my friend,' Signor Salvelli heard himself saying:
'I
give it to you. As a present. It is yours.'

Not until Hiram was out of the shop did Salvelli realize what he had done. He hung the reproduction back upon the wall and shrugged his shoulders. He was a healthy man. Strange things happened when one dealt in the possessions of the ancients. Many little pagan gods dwelt in his shop. Perhaps they had looked down approvingly upon what he had done and would bring him
luck....

The bombers had passed and were a distant humming, and the spell was broken. Hiram wandered on past the slab of black stone covered with a sheet of metal to protect it, and known as Caesar's Rostrum. He came from behind it. In front there stood a tall slim girl with deep violet eyes, and dark chestnut hair. A young boy, eight or nine years old, was beside her. The girl spoke to him in German. 'See, my Peter,' she was saying, 'from that stone Marcus Antonius faced the cowards who had murdered Caesar and over his dead body spoke his funeral oration.'

Hiram raised his hat. 'Heidi! And Duke Peter,' he said. 'How fine to find you again.'

The boy flew into his arms with a yell of delight. 'Onkle Hiram
...
Onkle Hiram! Where have you been
?'

But the Princess Adelheit von Furstenhof of Styria said quietly: 'It is good to see you again, Hiram.' She did not hold out her hand. She thought that he had changed since that first fantastic night in London so many months ago when they had met. He was leaner-looking and harder, with much of the roundness gone from his face, and there were lines in it that had not been there before.

He looked
at
her gravely, conscious of the coldness in her.

He said: 'Are you well - and safe here?' He glanced at Peter.

'Yes,' said Heidi, and there was no colour in her voice. 'The Italians have been kind. Or perhaps Peter and I are a bargaining point for them with Germany. We are going away soon - to where
it
will be
safer....'

There they were, talking like casual strangers, the girl he had led over the impassable Lattler Riicken that bridged the Gross Loffler from Austria into Italy, on the wild, night ski-run.

'And Count d'Aquila,' inquired Hiram politely, 'that brave man who fought like a lion for us, in Prague
?'

Heidi lifted her head.
'Mario?'
she said. 'He is in Rome. He is at the "Russie." He loves and admires you very much, Hiram. Why don't you try to see him
?'

'I
will,' said Hiram.
'I
am at the same hotel.' Commonplaces, commonplaces. What was the barrier between them ? His last sight of her had been at the end of the terror-ridden flight from Vienna over the Alpine pass. When he had recovered consciousness in the Tyroler hut, on the Italian side, she and Peter had been gone. The people there had explained that if Heidi and the boy had remained, questions would have been asked and it would have been dangerous. And so they had sent her on, passing her from house to house and village to village.

'What happened after we made the crossing, Heidi? I remember very little.'

The
girl gave a small cry. 'Hiram,' she said. 'What - what do you remember
?'

'We came to the broad slope in the darkness where the house was. I know I fell. That night was a torture of everlasting falling. I thought I would crash again, but someone held me. And after that I do not remember any more, except that there were dreams, horrible ones of black abysses, rocks and ice, and a dear one, where you were Heidi, and one in particular that I have tried to dream again
...'

The girl drew in her breath sharply. Her hands sought for Peter's.' It
...
it is so late. Come, Peter, we must go. I
...
I am glad you are well, Hiram.'

He stood there and watched them disappear. Only the boy turned around and waved to him. 'Hiram Holliday, the kingmaker,' he said to himself. 'How do you like it ?'

And then like a blinding lightning he was riven by the thought - supposing the dream had not been a dream, that she had held his head in the darkness of his delirium and called him brave and beloved, and wept over
him....
What had he known, battered and broken
at
that time, where dreams had ended and truth began ? He turned to run after them, but they had vanished.

He shrugged his shoulders and made his way to the exit of the Forum on the Via Impero where he hailed a horse-drawn carriage and directed the driver to the office of the
Sentinel
Bureau. He wondered whether his last article had been printed in New York. He had written a scathing comparison of the opponents picked by ancient and modern Italy for battle. There might be a message from Beauheld. He wondered how the piece would go down with Fascist Italy if it had been translated and cabled back, as was the work of most of the foreign correspondents.

The answer to his question was there when he arrived. In addition to Proggi, there were two unexpected callers awaiting him, a Lieutenant Di
Cavazzo, and a Commendatore Ara
Pesca. The former he knew personally, the latter by reputation. And with very few words wasted, they made their business with him plain.

For certain men in one of the inner bureaux of the Italian Government were likewise asking not only: 'Who is Hiram Holliday ?' but 'What is to be done about him
?'

In the ordinary course of events, Hiram would have been asked to quit Italy within twenty-four hours. But there was in the Bureau a letter in an envelope bearing the Gestapo seal, in which Italy's axis partner sent a digest of the dossier on Holliday, and made a number of specific demands. The demands themselves did not go down so well since the Italians rather resented the implication that Gestapo business took precedence over the varied problems of the Italian secret police. But the prime consideration was that Hiram's articles had touched the Romans on their weakest spot - their pride. It had been newly dusted off and refurbished for them by Mussolini. They had become boastful of their military power in the manner of all the totalitarian nations as part of the propaganda to impress and disturb the democracies. The Italians, however, being naive, had swallowed their own propaganda. The powerful higher-ups in the Government in addition to being wounded i
n their national pride, for the
Italian is a true patriot at heart, saw that Hiram was on the verge of hitting upon a further truth which if widely disseminated as counter-propaganda might wreck expansionist schemes and result in a genuine calling of the totalitarian bluff. If this were to happen they might be forced either into a disastrous and losing war which would wipe out all the gains they had made since Mussolini came to power, or, their bluff called, slip back to the status of a third-rate power. For this reason aione they were in agreement with their northern partner - that the axis powers could but benefit by the elimination of the individual by the name of Holliday. But they cast aside the crude suggestions of the Gestapo and went at the matter in a truly Italian manner.

And the means to their end were supplied by the statement of one Lieutenant Di Cavazzo, a member of the Secret Council, the only one of their number who not only had ever seen the man Hiram Holliday, but, it developed, knew
him
personally.

Di Cavazzo, it appeared, frequented the huge, sombre
salle d'armes
beneath the colonnades of the big Stadio P.N.F., the sports stadium of the National Fascist Party. To this
salle,
reported Di Cavazzo, himself a sabre-fencer, came this man Holliday three evenings a week for fencing instruction and practice. He was taking lessons from Captain Rozzo, the Italian Army champion, the
epee,
or duelling sword, appeared to be his weapon; and while by no means brilliant, he was a capable and competent fencer of many years' experience, to be rated in class B, perhaps, and one who made up in enthusiasm and love for the sport what he lacked in skill, practice and speed of legs, hand and eye.

'He is quiet and earnest,' reported Di Cavazzo.
'A
true sportsman, and well liked. I have observed him, have fenced with him myself and judge him to be a visionary and a romanticist. As you know, one learns a man's character, his strength and weaknesses, more quickly at the end of a sword blade than in any other manner. It is unusual to find in an American the instincts of a medieval bravo. He savours a bout to the last stroke, and it is easy to see and feel that in his imagination he is playing without mask and button.'

At this point the Chief of the Council, a spare, dry man with a bald head and a monocle, interrupted and said: 'Sufficient, my dear Di Cavazzo. You are a capital fellow, and your powers of observation and analysis will take you far. You have shown us the solution to the problem. At this moment, Signor Holliday is either a dead man, or one who is so discredited that he will be of no further menace either to us, or our - ah -friends in the north. Observe how we will impale him upon the horns of a dilemma from which there is no escape between the choice of death or disgrace.'

He then made clear the details of his plan, which were exquisitely simple.

How the Forces of Evil Challenged Hiram Holliday to a Duel He Could Not Win

'Good evening to you, Mr Holliday,' said Lieutenant Di Cavazzo in the
Sentinel
Bureau. 'Permit me to make known to you Commendatore Ara-
Pesca, one of the editors of
Il
Popolo d'ltalia.'

Hiram acknowledg
ed the introduction. Signor Ara
Pesca was a little man with a dark face and shrewd eyes.

' We have missed you at the fencing
salle,
said the Lieutenant.

Hiram replied that he had been busy with some special work, but hoped to be there again in the near future. He was racking his brains for a pre-glimmer of the real purpose of the visit, so that when it came he would not be unprepared. He had long had a vague inkling that Di Cavazzo was more than a mere Army lieutenant.

'Ah,' said Di Cavazzo. 'You have been occupied no doubt with the preparation of your articles for the American Press. Articles which you were certainly aware must be exceedingly offensive to the Italian Government.'

Hiram grinned. The Lieutenant, wonderfully dapper in his black uniform, swagger cape and shining boots, seemed suddenly comic opera to him. 'Well,' he said,
'I
didn't think you'd exactly like them.'

It was now the Lieutenant's turn to flash white teeth.
'Per Bacco !
Spoken as I expected. I can see that you are our man. The Government indeed has been deeply offended, and it was with difficulty that the Commendatore and myself were able to dissuade certain members from ordering your immediate expulsion from the country.'

Proggi, the Bureau Chief, a tall, white-haired man, looked baffled and disturbed. He had not thought Hiram's articles that important, if important
at
all.

The comic-opera notion faded from Holliday's mind. He said evenly: 'That was white of you, Lieutenant. And to what do I owe your benevolent interest in my fate ?'