The Sword of Fate (9 page)

“His Excellency tells me that you know Miss Diamopholus, Mr. Day. As you’re probably aware, her family has great influence here in Alex, and it’s our job to pick up all we can about influential people. These wealthy Greeks keep themselves very much to themselves, though, so it’s not easy to get precise information about them. You’d be helping us a lot by giving me your impressions of this young lady and her family.”

“I know very little about them,” I replied with complete honesty; and having given him an account of my accident I went on: “According to Barbara Wishart the Diamopholi are one hundred per cent pro-British, but Daphnis is engaged to an Italian—a man named Paolo somebody, who is employed in the Legation here. She’s eighteen—nearly nineteen—years of age, and is kept as strictly as a Victorian miss. She speaks several languages fluently and she’s quite well educated.”

Major Cozelli’s shrewd black eyes bored into mine.

“A Victorian miss, who is kept shut away from the world, but is quite well educated, eh? Now do you really think that she has a mind of her own or that you’ve endowed her with one because—well, owing to your evident interest in her?”

“Probably you’ll think I’m prejudiced,” I smiled, “but I can assure you that she’s no fool. I talked to her once for the best part of an hour on international politics, and although I didn’t by any means agree with all her opinions, she seemed to have a very wide knowledge of affairs.”

“And Italian sympathies?”

“Well, yes,” I admitted. “Like plenty of other people who are anti-Communists, she considers that Mussolini did a good job of work in saving Italy from the Bolsheviks after the last Great War, and that he and his Fascists deserve credit for the way they’ve cleaned up the country.”

“That may be, but they control Italy, and Britain’s application of Sanctions hampered Fascist plans without thwarting them. They haven’t forgiven us for that, and it not only threw them into the arms of Hitler but also enabled them to turn the Italian people against us. I’m a British subject by birth but I have many Italian connections, so I’m particularly favourably situated to judge their feelings. Mussolini gave them Imperial
ambitions and their jealousy of us has been turned to hatred. There are over sixty thousand of them here in Egypt, and they’re going to need a lot of looking after if Mussolini decides to take the plunge and drag Italy into the war.”

“Do you really think that’s likely?”

He considered a moment. “It’s impossible to say. He might now that the French seem to be cracking so badly. However much we may dislike the Communists the fact remains that the Fascists are really just as bad. One lot are unwashed hoodlums who would cut your throat for fourpence, while the others are gangsters dressed up in smart new uniforms. ‘Corsica, Nice, Tunisia!’ has been their parrot-cry for months past, and now the true state of France’s rottenness is at last being made plain to the world it’s just possible that these Fascist blackguards might jump in to grab what loot they can, while everyone else has their hands full. If they do come in I’d like to know on which side your little friend, Mademoiselle Diamopholus, is going to be.”

I smiled reassuringly. “I don’t think you need worry. The odds are that she’s only picked up these pro-Fascist ideas from her Italian fiancé, and that they’re quite superficial. The marriage was, I gather, arranged, and … well, I think there’s quite a possibility that she won’t go through with it. Then, as you know, her parents are definitely pro-British.”

The Major’s thin-lipped mouth tightened perceptibly. “You overrate the influence of the fiancé, I think. But perhaps you were not aware that she’s half-Italian herself?”

“Really!” I exclaimed. “No, I didn’t know that.”

He nodded. “Old Diamopholus is only her stepfather, and she took his name for some family reason.”

There flashed back to me then a sentence of that conversation I had overheard on the first night that I entered the Diamopholus garden. The man had said to Daphnis, “Your
stepfather
hates me like poison.” For some strange reason its implication had failed to register until that moment, but the cadaverous Major was going on:

“Diamopholus is the biggest shipping man in Alex. He works with the British Naval authorities and has a lot to do with arranging our Mediterranean convoys. Do you happen to know if Miss Diamopholus takes any interest at all in her stepfather’s business?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” I smiled, “but most girls of her age find anything to do with commerce extremely boring, and in that way I shouldn’t think she’s an exception.”

“I see. I only wondered. Well—thanks for coming in.” The Major stood up, indicating that the interview was over.

That Daphnis was half-Italian was certainly new to me, but I did not consider it particularly perturbing. I was smiling still as we shook hands, then having saluted I marched towards the door.

My hand was already on the knob when Major Cozelli’s voice came, seemingly casual, behind me:

“Oh, Mr. Day, duty makes some pretty heavy demands on us sometimes. If you
did
chance to discover that Mademoiselle Diamopholus was furnishing particulars about shipping to your country’s enemies, you wouldn’t hesitate to let us know, would you?”

Those words were like a douche of cold water down my spine. Something in the way he said them convinced me that he knew much more about Daphnis than he had disclosed. The smile had been stricken from my face as I stammered, “N-no, of course not, sir,” and left the room.

From Major Cozelli’s office I went straight down to the
plage
, where scores of young people were disporting themselves in the warm Mediterranean waters. The smart bathing-place at Alex consists of one of the smaller of its bays which forms almost a lagoon and has three tiers of bathing boxes built right round it, making it a natural water amphitheatre.

Now that it was mid-June the sun was very strong, so most of the members of the Forces there were having strictly to limit the time during which they exposed themselves, owing to the danger of severe sunburn; but I had done so much sun-bathing in the last few years that I was bronzed already and had little fear of getting burnt.

All the time that I swam or lounged about afterwards I thought of Daphnis and Major Cozelli’s exceedingly worrying insinuations. I had never liked to ask her about the episode which
had taken place in her garden on the first night that I had gone into it, as I feared that to do so would have given her the impression that I had been deliberately spying on her; yet I had puzzled over it many times.

The riddle for which I could find no answer was: why should she see her fiancé in secret late at night in the garden when she could quite well have asked him at any time to the house?

Paolo had said that night something to the effect that secrecy was necessary because Daphnis’ stepfather hated him so much. Perhaps, then, Daphnis and Paolo were working together for Italy. That would explain, if he were suspicious of it, old Diamopholus’ dislike of Paolo and, if the engaged couple wished to exchange information, explain why they met clandestinely to do it instead of risking further trouble by doing their business more or less in the presence of the pro-British household.

Yet somehow that theory did not seem to fit. The man in the garden had definitely conveyed the impression that he was not received in the house in any circumstance, whereas Paolo quite definitely was. Perhaps, then, the man in the garden had not been Paolo after all, but some other Italian.

This theory had more sinister implications still. Having a fiancé already in Paolo, if Daphnis was running the other fellow as a beau on the side it was most unlikely, unless she was an embryo Messalina, which I did not believe for one minute, that she would have been prepared to start an affair with me. As she had, it followed that the other fellow was not a beau at all, and therefore the secret meetings between them were quite possibly in connection with some form of espionage.

True, Britain was not at war with Italy, but the Fascist Government made no secret of its partisanship for the Nazis, and it was certain that any information with regard to Allied troop movements or shipping which could be collected by the Italians outside Italy was passed straight on to Berlin.

If Daphnis had some deep-rooted feeling that her father’s country was her own, one could not attach any blame to her for spying for the Italians; but if she was so engaged it meant that I was up against the most ghastly problem that any man could be called on to face. How could I betray the girl that I loved to Major Cozelli if I found her out? Yet on the other hand I could certainly not stand by with the knowledge that British lives were being lost through her operations and my cowardly hesitation to put a stop to them. It seemed for a few black hours that my wisest course would be to cut Daphnis right out; to make no further
attempt to see her and do my utmost to forget her as quickly as possible.

Having seen her again in all her loveliness only the previous day made such a step ten times more difficult. I had the knowledge now that she did not love Paolo and was strongly attracted to me. The sight of her and the sound of her voice had inflamed my romantic imagination to new and almost delirious heights. After weeks of despair I had secured the right to call upon her, and was actually invited to a party at her house on the following evening. To have thrown away this magnificent new opening seemed more than I could possibly ask myself, and to attempt to forget Daphnis altogether would now be like trying to tear out my own heart.

That night a new thought suddenly came to me. There was not one iota of proof against Daphnis. All these black thoughts had been engendered solely through Major Cozelli’s damnable insinuations. It was his job to be suspicious of everybody, and the fact that one of the key men in the Anglo-Egyptian Shipping Control had a half-Italian stepdaughter who was engaged to a member of the Italian Legation was more than enough to cause the counter-espionage people to wish to keep an eye upon her, but I had been given absolutely no evidence.

The odds, I now argued, with a swift revulsion of feeling, were all in favour of Daphnis’ being innocent, and, I reasoned with myself, even if it turned out later that she had been passing on little bits of information to Paolo or some other Italian about her stepfather’s ships, if she really cared for me she would certainly refrain from doing so in the future.

Before I fell asleep I was fully prepared to stake my reputation on Daphnis’ honesty, and absolutely determined to marry her. If she became engaged to me, an Englishman, I felt certain that although she might retain Italian sympathies, she would never for one moment contemplate an act which might be harmful to the country of the man she loved.

I had been invited for six o’clock on the Monday, and when I arrived at the Diamopholi’s I found a dozen people already present. Most of them were Greeks, and several were members of the family. Madame Diamopholus introduced me to her husband, the shipping magnate, a paunchy, grey-haired man, with a fattish face and quick intelligent eyes. He gave me a very friendly welcome then introduced me in turn to a British naval captain, with whom I stood talking for some time.

Daphnis had smiled at me in passing, but swiftly disengaged
herself, so I took my cue from her, realising at once that if I wished to retain the goodwill of the parents, so that they would ask me to the house again, I must be very careful not to appear to be chasing their already affianced daughter.

Twenty or thirty more people flooded in, and I was introduced to a number of them. Fortunately, I knew a little Greek so I was able to join in the conversation, although I have no doubt that most of them could have conversed with me in French or English. There was apparently an unlimited supply of champagne cocktails, and the native servants in their striped silk
jibbahs
and red
tarbooshes
constantly carried round trays of sweet cakes in addition to the usual cocktail accessories.

The talk centred mainly round the desperate battle raging in France; but now that Weygand had had ample time since taking over as Generalissimo to make fresh dispositions, everyone expected to hear any day that he had performed another ‘miracle of the Marne’. After all, we argued, the Boches couldn’t keep up much longer the rate they were going. The master strategist was only waiting for the psychological moment, when the enemy was spent, to launch a great counter-offensive which, if really successful, might roll the whole Nazi host back in confusion.

The Greeks had no illusions about the weight of the colossal blow that Britain had sustained in the loss of all her first-line tanks, guns, equipment and vast quantities of stores at Dunkirk. An extremely bad impression had also been created by the official announcement that General Lord Gort had been recalled to report and had gone back to England on the Saturday because there was no longer remaining on the beaches a command suited to an officer of his high rank, when, in fact, many thousands of the men he had led into Belgium were still stranded there, and the last of them were not taken off until the following Tuesday. But the naval captain, who had just been flown out from home and said he knew the inside story, explained to those of us who were near him that Lord Gort had been put in an impossible position by the Cabinet.

He told us that to hearten the men Lord Gort had walked up and down the beaches without a tin hat, while they were being sprayed with machine-gun bullets by the Nazi airmen, and that when a destroyer had been sent for him he flatly refused to go home in it before the beaches were clear. Only when the Government sent a special message that by remaining he was imperilling the lives of the destroyer’s crew was he induced with great difficulty by his staff to leave.

Opinion was most sharply divided upon the surrender of the King of the Belgians. French statesmen had publicly denounced him as a traitor, and English leader-writers of repute had called him a rat; but Churchill had asked the House of Commons to suspend judgment, and certain of the Diamopholi’s friends gave it as their view that the British General Staff were entirely to blame for the Belgian collapse. They argued that at one period of the battle the British had quite obviously attempted, but lamentably failed, to close the gap and rejoin the French. In order to execute this movement it was obvious that they would have had to swing away from the Belgians on their left and leave them in the air. Either the British had attempted to rejoin the French, as had been publicly stated, or they had not; but, if they had, no one could blame the Belgians for chucking in their hand.