Night Journey (14 page)

People crowded round. I lay still and gasped and groaned. The man had gone. A policeman was crossing the steeet.

“A dispute over a taxi,” said the woman who had screamed. “I saw them quarrelling and this one fell!”

“He is injured! He is dying!”

“What is the matter? Why has the taxi gone?”

I half sat up, and then was helped to my feet. Voices and faces jostled each other.

“It was nothing,” I said to the policeman. “As the lady said. A man claimed he had hailed it first. He pushed me and I fell … I have been in hospital with air-raid injuries.”

There was a murmur of sympathy.

“Where is the man?” said the policeman. “ Which way did he go?”

No one knew.

“Perhaps he took the taxi. Do you wish to make a statement?”

“No, no, certainly not. It is quite unimportant.”

It took some minutes to find another taxi—they were not really allowed to cruise for fares—and I was helped in, half fainting in the darkaess.”

“Where do you wish to go?” asked the policeman.

“Lorenzo & Co., Via Monte Rosa II.”

The door slammed. Grey streets and odd lights flittered past. If this was the fake taxi then I was done. It might just have driven round a block.

I stared out. Nothing to be seen of the hotels in the Corso Vittorio Emanuele. Trams clanging. It was dark. Sounding of horns. Perhaps this was the end.

But not quite. The taxi stopped and the driver opened the door.

“See here. Lorenzo & Co. That will be eight lire.”

I gave him ten before getting out. The street was quieter than expected, but it was the right place. No mistake. There was the name of the shop over the door in gilt letters.

My knees were holding better. I glanced along the way we had come and saw another taxi moving very slowly towards us, practically kerb crawling. So they had not lost the scent. I hoped the arrangements to receive me were adequate for this sort of emergency. I hoped, whatever they were, tha they did not require
any
more exertion on my part to-night. All I wanted was a drink and to lie down.

My own taxi turned round and made off the way it had come. The other car was still a hundred metres away and still slowly approaching. I turned and walked unsteadily but with confidence up to the door of the shop.

But the shop was shut.

Of all the moments of this nasty day, this was the darkest and bitterest of them all. To reach your promised bolt-hole and to find it closed against you, to be trapped and ill and alone, and darkness falling.

They say the unknown is the worst thing to face; but I would have stood any unknown danger better than this known evil that was coming to me. I knew it all: the cellar and the rubber truncheons and the weakness of the flesh. In that last awful summer in Vienna I had sat behind two storm troopers on a tram and one had complained that his shoulder was stiff. The other said, why? And the first man, with a boyish grin, had answered: I was beating up lousy Jews all night.

Nausea had been assailing me on and off ever since I woke, and now it had its way: I was sick in the corner, in the darkness, like an injured dog. When it was over I fumbled in my pocket and felt with relief the pencil Dwight had given me.

The approaching taxi had stopped about fifty metres away. The reason was plain: on the other side two women were passing. There must be no observers; the thing must not be bungled again. Two men got out of the taxi.

A last instinct of escape awoke in me again. I backed into the shop porch, pencil still in hand, rattled the handle of the door, beat on the door. An iron grille was down and this rattled and shook. No answer. I jerked and wriggled at the handle. The women were just passing on the other side of the street.

Beside the shop was a narrow alley. I went down it, blindly, not reasoning now. It was a cul-de-sac—at the end a door. It might in some way be connected with the shop. As I hammered on it two figures appeared at the mouth of the alley. They must have sprinted, thinking I might get away. Now, seeing me trapped, they stopped, waiting for the taxi to come up.

I thumped and hammered again, hurting my injured fist, pencil raised to my mouth.

The door opened. In the half darkness a shrivelled old woman peered angrily up at me.

“How dare you make such a noise! What do you want?”

I half stumbled, pushing at the door, but she held it firm.

“Lorenzo & Co!”

“They are shut.” She was stronger than I was and the gap was narrowing.

“Manuel Lorenzo!” I said choking. “I wish to see him!”

“Come round in the morning. We open at eight.”

“To-morrow will not do! I must see him to-night!”

“You cannot see him … Wait. I will ask.”

“Let me in!” I said. “I am not well: I am going to faint.”

“It's after shop hours. We don't admit people after——”

Footsteps behind me: I pushed again and this time I was stronger or she weaker, for I forced a clumsy way in, past the old woman who was proclaiming shrilly, stumbled in a dark passage against a bicycle, caught on to a shelf to save the fall. Heard the door shut behind me. Really shut. For a moment a breathing space.

I stuffed the pencil away. “
Signora
, I implore you——”

“Be quiet,” she said. “ Can you walk?”

A complete change in her voice. “A little way. You see——”

“Follow me, then. But have a care for our stock.”

She led the way to the end of the passage and up stairs. I made these noisily, kicking against the steps. At the top she said: “ Hush, be quiet,” and led me across a wide showroom full of dummies and rolls of cloth. Twice she had to stop for me, because only a tiny pilot light burned.

We went into a lighted office with a roll-top desk and a safe. Two men were counting money. The old woman said something I could not catch and I sat heavily in a chair.

“I told you he was not to be let in!” one of the men said harshly.

“I know,
I know
. I gave all possible hints. But look at him?
In extremis
. What could I do!”

The man came across. He was small, middle-aged, with cheeks like canyons.

“Manuel Lorenzo,” I said with difficulty, repeating my lesson. “Via Monte Rosa, II. I wish to see him.”

“I'm afraid we cannot oblige,
signore
. You should have gone to the Monumental Cemetery.”

“The——”

“Manuel Lorenzo has been dead ten years. Perhaps, as his son, I can oblige.”

“But I was …”

“How did you come by that injury?”

It was past time to consider whether anything would be lost by telling the truth. “The German secret police tried to kidnap me. I escaped with the injuries you see. I only left hospital at six-thirty.”

“So that was why you were so late for your appointment. It has made things very difficult for us.”

The other man came across carrying a glass. He was younger, with spectacles, close cropped fair curly hair.

“Drink this.”

Cognac. I had wanted water but the cognac went down, burning all the way.

“Manuel Lorenzo,” I said.

“Forget about him. Tell us what happened.”

I tried to. I gained strength as the words strung themselves together.

When, it was over the elder man rubbed a furrow in his cheek. “It will be very dangerous now, Ricci. Are you still willing to try?”

“Of course. It may divert suspicion from us.”

“Not if you put bandages about your head and your hands.”

“The diversion will make it easier for you to get him out of the house.”

“
I
cannot take him now. Maria will have to go.”

“Well, it will be easier for her, then.”

“Oh, have it your own way. But we can't help you if you ran into trouble.”

The fair-haired man turned to me. “ How long before you feel able to walk?”

“I can move now.”

“Come with me, then.”

I pushed myself up from the chair and moved towards a door he held open. Within was a small fitting-room with mirrors.

“I want your hat and your suit and your tie,” said Ricci. “I'll fetch you a new suit to wear.”

I was to have come to the shop and asked for Manuel Lorenzo, a sufficient guide to my identity. I was to have been taken to the tailoring department and fitted for a ready-made suit. In fifteen minutes a man dressed in my clothes would walk out and leave the shop. Anyone waiting would recognise the superficial likeness and follow. In the meantime I would have left by another entrance in a new suit.

“But why,” I asked, “was this only to be effective during the last half-hour of business? Why could I not have come earlier in the day?”

“Because after six the light begins to fail. If this were done in bright day the deception would be likely to be seen.”

The scheme had a touch of brilliance because it could all have happened without incriminating anyone in the shop, Now everything had gone awry. I had come after closing time and hammered on a side door. The man who took my place was clearly acting as a decoy and was in much greater danger; and Lorenzo & Co. were incriminated.

“This is not good,” I muttered, as I watched Ricci go. “He is simply taking over the risks I ran.”

Signor Lorenzo shrugged. “ Ricci is a fit man and you are not. He will not be knocked on the head at the first corner. So long as the deception is not immediately seen through. Are you ready to go?”

I had two more gulps of cognac and put the half empty flask in my pocket. The old woman was tying a scarf over her grey head.

“I must sincerely thank you for this,” I began to Lorenzo. “If——”

“We do not do it for thanks,” was the dry answer.

“I am waiting,” said Maria from the door.

I followed her downstairs to the door by which I had entered, then down again. She had a torch, and we picked our way through two cellars stocked with piece-goods. In the second cellar was a large cupboard. We entered, this, and as she shut the door the back of the cupboard opened and we stepped out into another cellar. Through this and up a flight. Head throbbing again.

A door. “Careful now,” she said.

Another alley. She peered out, her breath coming quickly like a fox. It was dark.

I followed her through the door, and we hurried down the alley keeping close to the wall; came to a cross-way and took the left turn.

She touched my aim. “ You would draw attention in a tram. We will go by taxi from the end here. There is a rank on the corner. Say to the driver Santa Maria Grazie.”

We came out on a busy street. Three taxis. We chose the middle one, and is a moment I was sitting back, the curt old woman at my side. The relief threatened to bring back weakness again. As the taxi crawled through the centre of the city I recognised the turn down the Via Meravigli, and in a few minutes I was paying off the man outside the fine old Bramante church where da Vinci painted his great fresco.

Before the car had started again the old woman was pulling at my arm. I stopped for a gulp of cognac and thea went with her through two or three poor streets until we reached the back entrance of a warehouse. She took out a key and unlocked a wicket door. We went up steps.

“Ricci,” I said, breaking a long silence between us. “ I should wish to know that he comes to no harm. Perhaps you will be able to send word.” We went through another storeroom. Her torch showed up the

name
Lorenzo
on one bale.
“We do not send word in this business,” she said. “If you wish

to know anything ask the people in here. I must get back.”
She had knocked at a door. A tall man opened it. Major Dwight.

It would be an understatement to say I was relieved to see him. I had been too long on my own, making decisions in a vacuum, struggling just to stay alive. It seemed like a month, not two days.

He was alone in a little office place, not unlike the one I had just left. I collapsed in a swivel chair, while the old woman went into voluble explanations. When she had done she hitched her shabby black knitted cardigan round herself and left.

Dwight bit at his pipe with long yellow teeth and looked me over impersonally, like a vet with & sick horse on his hands.

“Groggy?”

“Not bad.”

“Dead beat?”

“More or less.”

He put a hand on my arm. “Come along. I'll show you what you need, old man.”

He led me into a bare little room with a radio set, a divan bed, some photographic negatives curling in a wash-basin. He pointed to the bed.

“Get undressed and put out the light. A spot of shut-eye. I'll give you three hours. We'll have a full pow-wow then.”

“I could do with a drink—just cold water, if you have it.”

“The tap's there. Entirely
potabile
. I'll wake you at ten-thirty.”

I had craved sleep so much while fighting off the effects of the sedative that now perversely it seemed far away. Nerves were too much an edge …

He was shaking my arm and telling me it was nearly eleven. I dressed again, still shaky; sliced face and hands, and the sting of the cuts seemed to revive me. I drank another glass of water and went into the office, to find them
all
there.

Quite a reunion. Andrews, apparently feeling the heat, had flung off his coat and wore a
setta pura
emerald green shirt with a long loose the showing green gondolas on a red background. A broad grey velour belt kept his striped trousers up.

And Jane … well, I did not take in all that about Jane except that she was here. My face had, I think, flushed on seeing her, and the expression in her eyes startled me and lit up my mind.

Now I told them everything that had happened, and was glad Dwight had insisted on the extra rest before hearing me. When I had done they asked endless questions, chiefly Dwight walking up and down and swearing quietly from time to time under his breath. Andrews sat quietly twine-toed biting at his thumb-nail.