North from Rome by Helen MacInnes

little dazed, I think, but still curious. See?” For Lammiter had moved quickly over to the window and stood at its side, as he looked down.
    “Thank you, Salvatore,” the girl said. “I hope we didn’t make you late for your own appointment. But Giuseppe is on duty at six.”
    “And the princess can’t be kept waiting, while my flock of Swedish schoolteachers can? Now, now, Rosana, that was only a joke. I’ll be in good time for the schoolteachers.”
    “You ought to leave now,” Rosana said worriedly. She came over to the window, too.
    Lammiter had been right. He was looking down at the Piazza Navona. He had been guided carefully in a wide arc, by a maze of narrow alleys, to the cobbled street that backed the buildings along this side of the Piazza. Was all the precaution to impress him? Or perhaps these people were really afraid.
    “Satisfied?” the bald-headed man asked. He didn’t sound either welcoming or particularly friendly. Lammiter looked at him, and saw why the man sat immobile. His right leg was out of action, its ankle bandaged, stiff, propped up on the foot-rest before the arm-chair. He was probably in some pain. That might explain his bad temper, or the fact that he had a large fiasco of Chianti too near his elbow.
    Rosana said pleadingly, “Tony—please!” She tried to explain to Lammiter. “This is my friend Anthony Brewster, an Englishman who—”
    “All right, all right,” Brewster said. He must have been fond of the girl, for he looked as if he would have bitten off anyone else’s head and chewed it into little pieces. He took a deep breath, and studied Lammiter gloomily. Lammiter was in no mood to be outstared.
    The Englishman was about forty years old, with a powerful body now beginning to run to fat. His legs seemed short, so he probably was only of medium height when he stood on his feet. He wasn’t completely bald. Once he had had fine reddish-fair hair to match his eyebrows and lashes; now, he had only a slight fuzz of thinned-out pinfeathers, beginning in a line over his ears and stretching back in longer strands to the nape of a weather-reddened neck. Normally, his blue eyes might have been both shrewd and merry above a shapeless clown’s nose and a friendly mouth in a brick-complexioned face. He was intended to look both round and genial. But this evening he was neither. He was sharp and bitter. His general good nature had vanished. He looked angry, worried, suspicious, sullen, stubborn. “I didn’t want you here,” he told Lammiter abruptly.
    “Then I’ll leave,” Lammiter said equably. He looked at the door where Salvatore still stood. On guard? Salvatore had been turning the key in the lock, slowly, carefully. For a moment he looked startled, as if he hadn’t expected Lammiter to leave so suddenly. And then, it was Lammiter who was surprised: hadn’t Rosana locked the door after they had entered? “If you didn’t trust me, then why did you have me brought here?” He took a few steps to the door.
    “Oh, stop being so thin-skinned,” Brewster said. His voice was slowing. “Come back. Over here. And stop towering over me. Sit down. Rosana insists you can be trusted.” He paused. When he spoke again, his words were uttered with considerable effort. “She has a weakness for Americans, particularly when they are tall and not—not—unprepossessing.” He smiled around him, as if delighted with his victory over that word. “I hear you’re famous, too. And rich.”
    Lammiter’s face hardened. “I don’t have to stay,” he reminded Brewster. He didn’t sit down.
    Rosana said, “Please—don’t leave.” She looked towards the Englishman unhappily. “Tony’s ill. He’s had no sleep for three nights.”
    He’s drunk, Lammiter thought. It’s useless staying here. And somehow, he felt a crushing disappointment. He had expected too much from this interview. He looked at Rosana, then at Salvatore, who had come forward into the room. Brewster’s eyes had