better, would you
reconsider and let Gina accompany me?”
An observer who was unacquainted with the
pre ceding circumstances would
have assumed, at a glance,
that Donna Maria was trying inconspicu ously to swallow a live cockroach which she had carelessly sucked in with her brandy.
“Perhaps I was being too hasty,”
she said. “Since you
are such a close friend of Alessandro, there is really no reason for me to
object. What are you most interested in?”
The resultant discussion of Sicilian
antiquities continued this
time with no contribution from Gina,
whose eyes had become slightly glassy and her jaw slack, either from renewed
bewilderment or from
trepidation lest anything she interjected would change her aunt’s mind again.
Another refill of cognac was pressed on the
not too resistant
Saint, though curtly refused to Lo Zio, who having smacked his way through his first was plaintively extending his glass for
more. But after that there was nothing left to stay for, short of asking if they had a spare room for the
night.
“Tomorrow at ten, then, Gina,” he
said, and stood up.
“And I’ll tell Alessandro how nice all of you have been.”
The last remark was principally intended for
the reigning
tyrant of the establishment, but it scored first on Lo Zio, who must have been feeling
some effects from
his unaccustomed libations.
“Ah, Alessandro,” he said, as if
some cobwebby relay had been tripped. “I told him. I warned him. Told him he should not go to Rome—”
“It
is late, Lo Zio, and well past your bed time,” Donna Maria said hastily.
She whipped the wheel-chair around with a
sud denness that had the old
man’s head bobbing like a balloon
on a string. The maid came scurrying in on a barked command, and whisked away the chair and its mumbling
contents.
“Buona notte, signore,” Donna Maria said, with one more spasm of her overworked facial
muscles, and the impression of it seemed to remain even af ter she had closed the front door, like the
grin of some
Sicilian-Cheshire cat.
Simon made the short walk to the driveway
gate with his nerves as taut as violin strings, his ears straining, and his eyes darting into every
shadow. But there was
no warning scuff or stir to herald an onslaught by lurking assailants, no crack of a shot to make belated announcement of a bullet. He opened the inset door, flung it open, and
leapt far through it in
an eruptively connected series of cat-swift movements calculated to disconcert
any am bush that
might be waiting outside; but no attack came. An almost-full moon that was rising
above the hills
showed a road deserted except for his own car where he had left it, and the
only sound was the thin
shrill rasping of multitudinous nocturnal insects. Feeling a trifle foolish,
he turned back and shut the little door, and then walked towards the Bugatti,
making a wide swing out into the road around it, just in case someone was skulking on the side from which he would not have been
expected to approach.
But no one was.
Then he had not been detained in order to
gain time to organize a bushwacking, it
seemed …
But the instinct of an outlaw who had
carried his life in his
hands so often that his reflexes had adapted to it as a natural condition was not lulled into somnolence merely because logic seemed
to have suspended the
immediate need for it. If any thing,
it was left more on edge than ever, seeking the flaw in conclusions which did not jibe
with in tuition.
He climbed halfway into the driver’s seat and peered in search of the
ignition lock. He located it and
inserted the key; but as he raised his head again above the dashboard before switching
on, his eye was caught
by a blemish on the gleaming ex panse
of hood which did not belong at all on such a lovingly burnished surface.
Clearly revealed by the moonlight was the
print of a greasy hand.
Simon
very carefully withdrew the key, stepped down to the road again, and went around to
ex amine the hood more
closely. But
reconsider and let Gina accompany me?”
An observer who was unacquainted with the
pre ceding circumstances would
have assumed, at a glance,
that Donna Maria was trying inconspicu ously to swallow a live cockroach which she had carelessly sucked in with her brandy.
“Perhaps I was being too hasty,”
she said. “Since you
are such a close friend of Alessandro, there is really no reason for me to
object. What are you most interested in?”
The resultant discussion of Sicilian
antiquities continued this
time with no contribution from Gina,
whose eyes had become slightly glassy and her jaw slack, either from renewed
bewilderment or from
trepidation lest anything she interjected would change her aunt’s mind again.
Another refill of cognac was pressed on the
not too resistant
Saint, though curtly refused to Lo Zio, who having smacked his way through his first was plaintively extending his glass for
more. But after that there was nothing left to stay for, short of asking if they had a spare room for the
night.
“Tomorrow at ten, then, Gina,” he
said, and stood up.
“And I’ll tell Alessandro how nice all of you have been.”
The last remark was principally intended for
the reigning
tyrant of the establishment, but it scored first on Lo Zio, who must have been feeling
some effects from
his unaccustomed libations.
“Ah, Alessandro,” he said, as if
some cobwebby relay had been tripped. “I told him. I warned him. Told him he should not go to Rome—”
“It
is late, Lo Zio, and well past your bed time,” Donna Maria said hastily.
She whipped the wheel-chair around with a
sud denness that had the old
man’s head bobbing like a balloon
on a string. The maid came scurrying in on a barked command, and whisked away the chair and its mumbling
contents.
“Buona notte, signore,” Donna Maria said, with one more spasm of her overworked facial
muscles, and the impression of it seemed to remain even af ter she had closed the front door, like the
grin of some
Sicilian-Cheshire cat.
Simon made the short walk to the driveway
gate with his nerves as taut as violin strings, his ears straining, and his eyes darting into every
shadow. But there was
no warning scuff or stir to herald an onslaught by lurking assailants, no crack of a shot to make belated announcement of a bullet. He opened the inset door, flung it open, and
leapt far through it in
an eruptively connected series of cat-swift movements calculated to disconcert
any am bush that
might be waiting outside; but no attack came. An almost-full moon that was rising
above the hills
showed a road deserted except for his own car where he had left it, and the
only sound was the thin
shrill rasping of multitudinous nocturnal insects. Feeling a trifle foolish,
he turned back and shut the little door, and then walked towards the Bugatti,
making a wide swing out into the road around it, just in case someone was skulking on the side from which he would not have been
expected to approach.
But no one was.
Then he had not been detained in order to
gain time to organize a bushwacking, it
seemed …
But the instinct of an outlaw who had
carried his life in his
hands so often that his reflexes had adapted to it as a natural condition was not lulled into somnolence merely because logic seemed
to have suspended the
immediate need for it. If any thing,
it was left more on edge than ever, seeking the flaw in conclusions which did not jibe
with in tuition.
He climbed halfway into the driver’s seat and peered in search of the
ignition lock. He located it and
inserted the key; but as he raised his head again above the dashboard before switching
on, his eye was caught
by a blemish on the gleaming ex panse
of hood which did not belong at all on such a lovingly burnished surface.
Clearly revealed by the moonlight was the
print of a greasy hand.
Simon
very carefully withdrew the key, stepped down to the road again, and went around to
ex amine the hood more
closely. But
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