‘He must have come while we were asleep,’ I said. ‘There’ll be a boat round the other side. But let’s look here first.’

We were standing by the place where we had last seen Angela. The grass was broken and bent; she had left a handkerchief as though to mark the spot. Otherwise there was no trace of her.

‘Now let’s find his boat,’ I said.

We climbed the grassy rampart and began to walk round the shallow curve, stumbling over concealed brambles.

‘Not here, not here,’ muttered Mario.

From our little eminence we could see clusters of lights twinkling across the lagoon; Fusina three or four miles away on the left, Malamocco the same distance on the right. And straight ahead Venice, floating on the water like a swarm of fire-flies. But no boat. We stared at each other bewildered.

‘So he didn’t come by water,’ said Mario at last. ‘He must have been here all the time.’

‘But are you quite certain it wasn’t the signora you saw?’ I asked. ‘How could you tell in the darkness?’

‘Because the signora was wearing a white dress,’ said Mario. ‘And this one is all in black—unless he is a negro.’

‘That’s why it’s so difficult to see him.’

‘Yes, we can’t see him, but he can see us all right.’

I felt a curious sensation in my spine.

‘Mario,’ I said, ‘he must have seen her, you know. Do you think he’s got anything to do with her not being here?’

Mario didn’t answer.

‘I don’t understand why he doesn’t speak to us.’

‘Perhaps he can’t speak.’

‘But you thought he was a man. . . . Anyhow, we are two against one. Come on. You take the right. I’ll go to the left.’

We soon lost sight of each other in the darkness, but once or twice I heard Mario swearing as he scratched himself on the thorny acacias. My search was more successful than I expected. Right at the corner of the island, close to the water’s edge, I found one of Angela’s bathing shoes: she must have taken it off in a hurry for the button was torn away. A little later I made a rather grisly discovery. It was the cat, dead, with its head crushed. The pathetic little heap of fur would never suffer the pangs of hunger again. Angela had been as good as her word.

I was just going to call Mario when the bushes parted and something hurled itself upon me. I was swept off my feet. Alternately dragging and carrying me my captor continued his headlong course. The next thing I knew I was pitched pell-mell into the gondola and felt the boat move under me.

‘Mario!’ I gasped. And then—absurd question—‘What have you done with the oar?’

The gondolier’s white face stared down at me.

‘The oar? I left it—it wasn’t any use, signore. I tried. . . . What it wants is a machine gun.’

He was rowing frantically with my oar: the island began to recede.

‘But we can’t go away!’ I cried.

The gondolier said nothing, but rowed with all his strength. Then he began to talk under his breath. ‘It was a good oar, too,’ I heard him mutter. Suddenly he left the poop, climbed over the cushions and sat down beside me.

‘When I found her,’ he whispered, ‘she wasn’t quite dead.’

I began to speak but he held up his hand.

‘She asked me to kill her.’

‘But, Mario!’

‘ “Before it comes back,” she said. And then she said, “It’s starving, too, and it won’t wait. . . .” ’ Mario bent his head nearer but his voice was almost inaudible.

‘Speak up,’ I cried. The next moment I implored him to stop.

Mario clambered on to the poop.

‘You don’t want to go to the island now, signore?’

‘No, no. Straight home.’

I looked back. Transparent darkness covered the lagoon save for one shadow that stained the horizon black. Podolo. . . .

THREE, OR FOUR, FOR DINNER

It was late July in Venice, suffocatingly hot. The windows of the bar in the Hotel San Giorgio stood open to the Canal. But no air came through. At six o’clock a little breeze had sprung up, a feebler repetition of the mid-day sirocco, but in an hour it had blown itself out.

One of the men got off his high stool and walked somewhat unsteadily to the window.

‘It’s going to be calm all right,’ he said. ‘I think we’ll go in the gondola. I see it’s there, tied up at the usual post.’

‘As you please, Dickie,’ said his friend from the other stool.

Their voices proclaimed them Englishmen; proclaimed also the fact that they were good clients of the barman.

‘Giuseppe!’ called the man at the window, turning his eyes from the Salute with its broad steps, its mighty portal and its soaring dome back to the counter with the multi-coloured bottles behind it. ‘How long does it take to row to the Lido?’

‘Sir?’

‘Didn’t you say you’d lived in England, Giuseppe?’

‘Yes, sir, eight years at the Hôtel Métropole.’

‘Then why——?’

His friend intervened, pacifically, in Italian.

‘He wants to know how long it takes to row to the Lido.’

Relief in his voice, the barman answered, ‘That depends if you’ve got one oar or two.’

‘Two.’

‘If you ask me,’ said Dickie, returning to his stool, ‘I don’t think Angelino, or whatever his damned name is, counts for much. It’s the chap in front who does the work.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the barman, solicitously. ‘But the man at the back he guide the boat, he give the direction.’

‘Well,’ said Dickie, ‘as long as he manages to hit the Lido. . . . We want to be at the Splendide by eight. Can we do it?’

‘Easily, sir, you have got an hour.’

‘Barring accidents.’

‘We never have accidents in Venice,’ said the barman, with true Italian optimism.

‘Time for another, Phil?’

‘Three’s my limit, Dickie.’

‘Oh, come on, be a man.’

They drank.

‘You seem to know a lot,’ said Dickie more amiably to the barman. ‘Can you tell us anything about this chap who’s dining with us—Joe O’Kelly, or whatever his name is?’

The barman pondered. He did not want to be called over the coals a second time. ‘That would be an English name, sir?’

‘English! Good Lord!’ exploded Dickie. ‘Does it sound like English?’

‘Well, now, as you say it, it does,’ remonstrated his companion. ‘Or rather Irish. But wait—here’s his card. Does that convey anything to you, Giuseppe?’

The barman turned the card over in his fingers. ‘Oh, now I see, sir—Giacomelli—il Conte Giacomelli.’

‘Well, do you know him?’

‘Oh yes, sir. I know him very well.’

‘What’s he like?’

‘He’s a nice gentleman, sir, very rich . . .’

‘Then he must be different from the rest of your aristocracy,’ said Dickie, rather rudely. ‘I hear they haven’t two penny pieces to rub together.’

‘Perhaps he’s not so rich now,’ the barman admitted, mournfully. ‘None of us are. Business is bad. He is grand azionista—how do you say?’ he stopped, distressed.

‘Shareholder?’ suggested Philip.

‘Good Lord!’ exclaimed Dickie, ‘I didn’t know you were so well up in this infernal language. You’re a regular Wop!’

The barman did not notice the interruption.

‘Yes, shareholder, that’s it,’ he was saying delightedly. ‘He is a great shareholder in a fabbrica di zucchero——’

‘Sugar-factory,’ explained Philip, not without complacence.

The barman lowered his voice. ‘But I hear they are . . .’ He made a curious rocking movement with his hand.

‘Not very flourishing?’ said Philip.

The barman shrugged his shoulders. ‘That’s what they say.’

‘So we mustn’t mention sugar,’ said Dickie, with a yawn. ‘Come on, Phil, you’re always so damned abstemious. Have another.’

‘No, no, really not.’

‘Then I will.’

Philip and even the barman watched him drink with awe on their faces.

‘But,’ said Philip as Dickie set down his glass, ‘Count Giacomelli lives in Venice, doesn’t he?’

‘Oh yes, sir. Usually he comes in here every night. But it’s four—five days now I do not see him.’