Major Sweet, from the rear, looked quite unlike himself: there was something about his back and the forward tilt of his head that suggested extreme alertness. A slight movement and his cheek, the end of his moustache and his right eye came into view. The eye was cocked backwards: the eye of a watchful man. Giovanni leant towards the Major and talked. No Italian can talk without hands and Giovanni’s were active but, as it were, within a restricted field. The Major folded his arms and seemed to wait.

Could he, Alleyn wondered, be arranging with Giovanni for a further installment of last night’s excesses? Somehow the two of them didn’t look quite like that

They looked, he thought, as if they drove some other kind of bargain and he hoped he wasn’t being too fanciful about them.

He saw that by delicate manoeuvring he could cross the yard, edge up to a bin with a polyglot collection of papers under a tall cupboard and thus bring himself much nearer to the caffè. He did so, slid a disreputable but large map out of the bin and held it in front of him in case they suddenly came his way. Lucky, he thought, that he’d changed his shoes and trousers.

They spoke in English. Their voices dropped and rose and he caught only fragments of what they said, as if a volume control were being turned up and down by some irresponsible hand.

“—waste of time talking — you better understand, Vecchi — danger. Ziegfeldt—”

“—are you mad? How many times I tell you — instructions—”

“—search — Police—”

“O.K., Signore. So they search and find nothing — I have made—‘arrangements’—”

“—arrangements. Try that on Alleyn and see what — Different — Take it from me — I can do it. And I will. Unless—”

“—drunk—”

“—nothing to do with it. Not so drunk I didn’t know — It’s a fair offer. Make it right for me or—”

“You dare not.”

“Don’t you believe it. Look here — if I report — Ziegfeldt—”

“Taci!”

“Shut up.”

A savage-sounding but muted exchange followed. Finally Giovanni gave a sharp ejaculation. Chair legs grated on the pavement. A palm was slapped down on the table. Alleyn, greatly stimulated, squatted behind the ruin of a velvet chair and heard them go past. Their footsteps died away and he came out of cover. Somewhere behind a shuttered window a man yawned vocally and prodigiously. Further along the street a door opened. A youth in singlet and trousers lounged out, scratching his armpits. A woman inside the trattoria called with an operatic flourish. “Mar — cel — lo.”

The siesta was over.

It was a long time since Alleyn had “kept observation” on anybody and, like Il Questore Valdarno, he didn’t altogether object to an unexpected return to fieldwork.

It was not an easy job. The streets were still sparsely populated and offered little cover. He watched and waited until his men had walked about two hundred yards, saw them part company and decided to follow the Major, who had turned into a side alley in that part of Old Rome devoted to sale of “antiques.”

Here in the dealers’ occupational litter it was easier going and by the time they had emerged from the region Alleyn was close behind the Major, who was headed, he realized, in the direction of his small hotel where they had deposited him in the early hours of the morning.

“All that for nothing,” thought Alleyn.

The Major entered the hotel. Alleyn followed as far as the glass door, watched him go to the reception desk, collect a key and move away, presumably to a lift.

Alleyn went in, entered a telephone booth opposite the lift and rang up Valdarno as he had arranged to do at this hour. He gave the Questore a succinct account of the afternoon’s work.

“This Major, hah? This Sweet? Not quite as one supposed, hah?” said the Questore.

“So it would seem.”

“What is your interpretation?”

“I got a very fragmentary impression, you know. But it points, don’t you think, to Major Sweet’s connection with Ziegfeldt and in a greater or less degree with the Mailer enterprise?”

“Undoubtedly. As for the premises — this Toni’s — Bergarmi conducted a search yesterday afternoon.”

“And found—”

“Nothing. There was evidence of hurried proceedings but no more.”

“The stuff they sold me was in a very small office near the main entrance.”

“It is empty of everything but a cash-box, ledger and telephone directory. There is no lead at all so far as Mailer is concerned. We are satisfied he has not left Rome. As you know I set a watch of the most exhaustive, immediately after you telephoned.”

If Alleyn felt less sanguine than the Questore under this heading he did not say so.

“I think,” Valdarno was saying, “we tug in this Giovanni Vecchi. I think we have little talks with him. You say he spoke of ‘arrangements.’ What arrangements do you suppose?”

“Hard to say,” Alleyn cautiously replied. “I seemed to smell bribery. Of a particular kind.”

There was a longish silence. He thought that perhaps it would be tactful not to mention Major Sweet’s remark about himself.

“And your next move, my dear colleague?”

“Perhaps while your people have their little talk with Giovanni Vecchi, I have one with Major Sweet. And after that, Signor Questore, I’m afraid I’m going to suggest that perhaps — a close watch on the Major?”

“Where are you?”

“At his hotel. The Benvenuto.”

“That will be done. There is,” Valdarno confessed, “some confusion. On the one hand we have the trade in illicit drugs, which is your concern. On the other the murder of Violetta, which is also ours. And Mailer who is the key figure in both. One asks oneself: is there a further interlockment? With the travellers? Apart, of course, from their reluctance to become involved in any publicity arising out of our proceedings. Otherwise, between the murder and these seven travellers there is no connection?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Alleyn said. “Oh, my dear Signor Questore, I wouldn’t say that, you know. Not by a long chalk.”

When he had explained this point of view he hung up the receiver and took counsel with himself. At last, by no means sure that he was doing the right thing, he went to the reception desk and sent up his name to Major Sweet.

It was hard to believe that this was the same man who, half an hour ago, had muttered away with Giovanni. The Major was right back on the form that Alleyn had suspected from the first to be synthetic. There he sat in his impeccable, squarish lightweight suit, wearing an R.A. tie, a signet ring, brown brogues polished like chestnuts and the evidence of a mighty hangover in his bloodshot eyes. The hangover, at least, was not assumed. Perhaps none of it was assumed. Perhaps the Major was all he seemed to be and all of it gone to the bad.

“Glad you looked in, Alleyn,” he said. “I hoped to have a word with you.”

“Really?”

“Only to say that if I can be of use I’ll be delighted. Realize you’re in a difficult position. Treading on foreign protocol corns, what? Don’t suppose there’s much I can do but such as I am — here I am. Services ought to stick together, what?”

“You’re a gunner, I see.”

“Was, old man. Was. Retired list now but still good for a spell of duty, I hope.” He gave a sly comradely laugh. “In spite of the other night. Mustn’t judge me by that, you know, Bad show. Rather fun once in a while, though, what?”

“You’re not a regular patron of Mr. Mailer’s then?”

A fractional pause, before Major Sweet said: “Of Mailer’s? Oh, see what you mean. Or do I? Can’t stomach the feller, actually. Picked him for a wrong ’un straight off. Still, I must say that show was well run even if I did look on the wine when it was red but let that go.”

“I wasn’t talking about alcohol. I meant hard drugs. Heroin. Cocaine.”

“I say, look here! You’re not telling me they’ve been pushing that rot-gut at Toni’s pad! I mean regularly.”