“Regrettably!”
“In this case the biggest boy of all is undoubtedly Otto Ziegfeldt who, at the moment, has retired to a phoney castle in Lebanon. We can’t get him. Yet. But this person, here in Rome, is a key man.”
“I am most anxious that his activities be arrested. We all know, my dear colleague, that Palermo has most regrettably been a transit port. And also Corsica. But that he should have extended his activities to Naples and, it seems, to Rome! No, assure yourself you shall have every assistance.”
“I’m most grateful to you, Signor Auestore. The Yard was anxious that we should have this talk.”
“Please! Believe me, the greatest pleasure,” said Il Questore Valdarno. He had a resonant voice and grand-opera appearance. His eyes melted and he gave out an impression of romantic melancholy. Even his jokes wore an air of impending disaster. His position in the Roman police force corresponded, as far as his visitor had been able to work it out, with that of a chief constable.
“We are all so much honoured, my dear superintendent,” he continued. “Anything that we can do to further the already cordial relationship between our own Force and your most distinguished Yard.”
“You are very kind. Of course, the whole problem of the drug traffic, as we both know, is predominantly an Interpol affair but as in this instance we are rather closely tied up with them—”
“Perfectly,” agreed Valdarno, many times nodding his head.
“—and since this person is, presumably, a British subject—”
The Questore made a large involved gesture of deprecation: “Of course!” he said.
“—in the event of his being arrested the question of extradition might arise.”
“I assure you,” said the Questore, making a joke, “we shall not try to deprive you!”
His visitor laughed obligingly and extended his hand. The Questore took it and with his own left hand dealt him the buffet with which Latin gentlemen endorse their friendly relationships. He insisted on coming to the magnificent entrance.
In the street a smallish group of young men carrying a few inflammatory placards shouted one or two insults. A group of police, gorgeously arrayed, pinched out their cigarettes and moved towards the demonstrators, who cat-called and bolted a short way down the street. The police immediately stopped and relit their cigarettes.
“How foolish,” observed the Questore in Italian, “and yet after all, not to be ignored. It is all a great nuisance. You will seek out this person, my dear colleague?”
“I think so. His sight-seeing activities seem to offer the best approach. I shall enroll myself for one of them.”
“Ah-ah! You are a droll! You are a great droll.”
“No, I assure you. Arrivederci.”
“Good-bye. Such a pleasure. Good-bye.”
Having finally come to the end of a conversation that had been conducted in equal parts of Italian and English, they parted on the best of terms.
The demonstrators made some desultory comments upon the tall Englishman as he walked past them. One of them called out, “Ullo, gooda-day!” in a squeaking voice, another shouted, “Rhodesia! Imperialismo!” and raised a cat-call but a third remarked, “Molto elegante,” in a loud voice and apparently without sardonic intention.
Rome sparkled in the spring morning. The swallows had arrived, the markets were full of flowers, young greens and kaleidoscopic cheap-jackery. Dramatic façades presented themselves suddenly to the astonished gaze, lovely courtyards and galleries floated in shadow and little piazzas talked with the voices of their own fountains. Behind magnificent doorways the ages offered their history lessons in layers. Like the achievements of a Roman pastrycook, thought the tall man irreverently: modern, Renaissance, classic, Mithraic, each under another in one gorgeous, stratified edifice.
It would be an enchantment to walk up to the Palatine Hill where the air would smell freshly of young grass and a kind of peace and order would come upon the rich encrustations of time.
Instead he must look for a tourist bureau either in the streets or at the extremely grand hotel he had been treated to by his department in London. He approached it by the way of the Via Condotti and presently came upon a window filled with blown-up photographs of Rome. The agency was a distinguished one and their London office well known to him.
He turned into an impressive interior, remarked that its decor was undisturbed by racks of brochures, and approached an exquisite but far from effete young man who seemed to be in charge.
“Good morning, sir,” said the young man in excellent English. “May I help you?”
“I hope so,” he rejoined cheerfully. “I’m in Rome for a few days. I don’t want to spend them on a series of blanket-tours covering the maximum of sights in the minimum amount of time. I have seen as much as I can take of celebrated big-boomers. What I would like now is to do something leisurely and civilized that leads one off the beaten way of viewing and yet is really — well, really of Rome and not, historically speaking, beside the point. I’m afraid I put that very badly.”
“But not at all,” said the young man looking hard at him. “I understand perfectly. A personal courier might be the answer but this is the busy season, sir, and I’m afraid we’ve nobody free for at least a fortnight whom I could really recommend.”
“Somebody told me about something called Il Cicerone. Small parties under the guidance of a — I’m not sure if I’ve got his name right — Sebastian Something? Do you know?”
The young man looked still more fixedly at him and said: “It’s odd — really, it’s quite a coincidence, sir, that you should mention Il Cicerone. A week ago I could have told you very little about it. Except, perhaps, that it wasn’t likely to be a distinguished affair. Indeed—” He hesitated and then said, “Please forgive me, sir. I’ve been at our London office for the past three years and I can’t help thinking that I’ve had the pleasure of looking after you before. Or at least of seeing you. I hope you don’t mind,” the young man said in a rush, “I trust you will not think this insufferable cheek: I haven’t mastered my Anglo-Saxon attitudes, I’m afraid.”
“You’ve mastered the language, at least.”
“Oh — that! After an English university and so on, I should hope so.”
“—and have an excellent memory.”
“Well, sir, you are not the sort of person who is all that readily forgotten. Perhaps then, I am correct in thinking—?”
“You came into the general manager’s office in Jermyn Street while I was there. Some two years ago. You were in the room for about three minutes: during which time you gave me a piece of very handy information.”
The young man executed an involved and extremely Italianate gesture that ended up with a smart slap on his own forehead.
“Ah-ah-ah! Mamma mia! How could I be such an ass!” he exclaimed.
“It all comes back to you?” observed the tall man drily.
“But completely. All!” He fell away a step and contemplated his visitor with an air of the deepest respect.
“Good,” said the visitor, unmoved by this scrutiny. “Now about the Il Cicerone thing—”
“It is entirely for recreation, sir, that you inquire?”
“Why not?”
“Indeed! Of course! I merely wondered—”
“Come on. What did you wonder?”
“If perhaps there might be a professional aspect.”
“And why did you wonder that? Look. Signor Pace — that is your name, isn’t it?”
“Your own memory, sir, is superb.”
“Signor Pace. Is there, perhaps, something about this enterprise, or about the person who controls it, that makes you think I might be interested in it — or him — for other than sightseeing reasons?”
The young man became pink in the face, gazed at his clasped hands, glanced round the bureau, which was empty of other people, and finally said: “The cicerone in question, Signore — a Mr. Sebastian Mailer — is a person of a certain, or perhaps I should say, uncertain reputation. Nothing specific, you understand, but there are—” he agitated his fingers. “Suggestions. Rome is a great place for suggestions.”