“Why should I want to inspect it?”
“The V, Mr. Marlow, stands for Vagas.”
“That’s very interesting; but as I shan’t be seeing General Vagas…” I shrugged. “Good night.”
“Pleasant dreams, Mr. Marlow.”
I went.
My dreams that night were far from pleasant. I remember waking up at about half-past three from a nightmare in which Bellinetti was smothering me with huge stacks of photographs of General Vagas. But when I finally went to sleep again I was thinking of Claire. It was, after all, only a question of a month or two before I would see her again. Dear Claire.
5
I did not see Zaleshoff again for over a week.
The gods, like most other practical jokers, have a habit of repeating themselves too often. Man has, so to speak, learned to expect the pail of water on his head. He may try to side-step, but when, as always, he gets wet, he is more concerned about his new hat than the ironies of fate. He has lost the faculty of wonder. The tortured shriek of high tragedy has degenerated into a petulant grunt. But there is still one minor booby-trap in the repertoire which, I suspect, never fails to provoke a belly-laugh on Olympus. I, at any rate, succumb to it with regularity. The kernel of the jest is an illusion; the illusion that the simple emotional sterility, the partial mental paralysis that comes with the light of the morning, is really sanity.
The morning after that first curious evening with Zaleshoff was fine. It was cold, but the sun was shining and lighting up the faded green plush hangings of my room so that they looked more tawdry than they really were. The effect heightened the deception, coloured the illusion that now I was seeing clearly. Over my coffee I cheerfully pooh-poohed my sneaking apprehensions of the night before. The card index, this American’s mysterious hintings-what a lot of nonsense! I must have been crazy to think of taking it seriously. It was all, I assured myself, due simply to my ignorance of the Continental business atmosphere. I must not forget to make allowances for that factor. Fitch had warned me of it. “Over there,” he had said, “they approach business as if it were a particularly dirty game of politics. They’d sooner play politics really; but if they can’t do that they play business in the same spirit.” Zaleshoff the American had evidently caught the infection. He was probably working up to a proposal that Vagas should introduce me to a man with an order to place, and that a substantial commission (payable in advance) would secure adequate representation of Spartacus’ interests. Well, he wouldn’t get the chance. I had too much real work to do to permit me to waste time with such childish nonsense.
I see now that it was a piece of self-deception that was very nearly conscious; but semi-conscious or not, it was thoroughly effective, almost too effective, for I forgot General Vagas and the fact that I had to put off my appointment with him until practically the last minute.
After an acrid morning with Bellinetti and his files, I went to the Amministrazione to collect my passport. After half an hour in the waiting-room, I wrung an admission from the attendant policeman that the signor Capitano was not in the building, and that he had left no instructions about either my identity card or my passport. If I would return later, all would arrange itself. I returned later and waited for a quarter of an hour. This time the policeman was more helpful. The signor Capitano had not returned, but he himself had made inquiries. The passport had been sent to the Foreign Department. It would, doubtless, be available on the following day. If I could call in then…
But I did not call in on the following day. I did not call in until the following Tuesday. The reason for this was that on the Thursday night I went to Genoa.
As Pelcher had explained, one of my principal duties was to maintain personal contact with the users of Spartacus machines. Thursday’s post had brought a letter from one of these users, a big engineering firm with works near Genoa, and, as the letter raised points of technical importance, I had decided to make it an excuse to visit them. I should, in any case, have gone, as I had found that my Italian, though equal to most ordinary demands upon it, was as yet far too sketchy to permit me to commit my thoughts on technical subjects to paper.
I spent Friday, Saturday and Monday in the customer’s works, and arrived back in Milan early on the Tuesday morning.
It had been my first direct contact with a customer, and I had been impressed by the evidence I had had of Mr. Pelcher’s earlier activities. There had been some trouble over Bellinetti’s lack of attention to their interests, but they had been notified by signor Pelcher of my arrival and all was now well. On Sunday the works manager had driven me to Portofino in his car, and had permitted me to buy him a very expensive lunch. There had been talk of an order for six more S2 machines. I had received veiled but precise instructions concerning the method of paying the secret commission, and learned that my German competitors were obtuse and parsimonious when it came to the arrangement of such affairs. It was understood, however, that Spartacus were a sympathetic company to deal with. Their machines, too, were of the best. The Government inspectors would be in the works on the Monday. If I could spare the time to meet them, it would be to my advantage. I had spared the time, and found the inspectors as tractable as, if rather more discreet than, the works manager.
I was both pleased and disgusted by my week-end’s work. Fitch had warned me what to expect, and had, indeed, coached me carefully in the order-taking ritual; but the reality was disconcerting none the less. It was one thing to talk glibly of bribery and corruption; it was quite another thing actually to do the bribing and corrupting. Not, I reminded myself, that my part in the proceedings was anything but passive acquiescence. These people were already corrupt. It was merely a question of who paid-the German firm or Spartacus. “ Chi paga? ” was, after all, a favourite gibe in Italy. “When in Rome…” Perhaps there was more to that old saw than met the eye.
With such things on my mind it was scarcely surprising that I should have forgotten that such persons as Zaleshoff and Vagas existed.
I was soon to be reminded of the fact.
The first reminder was contained in a long postscript to a letter from Claire that was waiting for me at the Hotel Parigi on my return. Here it is:
P.S.-By the way, Nicky my sweet, I think you’ll have to do something about the chambermaid or whoever it is who has access to your room. You may remember that you asked me to send you the Engineer each week (matter attended to, by the way), and that you wrote about it across the back of the envelope. Well, dear, in your little Miss Sherlock’s opinion, the envelope was steamed open after that. What made me notice it particularly was a slight kink in the writing (you know how you run all the words together?), and when I looked at the envelope closely I could see a thin ridge of gum running round the edge of the flap and approximately. 05 cm. from it. I think that research grant they gave me years ago must have had a bad effect on me, because what must I do but rush out there and then and buy five different kinds of envelopes with which to experiment. First I sealed the five envelopes, then, after a two hours’ interval, I steamed them open again. Immediately after opening them I re-sealed them and left them until the morning when I compared the results with your envelope. All revealed the ridge of gum which (note the scientific mind at work) may, I suggest, be produced partly by the shrinkage of the paper flap following the steam treatment, and partly by the surface tension of the gum while it is in a liquid state. I am aware (O Shades of Socrates!) that there is nothing proved here, and that I ought to have kept quiet about it until I had tested at least five hundred sample envelopes, but I can’t spare the time to do so and, in any case, prolonged steaming operations take the wave out of my hair. All the same, I thought I’d better report. She’s probably jealous, my sweet. I advise prompt posting to avoid the crush. Love. Claire.