I got up and looked out of the window.
The Skeltons had just come up from the beach and were sitting down at a table on the lower terrace. Faintly I could hear their voices. Warren laughed once and struck a Napoleonic attitude. His sister shook her head vehemently. I wondered vaguely what they were talking about. If they had been down on the beach all the afternoon they might be able to give alibis to some of the other guests. For the searching of my room could have taken place only while I had been with Schimler or in the village telephoning Beghin. It had probably been the latter. I had, no doubt, been seen leaving the hotel. The path to the gate was visible from half the windows or from the writing-room. Perhaps while I had been planning to search Schimler’s room, Schimler had been planning to search mine. A pretty irony. Schimler, however, had known the number of my room. That is if it had been Schimler who had latched my suitcase twice instead of once. Perhaps his mind had been busy with the Birth of Tragedy at the time. Perhaps Koche had made the search, or Herr Vogel or Monsieur Duclos or…
But this was Friday. Only one day more and it would be time for me to go; and still I should be hoping, wondering, saying names to myself-“Koche, Schimler, Herr Vogel, Monsieur Duclos”-and still I should be here watching the hands of the clock move and doing nothing but wish. I must act. I must do something. I must hurry.
When I left my room I was very careful to lock the door and put the key in my pocket. Worry can play very neat tricks with the sense of humor.
I walked slowly down to the lower terrace. The Skeltons were still talking, but as I approached they looked up. They hailed me with unexpected eagerness.
“We’ve been looking for you.” He came towards me, took me by the arm and looked at me searchingly. “Have you heard yet?”
“Heard what?”
He led me firmly towards their table.
“He hasn’t heard,” he announced with satisfaction.
“Not heard?” echoed the girl. She rose and took my other arm. “Sit down, Mr. Vadassy, and listen.”
“The sensation of the week!” put in her brother.
“It’s too good to be true.”
“Will you tell him or shall I?”
“You. I’ll take the big scenes.”
Skelton suddenly pushed me into a chair and thrust a packet of cigarettes under my nose.
“Smoking steadies the nerves.”
“But what…?”
“A match?”
I lit the cigarette.
“You see,” put in the girl earnestly, “we don’t want you to think us completely crazy, but we have this afternoon witnessed such a sight as…”
“Will kill you,” supplied her brother. “Moreover, we’ve been dying to tell someone about it. Thanks to you, Mr. Vadassy, we live.”
I grinned sheepishly. I was beginning to feel a little embarrassed.
“One of us,” remarked the girl darkly, “won’t live much longer if you don’t get on with it.”
“To business, then!” he announced. “Mr. Vadassy, you know that yacht that came in this morning?”
“Yes.”
“It’s an Italian.”
“Is it?”
“It is. Well, we were down on the beach this afternoon with some of the others. There were the Switzers and the French couple and that old guy with the white beard. A bit later down come the British major and his wife.”
“Oh, hurry up!” said the girl.
“Wait! I want to recreate the atmosphere for Mr. Vadassy. That’s how it happened. They came down a while after everyone else. You know how hot it was. All of us were lying around half asleep in our chairs after that poulet a la creme they gave us at lunch. We just knew the British had come down because we’d heard him saying his chair was unsafe or something.”
“You see,” she broke in, “they were sitting just a little to the right, so we were quite close and saw everything. Well…”
“Be quiet,” said her brother; “you’re spoiling it. Your part comes in a minute. As I was saying, Mr. Vadassy, we were all sitting there wondering whether it was possible for the sun to get much warmer and whether we hadn’t had too much to eat when Mrs. Switzer says something to Mr. Switzer. Well, you know how it is. Even if you don’t know a language, you can often understand the intonation. So I open my eyes and see that the Switzers are looking out across the bay. Then I see that the yacht has lowered a dinghy and that a sailor is rowing it around to the gangway. Down the gangway comes a man in a yachting cap and white drill. He’s got plenty of flesh on him, but he hops into the dinghy neatly enough and the sailor starts to row him towards the beach. Well, everybody perks up at this, probably because it takes their minds off the digesting of the poulet a la creme, and starts talking.” He wagged a dramatic finger. “Little do they know what is in store for them.”
“But for us,” interjected his sister, “the plot is already thickening, for suddenly the two British start talking. The queer thing is that they’re talking Italian. Queerer still, it’s Mrs. Clandon-Hartley who is doing most of the talking. What’s more, she keeps pointing to the dinghy. Then the Major has a look and starts talking back. He doesn’t seem to agree with what she’s saying, for he shakes his head and says something that sounded like a girl’s name, Kay something or other. She didn’t seem to like it and started pointing again. But this time the dinghy is about twelve yards out and the man in the cap is standing up with a boat-hook to catch that iron ring on the rocks when suddenly she lets out a sort of whoop and runs down to the water’s edge calling out something and waving to him.”
“The man with the boat-hook saw her at the same moment and nearly fell overboard with excitement,” said Warren Skelton; “then he shouted, ‘Maria!’ I don’t understand a word of Italian, so I couldn’t tell what they were talking about, but they were chatting away as hard as they could go across the water until finally he got the dinghy alongside the landing rock and jumped ashore.”
“Then,” said the girl, “he flung his arms round her and kissed her two or three times. They evidently knew each other very well indeed. Not that I would care to be kissed even once by this particular man. He was fattish, and when he took his cap off he had his hair cropped so that his head looked like a dirty gray egg. Also he had dewlaps, and if there’s one thing I wish no part of it’s a man with dewlaps. But what surprised me was her. We’d never heard her say a single word before, and here she was behaving like a kid out of school and grinning till we thought her face was going to crack. Obviously she hadn’t expected Signor Dewlaps and it was all a beautiful surprise. He was pointing to the yacht and thumping himself on the chest as though to say, ‘Look what I’ve done,’ and she was pointing up at the hotel and telling him she was staying there. Then they started hugging and kissing again. Everyone on the beach was highly diverted.”
“That is,” qualified Skelton, “all except the Major. He wasn’t looking a bit pleased. In fact, he was looking pretty darn sour. When this second bout of hugging started he got up very slowly from his chair and walked over to them. He just walked, but there was something about the way he walked that made you feel that something was going to happen. The Switzers had started talking to the old Frenchman, but now they shut up. If it hadn’t been for the sound of the sea you could have heard a pin drop on the sand. But nothing happened-then. Signor Dewlaps looked up and saw the Major and grinned at him. You could see they’d met before, but you could also see that they thought nothing at all of each other. They shook hands and Dewlaps went on grinning, but Mrs. Major dried up again as though someone had put an extinguisher on her. Then they all started to talk quietly. Well, I think most of the others lost interest at that point, but I kept on watching them. You see, I’m something of a student of human nature. The proper study of mankind is man, I always say.