As Harry pulled up before the front entrance, Cherry appeared, his pink and white face wreathed in smiles. He came down the wide stone steps and opened the car door, giving Don a dignified bow.
"You look pretty pleased with yourself, Cherry," Don said. He stared at the villa. "My, my, this is quite a place."
"It is eminently satisfactory, sir," Cherry said. "Miss Rigby is waiting for you. Lunch will be ready in ten minutes."
An hour later, Don, Marian, Cherry and Harry were on the veranda that overlooked a magnificent view of Siena.
They had just finished a lunch prepared and cooked by Cherry: a lunch of ravioli, veal steaks with white truffles and ice-cream encrusted with candied fruits.
Don and Marian sat in basket chairs. Cherry rested his large haunches against the balustrade of the balcony: the furthest he would go to sitting in the presence of his employer. Harry was perched on the balustrade, his hands gripping his knees.
"You've done a good job," Don said, fanning aside the smoke from his cigar. "This is just the place for our headquarters. Somewhere in Siena is the man we are looking for. I'm sure of it. Now we've got to find him. It might not be too difficult if we could go around asking questions haphazardly, but we can't do that. He's bound to have a grapevine and he'd know fast enough we were making inquiries. Once he does know, we're sunk."
"So what do we do?" Harry asked, shifting impatiently.
"You and Cherry don't do anything for the moment. You'll run the villa and keep up the standard that's already been set." Don looked over at Cherry. "That meal was right out of the book, Cherry. It's obvious you haven't lost your continental touch."
Cherry preened himself and coughed behind his hand.
"If either of you could speak Italian," Don went on, "I'd let you loose in the city to see what you could pick up, but as you don't, the spade work1 must be done by Miss Rigby and myself." He turned to Marian. "We're going to dig into the history of Siena again. We'll go to the local bookshop and get all the books on the history of Siena they have in stock. I want to find out a lot more about the ward that represents the tortoise than we know already. When we have some facts, I can then ask questions, but they have got to be the harmless kind of questions a tourist interested in the history of Siena would ask, and not the kind of questions a policeman would ask."
Marian nodded.
"There's a bookshop in Via Pantaneto. They should have all we want."
"Okay, let's make a start. Harry, keep out of town. The less anyone sees of you the better. There may come a time when a new face will be useful, and that goes for you too, Cherry. Sooner or later, the Tortoise will find out, I am after him.
What I don't want him to know is I have you two helping me. Do you follow?"
Cherry, who hadn't forgotten the part he played in the Tre-garth affair, leaned forward, his fat face alight with excitement.
"I have come prepared, sir," he said. "I have my sword stick with me. If you will remember it came in useful in Venice last year."
The picture of fat Cherry tackling an armed thug with his sword stick jumped into Don's mind and he had to make an effort to suppress a grin.
"I remember all right. Keep it handy, Cherry. You never know. You may need it."
Marian and Don spent the next two days poring over the dozen or so books they had found at Pedoni's bookshop.
They sat together hour after hour on the veranda in the warm sunshine, oblivious of the view, searching for some clue that might ¦ lead to the Tortoise.
Harry busied himself in the garden and helped Cherry run the villa. Both he and Cherry cast anxious eyes at the other two as they turned page after page, waiting hopefully for a discovery that would give them some action.
On the evening of the second day, Don laid down his book and suppressed a yawn!
"Phew! I'm getting bored with this," he said. "Let's give it a rest. I'm going for a stroll in the town. Come on, Marian, keep me company."
Marian shook her head.
"I've nearly finished," she said, patting the large, dry-as-dust tome she held on her knees. "Another couple of hours and I'm through. I really can't face it again tomorrow. I must finish it."
"Your appetite for work is horrifying," Don said, heaving himself out of his chair. "All right, I'll go and find a nice blonde and paint the town red1. Don't say you didn't get the first offer."
Marian waved him away.
"Some chance you've got to find a nice blonde in Siena," she said.
"Well, okay, I'll settle for a brunette. Come on: change your mind."
"Don't tempt me, please," Marian said firmly. "I intend to finish this tonight."
Shaking his head, Don went down to the garage and got out the car. Harry came out of the darkness and looked hopefully at him.
"You're out of luck, Harry," Don said. "I can't take you with me."
Harry rubbed his nose with the back of his hand.
"Okay, sir; just as you say."
"Go and play gin-rummy with Cherry. You might win some money off him."
Harry snorted.
"Some hopes," he said in disgust. "He's got that sword stick out and he is cutting and thrusting like someone on the movies. I told the old goat if he didn't watch out, he'd have a stroke."
Don laughed.
"Leave him alone, Harry. He has an adventurous spirit. He did damn well last time he produced that sword stick."
He drove down the drive and out into the lane. A mile of moonlit road brought him to the Porto Camollia over which was the inscription in Latin: Siena opens her heart still wider to you.
Leaving the car, Don walked towards the Piazza del Campo. It was just after half-past nine, and the narrow streets were already thronged with people aimlessly walking, filling the night air with the sound of their voices, moving aside indifferently as the cars with an impatient bep-bep on their horns forced their way through the solid crowd.
Don found his way to the Campo and over to a cafe where he sat down.
A brilliant scene lay before him. The shell-shaped Campo around which, twice a year, the Patio was raced for, was floodlit. The twelfth-century Palazzo Pubblico with its three hundred foot tower formed an impressive Hollywood-like background to the piazza.
Looking at this scene, Don thought how easy it was to put the clock back in Siena. He wouldn't have been the least surprised to see men in helmets and breastplates, arquebusiers and halberdiers, march into the piazza.
* A harassed waiter, carrying a laden tray, paused to take his order for a coffee espresso.
While waiting, Don glanced at the people sitting around him. There was the inevitable quota of American tourists, a number of Italians discussing politics at the tops of their voices, and two tables from him, a gigantic negro.
The negro held Don's attention. He had never seen a man built on such a colossal scale. He was a Michelangelo creation carved from ebony with a muscular development much larger than life.
Although he was seated, he was a good foot higher than the waiter who was placing before him an enormous pile of pink icecream. His bullet-shaped head grew out of shoulders as wide as a barn door without any apparent neck to join one to the other. There was a brutish, alert expression on his face that made Don think of a gorilla. His bloodshot eyes were constantly on the move. They flickered in Don's direction, ran over him with an insolent, inquisitive stare, passed on and came back to him and repeated the stare.
Don stared back and the negro shifted his glance. He picked up a spoon that seemed like a toy in his enormous hand and began to shovel ice-cream into his thick-lipped mouth.
What a beauty! Don thought. My goodness! I wouldn't like to tangle with him. He's the stuff nightmares are made of.
He lit a cigarette and shifted his attention from the negro to the slow-moving crowd walking to and fro across the Campo.