From that moment she had fought against a surge of terror so imperative that it was accompanied by a physical pain. She ran downstairs and told the manager. The porter and two of the waiters and Troy herself had gone out into the deserted and sweltering streets, Troy running uphill and breathlessly calling Ricky’s name. She stopped the few people she met, asking them for a “petit garçon, mon fils.” The men shrugged, one woman said something that sounded sympathetic. They all shook their heads or made negative gestures with their fingers. Troy found herself in a maze of back streets and stone stairways. She thought she was lost, but looking down a steep alleyway, saw one of the waiters walk across at the lower end and she ran down after him. When she reached the cross-alley she was just in time to see his coat-tails disappear round a further corner. Finally she caught him up. They were back in the little square, and there was the hotel. Her heart rammed against her ribs and she suffered a disgusting sense of constriction in her throat. Sweat poured between her shoulder blades and ran down her forehead into her eyes. She was in a nightmare.
The waiter grimaced. He was idiotically polite and deprecating and he couldn’t understand a word that she said. He pursed his lips, bowed and went indoors. She remembered the Commissary of Police and was about to ask the manager to telephone the Préfecture when she heard Raoul’s car turn into the street.
Alleyn said: “Right. I’ll talk to the Préfecture. But before I do, my dearest dear, will you believe one thing?”
“All right, I’ll try.”
“Ricky isn’t in danger. I’m sure of it.”
“But it’s true. He’s been — it’s those people up there — they’ve kidnapped him, haven’t they?”
“It’s possible that they’ve taken a hand. If they have it’s because they want to keep me busy. It’s also possible, isn’t it, that something entered into his head and he got himself up and trotted out.”
“He’d never do it, Rory. Never. You know he wouldn’t.”
“All right. Now, I’ll ring the Préfecture. Come on.”
He sat her beside him on the bed and kept his arm about her. While he waited for the number he said: “Did you lock the door?”
“No. I didn’t like the idea of locking him in. The manager’s spoken to the servants. They didn’t see anybody. Nobody asked for our room numbers.”
“The heavy trunk is still in the hall downstairs and the room numbers chalked on it. What colour are his clothes?”
“Pale yellow shirt and brown shorts.”
“Right. We may as well— ’Allo! ’Allo!..”
He began to talk into the telephone, keeping his free hand on her shoulder. Troy turned her cheek to it for a moment and then freed herself and went out on the balcony.
The little square — it was called the Place des Sarrasins — was at the top of a hilly street and the greater part of Roqueville lay between it and the sea. The maze of alleys where Troy had lost herself was out of sight behind and above the hotel. As if from a high tower, she looked down into the streets and prayed incoherently that in one of them she would see a tiny figure: Ricky, in his lemon-coloured shirt and brown linen shorts. But all Troy could see was a pattern of stucco and stone, a distant row of carriages whose drivers and horses were snoozing, no doubt, in the shadows, a system of tiled roofs and the paint-like blue of the sea. She looked nearer at hand and there, beneath her, was Raoul Milano’s car, seeming like a toy, and Raoul himself, rolling a cigarette. The hotel porter, at that moment, came out and she heard the sound of his voice. Raoul got up and they disappeared beneath her into the hotel.
The tone of Alleyn’s voice suggested that he was near the end of his telephone call. She had turned away from her fruitless search of the map-like town and was about to go indoors when out of the tail of her eye she caught a flicker of colour.
It was a flicker of lemon-yellow and brown.
The hot iron of the balcony rail scorched the palms of her hands. She leant far out and stared at a tall building on a higher level than herself, a building that was just in view round the corner of the hotel. It was perhaps a quarter of a mile away and from behind a huddle of intervening roofs, rose up in a series of balconies. It was on the highest of these, behind a blur of iron railings, that she saw her two specks of colour.
“Rory,” she cried. “Rory!”
It took several seconds that seemed like as many minutes for Alleyn to find the balcony. “It’s Ricky,” she said, “isn’t it? It must be Ricky.” And she ran back into the room, snatched the thin cover from her bed and waved it frantically from the balcony.
“Wait a moment,” Alleyn said.
His police case had been brought up to their room and contained a pair of very powerful field glasses. While he focussed them on the distant balcony he said: “Don’t be too certain, darling, there may be other small boys in yellow and — no — no, it’s Ricky. He’s all right. Look.”
Troy’s eyes were masked with tears of relief. Her hands shook and her fingers were too precipitant with the focussing governors. “I can’t do it-I can’t see.”
“Steady. Wipe your eyes. Here, I will. He’s still there. He may have spotted us. Try this way. Kneel down and rest the glasses on the rail. Get each eye right in turn. Quietly does it.”
Circles of blurred colour mingled and danced in the two fields of vision. They swam together and clarified. The glasses were in focus now but were trained on some strange blue door, startling in its closeness. She moved them and an ornate gilded steeple was before her with a cross and a clock telling a quarter to two. “I don’t know where I am. It’s a church. I can’t find him.”
“You’re nearly there. Keep at that level and come round gently.” And suddenly Ricky looked through iron rails with vague, not quite frightened eyes whose gaze, while it was directed at her, yet passed beyond her.
“Wave,” she said. “Go on waving.”
Ricky’s strangely impersonal and puzzled face moved a little so that an iron standard partly hid it. His right arm was raised and his hand moved to and fro above the railing.
“He’s seen!” she said. “He’s waving back.”
The glasses slipped a little. The wall of their hotel, out-of-focus and stupid, blotted out her vision. Someone was tapping on the bedroom door behind them.
“Entrez,” Alleyn called, and then sharply, “Hullo! Who’s that?”
“What? I’ve lost him.”
“A woman came out and led him away. They’ve gone indoors.”
“A woman?”
“Fat and dressed in black.”
“Please let’s go quickly.”
Raoul had come through the bedroom and stood behind them. Alleyn said in French, “Do you see that tall building, just to the left of our wall and to the right of the church? It’s pinkish with blue shutters and there’s something red on one of the balconies.”
“I see it, Monsieur.”
“So you know what building it is?”
“I think so, Monsieur. It will be Number 16 in the Rue des Violettes where Madame enquired this morning.”
“Troy,” Alleyn said. “The Lord knows why, but Ricky’s gone to call on Mr. Garbel.”