‘For God’s sake sit down,’ he said. ‘I’m not suggesting you had anything to do with it. But I must find him. It’s vitally important. Sit down — please.’ I hesitated. He pushed his fingers through his fair hair. He looked damnably tired.
‘All right,’ I said, resuming my seat. ‘Now, what do you want to know?’
‘Just tell me everything that happened to you in Pilsen — everything, however unimportant. It may help.’
So I told him the whole story. When I had finished he said, ‘Why was Tucek so anxious for you to see him when you got to Milan?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
He frowned. ‘And he came to your hotel that night?’ He looked across at me. ‘Has anybody tried to contact you since you’ve been in Milan?’
‘Yes,’ I said. I told him then about the telephone conversation I’d just had. Somehow the sense of menace I’d attached to it seemed to recede as I told it to Reece.
When I’d finished he didn’t say anything for a moment, but sat lost in thought, toying with the drink the waiter had brought him. At length he murmured the name Sismondi, rolling it over his tongue as though by repeating it aloud he could make contact with something hidden away in his memory. But then he shook his head. ‘The name means nothing to me.’ He swilled the pale liquor of his cognac round and round in the glass as though he couldn’t make up his mind what line to take. ‘I wish to God Maxwell was here,’ he said. Then he suddenly knocked back the drink. ‘I want you to do something,’ he said quietly, leaning across the table towards me. ‘You probably won’t like it, but—’ He shrugged his shoulders.
‘What is it?‘I asked.
‘I want you to go and see Sismondi.’
‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘I don’t want anything to do with it. It’s none of my business.and—’
‘I know it’s none of your business. But Tucek was a friend of yours, wasn’t he? You were in the Battle of Britain together.’
I thought again of that shattered windshield with the black oil smoke pouring through it, the flames fanning out from the engine cowling and a voice in the headphones saying: Okay, I get him for you, Dick. Jan had probably saved my life that day. ‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Very well then. You can’t just abandon the poor devil because you’re afraid of getting involved in something unpleasant. All I want you to do is go and see Sismondi.
‘Find out what he knows. Evidentally he thinks you’ve got something he wants. Play on that.’
I remembered the silky tone in which Sismondi had offered me that bribe. Hell! It wasn’t my pigeon. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to get mixed up—’
‘Damn it, Farrell, don’t you realise Tucek’s life may be in danger. Listen! This is the second time in two months that somebody important has come through from the other side and then disappeared here in Italy. There have been others, too. Our people have been offered information that could only have been brought through by people who have completely disappeared. They’ve had to pay through the nose for it. Now do you understand? The man’s life is at stake.’
‘That’s your affair,’ I answered. ‘You and Maxwell were organising the thing. It’s up to you to see that he’s safe.’
‘All right,’ he answered in a tone of sudden anger. ‘I’ve slipped up. I admit it. Now I’ve come to you. I’m asking you to help me.’ He was forcing his voice under control, suppressing his anger, trying desperately to assume humility.
‘I’ve given you all the help I can,’ I answered. ‘I’ve told you everything that’s happened. I’ve given you a complete account of my telephone conversation with Sismondi. It’s up to you now. Go and see him. Batter the truth out of him.’
But he shook his head. ‘I’ve thought of that. It wouldn’t work. Sismondi won’t be the man we’re looking for. He probably knows very little. But if you were to suggest that you had the papers they’re after—’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m through with that sort of game. You should know that better than any one,’ I added in a tone of sudden bitterness.
‘Then you won’t help?’
‘No.’ I felt obstinate. Maxwell could probably have persuaded me. But not Reece. There was a personal barrier. I finished my drink and got to my feet.
Reece got up also and came round the table. He didn’t make any further attempt to play on my friendship with Tucek. He didn’t even try to tell me it was my duty as an Englishman to help him. He just said, ‘All right. I was afraid you might feel like that so I brought someone with me. I think you’ll find it more difficult to say No to her.’
For an awful moment I thought he’d got Alice with him. But he must have realised what was in my mind, for he said quickly, ‘It’s someone you’ve never met before. Let’s go through into the lounge.’ He had hold of my arm then and I had no option but to go with him.
She was sitting in the far corner — a small, red-haired girl with her head bent over a newspaper. As we approached she looked up, and I knew her at once. She was Jan Tucek’s daughter. Reece introduced us. ‘I have heard of you from my father,’ she said. The grip of her hand was firm. The set of the chin was as determined as her father’s, and her eyes, set rather wide on either side of the small upturned nose, looked straight at me. ‘He often used to speak of his friends in the R.A.F.’ She glanced down at my leg and then pulled up a chair for me. ‘Mr. Reece said you might be able to help us.’ Her voice was rather husky and she spoke English with a queer mixture of accents.
I sat down, comparing the girl in front of me with the memory of the photograph in Tucek’s office. Some trick of the light caused her hair to gleam just the way it had gleamed in the photograph. It was beautiful hair — a reddish gold, the real Venetian Titian. And she had freckles just as Tucek had said. They mottled the pale golden skin of her face in a way that gave it a gamin quality. But the face wasn’t quite the same as the face in the photograph — it was older, more set, as though she had had to come to grips with life since the photograph had been taken. I remembered how I’d last seen that photograph, smiling up at me from the floor of Tucek’s ransacked office. She wasn’t smiling now and there was no laughter in her eyes. Her face looked small and pinched and there were dark rings under her eyes. And yet, as I met the level gaze of her eyes, I was conscious again of that sense of something personal in her face. It suddenly became important to me that she should smile again as she’d been smiling in the photograph. ‘I’ll do anything I can,’ I murmured.
‘Thank you.’ She turned to Reece. ‘Is there any news please?’
He shook his head. ‘Not much I’m afraid. Farrell saw your father only once.’ He hesitated, and then said, ‘Does the name Sismondi mean anything to you, Hilda?’
She shook her head.
‘Your father never hinted that he might be forming a business partnership with Sismondi?’
‘No.’
‘He wasn’t planning to form a company here in Milan?’
Again she shook her head. ‘No. We were to have a holiday here, and then we were going to England.’ Her voice sounded puzzled. ‘Why all these questions?’
Reece gave her the gist of what I’d told him. When he had finished she turned to me. ‘You will go and see this Sismondi?’ I think she knew at once that I didn’t want to. ‘Please,’ she added. ‘He may know where my father is.’ She reached out and caught hold of my hand. Her fingers were cold and their grip was hard and urgent. ‘This is our last hope, I think.’ Her eyes were fixed on my face. ‘Can you imagine what it has been like for him in Czechoslovakia all these months since they take over? It has been terrible — always living on the edge of catastrophe. And it had happened before, you see — with the Germans. My mother was murdered. And his father. To have to leave Czechoslovakia twice — that is very hard, I think. We plan to build a new life in England. And now—’ She shrugged her shoulders. I thought, if she breaks down now it will be horrible. But she didn’t. Somehow she kept control of herself and in a small, tight voice, she said, ‘So you must help me, please.’