I rubbed my hand over my eyes. I started to tell her that the plane from Messina wouldn’t be flying from east to west, but somehow it didn’t seem to matter. I was too drunk to care.
Roberto came in then. He didn’t knock. He just walked straight in and stood there, staring at me with an angry, sullen, animal look. Zina pushed me away from her and got to her feet. They talked together for a moment in low voices. Roberto was looking at her now, his features heavy and coarse with desire. I wasn’t so drunk I didn’t know what the look on his face meant. They reminded me of King Shahryar’s Queen and the blackamoor and I began to laugh. Zina turned at the sound of my laughter. The blood drained from her face so that her eyes were big and dark and angry. She dismissed Roberto and then came towards me. ‘Why do you laugh?’ Her voice was tight with rage.
I couldn’t stop myself. I suppose it was the drink. It seemed so damned funny. She was leaning over me now, her face white. ‘Stop it. Do you hear? Stop it.’ I think she knew why I was laughing, for she suddenly hit me across the face. ‘Stop it, I tell you,’ she screamed at me. Whether it was her voice, which was not pleasant, or the blow, I don’t know, but I stopped laughing.
She was leaning over me still and I thought for a moment she was going to hit me again. Her face was twisted with passion. ‘Because I tell you I am born in the slums of Napoli—’ She stopped herself and turned quickly to the drink table. She came back with cognac in a balloon glass. ‘Drink that,’ she said. ‘Then you must go to bed.’
I didn’t want the cognac. I’d sobered up a little and I was beginning to feel uneasy. ‘Why did you bring me out here?’ I asked. My voice sounded slurred and I couldn’t get her properly into focus.
She sank down on to the couch beside me. ‘I am sorry, Dick. I do not want to hit you like that. Something get into me, I think. It is the heat.’
‘Whose villa is this?’
She pulled my head down on to her breast. ‘You ask so many questions. Why are you not content to take things as they come?’ Her hand was stroking my hair again, her fingers caressing my temples. It was very soothing. ‘Close your eyes now and I will sing to you.’ She chose a soft Neapolitan lullaby. My eyes felt heavy with sleep. Somehow I found the glass in my hand and I drank. Her voice came and went, the drowsy murmur of a bee, the soft lilt of water. I closed my eyes for the room was pulsing to the sound of her voice.
Then I was being helped up the stairs to bed. I heard her say in Italian, ‘He will sleep now.’ Her voice sounded very far away. It was Roberto’s voice that answered her. He just said, ‘Bene.’
Some sixth sense told me I mustn’t become unconscious. I fought to get control of my reeling brain. Then I was lying on a bed in complete darkness. No breath of air stirred in the room. It was suffocatingly hot and I felt sick. I rolled out of bed and felt my way to the farther wall. I found the basin just in time. I broke into a cold sweat then, but I felt better and my head was clear. I cursed myself for a fool. To come out to a lonely villa with a girl like Zina and then get so drunk that I had to be put to bed!
I stood there leaning on the basin and wiping the sweat from my forehead with a towel. The villa was very still. The gentle putter of the electric light plant had ceased and I could hear no sound of voices. I glanced at my watch. The luminous face of it shone bright in the utter darkness. It was just after one.
I was feeling much better now. I rinsed out the basin and had a wash. As I dried my face I was wondering why Zina had given me so much wine to drink. Had she wanted to get me drunk? Was that the way she liked her men? Maybe she’d been in the room with me. Then I remembered the expression on Roberto’s face and her sudden blaze of anger. And I began to feel uneasy again.
I put the towel down and turned to feel my way towards the door. Her room would be somewhere along the passage. I was feeling fine now. Halfway across the room I remembered there was a torch in my suitcase which was on the window seat. I found the case and was just slipping back the clasps when I noticed a vertical red line where the shutters were swung across the window. I lifted the securing bar and pulled the shutters back.
I stood quite still then, staring in amazement at the sight that met my eyes. Framed in the window was the dark bulk of Vesuvius outlined against an incredible, lurid glow. On either side of the summit two great streaks of red snaked down towards the villa. They were like a finger and thumb of fire crooked to clutch at something on the slopes. The hand and shaft of the wrist were formed by a ruddy column that flamed from the crater, reflecting itself on great billowing masses of gas that rolled upwards, filling the sky and blocking out the stars.
I turned slowly and faced the room. It was full of a demon red glare. I got my torch and moved towards the door. As I did so the head and shoulders of a man moved to meet me. It was my own shadow thrown on the further wall by that ghastly volcanic glare.
I reached the door and turned the handle. But nothing happened. I turned the knob in the opposite direction, but the door would not budge. I was suddenly very wide awake. I jerked furiously at the door in the grip of a sudden panic fear of being trapped. With the horrid glare of the mountain behind me I became desperate to reach the safety of the passage outside. But I couldn’t shift it and at last I realised that I was locked in. For a moment I was terrified. The mountain was in eruption and I had been left here to die under the ash. I was on the point of shouting for help when some instinct kept my mouth shut. I turned quickly back to the window and stood gazing up at the flaming mass of the volcano.
My heart was still pounding against my ribs, but my brain was clearer now. The mountain wasn’t in eruption — not yet. It was worse than it had been last night, but it wasn’t in eruption — not in the way it had been when Pompeii had been destroyed. A lot more gas was escaping, but the glow was mainly from the lava outflows. The villa wasn’t in any imminent danger. And if the villa wasn’t in danger then there was no call for me to panic because the door of my room had been locked. Perhaps it was just jammed.
I went back and tried it again. But it was locked all right. And then I remembered the nightmare of that night in my room at the Excelsior in Milan. I felt the sweat breaking out on my forehead again. I told myself there couldn’t be any connection. But why had the door been locked? Why had Zina gone out of her way to fill me up with wine till I was so drunk I couldn’t stand? Whose villa was this?
I remembered then what Maxwell had said — But somehow you’re a part of it whether you like it or not. And the man who called himself Shirer — Hilda had said he was in Naples. I flashed my torch round the room. The hard white beam of it seemed somehow solid and friendly. I lit a cigarette. My hand trembled as I held the match to it. But at least I was forewarned. I glanced up at Vesuvius. The whole night sky seemed on fire like a scene from Paradise Lost. The headlights of a car stabbed the lurid countryside on the road to Avin. It slowed and stopped. Then the headlights went out. A door closed in the stillness of the villa below me. Involuntarily my muscles tensed. I thought I heard the creak of a stair board, and suddenly I knew someone was coming up the stairs, coming to my room.
I swung the shutters to and moved towards the door. The palms of my hands were sweating and the chromium of the torch I held felt slippery. But the weight of it was comforting. I stood with my head pressed close to the panelling of the door, listening. There was somebody outside now. I couldn’t hear him, but I sensed him there. Very quietly the key was turned in the lock. I stiffened and then stepped back, so that I should be behind the door when it opened.
I couldn’t see it, but I felt the handle turning. Then my hand, which was touching the woodwork of the door, was pressed back as the door was opened. I grasped the heavy torch, raising it ready to strike out. But before I could hit him the man was past me and moving towards the bed. I slipped out into the passage then, the sound of my movement lost in the deep pile of the carpet. A faint red glow showed through an unshuttered window at the far end of the corridor. I reached the dark shaft of the stairs and hesitated. The villa was all silent, an alert stillness that seemed to be listening for the sound of my footfall.