‘Keep quiet, can’t you,’ Maxwell cut him short. ‘Now, Dick. If this is your Doctor Sansevino, what happened to Shirer?’
‘I found him the morning after the escape slumped over Sansevino’s desk, dressed in his uniform with no moustache and wearing dark glasses. I thought it—’ My voice trailed away. I had an almost uncontrollable desire to start laughing again. It was the thought that I’d been looking at Walter Shirer that morning.
‘Then it was Sansevino who escaped with Reece that night?’
I nodded.
‘And when you met this man in Milan you recognised him?’ It was Hilda who put the question to me.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I didn’t recognise him. I just kept on seeing him as the doctor, that was all. They were very much alike, except for the moustache and the glasses.’
‘And that is why you left Milan?’
I nodded. My eyes seemed held by hers, for I sensed sympathy there and I clung to it. Anything to stop myself laughing. ‘I was scared,’ I said. ‘I thought I was seeing things — going out of my mind.’
The room was suddenly lit by a brighter glow. We all glanced involuntarily towards Vesuvius. The whole top of the mountain flamed as great gobs of molten rock were hurled out of the crater and up into the column of black gas. And through the window, quite clearly in the still, oppressive heat of the night came the creak of wagons and the shouts of people urging cattle along the road to Avin.
‘We must hurry, Max,’ Hilda said. ‘I am so afraid he is somewhere up there.’ She turned to Zina. ‘What was it you said about two men up at Santo Francisco?’
But Zina seemed to have fallen into a coma. She didn’t answer. ‘I’ll have to get it out of this little swine then,’ Maxwell said. He turned to Sansevino. ‘Where is Tucek?’ The man didn’t answer and I saw Maxwell hit him. ‘You picked him up at Milan Airport. Tucek and Lemlin. You were after what he was bringing out of Czechoslovakia, the same as you were with the other poor devils. Well, where is he?’ There was a scream of pain.
Then Hacket had Maxwell by the shoulder. ‘Because the guy’s killed someone, it doesn’t entitle you to third degree him.’
‘You keep out of this,’ Maxwell said sharply.
‘Then leave the guy alone.’
‘This isn’t the first man he’s murdered. You heard what Farrell said.’
‘I’ve heard a lot of nonsense about doctors and assumed identity and I’ve heard the man who made that accusation laughing like a maniac. Now you just leave the guy alone and I’ll telephone the carabinieri. It’s their responsibility.’
‘Listen, Hacket. This man has kidnapped Hilda Tucek’s father.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘I don’t care whether you believe it or not. Go out and telephone the carabinieri. Meanwhile—’
It was at this moment that the lights dipped. They did it twice and then they faded away. For a moment we could see the filaments in the candle bulbs of the chandelier glowing faintly and then they vanished and the room was a red glare full of moving shadows. ‘The plant must have run out of gas,’ Hacket said. At the same moment Maxwell shouted. A figure slid by me. The door opened and slammed shut. Maxwell dashed past me, had it open in a flash and disappeared into the darkness of the hall. I got my torch out and followed him.
The front door was still bolted. ‘Through the servant’s quarters,’ I said.
We dived into a passage. It led to the kitchen. Beyond were outhouses and here we found a door hanging open. We went out, sinking to our ankles in soft ash. We could see his footsteps in the ash leading out of the shadow of the villa into the red glare towards some outhouses. As we ran over the sifting surface of the ground there was the roar of a motor and Zina’s cream cabriolet came slithering round the corner of the house, the back wheels sending up twin sprays of ash that caught the light so that they looked like firemen’s hoses in the glow of a fire.
I had a brief glimpse of Sansevino at the wheel, then the big car was charging straight at us and we were jumping for our lives. He just missed us and I heard him change gear as he rounded the corner of the villa. ‘Quick! See which way he goes.’ I followed Maxwell as fast as I could to the front of the building. The car’s headlights cut a swathe through the red night as it hurtled down the track through the vineyards. We could see carts and people straggling along the road to Avin and Maxwell’s car shrouded in ash standing by the open gateway. With blaring sirens Sansevino nosed out on to the refugee-strewn road and turned right. ‘He’s going up to Santo Francisco. Come on! We’ve got to follow.’
Hacket and Hilda had joined us now and as we started off down the track to where the cars were parked, Zina came flying after us. ‘Don’t leave me,’ she whimpered, clutching hold of my arm. ‘Please don’t leave me. I’ll show you where they are.’
Maxwell heard her and turned. ‘You know where Tucek is?’ he asked her.
‘I do not know anything about Tucek,’ she replied. ‘But I know where he kept the others you speak about. It is in the old monastery of Santo Francisco.’
‘Come on then.’
By the time I caught up with them Max had the car turned and he was waiting for me with the door open and the engine running. The stream of refugees seemed already to be thinning. Most of those who had fled on foot had already passed. Only those who had stopped to salvage some of their belongings were still on the road. We passed bullock cart after bullock cart piled to a crazy height with furniture, bedding, children and livestock. As we forced them off the road, with the blare of our horn the loads canted over at a crazy angle.
Zina was in the front beside Max. I could see the shape of her head against the white swathe of the headlights and the glare of the lava streams. ‘Hurry. Hurry, please.’ She was getting scared again. It was hardly to be wondered at. The scene was like something out of the Bible — the bullock carts and the terror-stricken people fleeing from the wrath of the Lord. And then I caught a glimpse of the village of Santo Francisco, a black huddle of ancient houses outlined against the blazing wrath of Vesuvius. The red glare of the lava streams was ahead of us and on either side of us. Santo Francisco was doomed and I thought of the fire and brimstone that had put an end to the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah. It must have been very like this.
‘Pray God we’re not too late.’ It was Hilda who had spoken and I realised suddenly that she was clutching my hand.
On the far side of the back seat Hacket said, ‘This is the craziest thing I’ve ever been mixed up in.’ He leaned towards me across Hilda. ‘Farrell. Do you mind telling me what it’s all about?’
Hilda answered for me. ‘It’s my father. This man Sansevino has shut him up somewhere in Santo Francisco.’ I think she wanted to talk, for she went on, telling him about her father’s escape from Czechoslovakia. I looked at my watch. It was just after four. In little over an hour it would be light. A great shower of sparks rose out of the crater glare and lifted to the black cloud above that was shot with intermittent stabs of forked lightning.
‘Any moment that damned mountain’s gonna blow its top,’ Hacket muttered. His voice trembled slightly. But it wasn’t fear. It was because he was excited. He had come all the way from America to see this volcano and I think he was as near to being happy as he’d ever be.
We were entering the village now. The crimsoned stucco fronts of the houses closed in on us, throwing back the roar of the car’s engine and blocking out the sight of Vesuvius. The streets were quite deserted. The last of the refugees had left. There wasn’t a cat or a dog, not even a chicken, to be seen. It was as though we were entering a lost town.
We passed a shop where a candle still guttered on the counter and vegetables piled the shelves. The doors of the houses gaped open. In a small piazza a cart stood forlornly, abandoned because one of the wheels had broken under the strain of the furniture heaped on top of it. By the village pump a small child sucked its thumb and stared at us with big, frightened eyes.