"Because, you see, we have to do something," Kuryakin added. "We simply have to find what it was that Leonardo used to make this hologram. For without that, the list it records will remain forever a secret; Thrush will be able to push on with its plans unchecked; and all Leonardo's work will have been in vain."
"I guess you're right," the girl said. "But I'm afraid you may have a long wait."
In the event, it was decided that Solo and Illya should keep watch together. They would see more if they were separated; but they would not be able to check their impressions one against the other until they met again. And however often this was, it was bound to lose them the immediacy they would gain if they pooled impressions on the spot as things happened. There was a tiny office to let on the first floor of an old building almost immediately opposite the post office, and after a few discreet telephone calls from the office of the Commendatore, they found themselves the temporary tenants of this.
Giovanna, with the permission and connivance of the S.I.D., was to act as liaison between them and the office, carry out any follow-up chores that might arise, and generally stay on a roving patrol in the neighborhood.
On the following morning, the two agents installed themselves at a desk in the window of the office. In front of them, a specially ordered pane of glass revealed the street but concealed them from anyone who might be watching. Beside them were cameras, tape machines binoculars and a selection of curious electronic devices perfected by the Command's laboratory technicians in New York; and behind them on a chair were transcripts of the Commendatore's dossier on the Leonardo case. Plus a large Thermos of coffee.
By the evening of that day, they had identified many of the witnesses whose testimony they could read in these xeroxed sheets—the fat man and his even fatter wife who ran the tobacco kiosk let into the post office wall opposite, the uniformed war veteran who opened and closed the post office doors, a lean man who walked up and down selling papers, the curvaceous and come-hither redhead with the tie shop next door, the blind matchseller who sat all day on the sidewalk outside the kiosk, the three waiters at the cafe-bar on the corner and the sloe-eyed, bosomy girl who operated its espresso machine, and the two smart, bespectacled women who owned the flower shop immediately underneath their office.
Twenty four hours later, they had begun to recognize many of the "regulars" from the office buildings around.
They knew that the post office doorman became angry if customers stayed too long after the door was supposed to be closed at noon and he missed his usual corner seat at the bar during the lunch hour. They recognized most of the typists and clerks who took an aperitif and a sandwich at the cafe. They had noted the number of the Savona-registered Maserati in which a dark, smooth young man called for the girl who ran the tie boutique every lunchtime and evening. And they had been told by the concierge that—despite their airs and graces—the flower ladies below were doing so badly that they brought their own lunch in a paper bag and ate it behind the closed shutters as they took turns to cross the road and bring back from the cafe the smallest possible amount of hot chocolate in a jug. They could tell, also, which taxi it was that was calling to take home the blind man, and which one had been ordered to help with the shopping by the wife of the man who ran the kiosk.
What they did not know was anything more about the killing of Leonardo.
On the third day. Solo sighed and took the binoculars away from his eyes at eleven thirty. "We could get them to send our retirement pensions here," he said. "This is getting us nowhere, Illya. Let's vary the thing a bit, eh?"
"Alter the routine, you mean?"
"Exactly. Let's check up the characters we see, when we see them, with the statements they gave the police after the murder. We'll see if they fit the ambience of their statements! You keep a look-out and tell me who you see; I'll look up what they said—and we can both decide if it sounds right!"
"The porter has come out on to the steps to look at the sky," Illya reported a few minutes later. "He shakes his head. He thinks it will rain. So do I."
Solo flipped over pages. "Let's see... porter... Here we are!" he said. "I quote. 'Hearing a disturbance on the steps, I went out and saw a small crowd of people at the bottom of the flight. Some were on the steps and some still on the sidewalk. They were gathered round a tall man who had been coming into the post office and had fallen back down the stairs so that his head was now on the pavement. He was cleanshaven and his eyes were open. I could see that he was dead. There was plaster on the steps and blood underneath the man."
"That seems to stack up very well with the man I can see," Kuryakin said. "Old soldier trained to observe. Crisp, factual comments. Eye for detail."
"Yes. I guess the plaster was the result of the third bullet; the one that missed him... what is it?"
"Another customer. The wider of the flower shop ladies is going to get her chocolate."
Solo consulted his list again. "The wider one. That'd be Signora Rastoldi... 'I heard my cousin cry out. I looked up. A tall man in dark glasses was lurching about on the post office steps across the road. He sat down suddenly and fell back into the road. Then people rushed up and I couldn't see any more'."
Twenty minutes later, Kuryakin said: "Glamour girl's boyfriend has arrived in the Maserati. She's locking up the shop and getting into the car."
"On the day Leonardo was killed," Solo said, "she went to the post office first to register some letters before lunch. Estrellita Palomari... 'I heard what I thought was a backfire. I thought my friend's car was perhaps being temperamental, again, but when I reached the steps there was this man lying there with people all around. He was on his back sort of staring at the sky. Somebody told me he was dead."
"The porter has closed the doors," the Russian said a little later. "He has bought his usual box of matches from the blind man... now he's at the cafe."
"Did they take evidence from the blind man?... Ah, yes!... 'There was a clatter and a thump from just beyond where I sit. Something heavy fell down the stairs... footsteps dashed up and someone said send for an ambulance. It was some time before I could catch anyone's attention to ask what had happened.'... Now let's see—I know she's not there just now—how it looked to someone who saw it all. 'I noticed a tall man in sunglasses coming up the stairs towards me. I happened to glance up over his head and I saw three puffs of smoke, one after another, float away from a window of the new apartment block beyond the lot across the road. It was blue smoke.
"I imagine there was about ten seconds between the first puff and the last. I heard the sound of the three shots just as the man gave a kind of cough and fell against the wall. Then he sat down and fell back into the street. My dress was covered in plaster dust and something stung my cheek'."
"That's the housewife the Commendatore was talking about?"
"Yes; Signora Rastafia. Do you notice anything so far?"
"About the various statements? You mean...?" Illya sketched a gesture in front of his face with both hands.
"Yes. I mean," Solo said grimly. "There's a discrepancy, isn't there? But before we get our teeth into it, let's have a look through the glasses."
He took the binoculars and scanned the street below. "Think of the evidence and look carefully," he said at last. "'On the left, there's a little entry leading through an arch to a warehouse or something..."