She crossed to the lobby and opened the front door a few inches.
I joined her.
"Now, wait, Helen . . ."
"Please, Ed. Don't let's say any more. You'll either be on the train or you won't. That's all there is to it." Her lips brushed mine. "Good night, darling."
I looked at her and she looked at me.
As I stepped out into the corridor, I knew I would be on that train.
PART TWO
I
I had five days ahead of me before I left for Sorrento. During that time I had a lot to do, but I found concentration difficult.
I was like a teenager looking forward to his first date. This irritated me. I had imagined I would be blasé enough to take the situation Helen had engineered in my stride, but I wasn't. The idea of spending a month alone with this exciting girl really got me going. In my saner moments – and they were few - I told myself I was crazy to go ahead with this, but I consoled myself with the knowledge of Helen's efficiency. She had said it would be safe and I believed her. I argued that I would be a fool if I didn't grab the chance of taking what she was offering me.
Two days before I was due to leave, Jack Maxwell arrived in Rome to take over the office in my absence.
I had worked alongside him in New York way back in 1949. He was a sound newspaper man, but he hadn't much talent for anything but news. I didn't care much for him. He was too goodlooking, too smooth, too well-dressed and too generally too.
I had an idea that he didn't like me any more than I liked him, but this didn't stop me from giving him a big welcome. After we had spent a couple of hours in the office going over future work, I suggested we should have dinner together.
"Fine," he said "Let's see what this ancient city has to offer. I warn you, Ed, I expect nothing but the best."
I took him to Alfredo's which is one of the better eating places in Rome, and gave him porchetta, which is sucking pig, roasted on a spit, partially boned and stuffed with liver, sausage-meat and herbs: it makes quite a meal.
After we had eaten and had got on to the third bottle of wine, he let his hair down and became friendly.
"You're a lucky guy, Ed," he said, accepting the cigarette I offered him. "You may not know it, but you're the white-headed boy back home. Hammerstock thinks a lot of the stuff you've been turning in. I'll tell you something off the record: only not a word to anyone. Hammerstock is having you back in a couple of months' time. The idea is I'm to replace you here, and you're
going to get the foreign desk."
"I don't believe it," I said, staring at him. "You're kidding."
"It's a fact. I wouldn't kid about a thing like that."
I tried not to show my excitement, but I don't think I succeeded very well. To be given the foreign desk at headquarters was the top of my ambition. Not only did it mean a whale of a lot more money, but it was also the plum job of all the jobs on Western Telegram.
"It'll be official in a couple of days," Maxwell told me. "The old man has already okayed it You're a lucky guy."
I said I was.
"Will you mind leaving Rome?"
"I'll get used to it," I said and grinned. "A job like that is worth the move out of Rome."
Maxwell shrugged.
"I don't know. I wouldn't want it myself. It's too much like hard work and it would kill me to work so close to the old man." He sank lower in his chair. "That pig wasn't half bad. I think I'm going to take to Rome."
"There's no city in the world to touch it."
He fed a cigarette into his mouth, scratched a match alight and puffed smoke into my face.
"By the way, how's rampaging Helen getting along?"
The question startled me.
"Who?"
"Helen Chalmers. You're her nurse-maid or something, aren't you?"
The red light went up. Maxwell had a nose for scandal. If he got the faintest suspicion that there was something between Helen and me, he would work at it until he had found out just what it was.
"I was a nurse-maid to her for exactly one day," I said casually. "Since then I've scarcely seen her. The old man asked me to meet her at the airport and take her to her hotel. She's working at the university, I believe."
His eyebrows jerked up.
"She's-what?"
"Working at the university," I repeated. "She's on some architecture course here."
"Helen?" He leaned forward, stared at me, then burst out laughing. "That's the funniest thing I have ever heard. Helen on an architecture course!" He leaned back in his chair and roared. People turned around to stare at us. He certainly sounded as if he had heard the funniest joke of the century. I didn't find it all that funny. It was as much as I could do not to kick my chair away and plant my fist in his handsome face.
When he got over laughing, he caught my eye. Maybe he saw I wasn't all that amused because he made an effort to control himself and he waved an apologetic hand.
"Sorry, Ed." He took out his handkerchief and mopped his eyes. "If you knew Helen like I know Helen ..." He broke off to laugh again.
"Look, it can't be all that funny," I said, a rasp in my voice.
"What gives?"
"It is funny. Don't tell me she has taken you in too? Up to now the only guy on the Telegram staff who isn't on to her is her old man. Don't tell me you haven't got her taped yet?"
"I'm not fallowing this. What do you mean?"
"Well, you certainly can't have seen much of her. I had an idea she might have gone for you: she seems to fall for big, husky he-men. Don't tell me she showed up in Rome in her flat heels, specs and scraped-back hair-do?"
"I'm still not following you, Jack. What is all this?"
"All this?" He grinned. "It seems you're luckier than I thought possible, or unlucky, depending how you look at it. All the boys back home know about her. She's notorious. When we heard she was heading for Rome and the old man wanted you to keep an eye on her, we all thought, sooner or later, you'd be a dead duck. She'll make a play at anything in trousers. You
mean to tell me she hasn't tried to make a pass at you?"
I felt myself turn hot, then cold.
"This is something new to me," I said, speaking casually.
"Well, well. She's a menace to men. Okay, I admit she has everything. She has looks, comeon eyes and a shape that would bring a corpse alive, but the trouble she can get a guy into! If Chalmers wasn't the biggest power in newspapers, every paper in New York would be carrying headlines about her at least once a week. She only escapes publicity because no newspaper wants to get on the wrong side of the old man. She gets into pretty near every damn mess there is. It was only because she was involved in the Menotti slaying that she cleared out of New York and came here."