The Angry Mountain

CHAPTER FIVE

In the morning I told myself I was a fool to be driven out of Naples by Maxwell. Why should I go up to a hot, dusty villa on the slopes of Vesuvius when I could stay down in Naples and lounge by the sea? Better to go over to Capri or Ischia or down the coast to Amalfi and Positano. The fact that Maxwell seemed to think I was in some way connected with Tucek’s disappearance didn’t seem so important as I sat on the balcony having breakfast in the sunshine.

It was a very close day. The sky overhead was blue, but cotton-wool banks of cumulus were piled up over Sorrento. Vesuvius looked remote and misty as though the air round it were curtained with dust. The red flashes of fire I’d seen the night before were no longer visible. The mountain looked serene and entirely dormant.

A thing that puzzled me was why Zina should want to go up to a villa on the slopes of Vesuvius. She seemed so much a creature of the popular bathing beaches. Not that it mattered. She would be exciting wherever we went. Lying back in my chair with a cigarette between my lips and the warmth of the sun seeping through the silk of my dressing-gown my mind conjured a picture of her body that was so clear I felt I could stretch out my hand and caress it.

The sound of a taxi stopping in the street below broke the spell and I leaned curiously over the balcony. It had stopped at the entrance to the hotel and a girl got out. Her titian hair glinted in the sunlight as she paid off the driver. It was Hilda Tucek. I turned quickly back into my room and grabbed the telephone. But by the time I got through to the hall porter it was too late — she was on her way up to my room.

As I put down the receiver there was a knock at the door.’ Signer Farrell.’

‘Yes?’

‘C’e una signorina che la cerca, signore.’

I tightened the belt of my dressing-gown and went to the door. When I opened it I was shocked to find how tired she looked. She seemed to have got no benefit from the sunshine of the past few days. Her skin was pale, almost transparent, and the freckles were more noticeable. ‘May I come in, please?’ Her voice was low and hesitant.

‘Of course.’ I held the door open. ‘Come through on to the balcony. Would you like something to drink?’

‘Please. A lemonade. It’s so hot.’

I sent the boy for it and took her through to the balcony. She stood quite still with her hands on the railing looking out across the bay.

‘Won’t you sit down?’ I suggested.

She nodded and sank into my chair. I brought out another. An awkward silence developed. I was waiting for her to tell me why she had come and she seemed to find it difficult. At length she said, ‘It is so beautiful.’ Her voice sounded wistful.

The boy brought her the drink and she sipped at it. I offered her a cigarette. When I had lit it for her, she said, ‘I am afraid I was rather rude to you that morning at the Excelsior.’

I waited for her to go on, but she was gazing out towards Capri again. ‘Did Maxwell tell you to come and see me?’ I asked.

She glanced at me quickly and then dropped her eyes to the handkerchief she was slowly twisting round her fingers. ‘Yes.’ She looked up suddenly and I realised how tensed-up she was inside. ‘He thinks you know something. He thinks you’re connected with it in some way. Please, Mr. Farrell, you must help me.’ There was desperation in her voice and somehow it hurt me.

‘I wish to God I could help you,’ I said. ‘But I can’t. Maxwell’s wrong. I know nothing about your father’s disappearance. If I did I’d tell you.’

‘Then why did you leave Milan so hurriedly?’

‘I told Maxwell last night — because I needed a holiday.’

‘He doesn’t believe you.’ Her eyes were watching me closely and I realised that, however pathetic she might seem, she was a girl of iron determination. She was going to sit there and batter away at me until she got the truth out of me. I felt suddenly ill-at-ease, as though I was faced with something that I couldn’t beat down. ‘Why did you leave Milan?’

‘Look,’ I said. ‘The reason I left Milan has nothing whatever to do with your father’s disappearance. You’ve got to believe that.’

She looked at me hard, and then said, ‘Yes — I think I believe that. But Maxwell is convinced there’s some connection between—’

‘Maxwell knows nothing about it,’ I snapped.

She turned her head and looked out to sea. ‘Would you be willing to tell me about it?’ she asked.

I hesitated. ‘No,’ I said. ‘You’ve got enough troubles without listening to mine.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said softly. ‘I would have liked you to feel you could trust me.’ She paused for a moment and then said, ‘When John Maxwell arrived in Milan he brought a message for me from my father. It was given to him at the airfield before they left — on that flight. My father said, if anything went wrong I was to contact you.’

‘Contact me?’ I stared at her in surprise. ‘Why contact me?’

‘I don’t know, Mr. Farrell. I thought you might know. You were his friend years ago. I think he must have communicated something to you.’

I remembered then the extraordinary telephone conversation I had had with Sismondi.

‘Won’t you tell me what it was, please?’

‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing to tell you.’

‘But surely—’

‘I tell you there’s nothing. I saw him once, that’s all. It was in his office and there was an interpreter with us the whole time. All he did was to give me a message for Maxwell which I delivered.’

‘And you didn’t see him again?’

‘No.’ I hesitated and then added, ‘The night porter at the hotel where I was staying told me your father visited me late one night. If he did, he didn’t wake me. He left no message, nothing. I’ve searched my baggage, even my clothes. I can only imagine the porter made it up in order to blackmail me into giving him some kronen to keep his mouth shut.’

‘I don’t understand,’ she said, looking at me hard. ‘Maxwell is convinced you’re mixed up in this—’

‘Damn Maxwell!’ I said, rising suddenly to my feet. ‘He knows nothing about it. He wasn’t there.’

‘But this business of Sismondi telephoning you about some blueprints you were to deliver to him?’

‘I think it was a try-on.’

‘You went to his house. What happened, please?’

‘Nothing happened.’ I was getting agitated. She was forcing my mind back to Milan, to things I wanted to forget.

‘Alec told me you were very upset when you got back.’

‘I was drunk,’ I said. Damn it, why did she have to cross-examine me like a public prosecutor?

‘Mr. Farrell, please. I have a great deal at stake in this. I love my father very much. I have run his home ever since we have been able to return to Czechoslovakia. He means a great deal to me.’ There were tears in her eyes now. ‘What happened at the flat of this man Sismondi?’

I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to help her. But it wouldn’t help if I started telling her again about Shirer and Sansevino. ‘Nothing happened,’ I said. ‘I met someone I hadn’t seen for a long time, that’s all. It upset me.’

‘Walter Shirer?’

I nodded.

‘Captain Caselli is satisfied he has got nothing to do with it. Also Alec Reece swears that Shirer would never have become involved in a thing like this.’

‘The man he knew wouldn’t,’ I answered.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Nothing.’ I was thinking back now to the scene in Sismondi’s flat. I’d thrust it out of my mind. But now I remembered how Sismondi had been waiting …

‘Walter Shirer is very like the man whose picture you had.’

‘Yes. He was very like Sansevino. Have you — met Shirer?’

‘Yes. John Maxwell took me to see him.’

‘In Milan?’

‘No. Here in Naples. We saw him last—’ She caught hold of my arm. ‘What is the matter?’

‘It’s all right,’ I muttered. I felt for the back of my chair and sank into it.

‘You went quite white.’

‘I’m not at all well. That’s why I had to have a holiday.’

‘It was when I said Walter Shirer was here in Naples.’ She was leaning forward, staring at me. ‘Why did the name Shirer upset you?’

‘I told you, that day in Milan when I was leaving — only you wouldn’t believe me. His name’s not Shirer. It’s Sansevino. Tell Maxwell that. Tell him that the man Reece escaped with was Sansevino.’

I saw her eyes widen. ‘But this Dr. Sansevino is dead — he died in 1945. Besides, Alec has seen Shirer in Milan. He would have known if it wasn’t Shirer.’ She was looking at me oddly. ‘I think that doctor was right. You are ill.’

I felt frustration and anger mounting inside me. ‘Do you think I don’t know who the man is? That last night in Milan — I lay in bed in the dark and felt his hands on my leg. I knew those hands. I’d know them if a thousand hands were touching my leg.’

Her eyes had dropped to my artificial limb. The metal of it was showing beneath my pyjama trousers. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Last night Maxwell told me what happened to you when you are a prisoner. I did not mean to—’ She didn’t finish and got to her feet.

‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ I, too, had risen.

‘I think perhaps you were right. You do need a holiday. I didn’t realise it would be such a shock—’

I caught hold of her then. ‘You little fool!’ I snapped, almost shaking her. ‘You come here for the truth. I give it you and you don’t believe me.’

‘ Please, Mr. Farrell.’ She took hold of my hands gently and pulled them away from her shoulders.’ Why not lie down for a bit? I don’t think you should be out here on the balcony. The glare—’

I started to say something, but she stopped me. ‘You mustn’t excite yourself any more.’ Her eyes looked at me sadly. ‘I’ll let myself out.’ Then she turned and went through into the room. I heard the door close. I was alone then with the knowledge that Sansevino was here in Naples.

I dressed quickly, packed my things and checked out of the hotel. Thank God Zina had suggested visiting this villa. I could forget things so easily with Zina. And they’d never find me there. I got a taxi and drove straight out to the Villa Carlotta.

Zina’s big, cream-coloured Fiat was waiting at the door as I drove up. Roberto was in the driver’s seat, lounging over the steering wheel. He didn’t smile at me. His eyes looked black and sullen and I had a sudden feeling that he hated me. The good-looking youth in the bathing trunks seemed to have become coarsened into a surly peasant.

I was shown into the room where I’d met her before. The powder-blue walls and furnishings seemed colder, more artificial. The view from the balcony was bleak and grey and the air was heavy so that my shirt stuck to my body. On a table in a corner was a photograph in a heavy silver frame — Zina in a white wedding dress, her hand resting on the arm of a tall, uniformed man with a drawn, leathery face. The door opened as I was putting the photograph back on the table. ‘You like my husband?’

I swung round. Zina, in a pale green silk frock covered with scarlet tigers, was smiling at me from the doorway. I didn’t know what to say. The man looked more than twice her age.

She gave me a quick, angry shrug. ‘What does it matter? He is already a part of the past.’ She smiled.’ Shall we go?’

I realised then that it had never occurred to her that I should not come.

‘You look tired,’ she said as she took my hand. Her fingers were very cool.

‘It’s nothing,’ I answered. ‘Just the heat. What’s wrong with Roberto this morning?’

‘Roberto?’ An amused smile flickered across her lips. ‘I think perhaps he is a little jealous.’

‘Jealous?’ I stared at her.

For a moment she seemed about to burst out laughing. Then she said quickly, ‘Roberto is employed by my husband. He think he is my watch-dog and he does not approve of my taking handsome young Englishmen out to Santo Francisco.’ She held the door open for me. ‘Come,’ she said gaily. ‘I have arrange everything. We will have lunch at Portici and then we have an appointment to keep with your American friend at Pompeii. Remember?” She wrinkled her nose at me. ‘I think it will be very dull. I ask him only because you are so stupid with me yesterday. But it does not matter. We have all the night.’

Outside Roberto was just putting my suitcases in the boot. He went round to the door and held it open. Zina paused as she was getting in and said something to him in Italian. She spoke softly and very fast. His eyes flicked to my face and then he grinned at her rather sheepishly. He was like a small urchin that has been promised a sweet.

‘What did you say to Roberto?’ I asked as I subsided into the cream upholstery beside her.

She glanced at me quickly. ‘I say he will have the whole afternoon to sit in a cafe and drink and slap the waitress’s bottom.’ She laughed at the expression on my face. ‘Now I have shock you. You are so very, very English, you know.’ She slipped her hand under my arm and snuggled down into the leather. ‘Relax now, please. And remember, this is Italy. Do you think I do not know what a boy like Roberto wants? You forget I am born in the slums of Napoli.’

I didn’t say anything and the car slid out through the big wrought-iron lacework of the gates and swung south down the Via Posillipo towards Naples. It was wonderful to feel the cool air on my face. Heavy clouds were banked up across the sky. It was oppressively close and the ash-heap of Vesuvius stood out almost white against the louring black of the sky. ‘Did you see Vesuvius last night?’ I asked her.

She nodded. ‘For three nights it has been like that. From Santo Francisco we shall see it much more clearly.’ She sighed. ‘Perhaps it is because of Vesuvio that the women of Napoli are like they are.’

‘How do you mean?’ I asked.

She looked at me from under arched eyebrows. ‘Our passions are like that volcano,’ she said huskily.

I stared at the mountain rising so quiet and serene above the sea. ‘Do you think it will erupt again?’ I asked.

‘I do not know. You must talk to the scientists at osservatore. But I do not think they know very much. When you have seen Pompeii, you will understand how powerful that mountain is. It is unpredictable and terrible — like a woman with a love she must destroy in order to hold.’

We had lunch in a restaurant that had once been a private house. The tall, scrolled rooms were almost Regency in architecture. It was just near Herculaneum, that other Roman town that had been buried in the ash of Vesuvius.

After lunch we turned inland from Portici, through narrow, dusty streets where naked babies sucked their mothers’ breasts and old men lay like bundles of rags asleep in the dust. Then we were out on the autostrada roaring southwards with Vesuvius towering higher and higher above us to the left. Zina looked back several times and then ordered Roberto to stop. As we pulled in to the side of the road a big American car flashed by. I caught a glimpse of two people seated in the back of it, a man and a girl, and though they did not glance at us I had a feeling they were conscious of us. I turned to Zina. She was looking at me out of the corners of her eyes.

The by-roads connecting the villages pass either over or under the autostrada and not until Torre Annunziata is there a side road branching off the autostrada. There is a petrol station at the fork and the American car was there. I looked back as we shot past and saw it nosing out on to the autostrada.

Five minutes later we were in Pompeii. Hacket was waiting for us near the entrance to the ruins, his tiny hired Fiat almost lost in the crowd of coaches and souvenir stalls. Zina asked for the Ruggiero and we were passed straight through the turnstiles. But when we got to his office we found he was in Naples, lecturing at the University, so Zina showed us round herself.

Our progress was slow for Hacket was continually pausing to refer to his guide-book or to take a photograph. It was oppressively hot and my leg began to ache the way it often does in England before it rains.

It was the sunken streets that made it so hot. Most of them are still just twenty-foot deep cuttings lined with the stone facades of shops and villas exactly as they were two thousand years ago. Zina showed us all the important things and as we followed her round she told us story after story, building up in our minds a picture of a voluptuous, orgy-ridden life in a Roman seaside resort in the days before Christ was born. But though I saw the forum and the baths, the various theatres and the brothel with the penis sign outside and the indelicate pleasure murals above the cubicles, and the villa with the revolting picture at the entrance and the murals in the love room, it was the little things I remembered afterwards — the deep ruts worn in the stone-paved streets by the wheels of the chariots, the shop counters with the pots in which olive oil and other household necessities had been stored; the small bones still lying in the room where a child had been caught by the hot ash. It was an overall impression of a town suddenly halted in mid-flow of activity.

Walking through those narrow, rutted streets, the phallic symbol of good luck still clearly marked on the paving stones, the initials of lovers and of men in the cells of the prison still as clear as when they had been cut, it seemed as though only yesterday the Romans in their togas had been here in place of this motley crowd of camera-slung tourists speaking a dozen different languages.

But in the Terme Stabiane all these impressions were swept aside. After seeing the hot bath Zina took us back to the entrance to look at a mosaic. And it was there that we came face to face with Maxwell and Hilda Tucek. They didn’t seem to notice me as they went straight through into the dim cavern of the baths. But I knew then who the occupants of the big American car had been.

Zina turned to me. ‘Do you tell your friends to follow us?’ She was white with anger.

‘Of course not,’ I said.

‘Then why are they here? Why do they follow us from Portici?’

‘I don’t know.’

She stared at me. I could see she didn’t believe me. Then she shrugged her shoulders. ‘I think we go now. I do not like to be followed about. Is that girl in love with you?’

‘No.’

She gave a quick, sneering laugh. ‘You do not know very much about women, eh?’ We went out and turned left towards the forum.

As we went back down the narrow, sloping street with the chariot ruts, she slipped her hand through my arm. ‘Do not worry about it, Dick. Roberto will get rid of them for us. My car is very fast and he is a good driver.’ She seemed to have recovered her spirits for she chatted gaily about the scene in Pompeii when Vesuvius erupted. She seemed to have an almost frighteningly morbid interest in the scene and I remember the.way she laughed as she said, ‘It happen so suddenly that men and women were caught in bed together and when they excavated they find them still like that. Can you imagine yourself in bed with a girl and then suddenly the room is full of hot sifting ash, you are suffocated, and there you are, in the same position, when a digger uncover your love couch two thousand years later? That is immortality, eh?’

As we went out through the gates I looked back. There was nothing to be seen of Pompeii except the burnt grass of what looked like a rabbit warren. It was all below the level of the ground. Behind and above it the ash slopes of film of white dust. Dust rose behind us in a white cloud. The country on either side was flat, with vines and oranges. Away to the right the ugly tower of Pompeii’s modern church thrust its needle-like top over the trees. It reminded me of the campanili of the Lombardy Plain.

It was past five when we reached the villa by a dusty track that ran dead straight through flat, almost white earth planted with bush vines. The villa itself was perched on a sudden rise where some long-forgotten lava flow had abruptly ceased. It was the usual white stucco building with flat roof and balconies and some red tiling to relieve the monotony of the design. It was built with its shoulder to the mountain so that it faced straight out across the hard-baked flatness of the vineyards to the distant gleam of the sea and a glimpse of Capri. As the car stopped the heat closed in on us. There was no sun, but the air was heavy and stifling as though the sirocco were blowing in from the Sahara. I began to wish I hadn’t come.

Zina laughed at me and took my hand. ‘Wait till you have tasted the vino. You will not look so glum then.’ She glanced up at the mountain, which from where we were standing seemed crouched right over the villa. ‘To-night I think it will look as though you can light your cigarette from the glow of her.’

We went in then. It was very cool inside. Venetian blinds screened the windows from the sunless glare. It was like going into a cave. All the servants seemed there to greet us — an old man and an old woman with gnarled, wrinkled faces, a young man who smiled vacantly and a little girl who peeped at us shyly from around a door and pulled at her skirt which was much too short for her. I was shown to a room on the first floor. The old man brought up my bags. He pulled up the Venetian blinds and I found myself looking up to the summit of Vesuvius. A little circle of black vapour appeared for an instant, writhed upwards and then slowly dissolved, and as it dissolved another black puff appeared to replace it. ‘Le place il Lachrima Christi, signore?’ the old man asked. He had a soft, whining voice.

I nodded.

He gave me a toothless smile and hurried out. He had surprising agility and he moved quickly as though expecting to be kicked out. In a few minutes he returned with a carafe of vino and a glass. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked him in Italian.

‘Agostino, signore.’ He gave me a smile that was as fawning as a spaniel.

Zina had been right about the wine. It was the sort of wine you never find in the trattorias. It was the wine reserved for the grower, the pick of the vintage.

A brief exploration along the passage revealed a bathroom, beautifully tiled and complete with foot-bath and bidet. I had a bath, shaved and changed. Then I went downstairs. Agostino was laying the table in one of the rooms. I asked him where the Contessa was. ‘She is having her bath, signore,’ he answered.

I nodded and went outside. Some little distance away from the villa was a huddle of farm buildings. There was a large ugly house with a reddish plaster front that seemed to house several families as well as a good deal of livestock. A girl was drawing water from a well. She wore a black cotton frock that showed the backs of her knees and by the way her body moved under the dress I knew it was all the clothing she wore. She turned and looked at me, a flash of white teeth in a dirty brown face. Near a stone building which presumably contained the wine presses an old woman was milking a buffalo. The buffalo stood quite still working its jaws very slowly.

I turned and went back to the villa wondering why in the world Zina had suggested coming out to this little peasant backwater. But I was glad it was so secluded. And then I started to wonder why Maxwell had tried to follow us. What the devil was it he thought I knew?

As I approached the villa I heard the sound of a piano and a voice singing the jewel song from Gounod’s Faust. I went up the steps and into the room on the left. The shutters were pulled and the lights were on, and Zina was seated at the piano in a plain white evening gown with a blood red ruby at her throat and a white flower in her hair. She smiled at me and went on singing.

When she had finished she swung round on the stool. ‘Phew! It is so hot. Get me a drink. It is over there.’ She nodded to the corner.

‘What will you have?’ I asked.

‘Is there some ice?’ I nodded. ‘Then I will have a White Lady.’ She gave a little grimace to stop me making the obvious crack.

I mixed the drink and as I handed it to her I said, ‘Why exactly did you suggest coming out here?’

She looked up at me. Then her lips curved in a slow smile and she caressed the keys of the piano with one hand. ‘Don’t you know?’ Her eyebrows arched. ‘Here I can do as I please and there is nobody to tell my husband that he is a cuckold.’ She suddenly threw back her head and gave a brazen laugh. ‘You fool, Dick! You know nothing about Italy, do you? You are here for two years during the war and you know nothing — nothing.’ She banged the keys of the piano with sudden violence. Then she finished her drink and began to play again.

I stood there, listening to her, feeling awkward and somehow shy. She was so different from any woman I’d ever met before. I wanted her. And yet something stood in the way — native reserve, my damned leg; I don’t know. The music swelled to a passionate note of urgency and she began to sing. Then Agostinb came in to announce dinner and the spell was broken.

I don’t remember what we had to eat, but I do remember the wine — lovely, soft, golden wine, smooth as silk with a rich, heady bouquet. And after the meal there were nuts and fruit and aleatico, that heavy wine from the Island of Elba. Zina kept my glass constantly filled. It was almost as though she wanted to get me drunk. The smooth mounds of her breasts seemed to rise up out of the shoulderless dress, the ruby blazed red at her throat and her eyes were large and very green. I began to feel muzzy. The pushing of my blood became merged with the gentle putter of the electric light plant outside in the stillness of the night.

Coffee and liqueurs were served in the other room. Zina played to me for a bit, but she seemed restless, switching from one tune to another and from mood to mood. Her eyes kept glancing towards me. They were bright, almost greedy. Suddenly she slammed her hands on to the keys with a murderous cacophony of sound and got to her feet. She poured herself another drink and then came and sat beside me on the couch and let me touch her. Her lips when I kissed them were warm and open, but there was a tenseness about her body as it lay against me. Once she murmured, ‘I wish you were not such a nice person, Dick.’ She said it very softly and when I asked her what she meant, she smiled and stroked my hair. But a moment later the madonna look was gone. She was listening and there was a hungry look in her eyes that I didn’t understand.

It was then that I heard the aircraft. It was flying very low, its engines just ticking over. I jerked upright, listening, waiting for the crash. It seemed to pass right over the villa, so low that I thought I could hear the sound of the slipstream. The engines were throttled right back and after a moment’s silence they roared into life and then stuttered to a stop. ‘I believe it’s landed,’ I said. I had half-risen to my feet, but she pulled me back. ‘They often pass over here like that,’ she said. ‘It is the plane from Messina.’

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.

And as I stood there, hesitating, there was a sudden shout from my room. ‘Roberto! Agostino!’

The lavatory was right opposite the head of the stairs. The door was ajar and I stepped back into the shadows as footsteps came running out of my room. A torch flashed in the corridor. ‘Roberto! Agostino!’ Somebody went hurtling past and flung himself down the stairs. I had a brief glimpse of a short, angry figure. Then a door opened along the corridor, near the red glow of the window. I peered out and saw the silhouette of a man hurrying down the corridor towards me. As he passed me he switched on a torch and in the reflected light from the walls I saw it was Roberto. His black hair was tousled and his features coarse and puffed with sleep. He wore a singlet and was buttoning on his trousers. He left behind him a faint smell of sweat mingled with the scent of a perfume that I recognised as Zina’s.

He went to the door of my room, peered inside and then came quickly back and ran down the stairs. I left the shelter of the lavatory then and went along the corridor. I think I knew in my heart who it was that had entered my room. But I had to know the truth. Zina had brought me here. She’d filled me up with liquor so that I couldn’t stand. I suddenly felt utterly callous and quite sure of myself. This was the end of it all, here in this villa. And if I had to throttle the little bitch, I’d get the truth out of her.

I reached the door from which Roberto had emerged and I went in. The shutters were closed. It was quite dark and very hot and airless. My breath was coming in quick pants. But it was excitement, not fear. Below, the silence of the villa was torn by running feet. I closed the door of the room behind me, shutting out the sounds. There was a key in the lock and I turned it. A voice murmured sleepily, ‘Che e successo?’ It was Zina all right. I switched on my torch and swung the beam to the big double bed.

She sensed something was wrong, for she sat up, clutching the bedclothes to her in an effort to hide her nakedness. Her hair looked damp and straggly and her mouth was thicker. ‘Chid?’ she whispered.

‘Farrell,’ I answered and wondered why I’d ever thought her attractive. ‘Get some clothes on. I want to talk to you.’ My voice showed my disgust. ‘Make a noise and I’ll hit you. The door’s locked.’

‘What do you want?’ She tried to give me an alluring smile, but her voice was hoarse with uneasiness and her smile was fixed and brassy like a prostitute’s.

Her dressing-gown was lying in the middle of the floor. I picked it up. It smelt faintly of the perfume I’d smelt on Roberto. ‘Put this round you,’ I said and tossed it over to her.

She flung it over her shoulders and pulled it round her under the bedclothes. I went over to her then and sat down on the bed. I kept the beam of the torch full on her. ‘Now then. Whose villa is this?’

She didn’t answer, but lay back, shielding her eyes from the glare of the torch. I leaned forward and pulled her arm roughly away from her face. ‘Whose villa is it?’ I repeated. She lay quite still, staring up at me. My disgust had turned to anger — anger at myself for being such a damned fool. I caught hold of her arm and twisted it. She gave a gasp of pain. Perhaps she sensed the violence of my anger for she said, ‘Please. You do not have to break my arm. It is the villa of someone you know. You meet him with me in Milano.’

‘Shirer?’ I asked.

‘Si, si. Signor Shirer.’

So I’d been right and I had walked straight into the trap. I suddenly wanted to hit her. I got up quickly and went over to the window, flinging back the heavy shutters. I heard a gasp from the bed as the lurid glare of Vesuvius invaded the room. I stared out across the balcony to the flat land below that showed quite clear and saffron-tinted, part moonlight, part glare of the mountain. It was like the sunset glow on snow. I saw figures moving by the outhouses. They were searching for me down there. I turned back to the bed. I had control of myself now. ‘Did he ask you to bring me here?’

‘Yes.’ Her voice was scarcely audible. Her eyes were very large as they stared up at me out of the pallor of her face.

‘And you were to get me drunk?’

‘Yes. Please, Dick. I couldn’t help—’

‘I thought you hated the man?’

‘I do. I do. But—’

‘Why did he want me here? Was he going to kill me? Was he afraid I knew—’

‘No, no. He was not going to hurt you. It was only that he wanted something.’

‘Wanted something?’ I had caught hold of her arm again. ‘What did he want?’

‘I do not know.’

I shook her angrily. ‘What did he want?’

‘I tell you, I do not know what he want.’

I remembered something then — something that suddenly had significance. ‘When we went to Casamicciola that day — why were you so worried about my leg?’ She didn’t answer and I repeated the question. ‘You wanted to get my leg away from me. Did he ask you to do that?’

She nodded.

‘Why?’

‘Please. I do not know. He ask me to take it. That is all I know.’

‘He was there, at Casamicciola?’

‘Si.’

The thing took shape then. I remembered how my leg had stood propped beside me that night I’d lain drunk on my bed at the hotel in Pilsen. I heard myself laughing, laughing at myself. What a bloody fool!

‘Why do you laugh like that?’ Her voice sounded scared.

‘Because now I know what it’s all about.’ I stood looking down at her, wondering why she’d trapped me like this. ‘Are you in love with this man?’ I asked her. It seemed to me the only possible reason.

She sat up then, regardless of the way her dressing-gown gaped. ‘I tell you once before — I hate him. He is — he is a cretin.’ She spat the words at me.

‘Then why do you do what he tells you?’

‘Because otherwise he will ruin me.’ She lay back again, pulling the dressing-gown round her. ‘He knows things about me and he will tell my husband if I do not do what he ask.’

‘Because of Roberto?’

‘No. Not because of Roberto.’ She dropped her eyes. ‘It is because — because he has something I need.’ The sound of voices came through the open window. She listened for a moment. Then she said, ‘I think you should go now.’

But I paid no attention. I was thinking of Walter Shirer. He’d been tough. But he wouldn’t have blackmailed a girl, whatever she was. And he wouldn’t have got involved in the Tucek business. Reason confirmed now what instinct had already told me. I knew beyond any doubt who it was searching for me in the grounds of the villa. ‘His name is Sansevino, isn’t it?’

She stared at me. ‘Please. I do not understand.’

‘His real name,’ I said impatiently. ‘It’s Sansevino, isn’t it?’ But the name apparently meant nothing to her. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter. But I’d keep clear of him in future. His name’s Doctor Sansevino, and he’s a murderer.’

‘Doctor Sansevino.’ She frowned. ‘You say he is a doctor?’ Then she nodded her head slowly. ‘Yes, I think perhaps he is a doctor.’

il dottore. My hands clenched. If I could only get hold of him! I thought of Hilda Tucek then, frantic over the disappearance of her father. Had he killed him? Or was he just torturing the poor devil? ‘Where is Jan Tucek?’ I asked her.

She shook her head. ‘I do not know where is Tucek. I never hear of this man Tucek.’ She lay back on the pillows. ‘Go now, please. I think it is not safe for you to stay any longer.’

I hesitated. But I couldn’t force her to talk, and it was quite possible she knew nothing about Tucek. Sansevino wouldn’t have told her more than he had to. I went over to the window. The world outside was very still in the red, mantle of the volcano. Nothing stirred. The search must have moved to the back of the villa. If so, perhaps I could get out by the front. I went over to the door and quietly unlocked it. The walls of the corridor outside were faintly tinged with the red glow from the window and there were deep shadows. The house was very quiet.

‘Dick!’

I swung round at the sound of movement by the bed. Zina was sitting up fumbling in her handbag. ‘Do not do anything foolish. I think this place is very dangerous for you now.’

I didn’t answer, but as I turned to leave the room, she hissed, ‘Un momenta. Wait.’

She slipped out of bed and came towards me in her bare feet. She held something in her hand. ‘Take this,’ she whispered. I felt the cold touch of metal against my hand and my fingers closed over the butt of a small automatic. Her hand touched my arm. It was almost a caress. ‘You think me very bad, yes? But remember, please, we come from two different worlds. Leave the villa now and do not come back. Get a plane very quick and go back to England where life is so easy and so secure.’ Her fingers squeezed my arm. Then she turned and went back to bed.

I went out into the corridor and closed the door behind me. The villa was deathly quiet. It was so quiet that it seemed to be full of sound. And then I realised that the sound was the sound of gases escaping from the crater vent high up on the summit of Vesuvius. It was a steady hissing sound that seemed to invade the place like an air-lock in the water system.

I went to the head of the stairs and started down. The stairs were of bare tile and it was difficult for me to manoeuvre my leg so that it made no sound. Below, it was pitch-black, for the shutters were still drawn over the windows. I didn’t dare use my torch in case they had come in from their search of the grounds, but the weight of it in my hand was comforting and I kept a tight hold of the little automatic Zina had given me.

There were two courses open to me — either to wait for Sansevino or to try and escape. Leave the villa now and do not come back. That was what Zina had said and I knew that it was the sensible thing to do. My courage was ebbing away in the dark stillness. Once I had got away I could contact Maxwell and tell him the whole thing. The proof was on me, strapped to my body in the shaft of my artificial limb. I was certain of that.

I felt my way to the front door. It was locked, and the key was not in the lock. The darkness all round me seemed suddenly alive. I had to get out. I couldn’t fight him alone here in the darkness. If he got hold of me. … I shuddered at the thought of the touch of his hands on my body. I turned in a panic and groped my way to the hall window. It was shuttered and the iron bar that secured the shutters was padlocked. I tried the dining-room. There, too, the shutters were padlocked. Again I had that feeling of being trapped, a nightmare sense of claustrophobia. I went back into the hall and there I hesitated. I was considering trying to get out through the servants’ quarters when I noticed a slight glow from the half-open door of the room where Zina had played to me earlier that evening. I crossed the hall and pushed open the door. Then I breathed a’ sigh of relief. A rectangle of red light showed opposite the door. The room was full of shadows. But I didn’t mind. All that mattered was that there were no shutters across the window. I went straight over to it and slipped the catch.

And then something about the stillness of the room made me turn. Was it my imagination or was there a figure seated at the piano? I stood there for a moment, quite still and rigid, the blood pumping against my eardrums. Nothing stirred. The room glowed faintly. I reached again for the window and pushed it open. The night air was cool on my face. The vineyards below the terrace were bathed in a macabre light. ‘You finding it hot to-night, Farrell?’

I swung round, my heart thudding. The voice had come from behind me, from the direction of the piano.

‘I couldn’t sleep either.’ The voice was almost American, but in the darkness I detected an unpleasant sibilance. The piano came to life, whispering the old Yankee tune Marching through Georgia. Shirer had whistled that tune, whistled it endlessly through his teeth to keep himself from crying out at the pain of his gas blisters. I switched on my torch. The beam cut across the glossy surface of the baby grand to the face above the keyboard — Shirer’s face; only not quite Shirer’s.

The man’s name was on the tip of my tongue — his real name. But I stopped myself in time. Maybe I could bluff it out. if I could make him think … ‘God! You scared me,’ I said quickly.’ What are you doing here? I thought you were in Milan.’

‘I live here. Do you mind switching that torch off. It’s a bit dazzling.’

For an instant I hesitated. If I kept the beam on his face maybe I could get Zina’s automatic out of my pocket without him seeing. But I might miss and then—’ The trouble was I couldn’t see his hands. But he wouldn’t have sat there waiting for me to be attracted to the open windows without having a gun. Somehow I had got to convince him that I’d no idea anything out of the ordinary had happened. I switched the torch off. The sudden darkness made me wish I’d chanced a shot.

‘Couldn’t you sleep?’

‘I slept for a bit,‘I told him. ‘Then I felt ill. I’m afraid I had too much to drink.’

‘ Where’ve you been — for a walk round the grounds?’

‘No. I tell you, I felt ill. Somebody was calling for Roberto and Agostino. Was that you?’

‘Yeah. That was me. Where exactly have you been? When I heard you were here I went up to your room to say Hullo, but you weren’t there. Where were you?’

‘I tell you, I felt ill. I was in the lavatory.’

‘ In the lavatory?’ He suddenly laughed. I think he was convinced then that I wasn’t suspicious.’ Well, what do you think of the local firework display?’ he asked. ‘Quite a sight, isn’t it? There’s tourists rubber-necking on the road between here and Avin.’

‘It’s incredible,’ I murmured. ‘Do you think it will get serious?’

‘Can’t say. Never seen anything like this in the two years I’ve had this place. The mountain’s always been quiet as a mouse.’

‘Are you the owner of this villa?” I asked him.

‘Yeah. Didn’t Zina tell you?’

‘No.’ And then I added, ‘I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have come if I’d known.’

‘Maybe that’s why Zina didn’t tell you. Zina’s an old friend of mine. If she wanted to bring you out here, that’s okay by me.’

I was getting accustomed to the weird light now and I could see that his eyes were watching me closely all the time. I think if I hadn’t been so wrought-up I’d have found the situation funny. There was I with whatever it was he wanted in the hollow of my artificial leg and he didn’t know how to get it out of me. ‘I think I’ll go back to bed now,’ I said.

He nodded and got to his feet. ‘Me, too. But first I’m going to have a drink. What will you have?’

‘Nothing, thank you.’

‘Oh, come on now. You’re not going to make me drink alone, are you?’

‘I’ve had too much to-night already,’ I reminded him.

‘Nonsense. I insist.’ He was over at the drink table. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but I heard the clink of glass. I started towards the door, but he stopped me. ‘Here you are, Farrell. A straight cognac. Just the thing you need.’

‘No, really — I’d rather not.’ I was edging towards the door all the time.

‘Damn it, man, it won’t bite you.’ His voice had sharpened. The light caught his eyes and they glowed like two coals in the half-dark. He’d almost certainly drugged it, but if I didn’t take it I was afraid he’d try some other method of getting what he wanted.

‘All right,’ I said. I took the glass.

‘Well, up she goes.’

‘Cheers,’ I said and raised the glass to my lips. It was cognac all right. I tipped it up and let it spill down inside my jacket. I thought he couldn’t possibly see in the dark, but he did.

‘Why do you do that?’

I’d slipped up and I knew it, for he’d spoken softly, almost menacingly. And there was no pretence of an American accent. It was Dr. Sansevino speaking in English.

I didn’t say anything and we faced each other. There was a sudden void in the pit of my stomach and the hairs crawled along my scalp. We were no longer play acting now. We were face to face — I knowing who he was, and he knowing that I knew. I slid my hand to my jacket pocket. It was a mistake. He saw the movement and knew that I was armed. He dived for the piano. Propped against the music rest I caught the dull gleam of metal. As he picked it up my hand tightened on the butt of the automatic.

And in that moment the rectangular space of the window blossomed in a monstrous flower of flame that went roaring out across the sky. With it came a noise that seemed to fill the heavens with sound. It was like fifty thousand express trains thundering through a tunnel. It was like a tornado sweeping over the open gates of Hell. It was a lion’s roar magnified until it shook the earth. The villa trembled to its foundations. The ground on which it was built rocked. It was as though the world were splitting open under the impact of another planet.

I saw Sansevino standing with the revolver in his hand staring at the window as though transfixed. His features shone with sweat in the ruddy glare. I followed the direction of his gaze and saw that the whole summit of Vesuvius was on fire. Two great fire gashes streaked the mountainside and from the crater a great column rose, red at the base with the reflected glow, but darkening to a hellish black as it opened out, writhing and twisting as though in agony. And where it blackened and spilled outwards across the sky it was criss-crossed with vivid flashes of forked lightning.

The noise went on and on, prolonging itself unbelievably. It was the noise of an angry mountain — a mountain breaking wind from the distended bowels of its rock stomach. Its gases and lava-excreta were being sprayed out of its crater orifice — thousands on thousands of feet upwards.

I stood absolutely motionless, unable to move, the sight was so staggering, the noise so terrifying. In a mental flash I saw Pompeii, buried under its millions of tons of hot ash, men and women caught and held in the midst of their daily life to be exhibited to tourists two thousand years later. Was this the same? Was this noise the roof of the mountain being blown to airborne fragments? Were we to be buried here for the benefit of archaeologists years hence?

All these thoughts and half my life poured through my mind as I stared up at that ghastly sight, the noise dinning in my ears so that it seemed as though there never could be any other sound in all the world.

Then, as suddenly as it had started, it ceased. The abrupt stillness seemed somehow more frightening than the noise. The noise had died to a faint, whistling sigh high up in the black sky. It was as though it had never been and all living things were dead and silent. Through the rectangular frame of the window the world looked just the same, the vineyards and orange groves serene and tranquil. But the light had changed. The scene was no longer saffron-tinted. It was red — red as Hell itself. The moon had been blotted out. The scene was lit only by the end of the red glow of the mountain.

And then slowly the fires died down. The light seemed to go out of the scene, as though I were watching the sunset glow and the rim of the sun was sinking below the horizon. I looked up towards the mountain. The red streaks of the lava flow were gradually fading. A curtain was being drawn over the mountain, veiling the terrible red anger of it. In a moment it was black as the pit. And as the glow vanished all the world went black. I could see nothing — no sign of the vineyards or the orange trees, not even the shape of the window outlined against the night outside.

And then the gentle hissing sound of something falling — continuously and relentlessly. It was like the sound of hail. But it wasn’t hail. It had a heavy, sulphurous smell. It was ash raining down from the mountain above.

I knew then what to expect. This was it — the rain of ash that had buried Pompeii. The history of the mountain was repeating itself. I felt suddenly calm, almost detached. There is a moment after you have been badly frightened when you accept death as the inevitable, logical conclusion. That was how I felt as I stared at the black, sulphurous night with its sifting sound of falling ash. I accepted it, and once having accepted it I didn’t mind so much.

And now I became conscious of other sounds. A woman was screaming. A door banged and footsteps ran along the corridor overhead. The villa seemed suddenly to have come to life. It was like the relief of the jungle after it has been frozen to stillness by the hunting roar of a lion. Sansevino came to life, too. He turned and ran to the door. As he passed me he cried, ‘The cars. Presto! Presto!’

I turned and followed him. A torch was bobbing towards me down the stairs. The beam showed a grey curtain of ash sifting down from the top of the villa. The tiny particles gleamed and danced in the light. The torch flashed on my face and Zina’s voice said, ‘Che dobbiamo fare? Che dobbiamo fare!’

I could hear Sansevino shouting for Roberto. ‘They’ve gone for the cars,’ I told her.

‘We must get away from here. Where is Roberto? Roberto! Roberto!’ Her voice was a scream. ‘We must get to the car. We must drive away quick before the roads are blocked.’

I thought of the cabriolet’s canvas hood. Hot ash would burn through it. Anyway, how could any one drive through it? It’d be worse than driving through a sandstorm. The ash would be like a solid wall reflecting the light of the headlights. ‘Better to stay here,’ I said.

‘Stay here!’ she screamed at me. ‘Do you know what it is liked to be buried alive? Did you not see what happen to Pompeii? Dio Santo! I wish to God I never come ‘ere. Albanese of the osservatore tell me something will happen. But I have to come. I have to come.’ She was literally wringing her hands. I’d heard of people doing it, but I’d never actually seen it before. Her hands were locked together, her fingers twisting and twining so tightly that she seemed to be trying to squeeze the flesh out from between the bones. ‘We must get away. Dio ci salvi! We must get away.’

She was on the edge of hysteria. I caught hold of her shoulders and shook her. ‘Pull yourself together,’ I said. ‘We’ll get out of it somehow.’

She shook my hands off. ‘Let go of me. Idiota! Do you think I am a peasant and am going to scream? It’s only that I need—’ She didn’t finish, but in the light of my torch I saw that her eyes had a feverish, starved look.

There was something about her face that was quite frightening. She looked as though she were in hell. ‘What do you need?’ I asked her.

‘Nothing.’ Her voice was high and harsh. ‘We must get to the car. Hurry!’ She pushed past me and flung herself at the front door. When she found it was locked she turned like an animal in a trap. Then she darted towards the servants’ quarters. A candle glimmered in the darkness of the passage. ‘Agostino!’ It was Sansevino’s voice.

The candle halted. ‘Si, signore?’

‘Get upstairs and shut all the windows.’ Sansevino came through into the hall. ‘It’s hopeless,’ he said. ‘Thick as hell.’

‘We must get to the cars.’ Zina started to push past him, but he caught hold of her arm. ‘I tell you, it’s hopeless. You’ll only get lost if you go out. I’ve told Roberto to start the light plant. We’ll have to stay here till the ash lets up a bit.’

Zina sagged against the wall as though all the stuffing had been knocked out of her. Agostino’s wife had joined us now, passive as a buffalo, one hand holding a candle and the other fingering the beads of her rosary. Her lips moved as she reiterated again and again, endlessly, ‘Mamma mia! Mamma mia!’ as though that in itself would keep the ash at bay. The little girl I’d seen when we arrived clung to her skirts, her eyes enormous in her white, frightened face.

The bulbs in the chandelier glowed into life, flickered and then brightened. We stood blinking at each other in the sudden brilliance. Sansevino was almost unrecognisable, he was so caked in ash. The air was thick with dust. A white film covered everything. We might have been in a building that had just been hit by a bomb.

Roberto came in then from the servants’ quarters. His hair and face were powder-grey and pellets of cinder slid from the shoulders of the leather jerkin he’d flung on over his singlet. Zina clutched at him. ‘We must get the car, Roberto. If we can reach the autostrada we—’

But he threw her off. ‘Impossible,’ he grunted.

‘But it must be possible,’ she blazed at him. ‘It must be.’ She caught his arm and shook it. ‘Will you stand there and let us all be buried here alive?’

He shrugged his shoulders, dragging down the corners of his mouth and spreading his hands in that inevitable Italian gesture of resignation.

‘Go and get the car!’ she ordered him.

He stood there, staring at her.

‘Go and get the car!’ she shouted. ‘Do you hear? I want my car.’ Then as he didn’t move: ‘You are a coward. You are afraid to—’

‘If you want the car, go and get it,’ he said sullenly.

She stared at him as though he’d struck her. Then she turned to Sansevino who was standing by the table, his fingers stroking his upper lip. ‘If the car is no good, there is still the aeroplane. Where is Ercole?’

‘He went into Napoli in the jeep,’ Sansevino replied. ‘It’s no good, Zina. We’ve just got to stay here.’

I thought for a moment she was going to break down. Instead she went towards him and in a quick whisper said, ‘Then give me some morfina.’

‘Later,’ he said quickly. ‘Later.’ His eyes had glanced in my direction.

She began to plead. Her voice was an abject whine and now I knew what that feverish, starved look in her eyes meant. He had started to move towards the stairs when suddenly there was a violent banging on the front door. Somebody was calling out, asking us to open.

It was Sansevino who opened it. A man staggered in with a blast of hot air and a rolling cloud of choking dust. He had his arm flung up to guard his face. He was white with ash, and cinders as big as peas rolled off the shoulders of his overcoat. As Sansevino flung the door to I had a momentary glimpse of a world that was black like a pit, a world that stirred and moved and was alive with an ugly hissing, sifting, drifting sound. The man shook himself like a dog. ‘I sure am glad I found your house,’ he said to Sansevino. And as the ash fell away from him I saw who it was. ‘You’ve had a lucky escape, Mr. Racket,’ I said.

He stared at me. And then his face creased in a smile. ‘Well, if it isn’t Mr. Farrell. Well, well — we just don’t seem to be able to keep away from each other, do we? And the Countess. Wonderful!’ He was coughing and beaming at us at the same time. I introduced him to Sansevino. ‘A fellow countryman of yours,’ I added and tried hard not to sound sarcastic.

‘Glad to meet you, sir.’ He wrung Sansevino’s hand. ‘I motored up to Santo Francisco. They told me it was the best place to see Vesuvius at night. Well, I certainly seen something. The folks at home will never believe me when I tell them. I was right there in Santo Francisco when it started.’ He shook his head in wonderment. ‘Stupendous! Just stupendous! I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. No, sir! And I’ve been down to see the volcanoes in Mexico.’

‘Is it possible to get away by car?’ Zina asked him.

He shook his head. ‘Not a chance, lady. Countess, I mean. When it started all the villagers came out into the streets. At first I thought they were rubber-necking, same as me. But then they started loading up their carts and I only just got out before the road was blocked with screaming horses and bullocks and humans. I’d got the idea by that time that it was going to be dangerous and I started to drive back down towards the autostrada. Then the ash began to fall. Couldn’t see a damn thing. Not a damn thing. It was like trying to drive along a pit shaft just after they’ve blown the coal face. Black as hell!’ He turned to me. ‘Remember those two people we saw at Pompeii — a man and a girl?’

I nodded.

‘They were out there. I ran slap into the back of their convertible.’

I glanced at Zina. She was looking at Sansevino. ‘What were they doing?’ she asked.

‘Just looking at the mountain, I guess. They were parked outside the gates to your place. They told me there was a villa up here so I came along. Didn’t fancy the hood of my little beetle-car would last long if the ash got hot.’

‘Who are these people, Zina?’ Sansevino asked.

‘Remember John Maxwell?’ I asked him.

His eyes flicked to my face. They were narrowed and wary. He didn’t say anything, but he nodded. ‘If it is the two people we met at Pompeii this afternoon,’ I added, ‘it will be John Maxwell and a girl called Hilda Tucek.’

‘Hilda Tucek!’ His voice had a sudden note of surprise. ‘No — I don’t think I know her. But I remember Maxwell, of course.’ The speed with which he covered up was amazing. ‘Well, since we can’t do anything we’d better have a drink.’ He opened the door of the room where we’d faced each other only a few minutes ago.

But Zina caught hold of his arm. ‘Walter! Are you going to do nothing? Do you wish to be buried here in your villa?’ The urgent, panicky note was back in her voice.

Sansevino shrugged his shoulders. ‘Tell me what I ought to do and I’ll do it. In the meantime you’d better have a drink to steady you.’ He had caught hold of her arm. But she flung herself free. ‘You want me to die. That is it.’ Her eyes were blazing. ‘You think I know too—’

‘Shut up!’ His eyes slid to my face.

‘I tell you, you cannot do this to me. I do not wish to die. I will—’

He had hold of her arm again and she cried out as his fingers dug into her flesh. ‘Shut up — do you hear? What you need is one of your injections.’ He turned quickly to the drink table and poured her a stiff cognac. ‘Drink that and get a hold on yourself. What about you, Mr. Hacket? Cognac?’

The other nodded. ‘So you’re an American, Mr. Shirer?’

‘Italian by birth, American by nationality,’ Sansevino answered, handing him his drink. ‘After the war I bought this place and settled down to producing wine. Would you care for another cognac, Farrell?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘And what part of America do you come from?’ Hacket asked him.

‘Pittsburgh.’

‘You don’t say. Well, isn’t that a coincidence! I’m from Pittsburgh myself. Do you know that little eating-house off Dravo Street — Morielli’s?’

‘Can’t say I do.’

‘Well, you go right over to Morielli’s when you’re next in Pittsburgh. Wonderful hamburgers. I thought all Italians knew Morielli. And that other place. What’s its name? Pugliani’s. Just inside the Triangle near Gulf Building. You remember Pugliani’s?’

‘Seltz?’

‘Er — yes, make it a long one, will you. Of course, Pugliani’s has changed hands now. They’ve put a dance floor in and—’

‘How deep was the ash when you came up to the villa, Mr. Hacket?’

‘The ash? Oh, about three or four inches, I guess. It must have been that because I got some inside my shoes.’ He took a pull at his drink. ‘Do you reckon it’s going to be like it was the time Pompeii was destroyed? About three foot of ash fell at first and then there was a breathing space. That’s why most of the inhabitants were able to escape. It was only those that came back later who got buried. If it lets up at all I reckon we ought to get out while the going’s good, eh?’ He shook his head. ‘Incredible what this mountain can do!’

There was a sudden pounding on the front door. Hacket turned at the sound and then said, ‘That’s probably the rest of the party. I told them if I didn’t come back it would mean I’d found the villa. They said they’d follow me if it got worse.’

Shirer sent Roberto to open the door. A moment later two dusty figures were shown into the room. It was Maxwell and Hilda Tucek all right, but they were barely recognisable under the film of ash that covered them. The lines on Maxwell’s forehead were etched deep where ash and sweat had caked. For a moment they stood quite still in the entrance, their eyes searching the room. The contrast between Hilda and Zina was very marked. Zina was still clean, but she was trembling and her eyes bulged like a startled rabbit. Hilda, on the other hand, was quite calm. It was as though Vesuvius and the falling ash were nothing to her.

Sansevino went forward, his hand outstretched. ‘It’s John Maxwell, isn’t it? My name’s Walter Shirer.’

Maxwell nodded. He was looking across the room towards me. The white mask of his face looked old and very tired.

‘You remember, we met at Foggia — before Farrell dropped me over Tazzola?’

Maxwell nodded. ‘Yes, I remember.’

‘Come on in and have a drink. Guess I wouldn’t have known you in that make-up if Hacket here hadn’t told me you were coming up. Cognac?’

‘Thank you.’ Maxwell introduced Hilda Tucek and then Sansevino turned to me. ‘Perhaps you’d get them a drink, Farrell?’

It was clear he wasn’t going to give me a chance of talking to Maxwell alone. I hesitated, on the point of blurting out the truth — that the man they thought was Shirer was Sansevino and that I had. what they all wanted tucked away inside my leg. Sansevino was standing slightly apart from the others so that he could command the whole room. One hand was thrust into the pocket of his jacket and I knew he had a gun there, the gun he’d taken up from the piano. The atmosphere of the room suddenly seemed strained and on the edge of violence. I went over to the drink table and in the sudden burst of conversation that followed my movement I sensed relief.

‘Tell you who came to see me the other day — Alec Reece. You remember Alec Reece, Maxwell? He was with us. …” Sansevino was talking to ease the tension — talking too fast, and he shouldn’t have called Maxwell by his full name. He’d been Max to everybody on the station at Foggia.

I got the drinks and then Hacket was talking — talking about the mountain again. ‘It’s incredible to think what: hat mountain can do. Why in the eruption of 1631 heavy stones were thrown a distance of 15 miles and one weighing 25 tons fell on the village of Somma. And only a hundred years before the volcano was dormant with woods and bushes growing on the slopes and cattle actually grazing in the crater. There was one eruption in the early eighteenth century which lasted from May to August and covered Naples.

He went on and on about Vesuvius. He was chock-full of guide-book statistics. It got on my nerves. But it was Zina who suddenly screamed at him — ‘For God’s sake, can you not speak of nothing but your damn mountain?’

Hacket stared at her open-mouthed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Guess I didn’t realise.’

‘You do not realise because for the moment you are safe inside this villa and cannot see what is happening outside.’ Zina’s eyes blazed with anger — anger at her own fear. ‘Now, please shut up, will you. Everything that you have described may happen to us at any moment.’ She turned to Roberto. ‘Go and see what it is like outside, please. As soon as the ash ceases to fall we must get away from here quick.’

Roberto left the room. He was back a moment later, coughing and wiping his face with a dirty rag. ‘Well?’ Zina asked him.

He shook his head. ‘It is still falling.’

Sansevino had been watching her all the time. Now he said, ‘Zina. Suppose you play to us. Play something gay — something from Il Barbiere.’

She hesitated. Then she went over to the piano. She began to play the scandal song. Shirer looked at Maxwell. ‘You like Rossini?’

Maxwell shrugged his shoulders indifferently. Hacket moved over towards Sansevino. ‘I suppose you were pretty fond of opera, even as a kid?’

Sansevino nodded abstractedly. ‘Trouble is I didn’t get much of a chance to hear it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Good God, man — I was a miner, until 1936. Then I got a job with the Union and moved to New York.’

‘But the miners had their own operatic company.’ Hacket was looking at him with a puzzled frown. ‘They gave shows free.’

‘Well, I never went. I was too busy.”

Sansevino took my empty glass and went across to the drink table. I could see Hacket watching him. ‘That’s queer,’ he murmured.’

‘How do you mean?’ Maxwell asked him.

‘The opera company was sponsored by the Union.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Funny how some people never know what’s going on in their own home town.’

Maxwell was watching Sansevino and as he came back with another brandy for me, Maxwell said, ‘By the way, Shirer, you remember that message I gave you for Ferrario at Tazzola?’

The other shook his head. ‘I don’t remember much about that mission. I was suffering from loss of memory by the time. I reached the Swiss frontier. My memory is very patchy.’

‘But you remember me?’

‘I tell you my memory is patchy. Another cognac?’

‘I still have some, thanks.’ Maxwell was swilling his drink round in the bottom of the glass. He didn’t look at the other and his voice was casual as he said,’ Remember the fellow who was with you the night they arrested you at Polinago?’

‘Mantani?’

‘Yes. I always meant to ask you this if ever I met you again. Did he take you to Ragello’s trattoria or did you take him? When I interrogated him, he swore that he’d warned you Ragello was a Fascist and that you’d just laughed at him. Did he warn you?’

‘ He did not. I think it was I who told him it was dangerous. Miss Tucek — another drink?’

She nodded and he took her glass.

Maxwell was standing right beside me and quite softly he said, ‘You were right, Dick.’

‘How do you mean?’ I asked.

‘The man who owned the trattoria where they were picked up was called Basani, not Ragello,’ he answered.

I didn’t say anything, but Vesuvius seemed suddenly remote. The volcano was right here in this room and at any moment someone would touch the spark that would send it off. My hand slipped to my jacket pocket, folding round the cold, smooth metal of Zina’s automatic. Only Hacket was outside it all. He was still the tourist with his mind on Vesuvius. But the others — they were all tied together with invisible threads: Hilda and Maxwell searching for Tucek, Sansevino searching for what rested in the shaft of my leg. And all the time Zina played — played Rossini, flatly, without any life, so that the music had the quality of tragedy. And over by the door Roberto stood watching her. I felt my nerves tightening in that electric atmosphere so that I wanted to shout out that I’d got what Sansevino wanted — anything to break the tension which was growing all the time. And all I could do was wait — wait for the moment when it would reach snapping point and break.