Of course, most of his time was occupied with keeping watch on the man he was trailing; and he kept us very amused with the account of his progress.
" I shall never be grateful enough to you, if I bring this off as I think I shall," he said. " It will be the turning point in my official career. I don't mind telling you they've treated me rather shabbily at home about one or two things I've done. But if I bag this bird, they can hardly say no to anything I may ask."
At the same time, it was clear that he took a genuine friendly interest in his love-birds, as he called us. He had had a disappointment himself, he said, and it had put him off the business personally, but he was glad to say it hadn't soured his nature, and he took a real pleasure in seeing people so ideally happy as we were.
The only thing, he said, that made him a little uneasy and discontented was that he hadn't got in touch with the people who ran the Gatto Fritto, which was an extremely exciting and dangerous kind of night club which indulged in pleasures of so esoteric a kind that Do other place in Europe had anything to compare with it.
Chapter IX.
The Gatto Fritto
It was about the end of the third week, I discover from Lou's Diary (I had lost all count of time myself), that he came in one day with a smile of subtle triumph in his eyes.
" I've got on to the ropes," he said, " but I think I ought in fairness to wam you that the Gatto Fritto is a pretty hot place. I wouldn't mind taking you as long as you go in disguise and have a gun in your pocket, but I really can't take it on my conscience to have Lady Pendragon along."
I was so full up with cocaine I hardly knew what he was saying. It was the easiest way out to nod assent and watch the clouds fighting each other to get hold of the sun.
I was betting on that big white elephant on the horizon. There were two black cobras and a purple hippopotamus against him ; but I couldn't help that. With those magnificent tusks he ought to be able to settle their business, and only to look at his legs you could see the old sun hadn't got a dog's chance. I can't see why people haven't the sense to keep still when a fight of this kind is in progress. What's the referee for, anyway ?
It was extremely annoying of Lou to protest in that passionate shrill voice of hers that she was going to the Gatto Fritto, and if she didn't she'd take to keeping cats herself, and fry them, and make me eat them !
I don't know how long she went on. It was perfectly gorgeous to hear her. I knew what it meant just as soon as we could get rid of that swine Feccles.
Hang it all, one doesn't want another man on one's honeymoon !
So there was Feccles turning to me in a sort of limp, helpless protest, imploring me to put my foot down about it.
So I said, " Feccles, old top, you're the right sort. I always liked you at school; and I shall never forget what you've done for me these last thirty or forty years or whatever it is we've been in Capri, and Lloyd George can trust you to nip that blighter you're after, why shouldn't I trust you to see us through this fun at the Gatto Fritto ? "
Lou clapped her hands, screaming with merriment, but Feccles said:
" Now, that's all right. But this is a very serious business. You're not going about it in the right spirit. We've got to go about it very quietly and soberly, and then open up when the word comes Over the top."
We pretended to pull ourselves together to please him, but I couldn't blind my eyes to the fact that I was likely to lose my money, because the white elephant had turned into a quite ordinary Zebu or Brahman cow, or at the best a two-humped or Bactrian dromedary, in any case, an animal entirely unfitted by nature to carry the money of a cautious backer.
Agitated by this circumstance, I was hardly in a condition to realise the nature of the proposals laid before the meeting by Worshipful Brother Feccles, Acting Deputy Grand Secretary General.
But roughly they were to this effect : That we were to lock up all our money and jewellery, except a little small change, as an act of precaution, and Feccles would arrive in due course, with disguises for me and Lou as Neapolitan fisherfolk, and we were to take nothing but a revolver apiece and a little small change, and we were to slip off the terrace of the hotel after dark without any one seeing, and there would be a motor-boat across to Sorrento ; and there would be an automobile, so we could get into Naples at about one o'clock in the morning, and then we were to go to a certain drinking place, the Fauno Ebbrio, and as soon as the coast was clear he would pick us up and take us along to the Gatto Fritto, and we would know for the first time what life was really like.
Well, I call that a perfectly straight, decent, sensible programme. It's the duty of every Englishman to learn as much of foreign affairs as he can without interfering with his business. That sort of knowledge will always come in useful in case of another European War. It was knowing that sort of thing that had put Feccles where he was in the Secret Service, the trusted confident of those mysterious intelligences that watch over the welfare of our beloved country.
Thank you, that will conclude the evening's entertainment.
I will say this for Feccles. He always understood instinctively when he wasn't wanted. So immediately the arrangements were made, he excused himself hastily, because he had to go down to the Villa where his victim was staying, and fix a dictaphone in the room where he was going to have dinner.
So I had Lou all to myself until he came with the disguises the next day in the afternoon. And I wasn't going to waste a minute.
I admit I was pretty sick about the way the white cloud let me down. I'd have gone after the silly old sun myself if I hadn't been a married man.
However, there we were alone, alone for ever, Lou and I in Capri, it was all much too good to be true I Sunlight and moonlight and starlight! They were all in her eyes. And she handed out the cocaine with such a provocative gesture I I knew what it was to be insane. I could understand perfectly well why the silly fools that aren't insane are afraid of being insane. I'd been that way myself when I didn't know any better.
This rotten little race of men measures the world by its own standard. It is lost in the vastness of the Universe, and is consequently afraid of everything that doesn't happen to fit its own limits.
Lou and I had discarded the miserable measures of mankind. That sort of thing is all right for tailors and men of science ; but we had sprung in one leap to be conterminous with the Universe. We were as incommensurable as the ratio of a circle to its diameter. We were as imaginary and unreal from their point of view as the square root of minus one.
We didn't ask humanity to judge us. It was simply a case of mistaken identity to regard us as featherless bipeds at all. We may have looked like human beings to their eyes ; in fact, they sent in bills and things as if we had been human beings.
But I refuse to be responsible for the mistakes of the inferior animals. I humour them to some extent in their delusions, because they're lunatics and ought to be humoured. But it's a long way between that and admitting that their hallucinations have any basis in fact.
I had been in their silly world of sense a million years or so ago, when I was Peter Pendragon.
But why recall the painful past ? Of course, one doesn't come to one's full strength in a minute. Take the case of an eagle. What is it as long as it's in the egg ? Nothing but an egg with possibilities. And the first day it's hatched you don't expect it to fly to Neptune and back. Certainly not !
But every day, in every way, it gets better and better. And if I was ever tempted to flop and remember my base origin as a forked radish, why all I needed was a kiss from Lou, or a sniff of cocaine to put me back in Paradise.
I