" You see how it is," I heard myself saying, " no passports, no cash, no clothes-nothing ! "
I was speaking of myself in the third person. The whole process of human life and action had stopped automatically as far as the hotel was concerned. The knot of babbling gossipers, was like a swarm of mosquitoes.
The consul's clerk had taken in the situation clearly enough ; but I could see that the detectives had become highly suspicious. They were itching to arrest me on the spot.
The clerk argued with them garrulously for an interminable time. The manager seemed the most uncomfortable man in Capri. He protested silently to heaven-there being nobody on earth to listen to him.
The situation was set going again by the reappearance of Lou on the arm of a chambermaid, followed by the doctor, who wore the air of a man who has once more met the King of Terrors in open combat, and knocked the stuffing out of him.
Lou was exceedingly shaky, paling and flushing by turns. I hated her. It was she who had got me into all this mess.
" Well," said the clerk, " we must simply go back to the consulate and explain what has happened. Don't be distressed, Lady Pendragon," he said. " There can be no doubt at all that this man will be caught in a very few hours, and you'll have all your things back."
Of course I had sense enough to know that he didn't believe a word of what he was saying. The proverb, " Set a thief to catch a thief," doesn't apply to Italy. If a thief were worth stealing, that would be another story.
There was no boat back to Naples that night. There was nothing to do but to wait till the morning. The manager was extremely sympathetic. He got us some clothes, if not exactly what we were accustomed to, at least better than the horrible things we were wearing. He ordered a special dinner with lots of champagne, and served it in the best suite but one in the house.
His instinctive Italian tact told him not to put us in the rooms we had had before.
He looked in from time to time with a cheery word to see how we were, and to assure us that telegraphic arrangements had been made to catch Mr. Laroche Feccles.
We managed to get pretty drunk in the course of the evening; but there was no exhilaration. The shock had been too great, the disillusion too disgusting. Above all, there was the complete absence of what had, after all, been the mainspring of our lives; our love for each other.
That was gone, as if it had been packed in our luggage. The only approach to sympathetic communion between us was when Lou, practical to the last, brought out our pitifully small supply of heroin and cocaine.
" That's all we've got," she whispered in anguish of soul, " till God knows when."
We were frightfully afraid, into the bargain, of its being taken from us. We were gnawed by fierce anxiety as to the issue of our affair with the police. We were even doubtful whether the consul wouldn't turn against us and scout our story as a string of obvious falsehoods.
The morning was chill. We were shaking with the reaction. Our sleep had been heavy, yet broken, and haunted by abominable dreams.
We could not even stay on deck. It was too cold, and the sea was choppy. We went down in the cabin, and shivered, and were sea-sick.
When we reached the consulate we were physical wrecks. One bit of luck, however, was waiting for us. Our luggage had been found in a hotel at Sorrento. Everything saleable had, of course, been removed by the ingenious Mr. Feccles, including our supply of dope.
But at least we had our passports, and some clothes to wear ; and the finding of the luggage in itself, of course, confirmed our story.
The consul was extremely kind, and returned with us himself to the commissario, who dismissed us genially enough, obviously confirmed in his conviction that all English people were mad, and that we in particular ought to travel, if travel we must, in a bassinette.
It took three days to telegraph money from England. It was utterly humiliating to walk about Naples. We felt that we were being pointed at as the comic relief in a very low-class type of film.
We borrowed enough money to get on with, and, of course, we had only one use for it. We stayed in our room in a little hotel unfrequented by English, and crawled out by night to try to buy drugs.
That in itself is a sordid epic of adventure and misadventure. The lowest class of so-called guide was our constant companion. Weary in spirit, we dragged ourselves from one dirty doubtful street to another ; held long whispered conferences with the scavenger type of humanity, and as often as not bought various harmless powders at an exorbitant price, and that at the risk of blackmail and other things possibly worse.
But the need of the stuff drove us relentlessly on. We ultimately found an honest dealer, and got a small supply of the genuine stuff. But even then we didn't seem to pick up. Even large doses did hardly more than restore us to our normal, by which I mean, our pre-drug selves. We were like Europe after the war.
The worst and the best we could do was to become utterly disgusted with ourselves, each other, Naples, and life in general.
The spirit of adventure was dead-as dead as the spirit of love. We had just enough moral courage after a very good lunch at Gambrinus, to make up our minds to get out of the entire beastly atmosphere.
Our love had become a mutual clinging, like that of two drowning people. We shook hands on the definite oath to get back to England, and get back as quick as we could.
I believe I might have fallen down even on that. But once again Lou pulled me through. We got into a veittura and took our tickets then and there.
We were going back to London with our tails between our legs, but we were going back to London !
Book II. Inferno
Chapter I.
Short Commons
August 17.
We are at the Savoy. Cockie has gone to see his lawyer. He is looking awfully bad, poor boy. He feels the disgrace of having been taken in by that Feccles. But how was he to know ?
It was all really my fault. I ought to have had an instinct about it.
I feel rotten myself. London is frightfully hot much hotter than it was in Italy. I want to go and live at Barley Grange. No, I don't ; what I want is to get back to where we were. There's frightfully little H. left. There's plenty of C. ; only one wants so much.
I wonder if this is the right stuff. The effect isn't what it used to be. At first everything went so fast. It doesn't any more.
It makes one's mind very full; drags out the details; but it doesn't make one think and talk and act with that glorious sense of speed. I think the truth is that we've got tired out.
Suppose I suggest to Cockie that we knock off for a week and get our physical strength back and start fresh.
I may as well telephone Gretel and arrange for a really big supply. If we're going to live at Barley Grange, we'll have to be cocaine hogs and lay in a big stock. There wouldn't be any chance of getting it down there ; and besides one must take precautions....
Bother August ! Of course Gretel's out of town-in Switzerland, the butler said. They don't know when she'll be back. I wonder when Parliament meets.
Cockie came back for lunch with a very long face. Mr. Wolfe gave him a good talking-to about money. Well, that's perfectly right. We had been going the pace.
Cockie wanted to take me out and buy me some jewellery to replace what was