Berati, who indulged very seldom in gestures, touched his underlip with his long firm forefinger.
“Yet—you came.”
Fawley smiled—perhaps a little sardonically.
“The men who work for you, General,” he observed, “should rid themselves of any fear of death.”
Berati nodded very slowly and very thoughtfully. He seemed to be appraising the man who stood on the other side of his desk.
“It appears to me,” he admitted, “that we may get on.”
“It is possible,” Fawley agreed. “Curiosity prompts me to ask you one question, however. When you sent for me, had you any idea that we had met in that barber’s shop at Nice?”
“I knew it perfectly well.”
“I confess that that puzzles me a little,” Fawley admitted. “I was at my worst that day. I did not show the self-control of a schoolboy. I had not even the excuse of being in a hurry. I was annoyed because you had taken my place and I showed it.”
Berati smiled.
“It was the very fact,” he pronounced, “that you were able to forget your profession on an ordinary occasion which commended you to me. Our own men—most of them, at any rate—err on the side of being too stealthy. They are too obvious in their subterfuges ever to reach the summits. You have the art—or shall I call it the genius?—of being able to display your natural feelings when you are, so to speak, in mufti. You impressed me, as you would any man, with the idea that you were a somewhat choleric, somewhat crude Englishman or American, thinking, as usual, that the better half of any deal should fall to you. I made up my mind that if you were free you were my man.”
“You had the advantage of me,” Fawley reflected.
“I never forget a face,” the other confided. “You were in Rome five years ago—some important mission—but I could recall it if I chose… To proceed. You know where to look for your identification papers if it should become necessary to show them. Your supplementary passports are in the same place—both diplomatic and social.”
“Passports,” Fawley remarked, as he disposed of the cigarette case in the inner pocket of his waistcoat, “generally indicate a journey.”
Berati’s long fingers played for a moment with the stiff collar of his uniform. He looked meaningly across his table.
“Adventure is to be found in so many of these southern cities,” he observed. “Monte Carlo is very pleasant at this time of the year and the France is an excellent hotel. A countryman of ours, I remind myself, is in charge there. There is also a German named Krust—but that will do later. Our relations with him are at present undetermined. Your first centre of activities will be within twenty kilometres of the Casino. A rivederci, Signor.”
He held out his hand. Fawley took it, but lingered for a moment.
“My instructions—” he began.
“They will arrive,” the Italian interrupted. “Have no anxiety. There will be plenty of work for you. You will begin where Joseffi left off. I wish you better fortune.”
Fawley obeyed the little wave of the hand and took his leave. In doing so, however, he made a not incomprehensible error. The room was irregular in shape, with panelled walls, and every one of the oval recesses possessed a door which matched its neighbour. His fingers closed upon the handle of the one through which he believed that he had entered. Almost at once Berati’s voice snapped out from behind him like a pistol shot.
“Not that one! The next to your right.”
Fawley did not, however, at once withdraw his hand from the beautiful piece of brass ornamentation upon which it rested.
“Where does this one lead to?” he asked with apparent irrelevance.
Berati’s voice was suddenly harsh.
“My own apartments—the Palazzo Berati. Be so good as to pass out by the adjoining door.”
Fawley remained motionless. Berati’s voice was coldly angry.
“There is perhaps some explanation—” he began ominously.
“Explanation enough,” Fawley interrupted. “Some one is holding the handle of this door on the other side. They are even now matching the strength of their fingers against mine.”
“You mean that some one is attempting to enter?”
“Obviously,” Fawley replied. “Shall I let them in?”
“In ten seconds,” Berati directed. “Count ten to yourself and then open the door.”
Fawley obeyed his new Chief literally and it was probably that instinct of self-preservation which had always been helpfully present with him in times of crisis which saved his life. He sprang to one side, sheltering himself behind the partially opened door. A bullet whistled past his ear, so that for hours afterwards he felt a singing there, as though a hot wind was stabbing at him. There was a crash from behind him in the room. Berati’s chair was empty! Down the passage was dimly visible the figure of a woman, whose feet seemed scarcely to touch the polished oak floor. Fawley was barely in time, for she had almost reached the far end before he started in pursuit. He called out to her, hoping that she would turn her head and allow him a glimpse of her face, but she was too clever for any gaucherie of that sort. He passed through a little unseen cloud of faint indefinite perfume, such as might float from a woman’s handkerchief shaken in the dark, stooped in his running to pick up and thrust a glittering trifle into his pocket, and almost reached her before she disappeared through some thickly hanging brocaded curtains. It was only a matter of seconds before Fawley flung them on one side in pursuit and emerged into a large square anteroom with shabby magnificent hangings, but with several wonderful pictures on the walls and two closed doors on either side. He paused to listen but all that he could hear was the soft sobbing of stringed instruments in the distance and a murmur of many voices, apparently from the reception rooms of the palazzo. He looked doubtfully at the doors. They had the air of not having been opened for generations. The only signs of human life came from the corridor straight ahead which obviously led into the reception rooms. Fawley hesitated only for a moment, then he made his way cautiously along it until he arrived at a slight bend and a further barrier of black curtains—curtains of some heavy material which looked like velvet—emblazoned in faded gold with the arms of a famous family…He paused once more and listened. At that moment the music ceased. From the storm of applause he gathered that there must have been at least several hundred people quite close to him on the other side of the curtain. He hesitated, frowning. Notwithstanding his eagerness to track down the would-be assassin, it seemed hopeless to make his way amongst a throng of strangers, however ingenious the explanations he might offer, in search of a woman whose face he had scarcely seen and whom he could recognise only by the colour of her gown. Reluctantly he retraced his steps and stood once more in the anteroom which, like many apartments in the great Roman palaces which he had visited, seemed somehow to have lost its sense of habitation and to carry with it a suggestion of disuse. There were the two doors. He looked at them doubtfully. Suddenly one was softly opened and a woman stood looking out at him with a half-curious, half-frightened expression in her brown eyes. She was wearing a dress the colour of which reminded him of the lemon groves around Sorrento.
CHAPTER III
An angry and a frightened woman! Fawley had seen many of them before in his life but never one quite of this type. Her eyes, which should have been beautiful, were blazing. Her lips—gashes of scarlet fury—seemed as if they were on the point of withering him with a storm of words. Yet when she spoke, she spoke with reserve, without subtlety, a plain, blunt question.
“Why