Pointer laughed and offered him a cigar.
"Which of the lot was that?"
"I don't know their names. It's the two Fascisti who have numbers seventeen and eighteen."
"Fascisti?"
"Well, they looked it."
"Get me their names from the book, will you."
Andreas brought him back a chit, on which he had scrawled, "Signor Gregorio Massa and Signor Antonio Massa."
"As I thought!" Pointer beamed. "Just the fellows, to try on a joke like that. Are they in their rooms now?"
The night-porter thought that they were. He had only caught sight of the door being closed. A final tip changed hands, and Pointer was alone.
After a little interval he crept out and along the passage to the numbers given. He heard two men's voices in seventeen. Not very pleased voices either. One was very low, but every now and then one would be raised hysterically, to be instantly quieted by a sharp low word from his companion. Pointer caught one such higher pitched word. It was a name. After it came a sudden pause, a pause of consternation. Pointer could almost visualise a hand clapped over a garrulous mouth. He was no longer near the door when it was noiselessly opened, but was well away on the upper landing. Lying down at full length, he saw a tall figure, its loose top-locks falling around it like a feather duster, search the lower corridor from end to end, noiseless in its movements as a horse-fly. Then it disappeared, and the door was shut without a sound.
Pointer felt like a dog hot on a scent and suddenly pulled up. One word he had heard, one name. Well he knew now, and he realised his danger.
Friday morning was spent like its predecessor, except for a telegram to di Monti appointing next Tuesday afternoon without fail for a meeting in New Scotland Yard and by noon Pointer was shaking hands with the tall lean figure of O'Connor on the Bozen platform.
"So our long-planned walking tour is coming of last?"
"It is," Pointer agreed "We begin it by taking train for Verona in an hour. Where's your bag; this man can carry it too."
Pointer had come accompanied by one of the town luggage-carriers, so as not to chance being alone on platform or in waiting-room So far, there had been no need of this precaution, but he had not cared to omit it.
"My bag? Tozer wouldn't let me wait to pack. And how's yourself?"
Pointer breathed in his ear.
"I've a pocket-book strapped to me, with a paper inside, which we must get home to the Yard. It'll clear the air."
"You're right, she's an uncommonly pretty girl," O'Connor agreed aloud, as lighting a cigarette and whirling on one heel to throw away the match, all in one swift motion, he almost burnt the tie of a man behind. The man, a typical Fascist by his hair and tightly-buttoned black shirt and thick, cudgel-like stick which he carried, hurried on.
Pointer, opened and shut his eyes as though saying, "Even so!"
"Brother Massa," he murmured. "He's off for the ticket office. Now, you get some food inside yourself, while I take our seats in the carriage that's put on here."
"Can you manage your luggage alone?" O'Connor asked cautiously.
"Can do," Pointer reassured him. O'Connor stepped into the buffet.
The usual change had come over the platform. A moment ago all was bustle; now it was almost deserted. Pointer had told his man what seats he wanted. The porter stepped in with the suitcase. In swinging it up, it caught in the curtain and almost overpowered him, for it was very heavy. Pointer made no move to assist. He stood well out on the platform.
Suddenly something knocked his feet from under him. A bag carried by another traveller had skidded from some three yards away. The man rushed up with apologies, in his hand the rubber-covered club of the Fascisti, the Italian sandbag. Pointer dodged the club and shot out his right with all the strength of his back behind it. The man who had had the accident with the bag sagged inertly forward. Pointer was on his feet now, and directing a kick at the shins of the porter, who had leapt out of the compartment. Pointer was not sure whether he were in the affair or not, but he could not afford to take a chance. The way the man acted cleared up his doubts. Instead of a volley of abuse, and calls to his mates, he picked up his Facchino cap and dived under the coach, just as an official from another platform hurried up.
"Ola! Cosa é?"
"Apparently this man has had a fit," Pointer answered in his careful Italian. "His bag slipped from his hand and knocked me down, too."
The man bent over the silent figure. He saw the black neck scarf, the hair, the rubber club.
"Take the man to the ambulance-room. Tell the Commandante about him. As for you, sir, you will be detained till he is able to tell us what happened."
"Can I telephone to your Sotto-prefetto?" asked Pointer.
A couple of Carabinieri who had strolled up said something to the station official. They evidently knew all about Pointer, for the Italian saluted at once.
"My excuses. I could not know. Nowadays one has to be careful, and he looked as though he had had a hard blow, on the point of the chin, too."
"Indeed! I took it for granted it was a fit."
"A very sensible view to take," the Italian said, with a rather dry smile as he passed on.
At Verona the two friends caught the Milan-Paris express, and settled themselves for the night in an empty first. They decided not to risk a sleeping car. Pointer was to stay awake the first part of the night, the Irishman relieving him after a rest.
Pointer was on the alert. He felt sure that further attempts would be made. He slipped back the two catches of the door opposite the corridor and wedged it with a cake of soap so that it looked shut, but would open at a touch.
"Just in case we need to slip out of the back-door in a hurry," he explained.
O'Connor nodded, and turned over, closing his eyes. The door of the corridor opened not long afterwards.
"Favorisca, i biglietti!" intoned a voice in the ticket-collector's usual sing-song. As usual, too, the man was accompanied by a second, who closed the door behind him.
Now Pointer had noticed a man stroll twice past the compartment at Verona. He had a bright brass eyelet shining from his black boot. When the man in the long coat and braided cap of the conductor slid open the door, Pointer's eye was upon a similar brass eyelet in his right boot. He roused O'Connor with the danger signal of "Wake up, Tozer!" But a mistake either way would be awkward. With his left hand he slipped the tickets along the seat, the next second he caught the sham ticket-collector's wrist in a vice that sent the knife to the floor. Then they grappled. The man was a big, sinewy chap, strong as a conger eel and almost as difficult to hold. O'Connor was dealing with his companion, but he, too, was having his work cut out. Though the Englishmen did not know it, they were struggling with a couple of the most dreaded of the Naples Maffei, killers by trade, with lists of victims as long as their own arms. They fought like savages. Pointer's allotment always trying with his thumbs for the other's eyes, his teeth snapping at his throat. If Pointer and O'Connor were both well up in jiu-jitsu, these men had similar tricks handed down from the Moors of Sicily, and used by Neapolitan criminals for centuries. But there was one thing that the Englishman knew, and their assailants did not, and that was about the door. With a wrench, Pointer managed to slew his man around, and fling him against it. The Italian went hurtling out. O'Connor's man struggled desperately, but they heaved him after his friend. Then Pointer pulled the chain. He did not want the two men to possibly crawl away to safety.
The express did not stop, but the guard, the ticket collector—the real one—and the soldier who generally accompanies Italian expresses, rushed up to the corridor door.
"Two men came in just now, one wearing a ticket collector's cap and coat," Pointer explained "They attacked my friend and me.