“His father was murdered by them,” I said shortly.
“Ah! Well, it was a bit of luck for you that you told Umberto. He’d forgotten to tell Bellinetti, who’d been out most of the previous day. But he told me, and so I left Tamara at the telephone and camped out at the station.”
I was silent for a moment. My thoughts were far from pleasant.
“Well,” I said at last, “what do we do now?”
Zaleshoff was looking out of the window. “The first thing we do,” he said slowly, “is to get out of this train. I don’t think it stops before Brescia, but there’ll be a ticket collector along before then and neither of us has a ticket. Besides…” he broke off and added: “How much money have you got?”
I examined my wallet.
“About four hundred odd lire, nearly five hundred.”
“Is that all? What about Vagas’ three thousand?”
“I paid most of it into the bank.”
“What have you got in that suitcase?”
“Pyjamas, a change of underclothing, a dirty shirt, toothbrush and shaving things.”
“Put the toothbrush and shaving things in your pocket, your underclothing too if you want it, then give me the suitcase.”
“But look here, Zaleshoff…”
“We’ll talk later,” he said impatiently; “we’ll be slowing down soon for Treviglio.”
I did as I was told. He took the suitcase and examined it carefully.
“No initials, no name and address anywhere on it?”
“No.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
He led the way into the corridor.
“Now,” he said, “I’m going to walk along the corridors to the last coach before the van. You follow me, but not too closely. Someone may wonder what the hell I’m doing carrying a suitcase about when we’re nowhere near a stop and you don’t want to get involved in any arguments.”
He disappeared towards the rear of the train. I began to follow slowly. Suddenly he reappeared, walking quickly towards me. He was frowning.
“Go back and get into the lavatory at the other end of the coach. There’s a ticket collector coming along. Don’t lock yourself in or he’ll wait for you to come out. Give him ten minutes to pass, then join me at the back of the train.”
He turned and disappeared with the suitcase into a lavatory. I followed suit at the other end of the corridor. I waited there nervously for five minutes. Then I heard the ticket collector slide open the door of the compartment next to the lavatory and ask to see the occupants’ tickets. There was a long pause, then the door slid to again. The man paused as he drew level with the lavatory door, evidently to glance at the indicator on the lock, then passed on. A few minutes later I joined Zaleshoff at the end of the train. I was feeling guilty.
“I don’t see why,” I said bitterly, “we couldn’t have bought tickets from him.”
“You’ll see why, to-morrow,” he said cryptically.
Then I noticed that he no longer had the suitcase.
“Threw it out of the window when we were going through that tunnel,” he explained.
“I don’t see where this is getting us, Zaleshoff,” I said. “Frankly, I’m worried, damned worried. I think the best thing I can do is to get off at Brescia and telephone the Consulate in Milan. If there is, as you say, a warrant out for my arrest, I’m not going to gain anything by playing the fool like this. The sooner I get in touch with the Consulate, the better.”
“Do you want to go to jail?”
“Of course not. But there’s surely no question of jail. There may be a fine, possibly a heavy one, and I shall probably be given twenty-four hours in which to leave the country. All very unpleasant, no doubt, but that’s the worst of it. Good gracious, man, I’m a British subject, known to the Consulate, and fairly respectable, I…”
“The British authorities,” he interrupted, “would, in the ordinary way, see you through anything from petty larceny to murder. But a charge of espionage puts the thing in a different category. They’ll drop you like a hot cake as soon as they know about it.”
“But you yourself said that the charge was bribery.”
“Until they catch you. Then you’ll get the whole packet.”
“Well,” I said disgustedly, “even if you are right, I still don’t see any alternative for me.”
“The only place you’ll be safe is out of the country, and that’s where we’re going.”
“You seem to forget,” I said witheringly, “that I have no passport.”
“I hadn’t forgotten.”
“Well then!”
“I said we’d talk later…”
“And in the meantime, I suppose…”
“In the meantime,” he interjected, “you get wise to yourself and do as I tell you.”
I shrugged. “Well, I suppose it doesn’t make much difference.”
“It makes a lot of difference. Have a cigarette. It’ll steady your nerves.”
“My nerves,” I snapped, “are perfectly all right.”
He nodded calmly. “That’s good. You’re going to need them in a minute. We’re going to drop off this train when it slows down for the curve at Treviglio.”
I did not answer. Things were moving too quickly for me. Twenty minutes before, I had been a comparatively composed Englishman returning from doing what I was conscious of being a sound piece of work. I had been looking forward to a quiet dinner, a couple of hours in a cinema and an early bed with a new book to read. Now I was a fugitive from the Italian secret police, hiding in lavatories, cheating ticket collectors and contemplating leaving a train in an unconventional and illegal manner. It had all happened far too suddenly. I couldn’t adjust my mind to these new and fantastic circumstances. I found myself wondering seriously whether perhaps by pinching myself I might wake up to find that I was, after all, still in bed in Rome. But no: there was Zaleshoff smoking and gazing intently out of the window and in my pocket there was a safety-razor, a leaking tube of shaving cream and a pair of American underpants. I looked down on to the track by the side of the train. It looked a long way away and dangerous. The train was going too fast for me to see whether the track was of small or large stones. It was a long, even grey-brown smear. It seemed to me that the train had begun to make a curious thumping noise. I tried to separate the noise, identify it, and realised that it was the sound of the blood pumping in my head. I knew suddenly that I was scared, scared stiff.
Zaleshoff touched me on the arm.
“We’re beginning to slow down. We’ll give it another minute, then we’ll get outside on the steps, ready. Don’t forget to let yourself go limply if you can’t keep your feet when you land.”
I nodded, speechless, and looked down again.
To me it seemed as if the train were going as fast as ever. It was running along the top of a steep embankment between ploughed fields. I looked again at the ground streaming past. Then I saw Zaleshoff put his hand on the latch of the door. It was madness, I told myself, madness! We should both break our legs or our arms or we should get flung under the wheels of the luggage van behind us and mangled to death. Suddenly there was a grating noise below us.
“They’re braking,” said Zaleshoff, “come on. You’d better go first.”
He opened the door and the roar of the steel coach seemed suddenly to be lost in the blustering wind.
“Down with you,” said Zaleshoff. “Make it snappy, now.”
I looked down. There were four steps down, then the track. I clutched the rail and went down three steps. The wind tore at my hat. With my free hand I jammed it down over my ears. Then I swung myself round facing the direction we were going. I could see the engine now as it began to round the curve. The smoke was flying in a long cone from the funnel. Below me the ground seemed to be going at a sickening speed. I felt suddenly giddy and retreated a step. I looked up. I had to shout against the wind.