"I didn't—" he began, embarrassed, "I didn't mean—"
Porro patted him on the shoulder reassuringly. "That's all right, signore. This is one they won't blame you for—it was him or you and no time for questions." He stood up. "I must get back to the car, signore—we can't get the other swine, but at least we can pick up the Englishman double-quick. And I can call up an ambulance for your friend."
"He's alive?"
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"Your friend's alive—he was a minute ago, anyway," said Porro heavily. "Sergeant Depretis is dead."
"Wait!" Boselli scrambled to his feet. His clothes were covered with dust and there was a tear in his trousers at the knee—his best office trousers. He brushed at himself ineffectually. Alive or dead, Villari was out of it now, and the immediate decisions were up to him.
"We'll lose 'em both, signore—if I stay here."
Boselli screwed up his brain.
"Don't pick the Englishman up. Phone General Montuori's office. Tell him what has happened—get through to the General himself, not some—some underling. Don't touch the Englishman unless he says so. That's an order."
Porro stared at him.
Boselli took a deep breath. He felt appallingly tired—drained.
With the last shred of his will he met Porro's stare.
"That's an order," he repeated.
After Porro had gone he stood in a dream, thinking of nothing. Then he stumbled the few paces to the junction of the streets. It was remarkable, he thought, how his immediate surroundings had contracted: Villari and the dead police sergeant lay only a very short distance up the alley on his left and the killer just those two or three steps behind him. Yet the distances had seemed immense only a few minutes ago.
How many minutes? Maybe it was no more than a matter of dummy2
seconds, during which time as well as distance had somehow been elongated.
The effort of thinking was beyond him. There were probably other things he should have done, or should be doing. But he knew so pathetically little about what was going on. He looked up the alley again: the place was like a battlefield with himself the sole unlikely survivor on it—and he didn't even know why he was fighting. Or who.
But he ought to do something for Villari, anyway.
It was up the General now.
He had done his best.
VIII
THE ELGIN MARBLES gallery wasn't difficult to find, which was just as well in view of the time shortage; and although it was by no means empty a merciful providence had just cleared it of chattering schoolchildren.
It seemed to Richardson that the British Museum itself hadn't changed much in fifteen years: the foyer was still jammed with the little monsters. That last and only time he had been inside the hallowed portals he had been one of the monsters himself, but unlike the present crop he had been a monster regimented and controlled into silence. The crowds through which he had just passed had obviously been just as bored as he had been (the BM probably ranked a poor third dummy2
to the Imperial War Museum and the Science Museum now, as then) but they were as belligerent as a football crowd.
"Professor Freisler."
There was no doubt about the identification, even though he had only seen the old man once before: the huge close-shaven head was unmistakable—it might have served as a model for those old Punch cartoons of square-headed Prussians stamping on the bleeding body of Gallant Little Belgium.
The head froze, and then began to revolve on its jowls until Freisler was facing him.
"Sir?" A hairy hand adjusted the spectacles. Then the little piggy eyes brightened with recognition.
"It is—it is Captain Richardson—is it not?"
"Plain 'Mister' nowadays, Professor."
" Mister Richardson—I beg your pardon!" The old man flashed a hideous steel-toothed smile. "Mr. Richardson—so!"
Richardson returned the smile.
"There was a notice on your door saying you were here. I hope I'm not disturbing you in the middle of something important?"
Freisler dismissed the notion with a wave of his hand. "There is no disturbance. The notice—it is for my students. They come to me when it suits them, and I come here when it suits me. Then they come here and we talk just as well, perhaps better."
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"You come here often, then?"
Freisler nodded. "Indeed so! To live so close to all this beauty and not live with it, I think that would be foolishness, eh?
And who knows—one day you British may decide to give it all back to the Greeks. That would be an even greater foolishness of course, but these are foolish days, I am thinking, are they not?"
The eyes bored into Richardson. Thinking—he was thinking right enough, but not about the marbles and their ultimate fate. That was merely what he was talking about while he took stock of the situation.
Richardson stared round the gallery, pretending to consider the question for a moment.
"I reckon they're safe enough for the time being, you know—
no one even wants to give the present lot in Greece the time of day." He grinned at Freisler. "Not that I'm any sort of judge of such things."
"No, of course." The old man nodded seriously. "It is not your field of interest—of business. And you have come to—see me, not the marbles, is that not so?"
"That's right, Professor."
"About your—business?"
"In a way, yes. But not officially." Richardson dropped his voice. "I need your help and I need it quickly."
"My help?" The eyes were expressionless now, as blank as dummy2
pebbles. "And in what way can I help you, Mr. Richardson?"
"You're a friend of David Audley's."
"I have that honour, yes." The tone as well as the words had a curious old-fashioned formality about them, and the guttural quality was suddenly more pronounced—the "have" had an explosive, Teutonic sound which had been hitherto absent.
"And so have I, Professor. That's why I'm here."
No reply. Prove it, Mr. Richardson, prove it.
"David's put up a big black, Professor—"
"A big black?" Freisler frowned. "A big black what? That is an idiom with which I am not familiar, no."
"Hell—a black mark. A faux pas."
"Now I am with you. An error of judgement, yes?"
"That's it. And somehow I've got to get him off the hook."
"I understand. That is to say I am able to guess your meaning, Mr. Richardson. But I beg you to stop using these unfamiliar figures of speech, or I shall not be able to help you quickly. . . . Now, what was this error he made?"
"He went abroad without telling anyone."
"That does not seem to me so very—erroneous."
"In our—business—there are rules, Professor."
"Rules?" Freisler shook his head quickly. "For a man like David Audley rules are made for other men. I would say—
yes, I would say that half his value lies in that alone. Do you not trust your friend then, eh?"
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"Damn it—it's because I trust David to hell and back that I'm here now, sticking my little neck out!" Richardson paused.
"What I mean—"
Freisler raised his hand. "No. That I do understand. To stick the neck out is a very ancient gesture of trust and submission in the animal kingdom. You have no need to explain it for me. You trust David, but there are others who do not—or they wish to make trouble for him—that I can well appreciate. He is not a man who would be popular everywhere, I would think."
"You're dead right there!"
"Of course I am right. But there is more to it than that I am thinking, eh?"
"How do you mean—more?"
"My good young man—" Freisler adjusted his glasses "—I am not in your business and I would not be if my life depended upon it—no! Only for David I have answered small questions from time to time. And on occasion I have asked questions for him in certain places back in my fatherland, where I am not yet wholly without influence-all out of friendship, you understand, and maybe a little out of gratitude for my quiet life here."