"How about staff? Does she use any local people?"
"Not at all. It is believed that her workpeople come by sea, and go the same way, when she goes away, out of the season, but we never see any of them. She is very private. There is one…"
"Yes?"
"A young lady, very beautiful, with blue eyes and yellow hair, very agreeable. Often she comes, here, to get food from the market. She is—what do you say?—cook? I have seen her, not spoken. Others say she is friendly but very keen with money, makes a good bargain. Some say she is in charge, is manager-housekeeper and companion. She does not talk much."
Solo kept the voluble waitress a little longer but there was no more to be had from her. In a while he detached himself and strolled away, heading out of the town. According to his map and information the Palace was no more than five or six miles away, and he fancied the walk. The exercise gave him time to review the possibilities.
The young blue-eyed blonde cook-housekeeper sounded like his best bet for a contact. Without consciously working it out he had decided that his best play was a frontal attack: he would barge in like the brash tourist he was pretending to be, and trust to his wide-eyed stare to get him through. He was so preoccupied that he completely missed the spread beauty of the scene. Great oaks, walnuts and acacia gave him their shade. In the hedges on either side bloomed hyacinth and honeysuckle, bee-orchis and buttercup. He saw nothing. He was engrossed in other things.
His mind was so busy that his eyes almost missed the sudden and small side road that went precipitously down to his left. This had to lead him close to the Argyr, by his calculations. Five minutes of following it got him within sight of the sea. He halted between high rocky banks and considered his position, then he tackled the rugged wall on his right, scrambling and struggling his way up through the clutching thorns of wild roses, moving through bright splashes of color from wild anemone. Twenty perspiring minutes later he had his reward. He saw the Palace, recognizing it at once from the picture he had seen at U.N.C.L.E. headquarters.
It lay back and away to his right, huddling against the mountain, framed in a fold of rock and backed with the dark green of olive groves. Seen this close it was more Disney-like than ever. The white stone was bright enough to have been freshly laundered and the woodwork of window-frames and shutters was the unlikely pink of candy floss. A powder puff palace for a cosmetic surgeon. Resting here on the rock spur he could see something else, too. The main road went by up there. The little side road he had just quitted went straight on down to the sea, to a derelict landing stage. And this rock spur went straight on down, too, right into the water. So how the devil did you get into the palace grounds?
He clambered higher and over the spur until he could see down the far side, and the riddle was solved. The palace had an extensive forecourt, with an ornamental garden and a drive that led down to a small plage, a place of tiles and seats and a limpid pool. But the private road led on, swung to the left and seemed to plunge headlong into the rock wall. So there had to be a gate, a way through and out into the road. That much was obvious, and he would have come to the gate had he gone on about ten minutes longer down the road. The implications were disturbing. This place was a fort! Only one way in, if you discounted the sea. And that meant there was also only one way out. A good agent, no matter how valiant, likes to know the way out if he has to run.
Solo looked again at the palace, and sighed. Hitching round his "camera" he rested it on a rock and ran out the telescopic lens. If this was Thrush it looked less like it than any place he had ever seen. It was like the concretization of somebody's fairy tale whim. Still, it had to be studied and he proceeded to do that. His acquaintance with architectural styles was meager but he knew enough to guess that this edifice was not of any particular style or period but the work of many hands and various whims. Getting a pinpoint focus he began raking the front, floor by floor. Spires, battlements, and then balconies—and not a sign of life anywhere. The light was against him, so that he couldn't have seen into any of the rooms had he wanted to. But all at once he caught a brief flash of movement and trained his lens back to one of the upper balconies.
There! Something moved, sharpened under his gentle fingers into a slim arm, a hand that moved and clutched something white and fluttering. A sheet, or a towel. In the next moment someone stood up and stretched in a luxurious yawn. He fingered the zoom wheel and the picture ballooned rapidly. A woman, turning now to look down and kick something away clear. She turned again and set her hands on the balcony edge.
Solo held his breath. He was no voyeur by choice, but this was a picture to be filed in memory for the sake of it. This was Countess Louise herself as few men could have seen her. Off-guard, unaware of observation and totally unclad, she was like some ancient Greek goddess come alive. Midnight-blue hair caught the sun and shone in a halo round her face. The same sun caressed the magnificent swells and curves of her shape, a shape that any model would have traded her soul to own.
A cynical voice at the back of Solo's mind told him that this woman was a cosmetic surgeon, that the curves were probably artifice, but the part of him that looked through his eyes denied it. This was artless perfection, and innocence. Caution tried to remind him that she was deadly dangerous, but caution was wasting its time. His hand slipped and he swore as he gently nursed the lenses back into line. He saw that she had moved a step or two, to stand by a curious dark object on the balcony wall. Just in time he realized what it was and ducked, turning away and sliding his camera around so that it was out of her sight. A telescope! He should have guessed she would have such a thing. Feeling her eyes on him he swung his head and went through the motions of staring at the scenery. In a while he risked a look in that direction again, and she had vanished out of sight.
He sat and pondered, hard. In the course of a highly exciting life he had learned the virtue of knowing when to run, but he had never learned to like doing it; nor did he now. This place was dangerous. That woman was dangerous. She had just caught him snooping. So his best bet was to depart from there, speedily. But he argued with himself.
"So I run!" he muttered. "Then what? On an island this size, where is there to go?" Having spiked that argument he went on to justify himself. He was playing the part of an irreverent and hard-necked tourist, wasn't he? All right, then, so he was snooping. What could be more natural? Why not carry it through? After all, nobody had taken a shot at him—not yet!
He sat still and surveyed the domain he had come to see. His gaze traveled down the front of the building, to the forecourt and grounds, along the path to the plage, and then on to the seafront itself. This was almost directly below him. Here someone had built two pier arms of stone faced with marble out into the sea so that they almost enclosed an area of about an acre of the lazuli-blue water, making it a natural pool. Or a harbor? There was a stone stairway rising out of the water that would be ideal for disembarking from a small boat. Then his eyes found something else.