The bidding crawled slowly up to the one and a half million mark. Then Valdini astonished the whole room by changing his tactics. He jumped from one and a half to two millions. There was a note of triumph in his voice. He guessed the hotelier would not follow him to that figure.
His psychology was right. Mancini shrugged his shoulders as the auctioneer glanced at him enquiringly. Then he rose to his feet. The bidding was over. Mancini was making a grand exit as though washing his hands of a preposterous business. The auctioneer raised his hammer. This time his movement was quicker.
But as the hammer rose, a sharp firm voice said, 'Due e mezzo.'
The room gasped. Two and a half million lire!
Mancini sat down again, searching the room. For a moment there was not a sound. I looked across at Valdini. The beaming importance had been wiped from his face by this fresh bid. His features had a mean look. The auctioneer searched out and found the new bidder. He was a small, pallid man in a dark grey suit seated uncomfortably on an upright chair. He looked like an undertaker. His clothes did not suggest that he was worth a lot of money. Asked to repeat his bid, he did so in the same firm voice.
The auctioneer glanced at Valdini who nodded his head with a worried look and raised the bidding five hundred thousand. 'Tre million!.' The voice was firm and impersonal. It hushed the sudden outburst of excited conversation.
'This is incredible,' I said to Mayne.
His eyes were fixed intently on the new bidder. He did not hear me. I turned to Mancini. 'Who is the little man who is bidding?' I asked him.
'A lawyer from Venezia,' he said. 'He is a partner in a firm which works for big industrial enterprises. He, too, is bidding for a client.' His tone showed his concern. I think he was envisaging a big syndicate invading Cortina with money enough to put himself and his friends out of business.
Valdini suddenly jumped five hundred thousand. His voice was pitched a shade high as he made the bid. It was a violent gesture. 'Shock tactics,' I whispered to Mayne.
He was still watching the scene intently, his eyes narrowed. I noticed the knuckles of his hands were white where they gripped the chair. He was clearly very excited by the bidding. Suddenly he relaxed. 'What? — oh, shock tactics — yes. Valdini is near his limit.' And he turned away again, tense and watchful.
The little lawyer seemed to hesitate. He was watching Valdini closely. Valdini was nervous. His eyes darted here and there around the room. Everyone was watching him. Everyone sensed that he was approaching his limit. A gust of excited whisperings filled the room. The cold voice of the lawyer stilled it. Four million and one hundred thousand, he bid.
The room gasped. The lawyer was reckoning on Valdini's limit being four million. One glance at Valdini's face showed that he was right. The bidding had passed beyond him. Valdini asked permission of the auctioneer to telephone his client. Permission was refused. He pleaded. His client, he explained, had not expected the bidding to go so high. He suggested that the auctioneer himself had not expected it. It was fantastic. In such exceptional circumstances the auctioneer should permit him to refer to his client for instructions. The auctioneer refused.
He and the room waited in suspense, watching the workings of Valdini's mind. It was clear that he wanted to go on, but that he did not dare without further instructions. The hammer rose, hesitated as the auctioneer raised his eyebrows in Valdini's direction, and then finally fell.
The astonishing auction was over. The slittovia was sold to an unknown buyer.
CHAPTER THREE
MURDER FOR TWO
There was no celebration after the auction. The room split up into excited, gesticulating groups. Mancini went off to confer with half the hoteliers in Cortina. I don't know where Mayne went to — he just seemed to drift off on his own. I found myself having a lonely lunch at the Luna, trying to figure out what all this had to do with Engles.
When I got back to Col da Varda, there were several parties of skiers there, for the sun was still warm. I went straight up to my room and wrote out a report of the auction for Engles. By the time I went downstairs again the skiers had all gone. But Valdini was there. He was standing at the bar, drinking. He had a furtive look.
'You had bad luck,' I said for the sake of something to say.
He shrugged his shoulders. He would have liked to appear unconcerned. But he was very drunk. He could not control his features. He looked so wretchedly miserable that I felt almost sorry for the little bounder. 'Anyway, you had Mancini licked,' I encouraged him.
'Mancini,' he snarled. 'He is a fool. He knows nothing. But that other…' He suddenly burst into tears. It was a disgusting sight.
'I am sorry,' I said. I think my voice must have sounded rather stiff.
'Sorry!' he snarled with a sudden change of mood. 'Why should you be sorry? It is me — Stefan — who is sorry. I should be the proprietor here now. This place should be mine.' He made a grand wavering movement of his arm, and then added, 'Yes, mine — and everything in it.' And he peered forward at me cunningly.
'You mean it should belong to the Contessa Forelli, don't you?' I said.
His eyes focused on me soberly for a second. 'You know too much, Blair,' he said. 'You know too damn much.' He seemed to be turning something over in his mind. His expression was not a pleasant one. I remembered Mancini's description of him — 'a dirty little Sicilian gangster'. I had thought at the time that Mancini was just giving vent to his anger. But it occurred to me now that perhaps that was just what Valdini was. He looked ugly, and dangerous.
Footsteps sounded on the wooden boards of the belvedere and the door was thrown open. It was the Contessa, and she was in a blazing temper — it showed in her face and in her eyes and in the way she moved. She was all in white — white ski suit, white gloves, white tam-o'-shanter. Only her scarf and ski socks were red. She looked hard at Valdini. The little man seemed to curl up, deflated. Then she looked past me to the bar. 'Aldo!' she called.
The ape came running. She ordered cognac and went out to a table in the sun.
'I think your boss wants you,' I said to Valdini.
He glared at me. But he made no retort and followed Aldo and the cognac out on to the belvedere. When Aldo returned, he went behind the bar and produced a cable envelope. 'For you, signore,' he said, handing it across to me.
'When did this come?' I asked him in Italian.
This morning, signore. Just before you left. Emilio brought it up when he came to fetch you this morning.'
'Then why the hell didn't you give it to me?' I asked angrily. 'Can't you see it's a cable and therefore important?' He smiled sheepishly and spread his hands in the inevitable gesture that he used to explain all his shortcomings.
I ripped open the envelope. It was from Engles and read: Presume attending auction. Cable fullest report Mancini unbuy. Engles.
I folded the cable and put it in my pocket. He wanted a cabled report if Mancini was not the buyer. Had he expected there to be an unknown buyer at the auction? What difference could it make to him who bought Col da Varda? However, he wanted the information by cable and that meant going down to Cortina again. I decided to give myself a try-out on skis. I hadn't done any skiing since I had gone up to Tolmina from Rome, and that had been two years ago. I was just going to get my ski things when I remembered a question that I wanted to put to Aldo. It had been in my mind ever since Valdini had begun to bid at the auction.
'You remember you did not want to let us have rooms here?' I said to him in Italian. 'That was because Signor Valdini had instructed you to turn visitors away, wasn't it?'
He looked helplessly towards the belvedere. He was afraid to answer. But it was clear that I was right. 'Now importante,' I said. It looked as though Valdini and the Contessa had planned to close the place down as soon as the purchase had been completed. Why?