V.

"Are you going to watch?" the Gaucho asked, indignant. "Can't I have a little privacy? I am still a citizen of Florence. This was a republic once." Without waiting for a reply he entered a stall and shut the door behind him. "How do you expect me to escape?" he called jovially from inside. "Flush myself and swim away down the Arno?" While urinating he removed his collar and tie, scribbled a note to Cuernacabron on the back of the collar, reflected that occasionally the fox had his uses as well as the lion, replaced collar, tie and blindfold and stepped out.

"You decided to wear it after all," Angelo said.

"Testing my marksmanship." They both laughed. The tenente had stationed the other two guardie outside the door. "The man lacks charity," mused the Gaucho as they steered him back down the hall.

Soon he was in a private office, seated on a hard wooden chair. "Take the blindfold off," ordered a voice with an English accent. A wizened man, going bald, blinked at him across a desk.

"You are the Gaucho," he said.

"We can speak English if you like," the Gaucho said. Three of the guardie had withdrawn. The tenente and three plainclothesmen who looked to the Gaucho like state police stood ranged about the walls.

"You are perceptive," the balding man said.

The Gaucho decided to give at least the appearance of honesty. All the inglesi he knew seemed to have a fetish about playing cricket. "I am," he admitted. "Enough to know what this place is, your excellency."

The balding man smiled wistfully. "I am not the Consul-General," he said. "That is Major Percy Chapman, and he is occupied with other matters."

"Then I would guess," the Gaucho guessed, "that you are from the English Foreign Office. Cooperating with Italian police."

"Possibly. Since you seem to be of the inner circle in this matter, I presume you know why you have been brought here."

The possibility of a private arrangement with this man suddenly seemed plausible. He nodded.

"And we can talk honestly."

The Gaucho nodded again, grinning.

"Then let us start," the balding man said, "by your telling me all you know about Vheissu."

The Gaucho tugged perplexedly at one ear. Perhaps he had miscalculated, after all. "Venezuela, you mean?"

"I thought we had agreed not to fence. I said Vheissu."

All at once the Gaucho, for the first time since the jungles, felt afraid. When he answered it was with an insolence that rang hollow even to himself. "I know nothing about Vheissu," he said.

The balding man sighed. "Very well." He shuffled papers around on the desk for a moment. "Let us get down to the loathsome business of interrogation." He signaled to the three policemen, who closed swiftly in a triangle around the Gaucho.

VI

When old Godolphin awoke it was to a wash of red sunset through the window. It was a minute or two till he remembered where he was. His eyes flickered from the darkening ceiling to a flowered bouffant dress hanging on the door of the armoire, to a confusion of brushes, vials and jars on the dressing table, and then he remembered that this was the girl, Victoria's, room. She had brought him here to rest for a while. He sat up on the bed, peering about the room nervously. He knew he was in the Savoy, on the eastern side of the Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele. But where had she gone? She had said she would stay, keep watch over him, see that no harm came. Now she had disappeared. He looked at his watch, twisting the dial to catch the failing sunlight. He'd been asleep only an hour or so. She had wasted little time in leaving. He arose, walked to the window, stood gazing out over the square, watching the sun go down. The thought struck him that she might after all be one of the enemy. He turned furiously, dashed across the room, twisted the doorknob. The door was locked. Damn the weakness, this compulsion to beg shrift of any random passer-by! He felt betrayal welling up around him, eager to drown, to destroy. He had stepped into the confessional and found himself instead in an oubliette. He crossed swiftly to the dressing table, looking for something to force the door, and discovered a message, neatly indited on scented note paper, for him:

If you value your well-being as much as I do, please do not try to leave. Understand that I believe you and want to help you in your terrible need. I have gone to inform the British Consulate of what you have told me. I have had personal experience with them before; I know the Foreign Office to be highly capable and discreet. I shall return shortly after dark.