Eric Ambler - Cause for Alarm

“Vagas got away, you said?”

“Yes, he got away. I don’t even know if they’ve issued a warrant for him. Maybe not. What happened probably was that his wife, having spilled all the beans to the Ovra, couldn’t resist telling him that she had done so. When he knew that they knew he was a German agent, he knew that it was time he went. His pensioners have saved his bacon before, but he couldn’t rely on their being able to repeat the process. You can’t buy your way through all the time. Sooner or later you come up against folks who haven’t had their cut. Then you’re done. Vagas took it on the lam like any other sensible guy in his position would have done. He was darn lucky to have the chance, and he knew it.”

“What did you mean by saying that they’d found out about my reports? Madame Vagas may have known nothing about them.”

“Ah, I was coming to that. Tamara and I were in our office last night when they raided your place. Bellinetti was with them, sort of official guide, but your lad had gone home. I knew you were away, as I’d called you up at the Parigi about some dinner the evening before, and they’d told me. Well, I, as a respectable citizen wondering what the devil all the fuss was about, marched up and threatened them with the law. They were a dirty lot of thugs. They shot me out straightaway, of course; but I discovered two things. One was that Bellinetti didn’t know where you were, which was odd. The other thing was that they had found out about the poste restante business. As I barged in I heard one of them telling the others to look for any correspondence from a man named Venezetti. That clinched it. Nobody but Vagas’ wife could have known about that.”

I remembered something. “Vagas told her that he was meeting me that night on the autostrada. She sent her kind regards.”

“Oh, did she! Well, now you’ve got them. Vagas must have been crazy to trust her. But his own self-esteem would place her above suspicion.”

“Why should she start off by warning me and then do this?”

“She probably thought that having ignored her warning you had only yourself to blame. And then Vagas must have done something that sent her completely nuts.”

“You may be right. But what I can’t understand is why Bellinetti didn’t know where I was. I told Umberto. Incidentally, how did you know I’d gone to Rome. I tried to telephone you before I went, but there was no reply.”

He grinned. “Ah, that’s the rest of the story. I told you that they began again on your office this morning. Well, Tamara and I were downstairs pretty early. We hadn’t a ghost of a notion what had happened to you. I don’t mind telling you we were damnably worried. You might have gone straight back to the Parigi and been arrested. I went along to try and find out, but the place was alive with Ovra agents, and if I’d started asking after you there might have been some trouble. We decided that the best thing was to stay at the end of the telephone in case you’d found out what had happened and called us up. Then, towards ten o’clock there was a scratch at the door, and your lad-Umberto, is it? — slipped in with his knees knocking together and frightened out of his wits, wanting to know if I was a friend of yours. I told him yes. He said that he’d been questioned upstairs, and then told to go home until he was sent for again. He’d come to me because he was worried about you. He seems to like you, that kid. They’d asked him where you were, and they hadn’t asked any too gently, because he had a cut lip and a hand-mark on his cheek that looked pretty nasty. But he hadn’t told them. He’d said he didn’t know. It appears that he knew who and what they were, and was afraid for you.”

“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.”