Kenneth Bulmer: The Key to Irunium

An odd thought occurred to him. Fritzy had said this was her first visit to Rome—or would have been had she reached the city—so the seductive Contessa di Montevarchi must have met her somewhere else. Interesting, though. He’d formed the obviously erroneous impression that Fritzy was still fresh from the nest, despite her job and her attitude.

He half expected the phone to ring again as he shaved.

He felt reasonably thrilled. After all, this was the first time he had entertained a real live contessa in his room in the early hours of the morning. Of course he knew well enough that only her friendship with Fritzy had really moved him; all the sophisticated allure he felt so strongly from this European woman would have meant absolutely nothing to him in the normal course of affairs. He was no sucker for sophistication. Even in their short acquaintance, his affection for Fritzy had mingled with pity over her attempts to ape the sophisticated.

The door opened quietly as he was shrugging into a lightweight gray jacket. He saw the door swing inward, saw the glimpse of marbled paper in the corridor blocked by a moving shape. Then he was striding angrily forward, waving his arms as though shooing sheep, and yelling. “What do you want, bursting into my room at this time of night! Go on, get out!”

His own vehemence astonished him.

The man in the doorway carefully transferred his hand from the doorknob outside to the doorknob inside. Next, moving with the deference of an impeccably trained butler of the old school, he closed the door and flicked the bolt home.

Prestin stood there, speechless with outraged indignation.

The man removed a shapeless flowing black cavalier hat and tossed it casually onto a chair. He smiled most charmingly at Prestin. The clothes he assumed were covered by a black caped cloak. Beneath that a tight mustard-and-pepper plus-four suit, almost a knickerbocker suit, screeched in a loud and unfashionable fashion. Prestin blinked. The man carried a thick and solid-looking silver-knobbed cane. He could, Prestin realized, have stepped right out of the 1890s.

“I am sorry to disturb you in this way, Mr. Prestin,” said his visitor.

Prestin recognized the voice.

“You’ve a damned cheek, Macklin. It is David Macklin, isn’t it? You did call me just now—?”

“And you told me to go to hell. Yes, that’s right.” Macklin’s laugh bubbled cheerily. His hair shone parchment white and profusely under the lights, an odd comparison for Prestin to make. His face, thin and yet with chubby ruddy cheeks, seamed with good humor, could have modeled for a Santa Claus on a diet. He appeared to be in perfect running order, as old as he might be. A certain dapper briskness about him, a gesture of slender yellowish hands, a pert turn of the head, or a turn of phrase, all added up to present Prestin with the picture of an oldster perfectly capable of keeping his end up in any weather.

“I’m expecting a visitor,” said Prestin with what he hoped was a finality that he had, disastrously, begun to lose. This man Macklin possessed an aura. It snapped from his eyes and hypnotized Prestin with a realization that here stood no ordinary man. He felt resentful of that.

“A visitor, eh, Prestin. And a pound to a pinch of moondust she’s the Montevarchi.”

“How the hell–?”

“Don’t be so indignant, laddie. Simmer down. D’you mind if I rest my old bones? No—” He sat down with a firm and controlled movement and quirked a hard eye up at Prestin. “No laddie. If we’re to work together I won’t pull the old Falstaff tricks on you. You deserve better of me than that.”

“You do me an honor.” Prestin clasped both hands behind his back. “Now, if you don’t mind, I would like you to leave.”

“I’ve told you, Prestin, we must work together. I’m an old man but I still have my strength and yet, and yet I need a younger and stronger man to aid me now—”

Prestin made a grimace. “You mentioned you’d put the old Falstaffian tricks away. You do not impress me. I am ringing for the manager and I would advise you to leave.”

Prestin crossed to the telephone, put out his hand.

He did not hear Macklin move.

His hand quivered inches away from the phone, moving forward slowly to give time, he thought, for Macklin to climb down decently and remove himself. His hand almost touched the phone.

The black stick crashed down hard on the table alongside the phone, scraping his fingers. The phone went tinnggg and joggled in its cradle. Prestin snatched his hand back as though he’d been about to shake hands with a cottonmouth.

“Take it easy, you maniac! Here—” He turned abruptly, with some idea of snatching the stick away.

Macklin stood there, swaying slightly, eyeing him with lordly insolence, the stick half raised.

“I suppose,” Macklin said in a. drawling voice, “the Montevarchi told you she was a bosom friend of poor Miss Upjohn? Yes,” he nodded. “Yes, she would. I have never met Miss Upjohn. Until she—ah—disappeared from the Trident I had never heard of her, or of you. And neither had the Contessa!”

“But she said—”

“Act your age, boy! Think! Use what brains God gave you!”

“Well–”

“Yes. You’ll find out that in this business you can never take anything at face value. Even me.” He chuckled with wet sardonic humor. “Especially me.”

“What business? What are you talking about, anyway?” Prestin felt uncomfortably aware that something or other—he had no idea what—was going on and he had been dumped right in the middle of it all, paddle-less.

“If you’re going to spin me a cock-and-bull story about spies and secret agents or dope and guff like that, save it. I’ve had mine.”

Macklin shot him a sharp glance from beneath those tufty eyebrows. “What do you mean, you’ve had yours?”

“I was involved with a stupid spy—aviation is riddled with them—and the idiot got himself shot. I kept my name out of it at the time. If you have anything to do with all that old stuff, I’ll complain to Colonel Black. He promised me—”

“I have nothing, my dear boy, to do with your debauched past except in one particular.”

“What’s that?”

Macklin laughed and resumed his seat, laying the stick across his mustard-and-peppered knees. “You are direct. Good. I have found out a great deal about you in the time you have been in Rome. But I know full well that the Contessa has too. She has an organization almost as efficient as mine.”

Prestin wished he hadn’t given up smoking. Confusion annoyed him. Colonel Black—no names, no pack drill—had promised him. The spy had been shot, the secrets had been kept safe, and Prestin had discreetly faded out. And now this. Could Fritzy have been another spy? Act your age, son…

“How does finding out about me help us find Fritzy?”

Macklin kept a hard, sparrow-bright eye fixed on Prestin. “If the Montevarchi is to visit you she will be here shortly. My friend in London knew you well enough; he, too, has many contacts in the world of aviation journalism, as well as in other less fantastic worlds.”

Prestin didn’t follow that remark and, despite his own feelings of urgency, had to ask, “What’s fantastic about aviation journalism?”

“Not necessarily the journalism, my boy. But your sort of people live in the clouds; you young aviators, you don’t know what goes on in the real world. Any bright young man in any air force feeds on a peculiar heady atmosphere generated by his service. It’s fed by pride and snap and the proficiency of weapons and aircraft—my God! You kids play with toys that can smash the entire world!”

“Don’t you think they know that?”

“They know it, yes, in their heads. But do they feel what it is that they may smash up? What do they know about life as a civvy has to live it—facing unemployment, the knife-edge of employers’ displeasure, or sickness with no comfortable base hospital—they’re all the trifling little worries that gnaw a civilian into baldness and your grand bemedaled aviators know nothing about them!”