Read Online Cause for Alarm by Eric Ambler - Free Book Online Page B

But it was obvious that his mind had not been on the soup stain which was, in any case, shaped more like the Isle of Wight. I put it down to the late Vittorio Saponi.
    “I think,” I said when I had finished, “that I’ll have a brandy with my coffee.”
    “Have you tried Strega yet, Mr. Marlow?”
    “No, but I think I’ll postpone that pleasure. I feel like brandy. Will you join me?”
    “Thanks.” He looked at me for a moment. Then:
    “Who else has asked you about Ferning, Mr. Marlow?”
    “A man who calls himself General Vagas. Do you know him?”
    “The guy that gets himself up like a rocking horse?”
    I laughed. “That sounds like him. Apparently he’s a Yugo-Slav. He wants me to go to dinner with him and his wife next week. Do you know anything about him?”
    “Not very much.” His expression had become quite blank.He was scarcely listening to me. Suddenly, he snapped his fingers and his face lit up in triumph. “Got it!” He beamed at me. “You know how it is, Mr. Marlow, when you kind of feel you’ve lost something somewhere and can’t quite think what? Well, that’s how I felt. But I’ve just remembered. In my office, I’ve got a photograph of Ferning. Would you like to see it?”
    I was rather disconcerted by this sudden interest.
    “Well, yes. I would. Perhaps I could look down some time to-morrow.”
    “To-morrow?” He looked at me incredulously. “Tomorrow nothing. We’ll call back in the office when we leave. I’ve got a bottle of brandy there. The real stuff. Not like this.”
    “I shouldn’t dream of bothering you.” I did not, in any case, feel like toiling back to the Via San Giulio at that time of night.
    But he was adamant. “It’s no bother at all, Mr. Marlow. Glad to be of assistance. I can’t think why I didn’t remember before. It’s only a snap, mind you, and not particularly good of him. He wanted some photographs for his identity card and I had a Kodak. I’d forgotten all about it until just now.” He changed the subject abruptly. “How are you getting on with Bellinetti?”
    “Not too badly,” I said cautiously. “He probably resents me a little.”
    “Sure, sure”—he nodded sagely—“only natural for a guy in his position.” He summoned the waiter and asked for the bill, which he discomforted me by insisting on paying.
    On our way back to the offices, however, he fell silent again. I concluded that he was regretting his earlier enthusiasm and suggested again that to-morrow would do just as well. The response was a stream of reassurance. He would not hear of my waiting. Besides, there was the cognac. Hehad been trying to remember exactly where he had put the photographs, that was all. We walked on. He was, I decided, a very curious man; not at all my idea of an American. But, then, the Englishman’s idea of what an American ought to look like and how an American ought to behave was notoriously wide of the mark. Still, he
was
odd. And there was a quality about him that attracted you. It wasn’t so much in
what
he said, but in the manner in which he said it. He had a way of disconcerting you with a gesture, with the way he timed his phrases. Yet you could not quite discover just why you had been disconcerted. You received the impression that you were watching a very competent actor using all the technical tricks in his repertoire in an effort to make something of a badly written part. There was something about him which cried out for analysis and yet defied it. I glanced sideways at him. His chin was tucked inside the thick grey muffler that he wore coiled twice round his neck; and he was staring fiercely at the ground in front of him as though he suspected the presence of a man-trap in the pavement. It was a portrait of a man with something on his mind.
    In his office, he switched on the desk lamp.
    It was a large room, larger than mine, and very neat and tidy, with a row of steel filing cabinets along one wall and a green steel desk to match. But