Night Journey by Winston Graham Page B

Canal. We crossed hastily to avoid one of the steam boats which bore down on us hooting dismally in the semi-darkness.
    A narrow canal on the other side. Slippery walls, slime-grown piles, a smell of darkness and decay. The tide was low. We were drawing up at a narrow landing stage with mooring poles and a tall green-painted door. The gondolier helped me out and smilingly accepted a twenty lire tip. I stood and watched him pole away cheerful into the darkness before I turned and pulled at the bell.

Chapter Seven
    She opened the door herself, and at once.
    â€œPlease come in. I’m real sorry for this mystery. Mind, there are two steps.”
    We went up narrow carpeted stairs into a neat little modern dining room; thess we crossed a passage and she pushed open a wrought-iron gate into a larger room with a finely moulded ceiling and long velvet curtains over Moorish windows. The furnishing was modern Italian work, chosen to match a few pieces that were plainly antique and valuable.
    So the lady was wealthy too. Her affair with Andrews had no grosser side. She was wearing a pale primrose-coloured frock, tight and rather long. I watched her cross the room with that characteristic, fastidious walk I had already come to recognise. She walked lile a cat picking its way among leaves.
    As she pulled the curtain to cut out a nick of light, I said: “ Does that look out on the Grand Canal?”
    â€œYes. I told the gondolier to come round the back way.”
    â€œThat was not the only back way he took. It was all in the best traditions of melodrama.”
    â€˜This work is often true to its traditions, Dr Mencken.”
    â€œI suppose so.”
    She looked at me from under her lashes. “ I don’t even know if I’ve done right to ask you here, but Major Dwight is already in Milan and Vernon Andrews has gone to Verona. I thought this the best thing to do—safer than saying anything over the telephone.”
    â€œSomething has gone wrong?”
    â€œI’m not sure, but I felt I had to warn you. All to-day you have been followed.”
    Worm twist in stomach, twist like falling from a height, like a dagger’s turn, like a sentence of death.
    Try to be casual. “ I wonder what that means.”
    She sat on the edge of a chair and picked up a silver embossed cigarette-box, offered me one. We lit up. It was an unfortunate moment for my hand to hold a match to her cigarette.
    â€œCaptain Bonini might wish to keep an eye on you over the week-end, for his own personal reasons,” she said. “Or the police may keep a general surveillance on people newly arrived from abroad. Anything is possible. But it means you mustn’t have any more contact with us—not merely for our sakes but for your own.”
    â€œYou’ll let Andrews know?”
    â€œOf course. It might mean some I change of arrangements after the conference.”
    â€œIf I reach the conference.”
    To my regret she inclined her head in grave agreement. I had wanted some reassurance. I stared across at the opposite wall which was decorated with a hanging of old Italian stamped leather, the design painted in once-brilliant tones on yellow lacquer.
    â€œHow do you know I am being followed?”
    â€œGiorgio reported to me. He is very reliable.”
    â€œWho is Giorgio and how does he know?”
    She shrugged apologetically. “It was an idea that Vernon Andrews had—just to have a man in your vicinity.”
    â€œTo make sure I was not playing a double game myself?”
    â€œOh, I shouldn’t think so. But it is routine to countercheck—certainty with Vernon. Normally of course Giorgio would have reported direct to him.”
    I thought this over. It would be particularly natural for a man like Andrews to have his doubts about a half-Germam.
    â€œIt can’t be the ordinary police,” I said. “ It might be the O. V. R.A. What do you instruct me to do?”
    She shrugged.