Free North from Rome by Helen MacInnes Page B

river. Lammiter laughed. His driver half-turned his head, and the bike swerved sharply.
    “Nothing, nothing!” Lammiter yelled. And then he thought he ought to offer a plausible explanation. “I just thought of the people waking up from a siesta and cursing our noise.”
    “Noise?” The young man looked perplexed, listened for engine trouble, and then took the bridge over the Tiber at full throttle.
    But even after Lammiter, temporarily bowlegged, had dismounted and said goodbye to his benefactor (nameless and asking no name, just one of the friendly souls who offered a lift in the same spirit they’d accept it), he was still amused by the vision that had suddenly burst upon him as they roared down the twisting Janiculum road towards Father Tiber. It was a vision of someone most serious, who had indeed followed him into the villa, who must have come hurrying out too late, only to see Lammiter, complete with schoolbooks, perchedon the rear of a motor bicycle, careering down between the Janiculum trees. He would very much like to see the written report on the Afternoon of Signore William Lammiter.

7
    At the hotel, the porter’s desk announced with quiet triumph that there was space available on the midnight plane. Lammiter paid his last bill, told the porter he’d collect the ticket himself, and found his luggage in the entrance hall, where it had already been deposited. No doubt there was some new American in his room, standing on his balcony, smoking a cigarette, wondering about the Aurelian Wall which he overlooked, admiring the giant crowns of the huge pine trees beyond in the Gardens. He wished he could have had just one minute to say goodbye to that view. It had cheered him up on many a night in these last few weeks. He hadn’t been happy. But he had liked that balcony, the sunset, the moonrise, the flight of the swallows. It would have been pleasant just to have had one last look around from the balcony. But life wasn’t a playwright, drawing everything neatly into a final scene and last act. Life had away of surprising and not explaining and turning you out into the street without one moment for sentiment.
    Perhaps just as well, he thought: he hadn’t much time to waste now. It was just after four o’clock. And what would be the safest way to telephone Rosana? He was taking not the smallest chance that his movements weren’t of interest to Pirotta and his organisation—Rosana’s hated “friends”. As for his own role in this strange fantasy, he’d find out when he saw her. He’d find out a lot of things. That was the end purpose of the telephone call as far as he was concerned. Then he decided how he could both telephone and evade anyone following him. He made his way through the crowded lobby, and signalled to the doorman for a taxi from the cab rank across the street. “To the airport,” he told the doorman. He was conscious of a man who, circling vaguely around, now stood within earshot.
    He had come prepared for a touching farewell. His pocket was bulging with hundreds of lire notes (he’d be glad when it was empty of the tattered scraps of paper sticky with age: handling them, he began to understand the Wyoming cow-boys who wouldn’t touch dollar bills; they weren’t real money. Silver dollars might need leather-lined pockets but at least they felt and sounded like something) and his progress through the hall to the doorway was triumphant but embarrassing. Everyone, even the second facchino, who had once taken his shoes to the cobbler’s, had gathered nonchalantly along his route of dispersal. A taxi was waiting—and within one minute of his last goodbye, he was being driven down the Via Vittorio Veneto, past Doney’s where the post-siesta crowd was already on view (all washed and perfumed and powdered, bare heads shining and carefully dressed, fresh low-necked dresses with wide skirts swirling overtanned legs and bare-footed sandals), down into the business section of the city, past the