A Pigeon Among the Cats by Josephine Bell Read Free Book Online

day in Rome. After that we go to Florence. You don’t suppose he’s likely to follow us there, do you?”
    â€œI wouldn’t put it past him,” Mrs. Chilton said gloomily.

Chapter Four
    When Owen strong recovered his temper after Gwen left him, he brushed his thinning hair, put on his tie and then his jacket and went down to the bar where he ordered an apricot drink and went to the telephone while it was being prepared to speak to a friend he addressed as Rollo.
    He lingered over his drink which he took to a small table near the hotel entrance. The friend had not far to come to the hotel, but for Owen the time dragged until he appeared.
    Rollo was small, middle-aged, shabbily dressed. He followed Owen into the dining room when it opened for the evening meal and ate heartily while the former did all the talking. Then, back in the lounge, Owen, sipping at first coffee, later a succession of brandies, the explanations were succeeded by orders.
    Owen’s Italian was good and though, seeing most of the hotel visitors were natives, he had to keep his voice low, his companion had no difficulty in taking Mr. Strong’s instructions. The Ambrosia Hotel, the tour coach ‘Roseanna’. Its route and time table and report back in an hour.
    â€œSi, signore. Prestissimo.”
    Rollo knew the Ambrosia. As a freelance journalist, far freer these days than he cared for, he prided himself on knowing all the Roman hotels and at least one member of the staff in each. In the bigger, the more opulent, this might be only the commissionaire who guarded the front entrance against his attempted invasion. More usually it was one of the kitchen underlings who could be bribed for a pitifully small handful of lire.
    As now. The big coach was garaged in the next street. It was being cleaned probably, unless Mario the driver was still tinkering with the engine.
    Rollo found two men at work on ‘Roseanna’. One, the big one in overalls, spanner in hand, other tools on the ground beside him, was leaning into the depths of the engine. The other, a thin boy in jeans and a filthy tee-shirt, was sweeping rubbish along the central aisle of the coach, pausing every now and then to pick up some piece more solid than the rest.
    â€œHere! I’ll have that,” Rollo said with a laugh holding out his hand.
    â€œAnything I find I keep,” the boy said. He was holding a glossy looking production that Rollo recognised as the brochure put out by the company that ran these particular tours. “So long as it don’t have the owner’s name on it.”
    â€œWell, has it?”
    â€œNo. So it’s mine.”
    â€œWhat’ll you take for it?”
    â€œI’d like to look at it. After that I might sell.”
    â€œI’ll give you twenty lire.”
    The boy put the brochure on a seat beyond Rollo’s reach and turned away, whistling a pop tune well known in all western Europe.
    Rollo, with a glance now and then at Mario, who showed signs of coming to the end of his engine inspection, gradually increased his offer while the boy slowly swept out the rest of the coach, taking the final heap of rubbish into a plastic bag he held at the top of the rear steps. The brochure had travelled beside him on the seats, the price had remained unfixed but had been slowly swelling.
    It was Mario who resolved the matter. He brought his body upright, he shut down the engine cover, he wiped his great hands on an oily rag that dangled from a pocket of his overalls. He walked down the length of the coach just as the boy finished disposing of his pile of rubbish. Mario leaned in over the boy’s shoulder to pick up the brochure.
    â€œI would like to have that, seeing it’s been discarded,” Rollo said.
    Mario turned it over. Certainly, it was unnamed.
    â€œHe says he owns any useful rubbish,” Rollo went on. “I offered to pay him for it”
    â€œHow much?” asked Mario.
    Rollo told