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

him the whole process of the bargaining.
    â€œGive him ten lire,” ordered Mario, handing the brochure to its new owner. The boy accepted the small final sum, stamped his foot, emptied his plastic bag over Rollo’s feet and shouldered his broom with a defiant gesture, tears running down his smooth brown cheeks.
    Mario burst into loud laughter. Rollo, shaking off the rubbish from his shoes, rolled up the plastic bag and slung it after the boy. It fell several yards short of him and he paid no notice, but walked on with bowed head, still suffering from his double failure.
    â€œYou go on again tomorrow?” Rollo asked as Mario turned away.
    â€œDay after. You can look it up in that book. Want to join us? We’ve several empty places. All Inglese, though.”
    He made a face of disgust, at which Rollo smiled.
    â€œNo young ones?”
    â€œA little junkie with idiot parents. A so-called widow, good-looker, but hysterical.”
    â€œThat all?”
    â€œBourgeois wives and dried-up spinsters. Bah!”
    He spat into the pile of rubbish. Rollo decided it was time to move away. He had done better than he expected and Signor Strong was not a patient man, though he paid well for his occasional small assignments.
    Owen was delighted to have the brochure; it was going to save him a lot of boring and perhaps rather dangerous work and a lot of time keeping tabs on this elusive project, this question of Gwen, calling herself Mrs. Chilton.
    He paid Rollo handsomely but got rid of him at once, with the usual warning to keep his mouth shut under pain of extreme penalties. The little journalist grinned knowingly as he took his leave, but he did not underrate the threat. There had been a fellow journalist who had gossipped about Signor Strong’s activities and had not been seen in Rome again. He had been found several months later in a smashed car at the foot of those high cliffs on the coast road between Sorrento and Amalfi. Rollo liked money; he seldom had enough for his careful needs. He was quite uninterested in his employer’s business. Secrecy was no effort, especially as it seemed to guarantee further employment, whereas the opposite, besides bringing retribution from Strong might also bring danger from the police.
    When Rollo had gone Owen turned his mind to his next problem. How much of what Gwen had told him, sitting in the pleasant shade at the cafe in the Plaza dei Populo was true, half true, or altogether false? She had lied about her relationship with that boss of hers. Not a husband, perhaps a lover, perhaps indeed a boss, but what kind of boss? Perhaps he should have got into contact with her in Geneva when he had seen her going into one of the banks with which he was very familiar. She had been nervous, but controlled. She had been carrying a large suitcase. She had kept him waiting a full hour, tinkering first with the engine of his car, then reading a Swiss newspaper, lounging behind the wheel. He had been dressed as a chauffeur and he had managed to slip into a convenient and legitimate parking place. But a whole hour! … No wonder he had been half asleep when she came out at last, carrying the suitcase that now looked suspiciously light from the way it swung in her hand.
    He was too slow. He had moved at last, had crossed the road where she had crossed. Was just behind her as she stopped a cruising taxi. But he heard her direction to the driver given in French. “To the airport — drive fast — a plane to catch for England. But first to the Universal for my luggage.”
    So, he had decided, he had lost out on that one. But after a day or two, playing his usual game, he had pulled off a useful move on the French Riviera and afterwards, making for Naples, had stopped at Genoa to visit the airport there. Purely on spec. These hordes of tourists. Sometimes, among them …
    Well, there it was. Gwen, easily remembered, with a tall, lean, elderly Englishwoman, country