I jumped up, shoved some money on the little table and hurried away, keeping a weather eye round most points of the compass, which enabled me to see the sinister speed with which a passing dropout removed my money from the table before the waiter could reach it. I kept assuring myself that I had not been mistaken—could not be mistaken. Oh yes, I remembered the line of Rick’s shoulder, his arm, his trousers made from the latest spinoff and those thick-soled imperial hoofers with which tourists keep a distance between themselves and the land they tread on. Yes. If I hadn’t been so preoccupied with calm pleasure in a sense of anonymity, I might even have seen him face to face. At this point I realized that my sense of security could not have influenced Rick. He would have seen me whether I had seen him or not. Or had I developed the chameleon’s power? Had I looked like an iron chair or a stretch of stone wall?

The sunglasses! That was why the morning sun was now trying my eyes! I had picked them up next door to the hotel when I strolled over. They had hidden all of my face except for my scraggy beard, and beards in Rome were thick as buttercups in a field. I must have been unrecognizable as a professional gentleman gathering evidence for divorce or espionage or shoplifting; and now, damn it, doubtless startled by remembering Rick, I remembered leaving them on the usual iron table. The round metal table. I thought for a moment that it would be too dangerous to return to Navona and get my spectacles back; but then I sneaked up on the square carefully, as a professional gent, and peered round the corner. Yes, my sunglasses were gone. There had been a raid by another dropout.

I felt very confused and by midday I had left the hotel (forwarding address: The Confederate Hotel, Roanoke, VA) and was driving in a direction which I thought would fox any pursuer. I drove east, reckoning that sideroads were the thing, so soon after the annulare I got on to them.

But if it wasn’t coincidence, how on earth could Rick have found out? If he were going on the evidence, he would now be on his way to Iceland. Certainly I had told no one. Customs had been indifferent, a young man who opened the passport and shut it again without looking—or had that been deliberate, to lull me into a sense of his indifference?

It was then that I slowed up and pulled into an open space at an elbow of road. I parked and switched off the engine. I said, Wilfred Barclay, you are still in shock. You should have waited a couple of days. Mary Lou had to see Rome and Dublin. They would see Rome, regretting perhaps that poor old Wilf had disappeared so inexplicably, but then it’s not just being a Brit, it’s being a writer. Put the two together, Mary Lou, and you just don’t know what they’ll do, rushing off. Why, look at Shelley and Noël Coward. No, hon, not together, separately. Hon, I know you majored in Eng. Lit., you were my favourite pupil, natch, oh I get it, it’s like poor Wilf would say, you’re tugging my leg. No, he’d say, you’re approaching my lower limbs with a view to exerting some traction. Ha Ha. Ha Ha Ha Ha. Ha Ha. Ha Ha. Ha Ha. Ha Ha. But what’s Mr Halliday going to say? From that point of view it’s real unkind of Wilf. After all, we only wanted to know about his past, particularly the juicy bits, and the occasional crime, let alone the infinite number of times he’s made a private clown of himself, what makes him tick in fact. He’s no right to hide any of that, hon. Why shouldn’t we make a meal of him?