I read and reread that letter because it contained so much, most of which had to be inferred. Not well! Who could be, living with that bastard? There’s no doubt, women ought to have their marriages arranged for them—my God, the bastards they hook on to blithely! They—I used to think it served her right, him I mean, but after years of not caring, now I felt genuinely sorry for her; however, enough is enough. What was more important was Rick. God almighty! Pinkerton’s! It scared me so much, no matter how much I told myself she was exaggerating, that I couldn’t think of much else. What with having no book to write and Liz’s letter, I saw that it was time I moved on. I thought too that I’d better learn a bit about Halliday, since he must be behind the whole operation. I didn’t like the reference to his power. I began to have nightmares. They weren’t really bad ones but suffused with worry. I mean, in the diminished response that you can have in a dream to events that in “real” life would fill you with terror, it was worry I felt when my dream self was condemned to be hanged, not the terror I should have felt if it had been actual. For a man who doesn’t normally dream (no unconscious, as she used to say) they were a turn-up for the book. It was a pity about Kestrel and Emmy.

I packed my clothes, disposed of the load of post I’d brought back from Titograd and went to Rome, wearing my dark glasses. In the big city I tried to look Halliday up in reference books. It was odd. I couldn’t find him. Admittedly I looked in the wrong book, I looked in Who’s Who when I should have looked in Who’s Who in America, but after all Who’s Who has people like Fulbrights, ambassadors, Secretaries of State and all that lot—but no Halliday! I began to wonder and would have spent more time in Rome had it not been for a condensation of the thought that he was either not important enough or else too bloody important to go in with the rest of us riff-raff and a nightmare that did do more than worry me. It filled me with dread. I dreamed I was in Rome, which is where I was. I dreamed I saw one of those scrawled posters that news boys and girls keep by them and up to date, as it might be GUERRA? or something about a nun winning a lottery, SBALIO! This one, however, was DOV’È BARCLAY? I hurried on in my dream and then, as I might well have done in “real’’ life, hurried back to assure myself that I hadn’t been mistaken, but I couldn’t find it and I woke up sweating.