He walked right round the great Piazza before he came to his decision. He would, if possible, undo the damage. He would go back to the hotel and if Mr Mailer was no longer there he would seek him out at the trattoria where they had dined. Mailer was an habitué and his address might be known to the proprietor. I’ll do that! thought Barnaby.

He had never taken more distasteful action. As he entered by the revolving doors into the hotel foyer he found that all the tourists had gone but that Mr Mailer was still in conference with the ‘Etruscan’ couple.

He saw Barnaby at once and set his gaze on him without giving the smallest sign of recognition. He had been speaking to the ‘Etruscans’ and he went on speaking to them but with his eyes fixed on Barnaby’s. Barnaby thought: Now he’s cut me dead, and serve me bloody well right, and he walked steadily towards them.

As he drew near he heard Mr Mailer say:

‘Rome is so bewildering, is it not? Even after many visits? Perhaps I may be able to help you? A cicerone?’

‘Mr Mailer?’ Barnaby heard himself say. ‘I wonder if you remember me. Barnaby Grant.’

‘I remember you very well, Mr Grant.’

Silence.

Well, he thought, I’ll get on with it, and said: ‘I saw your reflection just now in that glass. I can’t imagine why I didn’t know you at once and can only plead a chronic absence of mind. When I was half-way round Navona the penny dropped and I came back in the hope that you would still be here.’ He turned to the ‘Etruscans’. ‘Please forgive me,’ said the wretched Barnaby, ‘I’m interrupting.’

Simultaneously they made deprecating noises and then the man, his whole face enlivened by that arrowhead smile, exclaimed: ‘But I am right! I cannot be mistaken! This is the Mr Barnaby Grant.’ He appealed to Mr Mailer. ‘I am right, am I not?’ His wife made a little crooning sound.

Mr Mailer said: ‘Indeed, yes. May I introduce: The Baron and Baroness Van der Veghel.’

They shook hands eagerly and were voluble. They had read all the books, both in Dutch (they were by birth Hollanders) and in English (they were citizens of the world) had his last (surely his greatest?) work actually with them—there was a coincidence! They turned to Mr Mailer. He, of course, had read it?

‘Indeed, yes,’ he said exactly as he had said it before. ‘Every word. I was completely riveted.’

He had used such an odd inflexion that Barnaby, already on edge, looked nervously at him but their companions were in full spate and interrupted each other in a recital of the excellencies of Barnaby’s works.