His reactions were chaotic. He saw the man as if between the inclined heads of two lovers, and to the accompaniment of thunder and lightning. And whether the sensation that flooded him was one solely of terrified relief, or of a kind of blessed anticlimax he could never determine. He merely wondered, when the man advanced into the shade and drew an attaché case from under his jacket, if he himself was going to faint.

‘Mr Barnaby Grant?’ asked the man. ‘I think you will be pleased to see me, will you not?’

IV

They escaped from the Gallico which seemed to be over-run with housemaids to a very small caffè in a shaded by-way off the Piazza Navona, a short walk away. His companion had suggested it. ‘Unless, of course,’ he said archly, ‘you prefer something smarter—like the Colonna, for instance,’ and Barnaby had shuddered. He took his attaché case with him and, at his guest’s suggestion, unlocked it. There, in two looseleaf folders, lay his book, enclosed by giant-sized rubber bands. The last letter from his agent still lay on top, just as he had left it.

He had rather wildly offered his guest champagne cocktails, cognac, wine—anything—but when reminded that it was not yet ten o’clock in the morning settled for coffee. ‘Well then,’ he said, ‘at a more appropriate hour—you will let me—and in the meantime I must—well—of course.’

He slid his hand inside his jacket. His heart still thumped at it like a fist.

‘You are thinking of the reward so generously offered,’ said his companion. ‘But, please—no. No. It is out of the question. To have been of service even on so insignificant a scale to Barnaby Grant—that really is a golden reward. Believe me.’

Barnaby had not expected this and he at once felt he had committed a gigantic error in taste. He had been misled, he supposed, by general appearances: not only by the shabby alpaca jacket that had replaced the English tweed and like it was hooked over the shoulders, displaying a dingy open shirt with worn cuffs, nor by the black-green hat or the really lamentable shoes but by something indefinable in the man himself. I wish, he thought, I could take an instant liking to him. I owe him that, at the least.