Read 1954 - Mission to Venice for Free Online Page B

Don and nodded. The tall, thin man moved casually after Don, fifty yards or so in the rear.
    Unaware that he was being followed, Don headed towards the Moderno Hotel.

    * * *

    At eleven thirty, Don found an empty table outside Florian’s cafe and sat down.
    The Piazza San Marco was still crowded. Across the way, under the shadow of the Procuratie Vecchie a band was playing Verdi’s march of the Long Trumpets, and its robust, stirring rhythm set Don’s foot tapping. Nearly every table in the vast square was taken. Groups of tourists stood about, watching the perspiring orchestra or staring up at the rich midnight blue sky, pinpointed with glittering stars.
    Don ordered a brandy, lit a cigarette and stretched out his long legs. He was no further forward in his quest. The manager at the Moderno Hotel had no information to give him about Tregarth.
    “Il signor Tregarth never comes to Venice in September,” he had told Don. “Always in July. This year he does not come. Next year perhaps.”
    And yet Tregarth was in Venice, Don said to himself, unless the postcard was a fake, but he doubted this. If it had been a fake, why hadn’t it been sent direct to Hilda Tregarth, and why had it been signed in the name of Saville?
    Everything now depended on the girl from the glass shop. If she failed him, he had a problem on his hands. He looked over the teeming piazza. He couldn’t hope to find her in this crush. She would have to find him. He had told her he would be outside Florian’s. He would have to be patient and hope she would come.
    A fat man sitting at a table a few yards from him, beckoned to a waiter, paid his bill and moved away towards the basilica. The man in the white hat came out of the shadows of the arcade and sat down at the vacant table. He ordered a brandy and opening an evening paper, he glanced casually at it.
    Don remembered seeing this man as he had left the Moderno Hotel. He remembered suddenly that he had also seen him soon after he had left Rossi’s shop. Now here he was again. Don’s mind alerted. He turned his chair slightly so he could examine the man without being too obvious.
    The man was swarthy, with a hooked nose, a thin mouth and deepset, glittering eyes. Although he was thin, Don guessed he could be immensely strong. Steel and whalebone, Don thought, glancing at the thin brown wrists that protruded beyond the slightly frayed cuffs of the white coat.
    A nasty customer, Don said to himself: vicious, and as quick as a lizard. He didn’t look Italian: he was probably Egyptian. As the man in the white hat turned his head, Don saw he was wearing gold rings in his ears. Again Don glanced over the crowded piazza, then looked at his wristwatch. It was now twenty minutes to twelve. It would take the girl at least ten minutes to reach the piazza from the Calle Formosa. He couldn’t expect her much before midnight.
    The man in the white hat hadn’t once looked in Don’s direction. He seemed completely absorbed in his newspaper, and Don began to wonder if the faint suspicion that had hold of him was a false alarm. He happened to have seen this man three times during the evening. Did that mean anything? Probably not, but there was no harm in keeping an eye on this swarthy-looking cutthroat.
    As the two bronze giants on top of the clock tower began to hammer out twelve ringing blows on the hanging bell, Don signaled to the waiter, paid his bill and casually stood up.
    The man in the white hat took no notice of him. He waved his empty glass at the waiter, calling for another brandy.
    Don edged his way free of the tables and took up a position outside Florian’s brightly-lit window.
    The man in the white hat didn’t even look to see where Don had gone, and Don’s suspicions subsided.
    Leaning against one of the arches on the arcade was the short, thickset man in black. He watched Don furtively.
    Don was now searching the moving mass of people in the piazza as they passed and repassed beneath the long