Read Street of the Five Moons for Free Online Page B

where I was staying, and fluttered my eyelashes and wriggled my hips at him, as if I hoped there was a more personal motive behind his interest. He responded, in an outrageous parody of male ego that would have been funny if I had not lost my sense of humor. If he had had a mustache he would have twirled it.
    My vanity was somewhat wilted as I retraced my steps toward the Piazza Navona; but as I walked on I began to hope that perhaps the incident hadn’t been so disastrous after all. I was at an impasse in my investigations; now the gang might be forced to make the next move.
    How right I was! I was only wrong about one thing. I expected it would take them a day or two to check up on me, so I didn’t anticipate trouble right away. Certainly not before nightfall. Instead they snatched me out of the Roman Forum, right under the noses of a thousand tourists.

Three

    I DREAMED ABOUT SPAGHETTI. WHEN I WOKE up I could still taste the garlic. I soon discovered that the taste came from the cloth that was wound over my mouth. I was blindfolded, too, and my wrists and ankles were tied. I was lying on a flat, fairly soft surface. That was the extent of my knowledge. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t see, and breathing wasn’t awfully easy either. I like garlic, but not on rough cotton cloth.
    I had a beast of a headache and a funny feeling in my stomach, which was mostly terror, but might also have been a reaction to the drug I had been given.
    It was the blindfold that made me panic. Once, when I was about twelve, I ran away from home and crept into a cave in the hills when night fell. I woke up in total darkness, and for a minute I couldn’t remember where I was. It was horrible. I still have nightmares, about it. This was even worse — this time I knew the unseen surroundings held danger, and not being able to see what form it would take made it harder to endure. I squirmed and strained at the ropes for some time — I don’t know how long, it seemed like an eternity. Then I got a grip on myself. I was only making things worse and my best hope was to get my wits about me and try to think. Though I had no doubt what had happened to me, I couldn’t imagine how they had managed it. The last thing I remembered was the sunlight on the weathered white columns of the Forum — the single column of Phocas, near the Rostrum, and the magnificent triad of the Temple of the Dioscuri. The dark pines and cypresses of the Palatine Hill made a fitting backdrop for that ruined splendor. The Palatine… Yes. I had been on the hill, later; I had climbed the paved slope toward the ruins of the imperial palaces. After that it was a complete blank. I forced myself to go back to the events I did remember.
    After leaving the antique shop I had had lunch at one of the open-air restaurants on the Piazza Navona. I could have sworn no one followed me there. The people at the nearby tables were all tourists: a young French couple, arguing angrily about money; a German family; a group of American Midwesterners gobbling down spaghetti as if they were all underweight, which they weren’t. The piazza was crowded, as it always is. Bernini’s great sculptured figures of the rivers poured out the flowing water, and some ragged little Roman urchins splashed in it, giggling, till a policeman came and chased them away. Across the piazza the facade of St. Agnese in Agone raised twisted towers into the sky. Cars and motorcycles roared around the oval track; just as the Roman chariots had raced around Domitian’s stadium in the bad old days. The piazza had replaced the stadium, but the spirit of speed lingered on.
    I looked suspiciously at the other pedestrians when I left the restaurant, but, as I had anticipated, it was impossible for me to tell whether anyone was after me — for purposes of violence, I mean. One little man, who barely reached my shoulder, trotted after me for half a mile, flashing his teeth in what he mistakenly believed to be an irresistible