North from Rome Read Online Free PDF Page A

perhaps it may have been a lie—to make me feel all is safe. But—” She took a deep breath. Her lips trembled for a moment. Suddenly, watching the fear she was trying to hide, he believed at least part of her story.
    He said, “Do your friends know that you are working against them?”
    Her face went rigid with surprise at his guess. Quickly, with a pathetic smile, she said, “Please—please pretend I’m finding out about you, instead of your finding out about me.”
    “And what do your friends want to learn about me?”
    “Why you are in Italy? Are you dangerous to them?”
    “Dangerous?” He was now amused. Her sense of the dramatic was more Italian than American, although her accent was practically regulation Miss Hewitt’s Classes. She must have lived for a number of years in the United States, been to school there. Her manners were the recognisable pattern of the well-brought-up Eastern girl. “Wellesley or Smith?” he asked suddenly.
    “Please take me seriously,” she said sharply. “And my college was Radcliffe.”
    “Then we’ve got Cambridge in common.” That was always a useful point of departure in any friendship. In a way, he thought, it was a pity that this one was going to be so short.
    “Take me seriously,” she repeated, her voice dropping. Her eyes were unhappy. Her smile was pleading.
    “How can I? I don’t know who you are. Or what you are really trying to tell me.”
    “Don’t leave Italy,” she said, turning her head to look at the traffic behind them in the busy street. If anyone had been lip reading her remarks, this little move would have defeated him neatly. “Please don’t go. I need your help.”
    “I don’t think your friends would approve of that suggestion. What’s their line of business, anyway?”
    She considered her answer for a long moment, and in the end she didn’t give it. “The sun is moving around,” she said, her voice as unhappy as her eyes. She pulled back her arm into the shade, and moved her chair a few inches into the narrowing shadows. “Soon we shall have to leave.” She glanced over once more at the table with the two men. One was a middle-aged English-looking type: he still sat there, reading a book. The other, a handsome dark-haired Italian in an expensive grey suit, had left. But his drink was unfinished. He could be visiting another table. Lammiter found himself suddenly, unexpectedly, sharing the girl’s tenseness. He looked at the reading Englishman—the thin haggard face and shadowed eyes seemed vaguely familiar, so did the lock of long wayward hair falling over the narrow upraised eyebrow—and then back at the girl.
    “Something wrong?” he asked her quietly.
    “I’ll soon know,” she said, watching the waiter approaching them. “Mr. Lammiter, can I say you’ve asked me to luncheon with you?”
    “Yes, you can say that.” But to whom? “And I hope you’ve accepted.”
    The waiter said, “Signorina Di Feo? Telephone for you, if, you please.”
    “Ah yes,” she said. “Thank you.” She looked at Lammiter, and rose slowly.
    “What comes before Di Feo?” he asked.
    “Rosana,” she said. She had a proud way of carrying her head, a most attractive and tantalising way of turning to give a glancing smile over her shoulder.
    “I’ll wait here until you get back. Don’t be long, or I’ll get sunstroke.”
    Then, as he settled down to wait, he wondered whether she would come back. If she really needed help, she would. And yet, where did that place him? He was leaving Rome tonight. What help could he give? It would be kinder if he walked away, so that when she came back to this table—if she did come back—she would know that he couldn’t give any help. Then she’d have to begin looking for some other obliging idiot. Yet he didn’t start counting out money to cover the two paper tabs that the waiter had left under the ashtray. He didn’t make one move to leave. Instead, he leaned back in his chair, felt the warm