hand pocket buttoned down. Miss Portrait and I talked late and early and it made everything much easier.”
“Do you love her more than me?”
“I’m not abnormal yet. Perhaps that’s bragging. But she’s lovely.”
“Where should we meet P”
“Should we have breakfast at the Florian, on the right hand side of the square? The square should be flooded and it will be fun to watch.”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes if you want me.”
“I want you,” the Colonel said and hung up.
Coming out of the telephone booth he, suddenly, did not feel good and then he felt as though the devil had him in an iron cage, built like an iron lung or an iron maiden, and he walked, gray-faced, to the concierge’s desk and said, in Italian, “Domenico, Ico, could you get me a glass of water, please?”
The concierge was gone and he leaned on the desk resting. He rested lightly and without illusion. Then the concierge was back with the glass of water, and he took four tablets of the type that you take two, and he continued resting as lightly as a hawk rests.
“Domenico,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I have something here in an envelope that you can put in the safe. It may be called for either by myself, in person, or in writing, or by the person you have just put that call through to. Would you like that in writing?”
“No. It would be unnecessary.”
