A JOURNEY TO THE DOLOMITES
I had seen all the rushes of the film, but it was the first time I had sat through the full cut version. The rushes had been pure routine, short slashes of film to be viewed critically for alterations and cuts. They had meant no more to me than pages torn at random from a manuscript. They were strips of celluloid to be coldbloodedly hammered into shape.
But this was different — to sit there in the dark of the Studio theatre and have the whole grim story retold on the screen. It wasn't, of course, exactly the way it had happened. It couldn't be. No audience would have stood for it told that way. We had twisted it about a good deal to make a straight story of it. But it was all there, so that, with a bag of sticky sweets and hot hands clasped in the dark, any one with a couple of bob to spare could lose themselves for an hour and twenty-three minutes and live in the atmosphere of tension and fear in which we had lived in that chalet in the heart of the Dolomites.
The film opened with an approaching shot of the chalet from the slittovia, just as I had seen it that first time. And as the cable sleigh neared the chalet, I lost all critical sense in my absorption in the story. For I knew what the inside of the hut would look like before the camera planed in through the window. I knew who would be there and what they would be saying. I sat and lived the story all over again.
You may say — how could I help knowing who would be there and what they would be saying since I had written the script? That is true. But it is one thing to make up a story; quite another to have written of things that actually happened — written with the dead, so to speak, looking over my shoulder. It was Engles' idea — to film a thriller that had really happened. He it was who had introduced me to the characters, helped to set the stage and had had a large part in directing the events of the story. He had even given me the title — typed it out in black and white with fingers already grown stiff and cold. The fact that I had written the script and another man had directed the film, did not prevent it from seeming somehow entirely his work.
Thus, to me, the final version had something of a nightmare quality. And as the story I knew so well unfolded, each character on the screen transformed itself in the sockets of my brain and took on new features — features I had known. It was not the actors playing their parts that I saw, but the real people as they had once been. It was like a parade of ghosts. So many of them were dead. And I had come so near to death myself out there on the cold snow slopes below Monte Cristallo.
The story was so vivid in my mind. I did not need thousands of feet of film made at a cost of over £100,000 to recall it. Let the dead lie buried, not march like pale spectres out of a strip of celluloid, mouthing words they had once uttered when they were flesh and blood. It was unnatural and somehow rather horrible to sit there in a comfortable seat and see the whole thing neatly tied up with box office ticket ribbons ready for sale to the public.
This must sound a pretty strange opening to a story that has nothing of ghosts in it, but which tells of an ill-assorted group of people, of greed and violence in a strange setting. If I have begun at the wrong end, it is because it was after seeing the neat little parcel we had made of the film that I had the urge to tell the story exactly as it happened to me. I don't want to see the film again — ever. However big a success it is — and it has all the ingredients of success — I have seen all I want to see of it. Now I'll tell the story once and for all just as it happened. Then perhaps my mind will be exhausted with the telling of it and I shall be able to forget all about it.
Like most of the startling events in life, I stumbled into it quite by chance. It was the First of December — a grey, wet day that fitted my mood — and it was in a chemist's shop of all places. Derek Engles was standing at the dispensing counter, drinking a dark fizzy pick-me-up out of a beaker. He caught my eye over the rim of it and frowned. He always liked people to believe that drink had no effect on his constitution. He took liquor like most people take food. His brain worked best that way. Everything he did and said had to be whipped up, and drink was the stimulant. He never ate breakfast and cured his hangovers by secretly consuming aspirin, which he always carried about with him.
I don't know why he was in Shaftesbury Avenue that morning. It was just one of those things that happen. Sometimes Fate puts on a kindly mask and shakes up the pieces so that the right ones meet at the right moment. This was one of those occasions.
They say that things always work out for the best. But people who make that statement are always lapped in smug security at the time. I agree that life is cumulative and that the threads of each defined period of a man's life are woven into the pattern. But it is not always possible to pick up the right thread just at the moment when you need it most. And I was feeling pretty desperate when I met Engles.
Before the war I had had a nice little family business — a local paper in Wiltshire. But that went under and when I had been overseas three years and became due for release, I found I had no job to go back to. I was longing to get back to Peggy and the kid, but we agreed there was nothing for it but to sign on for another year. Then a friend of mine suggested starting up a publishing business in Exeter. He asked me to join him in the venture. When I came out we put all we had into it. It lasted six months — the paper shortage and lack of capital were too much for us.
I wrote to everyone I knew — people I had known before the war and contacts I had made in the Army. I combed the 'Situations Vacant' columns in the papers. But there were too many of us in the same boat. I sent Peggy and Michael back to our cottage in Wiltshire and here I was in London in search of a job.
It was five years since I had seen London, and in the meantime I had been halfway round the world. I had run big towns in Italy and Austria. I had lived in the best hotels in Europe. I had had servants and transport. And that morning I stood in the rain in Piccadilly Circus, an unimportant molecule in the great flood of London, feeling alone and a little lost. I was excited and at the same time depressed. Excited, because London is an exciting place. From Westminster to the City you can climb dingy stairs to offices whose ramifications cover the entire living globe. Anything is possible in London. The whole world seems to be under your hand. If you have the right contact and are the right man for the job, London holds the key to every country in the world. But I was also depressed, for there is no city in which you can feel so small and lonely and lost as London, especially if you have no job.
But because I needed some toothpaste as well as a job, I strolled up Shaftesbury Avenue and walked into the first chemist's I saw. And there was Engles.
I had been his Battery Captain back in 1942. We had gone overseas together. But after Alamein, he had transferred to the Intelligence and I had taken the Battery into Italy and had finished up as a Town Major. He had been an exacting Battery Commander. He had broken my two predecessors and everyone had said that I wouldn't last six weeks. But I had. I had even enjoyed working with him. He had been brilliant, moody and erratic. But he had an exciting personality and terrific drive and energy when things were difficult. Now he was back in films and, according to the papers, his directing of K. M. Studios' latest production, The Three Tombstones, had put him right at the top.
He nodded casually at my greeting, put the empty beaker down on the counter and looked hard at me for a moment as I made my purchase.
'What are you doing now, Neil?' he asked at length. He had a quick abrupt way of speaking as though his tongue worked too slowly for his mind.
'I haven't been back very long,' I told him. I had heard him sneer at failure too often to let him know the truth.
'Demobilised?'
'Yes.'
'You've been in a long time, haven't you?'
'Yes. I signed on for an extra year.'
'A good-time Charlie, eh?' he jeered.
'I don't get you,' I said. But I knew what he meant. Living conditions had been pretty good at the end — much better than at home.
He gave a harsh laugh. 'You know very well what I mean. All the bright boys were getting out when I left nearly eighteen months ago. The only ones staying on, apart from the regulars, were the duds and the adventurers — and the good-time Charlies. That's what is wrong with our European administration. There's no real future in the job, so it doesn't appeal to the sort of men we ought to have out there. Well, which category do you put yourself in?'
'Of the three categories you mention,' I replied, 'I think I'd prefer to be classed among the adventurers.' My voice sounded sullen. I couldn't help it. I was angry. I wasn't going to tell him how I had hated signing on for that extra year, when I had seen so little of Peggy since we had been married and I had barely seen the kid since he was born. And I felt uncomfortable, too. In the old days I had managed to stand up to Engles; not because my personality was as strong as his, but because I knew my job. But to face up to his volatile and domineering personality now, when things were going badly, was too much. I wanted to rush out of that shop before he pried too deeply into my circumstances.
'And now you're back,' he said. 'Still running that tuppenny ha'penny little rag down in Wiltshire?'
'No, that went smash,' I told him.
His dark eyes were watching me closely. 'Then what are you doing now?'
'I started a small publishing house with a friend,' I replied. 'What about you — are you working on another film now?'
But he wasn't to be put off so easily. 'It needs a lot of money to start up in publishing these days,' he said, still watching me. 'A whole crop of them sprang up like mushrooms soon after the war. They're mostly in difficulties now.' He hesitated. Then suddenly he gave me a queer puckish smile. He could be charming. He could turn it on like a tap. He could also be a cruel, sneering devil. But suddenly, there was the well-remembered smile and I felt a great relief as I realised that, despite his hangover, it was to be charm this morning. 'I think you need a drink,' he said. 'I know I do after that filthy stuff.' And he took my arm and led me out of the shop. As we crossed the road, he said, 'Done any more writing, Neil? Those two one-act plays of yours I produced on the ship going out — they weren't bad, you know.'
'I wrote a play whilst I was in Austria,' I told him. 'But you know what the theatre has been like — nothing but musicals and revivals. Even established playwrights can't get a theatre. And anyway, I doubt if it was good enough.'
'You sound as miserable as hell,' he said. 'Life is fun. Don't take it so seriously. Something always turns up at the last moment. Do you want a job?'
I stopped then. I could have hit him. His unfailing instinct for a man's weakness had told him I hadn't got a job and he was going to enjoy my discomfort. He was ruthless, unscrupulous. How he hated failure! How he revelled in attacking any man at his weakest point! It was incredible how that Welsh intuition of his smelled out a man's weakness. 'Life may be fun,' I said angrily. 'But it isn't as funny as all that.'
'Come on to the pavement,' he said. 'It's a lot safer. So you think I'm not serious?'
'I think you're behaving stupidly,' I snapped back at him. I was goaded by the thought that I had worked with this man on terms of equality and now he was in a position to cast me crumbs for the amusement of watching my reactions.
He took my arm in a firm grip and steered me through the glass door of a long gin palace of a saloon bar. He ordered whiskies. 'Here's fun!' he said, and raised his glass mockingly at me. He was laughing. It showed in his eyes. 'You think I'm not serious, eh?" he said. 'I am, you know — quite serious. Do you want a job or not?'
I downed my whisky at a gulp and ordered another round. 'I don't want your charity or your sneers,' I said. I was feeling very bitter.
'My God! You're prickly,' he said. 'But then you always were. Did you ever know me charitable? I seem to remember you telling me — more than once — that I was the most ruthless person you had ever met. Just because I wouldn't stand incompetence. It's a strange thing, but just at the moment I can't think of any one I would rather have run into. But life's like that. If you want a job done, the right man always turns up at the last minute. There are only about a half-dozen men I met in the Army who would be right for a job I have in mind. And if they'd all applied for it in a bunch, I'd have picked on you without a moment's hesitation.' The build-up was obvious. But I began to be interested. Engles never bothered to build any one up unless he really wanted to make use of them. He gave me a sudden warm smile. 'You know — I'm quite serious, Neil. If you want a job, I'd be glad to have you work with me again.'
'What sort of a job is it?' I asked.
'Three months at Cortina in the Dolomites as a script writer for K.M. Studios,' he replied quickly. 'A hundred pounds a month and all expenses.'
I gasped. It was the chance of a lifetime and I had walked bang into it in a chemist's shop. But why me? 'What makes you think I can produce the sort of script you want?' I asked him.
'I don't want you to produce a script, I've got one already.'
'Then what in the world do you want me to do?'
He reacted immediately to my disappointment. He patted my shoulder. 'Three months in the finest skiing country in Europe isn't a bad offer,' he said.
'I know,' I said hastily. 'But I couldn't help being disappointed. You offer me a job as a script writer, and then you say you don't want a script. You know I always wanted to be a writer.'
'I didn't mean to disappoint you,' he said. 'Look, Neil. It's best to be frank with you. I don't think you could write the sort of film script I want. But if you do write one, I'll promise you this — I'll read it and if I can use it in preference to the one I've got, I will. That's fair, eh?'
'Very fair,' I agreed. 'Now, what do you really want me to do?'
'You speak Italian, don't you?' he asked.
'Enough to get around,' I replied.
'Good!' He smiled. 'Since you class yourself among the adventurers, you might find this quite amusing. On the other hand, it may be a complete wash-out. In which case you will have to be content with three months' holiday in the Dolomites. It's just a hunch I have about something. I can't follow it up myself. I'm finishing off my next film. What I need is somebody I can trust to hold a watching brief for me and keep me informed — somebody with a sense of responsibility and plenty of initiative. You're just the man.'
'Thanks for the build-up,' I said. I was becoming excited despite my previous disappointment. Engles' excitement was always infectious.
He laughed. 'That's not a build-up. You just happen to possess those qualities. You can also write, and that gives me a pretext for sending you out. Now — do you want the job?'
'Well, what is the job?' I asked him.
'For God's sake, Neil!' he cried. 'Do you want it or don't you?'
'Of course I do,' I replied. 'I need a job badly. But naturally I want to know what the job is. How else can I tell whether I can do it?'
'You should know me better,' he said in a quieter tone. 'I wouldn't be offering you the job if I didn't think you could do it. Now, are you going to take it or not?'
'I'd like to,' I said.
'Fine!' And he ordered another round before I was halfway through my own drink. 'Just a final,' he said, 'whilst I tell you what I want you to do. Then I must dash or I'll miss my train. Do you know Cortina?'
I shook my head. I knew of it, of course. We had taken it over as a leave centre for our troops at the end of the war.
'Doesn't matter,' he went on. 'I plan to do a film there. There's not enough movement in modern films. Too much of the play about them. That's why Westerns are so popular. The studios seem to think people go the cinema to listen. They don't. They go to watch. There's a colossal market waiting for a fast-moving ski picture. Plenty of spills and thrills. The world has gone crazy about sport — artificial excitement to replace the excitement of war. But I've got to convince my Studios first. I'm sending a fat, sluggish ape called Joe Wesson, who just happens to be a first-class cameraman, over to take some pictures that will convince K.M. Studios that I'm right. You'll go with him to do the script. That's just an excuse to get you the permit. I don't give a damn whether you write a script or not, but you'd better try. Joe Wesson will expect it. To everyone else but me you're there to write a script. You'll be on the Studios' pay-roll as a script writer. I'll fix that.'
He lit a cigarette. 'You'll stay at a place called Col da Varda,' he went on. 'It's about five miles north of Cortina. It's little more than a rifugio, but it's got bedrooms: I've booked accommodation for two already. You go up to the Passo Tre Croci and take a cable-sleigh — slittovia, the Ityes call them — up to the hut. Make a pretence of writing and watch everyone who comes up there. Particularly, watch for this girl.' He produced a photograph from his wallet and handed it tome.
It was a very faded and much-worn photograph of the head and undraped shoulders of a girl. It had been taken in Berlin and scrawled across the bottom was — 'Fur Heinrich, mein liebling — Carla.'
'She's Italian,' he said. I could see that. She had dark hair and eyes and a wide full mouth. There was something very animal about that face and the eyes had a glittering hardness. It reminded me of some of the pictures of girls I had seen in the Vice Squad's index of prostitutes shortly after the fall of Rome.
'Understand, I don't want you to do anything,' Engles continued. 'I just want you to keep your eyes open. I'm interested in the slittovia and the hut, the people who are staying there, regular visitors, anything unusual that happens. I'm not going to tell you anything about it. If you keep your eyes and ears open, you'll probably come to know as much about the business as I do. But, / don't want you to do anything. Send me a daily report. If there's anything startling, cable me at the Studios. Send your reports Air Mail. Is all that clear?'
'As mud,' I said.
He grinned. 'That's about as clear as I wanted it to be. See my secretary tomorrow. She'll fix everything for you.' He glanced at his watch and drained his drink. 'I'll just make it,' he said. 'It'll be a three months' engagement and, if my hunch turns out right, you might find yourself nicely set up. At worst you might produce a script I could use. You leave for Cortina the day after tomorrow.'
With that he clapped me on the back and hurried out, leaving me slightly bewildered, but feeling suddenly that the world was an exciting place and life worth living again. Here was a chance to write a film script handed me on a platter. I had several more drinks at that bar, savouring the excitement of the moment with the warmth of the whisky. If I wrote a script — and it were good enough — Engles, I knew, would keep his word. I did not spare much thought for the private assignment he had given me. I did not know then that it was to oust from my mind any thought of writing a script until I wrote of the actual events that occurred at Col da Varda.
When I got back to the cottage that night Peggy met me at the door and she saw at once that our luck had turned. Her face lit up. We laughed together over the strangeness of it all and went out to celebrate, spending money without thought for the first time in months, planning the script I should write. The fact that we were to be separated again didn't seem to matter. It was for a short time and we were people with a future if we could grasp hold of it.
So it was that, two days later, I found myself sharing a carriage with Joe Wesson. Engles' description of him as 'a fat, sluggish ape' was cruel, but not inappropriate. He had heavy features. The skin below the sockets of his eyes was dragged down by great pouches. His cheeks swept in ample folds to his splendid chins and flapped like dewlaps as he talked. He weighed, I should guess, over fifteen stone. He was, in fact, one of the most impressive figures I have ever seen and to watch him fitting himself into his sleeping berth was as good as a visit to the panda's cage at the London Zoo.
He was in a furious temper when he joined me on the platform at Victoria. He had a hangover and obviously hated travel. 'You're Neil Blair, are you?' he said. He was panting, but for all that he was quick enough on his feet. 'I'm Joe Wesson. We've been had for a couple of mugs, blast Engles' God-damned soul! Why couldn't he convince the Studios himself without sending us to shiver on a Dolomite, taking pictures and writing scripts?' He heaved his gear on to the rack. 'The Studios will do what he says anyway. He could just as well talk them into it. He's got a tongue, and 'tisn't as though it's rusty. But he must have the whole circus running around full of the same idea.' He fitted himself into a corner seat facing the engine and, as though to bear out Engles' theories, brought out a stack of Westerns, picked up the top one and settled himself to read.
He worked his way steadily down through that pile of Westerns as we crossed the Channel and the train rattled across France and through Switzerland — that is, when he wasn't taking on food or drink, both of which he did noisily and in large quantities, or when he wasn't sleeping, which he did even more noisily, snoring with a strange series of grunts that ended in a slight long-drawn-out whistle.
He didn't talk much. But once he leaned across in a 1C friendly way and said, 'New to the K.M. set-up, aren't you, old man?' He had a queer way of jerking his sentences out as though he were always short of breath. When I told him I was, he shook his head so that his cheeks quivered. 'Good firm when you're on top, but God help you when you're not. They're a hard lot. Can't afford to make a mistake with them. If you do—' he snapped his fingers expressively — 'you're finished. Engles is their big man at the moment. He may last one year. He may last five. Worked with him before?'
I told him what my previous association with Engles was. 'Ah!' he said. 'Then you probably know him better than I do. Get to know men when you live with them like that. He can be charming. And then again he can be a devil. Most ruthless director I ever worked with. If a star doesn't toe the line, they're out — he'll get a new star or make one. That's how Lyn Barin jumped to fame in The Three Tombstones. The original star was Betty Carew. She threw a fit of temperament — wanted scenes played her own way. Engles chucked her off the set. His language was a poem in Technicolor. Next day he had the Barin girl there. No one had ever heard of her. And he made her a star right there on the set. He got the acting he wanted and the film was the better for it. Betty Carew had done good work for K.M. But she's washed up now.' He heaved a sigh. 'Why you blokes ever come out of the Army, God knows! You're safe there. Nobody can throw you out unless you do something stupid.' Then he suddenly smiled. His smile was quite delightful. His face, for all its loose flesh, was strangely expressive. 'Still, I admit I wouldn't change places with 'em. Life's a fight anyway. There's no fun in knowing you're safe whether your work is good or bad.' And he returned with a deep sigh of contentment to his Westerns.
It was dark and the snow was falling when we arrived at Cortina. Once out of the lights of the station our sense of pleasure at having finished the journey was damped by the blanket of steadily falling snow. The soft sound of it was audible in the still night. It hid the lights of the little town and muffled the chained wheels of the hotel bus.
Cortina is like all winter sports' resorts. It is a veneer of civilisation's luxuries planted by hotel-keepers in the heart of a wild country of forests, snow and jagged peaks. Because of the lateness of our arrival, we had arranged to stay the first night at the Splendido and go on up to Col da Varda the next day.
As soon as we passed through the Splendido's swing doors, the glittering palace lapped its luxury round us like a hot bath. In every room central heating thrust back the cold of the outside world. There were soft lights, dance bands, and the gleam of silver. Italian waiters, with a hundred different drinks, threaded their way through a colourful mob of men and women from a dozen different countries. Everything was laid on — ski instructors, skating instructors, transport to the main runs, ice hockey matches, ski jumping. It was like a department store in which the thrills of the snow country can be bought at so much a yard. And outside the snow fell heavily.
I picked up a pile of brochures on Cortina whilst waiting for dinner. One announced it as 'the sunny snow paradise in the Dolomites'. Another became lyrical over the rocky peaks, describing them as 'pinnacles rising out of the snow and looking like flames mounting into the Blue Sky'. They spoke with awe of fifty-eight different ski runs and, referring to summer sport at Cortina, stated, 'it is almost impossible to be tired at Cortina: Ride before breakfast, golf before lunch, tennis in the afternoon and a quick bath before dressing for dinner — still one is ready to dance until the early hours.' Nothing out of the ordinary could happen here, I felt. They had made a playground of the cold snow, and the grim Dolomite bastions were pretty peaks to be admired at sunset with a dry Martini.
Joe Wesson had something of the same reaction. He suddenly materialised at my elbow. He wore rubber-soled shoes and moved quietly for such a large man. 'Not a hair out of place, eh?' he said, looking at the brochure over my shoulder. 'It's like the Italians to try to tame Nature with a pot of brilliantine. But it can't be far from here that twenty thousand men died trying to get Hannibal's elephants through the passes. And only a year or two back, I suppose, a lot of our blokes were frozen to death attempting to get through from Germany.'
I tossed the brochures back on to the pile. 'It might be Palm Beach, or the Lido, Venice, or Mayfair,' I agreed. 'Same people — same atmosphere. Only I suppose it's all white outside.'
IB He gave a snort of disgust and led the way in to dinner.
'You'll be glad enough to return to it,' he muttered, 'after you've had a day or two up in that damned hut.'
As I sat down, I glanced round the room at the other diners, wondering whether the girl who had signed herself 'Carla' in that photograph would Be there. She wasn't, of course, though the majority of the women in the room were Italian. I wondered why Engles should expect her to be at Cortina.
'No need to try and catch their eyes,' Joe Wesson said through a mouthful of ravioli. 'Judging by the looks of most of 'em, you've only got to leave your bedroom door open.'
'You're being unnecessarily coarse,' I said.
His little bloodshot eyes twinkled at me. 'Sorry, old man. Forgot you'd been in Italy long enough to know your way around. Is it a contessa or a marchesa you're expecting?'
'I don't quite know,' I replied. 'It could just as well be a signora, or even a signorina, or just a common or garden little tart.'
'Well, if it's the last you're wanting,' he said, 'you shouldn't have much difficulty in this assembly.'
After dinner I went in search of the owner of the hotel. I wanted to find out what local information I could about Col da Varda and its slittovia. Our accommodation at the chalet had been booked through him and I thought, therefore, that he should be able to tell me what there was to know.
Edoardo Mancini was a short stocky man of very light colouring for an Italian. He was part Venetian and part Florentine and he had lived a long time in England. In fact, he had once been in the English bobsleigh team. He had been among the great of the bob-sleigh world. But he had had to pack it up ten years ago after a really bad smash. His right arm had been broken in so many places that it was virtually useless.
Once he had doubtless been a slim, athletic figure, but when I met him he had put on weight so that his movements were slow. He was a heavy drinker. I imagine that started after his final accident. It was not difficult to pick him out among his guests. He looked almost a cripple, his big body moving slowly, almost stiffly among them. He had broken practically every bone in his body at one time or another and I believe he carried quite a weight of platinum around in place of missing bone. But in spite of this, his rather dissipated features were genial under his mop of titian hair, which rose almost straight up from his scalp, giving him height and a curiously youthful air. He was a very wealthy man and the biggest hotelier in Cortina.
Most of this I learned from an American I had met in the bar before dinner. He had been a Colonel in the American Army and had had something to do with Cortina when it was being run as an Allied leave centre.
I found Edoardo Mancini in the bar. He and his wife were having a drink with my American friend and two British officers up from Padua. The American introduced me. I mentioned that I was going up to Col da Varda the next day. 'Ah, yes,' Mancini said. 'There are two of you — no? And you are planning to do a film? You see, I know who my guests are.' And he beamed delightedly. He spoke English very fast and with just the trace of a Cockney accent mixed up with the Italian intonation. But it was very difficult to follow him, for his speech was obstructed by saliva which crept into the corners of his mouth as he talked. I imagine his jaw had been smashed up in one of his accidents and had not set properly.
'Col da Varda belongs to the hotel, does it?' I asked.
'No, no — good heavens, no!' He shook his large head vehemently. 'You must not have that idea. I would not like you to blame all the short-comings of the place on me. You would obtain a bad impression. My hotel is my home. I do not have anybody here, you understand. You are my guests. That is the way I like to think of all these people.' And he waved his hand towards the colourful crowd that thronged the bar and lounge. 'If anything is wrong, we look at it as you would say, my wife and I, we are bad hosts. That is why I will not have you accuse me of Col da Varda. It is not comfortable there. That Aldo is a fool. He does not know how to arrange people. He is lazy and, most terrible of all, he is no good for the bar. Is that not so, Mimosa?'
His wife nodded and smiled from behind her Martini. She was small and attractive and had a nice smile.
'I will — how you say it? — sack him. Please excuse my English. It is many years since I was in England. I had hotels in Brighton and London. But that was long before the war.'
I assured him that he spoke excellent English. Indeed, if I had spoken Italian as well in my own country I should not have felt impelled to apologise.
He nodded, as though that were the reply he expected. 'Yes, I will give him the sack.' He turned to his wife. 'We will give him the sack, dear, the day after tomorrow and we will put Alfredo there. He has a good wife and they will run it well.' He put his hand on my arm. 'In the meantime, you will not blame me — yes? I am only what your doctors would call in loco parentis at the moment. I do the bookings. But on Friday it will become a little piece of the Splendido. Then, if you stay long, you will remark a difference. But it will take time, you understand?'
'You mean you are taking it over?' I asked.
He nodded. 'On Friday. There is an auction. I shall buy it. It is all arranged. Then you will see.'
'I don't quite get you, Mancini,' said the American. 'Don't you have to bid at an Italian auction? A thing like that, auctioned in America, would attract all sorts of real-estators and business men who'd enjoy running a toy like a slittovia. I know you're the biggest hotelier in the place. But I guess there are others who might like that little property.'
. 'You do not understand,' Mancini said with a quick crinkling of the eyes. 'We are not fools here. We are business men. And we are not like cats and dogs. We arrange things with orderliness. The others do not want it. It is too far out for them. But I have a very big hotel here and I am always progressive. It will make money because Col da Varda will become the Splendido's own ski run. I shall run a bus service and it will not be crowded like the Pocol, Tofana and Faloria runs. So, no one will bid but me. An outsider would never buy. He knows there would be a boycott.'
'I'd like to see an Italian auction,' I said. 'Where is it being held?'
'In the lounge of the Luna. You really wish to come?'
'Yes,' I told him. 'It would be very interesting.'
'Then you shall come with me — yes?' Mancini shook his head, smiling. 'But it will be very dull, you know. No fireworks. There will be just the one bid — a very low one. And then it will be over. But if you really wish to come, meet me here at a quarter to eleven on Friday and we will go together. After, we will have a little drink to celebrate — also because, if I do not give you a drink, then you will feel the time is wasted.' He gave a deep throaty chuckle. 'The Government will make little out of it. Which is good because we do not like the Government here. It is of the south and we have a preference for Austria, you know. We are Italian, but we found the Austrians governed better. If there were a plebiscite, I think this part of the country would vote to return to Austria.'
'What's the Government got to do with it?' asked the American. 'As I remember it, the slittovia was constructed by the Germans for their Alpine troops. Then a British division took it over. Did the British military sell out to the Italian Government?'
'No, no. When the war was nearly over, the Germans sold it cheaply to the man who once owned the Excelsior. It was from him that the slittovia was requisitioned by the British. His hotel was requisitioned, too. But when the British left, he found it difficult. He had been too great a collaborator. We persuaded him that it would be best to sell and a small syndicate of us bought him out. You see, we are quite a little family here in Cortina. If things are not right, we make adjustments. That was a year ago. Business was not good, you know. We did not want the slittovia then. It was sold very cheap to a man named Sordini.' He made a dramatic pause. That was a strange business — eh? We did not know. How could we? He was a stranger. It was a big surprise to us when he was arrested. And the two workmen he had up there — they were Germans, too.'
'I don't understand,' I said, trying to hide my excitement. 'Was this Sordini a German?'
'But yes,' he said in a tone of surprise. 'The name Sordini was an alias. He took it in order to escape just retribution for all his crimes. It was all in the papers. It was even on your own radio — I heard it myself. It was a captain of the carabinieri who arrested him. The captain and I were drinking together here in this bar the night before he went up to the hut. We think Sordini must have bought the place as a hideout. They took him to Rome and put him in the Regina Coeli. But he did not kill himself in that prison. Oh no — probably he had friends and hoped to escape, like Roatta, Mussolini's commander in Albania, who was reported to have strolled out of the prison hospital in his pyjamas I and got away down the Tiber in a miniature submarine. No, it was when he was handed over to the British to join the rest of the war criminals that he took the poison.'
'What was his real name?" My voice sounded unnatural as I tried to show only a casual interest.
'Why — Heinrich Stelben,' he answered. 'If you are interested you shall see the cuttings from the newspapers. I keep them because so many of my guests are interested in our local celebrity.' The barman produced them immediately.
'May I borrow these?' I asked.
'But certainly. Only return them please. I wish to have them framed.'
I thanked him, confirmed our arrangement for going to the auction and hurried away to my room. I was greatly excited. Heinrich Stelben! Heinrich! I switched on the table light and took out the photograph Engles had given me. 'Fur Heinrich, mein liebling — Carla.' It was a common enough name. And yet it was strange. I picked up the cuttings. There were two of them and they both were from the Corriere della Venezia. They were quite short. Here they are in full, just as I translated them that first night in Cortina:
Translated from the Corriere della Venezia of November 20,1946 CARABINIERI CAPTAIN CAPTURES GERMAN WAR CRIMINAL IN HIDING NEAR CORTINA.
Heinrich Stelben, German War Criminal, was captured yesterday by Capitano Ferdinando Salvezza of the Carabinieri in his hideout, the rifugio Col da Varda, near Cortina. He was known in the district as Paolo Sordini. The Col da Varda rifugio and slittovia were bought by him from the collaborator, Alberto Oppo, one-time owner of the Albergo Excelsior in Cortina.
Heinrich Stelben was wanted for the murder of ten British Commandos in the La Spezia area in 1944. He was an officer of the hated Gestapo and he is also accused of assisting in the deportation of Italians to Germany for forced labour and of the murder of a number of Italian political prisoners of the Left. He was also responsible for transporting several consignments of gold from Italy to Germany. The largest consignment was from the Banca Commerciale del Popolo of Venice. Half of this consignment mysteriously disappeared before it reached Germany. Stelben states that his troops mutinied and seized part of the gold.
This is the second time that Heinrich Stelben has been arrested by the Carabinieri. The first occasion was at a villa on Lake Como shortly after the surrender of the German Armies in Italy. He was taken to Milan and handed over to the British for interrogation. A few days later he escaped. He disappeared completely. Carla Rometta, a beautiful cabaret dancer, with whom he had been associating, also disappeared.
It is understood that his latest arrest was the result of information lodged with the Carabinieri. With him, at the time of his arrest, were two Germans posing as Italian workmen. It is not known yet whether they are also war criminals.
Heinrich Stelben and his associates have been removed to Rome where they have been lodged in the Regina Coeli.
Translated from the Corriere delta Venezia of November 24,1946 GERMAN WAR CRIMINAL COMMITS SUICIDE Shortly after Heinrich Stelben, infamous German War Criminal, had been taken from the Regina Coeli and handed over to the British Military Authorities, he committed suicide, according to a British press message. Whilst being interrogated, he broke a phial of prussic acid between his teeth.
The two Germans who had been arrested with him near Cortina were involved in the recent rioting in the Regina Coeli. It is understood that they were killed in the course of an attack on the Carabinieri by the inmates of the central block. It was not known whether they were wanted as war criminals.
I read those two cuttings through. And then I glanced again at the photograph. Carla! Carla Rometta! Heinrich Stelben! It was certainly a strange coincidence.