The Splintered Sunglasses Affair - Leslie Peter. Страница 19

A moment later, the saloon drew level with a crackle of exhaust and began slowly to forge ahead.

For seconds the two cars jockeyed for position on the narrow roadway. And then the Fiat began remorselessly to crowd the convertible towards the palisade of canes. The, girl swore viciously and stamped on her brakes.

Shuddering, the little Lancia lost way—and then the wheels locked, there was a scream of tortured metal as the offside front wing sheared along the Fiat's nearside quarter, and the convertible spun across the road to stall with its battered tail wedged deep in the bamboo.

Kuryakin had been thrown against the padded facia. As he struggled to recover his breath, he was astonished to find his own raincoat thrown over his head while Lala Eriksson vaulted over the side of the car and vanished into the thicket. Spluttering, he fought his way free and was about to leap after her into the waving canes when the driver of the Fiat, which had stopped on the far side of the road, sprinted across, a Berretta automatic in his hand.

"Forget it!" he called. "Bringing her in's not so important as getting you out"

It was Napoleon Solo.

CHAPTER TEN 

Finding Out The Facts

Because—in spite of his name—Leonardo had in fact been of Dutch nationality, Solo and Illya found that his murder was being handled by a special branch of the Turin police allied with the S.I.D. In the evening of the day on which Solo had rescued the Russian from a fate worse than death at the home of Carlsen and Lala Eriksson, they sat talking to a very fat and friendly member of its hierarchy.

"So you see, Commendatore," Solo said after he had explained the events leading up to their presence in the city, "exactly why it is so important to us to find out all we can about the killing of Signor Leonardo—and why we should welcome... I correct myself: why we should prostrate ourselves to receive!... all the help we can get in the matter of unravelling his final actions."

The Commendatore wore a beautiful sharkskin suit over his white shirt. He had changed every stitch he wore one hour previously. But it had been a hot day even for Torino, and he wished at all costs to avoid giving offense to these gentlemen from that hygienic paradise across the sea. He took out a large silk handkerchief and dabbed at his forehead, which was beaded with perspiration, stole a surreptitious glance below the arms of his jacket, which was not, and hoped for the tenth time that his men had not been too perfunctory in their enquiry. If only someone had said that the wretched Dutchman had been employed by this high-powered international organization....

He brushed the handkerchief across the ends of his luxuriant black moustache—which somehow seemed to give him more reason for having taken it out—and picked up a folder from his desk. He cleared his throat importantly.

"Alora, the facts of the case, gentlemen, the facts," he said, "are that Mynheer Leonardo was shot down by a marksman with a rifle. And what a marksman! He was standing by a window of the fifth floor landing on the emergency staircase of a block of flats. Behind the block is a vacant lot surrounded by board fences. And beyond the lot is the Corso Alessandro, where finds itself the post office branch in front of which he was assassinated."

"That's beyond doubt, is it—the locale?" Solo asked.

"Si, si. There are three cartridges, spent, on the floor of the landing. .303, probably, the experts tell me, fired from an English target rifle called the P14. And this checks because two bullets have enter his head, poor man, and a third have make a chip in the doorway of the post office on the Corso Alessandro."

"I suppose nobody saw him in the apartment block... on the stairs or anything?"

"But no. The block he is unfinished—that is to say he is finish, but nobody live there yet. All the flats are empty and the doors to the entrance are not yet being installed."

"I see. Anyone could have got in, in fact. What about witnesses to the shooting itself? You have many people who saw him fall?"

"Many, many people. The two ladies in the flower shop. The man and his wife who operate the tobacco kiosk. The blind seller of matches beside. The girl—Ah, signori! That girl!—who has the tie shop. The newspaper vendor. Passers-by. Many people."

"Witnesses, I suppose," Illya put in, "to the fact that he fell down and died in the street outside the post office? Presumably nobody actually heard, still less saw, the shot itself?"

"Aha!" the Commendatore was delighted. "But you are wrong, Signor Kuryakin! Wrong! There was one witness who happened to be looking towards the new block and observed the three puffs of smoke. He was confident enough, our killer, not to use smokeless powder!—and then. Just as Mynheer Leonardo fell to the sidewalk, remarked the noise of the shots. Otherwise—and I am honest with you, gentlemen!—we might still be looking for the place where the shots were fired. There are many tall buildings around, and he spun as he fell so we could not have told from which direction the shots come."

"And the witness?" Solo prompted.

"A lady. She was descending the steps of the post office as the murdered man was about to ascend. That is how we know he was entering and not leaving or just passing by."

"He was actually on the steps. I see. But he didn't have anything at all with him? No packet fell? There was no letter, no piece of paper, no cable form? Nobody could have approached the body and taken anything?"

"No to all questions," the Commendatore said.

"I guess he was going to send a cable in code, telling Waverly what he had used to make the Hologram, and he'd memorized the code," said Illya.

"I expect you're right. This piece of glass, Commendatore... no doubt you realize this is as important to us as finding out who killed our colleague?"

"Evidently."

"He must have put it somewhere, somewhere safe. Because he would have known that we must have it—that it must therefore be easily reached and available to us—and yet hidden from others."

"Clearly. Yet we found nothing. Nothing at all in his apartment, his car, his pockets—even a safe deposit box that we have traced."

"You have been unbelievably efficient," Solo said. "Naturally we do not wish to cover the same ground that your men have so painstakingly investigated. Yet—purely so that we can inhale, as it were, the atmosphere, the ambience of Leonardo's life and surroundings—we should very much like to spend a short while... a half hour at the most... in his apartment, if possible. Would it be trespassing too much on your already over-strained kindness to ask you to arrange this?"

"Perfectly. That is to say... you only have to ask," the Italian smiled.

"You are more than kind," Kuryakin said, taking his cue from Solo.

Later, as they left the building armed with a list of the names of witnesses and their addresses, the key to Leonardo's apartment, and a transcript of all the evidence so far taken, Illya said; "The last time I left a building to interrogate a witness to a crime, some kind gentlemen almost put an end to my career with a bomb as I crossed the road!"

"And just when was that?" Solo asked with a grin. "And what was the crime?"

"It was less than a week ago, Napoleon," the Russian said as they waited to cross the road. "Here... we have plenty of time before that bus comes. And the crime, you ask? It was nothing less than your own kidnapping!"