He came running across the beach, his legs throwing up a spray of silver sand. He was as brown as the girl and as slim, but he could give Troy an inch or two. As he drew nearer, his body glistening with sea water, the Englishman could detect the difference in their pedigree. The girl Aurora had thick, generous lips with a trace of moisture on them, while Carlo's were taut and dry, drawn together with a hint of cruelty. His eyes were set closer, and were smaller, and his jaw protruded with the suggestion of Fascist determination. He wore a small moustache, so thin it was virtually a stripe of vanity, and his demeanour as he faced them was of arrogance and conceit. A surly swine, decided Troy unreasonably before they had spoken.

"What is it?" He called to her in Italian.

"There is an Englishman to see you."

"An Inglese?"

Troy got to his feet. The beer was beginning to burst out into sweat and he felt uncomfortable. "You must be Carlo Mancini."

"Yes?"

"My name is Davis Troy. I am a colleague of Fletcher of the London Globe, and I've been sent to Rome to find him."

At mention of the name 'Fletcher' the interrogatory furrows fell away from Mancini's face.

"Ah, Signor Fletcher. Yes, I understand," he said.

"Signor Carboni told me you had many talks with Jack Fletcher across the bar, and thought you might be able to suggest..."

"About his disappearance. Si, this was remarkable. Many people leave hotels suddenly... if they do not have money to pay the bill, for instance... but Signor Fletcher. I cannot believe it has happened."

The girl, Aurora, sat on the step and said nothing, her hands pressed together in attitude of prayer below her chin. Those nails. They were like the talons of a game-bird.

"Did he say anything to you which might indicate ..."

Mancini held up his right hand, a policeman stopping the traffic. "A customer tells a barman many things," he rambled pompously, "and a barman is in the same position as a doctor or an advocate at law. He must not discuss the business of his customer... his client. That is understood in the nature of the job. 'Set 'em up, Joe ... and forget.' "

He laughed at his observation and asked Aurora to find him a beer. She disappeared obediently into the cabin.

"Look," said Troy. "I've been sent to Italy to find Fletcher by my paper. But quite apart from any office briefing, I'm one of Jack's best friends. I'm not going to land him in any trouble ... whatever has happened ... in fact I'm going to do my damnedest to keep him out of it. But I'm worried for his safety, and so are a lot of people."

"If I speak it will not reflect on my position at the hotel? Can you promise that?"

"You have my word."

The girl came out with his beer. He took it without a word of thanks.

"Now take a walk, Aurora," he instructed. "I have business to discuss with Signor Troy that is for his ears alone. Understand?"

"It does not interest me..."

He lost his temper and looking thoroughly evil shouted a gross vulgarity in Italian. "So get going," he added brutally, in English. There was no love lost between these two.

"All right, Mister Troy. You want to know if anything was worrying your friend? Yes, it was. Night after night he would sit at my bar and tell me about a young student of Rome University who was making violent love to his wife. It seems, and maybe you will correct me for I am speaking from

memory, that Fletcher was despatched with his wife and family from America in order to report on the visit of the English Princess to Italy for his newspaper. That is what he said. They travelled, all of them, in one of our crack liners, the Leonardo da Vinci. On the journey, according to Fletcher, his wife became friendly with a man who runs a big chain of antique businesses in New York State, a man called Rocky... let me think ... yes... Rocky Panunzi. This man Panunzi was on holiday with his family, the successful expatriate Italian re-visiting his birthplace and his relatives for the first time in forty years. O.K. so far? So on the ship the Panunzis get friendly with the Fletchers. Then these Americans tour around Sicilia -- Sicily -- in their big cars seeing the family and the old places, while the Fletchers come up to our hotel in Rome. He has to work, you see. The Fletchers meet them later in Rome by arrangement. But on the way this antique man has collected one of his nephews, a handsome boy on leave from the university who is studying engineering.

"It is all very complicated, but now maybe you can appreciate the situation. Money does not matter, and they all go out on the town. For those with full pockets the city of God has plenty to offer. Fletcher is possibly dull and working hard so his wife dances with the pretty young student boy. She goes on dancing... Fletcher believes into her bed. It is an affair, he claims, one of those things that is always happening in

Rome. Night after night the lovers are out together while Fletcher drinks at my bar. He drinks too much because he is unhappy. Maybe, he says, she will come back, and so she does. But it is only for money and then she treats him like a dog. He looks after the children in between his hangovers. They want to know why they don't see their mother so much but... zuzz ... what can he say? Then they vanish. Suddenly. All of them. That is the story, and it is not a pretty one. Please do not however relate these informations to me, for in that case I must issue denials and suffer a loss of memory. As I have said a good barman is supposed to understand nothing and to tell less. But you are his friend, and you will understand."

This succession of revelations threw Troy for a moment. Fletcher's wife unfaithful, Fletcher on the booze. If it was the truth, and who would invent such a story, it was a diabolical tale of human weakness which could ruin a good man's career.

"This boy... this undergraduate at Rome University ... can I find him?"

"I do not know his name."

"Then how about the American, this Panunzi? Is he still in Rome?"

"I cannot say."

"Where was he staying?"

"I do not know. But maybe I could find out. It is possible."

"How long would it take?"

"I should have to speak with my friends in the other hotels. Maybe by tonight."

"Then you'll do it? . . . and here, this is for expenses." Troy pressed a brown ten thousand-lira note into the barman's hand, as much as he would make in tips in a month.

"Si -- I will do it. But I don't want your money." Mancini spat into the sand. "Signor Fletcher was a good customer." He folded the note and tucked it into Troy's jacket pocket.

They fixed a time and a place to meet. Mancini, for reasons of his own, did not wish to be seen around the hotel on his day off. The rendezvous was to be at a small open-air restaurant called Otello which, the barman explained, was situated in a side street courtyard between the Spanish Steps and the hotel.

"As you have been on leave you will not know that all the Fletcher's luggage has been stolen?"

Troy, uneasy in the presence of this man although he had been reasonable enough, fired his disclosure suddenly while he watched Mancini's face closely to see what impact it made. 

"Si?" The response was matter of fact and delivered in a tone of mild interest. An odd reaction, if he really had Fletcher's interests at heart.

"It happens in Rome these days," he commented evenly. "With the Communisti active, and the police wasting their time chasing them, it is a good moment for crooks. The chances of detection are very small."

"Don't you think this might in some way be connected with Fletcher's disappearance?"

Mancini laughed thinly, his lips curling to a sneer.

"No, I do not. The suggestion is ridiculous. Plenty of people at the hotel... the manager, the staff and their friends and colleagues... have known for days that Fletcher left in a hurry without his baggages. Someone, realising the rooms were unoccupied, must have considered this a fine moment for theft."

Aurora had been sitting fretfully on the wooden slats in front of a beach hut twenty yards away while the men talked. Now Mancini waved a hand imperiously, signalling her to return. There was no doubt who wore the trousers in this family.

"Do not mention what we have been discussing," the Italian cautioned, as she came towards them across the duck boards. "Pretty girls are often silly girls and this one talks too much. We both require discretion."

He could say that again. Troy nodded and thanked him. Soon they were shaking hands.

"Tonight, then?"

"I will do my best to get the address for you."

The Englishman headed back slowly along the Colombo into Rome. The traffic was unusually heavy but he drove automatically in the main stream, allowing himself to be carved up by the more impatient Latins. He was weighing the probability of Mancini's information against a long acquaintance with the Fletchers, and he could strike no kind of balance.

The beggar in the invalid chair recognised Troy as he climbed the hotel steps and bowed gratefully in his direction. Troy waved a hand and forgot about him; he had donated enough for one day. The beggar shuffled away towards the pay telephone where he made another call.