“I’ll promise not to, however entrancing Vittoria is,” he said. “Ah, how divine the sea looks this morning. I long to be in it.”
A sudden idea occurred to him.
“Do let us stop on another fortnight, father,” he said. “Can’t we?”
“I can’t,” said he. “I must get back by the end of the month. But—” he paused a moment and Colin knew that he had caught his own idea, which his suggestion was designed to prompt. “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t have another fortnight here if you want,” he said.
Colin had fallen behind his father on the narrow path to the bathing-place, and gave a huge grin of satisfaction at his own subtlety.
“Oh, I should love that!” he said, “though it won’t be half as much fun as if you would stop too. And then I can go over to Naples with you when you start homewards, and make my wings sprout by staying with Uncle Salvatore.”
Nothing could have fallen out more conveniently, and Colin, as for the next two hours he floated in the warm sea and basked on the hot pebbles, had a very busy mind in his lazy, drifting body. His father’s absence would certainly make his investigations easier. He could, for instance, present Lord Yardley’s card at the Consulate with his own, and get leave to inspect the register with a view to making a copy of it, in accordance with his father’s wishes. Better yet, he could spend a few days in Naples, make the acquaintance of the Consul in some casual manner, and produce his request on the heels of an agreeable impression. He would not, in any case, be limited to a single visit, or tied by the necessity of acting at once. He would not have to fire his bribe, with regard to the letters like a pistol in Salvatore’s face, he would be careful and deliberate, not risking a false step owing to the need of taking an immediate one. And all the time the suggestion of stopping on here alone had not come from himself at all. His father had made it.
On the way up to the villa again after the morning’s bathe, they often called at the post-office in the piazza for letters that had arrived by the midday post. To-day these were handed under the grille to Colin, and, sorting them out between his father and himself, he observed that there were two for Lord Yardley in the handwritings of Raymond and Violet. Possibly these were only the dutiful and trivial communications of those at home, but possibly Violet’s week of postponement had been shortened.
“Two from Stanier for you, father,” he said. “Violet and Raymond. The rest for me.”
His father looked at the envelopes.