"Why? Come on, Hammond, it may start to pour again in a minute."
"No!"
His behavior was exasperating me. Clearly it wasn't that he was too niggardly to pay for the cab; it was almost as if he were delaying going back to the branch office for some hidden reason. But that was ridiculous, of course.
I said, "Look, you can stay here if you want to, but I'm going." I jumped out of the doorway just in time to flag the cab; it rolled to a stop, and the driver backed to where I was standing. As I got in, I looked once more to the doorway where Hammond was standing, his face unreadable.
He made a gesture of some sort, but the lightning flashed again and I skipped into the cab. When I looked again he was invisible inside the doorway, and I told the driver to take me to the branch office of the Company.
Curious; but it was not an end to curious things that night. At the branch office, my car was waiting to take me back to Naples.
I surrendered my travel coupons to the cab driver and jumped from one vehicle to the other.
Before my driver could start, someone appeared at the window of the car and a sharp voice said, "Un momento, Signore 'Ammond!"
I stared at the man, a rather badly dressed Neapolitan. I said angrily, "Hammond isn't here!"
The man's expression changed. It had been belligerent; it now became astonished and apologetic. "A thousand times excuse me," he said. "The Signore 'Ammond, can you say where he is?"