‘All right,‘I said.
A waiter appeared and collected our glasses. Maxwell folded his newspaper. ‘Would pane care to have a look at the paper?’ he said in Czech. I thanked him and took the paper. He collected his brief case and got to his feet. ‘Goodbye, Dick,’ he whispered. ‘See you again sometime.’ And he strolled down the length of the bar and out by the street door.
I had another drink and then went in to lunch. Time passed very slowly during the rest of that day. I drank it away watching the hands of the clock over the bar move steadily through afternoon into evening. The airport had made no difficulty about transferring my booking to the following day. The only question was, would the police let me go? Everything seemed to hinge on whether the night porter kept his mouth shut about Tucek’s extraordinary visit to my room. The more I thought about that, the more odd it seemed. If he had come to see me, then why hadn’t he wakened me? Perhaps I’d been so drunk he couldn’t wake me? But then why did he want to see me as soon as I reached Milan?
These speculations became more and more confused in my mind as I drank the evening out. And they became confused with my promise to see Reece. I didn’t want to see Reece. Alive or dead, I didn’t want to see him. He’d been so bitter. He’d turned his sister against me, smashed my life. Shirer I didn’t mind so much. Shirer had been older. He knew what I’d been through. But Reece was young. He didn’t understand. He’d never faced real pain in his life. Those letters he’d written her from the hospital — he’d told me what he was writing to her. He’d taken it out of me that way. Suddenly I didn’t care about the Czech security police. I didn’t want to leave Czechoslovakia any more. Let them arrest me. I didn’t care. All I knew was that I didn’t want to go to Milan and see Reece. God! For all I knew Alice might be there. I began to sing Alice Blue Gown. That was when they got me out of the bar and I found the night porter helping me up to my room.
As we reached the landing he said, ‘I hear,pane, that you have trouble with the S.N.B. to-day?’ His greedy little eyes peered up at me. I wanted to punch his face. I knew what he wanted. He wanted money. ‘You go to hell!’ I said.
I couldn’t get his face in focus, but I knew he was leering up at me. ‘Perhaps I go to the police.’
‘You can go to the devil for all I care,’ I mumbled.
He opened the door of my room and helped me inside. I tried to shake him off and fell on to the bed. He shut the door and came over to me. ‘Also I hear pan Tucek is escaped. Perhaps his visit to you is more important than the fifty kronen you give me, eh?’ He was standing beside the bed, looking down at me.
‘Get the hell out of here, you little crook,’ I shouted at him.
‘But, pane, consider for a moment, please. If I tell the police what I know it will be a very bad for pane.’