It was useless trying to do any business that day. It was Sunday. So I went for a walk. Spring had come to Milan. The sun shone out of a cloudless sky and the wide tram-lined streets blazed with warmth. There were tables out on the pavements and some cafes even had their awnings down. I walked up the Via Vittor Pisani and into the Giardini Pubblici. I was thinking of nothing but the fact that the girls were in summer frocks and that the olive-skinned, laughing crowds looked gay and happy. The mystery of Tucek’s disappearance and my encounter with the Czech security police seemed very far away, part of another world. In the gardens the trees were showing young green. Everything was bursting with life. I sat down on one of the seats and let the warmth of the sun seap through me. It was wonderful just to sit there and relax. Tomorrow there would be work to do. But to-day, all I had to do was sit in the sunshine.
I always remember that hour I spent sitting in the Giardini Pubblici. It stands out in my mind like an oasis in a desert. It was my one breathing space — a moment that seems almost beautiful because it had no part in what had gone before or what came after. I remember there was a little girl and a big yellow rubber ball. She followed it relentlessly, teeth flashing, black hair gleaming and her dark eyes bubbling with laughter. And her mother sat suckling a baby discreetly under a shawl and telling me how she hoped to go to Genoa for a holiday this year. And all the time Milan streamed by, their gay clothes and constant, liquid chatter seeming so lighthearted after the sombre atmosphere of Czechoslovakia. It was like listening to Rossini after a course of Wagner.
Feeling warm and happy I went out into the Viale Vittorio Veneto and sat for a while at one of the cafe” tables drinking cognac. I sat there till twelve-thirty, reviving my Italian by listening to scraps of the conversation that flowed around me. Then I went back to the hotel. As I crossed the entrance hall towards the lift the clerk at the reception desk called me over, ‘Signer Farrell.’
‘Yes?’ I said.
‘I have a message for you.’ He pulled a slip of paper out of the pigeonhole marked F. ‘Signor Sismondi telephone half an hour ago to say will you ring him please.’ He handed me the slip of paper on which was scribbled a telephone number and the name Sismondi.
‘Who is he — do you know?’ I asked.
‘Signor Sismondi? I think perhaps it is Signor Riccardo Sismondi. He have a big fabbrica out on the Via Padova, signore.’
‘What’s the name of his company?’ I asked.
‘I do not know if it is the same man, signore. But the one I speak of is direttore of the Ferrometali di Milano.’
I went up to my room and got my notebook with the list of Italian firms with which B. & H. Evans had done business before the war. Among them I found the Ferrometalli di Milano. I picked up the telephone and asked for Sismondi’s number. A woman’s voice answered. ‘Casa Sismondi. Chi Parla?’