“I say, want to play bridge?”
“Bridge!” I said. “Bridge? Bridge!”
He looked terribly worried....
“Well, my wife wants—Oh, wait till I’m back! I’ll drop you anyway.” And he was off, his brown coat flouncing peevishly. Through the open door I could see Napier, his coat open, everything about him open, standing in what looked like a wide courtyard....
“Mais quelle belle silhouette!” chattered the old nun. “Le vrai type brun anglais. Mais c’est naturel qu’il soit fou avec ces yeux là....”
Napier and Conrad Masters walked across the courtyard towards a tall red-looking building. Its door was pointed like a church door, and windows here and there were alight. Through one of them a nun was looking at me. On the sill outside the largest window of all, which was not alight, stood a pineapple and some grapes on a plate.
V
After that chill, stuffy lodge the night was like a kiss. The dark shapes of Masters’s Renault and Napier’s taxi faced each other, their dimmed lamps lighting only the darkness. The chauffeur of the Renault looked to be asleep at the wheel. I hoped Venice was asleep, too. The driver of the taxi was nowhere to be seen, and stealthily I was approaching the dark shape of the taxi, mentally communicating to Venice that it would be only decent of her to be asleep, when the taxi-driver emerged from the malodorous shape of the lavabo. “Elle dorme, je crois,” the fool shouted at the top of his voice, and I bolted into the capacious Renault.
“Sorry to wake you,” came the mutter of Conrad Masters from the open door. “Where are you staying?”
Through the front window I saw the door of the taxi close. Napier would tell Venice he had seen me, and she would be surprised I had not spoken with her. “You were asleep,” Napier would say, but she would still be surprised....