Surprisingly he came along with me.
If he hadn't, I would have left him in the street.
* * * * *
We were in a street of tenements. It was almost deserted; I rapped on
the nearest door. No answer, no sound inside. I rapped again, then
tried the door. It was locked.
The next door--ancient and rickety as the first--was also locked,
and no one answered. The third door, no one answered. By then it was
raining hard; the knob turned under my fingers, and we stepped inside.
We left the door ajar, on the chance that a squad car or cab might
pass, and for light. It was almost dark outside, apart from the light
from the lightning flashes, but even so it was darker within. There was
no light at all in the narrow, odorous hall; not even a light seeping
under the apartment doors.
In the lightning flare, Hammond's face was pale. He was beginning to
sober up, and his manner was uneasy.
We were there perhaps half an hour in that silent hall, watching the
rain sleet down and the lightning flare and listening to the thunder.
Two or three times, squad cars passed, nosing slowly down the drenched
streets, but though Hammond looked longingly at them, I still didn't
want to get wet.
Then the rain slowed and almost simultaneously a civilian cab appeared
at the head of the block. "Come on," I said, tugging at his arm.
He balked. "Wait for a squad car," he mumbled.
"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?"
I hesitated, but only for a moment. I didn't like the little man
peering in my window, however humble and conciliatory he had become. I
said abruptly, "No." And my driver took off, leaving the man standing
there.