Page 335 - tender-is-the-night

XXIII

Until one o’clock Baby Warren lay in bed, reading one
of Marion Crawford’s curiously inanimate Roman stories;
then she went to a window and looked down into the street.
Across from the hotel two carabinieri, grotesque in swad-
dling capes and harlequin hats, swung voluminously from
this side and that, like mains’ls coming about, and watch-
ing them she thought of the guards’ officer who had stared
at her so intensely at lunch. He had possessed the arrogance
of a tall member of a short race, with no obligation save
to be tall. Had he come up to her and said: ‘Let’s go along,
you and I,’ she would have answered: ‘Why not?’—at least it
seemed so now, for she was still disembodied by an unfa-
miliar background.
Her thoughts drifted back slowly through the guards-
man to the two carabinieri, to Dick—she got into bed and
turned out the light.
A little before four she was awakened by a brusque
knocking.
‘Yes—what is it?’
‘It’s the concierge, Madame.’
She pulled on her kimono and faced him sleepily.
‘Your friend name Deever he’s in trouble. He had trouble
with the police, and they have him in the jail. He sent a taxi
up to tell, the driver says that he promised him two hun-

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