I Spy Page 2

  “When I next see him.” The steward nodded curtly, taking the object from Trey’s hand as if it was quite possibly infectious.

  So “Monsieur Mustache” turned out to be called Monsieur Giovedi, which Trey thought sounded as if he maybe came from somewhere like Italy, which meant that he was more than likely called Signor Giovedi. But the real surprise, as he and his father came into the dining car, was that Signor Giovedi had a travelling companion. And she was a platinum blonde looker, in the style of that actress Thelma Todd, right off the cover of one of his magazines!

  His father didn’t seem to notice as he was in mid-flow, telling Trey about all the things they were going to be doing during their three-day stay in Venice. And, as Trey had figured, it boiled down to yet more museums and galleries, but so far there had been no mention of theatres, which was what his mother would call “a small blessing”.

  The head waiter beckoned them down the carriage and then pulled a chair out from the table he’d chosen for them; Trey’s father ushered him forward, and as he went past Signor Giovedi and his companion he realized the woman was wearing the exact same perfume his mother liked to use. This really did not fit with the way she looked – because she looked absolutely nothing like his mother, who was undoubtedly very pretty, but would never make the cover of Black Ace in a million years.

  The seat that Trey was shown to gave him no view at all of the Giovedis (he was assuming they were married – although he knew that any sleuth wishing to stay alive till the end of a story should never assume anything and always worked on the facts alone – as he hadn’t thought to check the woman’s left hand as he went past).

  “Close your mouth, Trey, you look like a galumph...and whoever it is you’re staring at, stop.”

  Trey snapped back, automatically sitting up straight and looking at his father. “Just daydreaming, Pops...wondering what was for lunch.”

  “Well I’d recommend looking at the menu, rather than anywhere else...” Putting on his horn-rimmed reading glasses, T. Drummond MacIntyre II picked his menu up and followed his own advice, nodding to himself as he turned over the pages. “All very nice...”

  A cursory glance told Trey that, in his father’s own words, he begged to differ. For a start the menu was all in Italian and just looked so darned classy that it was obvious there wouldn’t be anything on it he’d like. “I suggest you have the Fettuccine alle polpette, Trey, followed by the Gelato alla fragola,” he said as the waiter came and stood by their table. “That should keep you going until we reach the hotel.”

  “But Pops!” Trey watched the waiter’s pencil hover over his pad. “Can’t I just have a baloney sandwich, please?”

  “My suggestion is that you have something very like your beloved spaghetti and meatballs, Trey, followed by strawberry ice cream.”

  Trey looked up from the menu to find his father smiling back at him. “It is?”

  “Sure. But if all you want is a sandwich, I’m sure I can ask the waiter here to see what they can rustle up for you...”

  “Spaghetti and meatballs, right?”

  Trey’s father nodded.

  “Okay...”

  4 ONE STORY ENDS...

  After a very satisfactory lunch, try as he might, Trey had been unable to get away from his father to continue his investigations on the train, and, now here they were, with their luggage, chugging off towards the Hotel Excelsior on some overcrowded water taxi.

  “...they call this a vaporetto, son,” came the answer to an unasked question, “because it’s steam-powered.”

  Frankly, as far as Trey was concerned, they could call the boat whatever they darn well liked, because he was not happy. Not happy at his failure to come up with the goods on the mystery couple, or that the chances of him ever finding out whether he’d been on to anything or not had vanished into thin air.

  The last time Trey had seen Signor Giovedi (and the woman who might, or might not be Signora Giovedi) was when he’d caught a glimpse of them on the platform after the Orient Express had arrived in Venice at the Santa Lucia train station. In all the chaos which had accompanied their exit from the train, and the subsequent turmoil caused by their transfer to the vaporetto, Trey found it completely impossible to keep track of the dark grey fedora, and so the story of The Man With the Pencil Mustache stuttered to a somewhat disappointing conclusion. Unless, of course, he saw them again...

  As Trey had disconsolately traipsed after his father, following him through the station hall, the chance sighting of a freshly stubbed-out yellow cigarette butt had given him a moment’s hope that he was going to be able to pick up the trail, but it was not to be. The Giovedis had gone.

  Standing on the wooden deck of the small steamer, Trey held on to the brass rail, aware that his feelings of disappointment were fading as he stared around him...at least the latest stage in his summer journey looked like it was getting off to a good start, if the view from the boat was anything to go by. Whatever bones he had to pick with his father about his definition of “not working” (and there were so many of them they would make up an entire chicken’s carcass, in his opinion) Trey had to admit that, despite all the telegrams and such, he had certainly seen some sights on the trip so far. And here he was staring at another one: the city of Venice.

  All the stuff he’d read in the guidebook that his father had handed over the moment he’d asked a question (“Look it up for yourself, son...it’s the best way to learn”) hadn’t done anything to prepare him for the real thing – a whole city built on the water! Unfortunately, not on actual stilts, as he’d first imagined. The place was incredibly old, and looked like something out of a storybook where pirates and swashbucklers were to be found – and it had canals for streets!

  Everywhere Trey looked there were people going this way and that in small boats the guidebook had said were called gondolas. The stories he was going to be able to spin when he got back to Chicago! The gang at school were just not going to believe what he’d have to tell; he wished he’d tried that bit harder to get his father to buy him a camera so he could prove what he’d seen as he knew that Morty, Will, Stan and Ronnie would be spending the summer at their families’ South Shore houses.

  It turned out that their hotel was not in the actual main part of Venice, but on a long, thin island some way off it, in a place which Trey’s father said was called the Lido (“...you get the best views and don’t have to deal with the hoi polloi, son...”) and it looked to Trey very much like he was going to be stuck away from whatever action there might be in yet another smart and stuffy joint. No doubt the kind of place where nothing less than the very best behaviour would be the order of the day. Every day.

  The hotel looked like a palace, with uniformed flunkies everywhere, and crystal glass candelabra, velvet curtains, fancy gold decorations, marble floors, walls, stairs and statues; it had huge ornately framed mirrors and dark, impenetrable oil paintings on the walls, with acres of polished brass and wood as far as the eye could see. He was, Trey thought, staying in a museum with sea views. Once again, not his personal idea of a holiday.

  Their accommodation turned out to be a very large suite, which certainly had the kind of scenery you might admire, if you liked palms and seascapes, like his dad. There might be more interesting places around and about, but how to get to check them out? The answer came moments later when a troupe of maids arrived to unpack their cases, which he had a good idea might well cause a major distraction.

  “Pops?” he asked as his father, who spoke no Italian, began trying to tell the maids where things were to go.

  “Yes? What?”

  “Can I go for a walk?”

  “Sure, sure...” His father glanced over his shoulder, then returned to the job in hand. “No, not in there...”

  At which point Trey made a hasty exit and set off to see what, if anything, there might be for him to do.

  It was while he was wandering across a big terrace that he spotted something that looked worth investigating. A
large group of people (as he got closer he saw that there seemed to be a lot of women among them) was surrounding three men in uniform, and hanging on their every word. As they were speaking Italian, Trey had no idea why this was. Nevertheless he circled the group, as this was by far the most interesting thing that was occurring, but it wasn’t until he’d got a bit closer, and got a better look at the three men, that he realized they were flyers.

  One of the men made some comment and gestured rather grandly behind him, over the parapet and in the direction of the sea, and everyone clapped and cheered. Trey went over to have a look at what the man had been pointing to and found himself staring at the most beautiful sight in the world – if you liked planes, that is – because, floating in the pale blue, mirror-flat water, moored to a pier, was a bright red racing seaplane. And if Trey knew his planes (which he liked to think he did, having his own scrapbook of photos and stories clipped from newspapers and magazines) he was sure that what he couldn’t drag his eyes away from was nothing less than a Macchi M.52 – just about the cat’s pyjamas when it came to aeroplanes!

  “Oh boy...” he whispered. “What a beauty!”

  “You like the planes?”

  Trey spun round to find one of the flyers standing next to him. “Like them?” he sputtered. “I love them – I was lucky enough to see Mr. Charles Lindbergh’s ticker-tape parade in New York, you know!”

  “I think you are quite a lucky boy, then,” the man smiled. “Did you meet him?”

  “Me? No sir, I was thirty-three floors up in a skyscraper.”

  “Well right here, not even three metres away, is Major Mario de Bernardi, the man who won the Schneider Trophy race in your country last year – and I believe is going to win it once again this year. Would you like to meet him?”

  “Who, me? Yes, sir!”

  As Trey lay in bed, stomach full to bursting after a blow-out of a meal (he had actually lost count of the number of courses he’d eaten), his head was reeling from the sights and sounds of what had turned out to be possibly the very best day of his life. Not only had he met a record-breaking flyer – one of the fastest men on Earth – he’d actually been allowed to sit in his plane! The very same streamlined machine that would be taking part in the Schneider Trophy speed contest, which he’d discovered was happening right here in Venice in a few weeks’ time! Boy, would he love to be there!

  But, Trey thought as he began to nod off, there was a fat chance of that ever happening. When your father was one of the MacIntyres of MacIntyre, MacIntyre & Moscowitz (“One of the busiest engineering concerns in the whole of the continental US, son...right up there near the top of the heap!”), business always came first and always, if at all possible, ran to a tight schedule. Which was why this sudden change of plan to take a trip on the Orient Express had made him wonder...what on earth could his father be up to? The schedule and plan had been strangely abandoned.

  5 THE DAY TRIP

  The next day things really did not go according to plan. At least not to the plan that Trey had worked out in his head (but failed to discuss with his father), which was a long list of all the terrific ways he could spend his time. These mainly boiled down to staying as close as he could to the Italian flyers, with the general idea being that, while he knew there was no space for him actually in the single-seater Macchi racer, they might have other planes and he might get to go up in one of them. You just never knew.

  And as it turned out, Trey never did discover, because his father had other ideas entirely for what he and his son were going to do with their time. True to form, his father would not hear of any changes to the schedule he had planned. Especially, he explained, as he had lately been feeling a tad guilty about the amount of calls he’d had to deal with and cables he’d had to reply to and send. He told Trey he’d put aside the entire day for them to “do” Venice together.

  T. Drummond MacIntyre II, as was his way, had got it all meticulously worked out (something he had failed to discuss with his son), so Trey found himself being taken out to a vaporetto – a private one his father had hired for the day – which was going to take them on a tour of the Grand Canal, and more. As well as the boat, his father had also hired a guide for the day, Signorina Aurelia Sanpietro, who had the disadvantage, from Trey’s point of view, of being neither young nor pretty (she was no picture, as he had no doubt his mother would have put it); she also had a somewhat loud, not to say operatic voice and spoke English with such a heavy accent that Trey found what she said made no sense at all. The word “formidable” had immediately sprung to his mind when he’d been introduced to her.

  As the three of them left the hotel he saw the bright red Macchi M.52 bobbing at its mooring, and his heart sank. Mechanics were fussing about under the engine cowling and he could see someone – it looked like Major de Bernardi – pulling on a flying cap and generally getting ready to go. It would be just his luck if it turned out he was flying off for good, or at least until the race in September. The Italian flyers were the most exciting thing in this place.

  Trey hung back, watching the last-minute preparations, imagining what it would be like if he was over there lending a hand...imagining that he was there and that he’d spotted something, like a leaking fuel line – which, if he hadn’t been there, would have gone unnoticed and led to a fatal crash! He saw himself being congratulated for foiling the sabotage plot (with the honour of nations at stake in this race, it just had to be sabotage) and given his own leather flying helmet and goggles in appreciation...

  “Trey! Trey, will you stop daydreaming – the boat’s here and we’re ready to go!”

  His father’s voice dragged Trey unwillingly back to reality just as he was about to accept a celebratory glass of champagne and the scenario disappeared like a burst bubble.

  “Coming...” he mumbled, with one last glance over his shoulder at the plane, then traipsed off towards the pier where his father was standing, hands on hips, waiting for him.

  Once they were on their way his father explained to Trey exactly what the day held in store for them. And, entirely no surprises, it turned out they were on their way to see a long list of churches (which it would, apparently, be a crime not to see), galleries that must be visited, piazzas it’d be a shame not to sit in and bridges that had to be sailed under and walked over. Oh joy. An entire day of Culture, with one very big capital “C”.

  Trey had done his best. He really had. He hadn’t huffed and puffed too much, in his opinion, and while he hadn’t actually said a lot he hadn’t complained either, but by mid-afternoon he was truly beginning to lose the will to live. He just knew that if he saw another Palazzo, Campo, Piazza or Ponte he was going to get a twitch in one of his eyes and start to gibber quietly to himself, but then things took an interesting turn: he got lost.

  And there was no way round it, the situation was entirely his fault. One moment he’d been following his father, who was following Signorina Aurelia Sanpietro (an endlessly enthusiastic mine of information about her beloved city), and the next he was on his own in the middle of some enormous open space.

  Well, not actually on his own as wherever he now found himself was jam-packed with visitors...hundreds and hundreds of them. Quite possibly thousands, Trey thought as he stopped and stared around, vainly trying to spot his father and their jabbering guide.

  The buildings flanking the sides of the huge square were colonnaded and intricately decorated, bedecked in flags and covered in all kinds of coloured marble. The one he was facing, which he could see towering over the heads of the crowds surrounding him, looked like something out of an Arabian Nights tale; with its cupolas-on-top-of-other-cupolas roof and the statues and mosaics all over the front, it was, Trey thought, more like an enthusiastically over-decorated cake than a building.

  Pushing his way through the crush of people he searched with an increasing desperation for his father (what had he been wearing this morning? He hadn’t really been paying attention...), with one ear cocked for the sound of his na
me being called (surely, by now, his disappearance had been noticed...hadn’t it?) and the other listening for Signorina Aurelia’s telltale bellow.

  But there was no sign of his father, and if anyone was calling for him it was lost, as was Aurelia’s voice, in the rising babble and chatter from all the other tourists. Trey looked back the way he’d come, then realized that he couldn’t work out which way that might actually have been, and even if he did know it wouldn’t do him any good because he didn’t know where he was.

  It slowly dawned on him that not only did he not know his present location, where he’d been, or how to get back to where the boat had docked, he also hadn’t the slightest idea where they were going to visit next. And to top it all, although he’d heard any number of people speaking English wherever they’d been so far, right now he didn’t understand any of the languages he could hear all around him.

  This sense of being alone, abandoned and cast adrift made him feel really strange. In fact, Trey suddenly realized, if he didn’t get a good grip on himself he might possibly... No! That was not going to happen – T. Drummond MacIntyre III was not going to panic! He was going to find his own way back to the hotel, which might be a bit of a problem because that would entail a boat ride and he had no money. But as his grandfather, the original T. Drummond, had always said, where there was a will there was a way. And if Gramps said it, it had to be true.

  Trey knew beyond a doubt that he had the will (he was a go-getter, everyone said so) it was just that he was more than a little unsure of what the way was. Venice, as he knew from the map back at the hotel, was a random maze, completely unlike Chicago and New York, which had been built on downright sensible grid systems. Weaving through the milling crowds he might, for all he could tell, be going round and round in circles; as that thought came to him, he himself came to a circular break in the crowd, at the centre of which stood a lady who was either being attacked by hordes of pigeons or was in some way orchestrating them.