There were medium sized shrimp, gray and opalescent, awaiting their turn, too, for the boiling water and their immortality, to have their shucked carcasses float out easily on an ebb tide on the Grand Canal.
The speedy shrimp, the Colonel thought, with tentacles longer than the mustaches of that old Japanese admiral, comes here now to die for our benefit. Oh Christian shrimp, he thought, master of retreat, and with your wonderful intelligence service in those two light whips, why did they not teach you about nets and that lights are dangerous?
Must have been some slip-up, he thought.
Now he looked at the many small crustaceans, the razor-edge clams you only should eat raw if you had your typhoid shots up to date, and all the small delectables.
He went past these, stopping to ask one seller where his clams came from.
They came from a good place, without sewerage and the Colonel asked to have six opened.
He drank the juice and cut the clam out, cutting close against the shell with the curved knife the man handed him.
The man had handed him the knife because he knew from experience the Colonel cut closer to the shell than he had been taught to cut.
The Colonel paid him the pittance that they cost, which must have been much greater than the pittance those received who caught them, and he thought, now I must see the stream and canal fishes and get back to the hotel.
CHAPTER 23
THE Colonel arrived at the lobby of the Hotel Gritti-Palace.
His gondolieres were paid off and, now, inside the hotel, there was no wind.
It had taken two men to bring the gondola up the Grand Canal from the market.
They had both worked hard, and he had paid them what it was worth, and some more.
''Are there any calls for me?'' he asked the concierge, who was now in attendance.
The concierge was light, fast, sharp-faced, intelligent and polite, always, without subservience.
He wore the crossed keys of his office on the lapels of his blue uniform without ostentation.
He was the concierge.
It is a rank very close to that of Captain, the Colonel thought. An officer and not a Gentleman. Make it top sergeant in the old days; except he's dealing always with the brass.
''My lady has called twice,'' the concierge said in English.
Or whatever that language should be called we all speak, the Colonel thought. Leave it at English.
That is about what they have left.
They should be allowed to keep the name of the language.
Cripps will probably ration it shortly anyway.
''Please put me through to her at once,'' he told the concierge.
The concierge commenced to dial numbers. ''You may talk over there, my Colonel,'' he said. ''I have made the connection.''
''You're fast.''
''Over there,'' the concierge said.
Inside the booth the Colonel lifted the receiver and said, automatically, ''Colonel Cantwell speaking.''
''I called twice, Richard,'' the girl said. ''But they explained that you were out.
Where were you?''
''At the market.
How are you, my lovely?''
''No one listens on this phone at this hour.
I am your lovely.
Whoever that is.''
''You. Did you sleep well?''
''It was like skiing in the dark.
Not really skiing but really dark.''
''That's the way it should be.
Why did you wake so early?
You've frightened my concierge.''
''If it is not un-maidenly, how soon can we meet, and where?''
''Where you wish and when you wish.''
''Do you still have the stones and did Miss Portrait help any?''
''Yes to both questions.
The stones are in my upper left hand pocket buttoned down.
Miss Portrait and I talked late and early and it made everything much easier.''
''Do you love her more than me?''
''I'm not abnormal yet.