GUSTAW HERLING
61
raise this issue in advance? Because you mentioned the Eye of Providence
as the "central point" of your first visit to Malcolm. It is no secret
to
us that
Sir Harold was a member oflhe Magna Grecia Lodge in aples until Mus–
solini dissolved Freemasonry in 1925. And after that he probabl y belonged
to its illegal, secret, and "dormant" remnants. And after the war and the col–
lapse of Fascism, when the Lodge was waiting for legal reinstatement, he
played an important role with the rank of
Maestro Vfnerabilf.
And then his
son was invited to join and was initiated after his father's death. None of this
is a secret to anyone with the time and the inclination to take an interest in
the existence of Magna Grecia, which, by the way, still attracts notice every
few years with handsome advertisements plastered around Naples. So I
wouldn't overestimate that part of the Malcolm Melton
pa.stiaio."
"I accept your first suggestion wholeheartedly, Signor Commissario.
During our lunch break - once I got over the shock of the news of the Lon–
don bombing - I came to the same conclusion myself I'll tell you everything
I know. But I would like to take issue with the wisdom of your other
suggestion. Let me remind you that at the beginning of our conversation, you
urged me to guess the reasons behind Malcolm Melton's sudden departure
from Naples. I kept that in mind, because the suggestion was appropriate in
my position. And what is my position? I was not Malcolm's confessor, I was
not with him day and night, I did not travel with him, and I did not poke my
nose into his affairs. First of all I was a comrade-in-arms he saw again after
several years, then I became a friend he trusted well enough to take into his
confidence, however rarely and only partially, but that is too little to provide
the "facts only" you asked for. I am doomed, Signor Commissario, to conjec–
ture, hypothesis, and supposition. Either you agree to that, or you might as
well turn off the tape recorder right now and we can have the rest of this
conversation in a cafe. I have been living in this country for fifteen years,
long enough to know what an Italian
pasticcio
is. I do not deny that it has
certain merits and offers certain advantages. But I think that there are also
certain virtues to the baneful Eastern European tendency you so delicately
mentioned."
"I am sorry if I unintentionally offended you. Well then, please say
whatever your memory and imagination or so-called intuition dictates."
"Fine, I will not describe all our meetings in the course of the following
few years. When I went during the day and the weather was nice, we
would have a swim, and occasionally we took his motorboat to Procida and
Ischia; the evening visits were full of drinking, chatting, and listening to
records late into the night. In the daytime I ascertained several times that the
continual changes in the Eye of Providence were not caused by the play of
light from the lamp and the reflection of the moon; its expression constantly
