Part 2 — VI

"BY the way," said Lewis, without guarding against the association of ideas, "what do you think of that?" And he held out to Martial a telegram that had come from Pastafina that morning.

"Do you know that this business, which at first seemed so perfectly easy to run, is beginning to worry me seriously?"

"It's always the same story. I don't like these affectuosissimo and dilatory replies followed by complete silence."

And yet six weeks before a party of carefully chosen engineers had been despatched to San Lucido. Their prospecting continued to have excellent results, but so far not a stroke of actual work had been done. Formality after formality with an anti-French municipality ended in nothing but further checks, and permission to construct the railway line past the foot of Battaglia had been refused, in spite of an appeal to the Courts; they had had to face the prospect of getting their produce to the shore by a service of lorries which was rendered precarious by the absence of fuel supplies and an execrable road.

When the question arose of the establishment of an outlet to the sea and the utilization of the creek nearest to the works (the very one where Lewis used to bathe) it was far worse: the Company certainly possessed the authority and the possibility of building piers fairly quickly for loading ships; but they found that though, as shown on the maps, there was quite enough water, there was a chain of reefs just outside which made it dangerous for cargo boats to approach in rough weather. And so they had to consider loading from tenders on the high seas. After several attempts this had to be given up and they turned to the west, to Marmarole; there the land at the back of the south jetty was admirably adapted for the disposition of sheds and warehouses. But when they decided to make use of it, they were told that all the land had been let a short time before (the deal had been carried through in haste anonymously, and nothing had been done with the land since). Labour problems became more and more complicated: where before labour had been scarce, it had now disappeared altogether; where labour could be found the Trades Unions demanded such high wages that it was useless to start work. The emigration offices, the local Press, the local authorities, the Labour Bureau, the election agents, even the delegates of the Mafia seemed for once to be at one, banded together against this French undertaking. In whose pay were all these people? Lewis instituted enquiries. Some interesting facts came to light. Soon the hand of the Compagnia Pascali of Palermo appeared; behind them, issuing orders to them, a combine of Malto-Italian banks whose instructions were discovered to come from No. 8 Via Petrarcha, Trieste; in other words, from the Apostolatos Bank.