Equal Danger by Sciascia, Leonardo

supplied by the robber’s victim; in two days of work, with Dr. Maxia constantly offering descriptions and suggesting correc­tions, the artist eventually produced a portrait the distri­ bution of which would have risked causing harassment to a celebrated film star. What was circulated was the verbal description of a man five feet eight inches tall, thin, dark-skinned, slightly bald, with some white hair, perfect teeth, and slightly aquiline nose; by preference, the man wore gray; he had a great deal of money. This last was the factor that made him virtually invulnerable, provided that in his travels and stopovers he kept to first-class accommodations, which the police were reluctant to search. Cres had become, in a word, invisible. Rogas also suspected exactly how Cres had man­aged to get himself documents for a new identity. In prison, he had known one of the most able counterfeiters in the country, perhaps the best known to the police of four or five nations. The counterfeiter was a reliable man, scrupulous and loyal in regard to his clients. Fel­low-prisoners, questioned in this respect, recalled that he was very close to Cres during their years in jail. Rogas went to visit him, for he, too, was now at liberty, but the man said that in prison he had played chess with Cres and talked about books, that he remembered him warmly, but that outside of prison he had not seen him again and, indeed, was eager to have news of him. Was he well? Had they reviewed his trial? If the Insp