Chapter 24 Summary

Tom calls Mr. Greenleaf in Rome. As Tom expected, Greenleaf sounds pitifully hungry for any information about his missing son. Tom calls from the house of a friend, Peter Smith-Kingsley, where he is having cocktails with Marge and a pair of attractive brothers from Trieste, the Franchettis. Mr. Greenleaf is beginning to fear that Dickie is dead.

One of the Franchetti brothers jokingly suggests that Dickie has traded passports with a Neapolitan fisherman or a Roman cigarette vendor, to hide from the police. He suggests the impostor is a poor forger, and had to disappear quickly. Tom protests that many people who know Dickie, including Tom himself, saw Dickie in January. Anyway, the Naples and New York bank experts disagree on which signatures are forged. One of the three even says there were no forgeries. Marge insists that Dickie's personality has changed so...