Requiem at Rogano

wife.

1

Retirement, thought ex-inspector Brough, is all very well if your heart is in it. He settled himself into his favorite fireside chair and looked out at the mist creeping slowly up from the Thames. The cabs rattling along Jermyn Street already looked indistinct and spectral in the December dusk.

An early edition of the Star lay open on his lap. Fourth Man Strangled by Mystery Assassin declared a headline at the top of the page.

Brough reached for his pipe and began to fill it.

A university professor done to death in Camden Passage, the Yard running around in circles not knowing who to arrest next, and me sitting here sinking into my dotage, he muttered. It just doesn’t make sense.

Brough had been melancholy and shiftless for more than a month, ever since the strangler’s first appearance at Deptford had sent the press into hysterics and the Yard into confusion.

My brain is as sharp as it ever was, he thought. But the great god Regulations is not concerned with brains.

Daily physical jerks and a few Sufi exercises learned during his army days in India kept his body as sound as his mind. He was as fit now as when he had taken over the metropolitan murder division of the CID back in ’91.

But Regulations said an officer must retire at sixty, and no one—not even the commissioner—could defy Regulations. When, on the threshold of retirement, its depressing reality had at last become plain to him, he had tried hard to bend a few rules. But it was hopeless. He might just as well have sought the Holy Grail in the men’s locker room. On his sixtieth birthday, not a day sooner or later, the ax had fallen.

Oh, he had tried to make the best of it. He had tried to tell himself that detective work was just another way of saying donkey work. And, to a point, that was true. Every startling solution that hit the headlines, every dramatic arrest, was the product of weeks or months of often tedious legwork.

Donkey work, legwork, bloody hard work.

But it was hopeless. All those arguments appealed to the mind. They didn’t really touch him.

How could they? Reginald Arthur Brough had never troubled about hard work. He had savored every moment of it. In twenty- six years with the uniformed branch and eleven with the Detective Department he had earned the reputation of being one of the most single-minded men at the Yard. And donkey work or not, no man on the force had relished his duty more than Brough.

Never one to be defeated easily by misfortune, he had striven valiantly to fill the empty weeks and months of his retirement.

But that hadn’t worked either. In eighteen months he had accomplished much of what he had imagined would take years. Since leaving the Yard in June of the previous year he had read the complete works of Mr. Dickens—apart from Bleak House, which he couldn’t begin to get his teeth into; he had endlessly haunted the Natural History Museum; and he had photographed the scene of almost every notorious murder that had ever taken place in his beloved London. He had trudged from the splendid Kensington mews where Mrs. Cheyney-Loring had met her comeuppance in the shape of Spider Bill (to whom she had been married for twelve years without suspecting his identity) to the very house where the horrible Ratcliffe Highway murders had been committed, and he had taken hundreds of pictures en route. The sepia prints now occupied every inch of space on the walls, and, together with a formidable array of gruesome knick-knacks from a lifetime spent chasing criminals, they turned his gaslit rooms into a veritable museum of murder. He looked around him. Between the books and the murderers’ bric-a-brac, strange Buddhist gods peered at him out of the shadows. He dropped his gaze to his hands and ran his eye along the crease that the palmists called the life line. How far have I traveled along it? he pondered. I see its beginning. And its end. And all its tributaries. But whereabouts is now?

God, how he ached to be back on the job. Other men, not yet sixty, nudged him in the ribs and chortled about the freedom of retirement. Well, they could have it. The only freedom he wanted was about the only freedom he couldn’t have. Freedom, real freedom—carte blanche—to set up the machinery to snare this bastard strangler.

But what use were dreams? Sitting there alone in the flickering firelight of his rooms, he felt adrift like a dinghy that had broken its moorings. Botany, reading and amateur photography never had and never would replace the thrill of the chase. And learned men getting strangled in dark alleys miles from where they lived aggravated his dissatisfaction with life.

Such incidents made him yearn to wind back the clock and show these youngsters with three stripes on their arms before they were thirty how a criminal investigation should be handled. Dreams again. Empty, useless dreams.

Now with a little woman beside me, he reflected, I wouldn’t feel so cut off from life. I wouldn’t feel the need to fill my days with so much doing. Just being would be a fine thing.

He yawned. Troubled nights for the past few weeks had added to his misery.

He looked again at the unopened letter lying on the table by a plaster bust of his old sparring partner Charles Peace. It had arrived with the second post, but he had been so involved in developing some photographs that he had had no time to open it. Later, when the prints were hanging up to dry in his makeshift darkroom, he had been too immersed in mourning his lost past to give it a thought. Rising, Brough picked up the letter, walked to the window and opened it.

Grand Hotel de New-York

Palazzo Ricasoli

Florence

29 NOV 1902

R. A. Brough, Esq.

35a Jermyn Street

London W.

My Dear Uncle,

Forgive my using the typewriter, which at best seems cold and impersonal, but in three years of newspaper work my handwriting ability seems to have atrophied.

Journalism is a pretty precarious existence, as you warned me it would be—more so when you sell what you can on the open market rather than buckle down to an eight-to-seven drudgery with a regular employer. There’s not a great deal more to be made writing books, as I found with King Teddy, but the odd literary venture does swell the coffers a bit. And perhaps more importantly it helps me keep my hand in with the king’s English, which my twopence-a-lining for the dailies rather abuses. As an indignant professor of English told me before I came down from Oxford, any similarity between journalese and the English language is purely coincidental!

I know Teddy wasn’t the hottest seller of the year, but it did moderately well and I have enough confidence to think my style will improve with experience, so I’ve decided to start work on another book.

How does the idea of collaborating with me on a History of Murder appeal to you? I realize I have been rather aloof of late and I must have seemed ungracious in my neglect of our old friendship, but life takes some queer twists and the course of our existence is so often outside our control, as you have told me often. No matter. I shall be lodging with my parents for the foreseeable future when I return home and for my part I should dearly love to revive our old association. And after a year and a half of forced inactivity you must long to get your teeth into something challenging and fulfilling. You might be out for the count as far as new cases are concerned, but who better than a man of your experience to tackle a proper account of the great murders of the past—and to have a crack at clearing up a few of the unsolved ones? Writers with no training in detection are producing books every year with ingenious and widely discussed theories on old mysteries from the identity of the man who wrote Shakespeare’s plays to the riddle of the little princes in the Tower. Andrew Lang has made a career out of mystery.

As far as I can discover there has been no well-researched history of murder from the earliest times to the present day, and old Harris at Methuen & Co. thinks there could be a good market for it. Not knowing my plan to ask you to collaborate with me, Harris suggested that a foreword from you would give the book a sort of imprimatur. Imagine how the reading public will sit up and take note if the title page is inscribed By Former Scotland Yard Inspector Reginald Brough. . . .

I thought we could start with Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, who was clubbed to death in the Roman senate in 133 B.C., and document every notable murder that’s been committed since—reporting facts, commenting, and where possible offering new explanations for stubborn mysteries. I have already done six months’ work on a synopsis and I’ve been digging into some pretty bizarre cases.

I have stumbled on one case the like of which you’ve never seen. It must beat anything they ever handed you at the Yard. That’s really why I am in Italy. If we can get to the bottom of this one it will be the highlight of the book.

I still have a lot to do here but I expect to be back in London by Wednesday, December 10th, at the latest. If I don’t contact you before, I shall be at the Beggar’s on Thursday the 11th at six if you should care to join me.

With great affection

Your nephew

Nicholas

P.S. I’m not staying at the Hotel de New-York. I just nipped in for a cup of tea and to pinch some stationery.

Nicholas Calvin. My God, it must be nearly two years.

Before Oxford, Nicholas had been Brough’s companion through many long evenings. They shared a number of interests, notably the detection of crime, and each enjoyed listening to the other expound on his own subjects. Despite the thirty-odd years that separated them in age, a warm friendship had grown up between them. Nicholas was the only son of Brough’s sister Alice, so the old man had known his friend almost since he had drawn his first breath.

There had been a grand reunion when Nicholas came down from university and another a short time later when his biography of the new king was published, but since then nothing. Brough was not so unsympathetic as Nicholas seemed to fear. He had treasured their friendship, but for at least four years before it ran down he had expected his place in his nephew’s affections to be replaced, quite properly, by the tenderer charms of a young woman. As far as the old man knew, no serious love had as yet materialized. Doubtless there had been mistresses, but the lady in Nicholas’ life had turned out to be his work, and Brough no more resented that than he would have resented a woman.

The letter had taken nearly a fortnight to arrive, and by Nicholas’ calculations he would have arrived home last night.

A History of Murder. It was quite a thought.

Of course, Nicholas would have to do the writing. And Brough would insist that his own name came second on the title page—By Nicholas Calvin and Reginald Brough.

But the unsolved murders of the past exerted a peculiar fascination. . . . As Nicholas said, it would be unique for a respected detective to turn his training to that sort of use. . . . Mr. Dickens and botany could go to the devil, or at least to the old folks’ infirmary where they belonged. . . . The work involved would be immense. . . . But it would certainly put the mockers on this mental stagnation, this so-called retirement. Retirement? More like a slow march to death.

Yes, Nicholas, I’ll do it, he said aloud. God bless you, I’ll do it.

2

He took out his watch. Twenty minutes to six. If he was to be on time he would have to forego the pleasure of walking, generally his only way of travel in the capital, and take a cab. Putting on a sturdy greatcoat that had served him for a dozen snowy winters, he went down to the street, set off for Piccadilly at a brisk pace and there hailed a cab heading down Coventry Street.

The cries of a newsboy in Leicester Square made him call to the cabby to halt.

Special! Evenin’ paper!—’Nuvver Stranglin’ in London!—Maniac Kills Again!—Special!

Brough stepped smartly across the pavement and bought a copy of the Evening News.

Full story on the Camden Passage bloke, mister, said the newsboy.

Thank you, said Brough, and bidding him a cheery good night, he returned to the cab.

The glimmer of the lamp on the side of the hansom was too dim to read by, so he nestled down beneath the covers and reviewed the problems posed by the newcomer to the criminal scene.

The Deptford Strangler. A promising subject for the last chapter of the History. Nothing like being bang up to date.

His tongue worked away at a back tooth where a particle of meat had lodged at lunchtime.

The underworld must be running alive with rumor and speculation, he thought. The copper in charge of the inquiry would do well to collar a few criminal contacts. After all, even villains disowned a mad killer. When it was one against society like this, the criminal element nearly always crossed the line and allied itself to the forces of law. This was part of the reason why Brough had managed to forge a tolerable working relationship with a number of men who should strictly have been regarded as the enemy. In his last decade on the force he had been concerned solely with the detection of murder, so in practice he posed no threat to the pickpocket or the fence, or even the robber or cat burglar providing he avoided violence. As such he could pick their brains when their world spawned a specimen too nasty even for their taste.

He sighed miserably and longed once more for the past to return. Even the drudgery, the long hours, the cold, the drizzle and the darkness of his old job took on a romantic aspect as his mind dwelt on the excitement of cases now long solved or long closed.

As the cabby’s horse picked its way through the confusion of traffic at the corner of Charing Cross Road, he turned over in his mind the known facts of the murders which had London peering over its shoulder in fear. He was still ticking off points on his fingers when the vehicle came to a creaking halt outside the Beggar’s Alms.

3

Nicholas Calvin sat in the farthest corner of the saloon bar and sipped at a glass of brown ale. A pile of dusty papers was spread out before him on the table.

He liked the Beggar’s. He had been introduced to it years ago after a nocturnal expedition with Brough to the cellar that had become notorious for its grim connection with the Clerkenwell Poisoning Mystery. Four bodies sitting side by side in a damp cellar and all perfectly preserved by the massive doses of antimony each had absorbed. Suicide pact or murder? Publicly, no one had even been able to establish who the three men and one woman were, although some spoke guardedly of a latter-day Hell Fire Club and there had been much talk of a certain demented nobleman.

The truth of that one will never come out, Brough had said, but that doesn’t mean the truth is not known. And with those enigmatic words echoing in his mind, Nicholas had followed his uncle through gaslit courtyards and dingy alleys to the lowest pub in Seven Dials. The Beggar’s Alms was the haunt of criminals, pimps, prostitutes and all manner of outcasts, from the unfrocked clergyman who sat day and night by the open fire saying nothing and drinking almost without rest, to the circus dwarf who had grown too old to do somersaults and so outlived his usefulness. Bruno, found distracted and starving by Brough four years earlier, had been brought by the detective to the sanctuary of the Beggar’s, where he now played to a less discerning audience. His pathetic little one-man show had become a nightly event at the farther end of the bar, which all but a few ignored. At the end of it he would curl up in a ball on the straw-covered floor and sleep until opening time in the morning.

At least it keeps his belly full, Brough thought whenever he saw the dwarf in action.

Despite the ceaseless noise of the place, Nicholas found he could relax and be himself. The beer was good and the clientele appealing in a perverse sort of way. It was certainly a refreshing contrast to his parents’ whitewashed vicarage.

The wail of a broken barrel organ drifted across from somewhere in St. Giles as Brough paid the cabby and walked toward the raucous chatter and garish lights of the pub. He stepped inside and looked around the crowded bar for his nephew.

A wiry little man with red side whiskers was emerging from a lavatory to his left. Sam Croker! said Brough, and shook the man’s hand. I thought I might see you here.

You thought right, Mr. Brough, sir, Sam grinned from behind a great glass of frothy beer that had accompanied him to the urinal. Never stirs outside these doors till closing.

Then it’s off to work, eh? said the old detective with a smile. Sam had been one of his better underworld contacts in days gone by. A burglar by profession, he knew virtually every London villain north of the Thames. Since plowing through Notre Dame de Paris three summers ago, Brough had always thought of Sam as the King of the Beggars.

What’s the score, Mr. Brough?

Oh, just a social visit, Sam. There’s no chance of the Yard taking back an old codger like me.

That’s too bad. We need a few more good coppers, not less of ’em. Bet you’d soon lay this strangler character by the ’eels.

Maybe, Sam, I don’t know. Perhaps we could have a talk about him sometime. Keep your ears open on that one though, won’t you? You know my address if you get anything.

Brough knew no one else at the Yard had cultivated Sam as an informant and he assumed that Daubeney, his successor, would have no objection to a bit of free information from his old boss if the situation arose.

He gave Sam a wink and pushed farther into the crush of bodies. Bruno was sitting on a brandy barrel at the end of the bar, pulling faces to amuse the crowd. At the sight of Brough his face opened in a gaping childish grin. Brough smiled and waved. He saw Nicholas in his corner and gently elbowed his way toward him.

Uncle! said Nicholas, jumping up and extending his hand. Brough shook it heartily.

Nicholas’ frock coat was crumpled and dusty, and looked as if he had been wearing it day and night for a week. His face was dappled with the stubble of a good three days and there were dark pouches under his eyes, but he beamed with excitement and pleasure.

Brough did not remark on his nephew’s shaggy appearance, although it intrigued him. Before he could say anything at all, Nicholas said, I’ve been longing to see you. I haven’t slept a wink since Saturday but I had to talk to you before I turned in.

Have you just got back?

No. No, I arrived in London last night.

I’m delighted to see you, Nicholas, but what could be so urgent that it can’t wait until you’ve had some sleep?

Smiling, the young man looked at the pile of papers on the table in front of him.

This, he said. Then, once again before Brough was able to speak, he asked quickly, What do you know of the Inquisition?

Brough pulled up a chair and sat down opposite his nephew.

The Inquisition? he replied thoughtfully. Not much at all. You’re the historian of the family, I’m just a pensioned-off bloodhound.

He thought for a moment.

The Spanish Inquisition. Now let me see. I think I’m right in saying it did some pretty bloody deeds in its day, mainly persecuting Protestants and heretics.

Which of course were one and the same to the Inquisition, replied Nicholas. He hunched forward in his seat and rested his forearms on the table. "It’s interesting you should add the word ‘Spanish.’ Whenever we speak of the Inquisition we always seem to think of the Spanish Inquisition, chiefly I suppose because it was the most wicked and ruthless branch of the so-called Holy Court. But the Inquisition spread its tentacles all over Christendom. There was an Italian Inquisition, a French Inquisition. Even, for a time, an English Inquisition."

Really? said Brough. I didn’t know the blighters set foot here.

Very much so, though only for a short time at the trials of the Templars at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Another thing most people don’t know is that the Inquisition was not finally suppressed until 1808. And its successor, the Tribunal of Faith, was not abolished until 1834, less than seventy years ago. In its six hundred years the Inquisition tortured and murdered thousands in the name of Christ.

Nicholas’ fatigue seemed to dissolve as he became more involved in his subject, and his enthusiasm gave new life to his whole body.

"Is this part of the History of Murder?" asked Brough.

"We must abandon the History of Murder."

Why?

Because we are going to write a book on one single crime and its aftermath.

Ah, said Brough, still uncertain where the conversation was leading.

We shall also tell for the first time the true story of the Inquisition and its inner workings.

He picked up a sheaf of documents in his left hand.

I have here, he said, actual documents from one of the Inquisition’s courts. They include verbatim reports of proceedings, statements of witnesses and copious confidential memoranda. They build up a remarkably detailed picture of one of the most astonishing criminal investigations ever.

He rose and walked silently to the bar, leaving Brough to ponder what unexpected turns his disclosures might yet take. He returned with a tall glass of orange and lemon juice, the closest thing to alcohol Brough ever drank. The former policeman had always maintained that nicotine relaxed and sharpened the senses where alcohol dulled them. He had begun to revise his thinking over tobacco in recent years since a hacking cough had rendered his alarm clock redundant, and he had abandoned cigarettes for the more gentle poison of the pipe. But about alcohol his views remained unchanged. He thanked Nicholas for the drink and looked at him pensively.

I am disappointed, he said.

Don’t be. In dealing with the whole panorama of murder we should have been able to investigate none of them deeply. Theories are the best we could have produced. Whereas by concentrating on just one case we shall produce no theories but the truth.

That does sound a shade overconfident.

Why? Answer this. Why should the approach to a four-hundred-­year-old mystery differ from that of a modern investigation? Surely, with our scientific methods of detection we are now more likely than ever to succeed in solving the riddle.

Assuming we had all the facts, yes. But we are not present at the scene. We cannot go over the ground. We cannot get the feel of the place and the people. We cannot analyze the reactions and behavior of witnesses as we can in a case that occurs today. Instinct and intuition are often as important in solving crimes as are solid facts, you know that as well as I.

Yes, but the answer must lie in the facts. All the clues must be there. It simply needs a trained and methodical mind to sort the wheat from the chaff.

I challenge the word ‘simply.’ In detection there is very little that is simple.

"Point taken. But my instinct tells me there is an answer to this mystery, and that it is contained in the facts still available. I am surprised how minutely the whole affair was documented. There are gaps, some of them quite large, but I have every hope that these can be filled in with records still to be obtained. I cannot explain why, but from the beginning I have felt an odd compulsion to get to the bottom of this case, and an intuitive certainty that I shall actually do so."

Brough nodded silently. Well, he said at length, casting a glum look at the papers before him, as you’ve raised my spirits and knocked them down again all within the space of half an hour, perhaps you’d better tell me about this wondrous crime.

Nicholas did not react to the sarcasm. Swallowing the last of his beer, he launched into the story that had filled his mind and robbed him of sleep for months past.

4

On the night of October the thirtieth, 1454, said Nicholas, looking steadily into Brough’s tawny eyes, "Lorenzo di Corsa, Duke of Rogano, was murdered by an unknown assassin as he lay sleeping in his bed. It was the first of a series of killings that was to convulse half of Italy with fear.

"The town of Rogano lies in a narrow cleft of lowland between two great spurs of the Dolomites, in a fertile region known as Cavenna. Rogano evolved as a settlement after the Romans built a fortress high up in the valley to guard the perimeter of their embryonic empire from incursion by the barbarians massing beyond the Brenner Pass.

"Lorenzo was the second duke. His father, who rose to prominence as a banker and merchant, amassed a fabulous fortune and wielded enormous political power within Rogano. He was eventually invited to run the affairs of the town as Chief Citizen. After fourteen years of benevolent dictatorship, and with virtually no opposition from the city elders, he declared himself duke. He built himself a grand palace in the center of Rogano and ruled with apparent wisdom and mercy for another five years. He died in 1446 after being thrown from his horse while hunting in the hills above the city.

"He was succeeded by his son Lorenzo, then aged twenty-two, a handsome fellow judging by portraits of him. A pious man, he was both more intelligent and more studious than his father but at this time at least he was wildly undisciplined. At university he had nearly killed a fellow student in a brawl over a woman, and rarely a week went by without his challenging some rival to a duel. After succeeding to his father’s title he began to channel his excess energies into more socially acceptable outlets for aggression like field sports. He was a fine wrestler and an acknowledged master of falconry.

In a falconry accident outside Rogano shortly after his marriage in 1451 he lost his left eye and ever after wore a white patch over the empty socket.

What happened? Did the bird peck it out?

Yes, I think so. Nicholas paused. "In his short reign Lorenzo was as merciful an administrator as his father. But he lacked his father’s financial wizardry simply because he could summon up little enthusiasm for the aimless accumulation of wealth. Nevertheless, he became the most popular leader Rogano had known, his chief bequest to the town being one of the most magnificent libraries of medieval illuminated manuscripts anywhere in Italy. Unaware of the revolution the newly invented printing press was about to bring to the worlds of learning and communication, he commissioned the most beautiful manuscript versions of Aristotle, Socrates, Plato and the rest from calligraphers in the Cavenna monasteries.

"As Lorenzo reached the peak of his popularity something strange happened. As I said, he was a most pious man, and toward the end of 1453 he had led a great pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Shortly after his return a great change took place in his character. At the beginning of 1454 he shocked the Roganese by refusing for no apparent reason to allow his newborn son, Lothario, to be baptized. He would give no explanation for his unforeseen volte-face, which in the eyes of his people amounted to the most arrant blasphemy. The storm clouds gathered over the di Corsa Palace, and after a savage quarrel with Lorenzo, his wife fled to her family in Florence.

"Thereafter Lorenzo was rarely seen outside the grounds of the palace, and his sole companions were two Sicilian dwarfs who had joined his household shortly after the birth of his son. There was some idle talk that they were minions of the Vatican sent to spy on him and discover the reason for his strange conduct, but nothing was ever proven.

By the autumn it became clear to the leading citizens that something had to be done either to stir Lorenzo from his hibernation or else to resort to law and set out on the miserable road to impeachment. One thing seemed certain—Rogano needed a strong and active leader to withstand the threat posed by the rapidly expanding dukedoms to the south and west. From that viewpoint Lorenzo was a dangerous liability. Before any formal moves were made fate took a hand. One of the dwarfs, a deaf mute, discovered his master murdered on the morning of October 30th when he entered the duke’s chamber with his toilet articles.

How was he killed? interposed Brough. At that moment Bruno began wheeling about the farther end of the bar and singing broken verses of half-forgotten circus songs in his piping childish treble.

Let’s find somewhere quieter to talk, said Brough, snatching up an armful of Nicholas’ papers and marching through a doorway hung with a threadbare blanket behind the bar. Nicholas followed obediently as his uncle walked unannounced into the landlord’s dwelling place at the back of the pub.

Leon, we want to be alone out of the noise. Upstairs O.K.? said Brough. A growl rather than a word of assent brought the old policeman scurrying back along the passage and up a flight of steep wooden stairs. He led Nicholas to a dingy back room with green paint peeling from the door. The room contained a deal table, two chairs and a tumbled bed.

This’ll do, said Brough, motioning Nicholas to be seated. As Brough himself stooped to sit he squinted his eyes and twitched his nose once like a rabbit.

Peterson’s out, he said under his breath.

Out where? said Nicholas. And who’s Peterson?

Peterson the mine-shaft killer. He’s out of nick and he’s been here.

I thought you said when he went down for manslaughter that they’d never let him out.

They must have sprung him.

When?

I don’t know. But I can smell Peterson. He’s been here in the last four or five hours.

Nicholas gave a nervous little laugh. The thought that the re­voltingly brutal Peterson was possibly still within killing distance made him feel decidedly uncomfortable.

Are you sure? he asked, quite certain Brough was.

The human scent is as infallible a way of identifying criminals as fingerprints if you can only isolate it. Now my eyes get a bit cloudy as old age rolls on, my ears sometimes feel as if they’re bunged up with pipe tobacco, but one thing I know—my sense of smell is remarkable. Pity there’s no way of recording different aromas. I might have set up a huge index at the Yard—or even gone into the phonograph business and made my fortune writing symphonies of smells.

His Master’s Odor? said Nicholas.

Brough smiled at his own folly. No, he pronounced with a sudden seriousness, I’d know that man’s scent anywhere. There are some you just don’t forget. I could identify him in a crowded room at a range of fifty feet.

Is he likely to come back?

Not now we’re here. But I’d like to know what devilry went on up here today.

He sat down. Now, he said, switching with hard-won discipline