Giuseppe attacks Anthony at the Blitz Hotel

Giuseppe attacks Anthony at the Blitz Hotel in a nighttime attempt to seize Count Stylptitch’s memoirs. Anthony survives the knife attack, but Giuseppe escapes with Virginia Revel’s letters; the failed robbery of the manuscript thus becomes a successful theft of the other papers, setting up the blackmail plot and drawing Anthony deeper into criminal jeopardy.

The manuscript under watch

Anthony has reason to expect another intrusion. At dinner, he keeps the manuscript package and the letters on the table rather than leaving the papers in his suitcase while he goes downstairs. When the waiter returns with a small table and the meal, Anthony is standing with his back to the room, but a mirror lets him see the man watching the manuscript. The waiter moves softly around the table, glancing at Anthony and showing such agitation that Anthony recognizes him as an Italian rather than a Frenchman.

Anthony’s suspicions turn this apparently ordinary hotel service into a test of attention and access. The waiter is close enough to the papers to try for them, while Anthony has only the reflected view and his own judgment to guard them. The scene foreshadows the attack: Giuseppe’s first approach to the manuscript takes place in plain sight, disguised by his position as a waiter; his later entry will exploit the room’s vulnerability after Anthony has gone to bed.

The attack and escape

After the attempted daytime approach, Anthony gathers the letters and the manuscript wrapping and locks them in his suitcase. He locks the door, props a chair against it, and balances the bathroom water-bottle on the chair as an alarm. Before sleeping, he removes the memoirs from the suitcase and puts them beneath his pillow. The precautions are careful but incomplete: they protect the manuscript while leaving the suitcase, and the letters within it, exposed to an intruder entering by another route.

About four hours later, Anthony wakes to a stealthy rustle and sees a darker shape by the suitcase. When he switches on the light, the figure rises from its kneeling position. It is Giuseppe, holding a long, thin knife. Anthony is unarmed; Giuseppe, by contrast, appears practiced with the weapon and charges straight at him.

Anthony springs aside and avoids the first thrust. The men grapple on the floor, and Anthony concentrates on restraining Giuseppe’s knife hand, slowly forcing the right arm back. Giuseppe chokes him with the other hand, so the struggle is at once a contest for the weapon and for breath. The knife finally falls with a sharp tinkle, but Giuseppe twists free. Anthony moves toward the door to block his retreat, only then realizing that his chair-and-bottle barricade remains undisturbed.

Giuseppe has entered through the window, not the door. He escapes the same way, springing onto the balcony, leaping to the adjoining balcony, and disappearing through its window. Anthony does not pursue him: he judges that Giuseppe’s retreat is secure and that a chase would only get him into trouble. The escape leaves the hotel attack unresolved as a confrontation, even though Anthony has prevented the knife from being used against him.

The stolen letters and the widening case

Anthony checks beneath the pillow first and finds the memoirs still there. Their removal from the suitcase has spared them. But when he opens the suitcase to retrieve the letters, he discovers that they are gone. Giuseppe has failed to take the document that prompted Anthony’s precautions yet has secured the papers that will make Virginia vulnerable to blackmail. The reversal makes the two bundles’ different locations decisive: Anthony’s safeguard protects one target and inadvertently leaves the other available.

The theft leads into the blackmail involving Virginia. Later, Anthony looks back on the consequences of his conduct alongside the attack at Chimneys, where he was present as another crime took place. He recognizes that within twenty-four hours he has become involved in two separate crimes: his deliberate disposal of Giuseppe’s body has obstructed justice, and his arrival at the second crime’s scene places him under suspicion there. The hotel struggle is therefore not an isolated episode of attempted theft; it begins a sequence in which Anthony’s efforts to protect the papers and Virginia produce choices that compromise him.

Narrative significance

The attack is built around misdirection in space and in attention. Anthony watches the manuscript in the mirror, sees the apparent danger at the table, and then prepares against entry through the door. Giuseppe’s actual route is the window, and the carefully arranged chair and bottle remain untouched. The failed barrier exposes the limit of Anthony’s control: his alertness helps him survive the knife attack, but it cannot prevent Giuseppe from escaping with the letters.

The division between manuscript and letters also gives the episode its lasting consequence. The memoirs remain safe beneath Anthony’s pillow, while the letters vanish from the suitcase and become the basis for pressure on Virginia. The moment joins a political secret entrusted to Anthony with a private correspondence that another person can exploit, and it pushes the story from a guarded hotel-room encounter toward blackmail, murder, and Anthony’s increasingly perilous relationship with the police.