by Desmond Cory
“Nice boy.”
“Um. Given to pretty speeches, but – as you say – a nice boy. I’m interested in the speech he’ll make when we turn up at Oberneusl.”
“Yes, that was very odd.”
“Very.”
“You think there was more in him than meets the eye?”
“Oh well, that I wouldn’t know.”
They passed a group of porters, who were all enthusiastically shaking hands with one another. After a pause, Marie-Andrée spoke again.
“Why did you steal the wallet?”
“I was interested,” said Johnny defensively. “All those goings-on after little Johann had left off his squib about Oberneusl… They had me worried.”
“Darling, there’s no reason to suppose that affair had anything to do with us at all. Let’s have a teeny peek in the wallet, h’m?”
“Certainly not,” said Johnny firmly, stooping once more for the suitcases. “Not till we get to a hotel. Emphatically not here, with lynx-eyed policemen breathing down the back of your neck.”
“I bet it’s got nothing to do with us, anyway. I’m not even curious. Well – not very.”
“It’s got something to do with us all right.”
“What makes you so sure?”
Johnny looked at her in surprise. “Didn’t you hear what that fellow said before he died?”
“Why, no. What did he say?”
Johnny placed the suitcases once again on the ground and looked about the great station square for a taxi. “He said, ‘Mayer’,” said Johnny, absently.
MUNICH
THE HOTEL WEIMBERGER, overlooking the badly damaged Augsburgstrasse, lies some three miles from the centre of the city of Munich, and is not much frequented by tourists. Nevertheless, the room to which Johnny and Marie-Andrée were eventually shown was well-lit, clean and extremely comfortable; and the early breakfast the hotelier obligingly served them was large and eminently satisfying. It reduced the already sleepy Marie-Andrée to the state of somnolence normally attained only by over-fed boa constrictors… When the breakfast had been cleared away and two large bottles of Hofbrau placed on the bedroom table, Johnny stretched himself lazily in his chair and said:
“I like Germany.”
“Humph,” said Marie-Andrée.
“I feel almost cheery.”
“Huh.”
“So what shall we do next?”
“I,” said Marie-Andrée, “am going to bed. I am going to sleep. And I shall probably sleep a great deal sounder if you will kindly satisfy my womanly curiosity first.”
“About what?”
“Good Heavens. The wallet, idiot.”
“Oh, yes,” said Johnny, who really had forgotten all about it. “All right. Let’s have a look at it, then.”
He took it from his pocket, and weighed it curiously on the palm of his right hand. It was of good soft leather, neither new nor badly worn. Johnny unclipped the metal fastener and emptied the wallet’s contents out on to the table.
“Money,” said Marie-Andrée happily.
Johnny was turning the wallet this way and that, examining it. If he saw anything of interest, he made no comment. Instead, he said briefly:
“Count it.”
Marie-Andrée picked up the thin wad of notes, riffled through them, and then began to count them out on the table in front of her.
“… Five hundred and forty deutschmarks.”
Johnny nodded. He began to investigate the small pile of papers that had also emerged.
“German passport. That may be useful. Name, Erich Roose… Address at Köln. Um… Fellow seems to have travelled around a bit lately. Holland and Switzerland and – yes, Belgium… Small pocket comb. Ticket to Munich and platzkarte. Pocket calendar; no dates marked in any way, unfortunately. Membership card of some club or other. Rent book. Traveller’s cheques. Small envelope, aha! – containing… stamps. Well, I’m damned. And used at that. Dutch stamps, all different.”
“Show me.”
Johnny pushed them across to her, and she fingered them gingerly. “I don’t think they’re Dutch, are they?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about stamps. Take a look at this; this is much more interesting.”
It was a small pink membership card, stamped with the number 305 and bearing, directly beneath, the signature Erich Roose. At the head of the card was inscribed in florid Gothic lettering, CLUB DE MONTAGNE D’AUTRICHE.
“See?” said Johnny softly. “Another mountaineer.” Marie-Andrée closed her eyes and tried to think. The effort hurt her. She desisted.
“What am I supposed to make of it, anyway?”
“Nothing at all. I should imagine quite a lot of people on that train were returning from the mountains, or going to them. What I want to know is the connection between this laddie and Karl Mayer. It doesn’t look as if there’s anything here to tell me.”
He strolled over to the window and looked out across the wide street. A bright morning sun was slanting along its length, stabbing dark shadows in the tracks of the people hurrying to work. But there was no man with a newspaper.
“Awww-ww,” said Marie-Andrée inelegantly. She had taken her jacket off, and was surveying it with extreme distaste. “I’ll tell you something, my sweet. And that is, for the rest of the trip I’m going to wear something decent, instead of these horrible rags.” She kicked her skirt on to the floor. “Get my case open, will you? You’ve got the keys.”
Johnny turned obediently. “… I thought you did pretty well with our young friend from Zurich.”
“Huh. I wasn’t displayed to advantage.”
“I should hope not,” said Johnny, shocked. “If by that you mean… Here, this is your case. For Heaven’s sake get something on.”
“That’s the general idea. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to drink the rest of this excellent Hofbrau. And then I’m going out.”
“Going out?” said Marie-Andrée, her voice muffled by the folds of her nightdress. “What on earth do you want to go out for?”
“Excitement.”
“Swine,” said Marie-Andrée; hurling a pillow at him with excellent aim.
Johnny returned to the bedroom shortly after noon, whistling a complicated passage from a Prokofiev sonata; and found his friend peacefully asleep. He immediately ceased to whistle; started to tiptoe across the room, caught his foot in some semi-invisible undergarment and fell to the floor with a crash that shook the building. Marie-Andrée opened one large blue eye and regarded him reproachfully.
“You woke me up,” she complained.
“Sorry,” said Johnny, nursing his shins. “You’re such a light sleeper.”
“Never mind, darling; I am glad you’re back. I missed you.”
“You liar,” said Johnny, sitting down on the bed. “You’ve been asleep all the time.”
“Oh, well. I miss you when I’m asleep.”
“There, there,” said Johnny. “I missed you, too.”
Such are the workings of feminine logic that, at this remark, Marie-Andrée detached herself from Johnny’s welcoming embrace and eyed him with marked distrust.
“What have you been up to?”
Johnny pushed himself over on to his back and focused dreamily on the ceiling. The bed was comfortable, very comfortable indeed. He closed his eyes.
“Come on. Where’ve you been?…”
“Well, I haven’t been doing anything very exciting. But I’ve got two reservations on the three o’clock B.E.A. flight to Vienna; they should get us there in nice time for dinner.”
“Oh good.”
“Then I put through some long-distance calls. I rang up Zurich, to satisfy my curiosity about the Biel fellow. He’s all right. At least, he’s either what he says he is or else he’s rigged his end pretty neatly. As I said I was a police officer making a routine inquiry about the train affair, they probably gave me the right answers.”
“Clever boy,” said Marie-Andrée affectionately.
>
“So that left me where I was before. I rang up that Mountain Club, and they couldn’t tell me anything, either – except that Roose was on their books, and that we knew already. All in all, a waste of time and money. But then I went to a philanthropist’s.”
“Where?”
“A stamp shop, stupid. I was curious about those stamps, so I asked what they were… Well, they knew all about them; only it was all explained in technical language, full of permutations or something – I couldn’t understand a word of what they were saying.”
Marie-Andrée sighed. “So that was a dead loss, too.”
“The non-technical part was quite interesting, though; the only non-technical part. Which was, in effect, how much the wretched things were worth.”
“You mean . . . ?”
Johnny nodded. “Quite a lot. Just short of five thousand deutschmarks.”
Marie-Andrée started doing sums on her fingers, and looked impressed. “All that for those few little stamps?”
“Yes. Look in my pocket if you don’t believe me. I thought,” said Johnny, “it ought to count as legitimate loot.”
“You are clever.” She kissed him enthusiastically. “I should never have thought of that. Good Heavens, that’s going to pay our fares.”
“Oh yes. And the hotel bills.” Johnny rolled off the bed and walked, in his stockinged feet, over to the window. He drew back the curtain slightly, and peered out. “… I’m not happy about it, though. I don’t understand it; and I don’t like things I don’t understand.”
VIENNA
THE HOTEL BADZOV, overlooking the Franzistrasse, lies some three miles from the centre of the city of Vienna; and is not much frequented by tourists. Marie-Andrée, eyeing its unprepossessing exterior with some disfavour, at first inclined to the opinion that Johnny was a trifle overconsistent in his selection of hotels. She would have preferred the Bristol. However, the Badzov’s room service and interior comfort turned out to be well up to the standard of its Munich equivalent; after an excellent night’s sleep followed by an enormous plateful of debrecziner, Johnny thoughtfully announced that he liked Austria, too.
“You are the slave of your disgusting belly,” Marie-Andre informed him.
Johnny smiled gently at this scathing indictment, wandered over to the window and practised his favourite habit of staring moodily out of it. He had at least the consolation that this would be the last hotel window from which a qui vive would be necessary… with luck. A hot morning sun was again glaring down the street, the scene outside was full of metallic glints and sparklings. Cars moved by, travelling towards the Semmering Pass; pedestrians strolled – for this was Austria, not Bavaria, and no-one ever hurried. Behind the incredible jumble of rooftops, far in the distance, there rose the outline of the Vienna woods. Johnny smiled again, and turned back into the room.
“So here we are,” he said happily, “in the city of romance and song. The journey’s practically over. So we’d better start getting busy.”
“And what’s the next step?”
“The next step will, as it were, be taken in a car. We need a car. We must have a car. Therefore we’re going to get a car. I trust I make myself clear.”
“You’re perfectly comprehensible, your accent improves daily. How do we get a car – steal it?”
“Steal…? But that would be most dishonest.”
“I suppose it would. On the other hand, I don’t see how we can get one by legitimate means. There must be all sorts of restrictions covering cars, motor, civilian, sale of to foreigners.”
“There are,” agreed Johnny. “We’re going to have to see a man about it. A distinguished and well-mannered citizen, rather a famous crook. He lives in a nice house just off the Ring.”
“Fine,” said Marie-Andrée. “Well, let’s go. I love ’em well-mannered and distinguished.”
…They took a taxi and sailed off eastwards.
The Ringstrasse is the great boulevard that curves round Old Vienna, joined at each end by the straight cut of the Danube canal; within its D lies the international zone. It is the most famous street in Central Europe, and probably the most beautiful. Along its length are scattered the biggest hotels in Austria – the Bristol, the Grand, the Imperial, the Hotel de France; near its centre is the high steeple of the Stephansdom cathedral. And around that building’s Gothic solidarity there seethes the hive of activity of the main shopping streets… And between rows of marketable goods and the doors of the fashionable cafes, beside the Kärntnerstrasse and the Graben, behind the plate-glass windows and the fresh modern frontage, there runs the little alley called the Fleischmarkt, four hundred years old and more, with the oldest pub in Vienna on its right-hand side and the oldest brothel in Europe flanking it to its rear.
… It was at this street that the taxi finally drew up. Johnny paid off the driver; while Marie-Andrée stood on the narrow pavement drinking in the atmosphere. Century-old gables frowned down upon her; tiny lattice windows with bright red curtains eyed her distrustfully; from a large house directly behind her, a house that might once have re-echoed to the strains of Mozartian minuets and, later, to the waltzes of Strauss and Lehar, a very loud radio set testified to the international celebrity of Mr. Bing Crosby. Down the street a soldier marched, wearing no shako, no gay tunic, no curved and arrogant sword; but the nondescript khaki uniform of the British Army.
He passed by; and didn’t even glance at her. Marie-Andrée thought Vienna greatly overestimated.
“All very hysterical,” said Johnny, glancing round the surrounding houses. “This is the place, anyway. The Crosby devotee.”
“He’s a very lucky man. I’d love to live in a house like that.”
“Um.” Johnny seemed pensive. “D’you want to come in, or would you rather walk around outside, and inspect the architecture?”
“I’ll come in. Why, what’s the matter? Is there likely to be any trouble?”
“I don’t think so. He can be somewhat awkward to handle, but I don’t see why there should be any fuss over a little business deal like this. Come on, then.” He walked over to the front door, and hammered on it with the quaint eighteenth-century knocker. Marie-Andrée followed timidly.
“What’s this fellow called, anyway?”
“I always call him Harry.”
“Why?”
“That’s his name.”
The door opened soundlessly, and an impeccably-attired character with a round chubby face appeared in the portal. He chewed meditatively at one end of a toothpick. “Well, hullo, Harry,” said Johnny.
Harry removed the toothpick and beamed. “Well, well, well,” he said heartily. “Surprise, surprise! And am I glad to see you!”
“I don’t know,” said Johnny frankly. “Are you?”
“But of course, old man, of course. Come on in; sit down an’ make yourselves thoroughly unhappy.”
“… Meet my wife.”
“Delighted, delighted. I can’t call you by name, lady, because whatever appellation our friend here has adopted for you, I’m pretty darn sure it won’t be his own.”
“Hell,” said Johnny. “Since when have names mattered in our business?”
“Well, that’s right enough. A name by any other name…” Harry looked puzzled, and gave it up. “Anyway, park yourselves. Let me do things with tall glasses for you both. I guess I should propose your collective healths.”
“That’s as good a way as any of opening our little business discussion.”
Harry placed his glass on a small occasional table, undoubtedly the work of an eighteenth-century master, lowered himself into an equally exquisite chair and fingered his chin thoughtfully. “Oh. A business discussion, huh?”
“You ought to know you’re not on my list for purely social calls.”
“So rarely I see you about, I really wouldn’t know. You’re welcome to drop in any time, any time at all. You’ll always find me ready for a chat; and always willing to help.”
“Right now we want
a car. Can you fix that?”
Harry spread out his hands. “I can fix anything, anywhere, if I’m given the money. What sort of a car d’you fancy?”
“Good fastish American model. Say a Packard or an Olds.”
“Sure. Sure.” Harry nodded. “I guess we can fix that up, old man. It’ll cost you… Say forty thousand schillings to a great personal friend.”
Johnny said, “Let’s say thirty thousand. To a stranger.”
“Stranger? – Well, as to that, of course, I’ve never even seen you at all. You don’t have to worry, there won’t be any questions. Not when I fix the deal… Forty thousand.”
“Thirty,” said Johnny. “I’m making a deal, not endowing you for life.”
“Now you just don’t get it, Johnny. Forty is simply the dead all-time low. Why, I’m not even making a rake-off on this. I tell you I’m —”
“Thirty.”
Harry shrugged, and smiled rather crookedly. “Sorry, old boy. I’m terribly sorry. We’re just not talking business.”
“Okay, then I’ll go and talk business somewhere else. To Colonel Messiter, maybe. He’d like to hear about that business with the Princess Maria Vronovsky.”
There was a moment’s pause. Then Harry’s voice; a soft, gentle, velvety whisper.
“I wouldn’t do that, old man. Really, I wouldn’t do that.”
“Oh, but I would, you know.”
Another silence. Harry’s hand hesitated for a moment, moved towards the table and the glass of whisky.
“… So all right, Buster. I’ll get your car.”
“That’s right,” said Johnny. “You’re being smart, Harry. I always knew you’d be smart.”
“I don’t see how I am, being smart. But the way I figure it, there’s times when it’s smart not to be smart. That’s one way to look at it, hey?”
“You’re smart,” said Johnny. He leaned forwards. “And after I’ve got the car, Harry… that’s the time to go on being smart. I wouldn’t want you to do anything stupid before we’re clear of the Russian zone.”
“Why, these unworthy suspicions. The telephone’s right behind you, old man, if you’d care to pass it to me.”
