(1961) The Prize

by Irving Wallace

  She had slowed with this, and then stood still, her back to him, and now she came around, forehead knitted, and looked at him.

  ‘Are you making a joke, Mr. Craig?’

  ‘I’m perfectly serious. I’m proposing, young lady. I’m asking for your hand in marriage.’

  ‘You mean it,’ she said. It was not a question but a statement of fact.

  ‘Of course I mean it, Lilly. Never meant anything more. We can get married here, and then, you and your son, we can go back to the States, and—’

  She moved towards him. ‘Mr. Craig, why do you ask to marry me?’

  ‘I don’t know why. You want to marry someone, and you ask them.’

  ‘But why—now—me?’

  His mind dwelt on the incomprehensibility of all women, and he wanted a drink. ‘Because I care for you and need you, Lilly, and you can make me alive again.’ He was too sodden to concentrate in this serious vein. She liked fun. They had not often been serious. Fun. ‘I will buy you a Thunderbird and refrigerator and Bergdorf dress and nudist camp.’

  She had circled the coffee table and was now on the sofa beside him, rubbing the back of her neck beneath her golden hair, face too solemn.

  ‘You do not want to marry me, Mr. Craig.’

  ‘Lilly, I know what I want. I’m asking you to be my wife.’

  ‘If you are asking so serious, it is bad then, because I must say no.’

  He prickled and sobered slightly. ‘You said no?’

  ‘I do not wish to marry you.’

  He was too drunk to be depressed, but he had recognized her reply as a phenomenon. He had made up his mind while drinking, and had imagined her pleasure, a famous and wealthy American Lancelot, Galahad, to rescue her from insecurity, work, unwed motherhood. Yet she had said no.

  ‘But I thought—’ he began. ‘What’s wrong with me? Am I too old?’

  ‘Oh, no. That is all right.’

  ‘Don’t you like me? I thought you liked me. We get along, and we have fun, and it would always be better.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Or is it that you have been sorry for me—the sad, middle-aged old man who is drunk and lonely—’

  ‘Of course not—never!’

  ‘Why did you let me love you, then?’

  ‘Mr. Craig, you are making that too much, I have told you, and Daranyi has told you. Because a woman sleeps with a man in Sweden is not the same as America—is not to prove eternal love—is not a pledge for marriage. Maybe I was sorry for you, but not so much. And I would not give you body love for that reason. I offered my body love, because you are in many ways the kind of man I enjoy—you are serious and silly, and handsome and tall, and grown up—and, most of all, fun. I wanted to enjoy you, and you wanted me, and there was no more necessary. It is the most important thing, maybe, to have pleasure when you feel like it and not always look and wait for something that maybe does not come or comes too late. That is enough, what we have. Must I give you my heart too? Must there be a legal ceremony? Does that make us happpier or better?

  ‘We cannot marry together, because the fun is all right for a while—but a marriage is more practical and formal, and we do not have common things. You are too intelligent for my mind. You would tire of me. I am like a young girl who is always a young girl, who likes only the outdoors and to be frivolous, and you are not so, and I would tire of you.’

  A moment before he had ceased listening to her, because something else had entered his head. ‘Lilly, I know what is wrong. You know nothing about me, except I am a writer. You think I’m just another American tourist—a bad prospect—but that is not so. I could give you a fabulous life. Do you know who I am?’

  It was like handing her an expensive birthday present, and he could not wait to open it for her.

  But she was speaking. ‘You are Andrew Craig, the winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in literature.’

  His mouth fell open. ‘You knew?’

  ‘Not at first, but I have known. Daranyi told me.’

  ‘And you can still say no?’

  ‘I respect you, Mr. Craig, and am proud to have been loved by someone so famous. But what has that to do with marriage? I cannot be happy because I have married a prize.’

  He felt maudlin and also depressed, at last. ‘Then it’s no?’

  ‘There is one more reason,’ she said at last, ‘and it is one more reason why you would not be happy with me forever.’

  He waited.

  ‘You are in love with another girl, and you really want to marry her.’

  Lilly’s knowledge was startling and eerie, and he kept staring at her. ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Daranyi. He told me.’

  ‘How in the devil would he know?’

  ‘He knows everything, Mr. Craig. It is his business. He is making an investigation now for somebody connected with the Nobel Prize—Dr. Krantz—a bad man, Daranyi says, because he is always liking the Germans—and now he wants to know all about you and the other winners, and Daranyi helps and finds out everything—’

  ‘I don’t give a damn about Krantz,’ said Craig. ‘I want to know about this thing you heard about me.’

  ‘It is because Daranyi is like my father—always protecting me—and that is why he told me about you and about Emily Stratman.’

  ‘You even know her name.’

  ‘Emily Stratman. Her uncle is Professor Stratman. She is born in Germany. She is now American. She is beautiful and strange and not married. You met her at the Royal Palace. You took her on a tour of the city. You were with her at Mr. Hammarlund’s dinner. And Daranyi says maybe you love her like you did your wife.’

  ‘And that’s why you won’t marry me?’

  ‘No, Mr. Craig, I assure you. It is for all the reasons I give. You do love her, do you not?’

  He hesitated. Her face was so open, her honesty and strength so plain, that he could not lie to her. ‘Yes, I do, Lilly. And do you hate me?’

  ‘Hate you? How foolish you are, Mr. Craig. Of course not. It is as always with us.’

  ‘Well, she hates me—because of you.’

  ‘I cannot believe it.’

  ‘All women are not like you, Lilly, and all are not Swedish.’

  And then he recited to her, as briefly as possible, sobering all the while, some of what had transpired with Emily several hours ago in her bedroom. Lilly listened enrapt, sometimes clucking with incredulity. When he had finished, he awaited her comment.

  ‘She is most strange indeed,’ said Lilly.

  ‘All women are different, different problems and neuroses, different heredity and upbringing, and many women are like Emily.’

  ‘No, I do not like it. I think she loves you and commits suicide. It is terrible wrong.’

  Craig shrugged. ‘There’s nothing to be done.’

  ‘I am sad for her,’ said Lilly. ‘But you are the main one I worry about. It is no good for you alone. You can be so much and enjoy so much, but you cannot because you are alone. Emily Stratman pushes you away. Now, Lilly Hedqvist will not marry you. I am worried about you, Mr. Craig. Maybe I must marry you.’

  ‘Will you?’

  ‘No. Still, I worry in my heart. What will happen to you when you leave us?’

  ‘What will happen?’ Craig snorted. ‘I think we both know. It was fated. I’ll go back to Miller’s Dam and answer fan mail when I’m not drunk—that’ll be the writing I’ll do—and I’ll wind up with the inevitable—marrying my warden, Lee—the omnipresent Lee.’

  ‘Lee?’

  ‘Leah Decker, my sister-in-law.’

  ‘The awful one we hid from on the ferry to Malmö? Oh, no, Mr. Craig, you must not—’

  ‘There are worse things. At least, all my debts will be paid.’

  Lilly stood up. ‘Do not make deep decisions on an empty stomach. I will cook your eggs and heat coffee. After that, we will see how you feel.’

  ‘How do you feel?’

  She wrinkled her nose. ‘Like my bed is too big for one person alon
e. And I want to remember the fun—because I do not think you will be here again, Mr. Craig, and I want to remember.’

  11

  * * *

  FOR important business occasions, Nicholas Daranyi always wore the single-breasted, metallic-grey suit, of best English fabric, made for him via mail order by a Chinese tailor in Hong Kong. It was a suit which, had it been fashioned in London for one like the Duke of Windsor, might have cost between seventy and eighty pounds. By sending halfway around the world, and trusting the post, Daranyi had obtained the suit for twelve pounds, plus duty, plus the expense of a minor alteration across the shoulders.

  Tonight, standing outside Carl Adolf Krantz’s apartment door on the fourth floor of the fashionable orange building with white balconies and white flower boxes, located on the Norr Mälarstrand, Daranyi wore his Hong Kong suit. He had groomed himself carefully for the occasion, applying his favourite imported oil to his sparse, flat hair, and talcum and cologne to his smooth jowls. The suit draped beautifully, except for the right jacket pocket which held his folded sheaf of memoranda. He had taken care to look prosperous because, after tonight, he intended to be prosperous. Tonight, he reassured himself, would be his night of liberation from want.

  Krantz had required the information by the evening of December the ninth, and now it was seven o’clock of the evening of December the ninth, and Daranyi had kept his pledge and met his deadline.

  The door opened, and Krantz’s maid, Ilsa, a broad peasant woman from Westphalia, a woman of indeterminate years but many, whose face had the appearance of a dried prune and whose upper lip bore down, bowed respectfully from the waist and admitted Daranyi to the vestibule. Daranyi gave her his hat, and the overcoat that he had been carrying on his arm since leaving the elevator, and then followed her through the parlour, with its embroidered lace doilies on every dark heavy mahogany piece, to the door of Krantz’s study.

  Ilsa pushed in this door, and stood back until Daranyi had entered, and then she closed it, and Daranyi was alone in the study. Only once before, during his long but erratic relationship with Krantz, had Daranyi ever been inside this study. He recalled that against one wall there had been a sixteenth-century German oak cupboard with ornate locks and hinges of iron that had once belonged to Krantz’s father, and that over the oak cupboard had been a perfect square of framed photographs of Pope Pius XI, Fritz Thyssen, Franz von Papen, Paul von Hindenburg, Dr. Max Planck, and Hermann Göring, all autographed to Krantz. As if to prove his memory, Daranyi glanced at the right wall and was pleased to see the oak cupboard and the square of photographs above it.

  He heard a rustling movement to his left, and realized that he was not alone, after all. Carl Adolf Krantz, more dwarfed than ever by his furniture, had turned from the lace curtains and potted palms before the glass doors of the balcony, and, hands clasped behind him, had spoken.

  ‘I see you are on time, Daranyi.’

  ‘As I promised you, Dr. Krantz.’ Daranyi hastily went to his patron and took the perfunctory handshake. He observed that Krantz’s mouth, wet between the moustache and goatee, was nervous, and this reinforced Daranyi’s deduction that whatever he had obtained for the physicist was valuable and worth what he would eventually demand.

  ‘I was looking out on the water,’ said Krantz. ‘It is pleasant at this hour.’

  Daranyi joined him, peering across the balcony at the Mälaren. The lights and silhouette of a freighter, going sluggishly towards the Baltic, could be seen, and then the reflection of a white ferryboat.

  ‘You are fortunate to own an apartment with such a view,’ said Daranyi.

  ‘Yes,’ said Krantz, but he did not seem happy. Suddenly, with effort, he brought himself away from the window. ‘Well, we must not waste our precious time with aesthetics. You said on the telephone that you have the dossier on each of our subjects?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘But did not have time to typewrite them for me?’

  ‘That is correct, Dr. Krantz. With so much research to do and so little time—’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Krantz. ‘I am prepared to register on my pad what you have to say. You will sit there.’

  He gestured to a squat leather chair that faced the great circumference of black coffee table. Daranyi sat down and admired the thick and lush green fern planted in a long iron antique basin, that dominated the far end of the table and all but obscured Krantz when he took the chair behind it.

  ‘I trust you do not require alcoholic beverage before dinner,’ said Krantz. ‘I prefer you to keep a clear head. Ilsa has left a pot of tea.’

  Daranyi became aware of the tray, with its tea-service and plate of cheese patties, on the table before the fern, and he nodded.

  ‘Thank you. Perhaps later.’ He drew the folded sheaf of jottings from his pocket, and he saw Krantz match his action by taking up a yellow tablet and a pen. ‘I have been limited, by your deadline, to only the personal histories—as far as they were available—of the parties you are concerned with. I have omitted anything that might be known to you. I have pursued what might be useful to a committee fearful of a scandal before tomorrow.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Krantz.

  ‘I am proud to say that I not only have information of the laureates and their relatives up to today, but all through today. Besides the usual trusted informants, I employed several practised operatives. I thought that the movements of the subjects, a day before the Ceremony, might lend some clues. I do not know. Perhaps I am over-conscientious.’

  ‘We shall see,’ said Krantz, fidgeting restlessly behind the fern. ‘Please proceed, Daranyi. We do not have all night.’

  Daranyi examined his first page of scribblings. ‘Dr. John Garrett of Pasadena, California—’

  ‘Speak up, speak up plainly,’ said Krantz with some testiness. ‘I must have everything accurate.’

  Daranyi cleared his throat. ‘Dr. John Garrett, the Nobel winner in medicine. His background, outside of his career, was singularly unproductive, except for one fact. For some months, Dr. Garrett has been having psychiatric treatment in the city of Los Angeles. His physician is Dr. L. D. Keller. His treatment is not individual, but as part of a group. There are seven persons in this group, including Dr. Garrett. Because I thought that it might be useful for you to have the names and some data on the others—in the event one might be linked with Dr. Garrett in some way—I went to the trouble of obtaining information on the other six, too.’

  With loving care, Daranyi read aloud the names of Miss Dudzinski, Mrs. Zane, Mrs. Perrin, Mr. Lovato, Mr. Ring, Mr. Armstrong, identifying each with a dry sentence or two. Daranyi went on to reveal facts concerning Dean Filbrick and several of Garrett’s medical colleagues at the Rosenthal Medical Centre in Pasadena. Daranyi admitted that he could locate nothing to show that Garrett and Dr. Carlo Farelli had known each other before Stockholm. There was evidence that they had first met at the Press Club, and several reporters then present had felt that the pair were not on friendly terms. This was corroborated by a brief quarrel between them at the King’s banquet.

  With true dramatic flair, Daranyi was saving his bombshell, acquired from Hammarlund’s secretary, for the last. ‘As you doubtless know,’ Daranyi was saying, ‘Mr. Hammarlund gave a dinner for the laureates—Miss Märta Norberg was his hostess—on the evening of December sixth. There was a cocktail period before the dinner, and here the antagonism between Dr. Garrett and Dr. Farelli came to a head. They went into the garden, for privacy, and there Dr. Garrett accused Dr. Farelli of pirating his medical discovery. Harsh words—curses even—were exchanged. During the fracas, Dr. Farelli knocked Dr. Garrett down. Further violence was halted by the intervention of Mr. Craig, the literary laureate.’

  Daranyi stopped and looked up, pleased, expecting an exclamation of congratulations from Krantz for this deplorable and scandalous detail. Krantz was hunched over his pad, writing, and he said nothing. Daranyi’s disappointment was keen.

  ‘Interesting, is it not?’ h
e asked hopefully.

  Krantz glanced up with annoyance. ‘Yes—yes—what are you waiting for? Is there anything more on Garrett?’

  Daranyi wanted to counter by saying: is this not enough? But he could not afford insolence. And then the thought struck him that Krantz’s lack of enthusiasm about the Garrett and Farelli fight was an indication that Krantz either knew about it, or was not really interested in Garrett or Farelli. This was of some value to Daranyi. He could eliminate both of them, and he was closer to the truth of his assignment.

  ‘More on Garrett?’ repeated Daranyi. ‘Nothing significant, except his activity today. This morning at nine-twenty, he received a telephone call from your Foreign Office requesting him to appear in the Audience Chamber of the Royal Palace at eleven o’clock. I was unable to learn why he had been summoned or by whom.’ Daranyi looked up apologetically. ‘Reliable informants who are highly placed inside the Palace are, you will acknowledge, difficult to come by.’

  Krantz took out a handkerchief and blew his nose and scowled over the fern.

  ‘Well—well—?’

  Daranyi returned to his jottings. ‘At any rate, for whatever it means to you, Dr. Garrett arrived at the Palace at five minutes to eleven this morning, and was welcomed by the equerry . . .’

  The equerry, impressive in his regimental uniform, had departed, and now, at 10.59 in the morning, John Garrett was briefly alone in the Audience Chamber of the Royal Palace, and gratified to the point of self-complacency. He wandered about the resplendent and baroque room, hearing his heels on the floor, and wishing that Dr. Keller and Adam Ring and his friends at the Medical Centre and Carlo Farelli, above all Carlo Farelli, could see him now.

  Garrett touched the magnificent tapestries on the walls, executed in Delft for Queen Christina, examined the oil portraits done by Frans Hals, gazed up at the angel above the dazzling chandelier, and then he stood on the carpet before the gold-and-velvet throne—an actual kingly throne!—and then he inspected the canopy high above the throne.

  At His Majesty’s request, the Foreign Office spokesman had told him earlier, on a matter of business personal to the King, could Dr. Garrett appear in the Audience Chamber for a private meeting at eleven o’clock? The meeting, the spokesman promised, would be of short duration, so as not to disturb Dr. Garrett’s schedule, but it was on a matter of great concern to the King.