Be Shot For Six Pence (6 page)

“That is so. He did me a good turn, you see. A very good turn. Stolen goods, the police said. Of course it was a put up job. You understand?”

“I understand nothing—”

“That’s right. That’s quite right. Never understand a thing, then you can come to no harm. I must go now.”

He hopped on to his bicycle and pedalled off. As he reached the far end a car drew out from where it had been waiting behind the buttress of the bridge. It quite blocked the footway.

I saw the bicycle wobble, then it straightened, and the rider hopped off. I thought for a moment he was going to run for it. But the two men who had got out of the car closed up on him.

I turned and walked fast in the other direction.

At the west end of the bridge another car was stationed. The driver was at the wheel; beside him another man with horn-rimmed glasses and a wide mouth like a fish.

Neither of them moved as I came up. I passed behind the car, clattered down the steps, and walked off along the promenade. My heart was beating a little faster.

First I wanted to get off that promenade. It was too long and too straight and was commanded at both ends. Behind by the Hohenzollern Bridge which I had just left, and in front by the new Koln-Deutzer Bridge.

On my left I had been conscious of a looming white building. It turned out, when I got up to it, to be the Rhenisches-und-Historiches Museum. I bought a ticket off a snuffy old relic of the Franco-Prussian war and dived into shelter. Actually it was rather a nice museum, full of suits of armour, and engines of war and gigantic panoramas of the Rhine and a Vincenzo Coronelli globe from the Gymnasium Tricoronatum which, at any other time, I’d happily have spent the morning with. At that moment my mind was too occupied with the present to give due attention to the glories of the Rhenish past.

The rooms were almost empty. I sat myself down quietly on a seat behind a glass case of ladies’ Sunday clothes, and listened. Ahead of me was the slow tip-tap of footsteps. They belonged to a little man who had come in just before me. In the silence I could follow his pottering progress from room to room. The only other sound was from the lobby where the custodian wheezed and coughed and occasionally rattled his cash box as if to assure himself that it was still with him.

Presently I heard the outer door open. Two more visitors. I sat tight, I was almost out of sight, but had a fair view of the room, between the sequin-covered bodices. This time it was two men, neither of whom I had seen before. They advanced steadily, wheeled to the right, and disappeared into the adjoining room. They didn’t seem to be taking a great deal of interest in the history of the Rhine, either.

As soon as they were gone I got to my feet, blessing my rubber-soled shoes, and moved back the way I had come. The custodian seemed surprised to see me.

“It is forbidden to circulate in an against-the-clock direction,” he said.

“An urgent appointment,” I said firmly, vaulted the entrance turnstile, and trotted down the first steps. The custodian sat looking sourly after me. I had probably upset his calculations for the day.

Outside a police car was parked against the kerb. The driver looked worried when he saw me. His instructions had evidently not covered this contingency. I ignored him, and ran along the embankment. After all, it was no crime to run, even in Germany.

The driver had an inspiration and started to sound his horA stairway on the left. Just what I wanted. At the bottom an alleyway, and at the end of that another. Keep to the alleys. Cats can move in alleys. Cars can’t.

There’s a comfortably confusing network of alleys west of the Rhine at that point and it was a full quarter of a mile before I broke out into the Ringstrasse and immediately jumped on a tram.

I had no idea where it was going. The main point was that it was crowded, and moving. It made a swaying, jolting detour round most of the west suburbs of Cologne and finally dropped me at the Main Station.

The sweat was dry on me, and I was beginning to think. I went into the Station Buffet and bought myself a coffee. What had happened was now reasonably clear to me. The little man on the bridge had spoken the truth when he had said that his private life was catching up with him. It was catching up with
me
too. He was clearly a professional criminal. That the only reliable messenger in Cologne known to Colin should be a professional criminal was a piece of bad luck. That the police should have been planning to pull him in that morning was worse.

When they saw him stop and talk to me I became an object of suspicion too; and no wonder.

Were they still on my tail? It is easy to imagine you are being followed, but in this case I thought not. They would have had to be exceptionally quick and lucky to have picked me up as I came out of that maze of alleyways; and they would have needed a car at the exact spot to follow the tram.

Suppose for the moment I was all right. There were two flies in the ointment. The first was that I was too clearly a foreigner. The man in the car at the far end of the bridge had seen me closely enough to be sure about that. They may even have been able to identify me as an Englishman. The other thing was that I had a very healthy admiration for the German control of hotels. Registration was no mere formality, as it is in England. It was an efficient system designed to keep tabs on all strangers. It worked. I knew; I had had some before.

Regretfully I bade farewell to a suitcase full of new clothes, paid for my coffee, and made my way out. I knew just what I wanted. There is a large, new, department store on the Bendlerstrasse which specialises in men’s clothes. Also it has dressing rooms.

When I came out in half an hour’s time I was wearing (starting from the bottom) brogue flap-tongue shoes, white knitted stockings, cutaway leather shorts, a checked shirt, a bumfreezer jacket and a rather saucy Tyrolean hat with a synthetic badger’s tail in the turned up brim.

My own clothes were neatly packed into the rucksack on my back. I carried a stick with a hartshorn handle.

I wondered for a moment if I had overdone it, but my fears were quickly dispelled. No one spared me a glance. The Germans, like the Americans, take kindly to fancy dress. Indeed, to wear a uniform of any sort is to classify yourself, and the Germans are keen on classification.

Organise yourself, organise your country, organise the world. Bless their orderly little hearts.

I bought a third class ticket for Baden which was in the right direction and seemed a logical place for a hiker to go to. I was in no particular hurry. It was Saturday. It was summer. The Continent was in front of me.

Late on Monday morning, after five more changes of train and two changes of clothes I saw Steinbruck for the first time.

We had left Graz at dawn. East of Volkermarkt the train pulls out of the plain and drags itself up for a few miles into the foothills. This small amount of extra height gave depth and meaning to the scene. From then on it was a journey of enchantment.

I studied the large-scale map I had bought in Klagenfurt.

Steinbruck is an outpost. It sprawls between the foothills and the Raab, its frontage the river, its backcloth the magnificent semicircle of purple mountains which delimits the borders and meeting place of the ancient kingdoms of Hungary and Austria with the infant republic of Yugoslavia.

The mountains to the south had on their summer dress, laced along their lower slopes with the green vineyards.

But there was snow on the high tops and in the corries. As the train swung round a bend I was able to pick out the Klein-Oos and to follow its wandering course upwards. First through a cluster of red roofs which must mark the village of Kleinoosberg. Then up and up again, into the pine trees until – yes, there it was – topping the highest tree, built on to and into its pinnacle crag; the Schloss Obersteinbruck.

I could see what Colin meant when he told Henry it was a fairy palace. Without doubt Snow White had lived there. The Sleeping Beauty had lain in its tower-room and wolves still howled through the dark forest at its foot.

The train gave a derisive hoot, swung south again, and snorted down towards the town. I got out into the sunshine.

A long, straight avenue, bordered with plane trees, leads from the station to the town. Steinbruck is a relic from another age, an Edwardian-German spa, decayed but unchanged. There was the Kurhaus; there the mineral water fountain; there the tea garden. The covered stand for the orchestra. The concert room; the Tissichhaus and the Schlossgarten, their plaster flaking, their paint peeling, but still indomitably committed to the rigours of holiday-making.

I walked down a green allée towards the central square. One side of it was formed by the Casino. It did not look like a place where play would be high. More space would be given to family games of Dreizig-Vierzig than to baccarat. The pillars of the portico were cracked and along the front stood orange trees in tubs. To the right the road runs up the foothills; to the left, down to the river (“To the Island of Pleasure” says a notice board. “Season tickets, or by the day”).

An air of solid, contented, melancholy sits on the place, like a veil on the face of an elderly nun.

I went into the nearest Espresso and ordered coffee. It took a long time to come. Nothing moves fast in Steinbruck. I looked again at my map. The castle was three or four miles from the town, and more than a thousand feet above it. I sought out a garage and hired myself a car.

I have no recollection of the drive. My mind was ahead of me. Would Colin be there? What was it all about? Why had he stretched out this thread across Europe? It was a thin thread, tenuous and easily broken, but a twitch on it had been enough to bring me running.

We ground up the final ascent, and pulled to a stop, steam jetting from our radiator, before an iron studded door let into the living rock.

The driver hooted. A huge dog, lying in the sun, scratched itself. The driver climbed out and pulled at a bell.

For a long time nothing happened. Then, quickly and surprisingly quietly, the door opened. A tiny man, in some sort of livery, peered politely out.

The moment had arrived.

I took a sealed envelope from my pocket – it contained the original cutting from
The Times
– and handed it without a word to the gnome.

He looked me quickly up and down, then said, in German, “Would you like to wait inside?”

I said yes to that, and paid off the car, which made a shuddering turn and started coasting down the hill. I reckoned he wouldn’t have to use his engine until he got back to the outskirts of the town.

I turned and followed my guide up a sloping cobbled passage, and out into the courtyard at the end of it.

From the inner courtyard the size of the place became more apparent. Colin had been accurate in his description. It was a palace, not a castle.

I am not good at buildings, but I shouldn’t have said that it was much more than a hundred or maybe a hundred and fifty years old. Something older may very likely have been pulled down to make room for it. The fortress-like outer keep suggested a more ancient past. The inner portion looked like a hotel designed by an architect with illusions of grandeur.

I was shown into a small room on the left of the entrance portico, which might have been labelled “Reception”. When the door opened, I think I half expected a hall porter in uniform.

Instead, it was Lisa!

“Phee-leep,” she said. (‘Said’ is a most inadequate word. Lisa screams like a seagull when she is excited.) She came darting over and gave me a peck on the cheek.

Considering that it was thirteen years since I had set eyes on her she was very little changed. Somewhat sharper, a bit more angular, less ingenuous, more experienced, but the same darting eyes and wide mouth.

“This is a nice surprise,” I said sincerely. “Were you expecting me?”

“The last man in the world.”

“Lisa, be truthful.”

“Quite, quite truthful. When August came and said to me, ‘There is a visitor – an Englishman, I think’ – I had no idea. It might have been Anthony Eden –it might have been General Montgomery—”

“What a let-down,” I said. “When it was only me.”

Lisa said: “Well, it was rather. But how nice that it should have been just you and no one else.”

“Is Colin here?”

“Well—no.”

Something cold settled on my heart.

“How long is it since you have seen him?”

“Would you like to come and talk to the boss?”

“In a minute. How long since you saw Colin?”

“Philip! Two minutes and you start to bully.”

“I’m not bullying. But I’ve come a long way to meet him, and I want to know.”

“Today it is Monday. Last Monday was a week ago. Then another week. Then four days before that.”

“He was here a fortnight ago last Thursday, then?”

“That is right. A fortnight back from last Thursday. Come along now.”

“Has anyone heard from him since he left?”

“I do not know. Perhaps. Lady will tell you.”

“Lady?”

“Ferenc Lady. He is the leader here. Did you not know?”

“I know nothing,” I said. “Absolutely nothing.”

As we walked towards the door Lisa gave my hand a little squeeze. We climbed together the broad stairs which led from the hall to the first-floor landing. Facing us was a double door of carved, unpainted, lime wood. Lisa went in without knocking and I followed. It was a big ante-room. A young man with a pale face and sad eyes behind thick, horn-rimmed glasses, sat at a desk. He was snipping a paragraph from a newspaper and pasting it into a giant scrap book. A pile of mutilated paper lay on the floor behind him.

He looked politely at us.

“Gheorge,” said Lisa. “This is Philip.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Philips.”

“Well—actually Philip—”

“Mr. Philip.”

I gave it up.

“This is Gheorge Ossudsky. He is Ferenc Lady’s private secretary – and watch dog.”

Gheorge said, seriously, “You over-rate my capabilities, Lisa. And why should Lady need a watch dog. He is well able to watch after himself.”