The Adventures of Hiram Holliday (23 page)

The letter was from Clegg in Paris. It contained his passport, credentials, Registered Marks, traveller's cheques and letter of credit and a brief, unsigned note. It had not been opened at the border. The note read: 'Here you are. Next time don't be so careless and leave stuff like this around in hotel rooms. Messaged Beauheld after our talk. He says thank you and please go to Vienna at once and look after our interests there. Particularly interested in synopsis of "Man in the Iron Mask", for early publication. Regards.'

The cryptic reference stumped Hiram only for a moment until the sleep cleared from his head and then he grinned suddenly, and his admiration for Clegg grew. The Man in the Iron Mask was the most famous prisoner of France. Who was the most famous prisoner of Vienna but von Schuschnigg. To get a story on
him....
The assignment excited him, and he swung his legs from the bed and sat up. Then he looked at his watch and saw that it was nine o'clock in the morning and all the terrible memories came tumbling down upon him. Nine o'clock. The execution of Hermann Weide had been scheduled for eight, and he, Hiram Holliday, was still alive and safe. They had by this time discovered Irmgarde. Perhaps Dr Grunze was already at the prison. He tried to picture the scene, and grinned a little. The Doctor was in a bad spot, and was going to be very angry. Hiram called the porter and asked about planes to Vienna and booked on the one o'clock ship from Tempelhofer Feld. Then he called the American Embassy and asked for the under-secretary he knew there.

He said to him: 'This is Hiram Holliday speaking. I am back from Paris. I am very nervous, probably for reasons that are wholly imaginary. But I am going to take the liberty of calling you every hour. If I do not, will you be so kind as to make immediate inquiries as to my whereabouts. At one o'clock I am flying to Vienna, and I will call you once more when I arrive there. I know it is nonsense, but it will make me feel better. Thank you.'

Then he went out and bought some more clothes and linen, and secured another pair of spectacles at an oculist's. It was not difficult because he was only far-sighted, and it was easily corrected. At twelve o'clock he was at the magnificent Tempelhofer Feld, the Berlin Airpor
t, from where he telephoned the
Embassy again, and stood for some good-natured chaffing from the under-secretary.

He went to the
guichet
and checked his ticket and struck up an acquaintance with the Lufthansa man, a personable young chap who spoke excellent English. It appeared that he had been to New York and had even done some flying out at Roosevelt Field. Hiram had taken flying instruction there. The Lufthansa man knew the hangar out of which Hiram had flown. They struck the quick, easy footing of brother amateur pilots.

Hiram wandered about the waiting-room. His spirits were returning. He had been a fool, and very near death, but he was alive and beginning slowly to realize the fact again, and to return to the appreciation of the joy of living. He was still too close to past events to know fully by what a hair line his existence had hung. Enough that he was out of it, with his head still attached to his shoulders. He thought of Irmgarde with tremendous gratitude and affection. There had been no slip-up. It had worked out exactly as she had said it would. And part of the bargain was that he was never to see or try to speak to her again. It closed the book. But there was one thing that was not closed, and thought brought little chills of excitement to him again. He still had the fantastic story that he had had from the mouth of Dr Heinrich Grunze. Somehow, he would manage to get it out of Vienna. That, too, he owed to Irmgarde. He suddenly saw in his mind her tall figure with the white face surmounted by the flaming hair, and remembered the laughter around her mouth when she visualized the Nazi officials finding her in the cell.

He studied the huge bulletin board that stood just inside the entrance to the Airport Main Hall and facing the exits to the planes, so as to greet the incoming travellers. It was covered with travel-posters and schedules. He breathed deeply again -

Sweden, Norway Come to Picturesque Dalmatia....

Visit Rome The T
yrol Calls To You The world was
there for him to see. Yes, he, Hiram Holliday, was still there to see
it....

It was a quarter to one. He went and drank a glass of beer, and bought a couple of Tauchnitz edition paper-books to read on the plane. There were boys going through the waiting-room calling:
'Bay-Zett Am Mittag, Bay-Zett Am Mittag.
..
.' They were selling the famous Berlin afternoon paper,
B.Z. Am Mittag.
Hiram saw large black headlines, but ignored them since he could not understand German, much less the newspaper typeface.

At ten minutes to one he went back to
the
guichet
to say goodbye to his friend the Lufthansa man. The German suddenly held up the
B.Z.
in front of Hiram's eyes and said: 'Have you seen this?'

Hiram could read and understand the headline. It said:
'dr
grunze
todt
!' Dr Grunze dead! Dead! What did it mean ? When ? How ? Irmgarde had counted upon his protection.
...
Irmgarde! Grunze!

The iron voice of the loudspeaker system bellowed:
'Passa
giere nach Wien ! Bitte einsteigen ! Passagiere nach Wien bitte. Ausgang rechts !'

'That is your ship,' said t
he Lufthansa man, and extended
his hand. 'You go out to
the right there. Happy landing
'

Hiram hardly saw him because of the choking doubts and fears that clamped and bit into his heart. He said in a voice that he heard apparently from a distance, pinched and strained:

'This Dr Grunze. Tell me
...
what else does it say?
Where..
.How did
he...'

The Lufthansa man did not seem to notice anything strange in the query. He said: 'The paper says he was found dead in his bed this morning at eight o'clock from heart failure
...'

Grunze dead! Eight o'clock in the morning! Irmgarde!

'You know
...'
the Lufthansa man said, beckoning to Hiram to come closer, and dropping his voice confidentially, 'there is a rumour already all over Berlin. Of course the paper must print what is given. You understand. I heard it an hour ago. The rumour is that he died in some other way, and that he was not in his home. But of course one cannot tell. There are always rumours. Your plane is waiting. Good luck
...'

'Passagiere nach Wien
'
Hiram's porter, a boy in a sailor-suit and cap, was drifting towards the exit gate with his bag
...

Grunze dead! Rumour! Not in his own home! Some other way! Hiram was suddenly standing alone, far out on a point in stellar space, and the world, whirling, spinning, roaring, was rushing down upon him to crush
him....

What did it mean? What had happened?
why
had

irmgarde
forbidden
him
to
enter
the
salon?
What
had been in there that he must not see ?
And now he pictured the room again, the couches and tables, the soft rugs and paintings and the precious knick-knacks scattered about, the everburning log-fire. And he saw again the deep wing-chair, with the little black hunchbacked Doctor sitting
in it, with his huge head, red li
ps and deft chin. But now he was leaning back. His arms were at his side. And something was sticking up out of his chest, something curved and bright
...
Irmgarde! Irmgarde!

Had she? And then a shocking certainty gripped him so hard that he felt it clutch him physically at the nape of his neck.
The man who had laid the snar
e that had enmeshed Hiram Holli
day and nearly brought him to his death would never, while still alive, have given up his 'laissez-passer' from the All Highest to Irmgarde or permitted her to see him.

There was no choice now. He must go to her at once. As fast as they could take him there. To Moabit, to Moabit, to Moabit prison. Ring the bell, crash his fists against the gates!
Hola ! Hola I
Let me in! Let me in! I am Hermann Weide the condemned Communist.... The Grafin Irmgarde von Helm must go free!

Go free! And yet if she had murdered Grunze
...
He turned his back upon the plane for Vienna and moved heavily towards the doors that led from the waiting-room.

He was walking towards the great bulletin board. There were two workmen standing in front of it with bucket, brush and poster. They unfurled it, blood red. Whick! It was smacked up against the board! Sweck! The wet paste-brush smacked

across it, and battened it there, gleaming and dripping, the droplets trickling from it in little streams like thin bleeding.... Hiram saw the words, the terrible, burning words:

'fritz
gorner
,
hermann
weide executed
to-day
november
23
for high
treason.'

Hermann Weide! Hermann Weide! But he, Hiram Holliday, was Hermann Weide. And he was alive and staring at his own death notice. His own ? The poster was blood red, redder than Irmgarde's hair. Irmgarde! Weide! And then the world that had been rushing upon him split open with a crack of thunder and engulfed him, and he knew. Irmgarde had never removed the bandages. That was why he was safe. In crackling flashes he saw and understood. Irmgarde had killed Grunze, forged the order for the prison visit, and from the dead man had taken the powerful pass that had got her through to him. She had lied and acted. With a dead man on her soul she had laughed and acted and made him believe that she was safe. She had meant to die, but to die with one last, desperate reaching for the light and the sun. To die destroying a thing of evil, and giving life to him whom she loved.

When they came in the chilly, grey, November morning to execute sentence upon Hermann Weide, the figure in his clothes had arisen calmly and marched between the guards into the cold, bleak courtyard, where waited the man with the frock-coat and white gloves and silk hat. He saw the grotesquely bandaged head with the steel-bowed spectacles, laid upon the block. Hiram flung his hands before his face and cried aloud:

'Irmgarde! Irmgarde!'

He felt a twitch at his sleeve. It was the sailor-boy with his bag. He said:
'Mein Herri Das Schiff ist bereit. Gehen sie, oder gehen sie nicht?'

Hiram stared at him. The boy switched to English: 'Se aeroplan. Iss retty. Come you ?' He dragged a little at Hiram
's
arm. Hiram permitted himself to be led. He did not know that he was walking. The boy led him through the portal and out to the waiting ship. The gate shut behind him with a rolling, sonorous clang th
at echoed through and through
waiting-room.

FLIGHT
FROM
VIENNA

How Hiram Holliday
Listened to Folk-Song in Vienna
and a Princess Obeyed Orders

It
was the Baron who suggested that Sunday afternoon late in March, Hiram Holliday's last day in Vienna, that in the line of a farewell party they go to Franzl's in Grinzing to hear Mitzi sing
Gassenhauer,
old Viennese folk-songs, later go on to the Cobenzl Terrace, overlooking all Vienna, for dinner, and perhaps wind up the evening with one of their absurd whirls through the 'Wurstl Prater,' the famous old amusement park. Hiram didn't care. He was leaving Vienna for Rome the next morning and was gloomy and depressed with a sense of failure, and yet in a way glad to be going.

They drove out to Grinzing through Dobling and Heiligen-stadt in Hiram's rented car with Hiram at the wheel, silent, and Baron Willi von Salvator at his side chattering gaily. The Baron felt the depression of his strange American friend and was trying to cheer him. Hiram needed cheering. In Vienna he had learned that the life of a European correspondent can sometimes be as drab and routine as - well, perhaps as sitting fourteen years at a newspaper copy-desk.

Newspapers have their own ways of doing things, and Hiram knew that he had been sent to the dull post in Vienna for seasoning and experience, in spite of the series of fantastic and sensational stories he had turned in to the
New York Sentinel
almost from the time he had left his post at the copy-desk there to go to Europe for his first vacation in fourteen years.

He had not wasted his time entirely. He had employed tutors nights and had worked furiously, and now had a fair knowledge of French and German. He had acquired the routine of reading and translating the local press for stories, the daily visits to the various ministries and consulates; and in a cautious way had learned how to establish a pay-roll of informants and tipsters, but above all, he had realized that to be of use to a newspaper in a fixed post in a dictatorship such as Nazi Germany, a man must be marked 'dull, unenterprising, amenable,' in the files of the Propaganda Ministry, and definitely 'harmless,' in the dossier of the Gestapo, the secret police.