The Prize (24 page)

‘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 Malmِ? 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 alone. 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

FORimportant 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 M
ن
larstrand, 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 Gِring, 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 M
ن
laren. 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 M
ن
rta 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?’ he 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.

Garrett had been elated and was still elated. He was tempted to sit on the throne, for this was the way he felt, but he restrained himself for fear of being so discovered by the monarch. He wondered what the Swedish ruler wanted of him. It did not matter, actually. All that mattered—and this he had ascertained on the telephone—was that he, alone, had been called to the Audience Chamber at eleven o’clock, and now his ego puffed and strutted inside him. Poor, poor Farelli, he thought—to see the Italian’s face when he read the story of this . . .

Lost, as he was, in his reverie, Garrett did not hear the heavy carved oak door of the Audience Chamber as it was opened and closed behind him. What he heard, after, were the footsteps, and he swung around, erect as possible, to meet the King man to man.

‘Good morning, Dr. Garrett. It is gracious of you to come so promptly.’

It was not the King of Sweden who spoke to him, and now approached him, but a shorter, stockier man, in his sixties, wearing a disappointing dark blue business suit.

He shook Garrett’s hand. ‘I do not know if you remember me,’ he was saying. ‘I am the Baron Johan Stiernfeldt. We were introduced at Mr. Hammarlund’s dinner.’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Garrett. ‘The Foreign Office phoned this morning—’

‘At my urgent request,’ said the Baron. ‘I am really acting, as so often I do, on behalf of His Majesty. I will detain you but a minute or two. Shall we be seated?’