Be Shot For Six Pence (11 page)

“I see,” I said, thoughtfully. “And is there much unrest?”

“There was,” said the Baron, “until Szormeny doubled the industrial workers’ ration and gave them certain privileges. Now they are quiet again.”

At this point, to my annoyance, the Baronin fell out of her chair, and when we had picked her up and sorted her out the Baron decided that he had better take her off to bed.

Lisa had gone off to join Trüe and Gheorge in the office and I had decided to make for my own room and the prospect of an early bed when a cough from the deep armchair beside the fire reminded me that I was not, after all, alone.

It occurred to me that General Milo had somewhere acquired the art of sitting still. Now his head turned slowly and as his great glasses swivelled in my direction I felt like an enemy aeroplane caught by twin searchlights.

“I fear,” he said, “that my father rides his hobby horse. You must stop him if you are bored.”

“On the contrary,” I said, sincerely. “I find him most interesting. And he seems, if I may say so, well informed.”

The General turned this one over in his mind for a few seconds and then said, with all the deliberation of a chess player offering a gambit, “So he should be well informed.”

I moved a pawn forward myself, and said “Why?”

The General did not answer this directly. He nodded his head at an oil painting above the fire. I saw it was Honneger’s ‘Duelling Students’. “My father lives in the past. He was at Heidelberg, you know. He is still absurdly proud of a scar down the side of his chin. It was long a matter of anxious debate with him whether he should cultivate those Franz Joseph side whiskers. They suit him admirably, but they hide the scar.”

I moved another pawn.

“Not a man who would take kindly to the restrictions of the modern world?”

“Far from it. He has been, you know, a great smuggler.”

The outline became clearer.

“He is well placed for it here,” I agreed. “I suppose he gets his Tokay from Hungary, and his girls from Yugoslavia. And pays no duty on either of them.”

The General frowned very slightly. “You put the matter somewhat crudely,” he said. “You will remember that my father is nearly eighty.”

“I meant no disrespect. We could do with more individualists in our world today.”

“Well,” said the General. “That may be so. I will wish you good night.”

I was unable to detect whether he was really annoyed with me or not. A face trained in the fleshing sheds of Nazi politics was unlikely to give away much to a stranger.

It was after breakfast next morning that I happened to stroll along the terrace and turn into the long, dim conservatory which hung along the south wall of the Schloss.

The smell of any glasshouse, the wet earth and the greenery and the central heating, takes me straight back to my youth. Sunday morning, between my father and the head gardener, tremulously picking a flower for my mother.

“Nip it with your nails, Master Philip,” and, “Long stalk, Philip,” from my father.

This one was narrow and dim and full of hanging baskets of feathery Cycas and Cyathea. As I picked my way along the duck boards on the floor I realised that it was more extensive than I had thought, opening out finally into a balloon-shaped annexe at the corner. I also realised that the General had sadly underestimated his father’s prowess. One of the long wicker chairs was occupied by the Baron. Another pulled up alongside it, by little Dim-Wits. He seemed to be engaged in tickling the front of her bodice with a palm frond. How she was reacting to this I was unable to observe as she had her back to me.

Blessing once more my rubber-soled shoes, I withdrew carefully, the way I had come. I was almost back at the terrace when a complication presented itself. The door clicked open, and the Baronin appeared.

She was moving slowly, but with the steady inevitability of a snail in a salad border; and I didn’t really see how the Baron was going to get out of this one. He might of course, follow the example of the Duke of Marlborough and jump for it. But not only was he rather older than Churchill; he had about ten times as far to fall.

I backed nervously ahead of the Baronin. “A lovely collection you have here,” I said.

“August keeps it quite ten degrees too hot,” she said. I gathered after a moment’s thought, that August was the head gardener, not the month.

“It is excellent for palms and ferns.” She prodded a dark green Cycas with her ivory headed, rubber tipped, stick. “But the seedlings grow too fast. Then, when they are potted out, they die.”

I backed a bit further and resisted the impulse to look over my shoulder.

“Do you grow orchids,” I said, loudly.

“My husband is very fond of them,” agreed the Baronin. “He has a weakness for tropical flowers.”

There was an element of Aldwych farce about the situation; but I found little inclination to laugh. The Baronin might be deafish but she was not blind nor, I felt certain, complaisant.

“You get a lovely view from here,” I said, desperately.

This held her for a moment.

“On a clear day,” she said, “you can see the tip of the Radkersberg.”

“Would that be north or south of the pass?”

I indicated the white road which snaked up through the vineyards and disappeared round a shoulder of the mountain. (I assumed that the frontier post was on the other side. I could see no sign of it.) Like most women she had little idea of topography. By the time we had fixed the relative positions of the pass and the Radkersberg I had got my second wind.

“Surely,” I said, pointing over her shoulders the way we had come, “that is a flammarium orchid. I had no idea they could be grown in Europe—”

Once she had started in the other direction it wasn’t so bad. It took ten minutes, and three more leading questions, to get her out on to the terrace, and after that, feeling that I couldn’t very well drop her, I went with her to examine her collection of Japanese potpourri bowls.

That afternoon I went for a proper walk. I felt the need of it. Some people walk to keep fit, or to pass the time, or to work up an appetite. It doesn’t take me that way. I walk for the sake of walking. After half an hour, at a stiff pace, some centrifugal armature flies back, some valve opens almost with an audible click and I find myself in concert and ticking over again. It is immaterial to me where I go. On this occasion I made my way down to Steinbruck, skirted the town to the left, went fast along the good road to Graz for about eight kilometres, then took the first track to the left. There was no chance of losing my way. The mountain crests to the south were ruled, in one dark, hard line, across the whole of my horizon. I was out for walking, not climbing, so I stopped when the track ran out of the forest on to the outcrop and swung east skirting the edge of the trees. The tops above me looked stiff, but nowhere unclimbable.

I kept up a fair pace, in and out of the gullies, and was back above Obersteinbruck by four o’clock. When the gnome answered the bell he told me the Baron wanted me. I asked if it was urgent. The gnome thought not. I had a bath, changed, and made my way to the Baron’s study.

When I came in he got up, moved across and shook me by the hand. Nothing more was said, then or at any other time, about the incidents of the morning; but I reckoned I had received the accolade.

The Baron said, “By the way, I have news for you.”

“News?”

“Of a friend of yours.”

“Colin?”

“I would say also, a friend of mine. A most estimable young man. His knowledge of the intricacies of Hapsburg genealogy – quite remarkable.”

“What have you heard?”

“It is, I fear, only at second-hand. But it may offer you a lead. I have, you know, friends in the—” the Baron paused for an instant—”the transport business.”

“The General told me that you had interests in some of the neighbouring countries.”

“That is so. Interests in neighbouring countries. There is a man in Steinbruck who does much work for me. Herr Schneidermeister—”

“I know him,” I said. “A wine merchant, and shaped like a tub.”

“So. He is a largely built man. But his sons are young and active. They travel the countryside. They have not, perhaps, an undue respect for the artificial demarcations of frontiers—”

At any other time I should have enjoyed the courteous circumlocutions in which the Baron wrapped up the fact that he was hand in glove with a gang of smugglers. At the moment, however, I was too anxious to play.

“Tell me, please, Herr Baron,” I said. “Who has seen Colin and where?”

“It was young Franz Schneidermeister. He was talking to a man called Thugutt, a Yugoslav of German origin, quite an ethnological curiosity himself—”

The Baron must have seen my face, because he hurried on. “He is a forester. A very useful man, who lives with his family on the Yugoslav side of the Austrian frontier line, in the mountains, overlooking Hungary.”

I could well imagine that a man so placed would be useful to the Baron.

“And he had seen Colin?”

“I understand so. Either seen him or spoken to someone who has seen him. It was not easy to discover which, because on this occasion Thugutt appeared unanxious to talk. In fact, he would say very little. It seemed to Franz, however, that he might have talked, perhaps, if face to face with a personal friend of Studd-Thompson.”

“Would he talk to me?”

“That was in my mind.”

“When do I start?”

The Baron said, “On that we must consult Herr Lady.”

“What’s it got to do with him?”

“You must realise that we must not do anything to upset his plans.”

“I could judge better of that if I had the least idea what his plans are.”

“He has not told you, then?”

“I’ve been given a lot of cock and bull about ethnography which I not only didn’t believe but I don’t even think I was expected to believe.”

“He will tell you in due course, I am sure.”

“I’m afraid I can’t wait,” I said. “If you won’t help me, I shall have to see Schneidermeister and do what I can on my own.”

The Baron looked distressed. “I beg you,” he said, “to wait for Herr Lady.”

“Until he has finished buying his hand-sewn shirts or getting his hair cut in Bond Street, or whatever he has waltzed off to London for?”

An unaffected laugh brought my head round. Lady was inside the door.

“In fact,” he said. “I
did
have time for a haircut at Mr. Truefitt’s establishment, but, as you see, I have not allowed it to delay my return.”

I said, truculently, “I don’t know how long you’ve been eavesdropping, but if you heard what I told the Baron, you know what I want—”

“I expect it is the same as we all want. Would you be good enough to come with me?”

I followed him into the Operations Room. Lisa and Trüe were there, doing something to the maps. He waggled his little finger at them and they disappeared.

Then he looked up at me, and said: “You were the chief reason for my visit to London.”

“Oh,” I said, rather blankly. It was obvious enough, but it had not occurred to me. “What did they tell you?”

“Very little, except that you really were what you said. An old friend of Colin Studd-Thompson.”

“Why should I have lied about it?”

“No reason why. No reason why not.” He moulded the tip of a fresh cigarette between his thin brown fingers and added: “Also that, judging from your movements at the end of last week, you were a man of some resource. And that, so far as they knew anything at all about you, of integrity.”

“That only means,” I said, “that they don’t keep my papers in a buff file with a red label in the top left-hand corner.”

“Quite so. As I said, they know nothing against you, and very little about you. In the circumstances—” having got the cigarette to his liking he squeezed it into his long amber holder—”they have left the matter to my discretion. And I have come to the conclusion that you should stay here, and help us.”

“Why?”

“Because I like you,” said Lady, with a broad smile, that might have meant anything. “And trust you, of course,” he added.

“In other words, I’m here, and it might cause more trouble if you tried to sling me out, than if you let me stay. And anyway, whilst I’m here, you can keep an eye on me.”

“My dear fellow,” said Lady. “You insist on imputing the worst of motives to everyone. It is a defect in your character. If I am to be candid with you, you must be candid with me.”

He sounded exactly like my housemaster.

“All right,” I said. “Then you can be candid first. What’s it all about and you can leave out the ethnography.”

Lady said: “Very well. You shall know.”

And he told me. I won’t try to reproduce it word for word as he said it, because he took some time telling the story, and I can’t remember all of his background stuff. But what it amounted to was this. The Western powers – America and England specifically – had established a series of teams to deal with the problems of each of the satellites. The “Equipe Lady” were the top Hungarian specialists. It was quite a large affair, with an office in The Hague and branches in London and New York. Analysing the press reports and monitoring the wireless were its bread-and-butter activities. But there were more specialised branches. One of these was concerned with screening all refugees from Hungary; screening them and, in very exceptional circumstances, sending them back again.

“We are not a military organisation,” said Lady – and looking him over, from his openwork shoes, via his shot-silk shirt to his amber cigarette holder, I was forced to agree that he did not fit into my picture of any military headquarters. “Our role is to accumulate information. The larger part of it we get by sitting still and keeping our ears to the ground. Very occasionally, when there is an unexplained corner to be filled in, or some little job to be done, a man goes over the mountains.”

“But here at Schloss Obersteinbruck,” I said, “you are far from your comfortable offices in The Hague. In fact, you are at action stations. Why? Is a man being sent over the mountains?”

Lady looked at me. “I can perceive,” he said, “why you were unpopular with your own Intelligence.”