Be Shot For Six Pence (21 page)

They took it in turns to watch me. One would sit on the edge of the seat, his eyes on me. The other would relax and smoke. After ten minutes they changed roles. It was as professional as that.

When I was certain that I had no chance of escape I concentrated on trying to make out my whereabouts. The back of the tilt was up, and I could see the stars. As soon as I had placed Orion I knew where I was. We were going almost due north, with a touch of east in it.

This gave me food for thought. If, as I surmised, my entry into Hungary had been via the Raab and the Feistritz, and I was now travelling north, this should bring me back roughly to the place I had started from; but on the Hungarian side of the frontier.

At one point the road looped so that, for a moment, we were travelling almost south and I glimpsed the Plough and the Pole Star. I saw something else as well. It was the characteristic peak of the Radkersberg, the same that I had pointed out to the Baronin from her conservatory window. I was right then. The place we were making for was not very far on the Hungarian side of the Austrian border. I thought of Schloss Obersteinbruck, standing sentinel the other side of the mountains. It seemed very distant, in time and in place. As though at the reverse end of a huge telescope I saw the pigmy, gesticulating, figures of Gheorge and Lisa and the General and Trüe and Ferenc Lady. Lady, I am sure, was smiling.

The tyres hummed and the white road unrolled behind me like the used film off a spool. My head nodded down on to my shirt, rose with a start, and sank again.

It was the slowing of the vehicle that jerked me back into the present. We were turning off the road, into a gateway. There was a murmur of words, and we went on, still slowly, and climbing. Then we stopped altogether.

Both my guards were very much on the alert, now. Headquarters, I guessed.

Came the sound of a heavy door opening. We backed, made a half turn, and ran under an archway, and through it, into a courtyard. The same heavy door was shut. My guards relaxed. Their job was over. The mouse was in the trap.

One of them fumbled at my wrists, and the handcuffs came off. I climbed out awkwardly.

The size of the courtyard suggested that it was a very large house indeed. Something of the type of those monstrous German Spa-Hotels, which we copied from them and erected in the closing years of the last century, to the desecration of our countryside. A big, heavy, functional, soulless lump of brick and slate. The middle-class villa inflated to a castle.

As soon as I got inside I knew that I was in a Police Headquarters. From start to finish I hardly saw anyone in it wearing uniform, but when you’ve been in one or two you get to know them by the smell. I was signed for in a book (“accepted unexamined, without prejudice to damage discovered subsequently”), and my original guards disappeared still unsmiling and unmoved. I wondered what sort of lives they led off duty. I was invited to sit down and I sat, and waited. For a long time. One man sat at a desk, copying entries from one book into another. A second man sat by the door. He had nothing to do. A clock ticked.

Quietly in the distance a bell trilled.

The man by the door came out of his chair as smartly as if a sergeant major had shouted at him, and seized my arm. Another man appeared from nowhere. I was hustled along a passage. There was a door at the end of the passage which said “Colonel Dru”. This was opened and I was pushed inside

It was a huge room, something between a study and an office. There were two smallish desks behind each of which sat a serious looking young man. And a very large desk indeed, which was unoccupied. The owner of this desk was filling out a leather armchair beside the open fire.

Colonel Dru, I supposed.

He was the perfect pig-man. So perfect that you looked round for the make-up. But, no. On closer inspection you could see that this was something that nature had conceived, thought out, and executed without assistance. The skin pink but tough enough to turn a carving knife, the bristle of hair, the overflowing jowl, the little tusks of teeth and the tiny, deep set, twinkling, vicious eyes.

“Offer our friend a chair,” said Dru,”and stay if you wish.”

This increased the audience to four. I got the impression that the Colonel was a man who liked an audience when he performed.

“I must protest,” I said, “against this treatment of a British subject.”

“But of course.” Dru swivelled round in his chair, placed his elbows on the arm, and his chin on his hands, like some parody of a benevolent judge. “Make your protest.”

“I have made it.”

“But is that all?” f

“I have nothing more to say.”

Dru closed his eyes, opened them again, and stared at each of his four assistants in turn. They tittered. I sat back in my chair and determined that, come what may, I would keep my temper.

“Really now, Mr. Cowhorn—”

I must have looked puzzled.

“I have your pronunciation?”

“Oh, you were trying to pronounce my name. Well, I suppose that’s not bad for a first shot.”

“I was saying, Mr. Cowhorn. Why have you put yourself into this business. It is not your business. Why do you intrude in it?”

“It would take a long time to explain.”

“We have the night in front of us.”

“I’ve been looking for a friend of mine.”

“Admirable. But of course. His name?”

“His name is Studd-Thompson.”

“And you came here expecting to find him.”

“I didn’t come here at all. I was brought.”

“But that name. Do I not remember him? A moment.”

The Colonel held up one finger, as if he was listening for the first cuckoo. His aides gaped. Turning on them, he shouted: “Studd-Thompson. Search. Search. In the cabinets. He may be here.” They leapt to their feet, hauled open a filing cabinet each, and began thumbing through folders. “Quicker. He may escape. Some search under S. Others under T. Leave no stone unturned. But no. There is nothing.” The Colonel sank back in his chair. He waved the others back to their seats. “It is no use. He has escaped us.”

I said, coldly, “If you have any serious questions to ask, perhaps you would be good enough to ask them.”

“But of course I am serious. I have asked you a question. Why do you interfere in this business? Our countries are not at war. We are friends.”

“Great big friends.”

“Exactly. All friends together. Then why do you violate our friendship?”

“I have done nothing—”

“Co-operation. That is what we ask. If we are friends, we co-operate. If we co-operate, then there is no trouble. Am I stupid?”

He shot me a sharp look from his sharp little eyes. It was almost a nudge in the ribs.

“Oh, yes,” I said. “I mean, certainly not.”

“Then that is what you should tell them at the castle. How are all the dear fellows, by the way. The General, and Gheorge?”

“They were all very well when I left them.”

“Fine, fine. And Lisa? And Trüe?”

“Fine,” I said. “Fine.”

“And Herr Lady?”

“Well, of course. I didn’t see a great deal of him,” I said, cautiously.

“A great man,” said Dru. “But he might have been greater still. Perhaps the greatest in all Hungary.”

I was surprised to detect a note of what sounded like genuine respect.

“I had no idea,” I said.

“He did not tell you? But certainly. For a year or two after the War, his star was in the ascendant. There was nothing he might not have achieved. Then he made one mistake. But one was enough.”

“And what was that?”

“He refused to sleep with the Minister of Transport.”

The bellow of laughter which greeted this was like a sudden attack by the wind instruments. I looked round. The orchestra had increased to six, an old man, and a thick, black haired, unfriendly character in the uniform of a major.

“She was, perhaps, past her first youth. But not unattractive. Imagine it. Throwing away a Cabinet post from mere fastidiousness. Eh, Becker?”

Major Becker agreed that he would sleep with the rear portion of a pantomime elephant if it would advance him professionally.

The Colonel plainly regarded this as an attempt to steal his audience, and quelled the laughter with a frown.

“You see,” he said to me. “We are frank with you. Why not be frank with us?”

“I hardly see what I can tell you. You know so much already. I presume that someone at Schloss Obersteinbruck is your informant.”

“Of course.”

“Which one?”

“You do not know?”

“No,” I said. “I’ve no idea.”

“Incredible. Quite incredible.” The conductor toyed with his baton for a moment whilst the orchestra watched him starry-eyed.

“No doubt from time to time Lady informed you of his plans?”

“He told me practically nothing. And much of what he did tell me was, I suspect, untrue.”

“At first, no doubt. But later on he confided in you?”

“No. Why should he?”

“Even after you had removed Major Messelen for him.”

A very faint twittering from the strings. I tried to keep my head.

“Who says I murdered Messelen?”

“My information is that you strangled him with your hands and then buried him.”

Major Becker said something, and Dru bounced round on him.

“You do not believe he could do it? That is because you cannot judge the finer points of a man. You would like a demonstration?”

Apparently everyone wanted a demonstration.

“Come here, then, Major.”

Becker got to his feet and I had a chance to examine him more closely. He was biggish and white and had a lot of black hair, some of it on the back of his hands. He smelt of flowers. I liked none of him.

“And you.”

I got up.

“Now, Major, you have strong hands and wrists? Yes. Good. Now see if you can break his grip.”

We held out our hands and stood there, for a moment, like embarrassed contestants who have been forced to make up their quarrel in public. Dru beamed at us.

Becker put on the pressure. He was strong but not exceptionally so. If you hold your hand in the right way an opponent can do you no harm by hard gripping. He wastes his strength. At the end of a minute I felt his pressure weakening and sharply increased mine. Becker winced. I tightened again. He gave a little grunt, and we broke away.

Dru glanced round the room and collected the applause. I had no attention to spare for them. I was trying to remember something. Just how many people had I told that I had strangled Messelen. Lady, of course. And possibly one other, certainly no more. It looked as if the field was thinning out as we got nearer to the post.

“And now that we have all had our fun, perhaps you will answer a few very simple questions.”

“You still haven’t explained,” I said, desperately, “by what right—”

“Have you any rights? Has a murderer any rights? Is he not outside the law?”

It was a nice point. But I suddenly felt tired of it all.

“What do you want?”

“Information.”

“According to you I have no information. You know everything already. Far more than I do.”

“Not everything. And in any event corroboration is always useful.”

“And what makes you think I shall tell you anything?”

There was a pause of pained surprise.

“But
of course
you will tell me,” said Colonel Dru. “When I ask for information I obtain it. Do I ever fail?” He glanced round. There now seemed to be nine people in the room. “No, Colonel,” they said. “You never fail.”

“Are not my successes well known?”

About half of them said, “Well known” and the other half, “Yes, indeed”. At a less solemn moment I might have found the folk-song effect entertaining. As it was, I could only say, with a dry mouth: “Go on.”

“I expect,” said Dru, courteously, “that it is ignorance that is at the back of your refusal. It is often so. You do not understand modern methods. You are thinking of the Spanish Inquisition. Yes? And dungeons and racks?” Titter from the first violins. Nothing from me. “And of ingenious Chinese gentlemen who tie their victims beneath a single drop of water which falls upon their foreheads until they go mad. Ha ha.”

“Ha ha,” said the wind instruments, obediently.

“Put such ideas out of your head. They are old fashioned.

Too slow. Too uncertain.
Too complicated.
They give the victim too much time to be sorry for himself. Once let a man be sorry for himself and he becomes a martyr. A resistance is built up. You see, I am quite frank with you.”

Although the Colonel retained his academic manner perfectly, his audience were not so restrained. Some of the younger ones were beginning to dribble already.

“What we aim at nowadays is simplicity, speed, and certainty. Have you ever considered how a performing dog is trained? A hoop is placed in front of him. He does not move. He is touched with a red-hot iron. He moves, through the hoop. A second time. The same thing. Perhaps a third time, too. After all, dogs are not as intelligent as human beings. After that there is no trouble at all. When he sees a hoop he jumps through it. If he does not, he
knows
he will be burnt. It is as simple as that.”

I managed a yawn.

The Colonel said, “Quite right. I must not let my enthusiasms run away with me. Now to your case. I think of a question. Something quite simple. What shall it be? Something simple enough to be answered by “Yes” or “No”. Let me see. We will take this question. “Is it Lady’s intention to provoke a General Strike?”

I hope I preserved my composure. If the roof had fallen on me I could hardly have been more shocked.

I was aware that a cold, piggy eye was gleaming at me.

“All right,” I said. “You ask me a question.”

“I then give you ten seconds. If you do not answer me in ten seconds I will boil off your right hand.”

“You will what?”

“Place it in a saucepan of water and bring it to the boil.”

“You—”

“But remember. The essence of this is certainty. You will have only ten seconds to answer, and to answer quite truthfully. After that time, nothing that you say or do will have any effect at all; until the treatment is complete. Then we can start again.”