The Adventures of Hiram Holliday (25 page)

Weist du Mutter! was i tramt hob,

I hob im Himmel eini g'sehen,

Do warn so viele schoene Engerl,

Zu dennen mag i gerne gehen.
..
‘

Hiram put his head between his hands for a moment and held it, and then looked up again at the girl, and in doing so stared on beyond her into the wing on the right where his gaze held at one of the tables and the group of people sitting there. And then for the first time his hand shook violently, so much so that he spilled his wine and had to put his glass down. Salvator saw nothing because he was enchanted with Mitzi. He kept saying over and over:
'Entzü
ckend
...
entzü
ckendes Kind
. .
'
and then to Hiram: 'Isn't .she an enchanting child?'

It brought Hiram back wi
th a start from the mad, un
reasonable places
where he had been. 'What?

Eh? Yes, she's good. Very good.'

'Achy'
said Salvator half-angrily. 'Very good. You are not flesh and blood, you Americans. It's that damned ice-water you drink all the time. I show you a Viennese enchantress who looks like an angel and sings about angels and you say very good. Is there nothing that can get you out of your mood?'

'Yes,' said Hiram Holliday suddenly and flatly, *there is. Look, Willi, those people in the other room at the right, the third table on the wall from the archway, the fat man. Do you know them?'

The Baron half-rose from his chair to see better, and stared through his monocle. There was a fat man at the table with a woman, tall, elderly, angular, and a child, the latter with his back to them. But it was the man who caught and held his eye, because he was enormous, a mountain of obesity with a round, shining dome of a head, naked of hair. Ripples and rings of fat rose out of his huge collar, he looked like the rubber man of a famous old-time French tyre advertisement. He had a huge stone crock of beer in front of him which he rested on his swelling chest when he drank. The woman was drinking wine. The rough, tousled hair of the child just showed above the back of his chair.

Salvator sat down laughing.
'Ach,'
he said, 'the fat one and his family ? A typical Viennese high-liver. Put it in your book of types. Stuffed with beer and
foie gras.
The fatter he gets, the thinner his wife grows.
Au
s Ekel.
Out of disgust. I never saw them before.'

Hiram grunted and said nothing. He was watching Mitzi again. She was singing another song, this time a broad
Gassen
hauer
- in a rough voice, her hands on her swinging hips. She had turned so as to face the right wing:

'I
hob zwei habi Rappa
...
'

She checked suddenly as though the second line would not come, or she had forgotten it. Hiram saw that she was staring at the fat man who had not even turned his head to look at her. Then she caught the second line:

'Keine besser'n finds du nicht
...
‘

No one but Hiram noticed anything, Hiram whose breath was suddenly coming fast and hard from the turmoil of the emotions that boiled within him. The girl finished her song, made a curtsy and left the stage. The applause was long and loud, and insistent, but she did not come back. The orchestra struck up another piece. In the wings, the fat man and his family were making motions towards paying their bill, gathering up belongings. Salvator turned to say something to Hiram, and stopped with his mouth open. The placid roundness had gone out of the American's face somehow, his hair was upon end and the light blue eyes behind the steel-rimmed spectacles were shining with what to the Baron looked like madness. He seemed even to have grown in stature and his stoutish figure to have taken on a hardness. He was on his feet and had dropped a ten-mark note on the table. Then he had Willi by the arm. 'Come on,' he said, and even the voice was different.
'At
once.' The Baron had been a soldier long enough to know a command. He followed Hiram out of the door and down the long passageway to the courtyard exit, expostulating:

'Hiram! Are you crazy ? What is the matter ?'

They were at the door. 'There's no time,' said Hiram. 'Do. Do what I tell you. I'm relying on you. Go and get in the car. Take the driver's seat and start the engine. Put it in gear but hold the clutch out. You may be joined by someone in the back seat. Say nothing. Appear to occupy yourself. Keep your hat well pulled down over your face. Sit and wait until I give you the word. Then go like all hell for Vienna.'

A figure suddenly appeared in the adjoining doorway, leading apparently to the kitchen, a woman in a green
l
oden
cape with the hood over her head. Hiram did not hesitate an instant. He went to her and said: 'Mitzi! There is no time to talk now. Do as I say and there is a chance. Go to that blue car next to the big one. Follow that man. Get in back and sit quietly....'

She went immediately without a word.

Salvator had half-turned around and seen the girl. 'Yessus Maria, it's Mitzi. And I said that you were all ice-water. Hui! That is the fastest work I have ever seen, my friend.'

'God damn it, go on,' Hiram yelped savagely.

Baffled, and shaking his h
ead, Salvator got into the car,
started the engine and waited with his foot press
ing the clutch
pedal down. He heard the girl
climb into the rear seat. Hiram
went back a little into the
passageway until he heard heavy
footsteps. 'It's got to be,' he said to himself. 'God
, let it be. It
must be his car
'

Figures came down the passage. Hiram turned his back and walked slowly across the courtyard towards his car, calling out to Salvator in German: 'What do you think, shall we drive out to Cobenzl?'

The Baron took his cue. 'We could. It's still early.'

Hiram put one foot on the step of his car, opening the rear door as he did so, and then bent over and began to worry his shoe-laces. His back was to the big black limousine next to them. He heard the engine start, and bending his head still more he could see the elephant of a fat man with his angular companion holding the child by the hand coming across the courtyard. He heard the door of the limousine open on the other side and knew that the woman had helped the boy up first and had followed him, the chauffeur assisting. Hiram waited until the heavy puffing and grunting told him that the man was attempting to edge his enormous girth into the car and then struck.

He made a series of motions and they were so fast that there was almost no time between the sounds. He whirled, ripped open the door of the big black car, snatched the boy from the seat, holding him close, slammed the door shut, dumped the child on to the floor of his own car, slammed that door, tore open the front door, threw h
imself in yelling: 'Now, Willi,
Move! Duck, everyone!'

And they were turning the corner of the courtyard into the street before the first screa
m from the woman, the bull-like
roar of the man and a sharp explosion, reached their ears. The bullet went 'Wang
-yeeee
-eeeeeeee' off the body of the car, and they were down the street, turning a corner, doubling another, cutting in and out of the Sunday traffic, Hiram looking back, and the Baron grinning like a fiend and handling the car as though it were a racer on a track. The big black limousine was not in sight as they headed towards Vienna again after back-tracking through the narrow streets of Neu Gersthof.

'Ganz brilliant gemacht’
said Baron Willi. Through the mirror he could see that the girl had the boy in her arms and was sobbing.' Would it be too much to inquire of you whom we have kidnapped just in case a policeman should ask me ?'

Hiram laughed triumphantly. 'You're a hell of an Austrian, Willi,' he said. 'Keep on going. You'
ve got Princess Adelheit von Fü
rstenhof and her nephew, Duke Peter, the next Emperor of Central Europe, in the back of the car. And that fat guy was Dr Anton Virslany, the most dangerous Nazi agent in Europe.'

'Yessus Maria!' said the Baron Willi again, and took a corner on two wheels, and then slowed the car down to a sedate pace. He looked at Hiram as though he were some strange animal. 'And what do we do now?'

Hiram's heart was surging with elation. He hadn't
failed..,.
'To the Wurstl Prater. Protective colouration. It's the last place they'll look for
us....'

How Hiram Holliday Puzzled a Small Duke and Patronized a Shooting-Gallery

The Duke Peter was enchanted. His beloved Aunt Heidi had been returned to
him
and he was in the Wurstl Prater. His Uncle Virslany, the fat man who had taken him from Prague, had never gone to the Wurstl Prater with him. He had behaved with Uncle Virslany, because the uncle had promised him that soon he would see Heidi again, and so he had waited instead of trying to run away. And it had all come true, just as it had been promised, except, the colour of Heidi's hair was different. And Uncle Hiram was
there, too, and a new, strange,
nice man with fine moustaches. And here they were in the Prater, the gay, wonderful Prater where a band was making fine music, and people in Sunday dress were walking and children were screaming and playing on all sides, and there was a Punch and Judy show, and they went on all the exciting rides, and jaunts, ponies and scenic railways and boats, through the dark tunnels where every so often they came upon little miniature scenes out of fairy-tales, and the wonderful trip on the Giant Wheel that took them so high that all Vienna lay at their feet.

Uncle Hiram and Uncle Willi - that was the name of the new man - did strange things sometimes, but they were always exciting things. And Uncle Hiram could talk German now. That was wonderful because now he could speak with him. The nine-year-old Duke had been puzzled when Uncle Hiram had insisted upon leaving their beautiful blue car, so much prettier than Uncle Virslany's black one, in a side street, and had called a taxi-cab, but the taxi-cab had taken them straight to the Prater, and that was all that had mattered. And Aunt Heidi seemed to know who Uncle Willi was, and like him. How good it was to be back again with people he really loved.

Once, during the boat ride through the black tunnel, the Duke Peter had asked: 'Aunt Heidi, why is the colour of your hair different ? It was so pretty when it was golden,' and Aunt Heidi had placed her soft hand over his mouth, and whispered: ' Shhh, Peter, my sweet. Do not talk. Understand there is much danger. Just enjoy yourself with us. I had to change my hair to be with you sooner, to help to find you. It will be golden again, I promise you, only do not speak, whatever you see, whatever happens.'

The Duke was puzzled that Heidi should have had to change the colour of her hair to find him, because Uncle Virslany had been promising him that Heidi was coming all the time, but consoled himself with the idea that perhaps they were all playing the game again, like the time in London when some strange men had tried to steal him and Uncle Hiram had made him pretend that he was a little English boy going to the country. Grown-up people always did strange things and talked in strange, un-understandable ways, not sensibly like young people. For instance what had the new Uncle Willi meant when he had said
:'
It will be almost impossible to get out. They will forge an iron ring around Austria,' and Uncle Hiram had replied:
'Hm....
Well, perhaps if we can't break it we can bend it a little.'

And again in the boat tunnel, just as they had come to the delectable scene of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, he had heard his Aunt Heidi say: 'This strange play of Fate, Hiram. Always, when all hope is gone, it is you who appears. When I did not hear for so long, I had to do something. They were pressing me to ransom him. When I was a little girl in Styria the peasants taught me the old folk-songs. I thought if I changed the colour of my hair and worked in Grinzing, that sooner or later I would see Virslany and through that find Peter. But if it hadn't been for you
...'

'For Willi,' Uncle Hiram had said. 'If it hadn't been his idea to go to hear Mitzi sing, and his handling of the
car....'

No, these snatches of conversation were nothing for a small boy, though he was sharp enough to gather from what he heard later that his Uncle Virslany was not a good man, that he had stolen him, and that he had never meant him to see his beloved Heidi again.

But that which happened at the shooting-gallery! Ah, that was something!
Jucheee!
Hurrah for Uncle Hiram! Hurrah for new Uncle Willi. It had started when they walked down the Hauptallee of the Prater after the most wonderful Merry-go-Round ride, in which Uncle Willi had pretended he was a cavalry officer on his horse and rode like a king, and Heidi and Uncle Hiram and he, Peter, had had a race, and they all laughed as though they were mad and said that Peter had won and was the best rider of them all.