The Adventures of Hiram Holliday (27 page)

There was no sound in the vault, but Hiram imagined his own breathing was the rustle of the dead. Here they lay, and because of these pinches of dust and whitened bones enough blood had been spilled to fill the Danube from Vienna to the Black Sea.

Who remembered the king-makers ? And then Hiram knew that he did not care. One could not sit upon a throne unless one were born to it. One could aspire to a princess, and never achieve her. But one could, sometimes if one were called and blessed, for one brief moment move the King and Queen upon the chessboard of history.

History! The word seemed to ring through Hiram's mind like a deep, thrilling bell. Was this history, this little bit of dirt in carved boxes, all that remained of a great house ? Or was it in the flesh and blood of the two who knelt and prayed ? Or was it he, Hiram Holliday, himself for a moment ? Would the curved dome of the painted ceiling close in and crush him for the rashness of his thought ?

Perhaps, thought Hiram, because he was where he was and saw what he saw, he had lost Heidi for ever. The lightness and gaiety was out of the adventure of the fair-haired Princess and the lost Duke. These who were entombed here had been served and loved, and those who had served and loved them had vanished even as they. Hiram Holliday could, if he chose, love and serve too, and make his faint mark upon the blank page of things to come, and vanish too.

The boy and the girl finished their prayers and arose. Heidi took Peter by the hand and led him away. The child was sleepy and his eyes were barely open, but on Heidi's face there was the expression of one who looks into great and deep distances. She had to pass close by Hiram, but she never saw him as she went, or knew that he was there, as she climbed the step and passed into the other room where Brother Leopold and Salvator were waiting.

For another moment Hiram remained looking at the bronze effigies. He raised his hand in a queer sort ofhalf-gestured salute to them. Then he extinguished the taper and followed after Heidi.

How Hiram Holliday and the Princess Were Cornered on the Roof of the World

During the night the Baron Salvator slipped out of the monastery. It was safe for him to do so because his connexion with the fugitives was not even known. And the next day Hiram Holliday was introduced to something he had long suspected, but never would have seen under any other circumstances - the underground railway out of Austria for aristocratic suspects and political refugees.

At nine o'clock in the morni
ng a small, closed delivery-van
drove into the monastery. On it
s sides was painted the legend:
Backerei Lanz
er, - Modling.'
It discharged sundry loaves of
bread and packages of rolls
and also the Baron Salvator who
said: 'It isn't
de luxe,
but it
will get us where we must be by
tonight. Tickets, please '

They received the blessing of Brother Leopold and climbed in. The stolid-looking driver came around and closed and locked the rear doors of the van. Light filtered through from a small window back of the front seat. They felt that they were moving. The Baron spread out a map of Austria on the floor and they knelt around it. For the first time Hiram was glad that matters were out of his hands. From now on they were in Salvator's keeping. The Baron indicated a wavering, winding route that wandered down through Styria, crossed Salzburg and the Tyrol and ended
at
the Swiss border. 'Once we are into the Tyrol,' he said, 'we are practically safe. The Tyroleans do not love the Germans. We are spending the first night
at
the chateau of my cousin near Krumbach.'

Hiram studied the map, and with a finger traced the Italian border. He said suddenly: 'Heidi. What has become of your
...
of Count
Mario?'

The girl looked startled for a moment.
'I
...
I do not know. He was recalled to Italy without notice shortly after I left Prague for Paris.'

The sudden surge of joy and hope that went through Hiram belied his experience of the night before. He quelled it fiercely. The picture of Heidi kneeling came back to him. Aloud he said: 'Damn! In bad ? I mean, out of favour ?'

Again Heidi hesitated before she replied:
'I
...
I do not know. I have not heard from him.'

Salvator raised an eyebrow and looked at Hiram, who explained briefly, 'The Count Mario d'Aquila is the fiance of Princess Furstenhof....'

'So
?'
said the Baron Salvator and fell to studying the map again. But Hiram had seen his face. Salvator, too ? And yet, why not ? A Salvator could marry a Furstenhof.
Blood....
He hated the word. Blood and perdition! The men through whose veins these so-called noble streams had flowed had taken what they wanted and held it by their strength. Wasn't it acts and deeds that ennobled ? He fell to bitter introspection. What acts, what deeds were there for him, a stoutish reporter, close to middle age ? Heidi was for heroes, for men who could take her and hold
her....

That night a servant of the chateau reported that an enormous elephant of a fat man, a stranger, had taken lodgings at the hostel in the village a few miles away, and was asking questions: 'Had anyone seen or heard of a girl, a boy and two men travelling together in the neighbourhood ?'

'Damn,' said Hiram.
'Virslany....
I'm sure of it. He knows that unless he doesn't get the boy back he'll spend the rest of his life in a concentration camp. We've got to move.'

They left at five o'clock in the morning, this time in a furniture van.

They went 'west and southwards, always ahead of their pursuit, but never far enough. They travelled in vans, in horse carts, once even for a long stretch on horseback, which Peter loved. But Hiram was worried. The Baron's underground route was far from perfect, and several times they had had to switch destinations, or remain in their van because of advance information grape-vined that Virslany had put in an appearance in a village for which they were bound. Hiram was sure that the secret agent was out-guessing them, for if Virslany knew exactly where they were he would strike. But he didn't
know.
He suspected, and where he suspected, he appeared, asking his eternal questions. He never seemed to have anyone with
him
.

They tried going north-eastward again for two days, hoping to throw him off. He did not appear. It was almost as though he knew they were headed away from the border again. They went south to avoid Innsbruck and headed for the Brenner Pass. At Stafflach they paused at the Weisser Hirsch, where the proprietor was one of the links in the far-flung chain of the system. They were in a closed pedlar's wagon that they had procured at the last stop in the north where they had had two days of rest and comparative safety. Salvator himself was driving it. The fugitives inside the wagon were stiff and cramped. They had been under way many hours.

Salvator climbed down from the driver's seat and stretched himself, drinking in the clear, cold air. They were high in the mountains now. The Weisser Hirsch had a roof porch. Out on to it came an enormously gross and obese man swathed in bundles of clothes until he looked like a great, dark, round ball. He came to the edge of the rail and stood there looking down, his round, naked, pudding of a face wreathed in the steam of his wheezing breath. The proprietor of the inn came out, his hands stuck in the pockets, sauntering leisurely, and said: 'Nothing today, thank you. Have you those glasses with you for the Adler Hutte at St Jodok ? They are anxious for them there.'

^‘
Ja,
j
a,' said the Baron, and climbed lazily back into the driving seat.
'I
am going there now.' Inside the van Hiram was in a cold sweat.

'He! - you pedlar,' called out Virslany from the porch above, 'do you have any pistol cartridges ?'

Salvator tipped his cap as he swung the car around, and said: 'Sorry, Your Worsh
ip. Not permitted.' The fat man
frowned and turned away. They took the road to St Jodok in line with the suggestion of the inn-keeper. They had escaped only because Virslany did not
know
Salvator. But had they ? Was Virslany only playing with them ? An idea was gnawing at Hiram's mind, one he could not catch, or pin down. It had been growing for many days, but he had not spoken his fears to Heidi or Salvator.

At St Jodok, at the Adler Hiitte, the news was bad. Anton, the proprietor, a powerful Tyrolean, came out, smoking his long-stemmed pipe, and leaned on the front of the little van, apparently chatting affably and bargaining. But what he said was:

'The Brenner is closed. On the Swiss border they have struck. They came to the
schloss
of Graf Bentingen and took him away. It is useless to go there. You cannot stay here. I am suspected. There were two men here three days ago and they asked many questions. It is good you did not try to go through Innsbruck. Go east again, and wait. It is safer. You can go to Ginzling. Go to Franz Gussler's hut. The road is still open. Good luck!'

Eventually, Hiram and Salvat
or sat before a log-fire in the
mountain hut of Franz Guss
ler at the mouth of the Floiten
Thai, outside of Ginzling. Heidi and the child had been put
to bed, exhausted. It had be
en snowing for eight hours. The
van would be useless for trans
portation for many days. Behind
them, almost sheerly, rose the
great white wall of the Grosser
Loffler, rising to twelve thousand feet, barring them from Italy.
Running into the wall a shar
p angle from north to south was
the Rosswund, another icy, rag
ged group of peaks of the great
range of Zillerthaler Alps.
From one of the windows of the
hut Hiram could see the line of
the funicular that carried the
little cage-car six miles over
land and then hauled it up six
thousand feet to the great Schwar
zenstein Hotel that lay
snuggled on the mountain
slope to the south-west of the
Grosser Loffler.
The Baron had lost his
gaiety which had been unfailing
during the flight. He said:
'I
knew our luck was too good at the start. We should have got through if Bentingen had not been taken. Apparently, the Nazis had better information than
...'

'Willi,' said Hiram Holliday, 'give me that map.' He unfolded it, and with a pencil traced another line on it, the route of their dangerous, tedious journey. Then he marked with an
'x'
the villages where Dr Virslany had been seen or reported, and further shaded the portions leading to the borders where they had been advised it was dangerous to go.

'We've been herded,' Hiram said. 'I've felt it, but I wasn't sure. I am now. They've been stalking us like animals. Do you see
it?'

The Baron nodded gloomily. 'But if they knew, why did they not take us ?'

'But they never knew. They couldn't find us. And so they played it blind. Only Virslany could have conceived it. Look. The Gestapo, with the aid of the military, concentrates on the borders. Word gets around to your own people that it has been made impossible to get through. A few of them are arrested. They get the wind-up and warn us off. Closing the borders that way leaves Virslany free to conduct the search - his search. Look how the x's are grouped, and then see our line. For all his weight, Virslany is tireless. He travels constantly from village to village asking questions. He is playing a kind of blindfold chess.

'He says to himself: "Where I am, where I have been, they will not be. They will be elsewhere, either north or south of my imaginary line. I will then go to the north. If they are in the north I will drive them south. If they are not in the north then they are already in the south and I will go there next and eventually corner them." You see how he has zig-zagged? Two out of five times he hit us even though he did not know we were in the same village. Here and there he must have picked up scraps to guide him, leaks, tipsters. The only time he miscalculated was when we back-tracked. But he didn't mind that, because as long as we were heading back into

Austria he didn't care. The longer we stayed in Austria the sooner we would be betrayed.

'Now look here. We are coming into South Tyrol, and are running out of places to go. It is like cornering the king in chess. You see how he drives us up into this
pocket....'

Baron Salvator groaned. 'It is brilliant. Brilliant. We
...
I have been played with. And now here we sit like birds in a net waiting for him to come and pick us out. We cannot leave, but he can come in by sleigh. Hiram, my friend, what is there left to do ?
Das sü
sse Model.
Hah! When he comes, I shall kill
him
.'