The Numbered Account (26 page)

‘Kafka and Rilke don't by themselves necessarily produce actions like this,' he said.

‘Not? I've never read them,' Julia confessed. ‘But you see he's a Christian, too; when I thanked him he said— “This is what Christianity is about.”'

‘Extraordinary,' Antrobus muttered broodingly.

‘Oh, is it? I don't see why. Don't you know any Christians? I know several, and this sort of thing is really common form with them,' Julia pronounced, thinking of the Duke of Ericeira and other people in Portugal. ‘Anyhow, have you never read the New Testament?'

While he was laughing the Brienzerli appeared; crisp little fish fried a golden brown, but with much bigger heads than smelts. Julia tucked into them eagerly. ‘Goodness, I am hungry. And these are delicious.' Antrobus was hungry too, and they ate practically in silence; having finished her fish Julia asked— ‘Did you get Berne?'

‘Yes.'

‘When do they pounce?'

‘Not today.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because they rather hope that if they wait till “the principals” come—the higher-ups in the organisation that is after the papers—it might be possible to snaffle them too. It's not certain, of course; that's part of the complication.'

‘Any idea who these principals are? Sheiks or Emirs, one supposes; but they would be rather noticeable if they turned up in long robes and a silver-plated aeroplane, or a solid gold Cadillac.'

He laughed.

‘They won't do that. The principals almost certainly represent a particular financial—and political—interest which supplies the gold Cadillacs to the Sheiks and Emirs.'

‘I see.' She paused, frowning. ‘Yes, I see. Look, John, we ought to get that child away before all this starts.' She stopped as the little waitress removed the remains of the Brienzerli and put the veal and salad before them.

‘Have you a plan for her actual removal?' he asked.

‘Not yet. It was no good trying to arrange anything till I had somewhere to put her; which I hadn't, this morning—and anyhow I should be rather frightened of letting her know of a plan in advance.'

‘Why? Is she unreliable?' His voice was cold; Julia realised that for Antrobus June was still simply one of a gang of criminals, a willing accessory to a fraud.

‘Yes, completely unreliable,' she replied readily. ‘Not from vice; it's simply that she's so frightfully silly—she's really almost an institutional case. It's not her character I distrust, it's her I.Q.!'

He accorded the phrase a frosty smile.

‘Then what do you propose to do? Just walk in and sweep her off?'

‘Not unless those two murky characters are out of the way. I'm sure they'd shoot us both for tuppence. No, I think this is where you come in. You're in touch with the local police, who I presume will now be hovering nonstop in the Gemsbock garden. Can't you arrange for them to give me a ring when B. and K. go out, so that I can hustle down and collect June?'

‘No. I'm sorry, but that wouldn't work. You see, for one thing you are now on their list of suspects.' He grinned at her.

‘Oh how unfair! They ought to be grateful to me; and so ought you, and Colin and his lot.'

‘I am,' he said, suddenly serious. ‘And so will your cousin's superiors be when they have digested the facts— which I shall give them. But I don't propose to furnish those facts to the Swiss at this stage.'

Julia munched her veal.

‘I don't suppose Chambertin told them, either,' she said, forking salad into her mouth.

‘Chambertin of the Banque Républicaine? What might he, or might he not, have told them?'

‘Only that it was I who sent him the photograph of the real Aglaia Armitage, from
Paris-Match
, which was reproduced and circulated to all the Swiss police. That's why Borovali and Co. fled from the Fluss to the Bear.'

‘How do you know that?—apart from having so usefully furnished the photograph, a fact I didn't know myself.'

‘Oh, the porter at the Fluss told me why they left—Mr. B. came down at the very moment when the photograph was lying on his desk, with the Bumbles enquiring. And the Super or whatever you call them here at Merligen had a copy too—he showed it to me.'

He shouted with laughter.

‘Oh Fatima, Fatima! You don't need to open doors; everyone tells you everything, seemingly. Not that I'm in the least surprised, mind you—if I were a Swiss policeman or a hotel porter I should tell you everything myself!'

‘Well I do think it's hard that at least one Swiss policeman can't be organised to let me know when Messrs. B. and W. go on their next little trip, so that I could twitch June away,' Julia persisted. ‘But if they can't, can't you? I do think you might.'

‘My dear, if I possibly can, I will. Of course I ought not to, and I can't altogether share your affection for the little impersonator. Probably I shall be compounding a felony, or some crime like that. But she can always be
picked up at the good Pastor's, and I agree that anyone would be better away from B. and K.'

‘Well give me all the notice you can,' Julia said, with her usual practicality. ‘Bellardon is a long way away.'

A clock struck from one of the towers of the two churches, the Catholic and the Protestant, which stand side by side at the eastern end of the Hohe Matte, the chime ringing out through the sunny hay-scented air.

‘Goodness, it's a quarter to three! I must simply race, or I shall miss my bus,' Julia exclaimed.

‘But you've had no coffee.'

‘Can't be helped,' she said, rising. ‘Thank you for the lovely lunch—and be sure to let me know when Mr. B. goes to have his beard trimmed at the coiffeurs, or whatever.'

Antrobus had risen too.

‘Would it be a great nuisance to take this with you to Mrs. Hathaway?' he asked, holding out the now rather drooping bunch of
Waldmeister
, which during lunch had lain on the gravel under his chair, in the shade.

A chill of dismay struck Julia.

‘No, of course. But does that mean you aren't coming to dine?'

‘Yes, please God I am—with this pause I think I can get away all right. But the longer this little herb is steeped in the white wine, the better our
Mai-Kop
will be.' As he spoke an empty horse-carriage came clopping along outside the open garden—Antrobus hailed it, paid the driver, and handed Julia in.

‘There—now you won't have to race,' he said. Julia leaned out towards him.

‘Why on earth did you tell that frightfully silly story about being a journalist to Mrs. H.?' she asked, rather anxiously.

‘To tell you the truth, I lost my head. I do occasionally —in fact quite often!' he said, grinning at her; if a grin can express a
double-entendre
, that one did.

‘Well keep it tonight—and think up some corroborative detail,' Julia said urgently. ‘You can't fool Mrs. Hathaway at all easily.'

‘I'm sure not! I'll do my best.' He spoke to the driver. ‘Beatenberg Post-Auto, Bahnhof-Platz.' As she drove off
‘Auf wiederluoge!
Sorry about the coffee,' he called after her.

Julia enjoyed the drive, short though it was. Her over-mastering feeling was of relief at the knowledge that Antrobus was on their side; this coloured her own feelings towards him. It would have been impossible to—well, to let oneself go at all with a person who was in league with crooks; but as it was—. She didn't finish that sentence in her head; anyhow, he was coming to dinner tonight.

On the broad sunny Bahnhof-Platz the Interlaken Post-Autos always draw up next to a long set of roofed open-sided platforms, through which trains clank across the street on their way back from the far side of the river. These huge buses carry both mail and passengers to places not served by the railway—hence their name. The Beaten-berg bus was still nearly empty when she drove up; she got in and took the front seat, disposing the soggy bunch of
Waldmeister
on the floor. The blond driver was fussing about at the rear of the great machine, attaching a trailer full of luggage; presently he got in.

‘You found the Golden Bear?' he asked, as he clipped her book of vouchers and gave her a ticket.

‘Yes. It seems a nice little place.'

‘It is very small,' der Chrigl said disparagingly.

‘The personnel are very agreeable; in big hotels this is not always the case,' Julia said, faintly irritated by his contempt.

‘Oh, the old Frau Göttinger is all right, and she gets good girls to serve her—that is quite true. She is my aunt! I expect you saw her; she is never off duty. Old, and wearing black.'

‘With grey flowers on her apron?' Julia asked, instantly intrigued by the possibility of a link with the Golden Bear through der Chrigl; conceivably this might come in useful.

The fair man laughed.

‘Oh, those old black aprons with the grey flowers! She
will never wear anything else. They aren't made any more, but I believe she has two dozen of them! You have friends staying there?' he asked rather curiously.

‘One friend, yes.'

At this point a gaggle of passengers arrived to board the bus; a train from Berne had just come in. The driver busied himself with their tickets, while Julia looked on idly, wondering how, if at all, she could use him and his aunt for information about Borovali's movements. Suddenly, among the group waiting to get in she caught sight of Colin, most oddly accoutred: shorts, a beret, and a hideous tartan wind-cheater, with an outsize rucksack on his back and heavily-nailed climbing boots—the very picture of the native tourist on holiday. She grinned at the sight, and at that moment he saw her too; he gestured over his shoulder towards the rear of the bus. Julia turned and deliberately looked the other way. Drawn up on one of the further platforms was an empty
Wagons-Lits
coach with black-and-white placards at both ends; these, to her great surprise, read—‘Dortmund—Interlaken'.

‘Goodness, fancy through sleepers coming here from Germany,' Julia muttered to herself; she regarded Interlaken, though a bewitching little place, as definitely what Americans would call ‘up-State'—i.e. at the back of beyond. The Berne train, clanking slowly along towards the river and the Ost-Bahnhof, cut off her view of the surprising Dortmund coach; it gave some treble hoots before it crossed the street. Insular Julia laughed; she still thought trains running about loose in towns funny. But she was relieved by Colin's prudence in not coming to sit with her, especially in view of the driver's connection with the Golden Bear. She was glad that he had come back—and he might be able to help about getting June away, though she doubted it. But as the bus rolled slowly out of the Platz, roared along the flat road through the Interlaken suburbs, and then ground its way up through the woods, hooting its little tune before the hairpin turns, it occurred to Julia that with Colin at the Silberhorn tonight the stroll with Antrobus, on which she had been counting when Mrs.
Hathaway had gone early to bed, might not come off as easily, as inevitably, as she had hoped.

This idea upset her to a degree that was rather frightening. Was she really losing her head? She found herself running over in her mind phrases Antrobus had used: ‘What a nice person you are!' ‘Birds, too'—and what he had said about telling her everything if he were a Swiss policeman or hotel porter. But when you added them up, they really amounted to nothing more than that he enjoyed her, which men in her experience practically always did. She shook herself, mentally; at her age, she was behaving like a schoolgirl!

The bus gradually emptied itself at various hotels and pensions along Beatenberg's interminable village street. It pulled up at the foot of the Sessel-Bahn; here Colin got off, and went striding up the path towards the station, his vast rucksack on his back—Julia wondered what on earth he was up to. However, after she had arrived, handed the now very withered bunch of
Waldmeister
to Fräulein Hanna, looked in on Mrs. Hathaway and reported this, as well as the fact that Antrobus was definitely coming to dine, and was quietly brewing tea in her room to drink out on the balcony, there came a tap on the door, and in walked Colin.

‘Hullo! Are you staying here after all?'

‘Certainly. Only I didn't want to advertise it, especially with you on the bus too; so I walked along the Parallel-Weg and popped down. Do I see tea preparing? Good— I'm frightfully thirsty.'

‘You'll have to have it in the tooth-glass; I've only got one cup.'

‘No matter.' Colin held the tooth-glass up to the light and polished it with the fresh face-towel.

‘Are some of the others watching the air-ports?' Julia asked in a lowered voice, as they sat rather crampedly on the balcony on two wicker chairs, and she poured out tea.

‘No—at least not much. We hear they're probably coming by train now. More unobtrusive, in a way,' he replied, in the same tone.

‘Oh.' She reflected, sipping her tea, and was suddenly
struck by the recollection of that Dortmund-Interlaken sleeping-car which she had noticed down at the West-Bahnhof. ‘From Germany?' she asked.

‘Yes, almost certainly. But why on earth should you think so?'

Julia explained what she had seen.

‘That could be quite useful,' Colin said. ‘I didn't know about those through sleepers. You're a good observer, J. dear—but we knew that before!'

‘Who will watch the trains?' she asked. ‘Antrobus, I suppose, as he's down in Interlaken.'

‘Why Antrobus?' Colin asked, in his most carefully neutral voice.

‘Oh, he came clean this morning,' Julia said, with her warm laugh. ‘In spite of your total clottery, you silly creature, I do now know that he's in with your lot—but how idiotic that neither he nor you knew about one another. Really, the Secret Service!'