The Prize (32 page)

Jacobsson smiled an indulgent, wrinkled smile.

‘Do spell his name correctly, Miss Wiley, please,’ he said.

She sat moved, but unmoving, features suffused by an embarrassment she could not understand and pen frozen to her fingers. Behind her, Craig stood where he had been standing from the beginning, cold pipe in his hand, touched and shaken at his deepest core.

Sue Wiley swallowed, and it could be heard, and then she emitted one word. ‘Whew,’ she said.

‘If there are any questions—’ Jacobsson began.

But then came the knocking at the door, and Jacobsson freed himself from his chair and opened the door, and it was Mrs. Steen once more. She whispered to him, and he turned to his two guests.

‘I am wanted downstairs a moment,’ he apologized. ‘Always, before the final Ceremony, there are the invitation anglers. Please relax here as long as you—’

‘Thank you, Count,’ said Craig, ‘but I had better be on my way.’

‘Thank you, Count Jacobsson,’ said Sue Wiley.

He was gone, and the two of them were alone in the high, quiet room. Craig walked to the coat-rack, and removed his hat and overcoat. He realized that Sue Wiley had not left her chair, but remained seated, watching him speculatively.

When he turned to depart, she spoke. ‘I suppose you think that story makes me look rotten, don’t you?’

‘Does it matter to you what the devil I think?’

This seemed important to her, and her eyelids palpitated nervously, ‘I have my job, Mr. Craig, can’t you see that? I have my job to do.’

‘No one’s stopping you from doing it.’

‘I don’t like the way you and Jacobsson and some of the others look at me—like I’m some kind of reptile or adder or something crawly. Well, I don’t like it, and neither would you. I’m a person the same as anybody. I know you’re sore at me because of that question I asked at the press conference. I got a lead on you, and I wanted to know if it was true or not. Maybe I should have asked you personally, instead of in front of all the others—’

Craig stood beside the door. ‘I assure you, it doesn’t matter, Miss Wiley.’

‘But it matters to me. I work from information that is picked up all over, from Consolidated’s bureaux, just the way Associated Press and
Time
magazine and
Newsweek
magazine put together a story from leads they get from their bureaux. Before I saw Schweitzer, I didn’t just depend on questions I might think of, or ones based on what I’d read, or just depend on anything we might talk about. All of our bureaux and stringers pitched in. They went digging in Kayserberg, in the German Alsace, where he was born—in Günsbach, Strasbourg, Berlin, Paris, Aspen, Colorado—wherever Schweitzer had lived, studied, worked, and then they shot me all the dope, some good, some not so good, and then I was able to get up my questions and go to Lambaréné and get the true story.’

‘The true story, Miss Wiley?’

‘That’s right. It comes in from all over—interviews, gossip, tips, leads, solid research—and I sift it, and check it out, and there’s the true story. That’s exactly the way I went about getting information on all you Nobel laureates. Take you. How do you think I got the idea that maybe you take a nip at the bottle now and then? Do you think I made it up? Not on your life. We put your name on the wire, and pretty soon our bureaux were spading up every day of your life—on the newspaper in St. Louis, London and Marseilles and New Jersey in the war, Long Island with your wife, and your honeymoon in Europe, and finally the whole rural bit in Wisconsin.’

Although he would not admit it to her, Craig was impressed at the breadth of research. It was discomforting to know how much they must know, but yes, it was impressive.

Sue Wiley was going on compulsively. ‘Don’t think our Chicago bureau didn’t yell about having to send a reporter up to a one-horse town like Miller’s Dam. You’d think we were sending someone to Tibet. But after you won the prize, there was this man of ours snooping around Miller’s Dam for material to feed me—he got there a few days before you took off for Stockholm, and he stayed on through most of this week—and he was all over the county, casually asking questions, looking in here and there, searching back issues of newspapers and all kinds of documents. Mr. Craig, what I could tell you about yourself would make you blush. At least three people hinted that you got pickled to the gills every day, morning till night. At least one person tipped us that you visited a house of prostitution once in a while. I know your sister-in-law’s shopping list at the grocery store, so I know what you eat, and I know who your friends are, and I have photocopies of the mortgage on your house, and I know the words chiselled on your wife’s tombstone. I even know how she got there—’

Craig’s heart quickened, and he wished that he was out the door, so that he need not hear the sickening secret again, and from someone other than Leah. He waited.

‘—because I know every detail of the accident,’ Sue Wiley went on, ‘and we dug it out because—painful as it is for you to be reminded—it’s dramatic and will make good reading, and it is truth, and that’s my business. I can reconstruct that accident better than you can remember it—tell you how many inches of rain there was that night, tell you how much time you spent at the Lawson Country Club, tell you how the birthday cake looked and how many presents your wife gave you, tell you the exact time you left the party, and the exact time your car smashed into that oak tree, and even how that tie rod dropped off under your car and put you in that skid—though I am no mechanic—and then I can tell you—’

Craig felt the chill from his knees and chest to his scalp. He could not have heard her right. It was a mistake. Automatically, he moved towards her, and the incredulous expression on his gaunt face made her words hang in the air.

‘What’s the matter?’ she said, frightened. ‘Are you sore at me again or something?’

‘Miss Wiley, repeat what you were just saying.’

‘About what? Repeat what?’

‘The accident.’

‘Why, I was just saying I knew—’

‘The car,’ said Craig. ‘What did you say about the car—your not being a mechanic—the skid—’

‘Oh, that,’ said Sue Wiley with relief. ‘I was just showing off how thorough we are, and how I don’t talk through my hat like maybe you think. You had lousy luck with the accident, that’s all. When you came around the curve, your tie rod—you know, that
thing
underneath, under the front, that controls the wheels—’

‘I know. I know—’

‘It must’ve been defective or something, because when you came around the curve it broke—that happens to other people, too—and zing—one front wheel kind of buckles, goes out of control, you can’t steer it—and if you’re on a curve—well, I don’t have to tell you, you know what can happen.’

‘Where did you hear this?’ said Craig with agitation. ‘How do you know it’s true?’

‘How do I know? Well, don’t you know? After all, it was
your
accident. Our man from Chicago went to the county sheriff’s office, that’s all, to find out about the crash and how your wife was killed—and there it was, with everything else—including their routine police report on your car after you smashed it up. The phrase on the report, as I remember, was “accident due to mechanical failure”, and something about the tie rod snapping, and your inside wheel going flooey, and then the measurement of the skid marks on the wet road. I have the photocopies right in my hotel. Also, the coroner’s report waiving inquest, because there was no criminal liability, it was all open and shut, and they knew you anyway.’

‘Yes, we’re all neighbours. I never bothered learning the details. I was laid up in the hospital—at home—a long time. And there was no reason to go into it afterwards. I think my sister-in-law handled everything.’

‘That’s right,’ said Sue Wiley. ‘Somebody in the sheriff’s office told our man that they called Miss Decker down there, after the funeral, while you were still half-conscious in the hospital, and gave her a copy of their police report on the case for you, to close it up.’ Sue Wiley stared at him. ‘Didn’t you see it? What did you think caused the accident?’

‘What?’ he said vaguely. His mind was stumbling backwards, groping backwards through the months and the years, trying to remember every detail, and knowing with frigid certainty that Leah had hidden the truth from him, and in its place offered the guilt of his drunkenness and irresponsibility. The lie, half told him at first, then fully told him, then constantly told him, had been her hold on him and her insurance, and the enormity of her evil, and the depths of her unbalance and sickness, made the years a nightmare and made the memory of his self-hate a nightmare, and he knew his face was bloodless and the gorge was in his throat.

‘I said—what did you think caused the accident?’

‘This,’ said Craig weakly. ‘I guess I never thought about it, but I guess later I was told it was this. It—it was just—I don’t know—strange the way you brought it all back to me today.’

‘I’m sorry if I threw you off.’

‘It’s all right,’ he said, hardly aware of her. His mind was on Leah, and almost to himself, more to himself than to her, he said, ‘Yes, Leah, Leah took care of—of everything.’

‘What?’

‘I said—’ The shock was receding, and his surroundings were taking on their perspective, the walnut desk, and shelf of green ledgers, and the wall of books, and the glass cases, and Sue Wiley so confused with her eyes eternally blinking. ‘I forget what I said. I’d better be moving along. Thanks for everything. I hope you write as fairly as you research.’

‘I only wanted to show you how we work, so you’d understand—’

‘I understand a lot now, Miss Wiley. Good-day.’

In the study of Carl Adolf Krantz’s apartment on Norr M
ن
larstrand, Daranyi observed that the time was 7.41 and that he had only two more dossiers to report, and after that, one more odious task, and after that he would be free, free of the oppressive room with its crowded furniture and lukewarm tea and suddenly grubby fern, and its disgusting owner.

‘So,’ said Daranyi, lowering his trouser belt to make his stomach more comfortable, and picking up his sheaf of memoranda once more. ‘If you are ready, we will proceed with the last of the two names on my list.’

‘I am ready,’ said Krantz. ‘Proceed.’

‘We come now to the redoubtable Professor Max Stratman, formerly of Berlin, now resident of Atlanta, Georgia. By the biography you left with me, I see that you have already acquired most of the pertinent data on this great man.’

‘Yes. Our Nobel committee has researched the obvious facts, which are public, on his past. However, as to personal insights—’

Daranyi nodded. ‘I understand. I have done my best, but there was nothing I could find that bore the slightest hint of impending scandal. However, I will pass on to you the few items I have acquired. Only one of these, as I see it, might be of even passing interest. I refer to Professor Stratman’s heart condition.’

He waited, and was pleased with the instant heed that Krantz had given to this information.

‘Heart condition? Do you mean he is ill? Are you certain?’

‘I am certain,’ said Daranyi complacently. ‘I have my connections at our Southern Hospital, and that is where Professor Stratman has been to visit for examinations and shots. I do not know the particulars of his condition. I am informed there is an irregularity, but no immediate danger. I am told that if he takes care, he will have some useful years ahead.’