Thomas Ochiltree (5 page)

Von Falkenburg looked down at the envelope again.

“That’s a botched job,” he said to himself, thinking of the contents. The self-indulgent melancholy was starting to be replaced by real depression. The anesthetic was wearing off.

Von Falkenburg looked up at the clock on the mantelpiece. It gave him fifteen minutes. He opened his desk drawer and took out his service revolver. It felt strangely heavy in his hand. He broke it open. It was empty, as he expected.

The box of cartridges lay in the drawer next to where the revolver had been. Von Falkenburg placed one bullet in the cylinder and positioned that chamber carefully under the hammer. He placed the muzzle against his temple. He had heard of people putting it in their mouth, but that seemed inelegant and unmilitary. He had trouble holding the barrel level without straining his forearm until he realized that he should hold the gun upside-down.

His heart was pounding frantically in his chest. Well, it would not pound much longer, he thought savagely.

The mantelpiece clock showed only two and a half minutes to eight.

His mouth was suddenly dry, terribly, terribly dry, but there was no time to take a drink of water. He knew that if he did not kill himself on the stroke of eight, there might be a failure of will. His body trembled with fear and determination. He knew he had to pull the trigger, was going to….

Only half a minute to eight.
When the clock finished striking,
he would fire, by God, he would fire….

The minute hand crept forward as the restless pendulum swung back and forth in short, nervous swings.

Tingggg! The first crystalline note of the hour filled the room, followed by another, and another….

The last note rang out, then died away, and von Falkenburg still lived. Then, with a sudden surge of contempt for his cowardice he gave a compulsive pull of the trigger, while pressing the muzzle so hard again his temple that it hurt. The hammer swung back and fell.

It was not death.

Von Falkenburg’s heart still pounded – far louder, it seemed, than before – and the sharp snap of the falling hammer still echoed in his ears. At the moment he had felt the hammer release, the Idea had come to him. Come too late. And yet he was alive, so it was not too late after all.

With trembling, grateful hand von Falkenburg lowered the gun from his temple
. How on earth…?
He knew that the chances of a misfire were hundreds to one.

He broke open the revolver and saw the mistake that had saved his life. The chamber with the bullet was no longer centered under the hammer where he had placed it, but had advanced
one space beyond.
A moment’s puzzlement, and then he understood what had happened.

Like all Austro-Hungarian officers, von Falkenburg never thought much about his revolver, and certainly never loaded it with just one bullet. He had not remembered at the moment of doing so that since the backward movement of the revolver hammer turns the cylinder one notch – so as to replace a just-fired round with a fresh one – by placing his one bullet directly under the
uncocked
hammer he had accidentally assured that when he pulled the trigger the hammer would fall on the empty
following
chamber. If he had cocked the revolver by hand
before
centering the round, he would be dead by now.

So. He lived. He could try to carry out his Idea. It probably would not work, but it might give him another week of life. Even that was something. Von Falkenburg was inexpressibly glad that he was still alive.

And if his plan did
not
work, as least now he knew how to shoot himself. The colonel could hardly quarrel with a fifteen-minute delay.

The mantelpiece clock showed five minutes past eight. Von Falkenburg placed the revolver back in his desk drawer. Then he rose and twitched his uniform into place, making sure that the sword hung just right.

“You surprise me, von Falkenburg,” the colonel said coldly when he saw him enter his office. And indeed there was astonishment as well as contempt in his voice.

“It was a pure accident which prevented you from getting your way, Colonel. And you almost certainly still will. But since it is my life that is at stake, I thought I owed it to myself to do what I should have done yesterday: bargain a little.”

“Bargain? What kind of bargaining do you think I am willing to engage in with a criminal and a traitor? You are under arrest, close arrest. You’ll be in a cell in very short order.” The colonel reached his hand out for the bell on his desk.

“Touch that bell, Colonel, and you’ll assure the regiment’s disgrace.”

The colonel’s hand hovered above the bell. He knew von Falkenburg was right, but he was certainly not going to allow a traitor to go free for that reason.

“What do you mean by ‘bargain’? You sound more like a street peddler than an officer.”

“Let me be brief. First, I am innocent. I know that you don’t believe that, Colonel, so I am not going to waste your time by trying to convince you of the fact. But I mention it in passing as the reason why I am somewhat reluctant to put a bullet through my brain. If I
had
been spying for the Russians, I would have put a bullet through my brain
without
having been caught first. But of course you do not believe that either.”

The colonel of a Austro-Hungarian regiment was for the latter’s men the closest thing to God next to the Emperor, and was usually treated accordingly. Von Falkenburg’s tone, which implied that the colonel was not so much unwilling as intellectually incapable of understanding his motives, put the colonel on the defensive.

“Secondly,” von Falkenburg went on, “if I am put on trial, the regiment will be disgraced as much as I am. You can certainly kiss goodbye in that case to any hopes for a general’s star.”

Von Falkenburg knew that the colonel was intellectually too limited to be considered for such a promotion anyway, but he also knew that self-analysis was not the colonel’s forte. The look on the latter’s face showed just how agitated he was by the idea of kissing goodbye to his hopes for a general’s star.

“So that is one side of the question,” von Falkenburg said. “The other side is that you were right when you said that for me and my family, my suicide would be far preferable to my standing trial. And you and I both know that Military Intelligence will not simply let the matter drop unless I ‘take the honorable way out.’”

“Then what the devil are you driving at?” the colonel demanded. His face was very red, both from anger at von Falkenburg’s refusal to cooperate by killing himself, and from confusion at this wholly unexpected turn of events.

“The following: I want seven full days in which to discover who really did the spying and framed me. If by 8:00 A.M. the following morning I have failed to do so, you will get what you want: me dead.”

“All I want is for justice to be done, von Falkenburg,” the colonel said testily.

“At any rate, a week will give me time to get my affairs in order.” That sounded more appropriate than to say, “will allow me to have one last fling with a marvelous woman.”

“And you need not worry about my fleeing.
If
I had wanted to, I could have been far from Vienna at this very moment.”

“You spoke of bargaining, von Falkenburg,” the colonel said. “What are you offering in exchange for this week?” He was obviously hoping that it would be something that did not put his dreamed-of general’s star – gold, on gold-lace facing – in any danger.

“A full confession, signed by me. That will burn my bridges. You will know then that I
have
to kill myself rather than stand trial, since there would be no possible defense that I might be able to offer, no conceivable hope that I could cling to of a miraculous acquittal.”

“Besides,” von Falkenburg went on, “I’ll throw in a statement to the effect that I lied to you by giving my word of honor that I was innocent. That will
really
burn my bridges. A man in jail can always claim he was unfairly convicted, can always hope to prove that one day and obtain a pardon. But the officer who admits that he gave his word of honor to his commanding officer in the knowledge that it was a lie….”

Von Falkenburg could see that that offer impressed the colonel more than did the offer to confess in writing to the espionage. In the eyes of the colonel, and in those of every gentleman in Europe, to perjure one’s word of honor was almost equivalent to renouncing one’s humanity. Any beggar had more right to respect than an officer who gave his word of honor falsely.

“But still, you might not have the nerve,” the colonel insisted.

“To shoot myself? Hardly likely. But suppose that I did not. With a signed confession, the trial would be an open-and-shut case. But if dragged out, given the fact that espionage and an officer from an old family was involved, it would be something for the newspapers to puff up into a full-scale sensation. Headlines asking ‘Is the Captain Innocent?’ in letter six centimeters high.”

The colonel squirmed visibly in his chair.

“‘Deutschmeister Regiment Accused; the Colonel’s Role.’ That could be another one.”

The colonel’s face was very red.

“But all that could be avoided. With my confession, the case would be virtually over before it had begun. It would be impossible for the press to keep the story alive.
If
there were a trial. Which there wouldn’t be. If in a week I have not discovered my enemies and obtained proof of my innocence, you’ll find in my apartment what you were hoping for this morning. And I
will
give you my word of honor about that if you wish,” von Falkenburg said with perfect truthfulness.

There was a long pause. Then the colonel said, “I’ll have to talk to Major Becker on the telephone. And he will have to get authorization from his superiors. Von Falkenburg, why the devil do you have to make things so difficult for us?”

Von Falkenburg was tempted to ask, “when it’s merely a question of my life, colonel?” but respect for the colonel’s rank prohibited the sarcasm which disrespect for his person suggested. So von Falkenburg said nothing.

“Anyway, go back to your apartment and remain there until I send for you. That’s an order, von Falkenburg.”

Back in his rooms, von Falkenburg picked up the revolver and looked at it. He knew that he was bluffing, that come what may there was no question of him standing trial, and that if his bluff was called, all he could do was shoot himself without delay, for nothing had changed since last night on the Rudolfsbrücke. He carefully positioned the round so that when the trigger was pulled it would move under the hammer and fire.

“Bang!” he whispered to himself. The gun had a horrible fascination for him. He could not put it down, even though he knew that he should be making plans for proving his innocence in the event that he received the week’s delay. And that, he realized, was because he feared that there were no plans to be made, as he had no idea of where to begin. If he obtained the week, perhaps he should forget about trying to discover the truth, and concentrate on enjoying himself with Helena.

Maybe in half an hour his brains would be spilled all over the desktop, he realized suddenly. He carefully placed the revolver on the desk.

The door opened. It was Schmidt.

“I report most obediently, the captain’s trousers are not ready yet.”

“Very well, Schmidt,” von Falkenburg said. The orderly’s arrival was a welcome intrusion into the hermetically-sealed world of his thoughts.

“Schmidt,” von Falkenburg said, “if someone were to tell a lie about you – don’t worry, no one has – what would you do about it?” He asked the question in a tone that implied a purely theoretical interest on his part. But he was curious as to what the answer would be. Von Falkenburg had no illusions about his orderly’s intelligence, but perhaps a simple brain was what was needed to find the answer to what was possibly only in appearance a complex question.

“I report most obediently, Captain, I’d go to the liar, and ask him why he had lied about me, and if I didn’t like the answer, which I wouldn’t, since the captain said I should imagine that this person was lying about me, then I’d punch his nose.”

“An interesting approach,” von Falkenburg said carelessly, and then realized that in a way it
was
an interesting approach. Go ask the liar why he was lying. Perhaps the place for him to begin was with a confrontation with this person who was prepared to give perjured testimony to the effect that von Falkenburg was his accomplice.

Not that von Falkenburg could hope to get the truth out of the man. But he might get a fragment of the truth: a name carelessly dropped, an embarrassed silence in the face of a leading question. It was at least somewhere to begin.

And now that von Falkenburg had a starting point, he longed inexpressibly for a chance to get started. How long would it take the colonel to finish his discussions with Military Intelligence? Von Falkenburg found himself pacing up and down the room in impatience for a final decision, even if that final decision meant immediate death. Schmidt’s presence was somehow intolerable, so he sent him off to check on his mare Resi, which had been suffering from hoof trouble.

The hands of the mantelpiece clock seemed glued to the face, so slowly did they move, despite the rapid swings of the pendulum. Von Falkenburg went to a cabinet and took out a bottle of cognac. He poured himself a glass and drank it slowly, hoping for word from the colonel before he finished it. The word did not come. He poured himself another, and lit a cigar.

Von Falkenburg told himself that he would hear from the colonel before he had smoked the cigar down to the band, which against his usual custom he had left on. The ash crept down the cigar as slowly as the hands of the clock were moving.

Finally, just as the edge of the paper band was starting to turn brown from the heat, and the cigar had begun to give off that unpleasant taste that comes from having been smoked too far down, there was a knock at the door.

“Come in,” he said, trying to keep the tension he felt out of his voice, and suddenly wishing he had had time to smoke a dozen more cigars before he learned what the decision was regarding his fate.