“Just what did happen here in the hall?”
“A long story.”
“Oh.” End of that topic, she thought. “Well, I’ll say goodbye.” She glanced uncertainly down the quiet square. “If I cross that busy street and keep on going, do I reach the lake? It’s my guiding point. You see, I’ve just arrived in Zürich. Dropped my suitcases at the hotel, didn’t even have time to get my bearings.”
He stared at her unbelievingly. Could this be Mrs. Conway? As young as this? With humour and warmth, totally feminine? Smartly dressed, with quiet elegance—excellent grey wool suit over a blue cashmere sweater, a deep-blue fleece coat over her shoulders, shining black pumps and pretty stockings? She looked as if she had risen late and spent at least an hour on preparing herself for the outside world.
“Something wrong?” she asked.
“I was just trying to guess your name. Could it be Conway?”
“Yes,” she said, surprised. “Lynn Conway.” And now it was she who was staring. “You aren’t William Mathison?”
“Bill Mathison.” He shook her hand with mock solemnity. “How do you do, Mrs. Conway? Welcome to Zürich, city of Zwingli and numbered bank accounts.”
She recovered. “You aren’t at all what I expected.”
“My sentiments completely.”
“But I mean—you really don’t behave like a lawyer, not the ones I’ve met. I thought they kept all their fighting for court.”
He said quickly, dodging that subject, “Shall I show you where the lake is? We seem to have taken root on this sidewalk.” He fell into step at her side, or almost. It was one of his to one and a half of hers. They had passed the apothecary’s shop and he hadn’t even noticed it.
“I thought you hadn’t arrived yet. I’m really so glad you
are
here,” she was saying most seriously. “Tell me—what is going on? Two plain-clothes men in Yates’s office, the whole place disorganised, and no one could find Miss Freytag for me. Oh, I know Yates is dead, and I’m not being heartless. But frankly, there is a lot more involved than just a missing contract, isn’t there? There must be...”
“A lot more. I’ll put you in the picture as much as I can over lunch.” And then, as he noted hesitation in her blue eyes—the bluest blue he had ever seen, putting her coat to shame—he added quickly, “You
are
free, aren’t you?”
“I ought to telephone Jimmy Newhart,” she said slowly. “And there are other calls, too. Miss Freytag, for instance.”
“Protocol is always easier to handle after a good lunch. Besides, there is no use calling New York until at least three o’clock.”
“Of course. How stupid of me.” She was remembering the time lag. “I feel so—so disoriented. It was really a bewildering arrival.”
“Where are you staying?”
“The Eden au Lac.”
“That’s handy. I’m almost next door. Let’s walk to your hotel, and you can unpack. I’ll call for you there at one-fifteen. Frankly, you don’t even need a dab of powder, but I’d better wash and brush up.” He was acutely aware that his coat was dust-streaked and his shirt collar had lost a button. Suddenly, he halted abruptly. “Good God, I may be arrested any moment. Would you wait? Please? Won’t be a minute!” He was already running back to the apothecary’s shop.
She hesitated, and then she waited. She remembered his parting grin. Bill Mathison was a man of surprise, and she didn’t meet too many of them nowadays. He kept his word, too. He returned in less than a minute, with a small white package in his hand.
“All ready and wrapped. Not an eyebrow lifted,” he reported delightedly. “Not one explanation necessary, just the hard cash.”
“A very Swiss package,” she said, admiring the neat red seals on the mitred corners.
“Cough medicine. Special brew. We’ll feed it to the swans after lunch.” He was quite decided they were going to have lunch together. And dinner, too. “Zürich can be a very pleasant place,” he assured her as they set off at a brisk pace towards the lake. He liked this new fashion of low heels for women; it let them walk instead of teeter-totter.
“Yes, even thugs don’t want to clutter up a hall with any mess. Who were they?”
“Nasty types. The one who pointed his automatic at my spine had been following me around this morning.”
“Here? In Zürich?”
“Yates lived in Zürich, remember? But let’s leave all that until later and not spoil our appetites.”
“I have a thousand questions,” she warned him, and glanced at the package in his hand. Cough medicine? She shook her head trying not to laugh.
“After lunch,” he insisted, and had his way.
Sedate suits, immaculate Chesterfields, grey Homburgs, thin attaché cases grouped in small clusters near the doorway of Bill Mathison’s hotel. The bankers were waiting for the cars to take them to luncheon or a conference, perhaps both. The junior men crossed the sidewalk, while the older ones stayed inside the shelter of the lobby, hats in their hands, their heads, with their closely brushed hair, an array of shining grey helmets.
“It will soon be over,” the porter told Mathison as he collected his key at the desk. “They start leaving tonight.”
“Think of the fun I’ve missed by not being here this week.”
“Please?”
“A very impressive sight.”
“Indeed, yes. A very great honour.”
“Any messages?” A rhetorical question, as much a matter of habit as of hope. My friends in Zürich, thought Mathison, are not the type to leave messages at a hotel desk. Possibly,
too, their business with me is over. Gustav Keller’s nimble disengagement this morning is a fairly good indication of that. I’m the fellow who may ask too many questions. Where is quiet Frank O’Donnell, for instance? Any chance of meeting him here, or is he already on his way back to New York to pick up the threads of his investigation of the Burch angle of Yates’s peculiar life? And Charles Nield—is he already in Salzburg, concentrating on Bryant and Finstersee? Plagued by his own questions, which kept bobbing up no matter how he tried to push them firmly to the back of his mind, Mathison could imagine the barrage he would have to face over a lunch table today. Lynn Conway was too intelligent not to be curious, and if she was responsible for the Zürich office for the next few weeks, she certainly had to know some basic answers. Just what can I tell her? he wondered.
“No messages,” the porter said. He had searched thoroughly through pigeonholes and undercounter shelves.
“Thank you.” Mathison turned to face the lobby, straightened his tie, hoped the popped button didn’t show, and made his way around tall green plants in huge majolica pots to the quiet corridor where the elevators were hidden.
“Bill!” It was a woman’s voice. “Bill, how wonderful!”
Elissa? Good God, he thought, and I didn’t telephone her; I forgot all about it. He turned slowly. And it was Elissa Lang, dark hair loose to her shoulders, grey eyes teasing. She was dressed in the same smart fuzzy tweed coat, the same flat-heeled buckled shoes.
“You never telephoned,” she said laughingly as they shook hands.
“I just got back to Zürich this morning.”
“Where on earth have you been?”
“New York.”
“How cryptic!”
“Oh, I had to go there for some consultation.”
“Was the contract so involved as that?”
She has a good memory, he thought. Now what did I tell her about Bryant’s contract? Nothing very much, surely. Just an offhand mention when she asked about my business in Salzburg. “No. It was a matter of letting the publisher know the details so he could make up his mind what to do. And how are you?”
“Let’s talk about us over a drink in the bar.”
“Sorry, Elissa. I have a lunch date for one-fifteen. And after that I have to be at the office. But what about a drink this evening? Or lunch tomorrow.” He frowned. “No, tomorrow may be filled with business, too.” Or that trip back to Salzburg, he thought. “Let me phone you this evening: I’ll be more definite then.”
“Come and have a drink now,” she pleaded. “Just half an hour. I’m leaving Zürich.”
“So soon?”
“I’ll tell you all about it in the bar.” She turned and led. He could do nothing but follow, glancing worriedly at his watch. Half an hour would bring them to one-fifteen. He would have to keep this chat to twenty minutes. It was always the way, he thought wryly: last week in Zürich, he hadn’t talked with one pretty girl: today he had two beauties on his hands. He did remember to pull off his coat, hand it with a tip to an aged retainer in the lobby with instructions to have it sponged and pressed and in Room 307 within half an hour. His jacket had been protected by his coat and looked all right. He adjusted
his tie again, and concealed the gape of his shirt at its neck. One of his shoes had been badly scuffed, right over the toe. His favourite shoes, too, dammit. They’ll never be the same, he thought with annoyance as he chose a table near the door.
“Nothing intimate?” Elissa asked with that enchanting smile, which she was turning on today in full force. She glanced at one cosy corner where the subdued light scarcely carried, but sat down without any further comment and let him help her with her coat.
“Too many bankers around.” There were a few, here, who seemed to be cutting classes. Or perhaps they had business of their own to attend to. The huddled heads looked serious. “Now what’s this about leaving Zürich?” he asked, determined to keep the conversation on Elissa. That was the surest way of avoiding his own complicated affairs. “The Martinis are good, by the way. Will you risk one?” He ordered two with neither olive nor pearl onion.
“Purist,” she told him. “Remember that funny little café near the foot of the castle hill?”
“Yes. Too much vermouth, you warned me.”
“You
do
remember,” she said delightedly. “That was a perfect evening, wasn’t it?” She was studying the other tables quietly. The room was fairly spacious—it had probably been a small reception hall before bars had become a necessity—with softly shaded wall lights set into its dark wooded panels, and there was no feeling of crowding. Everyone sat at white-clothed tables, small islands unto themselves; there was no bar to stand at, no open array of bottles in front of mirrors, no high stools, not even a visible barman.
“Slightly on the short side,” he replied. “How was Schloss Fuschl?”
“Too sentimental for words,” she said, “but I suppose that’s the right tone for farewell parties.”
He said nothing at all. He wished he had never asked. Then he could have enjoyed an excellent Martini without wondering why she had lied to him in Salzburg. But he deserved this feeling of awkwardness that had unexpectedly attacked him; after all, he had set that little trap, and that annoyed him too. Except he had to know. Her answer had been important to him. He had got it, and it wasn’t the answer he had wanted. He looked at her face and thought sadly, you are much too beautiful to tell lies. And why such an unnecessary one?
“You are depressed,” she said.
“I was just thinking we seem fated to have an interrupted drink together.” If the waiter didn’t arrive soon, he wouldn’t have time to do anything but gulp it down.
“Couldn’t you phone and tell your friends that you’ll be a little late for luncheon?”
“No.”
“Then it’s another woman,” she said, laughing. “Why don’t you postpone her until tomorrow? And your business appointment, too? Then we could have the rest of the day to ourselves. I’ll be leaving soon, and then you’ll have all the free time in the world.”
“You’re always leaving, aren’t you?” The drinks had come, and he welcomed the interruption; he didn’t need to think what he would say next as he signed his name and room number on the cheque.
“My grandmother’s ill. She has two nurses, and the house is like a morgue. Oh, she’ll live to ninety. It’s just a matter of—well, senility. She’s slipping away gradually as far as memory
goes. She doesn’t even recognise me. Sad, isn’t it? She was such an energetic kind of old lady.”
“That’s grim.” But was it the truth? The trouble with one silly lie was that it kept casting its shadow around. Then he chided himself once more; he was becoming too damned suspicious. Why should Elissa lie about her grandmother? “So you are staying with your friend?”
Elissa shook her head. She said dejectedly, “No, all my plans collapsed around me. My friend gave up her apartment last week and moved to Geneva.” Her mood changed to one of amusement. “It would have been pretty useless if you had called that number I gave you. You didn’t, did you?”
“I only arrived this morning,” he reminded her.
“Oh, yes... Have you still got it?”
“Right here.” He fished out his address book and found the page.
“Let me see,” she said lightly, her arm extended over the table, her hand open. “You know, I’ve had the most awful feeling that I didn’t remember that number correctly when I first gave it to you.”
It was the only entry on the page. This was the first time he had actually looked at it since he had written it down in Salzburg. Then, it had only been a string of five figures, quickly scribbled. Now, they seemed familiar. I’ve seen that number somewhere else, he thought. He took out his pencil and scored it through. “Where are you staying?” he asked, ready to write her new number.
“Here.”
“At this hotel?”
“They managed to find a room for me. I’m sure it is one the
bankers rejected. It’s a dull little place with no view at all.” Her arm had remained lying across the table. Unexpectedly, she picked the little book out of his hand and looked at the opened page. “I knew it,” she said in dismay. “Oh, Bill, I’m so sorry. You could have called this number until doomsday and never found me. It was just a matter of the last two numerals; they should have been fifty-three, not thirty-five.” She gave him back the address book, opened at the page. “There isn’t much use in keeping that. Is there?” She shook her head over her idiotic mistake. Her dark-brown hair swung softly, fell over her brow. She brushed it back carelessly. She seemed completely at ease, and yet Mathison had a strange feeling that she was waiting.
He didn’t take the subtle cue; he made not one move to tear the page out of the book and hand it to her with an appropriate joke. Instead, he laughed the whole incident off while he looked hard at a number that had become definitely interesting. “No use at all,” he agreed. “Unless I frame it as a memento of our first meeting.”