Suddenly the mounting tension in the car ended. “How long have you known that Lang and Langenheim are the same girl?” Nield asked slowly.
“Since around half-past two this afternoon.”
“Oh, well,” said Nield, and laughed with relief. He started the engine, and the car moved gently away from the narrow street where Keller’s men were within call. “You’ve answered the question that has been worrying me for the last five hours.”
“And what was that?”
“What was Eva Langenheim to you?”
Mathison thought back to the scene in the bar. “That must have puzzled you.”
“It scared me stiff. I kept wondering if I had made the biggest blooper of my career when I told you too much in your apartment. Much too much, if you were Langenheim’s friend.”
“If I had been, what would you have done? Signalled one of Keller’s men to put me under arrest?” And I wouldn’t be surprised at all, Mathison thought with a mixture of amusement and annoyance, if the signal had been prearranged too. “You were to blink your lights twice in succession,” he said with a grin, but there was a tightening in the pit of his stomach. That quiet face, with its quiet voice and quiet good manners, which was now intent on finding the quickest way out of the labyrinth of alleys and short twisting streets, masked a lot of unexpected depths. Nield could be a very tough customer indeed.
“Here we are,” Nield was saying as he eased the car into a large and long street. There were trolley-car rails, automobiles, people hurrying home or walking out to supper. The shops were lighted and open for their last customers. “We’ll pull over near that café and I’ll call Keller.”
“Tell him I may have been caught napping but I’m not a sleeper.”
Nield laughed softly. He liked that. “I’ll warn him to have the airport, railway station, and main roads watched. You stay in the car, Bill.”
The first name was at least a gesture. “Well in,” Mathison agreed. “And don’t be long. That appointment I have for seven is with Miss Freytag.”
“Where?”
“At her home. It’s on Bergstrasse, wherever that is. Somewhere near the University.”
Nield paused with one foot out of the car. “Did you arrange this meeting?”
“No. She telephoned me when I was out, and the hotel took the message.” Something in Nield’s casual voice had caught Mathison’s attention. He pulled out the slip of paper with the written message and handed it over. Nield pulled his leg back into the car, closed the door, struck a match, and read the small scrawl of writing.
“Okay,” he said, handing it back and getting out of the car. “I’ll only be a couple of minutes.” He reached for his raincoat in the back seat, drew it on as he stepped on to the sidewalk, and found himself a tweed cap in its pocket to hide his fair hair. He had given himself a short walk past several shops to reach the café. He didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry.
Mathison studied the people strolling past; no one seemed interested in the car, no one was following Nield. Then he studied the broad street, the other parked cars, the occasional trolley, the little shops. It was all neat and respectable, comfortably middleclass, just like Miss Freytag herself. He replaced her note in his pocket, lit a cigarette, and wondered why Nield had been interested at all in her message. Or perhaps Nield had to be interested in everything.
“We’ve plenty of time before seven,” Nield said as he got back into the car. “So we’ll continue the sight-seeing. Distances are short around here.” The car swung gently into the stream
of traffic, and headed along the street, which had started to slope steadily downhill. Then Nield made a left turn into a modern but less brilliantly lighted street. No shops here, little traffic; a residential area of small houses and gardens. “We are on our way to Yates’s second place of business. Thought you’d like to see the house with that invaluable telephone number—the one that matched. Too bad we can’t go in and putter around on the second floor. I hear he had the very latest in sending and receiving equipment, together with a small developing laboratory, stores of objects all hollowed out to contain microfilm messages for his couriers to carry safely through customs. Ever seen those gadgets? Talcum powder cans with hidden spaces inside their caps, the same kind of tricks in pocket flasks, hollowed-out lipsticks that look perfectly normal and can still function for les girls, cuff links for the men, specially doctored shaving brushes to conceal film in their handles, hairbrushes that slide apart. Of course, nothing was left lying about; even the heavier equipment was dismantled and stowed away in hollow beams or under floorboards. The small stuff was found inside book ends, and also in the bottom roll of a large Chinese scroll hanging on one wall. It must have taken Yates several hours to get everything ready when he arrived there—two overnight stays a week, regularly—and longer to clear everything out of sight before he left. Only the small darkroom was left intact, supplied with absolutely innocent films and photographs.”
“And he risked telephoning from here?” So much care and evasion and trouble, and Yates had given his number to Anna Bryant? And Elissa, too, had handed it over to him? Mathison didn’t believe it.
“Not from his place. From the ground-floor section of that house, seemingly quite separate from Yates upstairs. A middle-aged woman lived there, never left it unattended. She seemed to have no connection at all with Yates. But she was the watchdog for the whole house, and in an emergency could put up any special visitor for the night. Yes, it was a very neat arrangement. Yates in the upstairs apartment as Herr Hase, whose job as a travelling salesman only allowed him a couple of nights at home each week. Downstairs, a widow called Dorothea Langenheim, whose pretty niece Eva visits her occasionally. A fine mess of lies, isn’t it?” Nield had been keeping the car’s speed down to a leisurely crawl so that now, as he pointed to a modest two-storey house with some trees and bushes cosying it away from the other neat little houses along this part of the dark street, he did not have to slow up in order to let Mathison have an adequate glimpse. He could see no aerial; but there was an outside staircase climbing up the side of the house to Herr Hase’s apartment.
“I bet he didn’t use that staircase when he slipped down to phone or interview,” Mathison said.
“It was kept for his open arrival and departure. When he had business downstairs, he used a hole in the floor and a ladder. The hole was rather expert; it was fitted over with a strong sliding panel covered by a heavy rug. From the downstairs view, it looked like part of the coffered ceiling in Frau Langenheim’s living room—an elaborate ceiling for such a modest house. Once the Swiss found a long ladder, library steps actually, which could run along her high bookcases on that side of the room, they became wary of the recessed panels in the ceiling just above it. That, and Frau Langenheim’s total ignorance of
her upstairs neighbour, led them to visit Yates’s place. They found his sliding panel in the floor. Frau Langenheim broke down for one minute, and then clammed up for the duration. However, as the Swiss discover more and more, she may reconsider.” They had left the dark quiet street with its pleasant little houses and were entering another that seemed almost a duplicate: some lights in shaded windows, small gardens, some trees and bushes, everything neat and shipshape and Bristol fashion. “This is Bergstrasse.” Nield announced. “And there’s number nineteen.” But he didn’t stop; they cruised on at the same even pace.
Mathison glanced at his watch. Its illuminated dial told him he had twenty minutes on his hands before he kept his appointment, and with Miss Freytag one had better be right on the minute, neither early nor late. He looked quickly back at the house, at all the other houses in their measured row. “This isn’t Bergstrasse,” he said.
“Sure is.”
“But she hadn’t any garden. That’s what she told me when we were talking this morning. At least—” He searched his memory. She and her mother lived in an apartment. A garden apartment like the one Yates had rented as Herr Hase? No, not that.
A garden would have been useless,
he remembered definitely. “That isn’t where she lives,” he said.
“Could this be it?” Nield pointed to the beginning of small apartment houses, three stories high, that ended the street before it joined the busy main thoroughfare of Rämistrasse.
“More like it, except for the number.”
“It’s her place all right.” Nield drove on, at last pulled up behind a row of parked cars.
“Then the operator at the hotel took down the wrong number?”
“No. We don’t think the operator at the hotel took down any number, or any message either. Inspector Keller hasn’t been able to reach Miss Freytag all afternoon. Her mother said she had been given a holiday from the office and was going to walk along the lake shore. Just before I called him, he had made one more try to reach Miss Freytag. She wasn’t there. Her mother is in hysterics; she has a policewoman with her right now.”
“Freytag is missing?”
“It looks as if she might be.”
Mathison didn’t move, didn’t speak.
“Outside your hotel today, was that Miss Freytag standing with Mrs. Conway in front of the Eden au Lac?”
Mathison nodded.
“So Elissa Eva Langenheim Lang saw them both?” I wondered what prompted that quick good-bye of hers.”
“You believe Elissa—” The thought was so monstrous that Mathison didn’t finish it aloud.
“She could have arranged for Freytag’s disappearance if she thought Freytag would identify her. She has a mission in Salzburg as Elissa Lang, an important one, now that Yates is dead and she can finish what he began. And as for the fake message to you—perhaps she feared Miss Freytag had told you about Eva Langenheim, perhaps she wants to know whether or not that suspicion is true.”
There was one sure way of finding out just what the fake message really meant. “Turn the car and drive back to Bergstrasse nineteen,” Mathison said grimly. “Drop me just before we get there, and I’ll approach that house on foot.”
“I thought I’d do that little job for you.” Nield backed and turned the car carefully.
“You aren’t my colouring.”
“I’ll keep my cap on.”
“You know damned well that if Elissa has half the brains you credit her with, she has given a precise description of me, or perhaps even a photograph she managed to take with one of her fancy gadgets.”
“We’ll have to chance that. Because I’m armed, and you aren’t.” Then Nield tried to play that angle down. “It shouldn’t be too risky. Keller will be placing his men around the house right now.”
“In that case, you’ve just argued yourself out of the job. We’ll avoid all chances; I go it alone,” Mathison insisted. “Up to a point,” he added with a grin. “You stick fairly near, will you? I’m no hero.”
Nield drew the car gently into one of the deeper patches of shadows, about forty yards or so from the entrance to the house, and switched off the engine. “You can use this, can’t you?” He handed over an automatic.
“I once could.” Mathison felt the weight of the pistol, liked its balance and grip. “I can always whack somebody over the head with it, and leave the marksmanship to you.” He slipped the automatic behind his belt. “And just what are you expecting inside that house?”
“I don’t know. Neither does Keller. He would like an excuse to get in, though. He didn’t have time to explain, but he certainly recognised the address when I gave it to him over the phone. And not favourably.”
“So I’m the excuse,” Mathison said slowly. No wonder
Keller was rallying around so quickly. That might be reassuring in one way, but in another it increased his worry. What was inside that house?
“I’ll stick near you. Very near,” Nield said as if he sensed Mathison’s thoughts. “No, no,” he added quietly, as he reached out and stopped Mathison from opening the car door. “No hurry. Mustn’t be early.”
Mathison tried to relax, looked along the dark street at the quiet house. He was back to thinking about Elissa. Nield was overestimating her, surely. “How could one girl manage all this?” he asked unbelievingly.
“You don’t imagine that Yates and Elissa were working alone with only the help of a caretaker, do you? He had a big organisation built up, and she must know something of it. Or how else could she have sent you this invitation to Bergstrasse nineteen? She has more power than you think. Or I thought. Or Andrew, for that matter. He’s the English friend you saw me with today.”
“The budding financial expert?”
“That’s right. He is attending the bankers’ get-together in your hotel. A very knowledgeable type. I stopped off on my way to Salzburg especially to meet him. We thought an exchange of information on Yates might be useful to both of us?”
“And I thought you were torpedoing the gold standard.” Mathison glanced at his watch. Three minutes to go.
“Glad I looked authentic. I had a hard time keeping Andrew from setting off after the beautiful Eva, or shall we say Elissa? It doesn’t really matter what we call her; all her names are as bogus as hell. But as I kept telling him, you just can’t tail people, dressed in your bowler hat and striped pants. He had
to settle for a quick phone call after she had gone up to your room with you—that’s where she went, wasn’t it?—and pray that one of his Zürich contacts could reach the hotel before she got downstairs.”
“But she’s staying in the hotel.”
Nield shook his head. “She was waiting in ambush for you in the lobby. That’s when Andrew first noticed her, just as she rushed after you with her arms outstretched and head tilted for that kiss. Touching scene.”
“Time—” Mathison said, looking at his watch.
“Not quite,” Nield said reassuringly. “Give the Swiss a chance to get close to the back door. Now, where were we? Ah, yes—Andrew. He almost popped his bowler when he saw Langenheim. British Intelligence have been looking for her since she vanished from London about three years ago. She was a blonde then, with a different name, a Canadian passport, and some useful connections—she had haunted the UN in New York for a couple of years before she arrived in England. Well, with a few introductions in the right direction, that face and figure did the rest. She aimed straight for a couple of men who held fairly influential jobs but who liked to fancy themselves as part of the swinging scene. Honest to God, I don’t know sometimes which are the more lethal to have around: the ones who want to prove they are virile or the ones who want to be considered intellectual.” Nield shook his head, perhaps remembering other men, other places.