“Oh, yes,” she said, and looked out at Nield. She frowned uncertainly.
“I’ll wait here,” Nield said. He moved casually behind Mathison, glanced into the hall.
“I won’t be long,” Mathison assured him, taking his cue.
Her frown deepened. “Greta!” she called. That was a normal enough cry, except that there was something in the tone of her voice that sounded more of a warning than of a call to her daughter. That, and the puzzled frown, the uncertain look in her eyes, the lack of invitation to enter, switched Mathison from almost-acceptance into definite doubt. It deepened as a man appeared immediately in the narrow hall and took charge. He was small and thin, a lightweight physically but with quick and highly intelligent eyes. With a glance at Nield and a friendly nod for Mathison, he said. “Come in! Miss Freytag is upstairs. She will be down in a few minutes.” He gestured to both of them.
The woman stepped aside, pulled the door wide open to
let them enter. Her frown persisted, as if she didn’t quite like this development but had no other ideas of how to handle the unexpected appearance of Nield. “Come in, come in,” she said, dropping the frown and picking up a more amiable look of welcome. “Please wait in there.” Her stick pointed to the room from which the man had appeared so quickly. “I will let Greta know you are here.” It was an unnecessary remark: Greta Freytag would have had to be inflicted with instant deafness not to have heard her name called up the narrow staircase and through the thin walls of this house.
Mathison stepped inside the hall. Nield threw his cigarette away and followed, hands deep in pockets, cap pulled down to his eyebrows looking, like some embarrassed lout who was totally disinterested and impatient to leave. “How long will this take?” he was muttering. He seemed to be paying no attention to the hall—unheated and as cold as the air on the steps outside, unfurnished except for one wooden chair—or to a rustle of movement, a creak of floorboard, that came from the room Mathison was about to enter.
But the thin-faced man stopped him, with a sharp glance at the woman, who had obviously made more than one unnecessary remark. “Wait here,” he countermanded. “I shall go and tell Greta. She may want to see you upstairs.” He transferred his sharp glance to Nield.
“We have a dinner engagement,” Mathison said, as he managed partly to block the man’s view of Nield by stepping between them. He didn’t add to the explanation; those quick eyes were clever enough to put the story together for themselves. The man’s interest faded. He nodded and ran up the staircase. Mathison moved slowly to the bottom step as the
man disappeared from view. From here, he could see something of the room. It was silent in there now, as if the man inside—or two men, perhaps, for the rustle and creak had seemed to come from separate sides of the room—was holding his breath. Mathison turned to look back at Nield, standing beside the lady with the stick, and an uncertain and perplexed old lady she was. “Don’t worry,” he told Nield, “I won’t make us late. I’m glad you came along, though. Never would have found this address by myself. Have you seen anything of Gerri lately? Heard he was opening a new garage. Business must be good.” What he had seen of the room was a stretch of bare floor, a wooden table and four chairs pushed back as if people had risen hastily. There were three beer bottles on the table; no glasses, cigarettes stubbed into the lid of a can, a poor overhead light from an elaborate brass chandelier, which had been left only one bulb. An empty house, thought Mathison, and now a very silent house. Had the men left by some other door, slipped out by a back entrance?
There was silence from upstairs, too. Nield was listening. He exchanged glances with Mathison but no words, as if he was too busy with his own guesses. He could be thinking that if he had been playing it by ear tonight, these characters in this empty house had thrown away the score and were improvising desperately. The deep silence ended. There were footsteps overhead, and the thin man returned to sight. He was looking perplexed but friendly. He ran lightly downstairs. “I am sorry,” he was saying. “Greta must have gone out. We didn’t know. But if you would telephone later tonight, you can talk to her then. Or I could have her telephone you when she returns. Where are you having dinner?”
Mathison looked at Nield. “At the Schwarzer Adler, isn’t it?” Now I’m stuck, he thought. You handle this, Charlie my boy. And what the hell is going on?
Nield handled it. “What’s that?” he was asking sharply, looking up the stairs. He listened quite openly. “I heard something—”
“Nothing,” the man said quickly, and signalled for the woman to open the door. She seemed to move very spryly, without much help from the walking stick. “The Schwarzer Adler,” he agreed with a nod of his head. “I’ll give her the message.”
“There it is again!” Nield said. “Someone is in pain—perhaps has had an accident, needs help? Didn’t you hear it, Bill?”
“No!” said the woman, her voice rising. “There’s nothing!”
“Nothing,” echoed the man in a more natural tone. “Gute Nacht, Herr Mathison. Auf Wiedersehen.” He flashed a glance at the woman, telling her to keep quiet.
“I think I hear something, too,” Mathison told him, watching Nield, who had managed to get between the man and the staircase.
“Willi!” shouted the woman, closing the door again.
Willi wheeled away from Mathison and saw Nield, his hand deep in his pockets, beginning to climb the stairs, slowly, innocently, looking upwards at the floor above. “Come back here, you! I’ll get the police!”
“Do that.” Nield went on climbing.
The man lunged after him and made his first open mistake. From under the heavy sweater that covered his belt, he drew a revolver while his other hand pulled out a silencer from his pocket. He was fitting them expertly together as Nield swung around to face him.
Mathison heard the shot from the staircase as he turned at the warning rush of heels on the wooden floor behind him. He caught the woman’s upraised arm with the stick ready to crash down on the back of his head. Her other hand came at him, two fingers pointed straight for his eyes, but he caught that wrist, too. For a moment, she was all strength, and then just as unexpectedly all weakness. Mathison removed the stick from her loosened grip. “For God’s sake!” he said in disgust, and dropped her on to the wooden chair as Nield picked up Willi’s revolver with a handkerchief. She was crying bitterly. At the foot of the stairs, the third man had been knocked back a good three feet. He lay there unconscious, his right shoulder smashed by Nield’s bullet.
“Look out!” came Nield’s voice, and Mathison turned sharply to see the woman dart past him, her white wig askew from the force of a quick rush that dodged Mathison and carried her through the deserted living room. A rear door smashed shut. “Let her go,” Nield called, and brought Mathison back to the hall. “Keller’s men will take care of her—like the other two.” He noticed Mathison’s slight surprise. “There were two of them? As well as the woman and this clown?” He nodded at Willi, who was moaning slightly in a strangled whisper, like a man screaming in a deep nightmare.
“That was my count,” Mathison agreed. “You have good ears.” Nield had been some distance from the living-room door. Mathison glanced at the stairs. “Did you really hear something up there?”
“No. But they didn’t want us to explore, did they?” Nield had emptied Willi’s revolver, holding it carefully with his handkerchief, and now placed it out of reach of the man’s inert arm. “Lesson one: never leave a loaded weapon beside even an
unconscious man,” he told Mathison. “And if this worries you, we are simply leaving evidence of lethal attempt.” Briefly, he examined the singed hole in the pocket of his raincoat. “How do I explain this, dammit? I borrowed the coat.”
“You’ve taken up pipe smoking,” Mathison suggested with a small laugh. His sense of relief was growing by the minute. Some kind of trap had been set here for him, but he hadn’t been caught. No damage done except to Willi.
“What’s so funny?” Nield asked curtly.
“You and your legal niceties, the woman’s wig, all this business of disguise and subterfuge; and myself, too. The joke’s on me. I really thought she was an old woman. Well, it’s lucky we had Keller outside.”
“
You
were lucky she didn’t carry a gun. And where was yours? Lesson two: never underestimate.” He glanced down at Willi. “I need to remember that myself. He was faster than he looked.” Distant footsteps caught Nield’s ear. Men were in the kitchen, about to enter the living room. “We can leave him now. He’ll soon be in good firm hands.” Nield was already climbing the stairs, three at a time.
Mathison followed at the same pace. From below he could hear footsteps and voices now coming into the living room. Nield was paying them no attention whatsoever. He was at the top of the stairs, gesturing for speed, pointing to the central corridor that led from this barely lighted landing along the upper floor to the other side of the house. Six closed doors, noted Mathison; three on each side. Nield said quietly, “You take these rooms. I’ll try, the others.” He had drawn his revolver as he moved towards them. Okay, thought Mathison, and pulled out his automatic. Trouble to be expected? He reached his first door, braced himself.
It was unlocked, and the room felt empty. He risked switching on the light. Anti-climax, he told himself as he looked briefly at a nondescript bathroom.
The second door was locked, but it was flimsy enough to be forced open at the first try. He groped for the light switch and flicked it on. The dark shapes in the room became recognisable: a well-furnished bedroom, complete with armchair and a small television set. But the wardrobe door, gaping open, showed nothing but empty hooks and hangers. The bureau drawers were empty, too, and its top quite bare except for a crumpled lace mat, as if someone had been packing in haste. There were two suitcases beside the door, heavy to lift, locked and strapped. “What do you make of this?” Mathison called softly to Nield.
Nield didn’t seem to hear. He was standing at the door of his third room, his hand on its light switch. Then slowly he turned away and came over to Mathison. He slipped the revolver back into his pocket. His light-blue eyes had become cold and hard. Briefly they took in the bedroom and the suitcases. His normally pleasant face was as taut as his voice. “Ready for evacuation, I see. Once they got you here alone, knocked you over the head, left you unconscious, they were ready to move out—no doubt calling the police as they left. They had it well staged.”
“They’d call the police?”
Nield nodded to the room across the passage. “Over here,” he said, leading the way. Mathison stopped abruptly at its threshold. He pocketed his automatic. Slowly he entered.
The room was small, barely furnished. On its strip of thin rug were scattered a brown tweed coat, brown pocketbook, a felt hat, gloves, umbrella. And on the narrow bed against one flowered wall, her face set in a death mask of fear and pain, lay
the rigid body of a woman. She was almost unrecognisable in the disarray of hair and clothing. Mathison’s breath strangled in his lungs. His eyes shifted unbelievably towards the coat, the matching gloves and pocketbook, the sensible hat; then back to the silk scarf tightly twisted around the woman’s neck.
Nield said quickly, “Touch nothing. Leave this all to Keller’s experts.” He put out a hand to keep Mathison from lifting the coat to cover the contorted face.
“Very wise,” said Keller’s voice behind them. He was alone. He stopped at the threshold, his lips tightening. “Greta Freytag?” he asked Mathison.
“Yes.”
Keller crossed over to the last unopened door. He kicked it wide, but found nothing inside that narrow room except a cot and blankets. He returned slowly. He looked only at Mathison, kept talking only to him. “So that is what it was: a safe house. They could shelter several people here if necessary, keep them apart from each other while new passports and identities were being faked.” He went on to the well-furnished bedroom and glowered down at the waiting suitcases. “The caretaker lived here—the woman who came running out into the night. I see she was ready for flight anyway. A neatly planned operation. Up to a point.” He glanced at Nield for the first time, gave a brief nod of congratulations, and ignored him once more. “Have you the revolver with which you wounded the man downstairs?”
“But I didn’t—” began Mathison. And then he caught on. Nield, quite silent, was holding the revolver out to him. Mathison took it. Nield didn’t seem too happy about parting with it, but he could scarcely object; he was the man who had never been here. “How’s this?” Mathison said, passing the
revolver over to Keller. And that, he thought, keeps your report in good order. No difficult questions about Nield’s presence to be answered. A neat and satisfactory solution for all.
“Thank you,” Keller said most seriously. “The police like to check weapons and match them with bullets.”
Mathison had rising doubts about that satisfactory solution. “Awkward for me,” he suggested.
“But why? You fired in obvious self-defence. The police will find the other bullet somewhere in the staircase wall—the one that came from the wounded man’s pistol.”
The other bullet? Mathison glanced sharply at Nield. But of course—there had been a silencer on that pistol, and it had deceived him. All he had noticed was a faint plopping echo to the shot that Nield had fired. Christ, thought Mathison, no wonder he lost his sense of humour down in that hall. Willi’s bullet must have whistled close.
“The man did fire at you?” Keller was making sure of that.
Nield nodded. Mathison replied for him. “He fired.”
“His pistol was empty when I picked it up.”
“Oh yes,” Mathison said quickly, taking the small handful of bullets from Nield to give to Keller. “It seemed a good idea to make sure he wouldn’t sneak another shot. Lesson one, I believe,”
Keller wrapped the bullets carefully in his handkerchief. “Can’t be too careful,” he agreed. “Well, now that we have everything straight, it’s time to leave. I would suggest that back-bedroom window. The roof of the kitchen and scullery jut out right underneath it, an easy drop for anyone in training. Except it might be wiser if you, Mr. Mathison, were seen to be leaving by the front door. There are some neighbours gathering down on the street, and it’s possible that a friend of this house is pretending to
be one of them. So you and I shall leave quite naturally, even if the back way is safe for anyone going out that window for the next five minutes. But just one moment,” he finished in the same grave voice, “I have to give orders to get Homicide along here.” He looked at the doorway of the room where Greta Freytag lay. He shook his head angrily, slowly. “I did not expect that,” he said. Then he was walking to the head of the stairs and began giving instructions to the man who waited for him half-way down.