She stood at the desk, looking at the telephone, hesitating. She glanced once more into the dining-room. The two policemen were there, but Andrew was gone.
“Ah, Fräulein Lang,” said August Grell, leaving his table, coming toward her, “did you want to make a telephone call? I’m sorry to ask you to wait. I have been expecting an important message for the last half hour. It should come soon, any minute. So would you be so kind as to—”
“No,” she said, “I didn’t want to telephone. I wanted to have a quiet talk with you.”
“If it is about your room—”
“No,” she said, lowering her voice even more. “It is about the telephone call you are expecting. From three of your friends? Who went to Salzburg today? They won’t be coming back.” She watched the genial mask slip for one brief instant and then cover August Grell’s good-natured face once more. But his eyes were blue ice. “And Frau Bryant is dead.” That was a real shock, a premonition of disaster complete. Again Grell’s strong control reasserted itself. “And now that you know how much I could tell you, would you care to hear some more? We have a lot in common, tonight.” She emphasised the last word delicately. “An interest in the Finstersee box, for example? Neither of us wants the Americans or British to get hold of it, do we? Oh yes, their agents are here. The Austrians, too. I can name them. Better yet, I think I know one way to get Johann to tell you where the box is hidden.”
He took a key from his pocket, went forward to his office door. “In here,” he said quietly.
A sad-eyed girl, pretty at other times, cheeks now swollen from, crying, looked at Mathison intently as he followed Lynn Conway into the comfortable kitchen. Curtains were drawn over the windows, electric light switched on in special welcome. From a room at the back of the Seidl house came the sound of someone gently snoring. The table was covered with a brightly embroidered cloth and set with a small serving platter of cold cuts, a slab of cheese, crusted bread. Trudi had been busy since she had dashed across the fields to get supper ready for her guests. She had even changed her apron, Lynn noted, and she was no longer on the verge of breaking into tears.
“This is Bill—Bill Mathison,” Lynn said. “You can trust him.”
Trudi gravely shook hands, watching him. “Frau Bryant spoke of him.” She went on watching him as he helped Lynn off with her coat, pulled off his windbreaker, laid them both on a chair near the door. “I am glad you came,” she said briefly,
beckoning them with her hand to sit down at the table.
Couldn’t we deal with the box first? Mathison thought. But no, they definitely could not. Trudi had her own way of arranging matters. It wasn’t time that was important to her, but trust. She had accepted Lynn, that was obvious, but she wanted to be quite sure of him. She kept glancing at him as she hurried to the back of the room for the coffee-pot on top of a clay stove. Then she lit two oil lamps, bringing one of them over to the table, remembered a serving spoon and fork, rough linen napkins, and turned off the electric light before she sat down at last, taking a chair directly opposite Mathison. Satisfied? he wondered. At least, she was more relaxed.
He made a pretence of eating and concentrated on talk. Someone had to start words flowing. Lynn ate little, and listened. Trudi was frankly hungry—“the first food I’ve been able to swallow today”—and even answered Mathison freely once he got on the topic of Johann. Yes, it was late last night, almost midnight, that she knew something was wrong. She had been waiting for Johann—he had phoned Frau Kogel in the afternoon and left a message at the post office for Trudi saying he would be in Unterwald that evening—and when it became so late, she went upstairs to her room. But she still waited. If Johann said he was coming, he was coming. Near midnight, she heard the sound of a motor driving up the hill from Bad Aussee. She rushed from her bed to the window. But it wasn’t Johann’s jeep. It was a dark car, large. It didn’t stop, didn’t slow down at the village crossroads either, but kept travelling uphill. And then she heard the jeep. It rattled past. There was one man in it, but he didn’t signal lightly on his horn as Johann would have done; he didn’t even flick his lights. He just kept on at high speed and then
took the road to the right when he came to the intersection—only a few farms up there, and then rough open country. Johann might take that direction to go climbing in daylight. There was a mountain towering above the road, the Sonnblick it was called; a cliff face, actually, that was good practice for scaling rock. But he would never go there at midnight. The jeep never came back. She waited and waited, but it never came.
“And the other car? You are sure it went up the hill?”
“Yes. I saw its tail-lights go right up the hill past the inn.”
“Towards Finstersee?”
Trudi nodded. “In that direction. There are forests along that road. When the car reached the trees, I could no longer see its lights.” She looked at his worried face. Surprised, she said, “I thought you would have been asking me about the box.”
“I’ll come to that,” he promised her. “But is that all you can tell me about Johann?” And there was nothing much he could ask about the box, except her permission to carry it downstairs. And not much carrying could be done when he was expected to be a polite guest. Women were really astounding, he thought as he noticed Trudi’s perfect hostess manner. But at least it kept her calm. He had been afraid of too much emotion when he had entered this room. Emotions were fine in the right place, at the right time; but danger and death couldn’t be warded off by emotions. And you remember that, he warned himself. What happened to you out there, almost at the door of this house? He looked at Lynn, and his eyes softened. For a moment, they exchanged a hint of warm laughter, of recollection shared; of astonishment, excitement, complete euphoria. Hold on, hold on, he told himself. Later, later. Not now. He looked quickly back at Trudi, regained his thoughts.
“That’s all I know,” Trudi assured him.
“Well—about the box—” And what the hell do I say? May I take it? Do I march upstairs into your room and get it?
“I’m glad you were thinking of Johann,” Trudi went on. “I was afraid that he would be forgotten. Once you got the box, perhaps he never would be found. You would not do that?”
“No.”
She rose. “Come. But you must walk quietly. The stairs creak.” She lifted the lamp that stood on the table and carried it toward the flight of wooden stairs that ran up one wall. “Please come, too,” she told Lynn, dropping her low voice to a whisper as she glanced quickly at the door leading to the back of the house. The snoring had long since stopped; Frau Seidl was deep in sleep.
They climbed the stairs, lightly, carefully, and followed a narrow wooden passage to Trudi’s room. She placed the lamp carefully on a small bureau, opened the massive chest that stood at the foot of her bed. She took out layers of linen, placing them in exact order on the plump eiderdown. “Now,” she said, and pointed.
Mathison reached into the chest for a box wrapped in white cloth. It was cumbersome to lift out of its hiding place. He had to strain to keep its weight from settling too heavily on the floor as he put it slowly, silently down. He pulled off its winding sheet, and saw that he could grasp it more easily for its journey downstairs by two handles folded at its sides. The box was both locked and padlocked, a solid piece of work. One thing was certain, this was not the kind of container that a photographer would choose for his equipment. We’ve really got something here, he thought, and looked at Lynn. Perhaps
she, too, had been prepared for disappointment, for her eyes were now wide with excitement.
Trudi was staring at the box with a mixture of dislike and distrust. She didn’t move, as if she wondered whether she was doing the right thing. “It is very valuable, Johann said. Equipment that belonged to Herr Bryant. You will see that Frau Bryant gets it?”
Mathison looked at the pathetic, anxious, transparently honest face. “If she is alive,” he said very quietly.
“
If
?”
Lynn glanced at him quickly.
Trudi said, “Have you heard something about Frau Bryant—something you have not told me?”
“I heard that the three men who took her away have been arrested. But there was no mention of Frau Bryant. That’s what troubles me.”
“You think she is dead? Is that what you think?”
“I don’t know for certain. But there is a friend of mine waiting outside. He may have learned something more.”
“But if she’s dead,” began Trudi, doubt and fear rising anew, “what do I do?”
“Let’s get this box downstairs,” Mathison said. “You want it out of your room, don’t you?” Trudi nodded. She was close to tears again. “How on earth did Johann carry it up here?” he asked, trying to sound conversational, prosaic, undramatic, anything to calm Trudi. He lifted the box. It wasn’t an impossible hoist for one man, just difficult to negotiate quietly on that narrow staircase.
“It was in a large rucksack.” At least Trudi had stepped out of his way. Her voice, her movements were listless.
“You haven’t kept that lying around, have you?” It could be dangerous.
“Johann took it.”
And kept it, perhaps. Hence Johann? Well, we all make mistakes, Mathison thought gloomily. He listened to the sound of a car travelling downhill. There had been several in these last ten minutes.
“I’ll go ahead and warn you when you come to the last steps,” Lynn said. She had picked up the lamp and was already waiting for him in the passageway. “Come on, Trudi,” she urged gently.
“Those cars?” he asked Trudi as he started down the staircase.
“The concert ended some time ago.”
And what’s Chuck thinking, outside there in the cold? Wondering if I’ve botched everything? Too damned slow about getting this box? And yet, how else? Mathison reached the foot of the staircase without any clatter. He needed a couple of deep breaths, though, after he lowered the box gently onto the floor. “I’ll find my friend and bring him here. You can talk with him, Trudi.” He picked up his windbreaker, moved quickly to the door, took out his pack of cigarettes.
“But I don’t know this man,” Trudi was saying sharply as Mathison left.
Lynn took charge. “Please trust us, Trudi. I heard Frau Bryant say she wanted to meet this man. He is a—a kind of detective. He was actually on his way to see Frau Bryant when she was kidnapped. She thought he could help her. With that box.” And an ugly brute of a thing it is, she thought, looking down at it. “I don’t know what is in it, but—”
“It’s equipment.”
“No. Not that.”
“But Johann said—”
“Johann was mistaken.” And that is being more than kind to Johann. “Trudi, Trudi—photographer’s equipment couldn’t have caused so many deaths.”
“Many?” Trudi stared at the box as if it contained a nest of adders.
“I have heard of three.” Richard Bryant, Eric Yates, Greta Freytag... “There may be others.”
“Johann?” Trudi asked slowly, fearfully.
“Bill’s friend outside, and all the men who are with him, will try to help Johann. I know that. Bill promised you.”
Trudi kept looking at the box. “I hate it,” she said with sudden vehemence. “There’s a curse on it. Get them to take it away. Get them—” She broke off, listened, as she heard brakes screech on the road. “That was a car—stopping. Here.”
“Two cars.”
“Your friends?”
“I don’t know.” Lynn almost panicked. “Quick, Trudi,” she said as she bent down and tugged at the box. “Give me a hand. Quick!”
Mathison had stepped out of the Seidl house, pulled on his windbreaker, and paused as he lit a cigarette and looked around him. The small front garden, enclosed by its neat waist-high wooden fence, was as quiet as the road that skirted it. So was the meadow to its side, and the small grouping of dark trees where Chuck said he would wait. No one around. The moonlight was half-strength and even more muted by the high
wind-blown clouds. His eyes became accustomed to the night, and he walked quickly along the short path that led toward the meadow. He reached his car, parked in the shadows at the side of the house. From there, it was only a matter of sixty or seventy yards to the trees. Had Chuck left? Everything was so peaceful.
But Chuck was there, all right. So was friend Andrew. So were two men bundled up like a couple of local climbers. Chuck said quickly, “You saw the box? What’s it like?”
“Locked and padlocked. Not equipment, I’ll judge. Fairly heavy.”
“Something like this one?” For a brief second, Chuck directed the beam of a shadow torch onto a box at his feet.
The surprise package? wondered Mathison. “Yours looks crummier,” he said, much amused, “and a little larger.” He bent and groped for the handles and hefted it. “Heavier, too. But not bad. What did you put in it? Bricks?”
“Give Chuck some credit for more artistry than that,” Andrew said. “Hundreds of typed sheets, sodden through, not a word legible.”
“A slow leak through the years?” Mathison laughed softly. Not bad, not bad at all.
“Come on, Bill,” Chuck was saying, “you and I carry this back to the house. Fair exchange. Where’s the real thing?”
“It’s now in the kitchen just behind the door.”
“Good.” He turned to talk to one of the climbers. “Hank, you get to our car, back it up to the meadow. Andrew, you and Chris can cover us from the road and keep an eye out for Bruno. He should be arriv—” He cut himself short, swung around to face the man who was approaching quietly, by way
of the trees that edged the meadow, from the fields that lay at the back of the Seidl house.
“Felix Zauner.” Andrew identified the man quickly. It must be. That figure was coming from the direction of the village, using the back fields as a short cut. “Yes, it’s Zauner. And about time, too.” I told him over half an hour ago to meet us down here, he thought with annoyance.
“Keep him with you, Andrew,” Chuck said. “Come on, Bill. Let’s start moving. Is Trudi expecting me?” He bent down to grip one handle of the box.
“Yes. I told her—” Mathison stopped, straightened up, looked in the direction of the road. Two cars were speeding down from the village. Chuck dropped his end of the box, too. They all looked, not even paying attention to Zauner, who slipped into the shadows around them and then stopped abruptly as he recognised Mathison.