“Why didn’t we lose them when we had the chance? “
“And make them realise that we disliked being followed? They’d interpret that as a guilty conscience. Better pretend that it seems very harmless and amusing, the kind of silly adventure which you like to tell your friends about when you get home.”
But about A. Fugger he wouldn’t say anything.
“The less you know from now on the better for you, my sweet.” And that was that.
It was Frances who lay awake tonight. She thought of the bookseller; of the tall American who had either been offended, or bored; of the constant rhythm of marching boots. When she fell asleep her thoughts were still with her, and chased her through the Five-cornered Tower. Richard was beside her, for she spoke to him and heard him answer, but she couldn’t see him. A. Fugger was there trying to show her the way out, but he spoke in a strange language and she kept straining to understand it. The American was there too, observing everything, but contenting himself with a sad smile when she took the wrong turning. It must have been the wrong turning although it had seemed the only right one, because then there was no way out, and she was looking at the Iron Maiden, and the face was that of the girl Ottilie, and the hands were real. The fingernails were long and pointed, and they were coloured blood-red.
9
NÜRNBERG INCIDENT
Richard watched Frances closely next morning. She had drunk several cups of tea and smoked three cigarettes. He kept silent about last night. Whatever had disturbed her sleep would gradually lose its detail and if he didn’t emphasise it by referring to it, it might lose its importance and merge into the vagueness of dreams that are past. He thought of something to do which would be interesting without being exciting. They would have to spend at least one more day in this place, perhaps even two or three if it seemed a good thing to do.
He made his voice as normal as possible. “What about the Germanic Museum today? It should be innocuous, and you’ll like the costume section. If you ever do more designing in Oxford, you may find some good ideas there. Better take your note-book and pencil.”
Frances nodded absently; she was wondering when they might leave Nürnberg and where they would have to go… And there was always the conjecture as to whether A. Fugger had escaped. If he had been caught, there would be, no doubt, some ingenious way of trying to make him talk. And yet, did any trusted agent such as he must have been ever talk? Weren’t they chosen for their capacity to keep silent even under the greatest persuasion? But then they were human beings too. Somehow, her note-book and designs for Oxford dramatics seemed very remote this morning. Richard’s voice had been light, but the slight emphasis with which he clipped his words proved that he was not as carefree as he would have her believe. She decided wisely not to pester him with questions about their plans. He was probably completing them now.
The silence in which they travelled to the Museum bolstered up this idea in Frances’ mind. Their two watchdogs attached themselves at a reasonable distance. It seemed as if it didn’t matter if they were noticeable. Frances thought this over. They had been so very obviously under watchful eyes, and their room had been so very obviously searched. She came to the conclusion that this might be especially subtle technique. Perhaps Richard and she were to feel persecuted, intimidated, very much in the power of a mighty secret police. The very cold-bloodedness of this cat-and-mouse game was to make them leave Germany if they really were harmless tourists. If they were less innocent than they seemed, then they might be trapped into making a mistake. As for the mistake which they might make… Frances couldn’t think of any agent trying to get in touch with one of his men at this stage. He would be liable to lie low, and he would most certainly try to lose the men who were trailing him. That might be it: if they were guilty they might make clever efforts to free themselves from their two shadows. It was the natural reaction of any secret agent to outwit the other fellow. That, indeed, could be their mistake. She began to understand just how intelligent Richard had been last night when he hadn’t left the picture house.
But one thing still needed explaining. If the Nazis thought they were worth terrifying or trapping, they would surely not let them wander about for the next few days without some real shadow trailing them—someone, Frances began to believe, who would do his job very efficiently and secretly, someone who would keep on the job after the two men had been eluded. The more she thought of this, the more convincing she found it. It never paid to underestimate your opponents. Better credit them with too much than too little.
She looked at Richard. She became surer that he had guessed this too: yesterday he had taken such care not to lose the uniformed men.
As they crossed the broad Sterntor, and found themselves momentarily isolated from people, Frances spoke for the first time.
She said, “They aren’t the only ones.” The words, were half a question.
Richard squeezed her arm affectionately. “Right you are. Too obvious.” That confirmed her guess as to why they hadn’t slipped out of the cinema last night, instead of innocently changing seats. One thing gave her some amusement: it looked as if the two stooges didn’t know of a third man themselves. Otherwise they wouldn’t have swollen their ankles, standing hungrily at the back of the picture house. They could have relaxed, depending on their accomplice, if they had known about him.
They were in the Museum until it closed at four o’clock. After that, all Frances asked was to be allowed to sit somewhere for a long, long time, with something cool and liquid on the table before her, in the open air, if it could be managed. Richard arranged it, by taking her to a nearby restaurant where there was both a garden for Frances and beer for himself.
He looked thoughtfully at her as they sat in the coolness of the trees.
“I think the city heat is too much for you, Frances,” he said at last. “It might be better for us to leave Nürnberg and go nearer the mountains. There’s a nice little resort south of Munich on the Starnberger See. There’s good bathing there. Or if you wanted some climbing we could go farther south into the Bavarian Alps.” He hadn’t taken the trouble to lower his voice. Frances wondered which person at the surrounding tables would be interested in all this. No doubt their bodyguard were draping themselves behind some concealing tree, but she had ceased to worry about them.
“I’ve quite enjoyed it here.” Like hell I have, she added under her breath. “But I should like to see some real country views for a change. I find the pavements very hot. And yet you have simply got to walk to see any of these too, too lovely buildings.” The saccharine dripped over her words. Richard was leaning back in his chair, smiling pleasantly at his wife. His eyes were applauding her; his mind was keenly aware that the handsome woman who sat two tables away from them was watching the foam in her beer glass with great intentness. Or perhaps she always studied beer in that way. If the woman had been interested in their conversation, he had at least this comfort: she could have heard every word of it.
They both thought it a good idea to return to the hotel and rest before dinner. Frances thought she would lie down for half an hour and read. Richard thought he’d like a bath. He left the bathroom door open and as he cooled off in the tepid water he could hear a page being turned. Once she laughed. He was happier about Frances. The Museum had been a good idea; there was nothing like a museum for calming one’s emotions. This game was simple enough, he thought, and cursed the latherless soap. This game was simple enough if you could convince yourself that you really were on holiday; that as long as you carried no unexplainable documents and neither received nor sent any, as long as you were an apparently harmless tourist, nothing could really touch you. You could give yourself away, of course. If you became flustered or lost your nerve because of the continual feeling of threat which hung over you, you might do something which was either stupid or too clever. Either of these actions would be a dangerous weakness. It was no good trying to pretend that a threat didn’t exist. It did, all the time. What you must
do was to ignore it; acknowledge it and ignore it. The only real danger points were those of the actual contact with an agent. If you were discovered at that moment nothing on earth could help you. Well, the danger point in Nürnberg was past. It had passed when Fugger had spoken so softly that he had had to strain to hear him. He had been looking down at the title page of a book, and the bookseller was searching through some other volumes.
“It is better in Innsbruck at this time of year. The Gasthof Bozen, Herzog-Friedrich-Strasse 37, is recommended. The owner is called Hans, and will help you. He likes music and red roses as we all do.”
That had been neatly sandwiched in between their discussion on editions and editors. He had the satisfactory feeling that A. Fugger had escaped. He was too wily a bird not to have had all his preparations made for just such a day as yesterday. It wouldn’t have taken him long to get through a window and lose himself in the labyrinth of passages and small streets which lay behind the shop. There were plenty of rooms there to have rented as a hideout, or as a place to change your identity. Or perhaps A. Fugger already had another neatly established identity practically next door to his bookshop. There was no limit to the ingenuity of a foresighted man with sufficient time to arrange things.
Suddenly, there was a firm, business-like knock on the bedroom door. He heard Frances say, “Come in.”
It might be a maid: some excuse, any old excuse. From the bathroom he could only see the windows of the bedroom and the heavy green brocade curtains. But in his mind’s eye he could see Frances, dressed in that pink frilly thing of hers and lying on their bed, raise an inquiring eyebrow from the novel she had been reading.
He heard her say, “Yes, it is warm, isn’t it? Please leave the towels on that chair. My husband is having a bath. Thank you. Good day.” It was only when he heard the bedroom door close sharply that he realised he was sitting bolt upright in the bath, his muscles tensed. Frances had remained where she was on the bed; nor did she call through to him. Thank heaven for that. She must have had a fright when that knock came; it hadn’t sounded like a maid. He got out of the bath quickly and made some pretence of whistling as he dried himself.
When he entered the bedroom Frances was lying on the bed with her eyes fixed on the bathroom door, waiting for him. The novel lay as it must have dropped when the maid had left the room. “Hello, darling. Cooler now?” She was forcing her voice to sound natural.
He lay down beside her, and with his head close to hers on the pillow, she whispered, “The knock… I thought he had been caught.”
“Don’t worry, Frances. I don’t think he was. Please don’t worry.”
She was laughing softly but it was a poor imitation of her laugh. It was becoming louder; her hands were cold.
“Snap out of it, Fran,” he whispered. He slapped her jaw sharply. That helped. At least the laughing had stopped. He lay with his arm round her shoulders, quietening her with his firm grip.
“We’ll leave here tomorrow,” he said at last. “I’ll get you to the mountains for some days.”
Frances had recovered and was looking rather ashamed of herself. “Yes,” she said, “I can always push someone over a precipice if there’s any monkey business there.”
Richard grinned. He was so unworried, so confident, thought Frances. It made her feel better just to look at him.
“That’s the idea,” he said.
After they had dressed they went downstairs for dinner in the hotel. Frances had recovered completely. She had worn her smartest dress as a tonic, and the results were good. She was amusing and gay, even over a not particularly good dinner— German cooking was not at its best this summer. Many of the people in the restaurant turned their heads to watch the slender, fair-haired girl. She was easily the loveliest woman in the place, thought Richard with justifiable pride.
“That rest did you good, Frances,” was what he said.
Frances only referred once to that afternoon. “You mustn’t worry about me, Richard,” she said. “I’ll be all right now. I am like that, you know. At college I used to get quite panicky three weeks before the examinations were due. But once I had got my worry over I was always perfectly cool when the examinations came. In fact, I used to enjoy them. Sort of legitimate showing-off, you know, with no one to reprimand you for being an exhibitionist. Well, I think it will be the same when whatever is going to happen happens. I was thinking about the war, particularly, Richard. The more I see of Germany, the more I know that a showdown must come, some day; and perhaps the sooner the better, before they are all turned into robots. When I think of the children leaving school each year, all of them carefully educated in the Nazi way, I honestly shudder to think what the rest of the world faces in ten years’ time if it waits. So don’t worry about me or start regretting that you brought me. I’m just in the process of adjusting myself between two very different ways of life, between peace and war. Coming here was a good idea after all: it reconciles you to the adjustment.”
Richard knew Frances was right in her self-analysis— she was like that—but his job right now was to see that her nerve didn’t crack before she had reached the cool, calm and collected stage. That would probably come before the end of this journey; at least, he hoped so. Her handicap was imagination. It was more difficult to face unpleasantness when you had imagination. But, as she had said, coming here helped to reconcile the adjustment. It also hastened it, thank heaven.
“I know,” he said, and began some amusing suggestions about what they could possibly be drinking.
“It’s really only habit which makes me order coffee. A few more days and I’ll probably lose it,” Frances said.
“It’s extraordinary what people can swallow for the sake of their beliefs. I heard of a practising surrealist who spent many months eating his wardrobe.”
“That sounds a good story,” said a man’s voice. Both Richard and Frances looked up in surprise.
“Hello, van Cortlandt. Glad to see you.”
“May I come over here for a while? I wanted to tell your wife…”
“I know,” said Frances quickly. “I’m sorry I got so hot and bothered yesterday in that discussion. You know, it isn’t easy for us to look at these things disinterestedly.”
“And I came over here because I began to feel I might have seemed too darned callous. You see, I’m trying to look at things disinterestedly, and I’m finding that isn’t easy, either.”
“Well,” said Richard, “now that we have all kissed and made friends, what will you have?” They all laughed, and van Cortlandt said he would have beer. Frances had a feeling that he disapproved of them somehow because they were English, and yet was surprised into liking them when they caught him off his guard.
“As a matter of fact,” he was explaining, “I watched you being the only real human beings in a roomful of stuffed dummies, and I thought we were fools if we didn’t get together. We may be a lot different, but we aren’t just like—” He nodded over his shoulder in the direction of those concentrating on the mastication of specially chosen vitamins to build a specially chosen race.
“Zombies is, I believe, the technical term,” suggested Richard. “Now would you really like to hear the story about the wardrobe?”
They talked for an hour and then decided to have a moonlight walk. The bodyguard joined them outside the hotel, Richard noted. As Frances explained that they were probably leaving tomorrow for the mountains, he wondered just who had been watching them inside the hotel dining-room. Not that it mattered, not now.
They didn’t choose any particular way, but just followed any twisting street which would lead them to the banks of the Pegnitz. Away from the bigger thoroughfares, the lights were economically dim, but it seemed safe enough—even with the two men marching behind them at a discreet distance. In the narrower streets where there were so few people, the men were ludicrously obvious. Richard wondered if they never felt the ridiculousness of the whole thing. The American, after his first glance back at them, had i
gnored the two pairs of feet keeping time with such perfect precision. Later, Richard wondered why he never then questioned the American’s lack of interest. Perhaps he was relieved that van Cortlandt appeared to think that this was only normal; it would have been difficult to pretend that they hadn’t noticed a thing. At the time he only felt grateful for van Cortlandt’s tact. It was a little surprising in such a forthright, I’m-just-a-plain-man type of individual. Perhaps the American found that frankness could be a very useful front, just as many a Britisher found under-statement a safe enough refuge.
Both Van Cortlandt and Richard were in good form. They talked with a good deal of the fervour and conversational abandon which have an unexplained way of suddenly appearing between two strangers, as much to their own surprise and enjoyment as to that of their audience. Frances was very well content to be the audience. They had just cruelly dissected Gothic art, and were proceeding to rhapsodise over Baroque, when Frances clutched their arms, and they moved closer to her. From the quiet blackness of the little alley to the left of them came a bitter cry, the high, self-strangling cry of fear or pain, or both. They looked at one another.
“And just what is that?” asked Richard quietly. He made as if to move into the alley. There was another cry. It made Frances feel sick. Van Cortlandt and Richard looked grimly at each other.
“You stay here with your wife, I’ll investigate.” The American had taken a step along with Richard into the alley.”
“Halt!” The abrupt command came from behind them. The two men had increased their pace to a run, as they had seen the foreigners become curious.