Judgment on Deltchev Page 16

  He nodded, grinning, and saluted.

  I walked away. The Corporal was not troubling to examine my permit any more. The Corporal had decided that I was harmless. The Corporal was absolutely right. Tomorrow, I decided, I would send a cable to the man who was paying me, tell him that he was wasting his money and my time, then take the first plane I could get out of the place. It was high time I stopped this foolishness and got back to work again. Not, I thought savagely, that the trip had been a complete loss. I had increased my knowledge of Napoleon the Third. I had also had two interesting experiences: that of finding a dead body in a strange house, and that of being locked in a room in another strange house. In the unlikely event of my ever wanting to write the kind of play in which incidents like that occurred, the knowledge would be useful. Meanwhile, to hell with it!

  I turned into the Boulevard Dragutin.

  It ran in a gentle curve round the high boundary wall of the Presidential Park. It was a wide road, lined with big plane trees and cobbled. Most of the buildings in it were apartment houses; there were no shops or cafes. The lights were on tall standards set among the trees on the building side of the road. I walked on the other side. Beneath the dense foliage of the trees it was very dark.

  I walked slowly. The air was pleasant and after a while something happened to make me forget my immediate troubles. Before I had left London I had been trying to write the third act of a new play and had got into difficulties with it. Indeed, I had practically made up my mind to scrap the whole thing. The commission to report the Deltchev trial had come at an opportune moment; it had given me a reason for suspending work on the play that left the real reasons for doing so in abeyance. But now, quite suddenly, I found myself thinking about the play again and seeing quite clearly the point of the problem that I had missed before. The shape of a third act began to emerge. Of course! The wife’s lover wasn’t her own choice, but her husband’s, and it was her realization of this fact that made it possible for her to leave him. Of course! It was the key to her whole attitude toward her lover. He was not her choice. Of course! How curious it was I had practically sign-posted the thing all the way through without realizing the fact. Why? My mind nosed round the discovery suspiciously like a terrier at a strange lamp-post. There must be a mistake. But no, it was all right. I had been too close to it before and too anxious. Now all was well. I drew a deep breath. Forgotten were the Deltchevs and the enigma they represented. I had just finished a play. I felt light-hearted and alive. I quickened my pace.

  Then I heard it. It was only a slight sound and it went almost immediately; a sort of ringing of my footsteps on the paving stones. But I was very much aware of everything at that moment; of the soft, warm breeze that was beginning to stir the air, of the smell of the trees, and of the slow movement of a distant point of light. At this moment of heightened sensibility the ringing of my footsteps was a matter for appreciation and curiosity. The pavement was solid enough. Where did the rest of the sound come from? I slowed down a little and heard it again, a kind of echo. From the wall? I stepped out again, but in a more emphatic way this time. Then I understood. It was not an echo I was hearing. Someone was walking behind me.

  It is easy to separate sounds once you know they are there. As I walked on, I could hear the other set of footsteps quite plainly. I slowed down again. The sounds separated and then again they coincided. Even then it took me a moment or two to grasp what was happening. The person behind me was varying his pace with mine. He did not want to change the distance between us. I was being followed.

  My heart suddenly beat faster. I looked round. I could just see him, a faint thickening of the shadows under the trees about thirty yards behind me. I walked on, fighting down a desire to run. Perhaps I was imagining it all, like a neurotic spinster with fantasies of being raped. But no; the foosteps kept pace with mine. Wild ideas of turning quickly and challenging the follower went through my mind, but I kept on walking for a bit. The calves of my legs began to ache. Then, suddenly, I turned and crossed the road to the lighted side. Out of the corner of my left eye I tried to see if he was crossing too. I could hear his footsteps. They had slowed down. He wasn’t going to cross. He was going to stay among the shadows. For a moment or two a feeling of relief flooded over me. It was not until I was nearly to the pavement that I realized why he had not crossed. A hundred yards or so ahead there was a stretch of road with no buildings and no lights. I remembered walking along it earlier. He was going to cross there.

  I reached the pavement and hesitated. Then I bent down and pretended to tie my shoelace. I wanted time to think. If I went back the way I had come, I could stay in the lights. I remembered also that I had seen two policemen yawning and spitting on a corner. But what was I to do then? Explain to them? But there was nothing to explain. The only thing was to wait about like a frightened child until someone else came along with whom I could walk in company through the dark. Ridiculous! What was there to be afraid of? Someone was following me. Very well. Let him follow. What did it matter? There was nothing to be afraid of in that. Nothing at all.

  I stood up again and walked on stiffly toward the darkness.

  It lay at the end of the lighted strip of pavement like the black mouth of a tunnel. The building I had to pass before I reached it was a huge baroque mansion that, judging from the lighted windows, had been converted into flats. I looked across the road. I could see him moving along under the trees now, a little behind me but at the same speed. The darkness came nearer and I began to see a short way into it. The footpath ran on between a stone wall and the trees, but the surface of it changed from stone pavement to dust. At the end of the pavement I paused. The leaves above stirred faintly; there was a radio playing somewhere and the breathing sounds of distant traffic, but that was in the background; the darkness before me was quiet and still. The gritty dust crunched beneath my feet, and the branches seemed to close in as I walked on again. I had gone about thirty paces when I heard the sound of an approaching car. It passed, going in the opposite direction. Then, as the sound died away, I heard footsteps on the road; the man from the shadows was crossing it behind me. I went on faster, stumbling slightly over the swellings in the path made by tree roots. My heart was beating sickeningly now and I could feel the cold sweat stealing down my body. I fought against the desire to run. It was absurd, I told myself. I had been in situations fifty times more dangerous. Here there were no mines or alarm wires to tread on, no machine guns or mortars waiting to open fire. All I had to do was to walk along a path beneath some trees in a badly lighted city street, followed by someone who might or might not be ill-intentioned. He might be a detective, one of Brankovitch’s men instructed to report on my movements. Petlarov had been warned off me by the police. They might now be checking to see if I had any other contacts. Indeed, the man could have been following me about for days without my having noticed the fact. Yes, that must be it. I almost chuckled with relief and slowed down, listening for the footsteps behind me. But there were none. Perhaps they were muffled by the dust. Perhaps -

  I stopped dead. Something had moved in front of me.

  I stood quite still for a moment, trying to control the thudding of the blood in my head so that I could hear. Something had moved — a shadow, something. I took a step forward and my foot grated on a pebble. The next instant there was a blinding flash of light.

  It came from a powerful hand-lamp a few yards in front of me and lasted for less than a second. And that, too, was the time I took to react. As the light went out I fell sideways, sprawling at the foot of a tree.

  I only heard the first shot, a thudding crack that made my ears sing; but the next two I saw — yellow blots of flames that seemed to be exploding in my face as I rolled over and clawed for cover behind the tree. Then there was a silence.

  I was gasping for breath as if I had been held under water, but my brain was working all right. He had missed me three times and then lost track of me. He would have to risk another flash from the lamp
to locate me again, and it would be a risk; he could not be sure that I was unarmed. In any case, I was prepared now, and unless he was a first-rate shot or very lucky he had not much of a chance. For the moment I had forgotten the man behind me.

  Five seconds went by. I was slowly straightening up and easing round away from the tree when the light flashed on again. It was not directly on me, and in the fraction of a second it took him to realize that, I had begun to move. I was halfway toward the next tree when he fired. The bullet whipped past my head. I reached the tree and swung round it as if to take cover again, but immediately scrambled on to the next one. The shot he fired at that moment was yards wide. But he had learned one thing; I was not going to fire back. The lamp shone out again, and this time it stayed on. He did not fire. He moved forward. He was going to make sure of it this time. Bent double, I scuttled on again. I saw my shadow twist among the long casts of the trees as the light swung round. Then, as I pulled up against the next tree, a different pistol fired.

  The bullet tore through the bark an inch or two from my right eye, and a splinter of wood stung my cheek. I dived for the ground again. The other gun, I thought, had been a. 38, but this had a heavier sound. I could see how it was. If I had not crossed the road, the man behind me would have shot me in the back. The second man had been there to make sure I did not get away. Probably he had crossed ahead of me while I was still in the lighted section.

  I was out of the light for a moment now, but both pistols fired again and the bullet from one of them ricocheted off the road. They were getting worried. Nearly half a minute had gone by since the first shot, and I could hear shouting in the distance. The lighted stretch was only a hundred yards away now, but if I broke cover and made a dash for it, I would have to pass the heavy pistol with the other man’s light behind me. It would not do.

  At that moment the man with the light began to run forward, yelling hoarsely. The heavy pistol fired again as I rolled sideways and found myself on the edge of the road. I hesitated for only a split second. Then I scrambled to my feet and ran, swerving like a rabbit, for the trees on the other side of the road. They both fired, but by then I was a hopeless target for a pistol. I dived through the trees, came up against the boundary wall, and ran along it toward the lighted section.

  I was safe now. I stopped to get my breath. There were people from the houses standing on the pavement opposite, talking and pointing toward the trees where the sound of the firing had come from. The two policemen I had passed farther back were approaching at a run. I was out of sight. My breath was beginning to come back, and with it my wits. I had not seen either of the attackers. I had no information about them to give. But even that would take a lot of explaining to the police, and they would certainly detain me while an interpreter was found and my story checked. If I could avoid the police altogether, I should do so. If, while they searched among the trees for the dead and wounded that were not there, I could make myself scarce, I would be saving them trouble. If, in fact, I now did what I should have done five minutes earlier — kept my head, walked back to a cafe, and there telephoned to the hotel for a car to fetch me — everyone would be much better off. I had begun to tremble violently. My ears were singing and felt deaf. I leaned against the Presidential Park wall fighting down a desire to vomit. Through the singing in my ears I could hear shouts from farther up the road. Then my head began to clear. Reaction or no reaction, if I was going to get away unobtrusively I would have to be quick about it. Keeping close to the wall, I started to walk.

  It was an hour before the car arrived at the cafe, and by that time I had had several plum brandies. I was not drunk but I felt sleepy. It was silly of Aleko, I thought, to want to kill me. Very silly. I was perfectly harmless. However, I had now acquired another useless piece of information: I knew what it felt like to be shot at in civilian clothes; it was exactly the same as it felt when you wore a uniform. That was interesting. In the car I went to sleep and had to be wakened by the driver when we got to the hotel.

  The reception clerk was asleep. I took my room key from the rack myself. The lift was not working. I walked upstairs slowly, yawning. I was really very tired. I was also beginning to feel stiff and bruised. If the water was hot (and late at night when nobody wanted it, it usually was hot) I would have a bath and attend to the knee I had cut on a stone. My suit was a mess too, but that could wait until the morning. A bath, then sleep; that was it. I felt curiously relaxed and happy. The odd thing was that this feeling had almost nothing to do with the plum brandy. It was because I had survived an ordeal.

  I opened the door of my room. There was a small foyer with a cupboard and a hat rack between the door and the bedroom itself. I switched on the foyer light, remembered with a twinge of irritation that I had lost my hat and would have to buy one of the local Homburgs next day, and went into the bedroom.

  My hand was on the bedroom light switch when I saw what was there. I stood quite still.

  A woman was lying face-downwards across the bed. By the foyer light I could see that she had a loose raincoat of some kind spread about her as if it had been thrown there to cover her up.

  I pressed the light switch, and the room was flooded with the bright hard light from the naked lamps in the gilt chandelier.

  Her hair was dark and one of her tightly clenched hands concealed her face. I walked over to the bed, and a loose board cracked loudly. I looked down.

  She stirred. Her hands moved and she rolled onto her side. The light poured down in her face and she raised a hand to shield her eyes.

  It was Katerina Deltchev.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I shook the bed, not gently, and she sighed. Then, with a start and a gasp, she was awake. She sat up quickly and the thin raincoat she had thrown over her slipped to the floor.

  ‘Good evening,’ I said.

  For a moment she stared at me, then she scrambled off the bed and looked round defiantly.

  ‘There’s no one else here,’ I added.

  She drew herself up as if she were about to deliver an oath of allegiance. ‘Herr Foster,’ she said formally, ‘I must apologize for this intrusion, but it was unavoidable. I will explain. I-’ She broke off and looked down as she realized that she was in her stockinged feet.

  ‘They’re down there,’ I said. Her shoes had slipped off while she had been asleep and were lying beside the bed.

  She opened her mouth to say something, then shut it again, went over to the bed, and put her shoes on thoughtfully. She was a young woman who was used to being in charge of a situation; now she was casting about for a way of taking charge of this one.

  ‘I am sorry-’ she began.

  ‘Quite all right,’ I said. ‘You wanted to see me, so you came here. I was out. You waited. You fell asleep. I am afraid I can’t offer you anything but a cigarette. Will you smoke?’

  For a fraction of a second she weighed the possible moral advantage of a refusal; then she shrugged her shoulders. ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  She took a cigarette and I lit it for her. She sat down again on the bed and looked at me calmly.

  ‘Herr Foster,’ she said, ‘it is not really quite as simple as that for you, is it?’

  ‘No, not quite.’

  I went into the bathroom, dipped a towel in water, and wrung it out. Then I went back into the bedroom, sat down in the armchair, rolled the trouser leg up, and went to work with the towel on my cut knee. She watched uncertainly.

  ‘Who told you I was staying here?’ I asked.

  ‘There were three hotels where you might have been staying. This was the second one I telephoned.’

  ‘How did you know the room number?’

  ‘By asking for another room number when I telephoned. Of course I got the wrong number. The operator corrected me.’

  ‘Who let you in here?’

  ‘The floor waiter. I said I was your lover and gave him some money. Does it matter?’

  ‘Not a bit. It’s just that at the moment I am in a suspicio
us mood. Now, then. How do you get out of the house without being seen? What do you do?’

  ‘Our neighbours are friendly. Between our wall and theirs there is a tree. With two vine poles one can crawl from the top of our wall to the tree. From the tree one uses the branches to reach their wall. For a child it is easy. For a heavier person there is some danger, but it can be done.’

  ‘Then why did you ask me to deliver that letter for you, Fraulein? If it was so important you could have delivered it yourself.’

  ‘I did not wish to risk my life if there was another way.’

  ‘Are you risking your life now?’

  ‘Yes, Herr Foster. I am also risking yours.’

  ‘That I guessed.’

  ‘But only if I am found here.’

  ‘Splendid.’

  ‘If I get back tonight without being seen, I shall be safe too. The guards inspect us only in the morning.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I would not have come, Herr Foster,’ she said severely, ‘if it had not been absolutely necessary to see you.’

  ‘You didn’t have to leave the house to do that. I was there myself an hour ago.’

  She shrugged. ‘I did not know. I wished to see you because-’

  I interrupted her. ‘Do you know a man named Aleko?’

  ‘Aleko? It is common.’

  ‘Who was the Valmo you sent that letter to?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘It is true. Valmo was only a name I was given to send letters to. The letter was for someone else.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My brother, Philip.’

  I sighed. ‘The one who’s studying law in Geneva?’

  ‘He is not in Geneva.’

  ‘Your mother said he was.’

  ‘My mother was lying.’

  ‘I didn’t think so.’

  ‘She did not intend you to think so. Will you please listen to me without interruption for a moment?’