Yet he couldn’t leave Anna close to tears, he couldn’t leave her unpersuaded and thinking bitter thoughts about him. And there were a few points to clear up. So he followed her. Slowly. He ought to have told Anna about the Finstersee chest before this, but it hadn’t been easy to find the right moment; perhaps there was never any right moment for his kind of news. He had even postponed telling her, this evening, until he was just about to leave for Unterwald. They had been quarrelling ever since. The phone call from Zürich had interrupted the savage argument, and at first he had been thankful for it, but now it seemed to have made matters only worse. I’ve got to make Anna see it my way, he decided, and quickened his steps.
She was sitting in the big armchair near the tiled stove. She had fought back her rage of tears, but her lips were set and her hands were tightly folded. A stranger would have said she made a very pretty picture with her head resting against the high back of the chair; sad but appealing. Johann paused, feeling a sense of guilt. He looked at the delicate face so deceptively fragile, at the tragic blue eyes that seemed helpless, at the soft blonde hair that fell in childlike wisps over her ears and brow. “A gentle creature,” Felix Zauner had called her fondly. By heaven, thought Johann, he ought to have heard her just half an hour ago.
He went over to her, dropped on one knee beside her chair, took her hand in his. “Anna,” he said gently, “we’ve never quarrelled before. Let’s not go on with this one. I haven’t been deceiving you. Would I have told you I found the box under the three boulders if I were trying to deceive you?”
“But why won’t you tell me where you have put it?”
“For safety. Your safety. The box’s safety. And mine, too. I had to move it; don’t you see that?”
“It was well hidden.”
“Yes. As long as Dick was alive and no one was suspicious of his visit to Finstersee, the box was well hidden. But as soon as things have quieted down around Unterwald, as soon as the men from the Gendarmerie have stopped measuring skid marks and asking questions of the villagers and gone back to Bad Aussee, the Nazis are bound to go up to the lake and check that ledge. Then they’ll find the box is gone, and they’ll search every foot of the woods and that meadow. Because Dick had nothing incriminating in his car, and so he must have hidden it... They would have found it.”
“Perhaps not.”
“They would have found it. They have only to calculate the area he covered before they met him that morning. It’s just a matter of deduction. These men are trained for it, Anna. I did what was best, for all of us.”
She lowered her eyes. So, she thought, Johann would not have hidden the box in the woods or the meadow near the lake. Where could he have taken it last Monday night?
“You see, Anna?” he asked hopefully.
She nodded. “Except,” she said slowly, “except that I must know where the box is hidden now. Dick would want me to know.”
“Why?” He rose abruptly to his feet, dropping her hands. His voice sharpened. “Don’t you trust me to deal with it correctly?”
“Dick would want me to have some control,” she said determinedly. “And I don’t trust your judgment, Johann—not in this. No, please don’t start shouting again. Please, Johann, let’s not quarrel any more.”
“Who’s shouting?” he demanded, forcing his voice back to normal. He began to pace around the kitchen, trying to cage his emotions as much as his body in this cramped space. He thrust a dining chair out of his way, shoving it back against the table, where it should have been in any case. “What’s so wrong about selling that box? Sure, you’ve told me Dick didn’t find it for money. But Dick is dead. You are alone. You need money. And I need you to have it. How can I marry Trudi and support you as well?”
“I’ll find a job.” She tried hard not to start thinking of that problem.
He shook his head. “Not enough to pay all your expenses. You’d have to double up with us in my house at Bad Aussee.” He might as well be brutally frank; it was the only way to make Anna realise the harsh facts of life. “Trudi may have her own ideas on that.”
“So have I. I won’t live with you and Trudi. I’ll visit you now and again, that’s all.” She paused. “I’m coming this week-end.”
She’s so transparent, he thought, and had to smile. She was going to search his house, was she? He turned to face her, his grin widening. “Anna, Anna... You’re wasting your time. You’ll find nothing more in my place than a slashed rucksack.”
“Dick’s rucksack?” She was horrified. “You left it lying around?”
“No, no. It’s mixed up with a pile of old climbing equipment.”
“Oh, Johann—”
“Stop fretting,” he said gently. “It’s safe enough.” He sat down at the table, found a cigarette and lit it. “What else could I do? I hadn’t time to destroy it last Tuesday morning. I was in and out of my house like a hunted fox. I had to get back to Salzburg to be with you. I’ll get rid of it soon, take it up a mountain, drop it into a crevasse. Nothing to it.” Anna was silent. Encouraged, Johann added, “Just leave everything to me. Trust me, Anna.”
She closed her eyes. So the Finstersee chest was not at Johann’s house. And it wasn’t hidden anywhere near the lake. Where had he taken it? She sighed, partly because she was tired with the vehemence of the emotions that had spilled around her tonight, partly because she couldn’t find an answer to that question. She was near the truth, perhaps so close to it that she could almost put a finger on it, and yet she couldn’t see it. Her mind, as Johann would say, wasn’t trained for such things. But his mind wasn’t trained for such deductions either; that was why he had given something away even as he had spoken to her, and she hadn’t the brains to see it clearly. As Dick would have.
“You might have trusted me a bit more tonight when Mathison called you. It’s just possible—”
“No,” she said sharply, guessing what was coming. “You’ll only endanger him too.” Did Johann not know what danger really meant? He could climb jagged peaks, descend rock faces, edge his way up chimneys and along razorbacks; did he think everything was as easy to master?
“I still think he is an agent.”
“He is coming here with papers to be explained before I sign them, and one of the New York publishers is coming with him too—a woman. It’s all simple business.”
“Oh.” Johann was deflated. His guess about Mathison had been wrong then. “So the publishers are sending a woman along? I suppose they thought she could drive a hard bargain.”
“What bargain? They don’t owe us anything.”
“There are some people who could make a load of trouble for them. And they know it. Smart lawyer, Mathison.”
“Johann!”
“Except when he goes boating,” Johann said with a wide grin. “He took a dunking in that Zürich lake, did he?”
“You’ve guessed wrong again,” she said angrily. “That was Eric Yates who had the accident. And he’s dead.”
“Yates has been killed?”
She nodded. And now, she thought, I’ve no way of communicating with the British. The only hope left—and a faint one—was Bill Mathison’s friend, the one he had spoken about, the one who might have contacts in Washington. She almost relented and told Johann about that, but first he must tell her where he had hidden the box. “Where did you hide it, Johann?” she asked very quietly.
“Now how did we arrive back there?” he asked, and rose. “I’d better leave. Trudi will begin to worry.”
“It will be midnight before you reach Unterwald.”
“That’s no problem,” he told her lightly.
She stared at him. “Then I think it is time you married the girl.”
“Come on, I’ll get you upstairs and see you safely locked in. The way your friend Mathison did last Monday.” He was over at the peg on the door, unhooking his loden cape.
“You don’t need to have guilt about not being here then,” she said in annoyance.
“I was fai
rly busy that night,” he reminded her.
Yes, she thought, finding that box, hiding it so cunningly, spending what was left of the night with Trudi. “Where did you hide it?”
“That’s not the question.”
“Then what is?” she asked sharply.
“The question is—what is in that box? If you know, you’d better tell me.”
“But why—” she began and floundered, suddenly on the defensive.
“Just so that we don’t sell it for too little.”
“I’m not selling!”
“That’s right, you’ll give it away.”
“Only to the right people.”
“Right, wrong... Anna, who can know what people are right, what people are wrong?”
“Dick said that if the box fell into the wrong hands, it could mean disaster.”
“For whom?”
“For the world that is free—and that means us, too, Johann!”
“That was only a matter of Dick’s opinion.”
“Is it only a matter of opinion that the Nazis were wrong—”
“No. They won’t get the box. So you can stop worrying about that. But apart from them, it’s a free market. I’ve no set opinions, like Dick.”
“Johann,” she said wearily, “there is a right way and there is a wrong way in which the contents of that box could be used.”
“Is it as important as that?” he asked quietly. “We’ve really got hold of something, haven’t we?” And then, just as Anna was looking at him with new hope, he added, “But who is to judge how anything will be used?”
“If you couldn’t judge the strength of a rope or the hold of a piton, where would you be? At the bottom of the Dachstein Glacier.”
He opened his mouth to reply, and burst out laughing instead.
She rose, opened the stove to see if its low fire would last gently through the night, began picking up her purse and a book to take upstairs.
“I’m glad you cook better than you argue,” he told her.
She said nothing.
“When do I expect you at Bad Aussee? Day after tomorrow? If I’m not around, you’ll find Franz working in the shop. And if he isn’t there, you’ll find the key to the house on the window ledge to the side of the door.”
She didn’t answer.
“Anna—I’ve never known you to sulk. Don’t start—”
“And I’ve never known you to behave like this either.” She didn’t look at him, but moved towards the door, then paused as a knock sounded. Instinctively, she turned to Johann. He was frowning as he glanced at his watch, puzzled and annoyed. He swore under his breath. The knock sounded again. “Who is it?” she called.
“Felix.”
Johann’s frown deepened. But he unfastened the chain that he had installed last Tuesday morning after he had returned from Unterwald and learned of the burglary here. He opened the door wide. “Come in, come in,” he said heartily enough. “It will have to be a short visit, Felix. I was just leaving.”
“So I see.” Felix Zauner stared briefly at Johann’s loden, which was draped over one arm, and then gave his full attention to Anna. “I dropped in to see if you were all right.” He pulled off a glove, took her hand and kissed it. “You know how sorry I was that I couldn’t be here for the funeral. I had business in Vienna. Just got back an hour ago.”
“Your wife told me you were there,” Anna said. “Come and sit down. There is some heat in the stove.” Felix was pulling off his heavy coat, but in spite of its weight and the warmth of his dark-grey suit, he looked cold. Haggard, too, thought Anna. The thin bridge of his nose was prominent, his high cheekbones were clearly marked, his mouth seemed pinched. “I’ll make some coffee,” said Anna, if only to break the silence in the room, and moved over to the small electric stove beside the sink.
“I was just about to get Anna upstairs and lock her safely in,” Johann said as Felix dropped his coat and gloves and green velours hat on a chair.
“I’ll do that.” Felix smoothed down the long thin strands of reddish hair that, in spite of his hat, had been blown wild by the wind. “It was Anna I came to see.”
“She’s tired.” Johann looked at Anna uncertainly. Would she start telling Felix about the chest at Finstersee? But even as a sweat broke in the palms of his hands, he remembered that Anna had no idea of Felix’s real job or his connections. She might, however, treat Felix as a father confessor. She was in a strange mood tonight.
“I’m all right,” she called across to him. “I don’t usually go to bed as early as this. It will be good to talk to Felix.” And what a ridiculous fuss about seeing me safely upstairs. Who’s going to see me safely upstairs tomorrow night, or the next, or forever? “You’d better leave or you’ll never get to Unterwald until dawn.”
“I’ll be there before midnight.” But he couldn’t decide whether to leave or stay until Felix had safely gone. And Felix, standing over the stove, heating his spine, had noticed his hesitation. “Just one thing before I go,” he told Felix. “What help did you get in Vienna?”
“Help? Oh, you mean about the financing of my plans for a ski resort at Unterwald?” Felix was taking out his cigar case, preparing to have a pleasant half hour in a comfortable chair. “They were interested but noncommittal.”
You know damn well what I meant, thought Johann. So there would be no investigation of Dick’s murder: they were all going to play it down and call it accidental death. “Didn’t you give them good reason to take direct action?”
“Your reason?” Felix smiled, but the grey eyes studied Johann carefully. “They have their own ideas about what should be done.” The smile faded. “Of course, my visit was very brief. It seemed a waste of time to me.”
He’s slipping, thought Johann. I know it. And he knows it. And now in Vienna—does State Security know it, too? Was that why they summoned him so damn quick yesterday morning? Felix Zauner had always seemed so infallible to him that all he could do now was stare incredulously.
Felix said airily, “The truth is, Vienna is rather removed from the situation here. It seems a little improbable to them, at the moment.”
“But if you had put in a full report—”
“Are you teaching me how to conduct my business?” Felix noticed Anna looking around at them both. He ended with an easy “There’s nothing to worry about. You’ll see a ski lift at Unterwald yet. And that will make you a lot of money, Johann. You and Trudi might very well run the inn, once August Grell leaves. He’s getting old, you know. And it looks as if his son, Anton, won’t be back in Unterwald.”
“What did I tell you—” Johann began.
“Last reports say that Anton is staying in the South Tyrol. His girl doesn’t want to leave Bozen. So they are getting married, going to run her mother’s Gasthof.”
“You believe that?”
“For the next few weeks,” Felix said smoothly, “we must all appear to believe that.”
Johann swung his cape across his shoulders and went over to Anna. He put his arms around her and hugged. “Will I see you on Sunday?”
She shook her head. “I’ll have enough to keep me busy here.” She tried to keep her voice natural. “And you’ll be most of the time with Trudi. Tell her I will come up soon to see her. I do have to meet her and her mother, you know.” Johann said nothing at all to that. He just stared at her. Now why? she wondered, turning away in a pretence of fussing over the coffee-pot. Why had he gone tense? Why doesn’t he want me to visit Trudi?”
“Later,” he was saying. “She knows you have a lot to face right now. I’ll try to get back here by the end of next week. Franz has been looking after the shop, but I’d better pay some attention to it myself.”
“And that is a splendid idea,” Felix said. “Need I remind you that the first snow is only weeks away? It’s about time you started getting your stock of equipment in order.”
“I’ll be ready,” Johann said. He wasn’t amused. “Keep safe,” he told Anna as he moved to the
door.
“And you take care of yourself, too,” Felix said. “Don’t play detective. Don’t go anywhere near the inn. Or Finstersee. Give them both a wide berth.” He drew on his cigar, got it glowing to his satisfaction, and looked up to see that he had managed to freeze Johann in his tracks. “When I left Unterwald yesterday morning, August Grell had as many as eight hunters as his guests. In fact, he seems to be expecting quite a good season this autumn; he has reopened the inn for another month at least.” He glanced at Anna and then said deliberately, “I have heard that his guests seemed keener on fishing than hunting—to begin with. But they didn’t seem to find what they were fishing for. So today, I hear, they have started beating the woods just above the picnic ground. Strange, isn’t it?”
So Felix wasn’t slipping after all, thought Johann; not altogether. “Strange,” he echoed. He refrained from looking at Anna and asking her silently what she thought of him now. If he hadn’t moved the chest from under those boulders, Grell would have his big thick-fingered hands on it this minute. “Are you going back to Unterwald, Felix?”
“Of course. I’m determined on that ski lift.”
“Johann,” called Anna softly as he opened the door, “take care. Please.”
“I’ll take care.” Of that chest, he thought, and of Grell too. He gave Anna and Felix a very cheerful wave to match his grin. Anna’s concern had been half an apology at least. He closed the door, confidently leaving her with Felix and his questions; she’d guard Dick’s secret even more now.
“Anna,” said Felix Zauner thoughtfully, “did you understand anything I was talking about?”
She concentrated on carrying two cups of steaming coffee over to the table. “About Finstersee and the Grells?”
“About Finstersee. I assumed you and Johann have discussed the Grells pretty frankly.”
She nodded, searching now for cream and sugar.
“But about Finstersee, Anna? What did Dick tell you about it before he left here?”
“As little as possible.”
“Didn’t you wonder why he was so secretive?”
The Salzburg Connection Page 29