by Janice Law
I wondered if he always repeated himself when he was lying. Don’t be too clever, Francis, Nan said in my ear. This was a man who had shot Oskar with a silencer and probably killed Belinda the same way. He would undoubtedly have other skills. Our compartment was otherwise empty, the whole carriage only half-full, and as the train pulled from the station, I wondered if I had miscalculated. I didn’t fancy being alone in a compartment with him.
But Underwood, who seemed alternately rigid and slippery, now set himself to be solicitous. “Oskar Schafer dead! Such a young fellow! Now you said ‘murdered.’ But you were, of course, exaggerating. Natural under the emotion of the moment.”
I waited to see where he was going with this.
“Could Oskar’s death have been an accident? Isn’t that possible?”
I shrugged. “Oskar is dead is all I know.”
“It had to have been an accident,” Underwood said in such a reasonable tone that, if I hadn’t seen him on the oberst’s lawn and known what had happened, I would have believed every word. “Because who would have wanted to hurt him?”
“We were all his friends,” I admitted. Inspired, I added, “Though Sigi was jealous of him.”
“Who is this Sigi?”
I said that he worked at the Eldorado as a dancer.
Underwood lit a cigarette and watched the smoke for a moment as if this was all news to him. “Possible, I suppose,” he said. I had to wait for whatever else he had in mind, because the conductor arrived and tickets had to be purchased. Underwood’s German was rapid and precise. He was chatty with the conductor, mentioning that he had been sent to collect a young relative with certain problems. The Kripos had been involved. Outbursts such as the one on the platform were not unusual. Drugs were likely a factor.
I kept my face noncommittal, although I could see that Underwood was covering his backside in case of any future unpleasantness. I had made a mistake with that hint of a scene. I should have saved that card as a surprise for the train. Now I decided to let Underwood think his conversation was beyond my German, because I guessed that ignorance might be my ticket to Berlin.
After the conductor was gone, Underwood smoked for several minutes in heavy silence, suggesting all manner of sinister possibilities. This was going to be a very long ride. At last he said, “You may be right, but Oskar has disappeared.”
“His body, you mean?” I tried to sound shocked.
“Body, yes. Mind and soul attached, I suspect.”
“But I saw him dead.”
“What do you know of death?” he asked, his voice turned hoarse with sudden anger. “I’ve seen more corpses before breakfast than you’ll see in a lifetime.” A thin line of sweat appeared on his forehead. I thought of Fritz’s father, who traveled in the same mental circles, and figured it best to keep my mouth shut.
“The dogs,” he said after a while in a normal tone of voice. “The dogs would have found him.”
“They are active and enthusiastic,” I agreed.
“They did not find him, ergo, he is not dead.”
“I hope that you are right. Oskar is a fine boy.”
Underwood took another tack, becoming confidential. “He was your friend. Did he know people on the island?”
An unexpected opening! I looked to the ceiling of our compartment, hoping for a particularly convincing lie. “Well, he had been to Rügen before. To Putbus. I think they had a family holiday there. I think they stayed not too far from our hostel.”
Underwood exhaled a long column of smoke. “How would he have managed to get there?”
This was tricky territory. I shrugged and made a show of deep thought. “We came on bicycles.”
“Too strenuous.” He shook his head as if at his own carelessness and added, “If, as you say, he was badly hurt.”
“The oberst has horses,” I suggested finally. “Or someone might have moved his body. The boys are devoted to der Bund and to the oberst.”
“You’re not suggesting Oberst Weick had anything to do with the boy’s injury.”
“Who else would have weapons?”
“Impossible,” Underwood said with a sniff. In another situation, I would have been amused at how the officer class automatically closed ranks. “But perhaps they drilled with weapons?”
“Wooden rifles. They’re not apt to do much damage unless someone knocked him on the head with one.”
He lifted his attaché case as if he’d made up his mind about something and set it on his knee. Official papers? Some work from the office? I didn’t think so, and I didn’t like the way he patted the leather and fiddled with the clasp as if struggling against an impulse to open it. After a few minutes, he said, “I know this route well. There are some woods, some bridges over the line, some dark sections. And quiet little stations where only the local stops. You are in an interesting position, Mr. Wood. You exist only in an embassy document. You were created ex nihilo, so to speak, and could disappear the same way.”
“Fortunately, unlike Mr. Wood, Francis Bacon has family. Nan. Even an uncle.”
“He’s landed you in trouble,” Underwood said. “I can’t advise you to rely on him.”
“Indeed. The oberst is his enemy.”
“If so, your uncle is most likely dead.” He paused. “But you might live.”
“With the help of our embassy,” I suggested. If he could keep up our charade, so could I.
“But only if you are honest with me. I don’t believe that your friend Oskar Schafer is dead. What’s more, I think you helped him leave the oberst’s estate.”
To be the focus of so much effort, Oskar must know a good deal about both Underwood and the oberst that wouldn’t bear examination. I shook my head. “The last time I saw Oskar he was lying in a pool of blood.”
“Then you are not useful to me,” Underwood said.
I think that he would have opened the case if the conductor hadn’t appeared at the door of our compartment. He was accompanied by a tall blond man with two suitcases and a messenger bag, holding a newspaper in his teeth. He dropped his assorted bags onto the seats, took the paper from his mouth, and thanked the conductor—he had gotten into the wrong compartment in the wrong carriage altogether.
Now he looked at his ticket and nodded to where I sat across from Underwood. I was in his seat, and, although Underwood gave me an evil look, I jumped up and immediately took the seat nearest the door and farthest from my companion.
The Swedish commercial traveler was apologetic. He always asked for a window seat facing the direction of travel, because of mild motion sickness. An inconvenience in his occupation.
“I should think so,” I said. “But I don’t mind switching. I might stand up for a while, anyway.” With this I went into the corridor, pulled down one of the windows, and feigned a great interest in the passing scenery. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the Swedish salesman chatting with Underwood. How about a chat with an assassin as a cure for nausea? Concentrate, Francis!
We slowed for a level crossing before accelerating again. Underwood was right that the local made a variety of stops, and now I recalled that, on our trip north, men had come on with carts of coffee and sandwiches between the larger stations. Could I make use of that? Or should I try locking myself in the lavatory? A tempting thought, but with the first-class compartment more than half-empty, I would be vulnerable alone at the end of the carriage. I decided that I was safer right where I was as long as the chatty Swede was in our compartment.
Was he going all the way to Berlin was the question. I had hopes until I heard him mention Prenzlau, a town about halfway. If that was his destination, I would be in trouble for the second half of the trip, and yes, it was to be Prenzlau, because he began explaining to Underwood, who I’m sure was charmed, that he had a consignment of ladies’ stockings and some flatware to deliver there. The flatware was a new line, v
ery cleanly designed.
I leaned back into the doorway and expressed genuine interest. I like to look at new things and modern designs. I would like to have seen the actual items, but he gave me a leaflet without opening his cases. I stood in the corridor, alternately studying the flatware designs—so different from the heavy, old-fashioned cutlery I was familiar with—and looking out for stations where I might make a quick exit.
Next up was Pasewalk. Let there be a man with a cart, who might block the aisle of our carriage and allow me to escape. As we slowed down approaching the station, I saw a few passengers waiting on the platform. None seemed bound for first class; however, I saw someone with a cart boarding farther down the platform. That was possibly better, for if he came to our carriage too far from a station, I would have nowhere to run but to the more crowded second- and third-class carriages.
Underwood would hardly take a shot in a crowd, but I wouldn’t put it past him to summon the railway police on some pretext or attack me in some other way, relying on diplomatic immunity to keep him safe. I needed to get off at a station big enough to have a phone or a telegraph office and places to hide if Underwood was at my heels. Not easy to accomplish—in fact, nearly impossible. I leaned disconsolately against the window as we started to pull away. I was staring mindlessly at the tracks when the northbound train approached the station. I pulled my head back to avoid flying cinders, and I was ready to return to the compartment, when I saw Mac sitting at a window in the northbound train; Miss Fallowfield must have received my telegram.
I thrust my hand out the open window, and at my frantic signal, he stood up in surprise. I drew my hand across my throat to signal my danger then lunged for the exit door of our carriage. We were already picking up speed when I pulled the emergency cord in the entryway. The squeal of the pneumatic brakes was followed immediately by the rattle of the carriage door sliding open with Underwood behind it.
I shoved a large suitcase across the doorway, dropped the exit-door window, fumbled for the latch, and as the door swung out, stepped off into space. I heard a pop behind me over the whoosh and rattle of the decelerating train before I landed with a terrible thump and rolled down the slope away from the line, over and over, finding rocks and roots and nettles at every revolution. Above, the clouds were revolving, dizzying white blobs against the blue sky. Run, Francis.
I rolled over. To my surprise, the ground was also in motion, spinning in a lazy rotation. I got to my hands and knees just the same and scuttled into some bushes. Up on the line, men were shouting back and forth, asking why the train had stopped, why the emergency brake had been pulled. I heard the rattle and bang of carriage doors opening and the huff of the engine and then my name called. That had to be Underwood. Ignoring the rippling ground and spinning clouds, I struggled further into the bushes, clutching a branch here and a tree there until I spotted a drainage culvert running under the track.
An oily trickle of water ran off into the brush, but when I got to the mouth of the pipe, I saw a glimmer of light from the other side, and with a glance toward the line—no silhouetted figures, no one sliding down the embankment—I scrambled into the culvert, a big, ribbed metal pipe, where I immediately slipped and fell on the slime and pebbles underfoot. For a moment, I couldn’t move, then a trickle of icy water ran down my neck and I sat up. I had to reach the other side and hope that Mac had gotten off the northbound train and was looking for me.
Squatting under the low ceiling of the culvert, I started forward, helped by the ribs of the pipe, thinking Please, no rats. Dizzy as I was, I slipped several times, and it was just good luck that I had fallen and was thinking seriously of lying right where I was for the foreseeable future, when I heard footsteps amplified by the culvert. Someone was approaching the mouth of the pipe. I turned as slowly and carefully as I could, keeping my face just above the damp, muddy floor. Nothing. Was I hearing things? Perhaps railway officials walking far above me?
I waited, and I was almost ready to argue myself into moving forward again, when the light behind me was interrupted. Someone had come from my direction to stand at the mouth of the culvert. Someone tall, with lots of leg. “Francis?” someone called softly. “Are you there, Francis?”
I didn’t answer. It was surely Underwood.
“The railway police will be here momentarily. If you’re in there, you’d better come with me.”
I flattened myself against the stones, my nose within a hair of breathing up the filthy water.
“I know you’re there.”
I raised my head a fraction. The light was now almost completely blocked. He must be crouched at the mouth of the culvert. He could not see me yet, but if he came in any farther, he would certainly find me, whether or not I tried to make my way to the far side of the line.
Suddenly a sound—a sinister pop—and something hard and metallic rattled off the roof of the culvert.
“Still hiding? Not a good idea,” he said and fired off another shot. “You see, the sound is well muffled by the earth overhead. I can keep shooting until I hit you. Or you can come out now.”
It was amazing how reasonable Underwood sounded given the circumstances, and I was beginning to think that I had no choice when he fired again, sending flakes of metal pinging down on me from the roof of the culvert. The pop and rattle of his shot was followed by an immense bang that made my ears ring. A shout of pain, another pop and rattle, another deafening bang, then silence—or rather an interior reverberation that momentarily took away all sound.
I raised my head. Once again the light at the end of the culvert was mostly blocked. Whoever was there had a weapon without the advantages of Underwood’s silencer. “Francis? Can you hear me?”
“Mac?”
“Are you hurt?”
“Not shot. Bruised up.”
“Get out the other end,” he said. “I’m coming through.”
I turned around and crawled toward the light on the east side. With a lot of bruises and what I guessed was a sprained ankle and something not quite right with one wrist, I made slow progress. Mac caught up with me before we reached the mouth of the culvert.
“Underwood?” I asked.
Mac gestured with his head. “With luck, they won’t find him for a while. Wait,” he said when I started outside. He looked out cautiously. I heard the rumble of a train overhead, and Mac touched my shoulder. Covered by the noise, we crawled out onto the grass. A dirt road ran along the fields, and I started limping toward the station, but Mac caught my arm.
“The railway police will be on alert, and you certainly look as if you’ve fallen out of a train. We’ll find a barn or a shed to hide in until dark.”
Chapter Nineteen
I never intended to become a gentleman’s outfitter,” Mac said, as he opened a large brown paper parcel. A shirt, a sweater, heavy pants, a cap, and a leather jacket were inside, plus a change of underwear and socks. While he’d been off shopping and what he termed “reconnoitering,” I’d been hiding in a roofless shed so chilly I couldn’t remove my damp and filthy clothes without his help.
“What on earth were you doing in these, laddie?”
“Chimney sweeping,” I said and explained how I had fooled the oberst and his fierce dogs. When I was dressed and beginning to warm up, I told him about Oskar. “He’s in the hospital. I sent a telegram to his father, but I’m worried. The oberst is an important man on the island, and sooner or later he’ll find out where Oskar is.”
Mac sat down on a stone from the half-ruined wall and lit his pipe, an elaborate operation that required reaming the bowl and tamping it full of tobacco before the matches came out. I was used to the process. Mac used the pipe as a way of delaying decisions. Now he shook his head. “Above all else, the republic fears the Bolshies. As a result, they have been reluctant to crack down on the nationalist combat leagues and old front-line veterans’ organizations. The left-wing fighters th
ey go after; the right tends to get a free pass. That’s just the way it is.”
“Oskar could have died. He might have bled to death, and they would have passed it off as an accident. But it was Underwood who shot him, not the oberst.”
“Leaving a boy who was a guest at his house to die does not make him much better,” Mac observed.
“Then there’s nothing we can do?”
“I didn’t say that. It’s risky, though. Whatever we do will make trouble for you without necessarily helping your friend. My best advice is to forget you ever met him.”
“I can’t do that. Besides, Oskar can put Underwood near the Eldorado the night Belinda was murdered. Wouldn’t the police like to know about that? And Oskar’s shooting. I can clear that up, too. Would that be enough—for them to maybe forget about the White Cat business?”
“The Prussian police don’t forget anything,” Mac said, “especially anything involving a violent death.”
“They might want to prevent another one. Oskar has a bullet wound. Without me, it is just his word against the oberst’s, and the oberst was going to blame me. If Oskar had died, I think he would have. He threatened me with the police unless I produced Uncle Lastings.”
Mac thought this over. “Fortunately, for all concerned, Underwood is out of the picture. See he stays that way.”
Although I was tempted to object, I nodded.
“So we might alert the local police,” Mac suggested. “Or we might speak to your friend. He will have information useful to us. In exchange for protection.”
“When?” I expected a consultation with the powers that be in Berlin and a confab with Miss Fallowfield and Harold, but I was wrong.
“Right now,” Mac said. “I didn’t get you all nicely kitted out just to ride back to Berlin.”
“What if I’m spotted at the station?”
“We’ll be on a different train with different conductors and police. Besides, you look quite respectable now, not at all like a lad who’d pull the emergency brake for fun. And remember, they are not looking for Underwood. Not yet. With luck, no one will find him for quite some time.”