Be Shot For Six Pence

by Michael Gilbert

  Then I told him what I wanted.

  “I know Herr Wachs,” he said, “and like him not at all. Why do you wish to know him better? And why do you wish me to help you?”

  I had, of course, seen that this one would come and had given a certain amount of thought to it. I had decided on a limited amount of plain speaking.

  “I’ve been sent out here,” I said, “by our Government, to keep an eye on things. There has been trouble in this town—”

  “Steinbruck was constructed by nature for trouble,” agreed Messelen.

  “Naturally, I don’t want this talked about. But equally I can’t ask help unless I tell you what I am doing.”

  “You are Secret Service?”

  “I am accredited to the British Foreign Office for Intelligence work.”

  “That means Secret Service?”

  “If you insist.”

  Messelen said, “I do not think I shall help you.”

  I must have looked a bit blank, because he added, “There are two reasons. First, I do not like trouble, I had plenty of trouble in the War. I want no more. Second, I am a business man. What you propose does not go well with business. I may wish to sell Herr Wachs a tractor. What then?”

  “I don’t think he is an agriculturalist,” I said. “Never mind. Will you forget what I said?”

  “I will forget it. And I will give you a piece of advice. Go to the Post Office.”

  I could only assume that this was some sort of code. I looked blank but receptive.

  “In most Austrian towns the centre of the black market is outside the Post Office. There are men who seem to have no business but to hang about there all day and talk to people and make telephone calls. Herr Wachs is usually there. His associates also.”

  “I’ll try it,” I said.

  I’d been past the Post Office half a dozen times before without noticing anything in particular, but when I used my eyes I could see at once what Messelen meant.

  Like most Austrian Post Offices it had a fairly large outer foyer with four telephone kiosks and a couple of benches. Outside the doors were other benches. There were half a dozen men hanging round, two of them writing things in notebooks, two arguing, one picking his nose and one doing nothing. As I watched them, Wachs came out of one of the telephone booths, said something to one of the arguers (a tall, thin, man in a Panama hat) and dived indoors again. The note-takers closed up and a general argument took place. Wachs reappeared and said something else, and three of them went in.

  Just like the Stock Exchange.

  I found myself a seat in an Espresso across the way and watched. People came and went, but there were three regulars. Wachs was one. Panama hat was another. A third was a dapper little type with a dark chin and a face like Joey the Clown. The way he carried on I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d done a couple of back springs or stood on his hands. He acted as runner to the group, and kept darting off down side streets and reappearing. Once he came back with a lady’s handbag, and pulled out the compact and pretended to powder his nose. This kept them in fits for five minutes.

  I was so engrossed with watching them that I only gradually became aware, without looking round, that someone had sat down at my table.

  When I turned my head, it was Messelen.

  “Come to see the fun?”

  “I’ve changed my mind,” said Messelen. He looked, I thought, a little sheepish. “If you try this alone you are bound to make a mess of it. What is your plan?”

  “Flexibility,” I said. “I mean, I haven’t got one. How long does this go on?”

  “They’ll have finished business for the day soon.”

  “We might follow one each, and see where they go.”

  “They’ve got eyes in their bottoms,” said Messelen. “I was afraid you’d do something like that. That’s why I came along. And it is unnecessary. I have been making some enquiries on your behalf. I have ascertained where they go in the evening. It is a small cinema, called the Blue Cinema, near the outskirts of the town. I have been there only once, to my knowledge. But I recollect that it is on the ground floor of a big building with an office block above it. Also I think there is some sort of club in the rooms behind it. A photographic club, something of that sort.”

  “Not bad, for one visit.”

  “I remember it,” said Messelen, seriously, “because it occurred to me at the time that it was one of the least attractive places I have ever set eyes on.”

  “It sounds terrific,” I said. “What is your plan?”

  “Not my plan. Yours. I bring you information. You make the plan.”

  I thought hard for a moment. The trouble was that I was quite uncertain how much of what Lady had told me was confidential and how much was common knowledge. I compromised.

  “What we think,” I said, “is that Wachs & Co. are not only racketeers. They’ve got a political slant as well.”

  “You mean that they are Nazis?”

  “Neo-Nazis was the term I heard used.”

  “They smell the same by any name. And there is no secret about it. Any form of gangsterism would suit them. National Socialism was founded by gangsters for gangsters.”

  There was such unusual bitterness in his voice that I wondered whether some personal motivation was at work.

  “It isn’t only gangsterism,” I said. “The idea is that the Russians may be using them. You know that there is regular border traffic from here, into Hungary and Yugoslavia. There are probably a lot of people involved, but one of the big crowds – a crowd which was, incidentally, very helpful to us – has lost two good men in a week.”

  “So,” said Messelen. He sat staring at me. I would have given a lot to know what was going on behind his wooden face. “I heard something. The last death, I thought, came of the riots.”

  “The suggestion is that the riot was stage-managed to cover the killing.”

  “It would be a well-worn technique. Now, what comes of all this?”

  “My ideas are still flexible. But it did occur to me that someone of the group – Wachs, if he is the head of it – must some time report to his contact. If we could find out who that contact is, it would be a step in the right direction.”

  “It would be a big step. But –I do not wish to exaggerate – almost impossible. These men have a thousand contacts. Their business is contacts. You saw them at work this morning. There are many different ways they could meet an agent, to receive orders, or pass on information. They could write to him, telephone him, meet him in the street, at the cinema—”

  He paused for a moment and our eyes met.

  “I wonder,” I said. “There must be some reason for choosing a cinema as their meeting place. It’s mad, of course. But it would work. You go in separately when the place is half empty, sit at the back of the circle, talk to your hearts content.”

  Another thought struck me.

  “Suppose the messenger is a girl. You can sit in the quietest corner with one arm round her. You could glare at anyone who came near you.”

  The table was shaking. It was Messelen laughing. “I knew as soon as I spoke to you,” he said, “that you were a romantic. Shall we proceed to the cinema tonight? I the swain, you the girl—”

  I started to get angry, and then I laughed too.

  “I’m damned if I’m going to dress up as a girl – although, in fact, I did once go to a hunt ball as a blonde for a bet and had the most peculiar suggestions made to me by a drunken Colonel – but if you’re game for a visit to the cinema, I’ll come.”

  Messelen sat, for quite a long time, silent and looking out of the window. In the light of early evening his normally pleasant face had a grim, set look. Wachs and Co. had disappeared and the square was almost empty.

  “It’s quite mad,” he said at last. “It will do no good, and may land us in trouble.”

  It was himself he was trying to convince, not me. I leaned on the other side of the scale.

  “They don’t know you,” I said. �
�And I’ve no particular reason to think that they know me. I’m new on the scene and I’ve never interfered with them.”

  “I think you have not yet quite realised. This is not England, where every man sits secure in his own back garden, with policemen in the streets. Here you are close to the end of the world. The place where the water gathers speed and goes over the black cliff.”

  “What you want is a drink,” I said.

  “All right,” said Messelen. “I’m behaving like a maiden aunt. I’ll come with you, but one thing I insist on. You must change your clothes. It is not a high class place.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Something old, but not too shabby. You are not to dress up as a workman in a play, you understand. I suggest you should seem to be respectable but poor.”

  “A blue suit with shiny elbows and knees, a thin black tie and a cap.”

  “That should be admirable. Can you find such clothes?”

  “Yes; I think so.”

  “Then we will meet at my flat. Tomorrow? Very well. At eight o’clock it will be beginning to be dark. And one other thing. Have you a gun?”

  “I’m afraid not. I might be able to borrow that too, but I’m no sort of shot.”

  Messelen looked surprised. His ideas of the British Secret Service had evidently received a blow. “I will see if I can find you a gun,” he said.

  Chapter X

  HERR WACHS AND OTHERS

  In the end I decided it would be better if I took Gheorge into my confidence. I asked him to get me the outfit.

  He jotted it all down. Gheorge was the perfect Personal Assistant. If I’d said I wanted a bottle of arsenic and a time-bomb he’d have got them for me. Or a thumbscrew; he’d have written that down too. He might have asked, “Left or right hand thread?” He was a chap who liked to get things right.

  When we came to footgear he suggested, “Workmen’s boots?” But I said no. I’d wear my ordinary light rubber-soled shoes. They mightn’t be in character, but I hate anything heavy on my feet.

  “Light shoes are a disadvantage in a fight,” said Gheorge. He might have spent half his life kicking people in the stomach.

  “I don’t aim to get into a fight,” I said. “I’m not the fighting type. What I’m best at is running away. Nice light shoes are best for that.”

  “All right,” said Gheorge. “When do you want it?”

  “By tomorrow evening. We’re aiming to get to the cinema some time after eight.”

  “I’ll have the stuff in your bedroom by six o’clock.”

  “I’d be obliged if you could handle it yourself. The less people who know about this the better, I should think.”

  “You don’t mind if I tell Lady?”

  “Not even him,” I said, firmly.

  Gheorge looked as if he was going to object, then broke into one of his rare smiles. “I can see,” he said, “that you are beginning to have a proper appreciation of our work.”

  It was a few minutes before eight on the following evening when I knocked at Messelen’s door. He was standing beside the table cleaning the grease off a small automatic pistol.

  “It’s a Mauser Kindchen,” he said. He showed me how the clip went into the handle, and I loaded it once or twice to get the hang of it. “I should judge that it’s most effective range is two paces.”

  “That sounds just my style,” I said. I put it in my pocket, where it swung a little, but felt comforting.

  Messelen was wearing an old black suit. He looked as solid and as reliable as the Rock of Gibraltar.

  “He’s my plan for this evening,” he said. “Unless you have anything better to offer? No? Then we’ll go in my car which we park near at hand but, I rather think, not too near. There is an alleyway about a hundred yards short of the cinema – I went down this afternoon to have a look. From there we will walk along and join the audience. If we see Wachs, or anyone else that we recognise, we will try to keep in sight of where they are sitting and follow them if they leave.”

  “And at the end of the performance?”

  “I had it in mind that it would be better if we came out just before the end. One to watch and one to bring the car up. We should then be in a position to follow whatever happens.”

  “That sounds all right to me,” I said. And added: “What I really mean is that it sounds absolutely mad, but I agree that it’s the best we can do. We certainly don’t want to get behind Wachs and breathe down the back of his neck.”

  “I have discovered something about the other two men you saw. The little one who behaves like a clown is an Italian from Carinthia and his name is Tino. No one knows much about him except that he does no work and has a lot of money and spends it all on girls.””The Welfare State in a nutshell,” I said. “What about the tall one?”

  “He is a less pleasant character. His real name I could not discover. He is known as the Margrave. And his specialty is the knife.”

  “Wachs, Tino and the Margrave,” I said, thoughtfully.

  “I can really imagine nobody I would rather spend a quiet evening without. Let’s get going quickly or I shall come to my senses and return home to bed.”

  Messelen did not smile. He arranged the covers over the brass cages, closed the big window carefully down, so that it was shut all but a few inches, and wedged it with a wooden wedge. Then he took a last, thoughtful, look around to see that all was in order, and turned out the light.

  His car, a handy little black Opel, was garaged at the end of the close. As we backed out and turned into the main road the great bell of the Marienkirche was announcing the half-hour.

  The main streets were brightly lighted, but almost empty. When we turned off towards the eastern quarter the street lighting ceased. At first there were one or two lighted shop fronts. Then even those fell behind, and we had to use our own lights discreetly.

  “Here is the place,” said Messelen. He had called it an alley; it was really an open courtyard between two tall buildings. We ran into it, switched off, and locked the car.

  “Down this street, right at the end and then—hullo. What’s this?”

  Messelen, who was walking ahead, stopped so suddenly that I bumped into him.

  “What is it?”

  “Police cars.”

  We had reached the first corner, and looked round it. In the next street three cars and a tender were packed nose to tail. There was a driver in the first one. The others seemed to be empty.

  We crossed the road, and strolled down the farther pavement. The driver looked blankly ahead of him, but I knew he had seen us.

  “Don’t like it,” said Messelen. “What are they up to?”

  Before we got to the second corner, Messelen said, “Down here. Don’t hurry.” He seemed to have a surprising knowledge of the by-ways of Steinbruck. The alley we had got into twisted and turned until I had lost all sense of direction; then we were looking out into a better-class street.

  The Blue Cinema lay some twenty yards up and on the opposite side of the road. Across the road, between us and the lighted foyer, was a barrier of trestles. There were half a dozen policemen there, and they were stopping everyone who went by. Farther up the street, beyond the cinema, was a second barrier.

  Across the side street which ran down behind the cinema was a police car, and there were policemen at the front and side entrances.

  As we watched, a man and woman came out. They seemed surprised at the reception committee. A few questions, and they were passed along to the barrier. Someone wrote something down, the barrier opened, and they went through.

  “It must be quite a film,” I said.

  Messelen said nothing. I could tell that he was worried. Presently he touched me on the arm and we crept back the way we had come.

  When we were safely in the car I said (the relief in my voice was probably only too evident): “Well that’s the end of that. Since the local force has chosen tonight for a Cleaner Films Drive there doesn’t seem to be a lot we can do.” />
  Messelen said: “I can believe in a good many things, but in a coincidence as big as that, no.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Tell me. Who exactly have you taken into your confidence about our trip tonight?”

  “One person only.”

  “And he is?”

  “A character called Gheorge. He’s Lady’s Personal Assistant. I had to tell him roughly what I was up to, to get hold of this outfit.”

  “I see.” Messelen’s breath came out slowly.

  “Just what are you getting at?” I said, patiently. “Do you suppose that immediately my back was turned Gheorge rang up the local police and asked them to parade three deep round the cinema just to prevent us getting in? Why should he? And even if he had asked them, why should they have done it?”

  “I just don’t believe in coincidences,” said Messelen. I had never heard his voice so ugly.

  “Whether you believe in them or not,” I started to say, felt his hand on my arm, and stopped short. Then I heard them too. Measured footsteps coming towards us, from the direction of the Cinema. They came nearer, hesitated at the corner, and then swung towards us.

  “Duck,” said Messelen. There wasn’t much room in the car, but we got our heads down as far as we could.

  The steps came slowly up to us, went past. I could hear three men. The smell of cigar smoke drifted into the car.

  “So you don’t believe in coincidences,” I said into Messelen’s ear, which was a few inches from my mouth.

  “Get out quietly. See if you can spot their car. I’ll be turning. Catch you up.”

  By the time I was out, the three men were gone. I ran to the corner and looked up the street. They were moving, quite slowly, away from me; Wachs I would have known anywhere, and the tall knife expert; the third man was a stranger.

  Messelen had turned his car, and its bonnet came to rest by my left elbow.

  “I’ll follow on foot,” I said. “When I’ve gone a reasonable distance, bring the car up to me.”

  “Das Bockspringen. Good.”

  “If they turn a corner I’ll wait for you. The only trouble is, they may hear the car starting and stopping behind them.”