Be Shot For Six Pence

by Michael Gilbert

  That he should have sent me out, so cold-bloodedly, hoping that I would kill Messelen for him, but not caring if, in the process, I lived or died! Granted he had no reasons to love me, for I had butted, unasked, into the delicate mechanism he was controlling. But that he should have commuted this into a positive feeling of dislike was the uncomfortable thing. Had he disliked Colin in the same way? It was quite possible. Despite his frankness that afternoon he had not really explained what Colin’s part in the enterprise was meant to be. Had Colin outstayed his welcome too, and been expended by his host in some equally cold and forlorn experiment?

  I got up and looked through the window. Lady was sitting with his back to me. As I watched he selected, with great care, the two of clubs from the remaining cards in his hand and laid it on the table.

  Lisa, who had taken my place, looked unhappily at it, dithered for a bit, and played the ace.

  I dragged my feet upstairs to my room. I was confident that I should get no sleep.

  When I opened my door I stopped. There was a patch of lightness on my bed where none should have been.

  “Don’t turn on the light,” said Trüe.

  When I got further into the room and my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, I saw that she was sitting up, in the middle of my bed, wearing my pyjamas.

  “Who told you you could wear those?”

  “No one.”

  “Take them off at once.”

  “But of course.”

  I was wrong. I slept very soundly that night. And for some nights to come.

  Chapter XII

  TRÜE

  I am certain that outwardly my relations with Trüe did not appear to change at all. But Lisa, of course, knew.

  Only once, in the course of that week, did she say anything about it. I was alone on the terrace and she came and sat down beside me.

  “You find Trüe sympathetic,” she said.

  “Very.”

  “Be warned then. She had Pisces in her horoscope.”

  “And that, I suppose, makes her a slippery customer.”

  “You must not laugh at the planets.”

  “I don’t laugh at them,” I said. “I just don’t believe in them.”

  “How can you not believe them, when what they say comes true?”

  “If you go on making predictions long enough, a few of them are bound to come true, in the end. By the law of averages—”

  That started a wrangle, as had been my intention.

  (My relationship with women had always followed that pattern. I start by loving them, truly and wholeheartedly, until, in time, they come to love me. Then I get frightened. Or tired? The cynic, Claude Anet, said “Aimer, c’est difficile, Être aimé, c’est fatigant”. Only a Frenchman could have said it, but there might be a particle of truth in it.)

  So far as Trüe was concerned I never had time to get beyond the blissful first stage. Possibly she was destined the big exception in my life.

  When I think back over my time at Schloss Obersteinbruck I find that I can remember the early days down to the death of Major Messelen in detail, day by day. After that my impressions begin to blur. If I take pencil and paper and a calendar I can sort it out, but I can’t remember it.

  It must have been about halfway through that week that Major Piper drove up behind me as I walked through the Square and invited me to jump in his car.

  “What’s this?” I said, as I got in beside him. “Arrest?”

  “A year ago I might have said ‘yes’ to that,” said the Major. “Now I’m just a military attaché. No executive powers. A sort of diplomat.” He gave a little, snorting laugh, at the thought of himself as a diplomat.

  We drove down to the river. The Raab, which joins the Feistritz ten miles lower down, has here been artificially broadened out to a shallow lake. The stream is unnavigable above the town by anything bigger than a canoe, but below the town small motor launches run down to the junction on the Hungarian border. Little sailing boats, their white sails gleaming in the sun, swooped across the water on both sides of Pleasure Island. At this time of the morning the bandstand was empty and the sideshows were shuttered, but the strip of beach was alive with sun-brown children.

  “Pretty, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Smashing. What did you bring me here to talk about?”

  Two very bright, but very worried eyes looked out at me from under the sandy tufts of the Major’s eyebrows. When I had first met him I had thought him a fool. I realised that I had been wrong.

  “The Austrian police have been getting at me,” he said. “They seem to think that you’ve killed somebody.”

  “Did they say who?”

  “Yes. A man who called himself Messelen. Real name Felder.”

  “Had they any reason for their suspicions?”

  “You had been going about with him a good deal lately. And were seen with him in his car the night he disappeared.”

  “Isn’t it rather shaky reasoning? He had plenty of other friends.”

  “Policemen don’t work by reasoning. They go by information received. Someone has given them a straight tip. They say you knocked Felder off and buried him. They’ve been doing a bit of digging.”

  “Where?”

  “Oh—all over the place. In the woods and fields.”

  “They’ve got quite a lot of ground to cover.”

  The Major looked at me and said: “You’re a cold blooded fish, if you’ll excuse my non-diplomatic language. By the way, did you know you were being followed?”

  “No. Who by?”

  “The police. They tagged onto you as you came into the town. Out at the castle you’re in baulk. Lady’s outfit has got a sort of diplomatic immunity. But they’ll pick you up as soon as you step out. There he is. Twenty yards back, on the other side of the road.”

  There was a grey car there, all right, with a middle aged driver, cutting his nails. He didn’t look like a policeman.

  “Not a bad thing really,” added the Major. “From your point of view, I mean.”

  “If you say so.”

  “The lesser of two evils. If the police weren’t there, I expect Messelen’s friends would try to get at you. Dirty crowd.”

  We sat for a moment, watching the children on the beach. Two small boys were trying to drown a smaller one. Like children all the world over.

  “I’ll do what I can for you, of course,” said the Major, at last. “You’ll excuse me asking, but is this sort of thing quite your cup of tea?”

  “Intelligence work?” I said. “From what I’ve seen of it, it makes muckraking respectable and sewage-disposal clean.”

  “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Like war but without any of the chivalry or trappings. Necessary in its way, I suppose. It did occur to me to wonder – not that it’s my business – but is there any reason why you shouldn’t cut adrift and go home?”

  “Not really. I came to find a friend of mine. But I’m beginning to believe he’s dead. I’d go tomorrow, only Lady seems to want me to stay.”

  “I see,” said the Major. He started the car and turned it towards the town. “It’s your life.”

  The driver of the grey car put away his nail scissors and came round behind us in a leisurely curve.

  It wasn’t that afternoon but, I think, the following one that I happened to interrupt Lady at work. I had gone in to talk to Gheorge and I found the three of them there. Lady in his shirtsleeves, heels up on the table, cigarette holder in mouth, listening, and Gheorge and Lisa with pencils and notebooks out.

  As I came in they waved me to silence. There was a crackle of atmospherics, and the wireless receiving set in the corner said, in Hungarian: “David Szormeny speaks.”

  Lady nodded. Gheorge reached out and pressed a button and I heard a soft whirr of the monitoring tape recorder.

  Then a voice.

  My Hungarian is exact, if not colloquial. I listened held, in spite of myself, by the unseen speaker. (I have always thought that there is a
n art of oratory which is quite independent of the spoken word. The art of the hesitant beginning, and the calculated pause; the variations of tempo, not so slow as to numb, not so fast as to bemuse; the introduction of each new theme; the careful crescendo; the stupendous finale. It seems trite to compare a great speech with a work of music. It is a work of music. A solo for the finest and most variable instrument ever created, the human voice.)

  Szormeny used facts as rivets, not as ballast. They had a clenching force, but were driven in sparingly and, once in, were somewhat difficult to locate.

  Subversive forces, said his voice, had been at work, encouraged and, in some cases, directed, by agencies outside Hungary. The head of a certain neighbouring state (he would name no names) had seen fit to make public utterances casting aspersions on the heads of the Hungarian Government. That was a sort of mud-slinging match in which he, Szormeny, would not join. For himself, he had no fears. He would submit himself to the only tribunal that mattered. The people of Hungary. All that, however, was the past. Now that the harvest was successfully brought in, it was an appropriate moment to face the future. The latest statistics of trade and industry were highly encouraging—

  I looked at Lady who made a guttersnipe gesture.

  —There had been a certain amount of quite artificial unrest, in the heavy engineering and transport sections, but it had now been proved beyond a doubt that this was inspired by a pitiful organisation of emigré malcontents working from outside the border. Let them but set foot in Hungary, and the people’s democracy would demonstrate in unmistakable fashion what they thought of such activities—

  I tried to visualise the man behind the screen of his words. It was not easy. The words themselves poured out, heavy, smooth, and controlled. But was there something in the tone of voice; something intangible, but nevertheless there; the faint but mocking side tone of a voice which says less than it means.

  I felt, as I listened, a prickling premonition of trouble.

  —To our many well-wishers we would say, Hungary lives, Hungary prospers, Hungary marches forward. To the one or two who wish us ill, we repeat the old Hungarian proverb: “If you speak ill of a man, be sure first that you are out of reach of his arm”. Our arm is not as weak and not as short as some people would appear to imagine. There are occasions on which it could cross the artificial borders of territory and reach the enemies who snap at its heels with imagined impunity—

  I happened to glance round at this moment and so caught the look on Lady’s face. It was a revelation. Clean gone was the customary sardonic humour. In its place, a flash of – yes – triumph. I was looking at a man, who, after arduous labour, after an infinity of planning, after a lifetime of deception, sees success within his grasp at last.

  I have been in a number of unpleasant places in my life, sometimes in the actual face of death, but I cannot remember when I have felt the presence of danger so near.

  But for a moment, only.

  Then the old Lady was looking out at me again.

  “You have the appearance,” he said, “of a man who is suffering from a stomach ache. Perhaps you find Szormeny’s oratorical style cathartic?”

  “I should judge,” I said, cautiously, “that he is a very practised orator, who says no more and no less than he intends.”

  “Even his indiscretions, you would say, are calculated.”

  “His indiscretions above all.”

  “You might be right.” He turned abruptly to Lisa and Gheorge and said, “I should like to see the draft of your reports as soon as they are ready. If I fly to The Hague tomorrow, I should like to be able to take them with me.”

  Lisa and Gheorge nodded like good children, and I went away to find somewhere quiet. I wanted to think.

  It was on the following day, that I first mentioned to Trüe the prospect of paying a visit to Pleasure Island.

  We were lying, I remember, in the wood behind the castle. My head was on her stomach, and her head was on Lippi. My ear, being pressed against her midriff, I had the illusion that I could listen right down into the core of her. And, as I spoke the words, at the centre of her mystery, something stirred.

  “Must we?” she said. “It’s much nicer in the woods.”

  “Much nicer.”

  “Then why?”

  “Just an idea I had. I was thinking about Colin—”

  Ping! It was extraordinary. Almost like radar.

  “You mean when he disappeared. That he was on Pleasure Island, with me.”

  “Yes. It’s just a silly sort of idea I had of trying really to accomplish something before I go. Before I push off home with my tail between my legs.”

  “Do not abuse yourself. You have done all that could be done.”

  “Which is nothing.”

  “Sometimes there is nothing to be done. Why not go home now, Philip? Right home to England.”

  “Soon,” I said. “I want to make one last effort before I do go. It’s just a silly idea. But I thought that we would copy, as closely as possible, what you did on the evening Colin disappeared. Tell me about it again.”

  “There is almost nothing to tell. It was a gala night. As, indeed, it will be tomorrow—”

  “Better still.”

  “There was a big crowd of people. In the beer garden, listening to the concert. And among the stalls and sideshows. They are nothing, really. Just booths where trinkets are sold.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “Just sitting and listening. The orchestra was playing the finale from Rosenkavalier. You know it—?”

  “Yes. I know it.” It appeared we both knew it, so we hummed it in unison.

  “That’s right. Then Colin said to me, ‘Wait here a minute. I’ll be back’. And he got to his feet and walked off. That was all.”

  “In which direction?”

  “Out of the beer garden. Towards the booths, I think. It was all very crowded.”

  “Did anything happen before he left you?”

  “What sort of thing?”

  “Did anyone speak to him? Did he see anyone? Or say anything?”

  “Nothing. We were listening to the music.”

  “Was he your lover?”

  Contact! No doubt about that one.

  She said, “Yes,” and all her breath went out at once. My head went down with it, like the sponge, when the bath water runs out.

  This time I had enough sense to tell Lady, in advance, what I proposed to do. He was past being surprised at anything.

  “I will have you watched, discreetly,” he said. “Also, I think, we will warn the frontier posts.”

  “Yes,” I said. I suppose I had long since realised that, if he was not dead and buried, Colin must have been taken out of the country.

  “I do not think, though, that you will run into that sort of trouble. But you had better keep your eyes open for Messelen’s friends. Have you a gun?”

  “No.”

  “You are very wise. A most overrated weapon. However, just for the evening, Gheorge will find you one.”

  “Do you think I am making a fool of myself?”

  Lady opened upon me his most expansive smile and said: “Of course you are. But we have a Hungarian proverb, ‘You will find the rainbow attached to the tail of the donkey’.”

  “That doesn’t sound flattering,” I said, and went off to look for Gheorge. I found him with Lisa. They were sitting together in the Operations Room, reading a copy of a report, and looking a lot too pleased with themselves.

  “What goes on round here,” I said, “that you’re all grinning like cats? Has Szormeny had a stroke, or something?”

  “Not yet,” said Gheorge. “But perhaps he will, soon.”

  “He’s in for a rough passage,” agreed Lisa.

  Gheorge seemed to think this terribly funny; I left them giggling together.

  At eleven o’clock on the following evening the finale of Rosenkavalier was drawing to its raucous close.

  “It is not really a coin
cidence,” explained Trüe. “These orchestras have – what do you call it – a schedule. At the end of the month they come round again to the end of their repertoire.”

  “And evermore,” I said, “go out by that same door where in they went.”

  “That is a quotation?”

  “A misquotation.”

  “You are drunk.”

  “I am. But not with liquor. I am intoxicated with excitement. The night. The music. And you. Every time you lean forward I can see—”

  Trüe sat up sharply, and said: “You realise that we are under observation.”

  “I had noticed the large gentleman at the gate, who followed us in. Yes.”

  “I thought also, that the tall man with the wall eye seemed interested.”

  “He has gone now. He was sitting at that table. Do you know him?”

  “It is possible,” I said, carefully, “that he was a character called the Margrave.”

  “He did not look very nice.”

  “His looks do him justice.”

  The last notes of Rosenkavalier sounded. The roll of the side drum merged into a burst of applause, and I said to Trüe, “Think carefully. What next?”

  “You say to me, ‘Sit still I won’t be a moment’ and you get to your feet, and you push your way across to that exit.”

  “And then?”

  “Why, then you go through it.”

  “Sit still,” I said, “I won’t be a moment.” Her eyes held mine for a second. I could read nothing in them. Hers was not an easy face to read. You needed your ear right up to her stomach to detect what went on inside that girl.

  I pushed my way slowly and carefully through the crowd; family groups; no one I had seen before. The exit gave onto a corner of the Island which was full of booths. There was a boardwalk down the middle, which was lined solidly with them. I had never seen them open before. They were not exciting. Some sold sweets and drink. Others were full of souvenir ash trays and stocknagel. Since very few tourists come to Steinbruck now I can only suppose that the inhabitants have got into the way of selling them to each other.