“What man? Did you see him?”
Hambledon nodded. “He is still there. The reason for my disturbing you at this unseasonable hour was to ask you to be so good as to have him removed.”
“But he—is he being held—what did he say—who is he?”
“I don’t know who he is except that he is not George Micklejohn, and he said nothing. He is quite dead, mein Herr, of a bullet through the head.”
“Dead,” said the Chief of Police, rising to his feet and pressing a bell on his desk, “dead, in your room——”
“Without being unduly squeamish,” said Tommy Hambledon, “I dislike corpses in my bedroom. Disconcerting. Unhygienic.”
2: Eckertal
The police took such thorough possession of Hambledon’s room that he found it advisable, if he wanted any sleep that night, to move into the empty room next door.
“Just for one night,” he said to the hotel manager. “Tomorrow, when the police have done with the room, I should like to move back. I like that room.”
“The Herr,” said the hotel manager, “has, then, no objection to sleeping in a room in which a violent death has so recently occurred?”
“Not in the least. Bullets through the head are not infectious—I hope. It is not as though the poor man had died of the plague, you understand.”
“Heaven forbid,” said the manager, edging away.
“I will not detain you,” said Hambledon graciously.
The man pattered off down the long passage and Hambledon went back to the end room to talk to the Chief of Police, who had come himself to give the enquiry a handsome start. The corpse had been unobtrusively removed via the service stair; no well-conducted hotel conveys the evidences of its more serious crises through the front hall.
“I ask myself,” said the Chief of Police, “for what object a search was made of your room.”
“So do I,” agreed Hambledon, “and I add to that the further question, who searched it? The late occupant of that chair or his murderer?”
“Fingerprints upon the furniture should tell us something. We have the dead man’s; may we, merely for purposes of elimination, have yours also?”
“Certainly. And, of course, the chambermaid’s. But do you mean to tell me that there are no traces of gloved fingers here? The criminal actually left fingerprints?”
“Indeed he did,” said the Chief of Police, exhibiting a wonderful collection of superimposed prints which had been brought up with grey powder on the edge of a drawer.
“A beginner,” said Hambledon disgustedly, “a novice, a rank amateur. Lives there a man in these days who does not read romans policiers?”
The Chief shrugged his shoulders. “You will be needing your things out of here, will you not? One of my fellows will bring them to your new room; the manager has found you one, no doubt?”
“Only my pyjamas and toilet things. I am sleeping next door for tonight. When you have done with this room I will come back to it, if you have no objection.”
“Not the least, if you have none. On the contrary, I should be glad if you would. I am assuming for the present that the corpse was here because this room was young Micklejohn’s—what a name—not because it is now yours?”
Hambledon agreed. “You think that possibly something else may happen here?”
“But not, I trust, another corpse.”
“So long as it isn’t mine,” said Hambledon cheerfully, “I shall bear up. Or George Micklejohn’s, of course.”
The Chief of Police blinked.
“The armchair,” he said, “shall be replaced. It is not what it was. By the way, here are the contents of his pockets. Not very informative, hein?”
There was a little collection of things laid out upon the dressing-table: a rather grubby but good-quality handkerchief, a packet of Astor cigarettes with some missing, and an assortment of money. East German marks, quite a large number of West German marks, and a few Russian coins. Hambledon looked them over and raised his eyebrows.
“No English money,” said the Chief. “Not even an odd coin or so, although he was wearing English clothes.”
“So I notice. These West marks now, there is quite a wad of them, a hundred or more. Do you think that our departed friend cashed a travellers cheque in Goslar? And, if so, on whose passport?”
“I shall enquire as soon as we can get made a photograph of him which does not look too dead. But there is no reason I can think of why he should not have obtained them in any other town in Germany or even have brought them into the country with him when he came.”
“Quite so,” said Hambledon.
“But it is worth trying and I will try it.”
Hambledon gathered up his pyjamas and toilet articles and went to bed; he stayed awake only long enough to decide to go to Eckertal in the morning.
He went out directly after breakfast to see the Chief of Police again and get from him a written authority to show the Frontier Police—the West German force—whose duty it is to patrol the frontier on this side as the Russian-trained Volkspolizei patrol it on the other. The West German patrols wear a green uniform and are familiarly called the Green Police on that account; the Volkspolizei wear brown uniforms like the Russian Army dress but with narrower shoulder straps.
The Chief very willingly wrote out and stuck in Hambledon’s passport an order to all Zonal Frontier police to assist, protect, and direct the Herr Hambledon as occasion might require—or words to that effect—and to answer his questions to any extent consistent with their duty.
“We cannot, of course,” said the Chief, laughing gently, “let you into all our little secrets. But as regards Herr Micklejohn, ask what you will.”
Communications with Eckertal are neither convenient nor frequent. Why should they be either since, except as the centre of a small farming community, the place is now dead? It is close against The Wire, as the frontier fence is called. Eckertal used to be a sort of suburb of Stapelburg, only a kilometre away as the free bird flies but now removed by the intervening Wire into another world. A railway ran through and is now stopped, a road went through and is now stopped.
Hambledon came to Bad Harzburg at noon to find he had forty minutes to wait for the autobus to Eckertal. Bad Harzburg is a spa and a tourist centre: there is a beautiful white Kurhaus sitting on formal terraces where a band plays; there are formal gardens with tidy gravel paths and gay flower beds; there are seats for the public to sit on; there are souvenir shops selling miniature witches of the Brocken and other mementoes; there are cafés with small tables under bright umbrellas.
Hambledon decided that he was not in the right mood for this sort of thing. He therefore retired into a restaurant to drink beer and eat sausage. Lunch at Eckertal seemed improbable.
The bus came at last and Hambledon got in. Other people got in also, not many, a dozen or so. They were evidently local inhabitants, for they nodded to each other, said “good day” to the bus conductor, and looked Hambledon over warily, for he was a stranger. In most parts of Germany fellow passengers in buses chatter freely to each other, strangers or no, but not anywhere near The Wire.
The conductor asked where Hambledon wished to alight and showed evident interest when he said: “To the end of the run.” Some of the passengers glanced at the stranger and away again but no one made any comment. The bus rolled on, stopping occasionally to set down passengers, until at last there were left only Hambledon and two others besides the driver and conductor when the bus stopped finally in the weedy station yard at Eckertal Bahnhof. The other two passengers got out and walked away. Hambledon also got out. The conductor took a parcel to the stationmaster’s house and a policeman in a green uniform stood at a little distance and watched proceedings.
Eckertal Bahnhof is a surprisingly large station for a very small place. Hambledon walked on to the platform and looked about him. There is a large booking hall, now closed, a restaurant surprisingly open until one realises that Eckertal has lost its inn beyond The Wire, an
d a waiting room fitted up as a chapel with notices on the door announcing the times of Gottes-dienst. There is also a stationmaster. He was sitting on his doorstep in his shirt sleeves, peeling potatoes. The whole place was uncannily quiet.
Hambledon walked across to look at the rails. They were corroded and eaten into by rust but they were not much of an eyesore because tall grass had grown up all over the permanent way, knee-high, and veiled the rotting lines. Sizable bushes and even young trees were flourishing between the rails. They went on towards the East and were lost in weeds and undergrowth.
Hambledon turned on his heel and left the place; as he crossed the station yard he saw the Green Police officer again, in another place, but still watching him; the man wore a large revolver holster on his hip and carried a pair of binoculars slung round his neck. The bus had gone.
Hambledon had studied a walker’s map bought in Goslar and knew that the frontier ran east of Eckertal Station. He had, therefore, only to walk in that direction till he came to a barbed-wire fence, and that would be it. The woods came down to the side of the road and a path led off in the right direction. Hambledon took it and walked pleasantly among pine trees till he came to the bank of a stream. This, according to his map, was the Ecker, and the frontier should be just beyond it.
The Ecker is the sort of mountain stream which is a brawling torrent among boulders after rain and in dry weather merely a slender rivulet among stones. Hambledon chose a suitable spot and hopped across dry-shod.
The further bank is a tangle of bushes and small trees. Hambledon threaded his way for some time through the undergrowth which was thick enough to deny him a clear view in any direction. He did not find any wire fence but he was insistently and increasingly conscious of being stared at, though he could see no one. There was no wind to stir the leaves—it was a blazingly hot day—and here again it was uncannily quiet; no sound of traffic or of voices or of men working; no dog barked and it even seemed to him that no bird sang. “They wouldn’t, anyway, in the middle of a hot afternoon,” he said to himself, but the back of his neck prickled and he turned to go.
When he reached the stream again he saw, sitting on the bank and waiting for him, the same man of the Frontier Police who had watched him in the station yard. Hambledon instantly crossed the stream and walked up to him.
“Guten Tag,” said Hambledon, with a smile.
“Guten Tag,” said the policeman politely, and stood up.
“Were you waiting for me? I have been wandering about looking for the frontier.”
“The Herr has found it,” said the man calmly. “The frontier is the middle of this stream.”
“What? Oh, is it? But it isn’t marked, I was looking for a wire fence.”
“The wire fence is further over. In winter when there is much rain, or when the snow melts, this river rises, as the Herr will understand. Then the land on the other side becomes flooded, so the Russians set the fence back to where it remains dry. A long way, in places, fifty or a hundred metres sometimes, but all that”—he waved his hand across the stream—“is East Zone territory all the same. I was very glad to see the Herr return in safety.” He put up his binoculars and slowly surveyed the scene.
“Thank you very much——”
“It is very tiresome if there is an incident, it makes a great deal of work for us. I have to make out long, detailed reports, in triplicate.” He sighed. “I do not like making out long reports and sometimes we do not get the body back for weeks. In this hot weather it can be an unpleasant business, the Herr will understand.”
“Dear me,” said Hambledon bleakly. “You do not cross the line at all, then, not even to recover a body on this side of their fence?”
“Not on any account. Such an action might start a Frontier Incident. Application has to be made to the Authority this side and by them to the Authority on the East side. Hence the delay,” said the policeman, and put his binoculars up to his eyes again.
“And suppose the victim is only wounded?”
“Go back among the trees,” said the policeman suddenly, “the Herr is too conspicuous standing up on this bank.”
“But I am well on our side,” protested Hambledon, removing himself quickly within the edge of the woods.
“Guns go off by accident,” said the policeman, joining him. “There are two Vopos there now, they have just come. The Herr was extremely lucky that they did not come while he was still across the stream.”
Vopos. Of course, a pet name for the Volkspolizei.
“There is a man in the watchtower now,” went on the policeman. “Do you see him?”
Hambledon looked at a high platform above the tops of the trees. It had a sort of shelter upon it and was very like the watchtowers from which, in more civilised countries, a lookout is kept for forest fires.
“He is looking at the Herr through his glasses. He has a machine pistol beside him. If the Herr has now seen enough, there are many much pleasanter places in the Harz than this stretch beside The Wire.”
Hambledon pulled out his passport.
“I ought to have shown you this at once,” he said, “but events rather overtook me. There is a note inside from the Chief of Police in Goslar.”
The man took the passport and read the order, nodding slowly. “I did not know that the Herr was anything but an ordinary tourist.”
“How should you?”
The policeman looked through the pages of the passport at the numerous closely packed stamps of a dozen frontiers of Europe and America.
“The Herr has travelled extensively,” he said with a note of envy in his voice. “It must be pleasant to be able to travel so widely.”
“I have been fortunate in having opportunities,” said Hambledon, “that is all.”
“For me,” said the policeman, closing the book and handing it back, “I have visited only Russia and for that I did not require a passport. Stalingrad,” he added, and raised the binoculars to his eyes again with the now familiar movement which was plainly habitual. “The Herr is still arousing interest. Take my glasses and look at the man on the tower.”
Hambledon did so. They were excellent binoculars; when he had adjusted them to suit his own eyes the watchtower leapt forward to hang before his face and the man upon it was staring through similar binoculars at him—an odd sensation.
“Ugly-looking little blighter, isn’t he?”
The policeman laughed and then turned to business.
“There was some matter about which the Herr desires information?”
Hambledon offered a cigarette and they sat down together, smoking companionably.
“I was asked to come out here to try to find some trace of an English student who seems to have disappeared in these parts.”
“I have heard that a young Englishman is missing but I do not, myself, know anything about it. I only heard that enquiries were being made. When did this happen?”
“Four days ago. Last Tuesday.”
The policeman thought for a moment and then said: “I was not on duty then, that was one of my free days. My colleague Ernst Schultz was on this patrol that day, if it please the Herr I will introduce him to Schultz and the Herr can ask him any question he pleases.”
“Thank you, I shall be very glad if you will. There is an idea that the young man—his name is Micklejohn—may have strayed across the frontier and been taken prisoner, is that possible?”
“It is possible,” said the policeman slowly. “Scarcely possible to stray across without being aware of it; there is always The Wire. The Herr has not yet seen The Wire? A young man could get through it easily enough, but not without noticing it, and there is also the ploughed strip to show footprints if anyone should walk across it. There is only one place I know of where there is no Wire and that is a short stretch beside the road at Neuhof, a long way off, south of Walkenried, thirty kilometres away and more. Nobody knows why there is no Wire at Neuhof, but there is nothing to take a visitor there, only a road leading nowhere; i
t is stopped.”
“Assume that for some reason a man climbed through The Wire,” said Hambledon.
“If he were seen by the Vopos in the act of doing so, he would be shot on sight, but even the Vopos cannot be everywhere at once. If somehow he avoided the Vopos and went on a kilometre or so beyond the frontier and were then picked up, I do not suppose they would shoot. He would be arrested, of course, taken in and questioned. If he seemed harmless and told a plausible tale he might be returned to this zone after a month or two. If they thought he was up to mischief he would be sent to Siberia or to the salt mines and no news of him would be forthcoming. They would say that they had never seen him.”
“Finished,” said Hambledon.
“Finished,” repeated the policeman.
3: The Wire
“I must resume my patrol,” said the policeman. “Would it interest the Herr to accompany me? He would then see for himself what the conditions are on this stretch.”
“It is very good of you,” said Hambledon. “I should be very glad to see anything you care to show me.”
“Good,” said the man, getting to his feet. “My name is Ritter.”
He led the way through the wood till they came to an iron bridge which used to carry the railway across the Ecker River towards Stapelburg. Ritter walked on to the bridge as far as the middle and there stopped. Hambledon made to pass him.
“Better not,” said Ritter quietly. “The middle of this bridge is the boundary and they are watching you.” His glasses went up to his eyes. “Do you see that tallest tree by the line with two bushes in front of it? There are two Vopos behind the bushes, can you see them? There, one of them moved. Take my glasses.”
Hambledon did so and saw two men in brown standing together behind the bushes and looking towards him. He was seized with a mixture of incredulity and exasperation; how ridiculous it was in peacetime to have armed men skulking behind bushes glaring at one. They were like tiresome small boys playing at cowboys and Indians, trying to frighten people, they wanted their heads banged together. A stupid game. One of the Vopos moved across a gap and Hambledon saw that his hand was on his gun. No, not a game.
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