Be Shot For Six Pence Page 14

  When I got down Lady was waiting in the ante-room. Waiting for me, I guessed.

  “How did you get along with the Major last night?” he asked.

  “All right.”

  “A rough party?”

  God damn the man. What was he hinting at? Quite suddenly I realised that he wasn’t hinting. He knew. My first reaction was anger, followed, in a photo finish, by alarm, and then relief.

  Lady stood watching me, perched on the fender, grinning all over his face like a pert young crow.

  “Better come inside,” he said, “and tell poppa all about it.”

  “I suppose it’s no good suggesting you mind your own damned business?”

  “No good at all.”

  “Who told you? Gheorge?”

  “Of course Gheorge told me. It would be a funny sort of organisation here if he had not done so.”

  “In spite of the fact that I only told him under pledge of secrecy.”

  “You’re talking like a boy scout,” said Lady. “Have a cigarette. Oh, no. You don’t do you? Then just relax and reflect, how lucky it was that Gheorge did keep me informed.”

  “It was your people who put a police cordon round the cinema?”

  “Our powers are not quite as extensive as you seem to imagine, but a word in the ear of the Austrian police sometimes produces results.”

  “Just what was due to happen in the cinema?”

  “It’s a little difficult to predict, but I rather think that you were going to make an indecent assault on a young lady and her escort was going to hit you, and there was going to be a small, but high class fight. Messelen would have got away with a black eye and possibly a sprained wrist. But you – alas – I fear, you would not have survived.”

  “The Rœhm technique,” I said. “If you plan to murder a man, be sure you take away his character first.”

  “Oh, certainly. The Major was a Nazi to the boot-heels. But do not underrate him. He was a high class operator. His real name, by the way, was Felder. You remember?”

  “Faintly,” I said.

  “He was one of the luckier ones at Nuremberg. Not quite enough evidence for a capital sentence. He was not one of the biggest shots, you understand, but well up in the third rank.”

  Memory stirred.

  “He was the Hauptmann Felder who carried out the Pinzio massacre.”

  “Alleged,” said Lady. “Alleged. He carried it out so thoroughly that absolutely no one was left to testify against him. With their characteristic respect for the laws of evidence, combined, no doubt, with admiration for a workmanlike job, your compatriots voted for his acquittal. The Russians would have hanged him. He received two years detention on lesser charges, after which he worked unceasingly against the British, who had saved him, and for the Russians, who would have hanged him. Not an uncommon reaction.”

  “A neo-Nazi?”

  “Of course. A founder member of the Werkebund.”

  “He fooled me,” I said, “to the top of my bent.”

  “His appearance was an asset,” agreed Lady. “The simple soldier. And indeed, I believe, in his early years he was precisely that. A simple, brave regimental officer. So was Goering.”

  I wasn’t listening. I was thinking of the first time I had met him, in that clean room, full of sunshine, with the cathedral bells chiming and all the birds singing.

  “What was the programme that first evening?”

  “Oh, the standard technique. If you had gone inside Major Piper’s office, I do not think you would have walked out again. Messelen’s story would have been that you had got drunk, which was true.”

  “Partly true.”

  “And had tried to interfere between some man and girl, and the man had assaulted you. Possibly thrown you downstairs. A broken neck. What easier?”

  “How very fortunate,” I said, “that Major Piper should have arrived when he did.”

  “Oh, very,” said Lady. “Very.”

  “And now, perhaps, you will explain two things that I find puzzling.”

  “Of course.”

  “Why, after all that, did you allow me to go out with Messelen last night, in complete ignorance of his real character?”

  “That is only one question.”

  “The second is even more curious. When you spoke, just now, of Messelen. You said: ‘He was a high class operator’ and later, ‘His appearance was an asset.’ You spoke of him in the past. Almost as if he were dead. I find that curious.”

  Lady looked at me for a long moment, and I thought, for the first time in our brief acquaintance, that I could detect a hint of uncertainty in his manner.

  Then he smiled, a big, simple, frank smile; frank as any expert witness under cross-examination.

  “Why,” he said. “Don’t tell me I was mistaken after all. Did you not kill him?”

  “Yes, I killed him,”

  “You had me worried for a moment,” said Lady, relaxing. “But if that’s right, what’s the mystery?”

  “The mystery,” I said, patiently, “is how you knew anything about it. You knew I was going out with Messelen, because Gheorge broke his word to me and told you. You knew about the cinema, because that’s something you arranged. But nobody on God’s earth can know what happened afterwards.”

  “It would perhaps be exaggerating to say that I know.”

  “Don’t fool yourself. You couldn’t even guess. It was one chance in a thousand that anything happened at all except my death.”

  “I wouldn’t put it quite as high as that. After all, consider the chances. The Major was not a heavy smoker. But he was bound to take out his lighter sooner or later.”

  I said stupidly: “He didn’t use it to light a cigarette. It was to look at a map. How the hell did you know?”

  “Of course I arranged for him to have it.”

  “You what?”

  “Try not to be obtuse. I arranged for him to have the lighter. I had it given to a girl, with instructions to give it to him – not earlier than yesterday morning. The danger was that you might see it too soon.”

  I could feel my anger getting hold of me. Only it was the wrong sort of anger. The cold and comfortless anger that roots in fear.

  “Would you mind telling me what the devil you mean.”

  “I shall tell you nothing if you make a scene about it.”

  “You’ll get no scene from me,” I said stiffly. “Just tell me the story. Where did you find the lighter?”

  “It was picked up, on Pleasure Island, by one of my men, on the night Studd-Thompson disappeared. We knew it was his. Trüe had seen it many times—”

  “And you had it planted on Messelen so that I should see it and lose my head and kill him. Before he could have me killed.”

  “Your synopsis is accurate, with one exception. I did not for a moment imagine that you would lose your head. Or, if you lost it I knew that you would recover it very quickly. Perhaps you would be agreeable now to telling me what happened last night.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Why should you not?”

  “Because—” Fury came bubbling up in a great cold wave, like the seventh wave of seven, taking away my breath, overwhelming me, blinding me—”because for all I know, as soon as it served your purpose you will inform the police about me, as easily and as quickly and as treacherously as you have broken every promise you have made since I came here—”

  “And did I ask you to come?”

  That pricked the bubble. I subsided into a chair, feeling limp, and with nothing left to say.

  “You must also remember—” having achieved his effect Lady performed another of his lightning changes and became sweet reason itself—”that you who are, you will pardon the expression, an amateur, have elected to play a part in a match of professionals. A match which is played to its own rules, of which you know nothing at all.”

  “And want to know nothing,” I mumbled.

  “Nevertheless I will explain the rules to you. I think you have e
arned it. The first is that you trust no one unless you are forced to. The second is that you tell no one anything unless it pays you to do so. Pays you, not him. When an opponent at bridge gives up a trick, you do not say: ‘How kind of him.’ You ask yourself: ‘Why did he do it? What future advantage does he hope to gain?’ The third—”

  “Spare me the third.”

  “The third is even more important. You start from the assumption that anyone might betray you. Anyone. Not only your opponents but your associates as well. In any organisation such as this it pays to base every plan on the absolute assumption that your opponents will have succeeded in introducing one of their side in to your team, or more simply, in corrupting one of your team.”

  “Like Major Piper’s blonde secretary.”

  “Oh, yes. Of course, Major Piper knows she is a spy. And by now, she knows that he knows. Her employers would replace her, if they could, but Major Piper will not dismiss her because he knows where he is with her.”

  “Also,” I suggested, “because she is his mistress.”

  Lady considered this. “I can see no logical connection,” he said.

  “I have always been lead to suppose that the female spy seduced the Intelligence Officer so that he would babble his secrets to her when in her arms.”

  “Your ideas are old fashioned. Now when I am in bed with a woman I never speak at all. I—”

  “All right,” I said. “We’ll leave it there. I take it, from what you say, that you have a traitor here.”

  “Of course.”

  “And you know who it is?”

  “Well, I have a very shrewd suspicion. After all, the field is not wide. It might be our host and hostess. Unlikely, perhaps? I agree. It might be their son, the Herr General. Or the dutiful Gheorge. Or the experienced Lisa. Or the so sweet and so disingenuous Trüe.” His tongue flickered for a moment between his teeth. “Or it might have been Studd-Thompson. Or it might be you.”

  “If a joke, a poor one.”

  “Or it might be me?”

  “I hope you’re not serious.”

  “Of course I’m serious. Put yourself in the shoes of our opponents. If they wish to buy themselves an ally in our organisation, what more natural and effective than to choose the head of it.”

  “Really,” I said, weakly. “If you had been a traitor, you’d hardly have taken the risk of suggesting the idea to me.”

  “I fear that your bridge playing has led me to overestimate your mental ability. However, to business. I have a proposition to make to you. Much of what I have said has been leading up to it.”

  “Almost everything you have said has been calculated to make me distrust you.”

  “Exactly. That is why I put my proposition in the form of a bargain.”

  “I have nothing to sell.”

  “That was perhaps true, yesterday. Now it is not true. It is absolutely essential to me to know what did happen last night, after you left the cinema. You are unlikely to tell me of your own free will and I have no way of making you talk, or no quick and easy way. Therefore I will buy the information.”

  “For what?”

  “In exchange I will tell you exactly what is going on here.”

  “I have been told two different stories already. How am I to know that the third will be the truth?”

  “Even you should, I think, be able to recognise the truth when you hear it.”

  “It has a certain rarity value round here,” I agreed. “Very well.”

  I was aware that I was placing my neck at his disposal, but there was a certain relief in getting the story told.

  Lady made me describe the house, the grounds and the wood. And then identified them to his own satisfaction on one of the large-scale maps on the wall.

  He did not seem interested in the precise location of the body. “A vineyard,” he said. “I think that was a fortunate inspiration. The vignerons are very regular in their habits. And they have no reason to dig deep. Tell me again about the car.”

  I went over that part of it again.

  “You parked the car outside his flat? Just as he had left it? And you are certain you left no prints? On the gear lever? On the brake?”

  I thought hard. “No, I polished both of them. And I drove wearing gloves. That must have rubbed off any marks that were left.”

  “Yes. A certain amount will depend on how soon someone drives a cart down that track. What about the lighter?”

  I took it out of my pocket and banded it over.

  “The incinerator, I fear,” said Lady. “Am I now to fulfil my part of the bargain?”

  “If you please.”

  “For myself, I should be delighted. It was you that I was thinking of. What I have to tell you really is a secret. It is at present known, in full, to perhaps six people in Hungary, and a dozen in the West.”

  “I should feel privileged to join the circle.”

  “Yes,” said Lady. “Do you carry poison?”

  My feelings must have been apparent because Lady smiled. “It is quite a simple precaution,” he said. “No real trouble, and not as dramatic as it sounds. Studd-Thompson, I know, did so. In a very small, metal, container which could be braced without discomfort to the inside of his mouth. He took it out at night, I understand.”

  “Just like dentures,” I said. “Suppose you tell me the secret and let me judge what precautions are necessary for its preservation.”

  “Very well,” Lady sighed. “You will understand me when I say that military espionage is now almost as out of date as the bow and arrow. The last people to recognise this are, of course, the military intelligence departments. But it is nevertheless a fact. The days when Mata Hari lavished her charms upon senior generals and extracted from them, between the sheets, the tonnage and performance of the latest tank are, alas, gone. Nowadays if we want a military secret we buy it. It is a question only of paying sufficient. Either in money, or in kind. And even if this were not so, you will agree that it is futile to expend blood and effort in obtaining information which will be out of date six months after you have obtained it.”

  “So what do you do?”

  Lady said: “It has been called psychological warfare and it has been called propaganda. In Communist circles it is sometimes referred to as mass indoctrination. I have a simpler and easier word for it. I call it interference.”

  “Right,” I said. “They interfere with you. You interfere with them. More particularly you interfere with Hungary. You throw Spanners into Works.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And what particular spanners are you now engaged in throwing?”

  “It is, of course, axiomatic that you attack an opponent where he is weakest. The weak spot of the regime in Hungary, as you may know, is the industrial worker. He has a scarcity value. There is not enough of him to go round. It gives him a bargaining position.”

  “Well that’s the way it works in the weak-kneed Western democracies,” I agreed, “but I fancied that totalitarian countries enjoyed certain powers of persuasion.”

  “You can take your horses to the water. They will not always drink. Do you know that last winter, so short were they of miners, the Budapest police were driven to round up criminals, gypsies – prostitutes even? It was not a success.”

  “I should have thought the miners would have loved it.”

  “After a number of unfortunate incidents the women, anyway, had to be released. But you can judge from that – which, by the way, is absolutely true, I have a most reliable informant in the coal mining centre at Pec – how vulnerable the Government is likely to prove on its industrial front.”

  I thought about it. It seemed to tie in with what the Baron had told me.

  “Just what are you planning?”

  “A General Strike.”

  The words floated quietly out. From Lady to me. Into my head and out again. Through the windows, over the trees, across the mountains, across the plains.

  The words turned into ideas and the ideas in
to pictures. Half a dozen men in a small back room, smoking and talking. A knot of workmen meeting in the shadowy corner of a huge workshop. A crowd in an open place, in the rain, listening to a man in a rain coat, talking, talking, talking. The rain drumming on the cobble stones. The crowd surging and breaking. The drumming of the rain changed to the metallic chatter of machine guns.

  A man screaming.

  “How can you keep such a thing secret?”

  “You cannot, altogether,” agreed Lady. “The Hungarian Government know of the danger of industrial unrest. They must be aware that agitators are increasingly active. They may even suspect that they are being subsidised and encouraged from abroad. But exactly what we plan and when and how – that much I think is still hidden from them.”

  “Do they know of your connection with it?”

  “There are signs of uneasiness. The troop movements I mentioned look like an attempt to seal this particular section of the frontier. And yet, I don’t know. We shall see.”

  “When and where does it start?”

  “That is a thing that David Szormeny would give up to the half of his treasury to know. I think you would be happier without the information.”

  On reflection I agreed.

  I can’t remember if anything more was said. I had a lot to think about, and I think better if I move, so I walked in the garden, in the twilight. The bats were out, swooping and fluttering. I find them no more sinister than mice or cockroaches. My cousin Michael’s old rectory is full of all three.

  My mind was on strikes. I had never considered them before from the view point of the strike-maker. The fomenting of strikes was traditionally one of the things that the Communists did to us. Not we to them. And yet why not? If that was the new warfare, must we not learn how to wage it?

  Not trumpet and drum, but the manifesto. For powder and steel, the ballot box and the vote. For poison gas, the human voice. Arise, Hungarian proletariat. Cast off the chains of your bureaucratic masters.

  After dinner I made myself unpopular again by refusing to take a hand at bridge. I walked out and sat on the terrace. What I needed to do was think.

  Mostly I thought about Lady. It gave me an odd and unpleasant feeling to think that he should have used me so calculatingly. Something of surprise, something of annoyance, but a distinct touch of fear, too, no getting away from it.