Part 10 (2/2)

For the rest, Toby advised me to cool down, bide my time, and-always a maxim of Toby's-act as if nothing had happened. Which was how matters stood one week and twelve hours later when the Professor telephoned me at ten at night, using the emergency wordcode and asking me in a strangled but imperious voice to come round to his house immediately, entering by way of the garden door.

My first thought was that he had killed someone, possibly his wife. I could not have been more wrong.

The Professor opened the back door, and closed it swiftly after me. The lights inside the house were dimmed. Somewhere in the gloom, a Biedermeier grandfather clock ticked like a big old bomb. At the entrance to the living room stood Helena, her hands to her mouth, smothering a scream. Twenty minutes had pa.s.sed since Teodor's call, but the scream still seemed to be on the point of coming out of her.

Two armchairs stood before a dying fire. One was empty. I took it to be the Professor's. In the other, somewhat obscured from my line of sight, sat a silky, rounded man of forty, with a cap of soft black hair, and twinkling round eyes that said we were all friends, weren't we? His winged chair was high-backed and he had fitted himself into the angle of it like an aircraft pa.s.senger prepared for landing. His rather circular shoes stopped short of the floor, and it occurred to me they were East European shoes: marbled, of an uncertain leather, with moulded, heavytreaded soles. His hairy brown suit was like a remodelled military uniform. Before him stood a table with a pot of mauve hyacinths on it, and beside the hyacinths lay a display of objects which I recognised as the instruments of silent killing: two garottes made of wooden toggles and lengths of piano wire; a screwdriver so sharpened that it was a stiletto; a Charter Arms .38 Undercover revolver with a five-shot cylinder, together with two kinds of bullet, six soft-nosed, and six rifled, with congealed powder squashed into the grooves.

”It is cyanide,” the Professor explained, in answer to my silent perplexity. ”It is an invention of the Devil. The bullet has only to graze the victim to destroy him utterly.”

I found myself wondering how the poisonous powder was supposed to survive the intense heat of a gun barrel.

”This gentleman is named Ladislaus Kaldor,” the Professor continued. ”He was sent by the Hungarian secret police to kill us. He is a friend. Kindly sit down, Herr Ned.”

With ceremony, Ladislaus Kaldor rose from his chair and pumped my hand as if we had concluded a profitable deal.

”Sir!” he cried happily, in English. ”Latzi. I am sorry, sir. Don't worry anything. Everybody call me Latzi. Herr Doktor. My friend. Please sit down. Yes.”

I remember how the scent of the hyacinths seemed to go so nicely with his smile. It was only slowly I began to realise I had no sense of danger. Some people convey danger all the time; others put it on when they are any or threatened. But Latzi, when I was able to consult my instincts, conveyed only an enormous will to please. Which perhaps is all you need if you're a professional killer.

I did not sit down. A chorus of conflicting feelings was yelling in my head, but fatigue was not among them. The empty coffee cups, I was thinking. The empty plates with cake crumbs. Who eats cake and drinks coffee when his life is being threatened? Latzi was sitting again, smiling like a conjuror. The Professor and his wife were studying my face, but from different places in the room. They've quarrelled, I thought; crisis has driven them to their separate corners. An American revolver, I thought. But not the spare cylinder that serious players customarily carried. East European shoes, and with soles that leave a perfect print on every carpet or polished floor. Cyanide bullets that would burn off their cyanide in the barrel.

”How long's he been here?” I asked the Professor.

He shrugged. I hated his shrugs. ”One hour. Less.”

”More than one hour,” Helena contradicted him. Her indignant gaze was fixed upon me. Until tonight she had made a point of ignoring me, slipping past me like a ghost, smiling or scowling at the ground to show her disapproval. Suddenly she needed my Support. ”He rang the bell at eight-forty-five exactly. I was listening to the radio. The programme changed.”

I glanced at Latzi. ”You speak German?”

”Jawohl, Herr Doktor!”

Back to Helena. ”Which programme?”

”The BBC World Service,” she said.

I went to the radio and switched it on. A reedy Oxford academic of unknown gender was bleating about Keats. Thank you, BBC. I switched it off.

”He rang the bell - who answered it?” I said.

”I did,” said the Professor.

”He did,” said Helena.

”Please,” said Latzi.

”And then?”

”He was standing on the doorstep, wearing a coat,” said the Professor.

”A raincoat,” Helena corrected him.

”He asked if I was Professor Teodor, I said yes. He gave his name, he said 'Forgive me, Professor, I have come to kill you with a garotte or cyanide bullet but I do not wish to, I am your disciple and admirer. I wish to surrender to you and remain in the West.”

”He spoke Hungarian?” I asked.

”Naturally.”

”So you invited him in?”

”Naturally.”

Helena did not agree. ”No! First Teodor asked for me,” she insisted. I had not heard her correct her husband before tonight. Now she had done so twice in as many minutes. ”He calls to me and says, 'Helena, we have a guest.'

I say, 'Good.'

Then he asks Latzi into the house. I take his raincoat, I hang it in the hall, I make coffee. That is how it happened exactly.”

”And cake,” I said. ”You made cake.”

”The cake was made already.”

”Were you afraid?” I asked - for fear, like danger, was something else that was missing.

”I was disgusted, I was shocked,” she replied. ”Now I am afraid - yes, I am very afraid. We are all afraid.”

”And you?” I said to the Professor.

He shrugged again, as if to say I was the last man on earth to whom he would confide his feelings.

”Why don't you take your wife to the study?” I said.

He was disposed to argue, then changed his mind. Strangers arm in arm, they marched from the room.

I was alone with Latzi. I stood, he sat. Munich can be a very silent city. Even in repose his face smiled at me ingratiatingly. His small eyes still twinkled, but there was nothing I could read in them. He gave me a nod of encouragement, his smile broadened. He said ”Please,” and eased himself more comfortably into his chair. I made the gesture every Middle European understands. I held out my hand, palm upward, and pa.s.sed my thumb across the tip of my forefinger. Still smiling, he rummaged in his inside jacket pocket and handed me his papers. They were in the name of Egon Braubach of Pa.s.sau, born 1933, occupation artist. I never saw anyone who looked less like a Bavarian artist. They comprised one West German pa.s.sport, one driver's licence and one social security doc.u.ment. None of them, it seemed to me, carried the least conviction. Neither did his shoes.

”When did you enter Germany?”

”This afternoon, Herr Doktor, this afternoon at five. Please.”

”Where from?”

”Vienna, please. Vienna,” he repeated, in a breathless rush, as if making me a gift of the entire city, and gave another wriggling motion of his rump, apparently to achieve greater subservience. ”I caught the first train to Munich this morning, Herr Doktor.”

”At what time?”

”At eight o'clock, sir. The eight-o'clock train.”

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