Part 23 (1/2)

He waited, sipping his wine. She had dropped her hand so it rested on his shoulder. He glanced up from behind his gla.s.ses and she was staring into s.p.a.ce. He still kept quiet.

'All right,' she said. 'It means breaking a confidence with a client for the first time, but I'm a.s.suming you wouldn't let me do that unless it was something very serious. I'm placing all my integrity in your hands. For me,' she continued on a lighter note, 'that's equivalent to entrusting you with my one-time virginity...'

'That's safe enough with me,' he said drily.

'Bob Newman, foreign correspondent. He asked me only this week to trace a Manfred Seidler. I may have got lucky - but I'm not sure. I have an address-and a phone number-for a Manfred. No guarantees issued that he's Seidler, but he does sound like him...'

'Address, phone number...'

Tweed had his small notebook on his lap, his old-fas.h.i.+oned fountain pen in his hand. She gave him both items of information out of her head. He knew that both would be correct. Like himself she only had to see a face once, hear a name, read an address or phone number, and it was registered on her brain for ever.

'What I've given you,' she went on, 'are the details of a girl called Erika Stahel. She may be Seidler's girl friend. Incidentally, Stahel is spelt...'

'It sounds as though he may be holed up in Basle,' Tweed suggested. 'If it is Seidler...'

'I've no idea. I have an idea I'm going to regret giving you this information.'

'You expect to see this foreign correspondent, Newman, again soon?'

'Why?' she asked sharply.

'Just that I wondered whether you had any idea what story he is working on...'

'You're going too far!' The annoyance showed in her tone and she didn't care. She stood up from the sofa arm, walked across to a chair and sat facing him, crossing her legs again. He gazed into her startling blue eyes and thought how many men would be clay in her slim hands, clay to mould into any shape she wished. She spoke angrily.

'Again you ask me to betray a confidence. Are you really working for the Ministry of Defence in London? I keep your secrets. If I give away other people's, you should cease trusting me me!'

'I spend most of my life in a thoroughly boring way - reading files...'

'Files on people I have helped you track across Europe...'

'Files on people who are dangerous to the West. Switzerland is now part of the West in a way it never has been before. No longer is neutrality enough...'

He took off his gla.s.ses and started polis.h.i.+ng them on his pocket handkerchief. Blanche reacted instantly, tossing her mane of hair as she clicked her fingers. He paused, holding the gla.s.ses in his lap.

'You're up to something!' she told him. 'I always can tell when you're plotting some devious ploy. You take off those gla.s.ses and start cleaning them!'

He blinked, thrown off balance for a moment. She was getting to know him too well. He put away the handkerchief and looped the gla.s.ses behind his ears, sighing deeply.

'Is Newman interested in the Berne Clinic at Thun?' he asked quietly.

'Supposing he was?' she challenged him.

'I might be able to help him.' He reached inside his pocket, brought out Mason's notebook and handed it to her. 'In there is information he might find invaluable. You type, of course? I suggest you type out every word inside that notebook. He must not see the notebook itself. Give him your typed report without revealing your source. Make up some plausible story - you are perfectly capable of doing that, I know. I'll collect the notebook when next I see you.'

'Tweed, what exactly are you up to? I need to know before I agree. I like Newman...'

The data from that notebook will keep him running.'

'Oh, I see.' She ran a hand through her hair. 'You're using him. You use people, don't you?'

'Yes.' He thought it best not to hesitate. 'Isn't it always the way,' he commented sadly. 'We use people. We all use each other.'

Reaching inside his breast pocket he brought out an envelope containing Swiss banknotes. He was careful to hand it to her with formal courtesy. She took it and dropped it on the floor beside her chair, a sign that she was still annoyed.

'I expect it's too much for what I've done,' she remarked. Her mood changed as the blue eyes watched him. Uncrossing her legs, she pressed her knees together, clasped her hands so the fingers pointed at him and leaned forward. 'What is it? Something is worrying you.'

'Blanche, I want you to take great care during the next week or two. There have been two killings, probably three. What I am going to say is in the greatest confidence. I think someone may be eliminating anyone who knows what is going on inside the Berne Clinic...'

Will Newman know?' she asked quickly.

'He is one of the world's top foreign correspondents. He will know. Providing him with that typed report may well be a form of protection. What I am getting at is this - no one must connect you even remotely with that Clinic. I am staying at the Bellevue Palace. Room 312. Do not hesitate to call me if anything happens that worries you. And use the name Rosa- not your own.'

She was astonished and perturbed. It was out of character for Tweed to reveal his whereabouts, let alone to suggest that she could call him. Always before he had called her. She gave a little s.h.i.+ver as he stood up to go and then ran to help him on with his coat.

'It's time you bought yourself a new sheepskin. I know a shop...'

'Thank you, but this is like an old friend. I hate breaking in new things - coats, shoes. I will be in touch. Don't you forget to call me. Anything unusual. An odd phone call. Anything. If I'm out leave a message. ”Rosa called...” '

'And you take care, too.' She kissed him on the cheek and he squeezed her forearm. He was glad to see that before opening the door she peered through the fish-eye spygla.s.s. 'All clear,' she announced briskly.

As he trudged homeward up the Junkernga.s.se through the silent tunnel Tweed's mind was a kaleidoscope of conflicting and disturbing impressions. Berne was like a rabbit warren, a warren of stone.

As the raw wind fleeced the back of his head exposed above his woollen scarf he remembered standing by the Plattform wall, staring down at the frothing sluices where poor Mason had been found. Mason had done his job so well - the notebook was a mine of suggestive information.

But the image which kept thrusting into his mind was that silver-framed portrait of Colonel Signer in Blanche's sitting-room. That had been the greatest shock of all. Victor Signer who was now president of the Zurcher Kredit Bank, the driving force behind the Gold Club.

Twenty-Five.

Friday, 17 February. Kobler stood behind the desk in his first floor office at the Berne Clinic, his back to the huge smoked gla.s.s picture window overlooking the mountains beyond Thun. It was ten o'clock in the morning and he was staring at the large man with the tinted gla.s.ses who again remained in the shadows. The soft voice spoke with a hint of venom.

'Bruno, you do realize that last night's experiment was a disaster.' It was a statement, not a question. 'How could the Laird woman possibly have left the grounds? Now we have no way of knowing whether the experiment succeeded or not...'

Kobler never ceased to be astounded by the Professor's colossal self-confidence, by the way he could focus his mind like a burning-gla.s.s on a single objective. Wasn't it Einstein who had said, 'Clear your mind of all thoughts except the problem you are working on' - or something like that? And Einstein had been another genius.

Kobler's mind was full of the problem of the police holding the Laird woman's body and the dangerous developments that could lead to. All of this seemed to pa.s.s the Professor by. As though reading his thoughts, the soft voice continued.

'I leave to you, Bruno, of course, the measures which may be necessary to deal with those tiresome people who had the impertinence to interfere last night.'

'It will be attended to,' Kobler a.s.sured him. 'I may have more positive news - about Manfred Seidler...'

'Well, go on. G.o.d knows you've been searching for him for long enough. Another tiresome distraction.'

'I concentrated men in Zurich, Geneva - and Basle,' Kobler explained. 'Knowing Seidler, I felt sure he would hide himself in a large city - one not too far from the border. The most likely, I decided, was Basle. Not Zurich because of the works at nearby Horgen he is too well-known there. Not Geneva because the place crawls with agents of all kinds who spend their lives looking for people. So, the largest number of men I put on the ground in Basle - and it paid off...'

'Do tell me how.'