The Salzburg Connection by Helen Macinnes
“Too many doors for my taste,” Mathison said, and he wasn’t thinking of the architecture either. “Where the hell do they all lead?” he asked irritably. He asked that question again, expurgated, as he brought Lynn into the kitchen. He is concealing a load of worry, she realised. But what was there to worry about here?
“Oh, one takes you through the Mozartplatz. The others go through courtyards and other buildings to the Residenzplatz and the Altmarkt. They are quite simple to use, really, once you know them.” She looked at the American girl who was standing uncertainly beside Mathison. Why is she here? Anna wondered. She is pretty, of course, and charming; and she must have some intelligence if she is representing the publisher—but is she? “Please take off your coat. Do sit down.” Anna began stoking the ceramic stove. Perhaps, she was thinking, I’ve learned to distrust too much in this last week. Perhaps last night and my quarrel with Johann and the shock he gave me will never let me trust anyone fully again. Johann... He would have liked this girl. She was even prettier than Elisabetha Lang; her clothes were the same smart style, her manner just as ingratiating.
“Let me help,” Lynn said.
“No, thank you. I can manage.”
Well, that’s that, thought Lynn Conway, and tried not to look too curious as she glanced around the strange mixture of living room and kitchen. Anna Bryant was not at all what she had expected. Nor was this welcome. Does she resent me? Lynn wondered. But why? She walked over to one wall, where a panel of mounted photographs caught her eye. “It’s beautiful country. Is this near Salzburg?” She pointed to a vista of meadows and trees falling towards a green valley with mountains stretching behind them all.
“That’s the view from my brother’s house. It’s at Bad Aussee.”
“Oh?”
Anna closed the door of the stove with a sharp clang. “Johann is a ski teacher and mountain guide,” she said stiltedly. “That’s his profession.”
“And is this Johann?” Lynn was looking at the picture of a skier, caught in motion as he came soaring over a ridge of blue-shadowed snow, bluer sky above, sharp peaks in the high background, a spray of sparkling snow rising behind him.
“Yes.”
“Very handsome.”
“So women think.”
Lynn couldn’t hide her surprise as she looked sharply at Anna Bryant. “An excellent photograph. Motion like that is always difficult to catch.”
“My husband was an excellent photographer.”
“So Bill tells me. It really was too bad that so many of his newest photographs were stolen. Of course, we couldn’t have publ—” She stopped short. “Perhaps you’d better read this letter Bill has brought with him, first.” She glanced over at Bill, who was taking the two large envelopes from his briefcase. Now it’s your turn, she told him silently. I did my best, but it wasn’t much good at all.
This is going to be more difficult than I imagined, Mathison was thinking. What has happened to Anna? She was going through the motions of politeness, but her natural warmth had gone; she seemed cold and restrained, almost bitter as she had talked about Johann. There was a hint of nervousness, too. Nervousness or concern? He remembered the angry interruptions in his telephone call with Anna. “Is Johann in Salzburg now?”
“No. He left for Bad Aussee last night. For Unterwald, actually.” She watched the American girl, but the name seemed to mean nothing to her. “That is near Finstersee,” she said carefully.
“Oh?” Lynn Conway was puzzled but polite. “This is my first visit to Austria, Mrs. Bryant, but I hope I’ll see something of your mountains and lakes before I go back to Zürich. Bill has promised to rent a car and take me around. Why don’t you come with us, and we’ll drive you to Bad Aussee and you can see your brother?” She has been spending too much time indoors, thought Lynn as she looked at the white strained face that stared at her so strangely.
“My brother is too busy,” Anna said curtly. “He will be most of the time in Unterwald. That’s where the Seidl girl lives—the one he is going to marry. They got engaged last Monday.”
“Monday?” Mathison asked, not concealing his surprise. But I met him here on Monday. And then later that night he was in Unterwald, certainly, but I thought he was there to find out why and how his brother-in-law had been killed. Johann chose strange timing to get himself engaged.
“So much happened that night,” Anna said briefly. She looked around the kitchen, thinking now of the Lang girl, who had come here in the darkness to steal. One of Johann’s girls. Twice she had been here with him, so filled with interest and questions and seemingly so harmless. Dick had thought her charming, charming and pretty. Johann had been proud of her. And I—I showed her around, showed her where I worked.
“Do you remember our talk then?” Mathison asked, trying to ease his way towards presenting the letter. “I did find out something about Eric Yates. You’ll find most of it here.” He held out the letter.
She took it from him silently, but before she started reading it she glanced down at the table where he had spilled out the contents of the other envelope. Quickly, she spread out the photographs Mathison had made of her husband’s file on Yates. “You really did keep your promise,” she said slowly, softly. So Johann was wrong about that, too. Why trust a stranger, he had said, what does Mathison owe you? But I did trust a stranger, and I was right. And here is the stranger, not probing like my friends—like Felix Zauner, and Werner Dietrich, and all those others who kept coming to see me this week, always bringing the talk around to Finstersee, never telling me why they were interested in it or who had sent them to question me. “Oh, thank you. Thank you. You’ll never know how grateful I am.”
“I don’t pretend to be much of a photographer, but I’m glad these prints came out clearly,” Mathison said awkwardly. Her thanks seemed excessive for such a small gesture. “Particularly that one.” He pointed to the photograph of the Burch cheque. “It’s the one that really interested Washington and got them answering some of my questions about Yates.”
“You found out about him?” she asked quickly.
“Some people in Washington were able to find out.”
“And what was that?”
“He wasn’t working for British Intelligence.”
She stared at him. “He tricked my husband?”
All the way, thought Mathison. “Why don’t you read the letter, first of all?” It explained more easily than he could tell her face to face. “I typed it,” he added frankly, “but James Newhart backs up all I said.”
“And that’s my signature,” Lynn told her, “but he will back that up too. We can call him in New York if you like.” What’s making her so difficult? Lynn wondered as she rose and came forward to the table. Poor old Bill, all that work put into the letter and she isn’t even giving it her full attention. She had only murmured “Your Mr. Newhart is very kind” as she read about his offer, and almost dropped the letter right there on the table. “Read on to the end,” Lynn insisted. Five drafts and a wasted lunchtime, she thought angrily. “If you want to know all about your Mr. Yates, you’d better finish it.”
Anna read on, and then looked up unbelievingly. “There never would have been a book? Newhart and Morris don’t publish—” Her voice trailed off. “Did he want the Finstersee box as much as all that?”
Mathison took a deep breath, glanced quickly at Lynn, wondered how to get her out of the room. Or it might be easier to stop Anna, get her to postpone talking. “Is the letter clear? If you have any reservations about it, just tell me.”
“Deceit,” she said bitterly. “Deceit right from the beginning. He robbed Dick of everything. But the only thing he did not get was the box itself.”
“Lynn, would you leave?” But that was as far as Mathison got. Anna Bryant began to laugh, a strange pathetic kind of laugh that twisted into a sob. Lynn moved quickly to put an arm around her shoulder, take the letter gently out of her hand, help her into a chair. The attack of hysteria never developed, unless t
“Do you understand what she is saying?” Lynn asked, looking nervously at Bill.
Everything had gone wrong, he was thinking, everything; and for no purpose except that Lynn has heard enough to put her into the circle of danger that’s now drawn around all of us. “Why didn’t you leave?” he said angrily. “I told you to leave.”
“And I will,” she said, equally angry. “But first I’ll get Mrs. Bryant up to bed and fix something for her to eat. She probably hasn’t had a decent meal in days. Or slept either.”
Anna Bryant was paying no attention at all to their argument. She had recovered her composure with a pathetic determination to keep calm, stay lucid. She kept looking at Bill Mathison. She put out a hand and caught his. “Will you help me?”
He nodded.
“Will you tell your friends in Washington about Finstersee?”
“They know.” He glanced at Lynn once more.
“All right,” Lynn said, “I can take a hint eventually.” She was trying to smile, but there was definite hurt in her eyes. What am I anyway, she thought as she walked towards a door into a long narrow hall, a decorative smoke screen? He’ll have some explaining to do before I take one more step with him through Salzburg. If she hadn’t left her coat in the kitchen, she would have kept on walking right through the shop and out of the front door.
Anna was too intent on her own thoughts even to notice that Lynn had left. “Did they send you here?” she was asking quickly, sharply, and she looked almost bitterly over at the documents on the table.
Mathison said carefully, “I came to bring you those papers. And a friend in Washington—your friend, too, Anna—asked me to warn you.”
“About what?”
“About talking as freely as you have been doing. He feels you are in considerable danger. And if you want his help, he is willing to give it.”
“One man?”
“There are also others.”
“And in return I was to tell you where the Finstersee box could be found?”
“No. You could have told him directly. He’s here in Salzburg. If you had wanted to tell him, that is.” Keep that point clear, Mathison thought; that’s the one reason that let you agree to being Nield’s little errand boy in the first place. “There’s nothing you can tell him now about the Finstersee box,” he added, “but you may yet be in danger, and I think you should see this man. He will think of some plan to get you out of Salzburg until it’s safe for you to return.”
She looked at him. The bitterness left her face. Her voice softened. “It is Johann you must see. At once. Tell Johann he must do nothing about the box until he can meet your friend.” She thought over that, made a decision. “I’ll go with you to Bad Aussee. This time, I’ll win the argument. Last night we had such a quarrel, and after he left I kept trying to piece everything together, to guess where he had hidden it. Not in his own house. That’s definite. It was hidden sometime last Monday night—that’s the only chance he had. Somewhere between the meadow on Finstersee and Trudi’s house.”
“Trudi?”
“Trudi Seidl. The girl he is marrying. I thought of going to see her, only—” she shook her head slowly—“Johann wouldn’t tell her about Finstersee, or the box, or August Grell. Too dangerous for Trudi. That is how Johann would see it.”
You’ve lost me, Mathison thought, but he wouldn’t risk interrupting.”
“Johann really believes he is doing this to protect me,” Anna went on. “He’s that kind of man. He thinks women shouldn’t know anything that’s dangerous. But then Dick was like that, too.” She broke off to glance in the direction of the shop. “And so are you. Oh, really, you are all so foolish! You only add to any danger, don’t you see? How can we recognise it when we have to face it? That is double danger, Bill. And it’s terrifying—the feeling of not being able to judge the truth is terrifying. This week, my friends became strangers.” She looked at him, added, “And it seems as if strangers have become friends. Can I trust this man you know—this man from Washington?”
“Yes.” And I thought the way we met, with the FBI vouching for Nield, was something slightly esoteric, a comedy touch like the Acme Quick Service brothers. Instead, it had let him face Anna Bryant with a direct answer and no private hesitations. “Let me send him here. You can tell him what you told me—and anything else you remember.”
“There is a lot to remember,” she said slowly. “A lot to tell.”
I bet there is, he thought. “You just put all the responsibility on to his shoulders. He can take it.”
Her confidence grew. “An hour ago, everything seemed hopeless. I didn’t get much sleep last night, of course. I was trying to puzzle out where Johann could have hidden the box, but all I could do was guess. And feel more bitter, more helpless.”
“You’ll have help now.” He picked up Lynn’s coat along with his briefcase. “I’ll get my friend around here at once. Say half an hour?”
“That will give me time to get my thoughts straight, tell him everything as quickly as possible. What is his name?”
“Cliff.”
“What does he look like? I have to be sure.”
“I’ll come back here just long enough to introduce him. Then I’ll leave you two alone. Okay?”
“But aren’t you going to see Johann along with me?”
The telephone rang.
“Cliff will do that. Better than I can.” He hesitated, made a guess about Johann. “Money may be involved now,” he added tactfully. “I couldn’t handle that at all, frankly.”
“It wasn’t money Dick wanted.” She was moving toward the shop where the telephone had given its second ring.
“Lynn will answer it. She speaks excellent German. That’s why Newhart sent her to take charge in Zürich until he finds a replacement for Yates.”
The phone stopped ringing. “She puzzles me,” Anna said, speaking low, as if Lynn were within earshot. “Doesn’t her husband object to her travelling abroad like this?” She had tried to make her voice light, keep any censure out of it. I’ll never understand American women, she was thinking. Will my daughter be as casual as Mrs. Conway?
“Her husband was killed about six years ago—in an accident.”
“Oh,” Anna said slowly. She turned away, entered the corridor that led into the shop. She paused again, faced him. “Did I tell you about Werner Dietrich?”
“He’s in hospital,” Mathison said patiently. God, he thought, how long will it take me to reach Charles Nield?
“He is dying. No hope. He had an accident early this morning. Such a stupid, silly accident. His back was broken; concussion, too. Everyone thinks he really did slip and fall on the stairs outside his office. But he was the only person who could identify Elisabetha Lang.”
“Lang? Elissa Lang?”
“Elisabetha. Last Monday night he saw her running away from this house. He was at the corner—”
“I remember him. He recognised the girl, all right. What does she look like?”
“Mrs. Bryant!” Lynn was calling.
“Coming!” he called back. “What does she look like?” he insisted.
“About Mrs. Conway’s height. The same kind of figure, the same kind of clothes. Dark hair, dark-grey eyes. She is very attractive.”
“Didn’t Dietrich report he had seen her?”
“Yes, but the police have done nothing.”
Then it wasn’t the police to whom he sent his report, thought Mathison.
He didn’t even try to disillusion her that the photographs had ever reached Yates. He had a new problem. “So you discussed Lang with Dietrich, and with Zauner? Who else knows?”
“Only you.”
“Not Johann?”
“How could I tell him? He brought her here in the first place.” She began hurrying towards the shop. “Elisabetha Lang was one of his girls,” she added over her shoulder.
Lynn was saying into the receiver, “Now that’s all right, Trudi. Here is Mrs. Bryant to speak with you. She will tell you I’m a friend... No, no, I understand. Please don’t get upset about that.” She handed, the receiver to Anna Bryant, covering its mouthpiece as she told her quickly, “Trudi Seidl. She thought I was you, and tried to pour out her troubles. Now she is in a fluster about me and what I’ll think.” She retreated to Bill Mathison.
“Troubles?” he asked.
“Johann didn’t go to see her last night. And he isn’t at his place. She’s phoning from there.”