Background to Danger (3 page)

Kenton had travelled on Continental trains long enough to regard anyone who wanted a window open, even the merest fraction, with some suspicion. The author of this window-opening outrage was small and very dark. His
face was narrow and he had the kind of jowl that should be shaved twice a day, but isn’t. He wore a dirty starched collar with a huge grey-flowered tie and a crumpled dark-striped suit. On his knees rested a limp American cloth attaché-case from which he was extracting paper bags containing sausage and bread. A bottle of Vichy water stood propped against the back of the seat beside him.

His eyes, dark brown and lustrous, met Kenton’s. He waved a piece of sausage at the open window.

“Please?”

Kenton nodded. The other filled his mouth with sausage.

“Good. I prefer to travel
à l’anglaise.”

He munched. A thought seemed to strike him. He indicated the attaché-case.

“Please, you will accept some sausage?”

The automatic refusal that rose to Kenton’s lips died there. He was hungry.

“It’s very good of you. Thank you.”

He was passed a piece of sausage and a hunk of bread. The sausage was impregnated with garlic and he enjoyed it. His companion plied him with more. Kenton accepted it gratefully. The brown-eyed man crammed some bread into his mouth, saturated it with a draught of Vichy, and began to talk about his stomach.

“Doctors are fools. You would not think to look at me, to see me eating with you now, that two years ago the doctors told me that I must have an operation for ulcers of the duodenum. It is true. I have a stomach of iron”—he thumped it to prove the point and gurgitated violently—“but it is thanks to no doctors. I tell you they are fools. They wish only to put you to the knife, to cut and probe and pry. But I said no. No prying and probing into me, my friends; I have a better way. They ask me what it is, but I laugh. I am not one to be tricked into telling such things to prying doctors. But you are no doctor and I will
tell you.
Pasta
is the secret. Nothing but
pasta
. I ate nothing but
pasta
for six months and I am cured. I am no prying Italian, but I tell you
pasta
is good for the stomach.
Maccheroni, fettucine, tagliatelle, spaghetti
, they are all the same; all are
pasta
and all good for the stomach.”

He continued in praise of flour and water, and Kenton’s face must have revealed his wandering attention, for the owner of the iron stomach broke off suddenly and announced that he would sleep.

“Please to wake me,” he added, “when we approach the frontier.”

He took off his hat, replaced it with a copy of the
Völkischer Beobachter
to protect his head from the smuts and, curling up on the seat, seemed to go to sleep. Kenton went outside to smoke.

It was ten-thirty by his watch and he estimated that another hour should see him at Passau. As he crushed out his cigarette he noticed that he was no longer alone in the corridor. A few compartments down a man was leaning on the rail, gazing out at the distant lights of a Bavarian village. Kenton had the impression that the man had that second turned his head and had been watching him. Then the man started walking towards him. Kenton noticed that he glanced in each compartment as he passed it and that he had small dull eyes set like pebbles in a puffy, unwholesome-looking face. As he came up, Kenton flattened himself against the window to allow the other to pass, but the man did not do so. Glancing behind him, Kenton saw that he was gazing into the compartment at his sleeping fellow traveller. Then, with a muttered
“Verzeihung”
, he walked back and disappeared into the next coach. Kenton dismissed him from his mind and returned to the compartment.

The newspaper had slipped from the little man’s head. His eyes were closed. He looked sound asleep. But as Kenton passed him he saw that the man’s forehead was
shining with sweat.

Kenton sat and watched him for a bit, then he saw the brown eyes open slowly and flicker towards him.

“Has he gone?”

“Who?” said Kenton.

“He—the man in the corridor.”

“Yes.”

The other sat up and, after fumbling in his pocket, brought out a large and dirty handkerchief. He wiped his forehead and the palms of his hands. Then he looked at Kenton.

“You are, perhaps, an American?”

“No, English.”

“Ah, yes. You will understand—it was not your speech but your clothes that made me think.…”

His voice trailed off into inaudibility. Suddenly he leapt to the switch and plunged the compartment into darkness. Kenton, not quite sure what was happening, stayed in his corner. If he were sharing a compartment with a madman, a negative attitude was probably safer. The next moment his blood froze as he felt the man sit on the seat beside him. He could hear him breathing heavily.

“Please do not be alarmed,
mein Herr.”

The voice was strained, as if its owner had been running. Then he began to speak, slowly at first, then quickly and breathlessly.

“I am a German,” he began.

Kenton said “Yes,” but disbelieved him. He had been trying to place the man’s accent.

“I am a German, a Jew. My father was a Gentile, but my mother was a Jewess. Because of her I am persecuted and robbed. You do not know what it is to be a German with a Jewess for a mother. They have ruined my business. I am a metallurgist. You say perhaps this man does not look like a metallurgist, but you are wrong. I am a metallurgist.
I have worked at Essen and at Düsseldorf in the foundries. I had my own business, my own factory—small, you understand; but you are English and will know that it is the small factory that is sometimes good. Now that is over. I have a little money. I wish to leave the country of my father and my Jewess mother and start again a small business. I wish to take my money, but these Nazi brutes say no. It is forbidden that I take my own money where I wish. I think perhaps I take it secretly by a quiet way across the frontier. All goes well. I meet a good English friend, we eat together, we hold conversation as gentlemen. Then I see this Nazi spy and he sees me. Now I know. They will search me at the frontier, strip me, send me to a concentration camp, where I shall be whipped. You saw this spy. He stopped and looked at me. You saw? He recognised me. I saw it in his face. In my pocket here I have ten thousand marks in good German securities—all I have in the world. Unless you will consent to help me they will take them from me at Passau.”

He paused and Kenton could see that he was wiping his forehead again.

The man was lying; of that he had no doubt. Metallurgist and Jew he might be. German he certainly was not. For one thing, his German was not as good as Kenton’s own; for another, any German business man would know that, as at that time all German bonds were “blocked” and not negotiable abroad, the only way to get money out of Germany was in hard cash. Again, there was the story of the Nazi spy. From what he knew of the Nazis, Kenton could not imagine them taking the trouble to send spies to peep at non-Aryan metallurgists in third-class compartments. If they had wanted the man, he would not have been allowed to board the train at Ratisbon. All the same, the whole thing was a little puzzling. The man in the corridor had certainly behaved oddly, and Brown-Eye’s fright was obviously linked in some way with his appearance.
Kenton began to scent a story of some sort.

“I don’t see how I can help you,” he said.

The other leant towards him. Kenton could feel his breath on his cheek.

“You could take my securities past the frontier for me.”

“And if I, too, am searched?”

“You are an Englishman. They would not dare. There is no risk. It is a little thing for you.”

Kenton was not so sure about that, but let it pass.

“I am afraid I cannot take the responsibility.”

“But I will pay you,
mein Herr
 …” He stopped, rummaged quickly in his pocket and drew Kenton into the light from the corridor. He had a wallet in his hand. “Look!… I will pay you one, two, three hundred marks to take my securities out of Germany for me.”

At that moment Kenton ceased for a time to be an impartial recorder of events and became a participator. Three hundred marks! A hundred owing to the Havas man left two hundred. Two hundred! Enough to get back to Berlin with plenty to spare. Brown-Eyes might be anything but what he claimed, and he, Kenton, might be heading straight for a German prison, but it was worth the risk—for three hundred marks.

He hedged a little at first and allowed the man to press and finally persuade him. Tears of emotion oozed from the brown eyes as he handed Kenton one hundred and fifty marks in advance. The balance was to be paid when the securities were handed back. They were, their owner hastened to explain, in his name, Herman Sachs, and of no value to anyone else.

“Mein Herr,”
he went on, laying his hand on Kenton’s arm, “I am trusting you with my poor savings. You will not betray me?”

His lustrous brown eyes were infinitely sad and appealing, but his fingers gripped with surprising force.

Kenton protested his good faith, Herr Sachs’s grip relaxed, and with a cautious glance at the corridor, he handed over a long, bulging envelope. Kenton could feel a bundle of stiff papers rolled up inside it. He put the envelope in his pocket.

Sachs drew a deep breath and relapsed into his seat exhaling loudly.

Kenton found his exhibition of relief a trifle disconcerting. With a growing dislike of the man he could not quite explain, he watched Sachs light a short black cigar and open a large and battered composition suitcase. He seemed to have forgotten Kenton’s existence.

From where Kenton sat he could see into the suitcase. It was stuffed to bursting-point with soiled linen. But Sachs seemed to know his way about it. He dived straight into one corner of the case. When his hand reappeared it held a heavy-calibre automatic. He slipped it easily into a holster under his left arm.

There was, thought Kenton, more to Herr Sachs than met the eye.

They went through the customs formalities separately.

Sachs hurried off first. Kenton, with a hollow feeling in the region of the solar plexus, the envelope lodged down his right sock and his German banknotes tucked in his left shoe, followed at a discreet distance.

Waiting his turn at the German “control,” Kenton saw Sachs passed through with only the usual currency interrogation. The “German” was neither searched nor detained. Kenton gave himself full marks for prophecy as he saw his doubts of Sachs’s story confirmed. He also caught a glimpse of the “Nazi spy” crossing a lighted yard on his way to the Austrian customs.

His own examination was casual enough, but he was profoundly relieved when it was over. Returning to the train, he found an anxious Sachs.

“Ah, here you are. You have it safely? Good. No, no, no, please!” as Kenton produced the envelope. “Please put it away. It is not yet safe. Put it in your pocket.” He glanced furtively towards the corridor. “He is on the train, the spy. There is still danger.”

At that Kenton lost his temper. He was cold, depressed and disliking Herr Sachs and his affairs intensely. His ordeal at the customs had unnerved him; he found this talk of spies and danger offensively melodramatic. Moreover, he had decided that the securities consisted of either (
a
) drugs, (
b
) stolen bearer bonds, (
c
) a report on white slave traffic possibilities in Westphalia, or (
d
) something else equally incriminating. Furthermore, he mistrusted Sachs. Whatever dingy game the man was up to, he, Kenton, was not going to be involved any longer.

“I’m afraid,” he said, “that I must ask you to take your securities back. I contracted to bring them across the frontier. I have done so. And now, I think, you owe me one hundred and fifty marks.”

Sachs did not speak for a moment. His brown eyes had become slightly opaque. Then he leant forward and touched the journalist on the knee.

“Herr Kenton,” he said quickly, “please put that envelope back in your pocket. I will increase my offer. Another three hundred marks if you will take my securities on to the Hotel Josef at Linz.”

Kenton had opened his mouth to refuse. Then that same streak of recklessness that had already proved so expensive that day asserted itself again. Six hundred marks! Well, he might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.

“All right,” he said.

But even as he spoke the words, he knew that all was not right, and that this time his weakness had led him into danger.

T
HE
offices of the firm of
Kiessling und Pieper Maschinen G.m.b.H. Zürich
are difficult to find. They are reached by walking along a narrow passage leading off a quiet street near Zürich station, unlocking a battered but very sturdy door, and climbing five flights of bare wooden stairs. At the top of these stairs is another door with the name of the firm painted upon it. An arrow points to a bell marked
“Bitte schellen”
, “Please ring”, but this does not work. There is another bell which does work, but that is operated by inserting a key in the lock, and few know about it. The firm of Kiessling and Pieper does not encourage business.

Although the firm still retains its original name, Kiessling and Pieper themselves have long since severed their connection with it. Herr Kiessling died in 1910, Herr Pieper in 1924. The firm has not prospered since: chiefly because its subsequent proprietors have always had more important business on their hands than the disposal for profit of vertical borers, milling machines and turret lathes. Drab brown photographs of such things still decorate the office walls; but they remain as the firm’s sole surviving connection with the trade it professes.

One afternoon in late November the proprietor of Kiessling and Pieper sat at his desk staring thoughtfully at one of those brown photographs. It portrayed an all-geared head, straight bed S.S. and S.C. lathe by Schutte and Eberhardt, but Andreas Prokovitch Zaleshoff did not know that.