Judgment on Deltchev (20 page)

‘Perhaps you would prefer your daughter to explain,’ I said.

She looked at her handkerchief. ‘My daughter is not here.’

I was silent.

She looked at me. ‘I am speaking the truth, Herr Foster.’

‘I understood that everyone here was under house arrest.’

‘My daughter is not here. She has gone.’

‘Do you mean that the police took her away?’

‘No. She escaped.’

‘How? What about the guards?’

‘Katerina has lived in this house all her life, Herr Foster. There are other ways of leaving it than by the gates.’

I hesitated. ‘A few minutes ago, madame, I asked you if you had heard of Pazar before. You said that you had not. Do you still say that?’

‘Yes. It is the truth.’

‘But others in this house do know him?’

‘I do not.’

‘Do you know where your daughter has gone?’

‘No.’

‘When did she go?’

‘This evening.’

‘Can you think of any reason why she should go?’

‘Herr Foster, I am very tired.’

I waited a moment or two, but she did not look up again. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I think I might have been of help to you.’

‘I have told you all I can.’

‘You have told me all you think it advisable for me to know, madame.’

‘Good night, Herr Foster.’ She pressed the bell-push.

I said good night and picked up my hat, but as I got to the door she spoke again.

‘Herr Foster.’

I stopped.

‘My daughter’s letter. Will you give it to me, please?’

‘It is burned.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure.’

She hesitated. ‘Forgive me, but do you know what was in it?’

‘I did not open it. In any case I cannot read your language.’

She came a little way across the room toward me. ‘Herr Foster,’ she said, ‘I have not been helpful to you, but I would not like you to think that I am ungrateful for your kindness and patience. I do most sincerely thank you.’

I bowed. I could not think of anything coherent to say which would not have deepened my embarrassment. The
sound of Rana’s sandals flapping along the passage outside came like the answer to a prayer.

‘Good night, madame,’ I said, and got out of the room as quickly as I could. It did not occur to me until I was walking down the stairs that my twinges of guilt were unnecessary. Beside the monumental evasions to which I had been listening for the past half-hour my own reticences were trivial.

It was very dark outside the house. The old woman had no lamp to guide us and I blundered rather than walked after her across the courtyard. The fact contributed somehow to the feelings of inadequacy, futility, and blank exasperation which were beginning to grow in me.

I stubbed my foot against the edge of a flagstone and said, ‘Damn!’ violently. The old woman opened the door in the wall and the flashlight from outside shone in my face. I scowled at it and hauled out my wallet as the door closed behind me. The light left my face and I saw the Corporal.

‘
Passieren, vorwärts!
’ he snapped, and waved me on peremptorily.

‘Don’t you want to see my permit, you fool?’ I enquired in English.

‘
Passieren, passieren!
’ he repeated, and waved me on again.

‘Grinning lout,’ I said with a smile to the Private.

He nodded, grinning, and saluted.

I walked away. The Corporal was not troubling to examine my permit any more. The Corporal had decided that I was harmless. The Corporal was absolutely right. Tomorrow, I decided, I would send a cable to the man who was paying me, tell him that he was wasting his money and my time, then take the first plane I could get out of
the place. It was high time I stopped this foolishness and got back to work again. Not, I thought savagely, that the trip had been a complete loss. I had increased my knowledge of Napoleon the Third. I had also had two interesting experiences: that of finding a dead body in a strange house, and that of being locked in a room in another strange house. In the unlikely event of my ever wanting to write the kind of play in which incidents like that occurred, the knowledge would be useful. Meanwhile, to hell with it!

I turned into the Boulevard Dragutin.

It ran in a gentle curve round the high boundary wall of the Presidential Park. It was a wide road, lined with big plane trees and cobbled. Most of the buildings in it were apartment houses; there were no shops or cafés. The lights were on tall standards set among the trees on the building side of the road. I walked on the other side. Beneath the dense foliage of the trees it was very dark.

I walked slowly. The air was pleasant and after a while something happened to make me forget my immediate troubles. Before I had left London I had been trying to write the third act of a new play and had got into difficulties with it. Indeed, I had practically made up my mind to scrap the whole thing. The commission to report the Deltchev trial had come at an opportune moment; it had given me a reason for suspending work on the play that left the real reasons for doing so in abeyance. But now, quite suddenly, I found myself thinking about the play again and seeing quite clearly the point of the problem that I had missed before. The shape of a third act began to emerge. Of course! The wife’s lover wasn’t her own choice, but her husband’s, and it was her realization of this fact that made it possible for her to leave him. Of course! It
was the key to her whole attitude toward her lover. He was not
her
choice. Of course! How curious it was I had practically sign-posted the thing all the way through without realizing the fact. Why? My mind nosed round the discovery suspiciously like a terrier at a strange lamp-post. There must be a mistake. But no, it was all right. I had been too close to it before and too anxious. Now all was well. I drew a deep breath. Forgotten were the Deltchevs and the enigma they represented. I had just finished a play. I felt light-hearted and alive. I quickened my pace.

Then I heard it. It was only a slight sound and it went almost immediately; a sort of ringing of my footsteps on the paving stones. But I was very much aware of everything at that moment; of the soft, warm breeze that was beginning to stir the air, of the smell of the trees, and of the slow movement of a distant point of light. At this moment of heightened sensibility the ringing of my footsteps was a matter for appreciation and curiosity. The pavement was solid enough. Where did the rest of the sound come from? I slowed down a little and heard it again, a kind of echo. From the wall? I stepped out again, but in a more emphatic way this time. Then I understood. It was not an echo I was hearing. Someone was walking behind me.

It is easy to separate sounds once you know they are there. As I walked on, I could hear the other set of footsteps quite plainly. I slowed down again. The sounds separated and then again they coincided. Even then it took me a moment or two to grasp what was happening. The person behind me was varying his pace with mine. He did not want to change the distance between us. I was being followed.

My heart suddenly beat faster. I looked round. I could
just see him, a faint thickening of the shadows under the trees about thirty yards behind me. I walked on, fighting down a desire to run. Perhaps I was imagining it all, like a neurotic spinster with fantasies of being raped. But no; the foosteps kept pace with mine. Wild ideas of turning quickly and challenging the follower went through my mind, but I kept on walking for a bit. The calves of my legs began to ache. Then, suddenly, I turned and crossed the road to the lighted side. Out of the corner of my left eye I tried to see if he was crossing too. I could hear his footsteps. They had slowed down. He wasn’t going to cross. He was going to stay among the shadows. For a moment or two a feeling of relief flooded over me. It was not until I was nearly to the pavement that I realized why he had not crossed. A hundred yards or so ahead there was a stretch of road with no buildings and no lights. I remembered walking along it earlier. He was going to cross there.

I reached the pavement and hesitated. Then I bent down and pretended to tie my shoelace. I wanted time to think. If I went back the way I had come, I could stay in the lights. I remembered also that I had seen two policemen yawning and spitting on a corner. But what was I to do then? Explain to them? But there was nothing to explain. The only thing was to wait about like a frightened child until someone else came along with whom I could walk in company through the dark. Ridiculous! What was there to be afraid of? Someone was following me. Very well. Let him follow. What did it matter? There was nothing to be afraid of in that. Nothing at all.

I stood up again and walked on stiffly toward the darkness.

It lay at the end of the lighted strip of pavement like the black mouth of a tunnel. The building I had to pass before I reached it was a huge baroque mansion that, judging from the lighted windows, had been converted into flats. I looked across the road. I could see him moving along under the trees now, a little behind me but at the same speed. The darkness came nearer and I began to see a short way into it. The footpath ran on between a stone wall and the trees, but the surface of it changed from stone pavement to dust. At the end of the pavement I paused. The leaves above stirred faintly; there was a radio playing somewhere and the breathing sounds of distant traffic, but that was in the background; the darkness before me was quiet and still. The gritty dust crunched beneath my feet, and the branches seemed to close in as I walked on again. I had gone about thirty paces when I heard the sound of an approaching car. It passed, going in the opposite direction. Then, as the sound died away, I heard footsteps on the road; the man from the shadows was crossing it behind me. I went on faster, stumbling slightly over the swellings in the path made by tree roots. My heart was beating sickeningly now and I could feel the cold sweat stealing down my body. I fought against the desire to run. It was absurd, I told myself. I had been in situations fifty times more dangerous. Here there were no mines or alarm wires to tread on, no machine guns or mortars waiting to open fire. All I had to do was to walk along a path beneath some trees in a badly lighted city street, followed by someone who might or might not be ill-intentioned. He might be a detective, one of Brankovitch’s men instructed to report on my movements. Petlarov had been warned off me by the police. They might now be checking to see if I
had any other contacts. Indeed, the man could have been following me about for days without my having noticed the fact. Yes, that must be it. I almost chuckled with relief and slowed down, listening for the footsteps behind me. But there were none. Perhaps they were muffled by the dust. Perhaps –

I stopped dead. Something had moved in front of me.

I stood quite still for a moment, trying to control the thudding of the blood in my head so that I could hear. Something had moved – a shadow, something. I took a step forward and my foot grated on a pebble. The next instant there was a blinding flash of light.

It came from a powerful hand-lamp a few yards in front of me and lasted for less than a second. And that, too, was the time I took to react. As the light went out I fell sideways, sprawling at the foot of a tree.

I only heard the first shot, a thudding crack that made my ears sing; but the next two I saw – yellow blots of flames that seemed to be exploding in my face as I rolled over and clawed for cover behind the tree. Then there was a silence.

I was gasping for breath as if I had been held under water, but my brain was working all right. He had missed me three times and then lost track of me. He would have to risk another flash from the lamp to locate me again, and it would be a risk; he could not be sure that I was unarmed. In any case, I was prepared now, and unless he was a first-rate shot or very lucky he had not much of a chance. For the moment I had forgotten the man behind me.

Five seconds went by. I was slowly straightening up and easing round away from the tree when the light flashed on again. It was not directly on me, and in the fraction of a
second it took him to realize that, I had begun to move. I was halfway toward the next tree when he fired. The bullet whipped past my head. I reached the tree and swung round it as if to take cover again, but immediately scrambled on to the next one. The shot he fired at that moment was yards wide. But he had learned one thing; I was not going to fire back. The lamp shone out again, and this time it stayed on. He did not fire. He moved forward. He was going to make sure of it this time. Bent double, I scuttled on again. I saw my shadow twist among the long casts of the trees as the light swung round. Then, as I pulled up against the next tree, a different pistol fired.

The bullet tore through the bark an inch or two from my right eye, and a splinter of wood stung my cheek. I dived for the ground again. The other gun, I thought, had been a .38, but this had a heavier sound. I could see how it was. If I had not crossed the road, the man behind me would have shot me in the back. The second man had been there to make sure I did not get away. Probably he had crossed ahead of me while I was still in the lighted section.

I was out of the light for a moment now, but both pistols fired again and the bullet from one of them ricocheted off the road. They were getting worried. Nearly half a minute had gone by since the first shot, and I could hear shouting in the distance. The lighted stretch was only a hundred yards away now, but if I broke cover and made a dash for it, I would have to pass the heavy pistol with the other man’s light behind me. It would not do.

At that moment the man with the light began to run forward, yelling hoarsely. The heavy pistol fired again as I rolled sideways and found myself on the edge of the road.
I hesitated for only a split second. Then I scrambled to my feet and ran, swerving like a rabbit, for the trees on the other side of the road. They both fired, but by then I was a hopeless target for a pistol. I dived through the trees, came up against the boundary wall, and ran along it toward the lighted section.

I was safe now. I stopped to get my breath. There were people from the houses standing on the pavement opposite, talking and pointing toward the trees where the sound of the firing had come from. The two policemen I had passed farther back were approaching at a run. I was out of sight. My breath was beginning to come back, and with it my wits. I had not seen either of the attackers. I had no information about them to give. But even that would take a lot of explaining to the police, and they would certainly detain me while an interpreter was found and my story checked. If I could avoid the police altogether, I should do so. If, while they searched among the trees for the dead and wounded that were not there, I could make myself scarce, I would be saving them trouble. If, in fact, I now did what I should have done five minutes earlier – kept my head, walked back to a café, and there telephoned to the hotel for a car to fetch me – everyone would be much better off. I had begun to tremble violently. My ears were singing and felt deaf. I leaned against the Presidential Park wall fighting down a desire to vomit. Through the singing in my ears I could hear shouts from farther up the road. Then my head began to clear. Reaction or no reaction, if I was going to get away unobtrusively I would have to be quick about it. Keeping close to the wall, I started to walk.