The Adventures of Hiram Holliday (12 page)

Lost in his thoughts, Hiram heard his name called over the noise of the lobby and looked up from his beer to see Wallace Reck threading his way through the tables. Reck was the Prague correspondent for the
Sentinel,
a thin, preoccupied man who worked eighteen hours a day in a messy hotel room littered with newspapers and reports, and who was eternally telephoning. He had been far too busy to do more than acknowledge Hiram's presence civilly. Hiram had understood and had stayed away from him.

He waved a hand and said: 'Hi! How you getting on ? Sorry I haven't been able to be around with you more. There's been some sort of a row on the Hungarian border. I had a wire from Beauheld. Said he'd think up something for you to do shortly. Pretty soft.'

Hiram grinned and waved to a chair.' Got time for a beer ?'

'One,' said Reck, and slid into the seat. 'I've got to meet a guy in ten minutes. What do you think of our little town ?'

'Dead,' said Hiram. 'Up here, I mean. Or here,' and pointed first to his head and then to his heart.
'A
guy came into our office once. He had been in the death-house up the river for six weeks and then been pardoned. The other guy confessed. He was alive, but he was still dead, if you know what I mean.

The eyes
...
and his gait. He wasn't walking free yet. It's like that.'

'Mrnrnmm. Yeah, and a lot worse,' Reck said. 'It's as though the day after the guy was freed they grabbed him again and gave him a life sentence. The people, many of 'em don't realize it yet, but the worst is yet to come. The Gestapo has moved in already. All the under-cover guys are coming up out of their holes. See that guy over there?' He indicated a slight, wispy-looking man sitting at a table with two others. 'He was around here with us before Munich. Working for some Belgian paper. He seemed like a nice guy and used to join us at the
Stammtisch
at midnight when we'd gather to have some beer. He disappeared while the row was on. We just thought he'd got scared and beat it. He's back now with the other two. They're all Nazis and Gestapo men. You never know who is who in this town any more, so you just don't trust anyone.'

Hiram thought suddenly of the Man with the False Beard, and it was on the tip of his tongue to tell Reck about it, but he checked the impulse because he was shy. Instead he said: 'I never felt so much
...
so much despair in a
city....'

Reck grunted. 'Despair
...'
he repeated. 'These people were resigned to die for their freedom and they wouldn't even let them do that. Now they're in for it. Not immediately, but it's coming, the beatings and the kidnappings and blackmailing, and the concentration camps and the persecutions, and worst of all the loss of their liberty. Their pals, France and England, abandoned them to
that.'

Hiram's nostrils expanded.... 'God,' he said. 'To have seen that happen. To get it on
paper....'

Reck moved irritably. 'You don't see it happen, you
feel
it happen. And you can't write what you don't see. The tunnelling and spying was bad enough before Munich, it's ten times worse now because they've got a free hand. Hitler's going to move in and take over sure as you're sitting there. There's a lot of damned good Czech patriots still, but what can
they
do ? They're all on the list. The nation and the Government is still intact, but they know what's coming, what's in store for them. They go on as before, but their heart
s are dead. Like your pardoned guy

' He looked at his watch suddenly.

'Oh, nuts. When I start to talk shop I lose track of time. Got to beat it. Thanks for the beer. See you later, maybe.'

He arose and left, but at the door paused suddenly and came back. 'Say,' he said, 'just thought of it. Would you like to come to a party a little later ? Be a hell of a good gang there. You know, diplomats, Government officials. . . . I've got to talk to a guy who's going to be there.'

Hiram said: 'Thanks,
Reck....
I don'
t like to bother you. I
guess I'll have another bee
r and turn in.' He did not want
particularly to see people. Now,
more than ever, after his talk
with Reck, he wanted to kee
p his rendezvous with Heidi, to
walk those dark, mysterious streets, past the heavy, iron-
bound doors and barred windo
ws behind which seethed the in
trigues of a dying nation
, to be at hand when and if she
called
.

'Sure,' said Reck. 'Suit yourself. I thought you might like to meet some of those people. They'll be mostly from the legations. Good to know if you're planning to do any work here. Come over if you change your mind. I'll be there from nine-thirty on. The address is the Wilson House, Podebradova, Number Thirty-five. It's one of those new modern apartment houses. Any cab-driver know
s where it is. The name is Scho
enau, third floor. Ask for me when you get there. Hope you change your mind.' He smiled and left.

When he had gone, Hiram sat thinking for a long time. He realized that the few minutes with Reck had been good for him because he had been lonely in Prague and also that it was important for him to make all the contacts possible. He knew he should have agreed to go to the party.

But Hiram had fallen into a strange mental and romantic trap. There were moments when he caught himself wondering whether there was not something faintly comic in the figure of a man close to middle age in mackintosh and umbrella questing the streets of a strange city for an Austrian Princess in exile. But stronger still was the fear
that if he relaxed his search,
sometime, somewhere in Prague the call from
Heidi would come, and he would not be
there to answer it. It was as though the time he had already put in called upon him to do more, seek further. He remembered what a famous and successful reporter had once told him about his methods. He had said: 'The trick is to keep moving. Pile up action. Nobody ever got a story sitting on his tail in a hotel lobby. If you keep moving about from contact to contact and from source to source you've got a better than even chance, math
ematically, of being around when
something comes off.'

Hiram sighed and looked at his watch. It was nine-thirty. He signed for his beer and got up. It wouldn't hurt to go for a walk before going to bed, to prowl a little - perhaps down to the old Ghetto section. Many eyes followed him as he went out through the revolving door. It was still misting heavily.

How Hiram Holliday Sought the Man with the False Beard and Found the Princess

Hiram stood on the pavement in the cool, damp air, for a moment, undecided. He heard the door revolve again behind him with the quick 'plock-plock' of someone in a great hurry, and when he turned to look out of idle curiosity, he saw that it was the Man with the False Beard. He was carrying a sort of briefcase under one arm, and wearing a long, dark overcoat. He hurried across the walk to the taxi rank at the kerb, and Hiram heard him give an address in Czech. But two words of it he understood. They were 'Wilson,' or rather 'Veelson,' and 'Podebradova.' It was the address that Reck had given him. 'Oh, oh,' said Holliday to himself. 'That's funny. Or is
it?'
His mind flashed back to what Reck had
said:'
...
important people
...
mostly from the legations
...
you never know who is in this
town....'
And it
was
a false beard. He was sure of it. The wind had snatched it for a moment, and Hiram had fancied almost that he had caught sight of the chin beneath it, though of course in the dark this was not possible. But he made up his mind instantly, a mind
that was still crammed with the
memories of those fantastic happenings in London and Paris. He entered the next cab in line and said: 'Wilson House, Podebradova thirty-five,' to the driver. He was not more than a block or two behind the Man with the False Beard. And there was a curious beating excitement in his breast.

The Wilson House was one of the modern type apartment houses that had been going up in the newer section of Prague, a six-storey, flat-roofed building, in cream, steel and red with what seemed to be almost a solid front of large casement windows. There were some two dozen cars parked in the street outside. Holliday paid his driver, went in through the heavy glass door and found himself in a lobby that still smelled of fresh cement. On the right there was a panel of post boxes with name-plates on them. Further on, the lobby widened into a large central well with two staircases and two self-operating lifts, a larger one in front and a smaller one in back. The rear staircase and lift were obviously for service. Near the name-panel was a glass door and the sign '
concierge'
above it. Holliday merely glanced through it long enough to see that the concierge was sitting with his back to the door, reading a newspaper and drinking beer, when his attention was caught by two figures ahead of him. One was the Man with the False Beard, and the other was a woman. They had their heads together and were talking earnestly in Czech, the woman with her lips close to the man's ear. They were moving away from him. In the glimpse Hiram caught of her, he saw that she had thick, almost greasy, black hair
and a small mouth that had been
painted into a startling crimson bow. Her face too was heavily rouged and her eyes, dark and protruding, "were heavily shadowed, and the lashes thickly laden with mascara. The pair passed on into the .lift, closed the door, pushed a button and ascended smoothly from sight. After a pause he heard the humming of the machinery stop, but had no way of telling at what floor it had paused. It did not start up again.

' Oh, well,' Hiram said to himself,' I guess that is that.' He consulted the name panel and found 'Von Schoenau,' and the apartment number,
'3A.'
He pushed the button to recall the lift, entered it, went to the third floor where he found himself on a corridor that made a square around the central well that housed the two lifts and staircases. To the left and in the corner was a door with
'3A'
on it in bright steel numbers, and from behind it came the crashing chatter of conversation and noise of glassware and dishes, and isolated patches of laughter that indicate a party. He rang the bell.

A maid opened the door, and the talk and noise and laughter leaped at him in a crescendo. He said to the maid: 'Is Mr Reck here? Will you please tell him that Mr Holliday has come?'

'Ah, j
a, Herr Reck,' said the maid. 'One moment, please, I will get him.'

She returned with the lean correspondent, who was frankly glad to see Hiram. 'Hello,' he said. 'Changed your mind. Fine. I was hoping you would. Come along, I'll introduce you to your hostess.'

Hiram saw that he was in a small vestibule that from one door which was ajar led down a hall from which opened rooms, and guessed that the apartment was laid out in the American style. The other door led into a huge drawing-room that was full of noise, and smoke and people, most of them in dinner-clothes or full dress, and who overflowed into a large dining-room that connected with the
salon.
He caught no more than glimpses, impressions of people, lovely women, decorations, a uniform or two as he threaded his way through the crush, closely following Reck towards a group occupying and standing about a settee near the broad casement windows in the corner.

He heard Reck say: 'Princess von Furstenhof, may I present my friend Hiram Holliday....'

And then he found himself in front of Heidi, Heidi who was sitting on the low divan and who now held her hand out to him and said: 'Hiram, my dear friend. How glad I am to see you again.'

'Hah!' said Reck. 'You've already
met...
There she was. She wore a simple white evening dress, and at her waist was a bunch of violets, the colour of her eyes, and her pale hair was piled high on her head. Her hand was cool and smooth, and she was surrounded by friends. And once she had slept in a railway carriage with her face pressed against his shoulder. The windmills of Don Quixote were turning in his head.

'In London,' Heidi was saying coolly, and volunteered no more upon the subject, except to say: 'We are old friends,' and then: 'Hiram, may I present Count d'Aquila, my fiance" -Hiram Holliday
...
and Captain Ovenecka, and Dr Virslany....'

The windmills were whirling faster and rocking his world with the flapping of their arms. Absurdly a sentence rang through his head, a sentence he had heard spoken by a teacher of literature in school, he even for a moment saw the man plainly in every detail standing on the .podium, and saying:
'
...
Cervantes's story of Don Quixote delivered the
coup de gra
ce
to the already dying chivalry of Europe, and reduced it to absurdity....' And so this was the end, too, of a fool's romantic quest for a Princess held in durance vile.