Hard Case Crime: Passport To Peril (16 page)

The doctor let up on Orlovska every minute or so.

“Where is the envelope? What did you do with the envelope? Where is it?”

Orlovska shook her head.

“Did you find it in the railway car?” When she didn’t answer, he slapped her face.

“Did Colonel Lavrentiev find it in the railway car?”

She shook her head.

“Is it here? Did Stodder bring it here?”

“Oh, my God,” Orlovska said. I could hardly hear her voice.

“Was it on Strakhov’s body? Have the Russians got it?”

Schmidt slapped her again. Orlovska said, “No.”

“What did Stodder tell you about the envelope? What did he say? What did he tell you about it?”

But Orlovska was unconscious.

It was at that moment that I became aware of sound behind me, on the other side of the French window. Someone or something was walking on the wooden porch.

I thought my imagination was playing tricks on me. I’d taken terrific punishment.

I heard the sound again. It could have been a shutter creaking in the wind.

Hermann brought Orlovska around with the water treatment.

“Where is the envelope?” Schmidt said again. Why didn’t the bastard put it to music? “What did you do with the envelope?”

I was sure I heard the sound once more on the porch behind me. It was probably a dog seeking shelter from the snow.

“Did you visit the railroad car?”

I thought,
Here it comes.

Orlovska said yes.

“Did you go with Colonel Lavrentiev?” I held my breath.

Orlovska nodded her head.

I felt that someone was looking through the window in back of me. I thought my fevered imagination was running wild.

“When did you go with Lavrentiev?” Schmidt asked Orlovska.

“This evening,” she said in a barely audible voice. “Early in the evening.”

The doctor’s next question had to be “Where?” I listened but there was no sound from the porch behind me save the rustling of the wind.

“While the train was in the station?” the doctor said. “Answer me. While the train was in the Keleti station?” I figured he was trying to establish the time of her visit.

“No,” Orlovska said.

“Then you boarded the train in the yards?” He wanted to know whether she and the chief of the MVD had visited the train before or after I had gone with his two goons.

The countess shook her head.

“I see we shall have to employ more drastic treatment,” Schmidt said, “until you decide which it is. You tell me you boarded the train with Lavrentiev. You refuse to tell where or when.”

He picked up another instrument from the rug. It looked like an enormous pair of pliers, a machine to break bones. He held it in front of Orlovska and slapped her ashen face until she raised her head and opened her eyes.

“Jozsefvaros,” she said.

Schmidt slapped her again. “Fool. Passenger trains don’t stop at Jozsefvaros.”

Hermann, who’d been standing in the doorway at the other end of the room from me, interrupted.

“Excellenz, one moment.”

“What is it, Hermann?”

“Excellenz, I hear noise. There is someone outside, Excellenz.”

Hermann was right. There was someone outside. He picked that moment to send a bullet through one of the front windows, shattering the glass. The bullet buried itself in the ceiling.

The sound of voices speaking Russian came through the broken window.

Schmidt switched out the lights.

There was a second shot through the window. Hermann fired a burst from his tommy gun.

The voices grew louder, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I didn’t make much effort. Rescue by the Russians could only mean more trouble for me. It was fine for Orlovska who was sobbing hysterically. But, as far as I was concerned, there wasn’t much difference between Lavrentiev and Schmidt. At least I had felt sure that Schmidt would keep me alive until he found the Manila envelope. There would be no reason for the MVD to spare my life; Orlovska could tell them quickly where to find Blaye’s papers. If I lived even that long. I told you the doctor and Hermann had placed me in front of the window, which was in a direct line with the shattered front window. Sooner or later the Russians would probably send a bullet straight through that window.

Instead of burying itself in the ceiling, it would bury itself in me. Schmidt and Hermann, in any event, couldn’t hope to hold out for any length of time. The best they could do would be to take a few Russians with them. The latter couldn’t lose even if it meant destroying the building.

Schmidt shouted, “Hermann.”

“Hier, Excellenz.”

“They will try to come through this window. Move into the hallway. Shoot when they come through the window.”

“Ja wohl, Excellenz.”

Schmidt moved into the opposite corner. I saw his shadow cross the second window. I could still hear the Russian voices. I figured they were deciding a plan of attack.

The next bullet came through the window nearest the doctor. He didn’t fire in return. He’d apparently decided to wait until they stormed the place. He must have guessed the house was surrounded. I don’t think he had heard the sounds that I had heard from the back porch but he knew from the sounds of the voices outside that the Russians were there in strength.

The voices in front of the building became louder.

“Now,” Schmidt shouted to Hermann. “They will come now.”

There was another bullet through the window nearest Hermann. The redheaded German said, “That one was close, Excellenz.”

Either his trigger finger slipped or he thought he saw the Russians approaching the window because he fired another burst from the tommy gun.

The next thing I knew, someone clapped a huge hand over my mouth. I tried to yell, but the sound was drowned by the explosions from Hermann’s gun. My ropes were so tight I couldn’t struggle.

I felt myself lifted into the air, chair and all. My head whirled. I went through the French window which had opened behind me. I heard Orlovska scream.

I couldn’t see who was carrying me, someone of enormous strength.

I was carried the length of the porch and into the deep snow at the end.

There was a stand of pines a short way from the end of the house. We had almost reached the shelter of the trees when the shots came from the house.

I felt myself plunging into space. I landed with a sickening thud in the snow. I’d either been dropped so whoever was carrying me could fire back at the house or else he’d been hit.

There were answering shots but they came from somewhere off to the right.

The next thing I knew, my ropes had been cut and I rolled free of the heavy chair. Then someone picked me up with the fireman’s hold, and we moved again toward the shelter of the pines but slower and less steadily than before.

When we were well inside the woods, the man who had been carrying me set me on my feet. My legs gave way under me but he managed to prop me against a tree. It was darker than the inside of my pocket.

I expected to be left there. I thought he might be going back to the house for Orlovska or to get first aid for his wound; I was sure he’d been hit when he let me drop in the snow. But he stuck a cigarette in my mouth. I heard him mutter something and I figured he couldn’t find a match.

“I’ve got a match,” I said in Russian. It’s one of the first phrases in the book. “In my left pocket.” I couldn’t have held even a matchbox. Schmidt had ripped my hands.

I felt a hand in my pocket. Then I heard a match strike. It burst into flame. It lit my cigarette. I took a couple of deep puffs.

The hand drew back the lighted match. I saw the face of my rescuer, and the cigarette dropped from my lips into the snow.

I had expected to see a Russian soldier or a Hungarian gendarme. But the man standing next to me was neither. He was a tall, rawboned man with a wide smile.

It was Hiram Carr’s butler, Walter.

“Please be quiet, Mr. Stodder,” Walter said softly. “They may try to follow our tracks in the snow.” He put another cigarette in my mouth and lit it.

“But you’re hurt,” I said. “They must have hit you. You’ve got to have help.”

“I’m all right,” Walter said. “We’ll move in a few minutes. Those krauts must have given you a bad time, Mr. Stodder.” My boiled shirt was spattered with blood.

There were a dozen questions I wanted to ask. Where was Hiram Carr? How had Walter known the Russians would attack the house? How had he and Carr known where I was?

We stood in silence under the tree in the darkness for ten minutes or so. There was no sound from the direction of the house. Maybe Schmidt and Hermann had surrendered, but I thought it unlikely. Either the Russians had killed both the Germans or they had ceased fire to plan a new attack.

There was a road somewhere close behind us. We heard a car approach. I thought it was going to stop, that perhaps the Russians were bringing up more men. They could be looking for me. But the car passed without slowing, and then we heard its horn off in the distance.

“We’ll go now,” Walter said. “It isn’t far.”

He started to pick me up, but I told him I could walk. He hadn’t noticed my feet were bare and still bleeding. We had only about fifty feet to go to the road but it took us a long time to find our way around the trees in the inky darkness. I fell half a dozen times.

“You wait here, Mr. Stodder,” Walter said. “Everything’s all right. I’ll be back for you directly.” The first streaks of dawn were lightening the sky.

Someone whistled down the road, in the direction Walter had taken, the first few bars of “Dixie,” and in a few minutes a car appeared out of the morning mist.

When the car came abreast of where I was sitting, Walter hopped off the running board to help me in. Hiram, still in his pea jacket and coonskin cap, was behind the wheel. Teensy was beside him, still in her ski costume, the two bright spots of orange rouge gray in the morning light.

Teensy winced when she saw my hands and feet, but neither she nor her husband commented. There wasn’t any small talk. Hiram got right to the point.

“Where is the envelope? Did you find out from Orlovska?”

I noticed we were driving farther away from Budapest, toward the west. The wild idea entered my head that we were heading for Vienna, that this was the first step in leaving Hungary.

“Where are you going?” I said. “We’ve got to get back to Budapest. You promised me you’d help me find Maria. I’ve done what you asked. You can’t let me down.”

Hiram said quietly, “Nobody’s letting you down. We wouldn’t have been here if we were going to let you down. But the roadblock is still in back of us. We’d never get through it now. We’ll have to take another road back to Budapest. First we’ve got to get you and Walter to a doctor.”

“All right,” I said. “Yes, I know where the envelope is. It’s where I left it.”

I saw Hiram glance at Teensy as if he thought my mind was wandering as a result of Schmidt’s treatment. Walter must have told him what he’d seen through the window.

“That’s where it is,” I said. “Don’t worry, I’m not crazy. The Russians moved the car. They took it off the train and moved it to Jozsefvaros. They took it away after you two left the train at Keleti. We looked in the wrong cars, that’s all.”

“Did Orlovska tell you that?” Hiram asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Then the envelope isn’t there any more. If she knew it, Lavrentiev did, too.”

“No,” I said. “She knew the car was moved because she and Lavrentiev went through it at Jozsefvaros. But they didn’t know about the envelope. She told Schmidt about the car being moved, though, and he knew the envelope was there.”

I filled them in on what had happened after Walter left me near the Arizona.

“How did you know the Russians were going to attack the house?” I said.

“We didn’t,” Teensy said. Hiram laughed.

“How did you get there at the same time?”

“A little invention of this corny husband of mine,” Teensy said. She pinched his cheek, and he gurgled like a happy child.

“What invention?” I said. “What did an invention have to do with it?” I was beaten up and worn out and hardly in the mood for conundrums. “Walter got me out the back window because Schmidt and Hermann were busy with the Russians in front.”

Hiram giggled. I could have murdered him with pleasure at that point.

“That’s correct,” Teensy said, “only there weren’t any Russians.”

“I’m not crazy,” I said. “I heard them in front of the house.”

“Phonograph record,” Teensy said.

“What?”

“It worked, didn’t it?” Hiram said gleefully. “It fooled you and the Germans, didn’t it?”

“Phonograph record,” Teensy said. “Schmidt will be quite annoyed when he finds it.

“You see, Mr. Stodder, I told you Hiram is an incurable gadgeteer. He figured this out a long time ago. These new long playing machines in small sizes are just what he needed.”

“Tell him about the voices he heard,” Hiram said.

“Oh, those were Russians cheering Stalin at a May Day parade,” Teensy said. “Hiram recorded them from a Moscow radio program.”

“I’ve seen everything,” I said. “But what about the shots that came in the front windows?”

“That was me,” Teensy said, “while Walter worked around to the back porch. I might say it took some shooting, too, so I wouldn’t hit you. Had to lie flat on my stomach in the snow so the bullets would hit the ceiling.”

“So there weren’t any Russians there at all?” I said. “That means Schmidt will get away.”

“Maybe,” Hiram said, “but he’ll have a hell of a time. We put his car where he won’t find it in a hurry and we shot all four tires to shreds. I think perhaps the Russians will get him before he finds the car.”

“I thought you said they weren’t around?”

“They weren’t,” Teensy said, “but they will be soon. You see, Hiram called them while Walter was bringing you out to the road.”

“What do we do about Maria?” I said.

“We can’t do anything until tonight,” Hiram said. “We’ll have to lay low today. Even if we dared, I don’t think any doctor will let you move without a long sleep.”