He addressed Anna. “Guten Tag, gnädige Frau. Ich möchte—” He paused, searching for the next phrase.
“I speak English,” Anna said. “I am sorry. The shop is closed for lunch. Until half-past two.”
He looked at the door behind him which was very much open. “Then I’m out of luck.” He had a very disarming smile.
“I forgot to lock it,” she confessed, softening visibly. She liked his attempt to speak German; that was politeness, at least. Too many foreigners would not even take the trouble. From his voice, he was American. He would be in a hurry; they always were. “At the moment, we are very busy. If you want your film developed and printed quickly, you should try Lieleg. That is on the right bank, the other side of the river. They are reliable—”
“But only after half-past two?”
She was almost amused. Any other day she would have laughed. She glanced at the clock.
“Actually,” he said in his easy way, slipping the boxes of film into his camera bag as if he were glad to get rid of them, “I came here hoping to speak to Mr. Bryant. My name is Mathison, William Mathison. Are you Mrs. Bryant?” She nodded. He looked over her head towards the hall door. “Mr. Bryant?”
“No,” said Johann, and studied the American more carefully.
“This is my brother, Johann Kronsteiner. My husband is not here at the moment. May I take a message?”
A sad and lovely face, thought Mathison, both old and young. But under the gentle mask of politeness, there was some deep anxiety that was pulling her attention away from this room. This had been the wrong time to come here in every way, he decided; his luck was out. But then, it had been out for the last four days, ever since he had arrived in Zürich from New York. He said, “I’m staying overnight at the Salzburger Hof. Perhaps your husband would telephone me there when he returns, and we could arrange to meet?” He produced a card from his wallet. She looked down at it with a frown. It was her brother who took charge then, padding forward in soft slippers that were too small for him.
“William Mathison,” Johann read from the card, “Attorney at Law.” He exchanged a look with his sister, and went on reading the names in the bottom left-hand corner of the small piece of pasteboard. “Strong, Muller, Nicolson and Hodge, 61 Wall Street, New York 5, N.Y.—and who are they?”
“My law firm. They represent Newhart and Morris.”
“Dick’s publishers,” Anna prompted Johann. “Did they send you here?” she asked Mathison. “But why?”
“Well,” he said, keeping his voice as easy as possible to calm her new anxiety, “for the last four years, I’ve been retained—” Hell, he thought, as he noticed the baffled faces, let’s cut out the jargon. “Whenever Newhart and Morris have a problem, they call on me. And I try to help.”
“And what’s the problem here?” Johann demanded.
“It’s simple enough, possibly just a—”
“It’s simple enough, so you came all the way here from New York?” Johann’s voice sounded belligerent.
Mathison turned to the woman. “It’s only a matter of a letter which I think your husband wrote to Newhart and Morris two weeks ago.” He took a folded sheet of paper out of his wallet and handed it over. “This is your husband’s signature?”
“Of course. Was it wrong of him to write to his publishers? He
did
wait to hear from New York,” she told Mathison reprovingly. “He thought that someone over there should be in touch with him now that his book was ready to be published.”
Mathison stared at her blankly for a split second. “Then he received the cheque he mentioned in his letter? And signed a contract?”
“But of course!” The touch of reprimand faded from her voice and face. “Didn’t you know?”
Mathison shook his head. He gestured to the letter in her hand. He said gently, “That’s the first we heard of Richard Bryant. Now please don’t start worrying. We’ll clear this up quite easily.” Like hell we will, he thought, but he spoke reassuringly. “It’s just some kind of bungle in the Zürich office. Or perhaps in New York,” he added to soften a hard look from Johann Kronsteiner. “Something has been misfiled, or gone missing in the mail. That happens now and again.”
“Didn’t you see the samples of my husband’s work? He took them to Zürich—in June—when he went to see Mr. Yates.”
Johann cut in. “Perhaps Newhart and Morris know nothing about Mr. Yates either.”
Mathison restrained himself and said patiently, “Eric Yates has been their representative in Zürich for the last six years. He usually does send samples of the work of any European
author he is recommending to Newhart and Morris, but in Mr. Bryant’s case there has obviously been some oversight.” And what samples were they, what kind of work?
Johann was angry. It was obvious he thought that the stranger’s “problem” was something invented by a bunch of Wall Street lawyers to let some New York publishers escape from their contract. “You can’t get the cheque back anyway. It has been cashed.”
“I never suggested that Mr. Bryant should return the cheque,” Mathison said acidly. He noted the relief on both their faces, and pressed on with the first small advantage that had come his way. “All we want to know is the date of the cheque, the amount, anything you can remember about it. That would help track it down. So would you tell your husband all that? He has possibly kept some record—” Mathison, talking easily again, preparing to leave, walked over to the wall where the pictures were displayed in order to get a closer view of them. “I’ve been admiring these,” he said. “Some beauties here. Did your husband take them?” They weren’t signed, but the studies of various lakes were named in a rough pencil scrawl in Bryant’s writing on the grey mat that framed each one. “What camera did he use?”
“A Hasselblad.” Her voice sounded strained.
He turned to look at her, pausing in his slow progress down the line of camera studies.
She was trying to appear normal, slightly amused. “Your cheque helped pay for it.”
“Money well spent,” he said, and went on with his inspection.
“I’m so glad you like these samples. They will be part of the book. It’s a study of Austrian lakes,” she said quickly.
He swung round again and caught the glance passing between Johann and his sister. What on earth have I wandered into? Mathison wondered. Don’t these two innocents know that Newhart and Morris are publishers of books dealing mainly with science? Books filled with words and authority? And if they used any photographs or illustrations, these were more likely to deal with the trajectory of rockets, or geological slices of contorted rocks, or the interior of a bathysphere, or the exterior of the moon? But art books? No, that wasn’t in any Newhart and Morris catalogue. And what was worrying these two at this moment—his interest in the pictures? Yet these were the samples Bryant had offered Yates. He turned back to the photographs. “I would pay good money for a copy of this kind of book myself,” he said tactfully. “It should sell very well, I’d imagine. Your husband really knows texture. Take this, for example.” He studied the quality of a mass of soft-petalled flowers growing around three giants of heavily grained rock set in a sea of grass against a background of forest and crag climbing to a gently clouded sky. This picture wasn’t named. “Oh, I see,” he went on, discovering the explanation for himself, “this is a detail of the end of this lake.” He pointed to a photograph a short distance away, and went over to it. Finstersee, it was called. “A grim name. How do you translate it? The dark lake, or lake of darkness?” He glanced around at Mrs. Bryant for her answer, but she was standing quite rigid, hands clasped tensely. Her brother’s eyes had narrowed. My tact isn’t doing so well today, Mathison thought. So he left the photographs, with only a passing look at the last one, Lake Toplitz.
“Doesn’t that one interest you?” Johann wanted to know.
Mathison studied the Austrian’s face. He was a handsome
type, strictly open-air, lean and powerful, a man of quick reactions. Perhaps his trade or profession needed that kind of reflex, but the challenge in his eyes at this moment was puzzling, disconcerting. “I thought I had wasted enough of your time. Sorry if I’ve been a nuisance. Well—I’ll be going.”
“Without seeing my brother-in-law’s records? We were talking about them, I believe.” The sarcasm was heavy and didn’t altogether suit Johann.
Mathison’s surprise deepened. So that’s the reason for his truculence, he thought: this character thinks I used the cheque as an excuse to get in here and study these photographs. Then his explanation seemed so wild that Mathison pushed it to the side of his mind. He said quietly, “We were. Is it possible to see them now? I thought Mr. Bryant might have them locked in his safe.”
“We don’t need to lock things up in Salzburg,” Johann said curtly. He looked at his sister. She had stopped staring at Finstersee, thank God, but now her eyes were fixed on the clock over the shop door. Damn this American who had talked of time.
“It’s almost two,” Anna was saying. “Oh, Johann—it’s almost two.”
“Get Dick’s files, that’s a good girl. Go on, Anna. Get them.” It was better to start searching for them instead of watching a clock and thinking of Dick. Better, too, to call the American’s bluff and show him the record of the cheque and get rid of him.
“It would save me coming back here again and troubling your husband,” Mathison said, and that at least seemed to make good sense, for she nodded and hurried towards the back of the house. The kitchen possibly lay there; the appetising smell of soup was growing stronger by the minute.
The silence in the shop was complete. Mathison was careful to keep away from the photographs of the lakes and looked out of the window at the narrow street. It was barely twelve feet wide—about the breadth of his living room back in New York—and edged by just the suspicion of a sidewalk. Two men were walking there. Slowly. They were dressed definitely for Salzburg, in capes and dark-green felt hats each with a chamois brush sprouting at the rear of its squashed crown. He might have paid them no more attention, transferring his interest to a couple who had the right idea about life—a boy and girl, holding hands, laughing at something preposterous—if one of them had been able to resist staring at the shop door. It was then he remembered seeing them before, at the end of the short street, as he had walked slowly up here, from the Altmarkt searching for Bryant’s address.
Suddenly, the silence was broken. Anna Bryant’s clear voice, carrying through the tunnel of a hallway, was welcoming someone and then explaining to him about the stranger from America.
“Bryant?” Mathison asked quickly, turning away from the window.
Johann shook his head. “Just a friend of the family,” was all he said, but even that was an admission he was relaxing. He greeted the man with evident relief. “Felix, come in. Glad you got here.”
Mathison thought it wiser not to look too hard at the man whose family privileges included the use of the kitchen door, so he contented himself with a polite nod as Anna Bryant murmured a quiet introduction to Herr Zauner, and then turned away to open the large Manila envelope she had brought him. There wasn’t much in it, but the contents were neatly arranged
and across its flap was written, in Bryant’s handwriting,
Yates.
He took out the documents, placing them for all to see on top of a counter, and began going through them. “Businesslike,” he said approvingly to Anna Bryant, who stood beside him.
“Yes, my husband is a very careful man,” she said with pride.
So careful, indeed, that—among the copies of the letters he had sent to Yates and of the one letter to Newhart and Morris—there was a photograph of a cheque for three hundred dollars. A wide and happy grin spread over Mathison’s face. “This is all we need,” he told her. “Do you mind if I photograph it, Mrs. Bryant? That’s the simplest way to put it into our own records.” He took out a neat camera only two inches long, switched on the lamp on the counter after exchanging its bulb for the high-intensity one that he carried in his bag along with an adapter for foreign sockets, laid the cheque under the bright beam.
“You come prepared,” Johann said, leaving Zauner in his corner. He looked curiously at the cheque. “It’s made out in New York! The First Maritime Bank of New York.” He studied the signature. “Emil Burch. Who’s that?”
Mathison didn’t answer. He was busy photographing the copies of Bryant’s letters to Yates. And there was no use in alarming Mrs. Bryant, for the flat truth was that Newhart and Morris did not bank with the First Maritime. Neither did they have anyone called Burch who was allowed to sign their cheques. And although Johann, breathing down the back of his neck, or the family friend standing silently against a wall might not believe it, the last thing that Mathison had come here to do was to add to Anna Bryant’s troubles. “Just one thing: the contract. It isn’t in this file.” He switched off the light, and closed his camera, placing it carefully in his carrying bag.
“No. Mr. Yates has it. He promised last Wednesday—or was it Saturday?—when he phoned. He promised it would be here soon.” Her thoughts wavered. “He is always telephoning,” she said, trying to sound amused. She made an effort to complete her answer. “We—that is, my husband—signed two copies of the contract. In August, no—in July; yes, July.”
Mathison helped her. He was beginning to see the pattern. “And after signing, Mr. Bryant sent the two copies back to Yates, who was going to send them to New York for the publisher’s signature. One copy would stay in New York, the other was going to be returned to Yates to send to you. Was that it?”
She nodded.
“And the cheque was sent to you through Yates?”
“In August, the beginning of August.” She was definite about that.
Johann cut in brusquely. “Isn’t that the usual way? I mean about this Yates fellow sending on the contract?”
“It’s the usual way,” Mathieson said reassuringly, his eyes on Anna Bryant’s white face. But nothing else about this whole case was in the least usual. There hadn’t been one mention of Bryant’s name, far less a contract, in the files of Yates’s office in Zürich. He began putting the copies of the letters and the photographed cheque back into their envelope. Not one real letter from Yates, he observed again; just two notes which must have accompanied the cheque and the contracts, and these were friendly and brief, making no specific mention of any business. One said:
Here it is! Glad it came through so quickly. Good luck with the Hasselblad. I hope it won’t be long before you can get to Zürich again. Yours...
And the other:
We kept these as straightforward and
simple as possible. Just return them to me with two samples of your fine sloping scrawl and I’ll attend to the usual routine. It may take time, but I’ve had the go-ahead signal from the Great White Father in New York, so all is well. Yours
... A very skilful job, Mathison thought. His lips tightened. “I’ll straighten all this out in Zürich,” he said. He pocketed the letter which he had brought with him, and re-exchanged the light bulbs. Well, that’s about all, he thought. “I can’t thank you enough, Mrs. Bryant. You’ve been more than helpful. I’m sorry I had to—”