'Yes? What is it?'
'Look, you've already been very kind,' she said, 'but would you mind walking me home? It is very late for a decent girl to be on the streets, and I doubt if I'll be able to find a taxi at this time of night.'
I shrugged and looked at my watch. 'Where do you live?'
'It's not very far. The 3rd Bezirk, in the British sector.'
'All right.' I sighed with a conspicuous lack of enthusiasm. 'Lead the way.'
We walked eastwards, along streets that were as quiet as a house of Franciscan tertiaries.
'You haven't explained why you helped me,' she said, breaking the silence after a while.
'I wonder if that's what Andromeda said when Perseus had saved her from the sea-monster.'
'You seem a little less obviously heroic, Herr Gunther.'
'Don't be fooled by my manners,' I told her. 'I've got a whole chestful of medals down at my local pawnshop.'
'So you're not the sentimental type either.'
'No, I like sentiment. It looks fine on needlework and Christmas cards. Only it doesn't make much of an engraving on the Ivans. Or perhaps you weren't looking.'
'Oh, I was looking all right. It was very impressive the way you handled him. I never knew the Ivans could be greased like that.'
'You just have to know the right spot on the axle. That kapral would probably have been too scared to take some drop, and a major too proud. Not to mention the fact that I'd met our Captain Rustaveli before, when he was plain Lieutenant Rustaveli and both he and his girlfriend had a dose of drip. I got them some good penicillin, for which he was very grateful.'
'You don't look like any swing Heini.'
'I don't look like a swing, I don't look like a hero. What are you, the head of casting at Warner Brothers?'
'I only wish I were,' she murmured. And then: 'Anyway, you started it. You said to that Ivan that I didn't look like a chocolady. Coming from you I'd say it almost sounded like a compliment.'
'Like I said, I've seen you at the Oriental, selling nothing worse than bad luck. Incidentally, I hope you're a good card-player, because I'm supposed to go back and give him something for your liberty. Assuming you actually want to stay out of the cement.'
'How much will that be?'
'A couple of hundred dollars ought to do it.'
'A couple of hundred?' Her words echoed around Schwarzenbergplatz as we came past a great fountain, and crossed onto Rennweg. 'Where am I going to get that kind of mouse?'
'Same place you got the suntan and nice jacket, I imagine. Failing that you could ask him to the club and deal him a few aces off the bottom of the deck.'
'I could if I were that good. But I'm not.'
'That's too bad.'
She was quiet for a moment as she gave the matter some thought. 'Maybe you could persuade him to take less. After all, you seem to speak pretty good Russkie.'
'Maybe,' I allowed.
'I don't suppose it would do much good to go to court and protect my innocence, would it?'
'With the Ivans?' I laughed harshly. 'You might just as well appeal to the goddess Kali.'
'No, I didn't think so.'
We came up a side street or two and stopped outside an apartment building that was close by a small park.
'Would you like to come in for a drink?' She fumbled in her handbag for her key.
'I know I could use one.'
'I could suck one out of the rug,' I said, and followed her through the door, upstairs and into a cosy, solidly furnished apartment.
There was no ignoring the fact that Lotte Hartmann was attractive. Some women, you look at them and calculate what modest length of time you would be willing to settle for. Generally, the better-looking the girl the less time with which you tell yourself you would be satisfied. After all, a really attractive woman might have to accommodate a lot of similar wishes. Lotte was the kind of girl with whom you could have been persuaded to settle for five steamy, unfettered minutes. Just five minutes for her to let you and your imagination do what you wanted. Not too much to ask, you would have thought. The way things happened, though, it looked like she might actually have granted me rather longer than that. Perhaps even the full hour. But I was dog-tired, and perhaps I drank a little too much of her excellent whisky to pay much attention to the way she bit her bottom-lip and stared at me through those black-widow eyelashes. I was probably supposed to lie quietly on her bed with my muzzle resting on her impressively convex lap and let her fold my big, floppy ears, only I ended up falling asleep on the sofa.
Chapter 22
When I awoke later that same morning, I scribbled my address and telephone number on a piece of paper and, leaving Lotte asleep in bed, I caught a taxi back to my pension. There I washed, changed my clothes and ate a large breakfast, which did much to restore me. I was reading the morning's Wiener Zeitung when the telephone rang.
A man's voice, with only the smallest trace of a Viennese accent, asked me if it was speaking to Herr Bernhard Gunther. When I identified myself the voice said:
'I'm a friend of FrSulein Hartmann. She tells me that you very kindly helped her out of an awkward spot last night.'
'She's not exactly out of it yet,' I said.
'Quite so. I was hoping that we could meet and discuss the matter. FrSulein Hartmann mentioned the sum of $200 for this Russian captain. Also that you had offered to act as her intermediary.'
'Did I? I suppose I might have.'
'I was hoping I might give you the money to give to this wretched fellow. And I should like to thank you, personally.'
I felt sure that this was K/nig, but I stayed silent for a moment, not wishing to seem too eager to meet him.
'Are you still there?'
'Where do you suggest?' I asked reluctantly.
'Do you know the Amalienbad, on Reumannplatz?'
'I'll find it.'
'Shall we say in one hour? In the Turkish baths?'
'All right. But how will I recognize you? You haven't even told me your name yet.'
'No I haven't,' he said mysteriously, 'but I'll be whistling this tune.' And with that he proceeded to whistle it down the line.
'Bella, bella, bella Marie,' I said, recognizing a melody that had been irritatingly ubiquitous some months before.
'Precisely that,' said the man, and hung up.
It seemed a curiously conspiratorial mode of recognition, but I told myself that if it was K/nig, he had good reason to be cautious.
The Amalienbad was in the 10th Bezirk, in the Russian sector, which meant catching a number 67 south down Favoritenstrasse. The district was a working-class quarter with lots of dirty old factories, but the municipal baths on Reumannplatz was a seven-storeyed building of comparatively recent construction which, without any apparent exaggeration, advertised itself as the largest and most modern baths in Europe.
I paid for a bath and a towel, and after I had changed I went to find the men's steam-room. This was at the far end of a swimming pool that was as big as a football field, and possessed only a few Viennese who, wrapped in their bath-sheets, were trying to sweat off some of the weight that was rather easy to gain in the Austrian capital. Through the steam, at the far end of the luridly-tiled room, I heard someone whistling intermittently. I walked towards the source of the tune, and took it up as I approached.
I came upon the seated figure of a man with a uniformly white body and a uniformly brown face: it looked
