fifteen minutes. A car is waiting for you about a hundred yards down the street from here which will take you discreetly to the station, where you will make sure you are seen — you have just come off the train. This suitcase contains all the clothes and toilet gear you will require. The same car will then drive you up to a hotel where you made a reservation two weeks ago.” “You fixed all this?”
“Yes. Rather, one of our agents did. Our man, as you might say, in Crau. Invaluable. He can fix anything in this city — he ought to, he’s a big wheel in the city council. One of his men will be driving your car tonight.”
Bruno looked at him consideringly. “You certainly believe in playing a tight game, Dr Harper.”
“And I survive.” Harper permitted himself a patient sigh. “When you’ve spent most of your adult life in a racket like this you will discover that, at any given time, the fewer people who know anything about anything, the greater the safety factor. Maria will hire a car in the morning. Two blocks west of here is an inn called the Hunter’s Horn. Be there at dusk. Maria will be there shortly afterwards. She’ll look in the doorway then walk away. You will follow her. You have a singular gift for sensing when you will be shadowed so I have no worries on that score. Any change of plan or further instructions will be given you by Maria.”
“You said your man in Crau could fix anything?”
“I did say that.”
“Have him fix a few sticks of dynamite. Any explosive will do as long as it has an approximately ten-second fuse. He can fix that?”
Harper hesitated. “I suppose. Why do you want it?” “I’ll tell you in a couple of days and that’s not because I’m doing a Dr Harper and being all mysterious. I’m not quite sure myself but I’m developing an idea that it might help me to leave the Lubylan.”
“Bruno.” The dark anxiety was back in the girl’s face again, but Bruno didn’t look at her.
“I think there’s a chance I might get in undetected. I don’t think there’s a chance in hell that I’ll be able to get out undetected. I may have to leave in a very great hurry indeed and once the alarm is raised I’m sure the exits will be automatically sealed. So my best line of exit may well be to blast my way out.”
“I seem to recall you saying that you had no wish to kill anyone. A dynamite blast could kill quite a few.” “I’ll be as careful as I can. It may have to come to the inevitable choice — them or me. One hopes not. Do I get the bangers or not?”
“You’ll have to give me time to think about that one.” “Look, Dr Harper. I know you’re in charge, but here and now you’re not the person who matters. I am. I’m the person who’s got to put his life on the line to get inside Lubylan — and out again. Not you. You’re safe and sound in base camp and will disclaim all knowledge of anything if I get chopped. I’m not asking, not now, I’m demanding. I want that explosive.” He glanced down in distaste at his clothes. “If I don’t get it you can try on this suit for size.”
“I repeat, I need time.”
“I can wait.” Bruno hitched his elbows on the coffin. “I can wait all of five seconds. I’ll count them. Then I’m taking this damned suit off and going back to the circus. I wish you luck in your break-in to Lubylan. I also wish you luck when you come to explaining to the police just how you made the trifling error of certifying me as being dead. One. Two. Three.” “This is blackmail.”
“What else? Four.”
“All right, all right, you can have your damned fireworks.” Harper pondered, then went on complainingly: “I must say this is a side of your nature I’ve never seen before.” “I’d never examined that damned Lubylan before. I’ve seen it now. I know my chances. Please have Maria take the explosives in her car tomorrow night. Does Wrinfield know that this was a charade tonight?”
“Of course.”
“You took a chance bringing Sergius with you here.” “Apart from the fact that he insisted, I’d have taken a damned bigger chance if I hadn’t. That would have been the one thing calculated to rouse his suspicions.”
“And he’s not? Suspicious, I mean?”
“The last thing that would occur to Colonel Sergius is that anyone would ever be misguided enough as to pick his parish as a place to commit suicide.”
“Money?”
“In your other inside pocket.”
“It’s freezing outside.”
“There’s a nice warm coat in the car.” Harper smiled.
“You’re going to love it.”
Bruno nodded to the open coffin. “That?”
“Will be weighted and the lid screwed down during the night.
We will bury you on Monday morning.”
“Can I send me a wreath?”
“That would not be advisable.” Harper smiled thinly. “You can always, of course, mingle discreetly with your mourners.” Forty minutes later Bruno was in his hotel room, unpacking, his eyes straying occasionally towards the nice warm coat that Harper had so thoughtfully provided. It was made of thick brushed nylon, in black and white wavy vertical stripes, and looked for all the world like a four thousand guinea chinchilla. Indisputably, it was the only one of its kind in Crau and, likely enough, for some hundreds of miles around, and the stir he had caused strolling through the lobby to the reception desk had been more than considerable: when the effect of his coat was added to the fact that he had had it carelessly flung open to reveal the sartorial rainbow of his suiting beneath it was understandable that hardly anyone had bothered to give his face a first glance, far less a second one.
Bruno put out the light, eased the curtain, opened the window and leaned out. His room was at the back of the hotel, overlooking a narrow warehouse-lined lane. It wasn’t quite in total darkness but it wasn’t far from it either. Less than four feet away were the steps of a fire-escape, the easy and, in combination with the darkened lane, the perfect way to leave the hotel. Too easy, too perfect.
In line with Harper’s advocated policy of non-concealment, Bruno went down to the hotel dining-room for dinner, carrying under his arm an East Berlin newspaper, dated that day, which he had found in his case. Harper was a man to whom the most insignificant detail could be of importance. Where he had obtained it Bruno had no means of knowing. His entrance did not cause any notable sensation — the citizens of Crau or visiting firemen were too well-mannered for that. But the raised eyebrows, the smiles, the whispers were evidence that his presence had not gone unnoted. Bruno looked casually around. There was nobody in sight who looked remotely like a secret police agent, although there was little comfort in that: the best agents never did. Bruno ordered his meal, then buried himself in his newspaper.
At eight o’clock the following morning Bruno was once more in the dining-room, again reading a paper but this time a local news-sheet. The first thing that caught his attention was a large black-bordered box — the borders were half an inch thick — in the centre of the front page. From this he learnt that he had died during the night. The grief was profound for circus lovers the world over but nowhere, of course, as keenly felt as in Crau. There was much sentimentalizing and philosophical sorrowing over the machinations of a strange fate that had brought Bruno Wildermann home to die. He was to be buried at 11 a.m. on Monday. It was hoped that large numbers of the citizens of Crau would turn out to pay their last respects to their city’s most illustrious son, the greatest aerialist of all time. Bruno took the paper back up to his room after breakfast, found scissors and cut out the black-bordered article, which he carefully folded and placed in an inside pocket. Late that afternoon Bruno went shopping. It was a cold and sunny day and he had left his fur coat in his room. This he had done neither because of the weather nor because of any innate bashfulness. It was just too bulky to be carried inconspicuously, however well it might have been wrapped up. This was the town that Bruno knew better than any in the world and he could have shaken off any shadower without even half thinking about it: it took him less than five minutes to know that he was not being followed. He turned down a side street, then into an even meaner street, little more than a lane, and entered the shop of a haberdasher for whom Savile Row must have lain on the far side of Paradise: even the best clothes it had for sale could not have qualified for the description of second-hand. The proprietor, an elderly stooped man, whose watery eyes swam behind thickly pebbled glasses — although it seemed an extremely remote possibility that the oldster would ever be called upon to identify him Bruno doubted whether he could have identified members of his own family, if any — had a unique but eminently practical way of displaying the wares he had for sale. The articles of clothing were piled in untidy heaps on the floor, jackets in one pile, trousers in another, coats in another, shirts in another, and so on. Ties were conspicuous by their absence.
When Bruno emerged it was with a bulky and exceedingly grimy brown paper parcel roughly tied with some
