holding the limp body of the countess in my arms. Ilonka was standing beside me, trembling like a leaf. The befuddled Colonel Lavrentiev was tossing half a glass of whisky down his tree-trunk throat, the only unconcerned person in the joint.
I had to do something so I yelled,
I managed to turn my head before we reached the door and I saw that Ilonka was right behind us. I pulled a wad of bills from my pocket and threw them to her. “Pay the bar bill,” I said, “and keep what’s left for yourself.”
She grabbed my arm, but Lavrentiev’s orderly told her to beat it.
“I’m sorry,” Ilonka said. “I guess you just aren’t a very good dancer.”
It was a hell of a time to tell me that, but she dropped something in my pocket, then turned on her heel and went off to the bar without looking back.
We stopped at the checkroom for my hat and coat. There was a short flight of glass steps leading to the main entrance. There were lights under the glass, and when you walked on the steps a music box was set in action. It had played the first few bars of the “Rakoczi March” when I first visited Budapest; now it sounded suspiciously like the beginning of the “Internationale.”
When we went down the stairs, the orderly still clutching my shoulder, I could see on the sidewalk the gendarmes that Ilonka had mentioned. They were lined up facing the entrance, parallel to the street, as if waiting for inspection. Two big military cars were across the street. I suppose I ought to have been flattered at such an armed turnout in my honor.
I automatically started out the door to be handed over to the gendarmes, but Lavrentiev’s orderly steered me into the doorkeeper’s room, hard by the exit. He sat me down in a chair.
“Let’s see your passport,” he said.
I handed him the Jean Stodder-Geneva document. He read the statistics out loud.
“You’ve got plenty of nerve,” he said, laughing. He threw the passport into my lap.
I could have told him I was frightened stiff. Why didn’t he hand me over to the gendarmes? The Russians must have known who I was the moment I first stepped into the Arizona.
“Do you get drunk in Switzerland and knock down colonels on the dance floor?”
I could have told him I wasn’t drunk, that I hadn’t intended to crash into the colonel and Anna Orlovska. But there wasn’t much use of saying anything. He was having his kind of fun before he sent me off to 60 Stalin ut.
“You’re lucky Colonel Lavrentiev didn’t pull a gun on you,” the orderly said. “He’s got a quick temper. He’s a dignified man.”
I didn’t say anything. I wondered why he hadn’t searched me for the gun. I was sure he could see the bulge in my coat. He must have thought I wouldn’t dare try anything, not with half a hundred gendarmes with carbines a few feet away. Of course, they’d take the gun the minute he handed me over.
I think I could have snapped the gun from the shoulder holster quickly enough to beat him to the draw. But it wouldn’t have done me a bit of good. The minute I fired, those gendarmes would have filled that little room and me full of lead. I think I’ve got as much guts as the next man, but that sort of death has never had any attraction. Anyway, I’m a follower of Grigori and his monkey.
“Well, come on, Herr Stodder,” the orderly said. “It’s time you were getting to bed.”
This time I laughed. I knew enough about 60 Stalin ut to make his remark very funny. A lot of things would happen to me but not bed.
The orderly stuck his head out the door and called, “Jozsef, Jozsef.” But instead of one of the gendarmes, the grubby doorman appeared.
“A taxi, Jozsef, for Herr Stodder.” I didn’t know who the orderly thought he was kidding, me or Jozsef, but I didn’t miss the wink he gave the doorman.
“I thought you’d rather leave in a taxi, Herr Stodder,” the orderly said.
“Very considerate of you,” I said. “I appreciate the courtesy.”
Well, the doorman returned and the orderly showed me out the door and there
It was my turn to faint and I damned near did. But I knew I had to get that driver to move his antique cab before Anna Orlovska had time to tell her story. He had hopped out and was spinning the crank, it was that old a car.
“Hurry up,” I said. “I’ve got to get to the Bristol in a hurry.” I spoke Hungarian and I didn’t care who heard me.
I ought to have realized what had been going on. I should have known it from the minute Colonel Lavrentiev turned his back on me on the dance floor. I was being kicked out of the Arizona as a foreign drunk who had had the ill manners to upset the chief of the MVD and his partner, I was a harmless drunk as far as they were concerned. They were looking for someone in the Arizona all right. They knew I was there. But they hadn’t put two and two together. What man in my position, the presumed murderer of Major Ivan Strakhov, would have the stupidity to come to the Arizona in the first place, then crash into the head of the secret police in the second?
Anna Orlovska was the only one who’d recognized me and she’d passed out before she’d had a chance to say a word. My only hope was to get that taxi out of there before she came to and blabbed to the police. Hiram Carr had sent me to meet her but he hadn’t foreseen what would happen. I’d failed and now I had the right to save my own life.
“What’s the matter?” I yelled to the driver. “Let’s get out of here.”
He was spinning the crank for all he was worth and blasting the night air with Hungarian oaths, the choicest on earth. I hopped out and got in the front seat but the ignition key was turned on. I moved the spark back and forth but still nothing happened.
There wasn’t another cab in sight. The only vehicles were the two Hungarian police cars.
I went up to the captain of the gendarmes. Since I was supposed to be a drunk, I was careful to lurch appropriately. I made the Hungarian language lurch, too.
“Excellency Captain,” I said. “Knowing the great and unbounded hospitality of the Hungarian people, may I ask one favor for an enchanted traveler?”
An American cop might have said, “G’wan, beat it,” but the Hungarian smiled indulgently. A foreigner who takes the trouble to learn a small country’s language can have almost anything he wants from the flattered natives.
“Might one of your mighty cars give this miserable cab a push?”
I watched the door of the nightclub out of the corner of my eye. I expected to see Lavrentiev or his orderly or one of the detectives emerge any minute. Orlovska couldn’t stay in a faint forever. She’d put the finger on me the moment she came to. I thought of walking, but it was snowing again. I also had no intention of going to the Bristol. As soon as the taxi was out of sight of the Arizona, I would tell the driver to take me to Hiram Carr’s. I’d done what he asked. It wasn’t my fault I’d failed. The next move was up to him. I’d been wasting my time in a nightclub when I ought to have been looking for Maria Torres.
The captain of the gendarmes ordered one of his cars to push the cab. The taxi driver was so disgusted he threw his crank into a snowbank before he got behind the wheel. I huddled in the back seat, by this time shivering from a combination of frayed nerves and the cold.
The military car hit the back of the taxi hard enough to break our necks, then churned snow until I couldn’t see through the windows. We slid and slithered, moved ahead and slipped back in convulsive jerks, the cab driver cursing at the top of his lungs, the gendarmes urging on the pushing car with alternate cheers and groans. I don’t suppose any hunted man in the annals of crime ever attempted a getaway in such circumstances.
Within a few minutes we’d collected a good-sized crowd, passers-by, customers in evening dress leaving the Arizona and the Moulin Rouge across the street, just plain derelicts who were glad to forget for the moment their lack of shelter, mixed with the gendarmes and the policemen off the beat. Everyone shouted advice, the cab driver cursed and thanked each one in turn, and the driver of the gendarme car spun his wheels until his tires were
