CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE TWICE-FIRED HAND
Back in Venice I left the launch at the foot of the Via Garibaldi and then went straight to the Royal Danieli.
In the lobby I found the telephones and put through a call to London. I didn’t get Sutcliffe or anyone I knew. I just said, “Ringmaster. Severus is dead. I’m clearing out. I’ll ring this evening for instructions.”
A voice at the other end said, “Thank you,” and then there was the click of the receiver going down.
After that things went on moving fast. I met Vérité in the Piazzale Roma, which is right up near the station, and close to the point where the autostrada runs out of Venice.
She had fixed us up with a chauffeur-driven car and, I discovered later, had done a lot of telephoning. She was as efficient as Wilkins and had the same gift, too, of not badgering for explanations at the wrong moment. Anyway, I didn’t want to talk. I’d got too much to think about. We drove north to Treviso and then across to Trento and up to Bolzano. At Bolzano we paid off the car and spent an hour waiting in the railway-station buffet.
We were picked up there by a blue-and-cream chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce, which had a drink cabinet in the back. I had a large whisky and soda and then went to sleep until we hit the customs check at the Brenner pass.
We stayed in Austria, because there was no other customs check, and at ten o’clock that night we turned off a side road along a private drive through pine forests.
It was too dark and I was too tired to have much curiosity about the place at that moment, though I could guess that it was some hunting lodge or mountain chalet that belonged to Malacod.
A fat old biddy with a cheerful face brought me a plate of smoked-salmon sandwiches and half a bottle of Chablis in my bedroom, and as I finished them Vérité came in.
She said, “You ought to let me look at that leg.”
I said, “It’ll keep until the morning. Where is this place?”
She said, “The nearest town, or village rather, is called Schwaz. We’re not a long way from Innsbruck.”
“And the house?”
“It’s called Chalet Papagei and it belongs—”
“To Herr Malacod.” I fished in my pocket and handed her the message which Baldy had written just before he died. “Translation, please.”
She read it through and then gave it to me in English.
The note from Baldy – and I could imagine him, forcing it from himself, hanging on desperately to get it down – read:
Zafersee again ... heard them in hall ... Zafersee, ten minutes away V. says ... good place dump L.B. or K.S. whichever....
After she had read it Vérité stood looking at me. Somehow I was still not in the mood for explanations.
I said, “When is Herr Malacod coming?”
“Tomorrow.”
“I’ll give you the whole picture, so far as I know it, in the morning.”
She said, “I don’t care about that. You must have lost a lot of blood from that leg. Please let me.”
“Don’t fuss around. It’s all right.”
“It’s not all right. You’ve got some dirty piece of rag around it. It could go septic.”
I gave in, and I got the whole treatment right through, leg dressed, hands and face washed like a small boy, and finally tucked up in bed and given a goodnight kiss.
While she was doing it I said, “Would the Zafersee be what I think it is? A lake?”
“Yes.” She gave me a look but said nothing, though she must have known what was on my mind. L.B. and K.S. meant to her what they meant to me.
When she was gone I reached for the telephone and called London.
I said, “Ringmaster. I’m at the Chalet Papagei, Schwaz near Innsbruck.”
The voice at the other end said, “Papagei, that means parrot.”
I said, “Thanks.”
I lay back and tried to sleep, but it was a long time coming. I could finish Baldy’s message for him. Whichever girl was to be eliminated, L.B. or K.S., would finish up in a lake not ten minutes from.... Well, that wasn’t difficult to work out. And, wherever it was, the big lead case had gone there last night.
She brought me coffee and rolls in the morning and sat on the side of the bed sharing the tray with me.
I said, “I’m sorry I was a bit edgy yesterday.”
She said, “I understood.”
“You did?”
“When you asked me to translate that message, you already knew what was in it, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Because if it had suited you, you weren’t going to pass it on.”
“Could be. I took a chance and got the desk clerk at the Danieli to translate it for me.”
“Because you’d seen the initials L.B. and K.S.? Oh, it’s all right. I know how you feel about her. And all yesterday you were thinking about her. I didn’t exist.”
I started to make some protest, but she shook her head and smiled, saying, “Even if there were no K.S. you’d have done the same thing. It’s the one thing which is wrong with you. You want something, something far more than you’ve got, and you’re always taking stupid chances in the hope of getting it. True?”
“True. Don’t we all want something more than we’ve got?”
“Yes, I suppose we do. But most of us, after a time, learn to be content with the way things are. Why don’t you try to be that way?”
“I do. All the time, but somehow it doesn’t work. At least, only for short stretches. I’m sorry about it.”
She stood up and walked to the window,
