Daranyi had remained in the leather chair, and he remained seated still. ‘No,’ he said plainly.
Krantz had begun to move towards the mantelpiece, but now he halted and turned. ‘What was that?’
‘I said no-meaning ten thousand kronor is insufficient for what I have done.’
‘What do you expect?’
This was the long-awaited moment at last. ‘Fifty thousand kronor,’ said Daranyi.
Krantz looked stricken. ‘Are you mad, Daranyi? You are pulling my leg.’
‘Your wallet, perhaps, but not your leg.’
‘You seriously think we would give you fifty thousand for that batch of prattle and pap?’
‘I seriously think you will. I have a notion I have done well for you.’
‘You have done nothing. Fifty thousand kronor? Why, you will consider yourself fortunate if I can have your fee raised to fifteen thousand.’
Daranyi sat Buddhalike, as immovable, as superior, on the chair. ‘The price is fifty thousand for my work’-he paused, and concluded-‘ and my discretion.’
‘Discretion, is it? I have never dreamed you would stoop so low as blackmail. Do you understand the position you are in? I could have you thrown out of this country in two minutes.’
‘I have counted on that. Eviction would coincide with my own plans. You see, the moment you have paid me, I will buy my air ticket to Switzerland. A second cousin of mine has taken residence there and plans to open a rare-book shop, and wants a partner. I think Lausanne will be more healthy than Stockholm. And I think there is more of a future today in rare books than in-research-and documents.’
Krantz was livid. ‘Now you want to jew me out of the money to finance you?’
‘Exactly.’
‘You are a greedy devil. Where is your sense of proportion and self-respect?’
‘I have just regained both.’ He smelt his victory, and he came lightly to his feet. ‘I have done my part. Now you do yours. Fifty thousand.’
Krantz stared at Daranyi with distaste. ‘You cannot be dissuaded from this crime?’
‘No.’
‘I would have to talk to my friends first. It could not be fifty thousand in any case, perhaps closer to thirty thousand.’
‘Forty thousand is my bottom.’
‘I will not bargain like a tradesman,’ said Krantz. ‘All right then, forty thousand.’ He picked up a Spanish hand-bell and shook it. ‘Ilsa will show you out.’
Daranyi made no move. ‘When do I have my fee? Tomorrow is my deadline, tomorrow before the Ceremony.’ He would remind Krantz of the price of forfeit. ‘While the world press is still here.’
‘You will have your Judas money. I will send the cash in a plain envelope by messenger to your apartment… You know this is our last meeting.’
‘I had hoped it would be. Good-night to you, Dr. Krantz. And if ever you are in Lausanne, and in need of a rare edition-’
Daranyi permitted himself to smile, and Krantz glared and said, ‘Good-night!’
Daranyi opened the door, took his coat and hat from Ilsa, and hurried out.
Krantz went to his study door and closed and bolted it. Then he hastened across the room to the glass door and peered down into Norr Mälarstrand. Not until Daranyi was briefly visible, below, did he leave the point of vantage.
Hurrying on his short legs, he went to the sitting-room door behind his chair and knocked three times. He heard the tumble of the lock, and stepped back. The door opened.
Briskly, polishing his monocle with a handkerchief, Dr. Hans Eckart came into the study.
‘You heard everything?’ Krantz asked anxiously.
‘Every word.’ Eckart placed the handkerchief back in his pocket and adjusted his monocle.
‘He kept staring at the plant,’ said Krantz. ‘I was nervous all the time that he would see the microphone.’
‘No one could see it,’ said Eckart.
Krantz danced closer to his patron, jittering. ‘You heard him about the money-’
‘Never mind about the money. That Hungarian nincompoop’s usefulness is ended anyway. I will see that he is paid.’
‘Was there anything in his information that-?’
‘Yes,’ said Eckart curtly. ‘The SS file on Emily Stratman. Let me see it at once.’
12
IT had snowed all the night through, gusty flurries of large flat flakes, dry and adhering to where they fell, and on the early morning of December tenth, it was snowing still. The flurries had ceased, Count Jacobsson observed from his parlour window above the Foundation, and now the crystalline flakes floated lazily downward like confetti, and clung to every surface, and built one on the other, so that Sturegatan and the park below, and all the city of Stockholm encompassed by the eye, lay snug and white under a powdery blanket that rose and fell into the darkness beyond sight.
We are regally cloaked, thought Jacobsson, majestically covered by a royal cape of white to herald our climax day of Nobel Week.
He heard, behind him, the ponderous movements of his stout housekeeper, who came three times a week to clean his bachelor quarters, and listened as she set his breakfast on the oval table. He waited for her to leave, continuing to enjoy the snowfall, and when she was gone, he turned from the window and took his place at the table.
He had been too preoccupied with the problems of the big day ahead to think of breakfast, but now his appetite was whetted by the hot tiny sausages and scrambled eggs, the toast spread with red whortleberry jam, the choklad, and he began to eat ravenously. After he had devoured the sausages and eggs, and begun to sip the cocoa and munch the toast, he opened the three morning newspapers piled at his right hand. Each, he noticed, had picture spreads and long stories about the afternoon Ceremony, on its front page.
It was only after he had finished his cocoa that he opened the green ledger containing his Notes of a decade ago, now lying to the left side of his plate. Upon awakening, and welcoming the celebration of snow, he had remembered the entry he had made that decade ago. It had been made shortly after reading a memoir by Rudyard Kipling, and this morning had reminded him of that old entry.
Lovingly, he opened his ledger, scanning the endless waves made by his pen on every page-how firm his hand had once been!-flipping the pages, seeking what he had remembered, until he found it at last.
This entry in the Notes contained some reminiscences of King Oscar, who had awarded the prizes at the first six ceremonies held in the years just before his death, then touched upon his successor, King Gustaf V, with whom Jacobsson had become so friendly. Then the Notes continued:
I have finished reading Rudyard Kipling’s recollection of his trip to Stockholm, of his arrival in our city immediately after King Oscar’s death. I am setting down some of Kipling’s impressions as he came here for his Nobel Prize in 1907. He wrote: ‘Even while we were on the sea, the old King of Sweden died. We reached the city, snow-white under sun, to find all the world in evening dress, the official mourning which is curiously impressive. Next afternoon, the prize-winners were taken to be presented to the new King. Winter darkness in those latitudes falls at three o’clock, and it was snowing. One half of the vast acreage of the Palace sat in darkness, for there lay the dead King’s body. We were conveyed along interminable corridors looking out into black quadrangles, where snow whitened the cloaks of the sentries, the breeches of old-time cannons, and the shot piles alongside of them. Presently, we reached the living world of more corridors and suites all lighted up, but wrapped in that Court hush which is like no other silence on earth. Then in a lit room, the weary-eyed, overworked, new King, saying to each the words appropriate to the occasion. Next, the Queen, in marvellous Mary Queen of Scots mourning; a few words, and the return piloted by soft-footed Court officials through a stillness so deep that one heard the click of the decorations on their uniforms. They said that the last words of the old King had been, “Don’t let them shut the theatres for me.” So Stockholm that night went soberly about her pleasures, all dumbed down under the snow.’