“I see. You’re going to find me the real criminal? It sounds like one of your stories.”
“You can let me go, Callaghan, I’d rather make you look the fool you are than black your bloody eye. You’d only have to go to bed for a few days with a black eye. But when I’ve finished with you you’ll leave Vienna.”
I took out a couple of pounds’ worth of Bafs and stuck them in his breast pocket. “These will see you through tonight,” I said, “and I’ll make sure they keep a seat for you on tomorrow’s London plane.”
“You can’t turn me out. My papers are in order.”
“Yes, but this is like other cities: you need money here. If you change sterling on the black market I’ll catch up on you inside twenty-four hours. Let him go.”
Rollo Martins dusted himself down. He said, “Thanks for the drinks.”
“That’s all right.”
“I’m glad I don’t have to feel grateful. I suppose they were on expenses?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be seeing you again in a week or two when I’ve got the dope.” I knew he was angry: I didn’t believe then that he was serious. I thought he was putting over an act to cheer up his self esteem.
“I might come and see you off tomorrow.”
“I shouldn’t waste your time. I won’t be there.”
“Paine here will show you the way to Sacher’s. You can get a bed and dinner there. I’ll see to that.”
He stepped to one side as though to make way for the waiter and slashed out at me: I just avoided him, but stumbled against the table. Before he could try again Paine had landed on him on the mouth. He went bang over in the alleyway between the tables and came up bleeding from a cut lip. I said, “I thought you promised not to fight.”
He wiped some of the blood away with his sleeve and said, “Oh no, I said I’d rather make you a bloody fool. I didn’t say I wouldn’t give you a black eye as well.”
I had had a long day and I was tired of Rollo Martins. I said to Paine: “See him safely into Sacher’s. Don’t hit him again if he behaves,” and turning away from both of them towards the inner bar (I deserved one more drink), I heard Paine say respectfully to the man he had just knocked down, “This way, sir. It’s only just around the corner.”
WHAT HAPPENED next I didn’t hear from Paine but from Martins a long time afterwards, reconstructing the chain of events that did indeed-though not quite in the way he had expected-prove me to be a fool. Paine simply saw him to the head porter’s desk and explained there, “This gentleman came in on the plane from London. Colonel Calloway says he’s to have a room.” Having made that clear, he said, “Good evening, sir,” and left. He was probably a bit embarrassed by Martins’ bleeding lip.
“Had you already got a reservation, sir?” the porter asked.
“No. No, I don’t think so,” Martins said in a muffled voice holding his handkerchief to his mouth.
“I thought perhaps you might be Mr Dexter. We had a room reserved for a week for Mr Dexter.”
Martins said, “Oh, I am Mr Dexter.” He told me later that it occurred to him that Lime might have engaged him a room in that name because perhaps it was Buck Dexter and not Rollo Martins who was to be used for propaganda purposes. A voice said at his elbow, “I’m so sorry you were not met at the plane, Mr Dexter. My name’s Crabbin.”
The speaker was a stout middle-aged young man with a natural tonsure and one of the thickest pairs of horn-rimmed glasses that Martins had ever seen.
He went apologetically on, “One of our chaps happened to ring up Frankfurt and heard you were on the plane. H Q made one of their usual foolish mistakes and wired you were not coming. Something about Sweden but the cable was badly mutilated. Directly I heard from Frankfurt I tried to meet the plane, but I just missed you. You got my note?”
Martins held his handkerchief to his mouth and said obscurely, “Yes. Yes?”
“May I say at once, Mr Dexter, how excited I am to meet you?”
“Good of you.”
“Ever since I was a boy, I’ve thought you the greatest novelist of our century.”
Martins winced! It was painful opening his mouth to protest. He took an angry look instead at Mr Crabbin, but it was impossible to suspect that young man of a practical joke.
“You have a big Austrian public, Mr Dexter, both for your originals and your translations. Especially for The Curved Prow, that’s my own favourite.”
Martins was thinking hard. “Did you say-room for a week?”
“Yes.”
“Very kind of you.”
“Mr Schmidt here will give you tickets every day, to cover all meals. But I expect you’ll need a little pocket money. We’ll fix that. Tomorrow we thought you’d like a quiet day-to look about.”
“Yes.”
“Of course any of us are at your service if you need a guide. Then the day after tomorrow in the evening there’s a little quiet discussion at the Institute-on the contemporary novel. We thought perhaps you’d say a few words just to set the ball rolling, and then answer questions.”
Martins at that moment was prepared to agree to anything, to get rid of Mr Crabbin and also to secure a week’s free board and lodging, and Rollo, of course, as I was to discover later, had always been prepared to accept any suggestion-for a drink, for a girl, for a joke, for a new excitement. He said now, “Of course, of course,” into his handkerchief.
“Excuse me, Mr Dexter, have you got a toothache? I know a very good dentist.”
“No. Somebody hit me, that’s all.”
“Good God. Were they trying to rob you?”
“No, it was a soldier. I was trying to punch his bloody colonel in the eye.” He removed the handkerchief and gave Crabbin a view of his cut mouth. He told me that Crabbin was at a complete loss for words: Martins couldn’t understand why because he had never read the work of his great contemporary, Benjamin Dexter: he hadn’t even heard of him. I am a great admirer of Dexter, so that I could understand Crabbin’s bewilderment. Dexter has been ranked as a stylist with Henry James, but he has a wider feminine streak than his master-indeed his enemies have sometimes described his subtle complex wavering style as old maidish. For a man still just on the right side of fifty his passionate interest in embroidery and his habit of calming a not very tumultuous mind with tatting-a trait beloved by his disciples-certainly to others seems a little affected.
“Have you ever read a book called The Lone Rider to Santa Fe”
“No, don’t think so.”
Martins said, “This lone rider had his best friend shot by the sheriff of a town called Lost Claim Gulch. The story is how he hunted that sheriff down-quite legally-until his revenge was completed.”
“I never imagined you reading Westerns, Mr Dexter,” Crabbin said, and it needed all Martins’ resolution to stop Rollo saying: “But I write them.”
“Well, I’m gunning just the same way for Colonel Callaghan.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Heard of Harry Lime?”
“Yes,” Crabbin said cautiously, “but I didn’t really know him.”
“I did. He was my best friend.”
“I shouldn’t have thought he was a very-literary character.”
“None of my friends are.”
Crabbin blinked nervously behind the horn-rims. He said with an air of appeasement, “He was interested in the theatre though. A friend of his-an actress, you know-is learning English at the Institute. He called once or twice to fetch her.”
“Young or old?”
“Oh, young, very young. Not a good actress in my opinion.”
Martins remembered the girl by the grave with her hands over her face. He said, “I’d like to meet any friend of Harry’s.”
“She’ll probably be at your lecture.”
“Austrian?”’
“She claims to be Austrian, but I suspect she’s Hungarian. She works at the Josefstadt. I wouldn’t be surprised if Lime had not helped her with her papers. She calls herself Schmidt. Anna Schmidt. You can’t imagine a young English actress calling herself Smith, can you? And a pretty one, too. It always struck me as a bit too anonymous to be true.”