Martins felt he had got all he could from Crabbin, so he pleaded tiredness, a long day, promised to ring up in the morning, accepted ten pounds’ worth of Bafs for immediate expenses, and went to his room. It seemed to him that he was earning money rapidly-twelve pounds in less than an hour.
He was tired: he realised that when he stretched himself out on his bed in his boots. Within a minute he had left Vienna far behind him and was walking through a dense wood, ankle deep in snow. An owl hooted, and he felt suddenly lonely and scared. He had an appointment to meet Harry under a particular tree, but in a wood so dense as this how could he recognise any one tree from the rest? Then he saw a figure and ran towards it: it whistled a familiar tune and his heart lifted with the relief and joy at not after all being alone. Then the figure turned and it was not Harry at all-just a stranger who grinned at him in a little circle of wet slushy melted snow, while the owl hooted again and again. He woke suddenly to hear the telephone ringing by his bed.
A voice with a trace of foreign accent-only a trace said, “Is that Mr Rollo Martins?”
“Yes.” It was a change to be himself and not Dexter.
“You wouldn’t know me,” the voice said unnecessarily, “but I was a friend of Harry Lime.”
It was a change too to hear anyone claim to be a friend of Harry’s: Martins’ heart warmed towards the stranger. He said, “I’d be glad to meet you.”
“I’m just round the corner at the Old Vienna.”
“Wouldn’t you make it tomorrow? I’ve had a pretty awful day with one thing and another.”
“Harry asked me to see that you were all right. I was with him when he died.”
“I thought…” Rollo Martins said and stopped. He was going to say, “I thought he died instantaneously,” but something suggested caution. He said instead, “You haven’t told me your name.”
“Kurtz,” the voice said. “I’d offer to come round to you, only you know, Austrians aren’t allowed in Sacher’s.”
“Perhaps we could meet at the Old Vienna in the morning.”
“Certainly,” the voice said, “if you are quite sure that you are all right till then.”
“How do you mean?”
“Harry had it on his mind that you’d be penniless.” Rollo Martins lay back on his bed with the receiver to his ear and thought: Come to Vienna to make money. This was the third stranger to stake him in less than five hours. He said cautiously, “Oh, I can carry on till I see you.” There seemed no point in turning down a good offer till he knew what the offer was.
“Shall we say eleven then at Old Vienna in the Kartnerstrasse? I’ll be in a brown suit and I’ll carry one of your books.”
“That’s fine. How did you get hold of one?”
“Harry gave it to me.” The voice had enormous charm and reasonableness, but when Martins had said good-night and rung off, he couldn’t help wondering how it was that if Harry had been so conscious before he died he had not had a cable sent to stop him. Hadn’t Callaghan too said that Lime had died instantaneously-or without pain, was it? or had he himself put the words into Callaghan’s mouth? It was then that the idea first lodged firmly in Martins’ mind that there was something wrong about Lime’s death, something the police had been too stupid to discover. He tried to discover it himself with the help of two cigarettes, but he fell asleep without his dinner and with the mystery still unsolved. It had been a long day, but not quite long enough for that.
WHAT I DISLIKED about him at first sight,” Martins told me, “was his toupee. It was one of those obvious toupees-flat and yellow, with the hair cut straight at the back and not fitting close. There must be something phoney about a man who won’t accept baldness gracefully. He had one of those faces too where the lines have been put in carefully, like a make-up, in the right places-to express charm, whimsicality, lines at the corners of the eyes. He was made-up to appeal to romantic schoolgirls.”
This conversation took place some days later-he brought out his whole story when the trail was nearly cold. When he made that remark about the romantic schoolgirls I saw his rather hunted eyes focus suddenly. It was a girl-just like any other girl, I thought-hurrying by outside my office in the driving snow.
“Something pretty?”
He brought his gaze back and said, “I’m off that for ever. You know,? alloway, a time comes in a man’s life when he. gives up all that sort of thing…”
“I see. I thought you were looking at a girl.”
“I was. But only because she reminded me for a moment of Anna-Anna Schmidt.”
“Who’s she? Isn’t she a girl?”
“Oh, yes, in a way.”
“What do you mean, in a way?”
“She was Harry’s girl.”
“Are you taking her over?”
“She’s not that kind, Calloway. Didn’t you see her at his funeral? I’m not mixing my drinks any more. I’ve got a hangover to last me a life-time.”
“You were telling me about Kurtz,” I said.
It appeared that Kurtz was sitting there, making a great show of reading The Lone Rider from Santa Fe. When Martins sat down at his table he said with indescribably false enthusiasm, “It’s wonderful how you keep the tension.”
“Tension?”
“Suspense. You’re a master at it. At the end of every chapter one’s left guessing…”
“So you were a friend of Harry’s,” Martins said.
“I think his best,” but Kurtz added with the smallest pause in which his brain must have registered the error, “except you of course.”
“Tell me how he died.”
“I was with him. We came out together from the door of his flat and Harry saw a friend he knew across the road-an American called Cooler. He waved to Cooler and started across the road to him when a jeep came tearing round the corner and bowled him over. It was Harry’s fault really-not the driver’s.”
“Somebody told me he died instantaneously.”
“I wish he had. He died before the ambulance could reach us though.”
“He could speak then?”
“Yes. Even in his pain he worried about you.”
“What did he say?”
“I can’t remember the exact words, Rollo-I may call you Rollo, mayn’t I? he always called you that to us. He was anxious that I should look after you when you arrived. See that you were looked after. Get your return ticket for you.” In telling me Martins said, “You see I was collecting return tickets as well as cash.”
“But why didn’t you cable to stop me?”
“We did, but the cable must have missed you. What with censorship and the zones, cables can take anything up to five days.”
“There was an inquest?”
“Of course.”
“Did you know that the police have a crazy notion that Harry was mixed up in some racket?”
“No. But everyone in Vienna is. We all sell cigarettes and exchange schillings for Bafs and that kind of thing.”
“The police meant something worse than that.”
“They get rather absurd ideas sometimes,” the man with the toupee said cautiously.
“I’m going to stay here till I prove them wrong.”
Kurtz turned his head sharply and the toupee shifted very, very slightly. He said, “What’s the good? Nothing can bring Harry back.”
“I’m going to have that police officer run out of Vienna.”
“I don’t see what you can do.”
“I’m going to start working back from his death. You were there and this man Cooler and the chauffeur. You can give me their addresses.”
“I don’t know the chauffeur’s.”
“I can get it from the coroner’s records. And then there’s Harry’s girl…”
Kurtz said, “It will be painful for her.”