The Numbered Account Read online

  ‘Goodness, fancy through sleepers coming here from Germany,’ Julia muttered to herself; she regarded Interlaken, though a bewitching little place, as definitely what Americans would call ‘up-State’—i.e. at the back of beyond. The Berne train, clanking slowly along towards the river and the Ost-Bahnhof, cut off her view of the surprising Dortmund coach; it gave some treble hoots before it crossed the street. Insular Julia laughed; she still thought trains running about loose in towns funny. But she was relieved by Colin’s prudence in not coming to sit with her, especially in view of the driver’s connection with the Golden Bear. She was glad that he had come back—and he might be able to help about getting June away, though she doubted it. But as the bus rolled slowly out of the Platz, roared along the flat road through the Interlaken suburbs, and then ground its way up through the woods, hooting its little tune before the hairpin turns, it occurred to Julia that with Colin at the Silberhorn tonight the stroll with Antrobus, on which she had been counting when Mrs. Hathaway had gone early to bed, might not come off as easily, as inevitably, as she had hoped.

  This idea upset her to a degree that was rather frightening. Was she really losing her head? She found herself running over in her mind phrases Antrobus had used: ‘What a nice person you are!’ ‘Birds, too’—and what he had said about telling her everything if he were a Swiss policeman or hotel porter. But when you added them up, they really amounted to nothing more than that he enjoyed her, which men in her experience practically always did. She shook herself, mentally; at her age, she was behaving like a schoolgirl!

  The bus gradually emptied itself at various hotels and pensions along Beatenberg’s interminable village street. It pulled up at the foot of the Sessel-Bahn; here Colin got off, and went striding up the path towards the station, his vast rucksack on his back—Julia wondered what on earth he was up to. However, after she had arrived, handed the now very withered bunch of Waldmeister to Fräulein Hanna, looked in on Mrs. Hathaway and reported this, as well as the fact that Antrobus was definitely coming to dine, and was quietly brewing tea in her room to drink out on the balcony, there came a tap on the door, and in walked Colin.

  ‘Hullo! Are you staying here after all?’

  ‘Certainly. Only I didn’t want to advertise it, especially with you on the bus too; so I walked along the Parallel-Weg and popped down. Do I see tea preparing? Good— I’m frightfully thirsty.’

  ‘You’ll have to have it in the tooth-glass; I’ve only got one cup.’

  ‘No matter.’ Colin held the tooth-glass up to the light and polished it with the fresh face-towel.

  ‘Are some of the others watching the air-ports?’ Julia asked in a lowered voice, as they sat rather crampedly on the balcony on two wicker chairs, and she poured out tea.

  ‘No—at least not much. We hear they’re probably coming by train now. More unobtrusive, in a way,’ he replied, in the same tone.

  ‘Oh.’ She reflected, sipping her tea, and was suddenly struck by the recollection of that Dortmund-Interlaken sleeping-car which she had noticed down at the West-Bahnhof. ‘From Germany?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, almost certainly. But why on earth should you think so?’

  Julia explained what she had seen.

  ‘That could be quite useful,’ Colin said. ‘I didn’t know about those through sleepers. You’re a good observer, J. dear—but we knew that before!’

  ‘Who will watch the trains?’ she asked. ‘Antrobus, I suppose, as he’s down in Interlaken.’

  ‘Why Antrobus?’ Colin asked, in his most carefully neutral voice.

  ‘Oh, he came clean this morning,’ Julia said, with her warm laugh. ‘In spite of your total clottery, you silly creature, I do now know that he’s in with your lot—but how idiotic that neither he nor you knew about one another. Really, the Secret Service!’

  ‘He had no business to tell you,’ the young man said. ‘After all, he knows nothing about you.’

  ‘Dear child, he knows everything about me—Morocco, Portugal, and all.’

  ‘How?’ he asked sharply.

  ‘Quite simple—rang up London to ask, and was put onto Hugh.’ She reddened a little at that name. ‘Anyhow he was more or less compromised into telling me, because I caught him red-handed in the Golden Bear, going through Borovali’s effects.’

  ‘That’s where they’ve shifted to, is it? In Interlaken?’ She nodded. ‘How did you find that out?’

  Still in a low voice Julia recounted the events of the morning, beginning with June’s telephone call; Colin listened attentively.

  ‘How I wish all international crooks and thugs employed such morons!’ he muttered fervently at the end. ‘This June girl is a piece of cake. Of course they had to use her for her face, but she’s God’s gift to us.’

  Julia proceeded to tell him that God’s gift must be got away promptly—‘before you start clamping down on those unsavoury characters, B. and W.’

  ‘Where can she go?’

  ‘Oh, they’ll take her in at La Cure, at any time.’

  ‘Good Lord! Does that delightful Pastor know what she’s been up to?’

  ‘Of course. He and I went to the bank together, you remember, and he heard the whole story there. He doesn’t mind a bit—he calls her his “god-daughter at one remove”.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ Colin said again.

  ‘More tea?’ As she refilled the toothglass—‘Why the fancy dress?’ Julia enquired.

  ‘Ah—well—perhaps slightly less obviously English. You see we think that Borovali and Wright almost certainly won’t hand over the papers to their principals in Interlaken itself; much more likely on a sight-seeing tour of some sort. So when I tag along I want to look as Swiss as possible.’

  ‘Oh I see. Very crafty! But how did you get hold of this idea of the excursion meeting?’

  To her surprise Colin’s dead-white face, a face as utterly white as his sister Edina’s, suddenly reddened like a girl’s.

  ‘Well—in fact—look here, J., I apologise for ticking you off last night about your goings-on at Merligen. My superiors took a different view, and they were quite right; we got some “bugging” arranged for that chemist’s telephone in Berne, and that produced this information about the meeting.’

  ‘And their coming by train?’

  ‘Yes.’ Colin’s face got redder still.

  ‘Oh ho!’ Julia said cheerfully. ‘So the chemist, all innocent, rang Mr. Kaufmann at the Villa Victoria, and he, if he’s back from Lugano—and if not sour-puss Mrs. K.— rang up Mr. B. at the Bear, I suppose. Did you get any date for this Ausflug?’

  ‘Not hard, no. But not before tomorrow, and more likely the day after.’

  ‘Ah—that’s why Antrobus felt safe to come to supper tonight.’ She felt that Antrobus might have told her some of this himself.

  ‘Is he coming to supper?’ Colin asked, looking pleased.

  ‘Yes—Mrs. H. invited him. She rather fell for him, and then fell away again!’ Julia said laughing. ‘But look, Colin’—she paused.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, he and I might have something to discuss, rather privately, after Mrs. H. has gone to bed.’ Julia as she spoke reddened as deeply as Colin had done a few moments before. ‘So if you could contrive not to be too much in evidence, darling—’

  He studied her face, more beautiful than ever scorched by the blush, with affectionate curiosity.

  ‘Very well. Is this it, Julia my sweet?’

  ‘Oh, how do I know? Clear out now, there’s a lamb. I must have a bath.’

  Chapter 11

  Beatenberg and Interlaken

  Dinner that night was rather a success. Julia, who bought clothes so skilfully—and so expensively—that they lasted almost for ever put on the green brocade dress which she had worn at a royal wedding in Lisbon nearly two years before; Antrobus startled everyone, and delighted Mrs. Hathaway, by appearing in a dinner-jacket. He bowed over her hand, apologised for not telephoning, but felt confident that she had rece
ived the verbal message he sent by Miss Probyn that he was coming, and expressed his great pleasure at being able to do so—Mrs. Hathaway was mollified. Fräulein Hanna had done wonders with the Waldmeister, and the May-cup was delicious; so was the soup, the tiny local trout, and the tender steaks. Small the Silberhorn rooms might be, but the food was admirable, and so was the view—beyond the window the snows of the Blümlisalp turned a tea-rose pink, faded to pale gold, and then to a cold lavender-grey. Within the brightly-lit room the curiosity of the English party was aroused by a table close by, evidently prepared for some celebration: broad mauve-and-white ribbons were stretched across it from corner to corner, mauve-and-white bows were pinned here and there, and posies of mauve flowers lay at each place.

  ‘What can it be?’ Antrobus speculated. ‘What does one celebrate by half-mourning?’ Julia enquired of Fräulein Hanna, who stumped over intermittently to supervise the service of their meal, and learned that it was a Swiss silver-wedding party.

  ‘Oh well, I suppose half-mourning is quite appropriate for that,’ Antrobus said. ‘The onset of middle age, and so on. After all, what colour could they have? White is bridal; red—well presumably all passion is nearly spent; green— oh, perish the thought! And blue is too dismal—so far as I know no one has composed “Silver Wedding Blues”. No, I think mauve is very well chosen.’

  Mrs. Hathaway, laughing, agreed. She was pleased with Antrobus for taking the trouble to make this sort of civilised conversation; her former approval of him returned. Colin as usual sat rather silent; Julia put in a slightly cassant drawled observation from time to time—so as not, as she said later to Antrobus, to have two death’s-heads at the feast.

  For she got her stroll. After coffee in the Kleine Saal —Mrs. Hathaway was still too cautious about evening chills to risk having it on the balcony—Colin offered to escort the older lady to her room; when he came down he asked Antrobus to excuse him, as he had some letters to write.

  ‘You two don’t want a little chat about unfinished business?’ Julia asked helpfully. Colin scowled at her; Antrobus grinned.

  ‘We can have that tomorrow morning, can’t we?’ he said to the young man. ‘What about 10 a.m. in the Englischer Garten?—you know, by the river, with the superb silver poplars and the monument to the man who built the railway up to the Jungfrau-Joch? I shall be sitting on a bench, reading The Times and listening to the blackbirds.’

  ‘I don’t know, but I will find it, and be there,’ Colin said, not very graciously. ‘Good-night. ‘Night, Julia.’ He took himself off.

  ‘What’s upsetting him?’ Antrobus asked.

  ‘Just what I’m wondering myself.’ She glanced round the small room, where two other parties were sitting, the men smoking cheroots. ‘It’s stifling in here—let’s go into the garden for a minute,’ she said.

  The garden was empty; the gravelled paths and the now cloth-less tables were clearly illuminated by the big arc-light across the street. Julia went over and leant on the parapet above the hayfield.

  ‘Colin worries,’ she said to Antrobus, as he came and leant besides her. ‘I expect you’ve heard about the line-tapping, and that the principals are expected to come by train now, from Germany.’

  ‘Yes, I heard that this afternoon.’

  ‘Personally I fancy those through sleepers from Dortmund to Interlaken,’ she said. ‘Wagons-Lits passengers give their tickets and passports to the attendant in order not to be woken up at the frontier; so even if the passport officials were alerted, they’d have a frightful job rousing up all the women with their hair in nets in the upper berths.’

  He laughed out loud.

  ‘What a splendid scene! No. I don’t think the Swiss would go as far as that—too bad for tourism. But all passengers, even in sleepers, have to tumble out and pass their luggage through the Customs at Berne; and there someone, I hope, will be keeping an open eye tomorrow—improbable—and the day after, and the day after that.’

  ‘And then give you a ring about people booked through to Interlaken?’

  ‘That, roughly, is the idea.’

  ‘And you loiter with intent at one of the Bahnhofs, and tip off Colin, in his incredible hiker’s outfit, who to follow?’

  ‘Some arrangement of the sort, if we are lucky.’

  ‘Well can’t you tip me off, so that I can go and snatch June while B. and W. are going up to Mürren or the Jungfrau-Joch on Ferien-Billets to hand over the doings?’

  He laughed rather grimly.

  ‘Julia, I’ve told you already that I will if I can. You are so persistent—one would think nothing mattered but your little criminal and her ankle!’

  ‘I’m not sure that anything else does matter quite so much. Certainly not beastly Sheiks and Emirs and their revolting oil for revolting aeroplanes.’

  ‘You’re incorrigible!’ he said, with an unwilling laugh. ‘Anyhow, I think I have a better idea—for once—than yours. How would it be if I could arrange to have B. and K.—well whatever they are; it all comes to the same thing —summoned to the police-station on some excuse about passports or what have you, tomorrow? And meanwhile you nip in and carry off your meretricious little protégée?’

  ‘How long could they be kept at the police-station?’ Julia asked, thinking of all June’s clothes and make-up, and how slow the limping child was. ‘Anyhow she isn’t meretricious; that’s the last adjective to apply to her.’

  He ignored this.

  ‘Say half an hour.’

  ‘Could you make it three-quarters? If you can do that I could work it.’

  ‘Probably—yes.’

  ‘Is this a hard offer? Because if so I ought to ring up the Pastor and lay him on. He’s frightfully busy always, and it’s quite a drive from Bellardon to Interlaken.’

  ‘Oh do for goodness’ sake leave that till later!’ the man said impatiently. ‘You can’t talk from that hopeless box now, with those people sitting just outside. All this is so boring, really, and it’s such a divine night. Come for a stroll. Do you want a scarf or something?’

  His impatient urgency delighted Julia. It was indeed a divine night; too warm for her to want any sort of wrap, she said. They crossed the street and took the narrow little path up towards the Parallel-Weg, passing the cow-stable where the enormous Emmenthalers, chewing the cud gently but audibly in the darkness, exhaled the sane and sweet smell of cows’ breath, delightful to the country-bred —Antrobus paused and looked in through the open half-door, which a shaft of moonlight penetrated, touching some of the huge peaceful hind-quarters. ‘Sweet beasts,’ he murmured. The moon was near the full, and its light strong; out to their right it illuminated the white-and-yellow hotel cat, sitting watchfully on the verge of the high uncut grass waiting for field-mice. ‘I love that cat,’ Julia said, pointing it out.

  When they reached the Parallel-Weg they turned right along it, in the direction of the Sessel-Bahn; the forest proper was some distance above them, but isolated trees studded the fields here and there, the moonlight throwing their shadows sharply onto the silvery sheen of the high meadow-grass.

  ‘What is this tremendously strong scent?’ Antrobus asked suddenly, stopping short.

  ‘Rowan.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mountain-ash I suppose to you. It’s just coming into flower—the whole place smells of it.’

  ‘Delicious,’ he said, walking on. ‘Clever of you to know what it is.’

  ‘I think it so odd that you don’t know it,’ Julia said. ‘After all, aren’t you supposed to be Scotch? It’s such an amusing tree—the great antidote to fairies.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh yes—in the West Highlands in old days practically every garden had a pair of rowan-trees planted at the gate, with their boughs twisted together to form an arch; the fairies can’t go through that, you see.’

  ‘Can’t they fly over the hedge, or wall, or whatever?’

  ‘Apparently not—the entrance is the entrance, and if you protect that
, you protect all.’

  ‘How charming. Yes, of course it’s the same idea as the Chinese putting those short isolated walls at the entrance to their court-yards—the devil-dodgers. Demons can’t fly or climb either, it seems; or even make right-angled turns.’

  ‘What fun! You’ve been in China, then?’

  ‘For a short time—before all this Communist beastliness really got going, thank goodness. I’d sooner have positive swarms of demons than Mao Tse-tung.’ He stopped again beside one of the wooden seats which the Swiss so thoughtfully place along their paths. ‘Let’s sit,’ he said, and taking her elbow drew her down beside him.

  Julia’s heart began to throb a little. She felt shy and nervous, though this was exactly what she had hoped for all day—to walk and sit in the moonlight with John Antrobus. He had chosen their seat well. The meadows sloped away below them, broken to the left by the irregular bends of a small stream which tinkled musically between flowery banks; from other cow-stables down by the village came an occasional note, deeper and even more musical—Swiss cows wear their bells all night, and any movement of the great animals gives off this soothing sound. Away across the darkling lake the Blümlisalp stood up, white in the moonlight, above the dark silvery-velvet shimmer of the forest slopes in front of it. The air was full of smells: a resinous whiff from the pines up the hill-side, the sweet breath of summer in the meadow, and, sharper and more intense, the almost savagely penetrating scent of rowan-blossom. Antrobus looked round; a mountain-ash stood a little way behind the seat.

  ‘There’s another of your anti-fairy trees,’ he said. ‘I shall always know that smell from now on. It is strong.’

  ‘It seems to smell stronger out here than at home,’ Julia said.

  ‘Practically all flowers smell stronger and are more intense in colour in mountains,’ he observed. ‘Odd, with their very short blooming season. Or perhaps that is the reason— carpe diem, if you know what that means.’