There was reason for the silence, especially good reason, Smith thought, for soldiers almost totally cut off from womankind. Mary Ellison, clad in a belted rain-coat, with a scarf over her head and a battered suitcase in her hand, was standing in the doorway. The silence seemed to deepen. Women are rare at any time in a high Alpine Gasthaus, unaccompanied young women even rarer and beautiful young women on their own virtually unknown. For some moments Mary stood there uncertainly, as if unsure of her welcome or not knowing what to do. Then she dropped her bag, and her face lit up as she caught sight of Heidi, a face transformed with joy. Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel, Smith thought inconsequentially. With a face and a figure and an acting talent like that, she could have had Hollywood tramping a path of beaten gold to her doorstep… Through the silent room she and Heidi’ ran toward one another and embraced.
‘My dear Maria! My dear Maria!’ There was a break in Heidi’s voice that made Smith reflect that Hollywood might have been well advised to tramp out two paths of beaten gold. ‘So you came after all!’
‘After all these years!’ Mary hugged the other girl and kissed her again. ‘It’s wonderful to see you again, Cousin Heidi! Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful! Of course I came. Why ever not?’
‘Well!’ Heidi made no effort to lower her voice as she looked around significantly. “They’re a pretty rough lot, hereabouts. You should carry a gun, always. Hunter battalion, they call themselves. They’re well named!’
The soldiers broke out into a roar of laughter and the normal hubbub of sound resumed almost at once. Arm in arm, Heidi led Mary across to the small group of civilians standing at the far end of the bar. She stopped in front of the man in the centre of the group, a dark, wiry, intelligent-faced man who looked very very tough indeed, and performed the introductions.
‘Maria, this is Captain von Brauchitsch. Heurn–works in the Schloss Adler. Captain, my cousin, Maria Schenk.’
Von Brauchitsch bowed slightly.
“You are fortunate in your cousins, Heidi. We were expecting you, Miss Schenk.’ He smiled. ‘But not someone as beautiful as this.’
Mary smiled in turn, her face puzzled. ‘You were expecting–‘
‘He was expecting,’ Heidi said dryly. ‘It is the captain’s business to know what is going on.’
‘Don’t make me sound so sinister, Heidi. You’ll frighten Miss Schenk.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘The next cable-car leaves in ten minutes. If I might escort the young lady–‘
The young lady is going to my room first,” Heidi said firmly. ‘For a wash-up and a Kaffee-Schnapps. Can’t you see that she’s half-dead with cold?’
‘I do believe her teeth are chattering,’ von Brauchitsch said with a smile. ‘I thought it might have been me. Well, the cable-car after the next one, then.’
‘And I’m going with her,’ Heidi announced.
‘Both of you?’ Von Brauchitsch shook his head and smiled again. Von. Brauchitsch was always smiling. ‘My lucky night.’
‘Permits, travel documents, identity cards and letters you have,’ Heidi said. She fished up some papers from the recesses of her Tyrolean blouse and handed them to Mary who was sitting across from her on the bed in her room. ‘Plan of the castle and instructions. Do your homework well then give them back to me. I’ll take them up. You might be searched — they’re a suspicious bunch up there. And drink up that Schnapps — first thing von Brauchitsch will do is to smell your breath. Just to check. He checks everything. He’s the most suspicious of the lot.’
‘He seemed a very pleasant man to me,’ Mary said mildly.
‘He’s a very unpleasant Gestapo officer,’ Heidi said dryly.
When Heidi returned to the bar, Smith and Schaffer had been rejoined by Carraciola, Thomas and Christiansen. All five appeared to be carefree in their drinking and chatting inconsequentially, but their low and urgent voices were evidence enough of the desperate worry in their minds. Or in the minds of some of them.
‘You haven’t seen old Smithy, then?’ Smith asked quietly. ‘None of you saw him go? Then where in hell has he got to?’
There was no reply, but the shrugs and worried frowns were reply enough. Christiansen said : ‘Shall I go and have a look?’
‘I don’t think so,” Smith said. ‘I’m afraid it’s too late to go anywhere now.’
Both doors of ‘Zum Wilden Hirsch’ had suddenly burst open and half a dozen soldiers were coming quickly in through either door. All had slung machine-carbines, Schmeissers, at the ready. They fanned out along the walls and waited, machine-carbines horizontal, fingers on triggers, their eyes very calm, very watchful.
‘Well, well,’ Christiansen murmured. ‘It was a nice war.”
The sudden and total silence was emphasised rather than broken by the crisp footfalls on the wooden floor as a full colonel of the Wehrmacht came striding into the room and looked coldly around him. The gargantuan proprietor of the Gasthatts came hurrying round from the back of the bar, tripping over chairs in the anxiety and fear limned so unmistakably clearly in his round pumpkin of a face.
‘Colonel Weissner!’ It required no acute ear to catch the shake in the proprietor’s voice. ‘What in God’s name–‘.
‘No fault of yours, mein Herr.’ The colonel’s words were reassuring which was more than the tone of his voice was. ‘But you harbour enemies of the state.’
‘Enemies of the state’ In a matter of seconds the proprietor’s complexion had changed from a most unbecoming puce to an even more unbecoming washed-out grey while his voice now quavered like a high-C tuning fork. ‘What? I? I, Josef Wartmann–‘
‘Please.’ The colonel held up his hand for silence. ‘We are looking for four or five Alpenkorps deserters from the Stuttgart military prison. To escape, they killed two officers and a guardroom sergeant. They were known to be heading this way.’
Smith nodded and said in Schaffer’s ear: ‘Very clever. Very clever indeed.’
‘Now then,’ Weissner continued briskly. ‘If they’re here, we’ll soon have them. I want the senior officers present of drafts thirteen, fourteen and fifteen to come forward.’ He waited until two majors and a captain came forward and stood at attention before him. ‘You know all your officers and men by sight?’
The three officers nodded.
‘Good. I wish you–‘
‘No need, Colonel.’ Heidi had come round from behind the bar and now stood before Weissner, hands clasped respectfully behind her back. ‘I know the man you’re after. The ringleader.’
‘Ah!’ Colonel Weissner smiled. ‘The charming–‘
‘Heidi, Herr Colonel. I have waited table on you up in the Schloss Adler.’
Weissner bowed gallantly. ‘As if one could ever forget.’
“That one.’ Her face full of a combination of righteous indignation and devotion to duty, Heidi pointed a dramatically accusing finger at Smith. ‘That’s the one, Herr Colonel. He –he pinched me!’
‘My dear Heidi!’ Colonel Weissner smiled indulgently. ‘If we were to convict every man who ever harboured thoughts of–ù’
‘Not that, Herr Colonel. He asked me what I knew or had heard about a man called General Cannabee–I think.’
‘General Carnaby!’ Colonel Weissner was no longer smiling. He glanced at Smith, motioned guards to close in on him, then glanced back at Heidi. ‘What did you tell him?’
‘Herr Colonel!’ Heidi was stiff with outraged dignity. “I hope I am a good German. And I value my engagements at the Schloss Adler.’ She half-turned and pointed across the room. ‘Captain von Brauchitsch of the Gestapo will vouch for me.”
‘No need. We will not forget this, my dear child.’ He patted her affectionately on the cheek, then turned to Smith, the temperature of his voice dropping from warm to subzero. ‘Your accomplices, sir, and at once.’
‘At once, my dear Colonel?’ The look he gave Heidi was as glacial as the Colonel’s voice. ‘Surely not. Let’s get our priorities straight. First, her thirty pieces of silver. Then us.’
‘You talk like a fool,’ Colonel Weissner said contemptuously. ‘Heidi is a true patriot.’
‘I’m sure she is,’ Smith said bitterly.
Mary, her face still and shocked, stared down from the uncurtained crack in Heidi’s dark room as Smith and the four others were led out of the front door of ‘Zum Wilden Hirsch’ and marched off down the road under heavy escort to where several command cars were parked on the far side of the street. Brusquely, efficiently, the prisoners were bundled into two of the cars, engines started up and within a minute both cars were lost to sight round a bend in the road. For almost a minute afterwards Mary stood there, staring out unseeingly on the swirling snow, then pulled the curtains together and turned back towards the darkened room.
She said in a whisper: ‘How did it happen?’
A match scratched as Heidi lit and turned up the flame of the oil lamp.