The Master of the Day of Judgment (11 page)

"It could be you're right," I said, for I remembered that Eugen Bischoff really was a great lover of Italy and all things Italian. "Your train of thought strikes me as completely logical. You have almost persuaded me."

The engineer smiled. An expression of satisfaction appeared on his face. My admission obviously gave him pleasure.

"I admit that I should have hit on those ideas myself. All honour to your detective acumen. I no longer doubt that you'll discover the identity of the lady to whom I talked on the telephone yesterday before I do."

The smile vanished from his face and furrows appeared on his brow.

"Not much detective acumen will be needed for that, I'm afraid," he said slowly. He raised his hands and dropped them again, and that gesture betrayed a resignation the reason for which I did not understand.

He relapsed into silence. He took a cigarette from his silver cigarette case and held it between his fingers. He was so lost in thought that he forgot to light it.

"You see, baron," he said after a pause, "while I was sitting here waiting for you, I had — it won't be easy to make the association intelligible to you — well, while I was sitting here I was naturally thinking about the lady on the telephone and her really strange reference to the Day of Judgment — I myself don't know how it happened — but suddenly I saw the five hundred dead of the Munho river."

He stared blankly at the cigarette in his hand.

"That is, I didn't see them," he went on. "But something made me think what it would be like if I were confronted with five hundred yellow distorted faces, all of them desperate at the certainty of death, looking at me accusingly ..."

He tried to strike a match, but it broke.

"A childish idea, of course. You're right," he said after a while. "What does that shadowy phrase mean to people of the present day? The Day of Judgment, an empty phrase from the past. God's Judgment Seat. Do those words rouse any feeling in you? Of course when the sound of the
Dies Irae
resounded from the pulpit your forefathers were stricken with mad terror and went down on their knees. The Yosches" — he suddenly assumed a casual, conversational tone as if what he was talking about, while perhaps not uninteresting, was not of any real importance — ' the Yosches come from a very Catholic area, the Neuburg Palatinate, don't they? I see you're surprised that I know so much about your family background. Don't imagine that I normally take any interest in the genealogy of baronial houses, but one likes to know with whom one is dealing, so last night at the club I looked up the Almanach de Gotha . . . What was I saying? No, I wasn't frightened, no, of course I wasn't, that would have been absurd. All the same, it was a very strange feeling. Brandy is an excellent way of getting rid of troublesome ideas."

His cigarette was alight at last, and he leaned back and blew blue smoke rings into the air, I watched them, and all sorts of ideas came into my head. Suddenly I felt I had found the key to the engineer's strange character. This fair, broad-shouldered giant, this robust and determined man of action, had his heel of Achilles. He had talked about this long-past war experience for the second time in twenty-four hours. He was no drinker, to him drink was merely a sanctuary, a place of brief refuge from a desperate struggle in which he was involved. A burning sense of guilt that would not heal over followed him through the years and gave him no respite. The slightest reminder of it cast him down utterly.

The clock on the mantelpiece struck eleven. The engineer rose to say goodbye.

"I have your word for it, haven't I? You're postponing your trip," he said, and held out his hand.

"What gave you that idea?" I said irritably, for I had not given him any such assurance. "I have not changed my plans. I'm leaving today."

"Is that so?" he exclaimed angrily. "Have I been wasting my time? I've spent two hours trying to get you to see reason, and ..."

I looked him in the face. He immediately saw that this was not the way to talk to me.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "I've been very stupid. At bottom the whole affair is no concern of mine."

I accompanied him out. He turned in the doorway and struck his brow with his hand.

"Of course," he exclaimed. "I nearly forgot the most important thing. Listen, baron. I saw Dina this morning. I may be mistaken, but I had the impression that she would very much like to talk to you."

This piece of information was like a blow on the head with a rifle butt. For a moment I stood there in a trance, totally unable to think. For the next second I had a wild struggle with myself. I wanted to go to her, take her by both shoulders — he had been with her, seen her, spoken to her. I felt a wild desire to find out everything, good and bad, to ask him whether she had mentioned my name, and if so what the expression on her face had been. That was my first impulse, but I overcame it. I stayed quite calm, I did not give myself away.

"I'll let her know my address," I said, and noticed that my voice was trembling.

"Do that. Do that," the engineer said, and slapped my back in very friendly fashion. "Have a good trip. And don't miss your train."

TWELVE

I do not find it at all easy to explain why I did not carry out my intention to leave by the next train. It was certainly not the thought of Dina that kept me in Vienna because, however much I was struck by what the engineer told me, after a moment's calm reflection I attached no importance to it. She believed me to be her husband's murderer. Was it really possible that she wanted to see me again? I saw through the engineer's purpose. He had invented the story to dissuade me from leaving Vienna, and I was furious with myself for having been taken in by it; if only for a second.

The reasons that made me give up the idea of going away were by no means of a compelling nature, they resulted from a change of mood brought about by the engineer's visit. Hitherto I had been quite inactive. An absurd incident had put me at the centre of an event to which I did not feel I had the slightest connection. I had been so stunned by the sudden turn of events that I had hardly tried to defend myself. I had completely withdrawn into myself, left everything to the chance that was governing events and, in an inexplicable reversal of feeling, had wanted only to remain unaffected by memories of the events of the previous day.

That had now changed. The conversation with the engineer had roused in me the desire to take up my own cause myself. Eugen Bischoff's murderer must be found, and I did not know where to look for him. I imagined a dreadful, sluggish, monstrously fat creature craftily waiting for his victim between his four walls. The idea that this murderous horror was more than a figment of the engineer's imagination, that he might be living in my immediate neighbourhood, that I might confront him and call him to account — it was this last thought in particular that spurred me to action. I had wasted far too much time already, now I mustn't waste another minute. I must find out where Eugen Bischoff had been between twelve and one o'clock on three days of the past week, that was the point from which everything else would follow, and I set about the task with the impatient zeal that had prompted me to make preparations for leaving town during the night.

By now it was one o'clock. Vinzenz had laid the table, but I left untouched the meal that he fetched as usual from a neighbouring tavern when I was at home. I paced up and down the room in a state of nervous excitement, made plans, dismissed them as useless or impractical or too time-consuming, considered all sorts of possibilities, but obstacles kept cropping up, I embroiled myself in a hundred different schemes, lost patience and began all over again, and not for a single moment did I doubt that I would end by hitting on the right one.

Inspiration came suddenly, when I least expected it. I was standing by the open window. The activity in the street reflected in the windowpanes was strangely diminished in size, and the picture it presented is inscribed in my memory as with an etching tool. I can still plainly visualise the bluish white curtains in the windows opposite, the lady with the old- fashioned cloche hat who was crossing the road, the working- class woman carrying a basket full of lemons. I could make out distinctly, though on a miniature scale, the Archangel Michael raising his hands in a protective gesture on the counter of the chemist's opposite. A passing tram obscured the picture and released it again. A confectioner's van was standing outside the corner café, and a red-haired apprentice carrying two yellow-brown boxes disappeared through the revolving door. And while I watched all this an idea struck me that seemed so simple and obvious that I could not understand how the engineer had managed not to think of it.

The starting point of my investigations must be Eugen Bischoff's taxi accident in the Burggasse. The Burggasse was in the 7th district, I reflected. I knew the police superintendent there, Dr Franz or Friedrich Hufnagl. I had gone to see him a few months previously about an anonymous threatening letter that had been sent me. Since then I had come across him several times in the chess room of a café in the town; he would help me. I lacked the inner peace and patience necessary to carry out inquiries myself. I wrote a few lines on a visiting card, and called my man Vinzenz.

"Go to the police station in the Kreindlgasse, ask for Dr Hufnagl, and give him this card," I said. "He will let you look up the police report of a road accident. Note the driver's name and the number of his cab. Then you will wait for the driver at his rank and bring him here, I've got to talk to him. That's all. Have you understood? You'll find that the police will be helpful."

He went off, leaving me plenty of time to consider my chances, which I certainly did not overrate. Very likely I would find out where Eugen Bischoff had picked up that taxi. That wouldn't get me very far, but at least I would know in what part of the city I must begin my search, and it was clear to me that it was then that my real difficulties would begin. But I counted on luck or sudden inspiration to help me out when the time came. Also I had stolen a march over the engineer, and that was good enough for the time being.

I had to wait for two hours, and the time passed very slowly. Vinzenz came back at three o'clock with a copy of the police report, from which it appeared that according to Police Constable Josef Nedved, taxicab no. A VI 138, driver Johann Wiederhofer, at 1.45 on 24 September because of the slippery road surface had skidded into the trailer of city tram no. 5139 in the Burggasse and suffered slight damage. The driver, whom Vinzenz had found at his rank, was waiting with his vehicle at the front door.

Johann Wiederhofer turned out to be a very loquacious gentleman of mature years. He obviously had not yet got over the accident, which had brought him into contact with the police, and he violently objected to any kind of police interference and to the tendencies to solidarity that in his opinion characterised all tramwaymen.

The mishap had been due to no fault of his, he insisted. It had been raining, and it had rained on the previous day too. The collision had occurred suddenly and out of the blue, and only his vehicle had been damaged. But those rogues the tram drivers all backed one another, and all at once the policeman had appeared on the scene, and he had told him not to make a fuss or take any notice of those tramway types.

He lit a Virginia cigarette, and I took advantage of the pause to ask about the extent of the damage. A mudguard had been bent and scratched, the windscreen had been smashed, and he had lost a whole afternoon doing repairs, which he finished on Saturday morning. At midday he was back at his rank, and chance had it that the same gentleman came out of no. 8. "Don't you take him," his colleagues had said, but he wasn't superstitious, not he. "Get in, sir," he had said to the gentleman, and . . .

"You saw the gentleman from no. 8 coming?" I interrupted, unable to conceal my excitement. "Where is your rank?"

"On the Dominikanerbastei, just opposite the Popular Café," he replied.

"Take me there," I said. "Dominikanerbastei 8," I said and got into the cab.

It stopped outside a melancholy-looking three-storey building. I looked in vain for the porter's flat inside the dark doorway, and found myself in a very neglected courtyard — puddles of rainwater had formed on the stone paving. A dog of indeterminate breed standing on a hand-cart barked at me furiously. Two pale small boys on a rubbish heap were playing with box lids and broken tiles and bottles. I asked one of them where I could find the caretaker, but he did not understand and did not answer.

I stood there for a while, at a loss what to do. A continual splashing sound came from some corner or other, perhaps from a fountain, or water may have been overflowing from the eaves. The dog was still barking. I went up the winding wooden staircase, intending to knock at a door and ask for information.

I was met by an unpleasant smell, the smell of domestic refuse, accumulated damp, and decaying vegetable matter. I was unwilling to give up and leave empty-handed, so I overcame my distaste and forced myself to go on.

On the first floor I did some reconnoitring. The premises of the Hilaritas German Students Association were on the right, next to the staircase. Two letters were under the door and a crumpled note on which "Am at the Kronstein café" was scrawled in pencil, followed by an illegible signature. There seemed to be no point in seeking information there, and the same applied to the office of the Hat and Felt Goods Dealers' Association. The third door was that of a private flat, occupied, according to the nameplate, by Wilhelm Kubicek, Major (ret.). I rang the bell, and handed my card to the girl who opened the door.

She showed me into a simply-furnished room. White covers protected the furniture. Opposite the door there was a portrait of a lieutenant field marshal in full dress uniform with the Order of the Iron Crown on his chest. The major, in dressing gown and slippers, came towards me, and on his face I read surprise and uneasiness at a visit the purpose of which he could not explain. On the table were a magnifying glass, a hookah, a note-pad, a cleaning rag, a bar of chocolate and an open stamp album.