I was promptly ordered straight back to the Gasthaus, and felt too weary to argue about it. I went along with the three policemen who took Richard and Voltek in charge. Steve, tired though he must have been, led the rest of the search party over to the mountain hut to recover the scrolls and bring in the bodies of Leopold and Otto.
It was impossible for me to rest while Steve was out there in the mountains. I hung around talking to Frau Krikl. The poor woman was desolate over what had happened. She blamed herself because the forester who lived down the track had given us away.
“I should have warned him to say nothing. I should have warned everyone around here.”
Apparently some of Leopold’s accomplices, making a second sweep of the area, had talked to the man in a tavern down in the village. Innocently, he’d mentioned seeing a car heading for the Gasthaus on the night of such bad weather.
“When you came not back last night, I was out of my mind,” Frau Krikl said. “This morning, just when my husband had formed a search party, the Herr Professor arrived. He summoned the police at once.”
I was now able to tell her something of the truth, and I felt better for it. I even told her that Steve was not my brother.
“Ja,” she said softly. “That I knew.”
“But when . . . ?”
She avoided a direct answer. “Brothers do not look at their sisters in such a way.”
Between us we prepared a meal for when the men got back. A huge pan of thick, meaty, nourishing soup, and a batch of bread. It was nearly dark when we heard them, and Frau Krikl and I went to the door. Steve broke away from the group and came over to me. He looked desperately tired, but he was smiling.
“Are you all right, Steve?”
“Just about!”
The men crowded into the little barroom, stamping their feet and talking loudly. I saw Bruno was carrying the metal tube that held the precious Kutani Scrolls.
He pushed his way through to us. “Has Steve told you, Jessica? We return to Vienna tonight.”
“Tonight! But it’s such a long way, and you must both be tired out.”
Bruno smiled faintly. “Steve and I can take it in turns to drive. It is better for you to get away from here, we think.”
Strings must have been pulled with officialdom, for I was asked no questions. As soon as the men had eaten, as soon as good-byes to the Krikls had been said, we were on our way in Bruno’s car. Steve told me he had fixed with the police to have the hired Volkswagen returned.
“And what about your own car?”
“We’ll think about that tomorrow.”
Sitting in the back of Bruno’s car with Steve, his arm around me, I began to fill in some of the missing links that had been puzzling me.
“How was it you appeared on the scene?” I asked Bruno.
“I got Steve’s letter by this morning’s post, and came at once.”
“Steve’s letter . .. ?”
“I didn’t want to bother you, darling,” Steve explained, “but after we heard about those two men calling at the Gasthaus, I thought Bruno ought to know what was happening. I got Herr Krikl to mail it for me.”
“But I don’t understand. You speak almost as if Bruno was somehow involved.”
“I will answer that for myself, my dear. You know me as a professor of physics, and that is what I am, ja. But there is another side to my activities about which I do not speak.”
“I see! And Steve ... you knew this?”
“Let’s say I had a shrewd idea.”
I thought of the curious friendship between Bruno Hutyens and Max. Now at last I could understand why Bruno had pursued it, despite the fact that they had so little in common. I asked sadly, “Was it because you suspected Max that you got in touch with him in the first place?”
Bruno didn’t answer—perhaps he hadn’t heard. But Steve gave my arm a sympathetic squeeze.
I wished that the steady drone of the car’s engine would lull me to sleep, but there was still too much swirling in my mind.
“What will happen about the scrolls?” I asked.
Steve said, “Bruno’s fairly sure he knows where they were originally stolen from—a museum in France that specializes in ancient biblical writings. But the authorities here will check and make sure they go back where they belong.”
We drove on through the night. I tried to think about the bright future, but it was overlaid by a gauze of sadness. The past was still too close.
“The money you found in your desk, Steve! What’s to be done with it?”
“Considering it came from the Nazis,” he said soberly, “how about a spot of poetic justice?”
“You mean, send it to a fund for refugees—something like that?”
“I think it would be a good idea, don’t you?”
“And there was the fifty pounds I got from Richard Wilson….”
“Darling, you can carry things too far! Where would you propose sending that—the Kremlin?”
I sighed. “What will happen to Richard Wilson now?”
“Well, in the first place, he and his pal Voltek will be facing a double-murder charge. I imagine there’s a lot else stacked up against them.”
We were traveling fast now on the autobahn. I began to unwind and feel calmer. I lost count of time, drifting between sleeping and waking. Steve took over the driving for a while after we had stopped for a cup of hot milky coffee at a roadside cafe. It was some time in the early hours when at last we ran down the ramp into the car park of the Hutyens’ apartment house.
I was soon to discover why Steve and Bruno had been anxious to rush me back to Vienna. From the safety of the Hutyens’ home I could be protected from the wily attacks of reporters who clamored for a human-interest story to add to the bare bones of the official releases.
Steve came around to spend each evening with me. Over Klara’s lavish dinners we would all discuss the latest developments. I learned that a number of Leopold’s confederates, including the two men who had asked questions about us at the Gasthaus, had been rounded up. But Ilse Hellweg had mysteriously disappeared, leaving the Villa Imwald without warning and vanishing into thin air. I didn’t doubt, considering her calculating mind, that she had foreseen some such emergency and cushioned herself for the future.
And there was Gretl Kolbinger. As I’d guessed, she was broken up by the news of Otto’s death. But it was unlikely, Steve said, that any charges would be brought, since her personal involvement had been slight.
After staying indoors for a full week, I was getting restless. The newspapers seemed to have lost interest in the case of the Kutani Scrolls, and when Steve came that evening, I asked him to take me out.
He hesitated, then nodded. “Okay. Where would you like to go?”
I had already decided. “The Weisser Stier, please.”
“I’d have thought that would be the very last place!”
“Don’t you see, darling, I want us to start all over again.”
This time I would happily wallow in the charming atmosphere of Old Vienna, thoroughly enjoying the romantic waltz-time mood of Strauss and Lehar. I wanted us to have a carefree evening out, as hadn’t been possible that other time. Nothing, I determined, was going to spoil it.
And nothing did. Not even when the unlikely happened and Mitzi Flamm turned up, with a new man on her tow rope. Catching sight of us, she came plunging across the room.
“I’ll get rid of her,” said Steve quickly.
“No, don’t bother.” She had no power to hurt me now. Nothing and nobody could dent the armor of my newfound happiness. On a quick laugh I added, “Even the Mitzis of this world have their place.”
Steve grinned, those wide-set gray eyes of his meeting mine across the table. How was it possible for any man to say so very much, just with a single glance?
Copyright © 1971 by Nancy Buckingham
Originally published by Ace Paperbacks
Electronically published in 2015 by Belgrave House
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This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.