Читать книгу Unneutral Murder - Footner Hulbert - Страница 6

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One night, upon returning to the hotel after listening to the fado singers, Lee and William saw an incongruous figure loitering outside the entrance. It was a middle-aged man who looked like a peasant labourer. His hair and beard were matted and soiled, his clothes torn, his hat a wreck. But there was something in the nobility of his glance that made them look a second time.

“This person wants to see you, sir,” said the commissionaire, with a contemptuous jerk of his head.

When Lee turned around, a wild eagerness broke in the man’s face. “Mr. Mappin?” he stammered. “You are Mr. Mappin?” He spoke English with a strong German accent.

Lee seized his dirty hand in both of his and pressed it.

“Erbelding!” he murmured, completely shaken out of his affectation of calmness. “Thank God! Thank God! We had given you up for lost!”

“You know me?” stammered the man.

“From your pictures ... Your family?”

“They are safe, too,” said the other, “... at least they were an hour ago when I left them.”

“Where?”

“In the railway station. The most public place seemed to be the safest for them.”

“That’s right.”

“But what an agony of terror they are enduring!”

“Let’s go! Let’s go!” cried Lee.

“Who is this?” asked Erbelding suspiciously.

“William Miller; a German like yourself who fights for freedom.”

They shook hands.

The Central Station was almost next door. As they hastened along the pavement, tears were making channels down Erbelding’s grimy cheeks. Lee caught up his hand and pressed it.

“Don’t notice me!” Erbelding murmured. “It is the relief! ... we have been through so much! ... And such a slender hope of finding help here! .... The blessed face of a friend ...”

“Don’t talk,” said Lee. “There’ll be time later.”

At the foot of the stairs leading up to the station, Erbelding held back. “What if the police have laid a trap for me here?” he said nervously. “I have no papers. Anybody is privileged to arrest me!”

Lee thought fast. “Look, William, engage a taxi, and have it wait here at the foot of the stairs. Let Mr. Erbelding sit inside it where he can’t be seen, and you stand on the curb with your hand on the door so I’ll know which is the right cab when I come back.”

Erbelding wrung his hands. “She won’t come with you. I have instructed her not to move under any circumstances.”

Lee pulled out his notebook. “She is familiar with your hand. Write her a note on a page of my book. Write: ‘This is our friend, Mr. Mappin. Come!’ and sign it Friedrich.”

It was done, and, slipping the book in his pocket. Lee scampered up the stairs. In the big waiting-room there was no chance of mistaking the group he was looking for. There they sat, a young flaxen-haired German woman, with three little tow-heads pressing against her. All four faces, frozen with terror, were still turned towards the archway through which their man had disappeared. They were miserably unwashed and uncombed, and they had not even so much as a lunch box to carry.

Also, across the room. Lee saw two cagey-looking, well-dressed men—obviously somebody’s secret agents, how well he knew the type by now!—watching the Erbeldings.

Lee went quickly to the mother and her babes, and the two watching men became alert. Lee said: “I am Mr. Mappin. Your husband is waiting outside in a cab. Was afraid of running into a trap. Come with me and you’ll be safe.”

All four pairs of clear blue eyes studied Lee’s round face with a heart-breaking look of doubt. Even the youngest, who could not have been more than three. Lee thought with a kind of fury: There are men in the world who could betray such innocence! Slipping the notebook out of his pocket he showed the young woman her husband’s message in such a way that the watchers across the room could not see what he was doing. The two men were edging nearer.

She made up her mind.

“Come, children,” she said in German. “This is our friend.”

Lee picked up the youngest, the mother took the other two by the hand, and they started for the stairs. The two men followed. The children’s lips were pressed together; none made any sound. The little one in Lee’s arms leaned away from him a little, still piteously searching his face as if she dared not let herself believe that help had come.

At the foot of the broad stairs a taxi was waiting beside the walk, with William Miller holding the door open. The father spoke quietly to them from inside and, suddenly coming alive, the children scrambled in, followed by their mother. Lee said to the driver:

“Rua Cachimbo, 23.”

William squeezed in last. “Those men were near enough to hear you,” he murmured to Lee.

“Okay,” said Lee. “That’s part of the scheme.”

They drove away. Looking through the back window, Lee saw the two men enter another cab and follow. Inside, the children were distributed on their parents’ laps. There was much clinging and soft weeping, but an enormous relief could be felt in the air.

“Ich hab’ hunger! Ich hab’ hunger,” whimpered the little one.

“They haven’t had anything since morning,” explained the mother apologetically.

“I’ll take care of that,” growled William.

The ride was a short one. As they turned into the Rua Cachimbo, Lee said to William:

“You run upstairs and turn on the lights in the front room, and leave them burning. We’ll go right on through the back and get another cab for the Alfama. Follow us as fast as you can.”

“Right,” said William. “I’ll buy food on the way.”

“Get plenty.”

They drew up at number 23 and piled out on the walk. As he shepherded his charges through the door, Lee, out of the tail of his eye, saw the following car stop some yards behind them. One man stood beside it watching, while the other darted into a shop. To telephone! thought Lee.

Leaving William to pay the taxi, the others by-passed the stairs and went on out through the back door into a narrow passage which led them into a wider lane and thence into an unfrequented street. Throughout this little journey the children were as quiet as mice. Lee thought: They’ve learned to take whatever comes!

The little street brought them to a thoroughfare where stores were still open and traffic passing. Here they climbed into another cab and Lee gave a new address; he now had enough Portuguese to get around with.

“Calcado Burro at the end of Rua dos Bacalhoeiros.”

They sped away with the usual squawking of the horn. Lee looked out of the back window until he was certain no other cab was following.

“You can relax now,” he said. “The danger is past.”

This was a longer drive, and Friedrich Erbelding had time to tell part of his story. “It was in Grenoble,” he began, “that I first heard the name of Amos Lee Mappin as one who had come to Lisbon to help us and others like us. It remained in my memory. In occupied France we found friends. We were travelling on a false German passport. There was no difficulty until the fact of our escape from Germany became known; then the Gestapo began searching for us everywhere.”

“How did you get across the Spanish border?” asked Lee.

“I engaged a fishing vessel to bring us from Perpignan in France to a point on the coast of Spain near Barcelona. It cost me dear, but it was the only way. In Barcelona I was arrested and thrown into prison, and my family detained in another place. My passport, my money and credits, everything I possessed, was taken from me. I shall arrive in my new home a pauper!”

“Don’t worry about that part,” said Lee. “You’ll be taken care of.”

“Charity!” said Erbelding bitterly.

“Not at all! Your books sell widely in America. There will be royalties waiting for you, lecture dates if you want them; and you can write more books ... Go on with your story.”

“When I was thrown into prison,” Erbelding continued in a low voice, “I thought it was the end. You can imagine my feelings in respect to these helpless beings who depend on me. I cannot tell you exactly what happened; I have no Spanish. In Barcelona there are many brave Republicans. I suppose bribes were paid. In the night I was led out of prison and brought to my family by unknown friends. We were given tickets on the express to Madrid, some money to buy food, and the address of another Republican in Madrid. By a miracle we found him.

“The Gestapo is very strong in Madrid, and I was advised that it would be impossible to travel further by railway. A cart and a driver were secured for us, and we were driven by unfrequented roads to the Portuguese border. We slept in farmhouses. The people were kind. Poor people everywhere are kind. The driver put me over the border by a smugglers’ path. Then he had to leave us. We walked the rest of the way to Lisbon, sleeping where we could. That is why you find us in such a state.”

“Good God!” murmured Lee. “These little kids!”

“In Lisbon,” Erbelding continued simply, “I didn’t know where to go. I knew the Gestapo was here, too. All I had was a name I had heard in Grenoble; Amos Lee Mappin. I enquired the way to the leading hotel and I learned that you were living there. So I waited and you came!”

“America will try to make it up to these children for what they have been through,” said Lee.

“It is my dream!” murmured their father.

They left the taxi at the opening to a steep and narrow street that presently broke into steps continuing up. This was the Alfama, a maze of narrow alleys running up and down in every direction, breaking into steps, diving under archways, crossing bridges over alleys below. Here and there, on an angle that was not covered with buildings, grew a tree.

“No wheeled traffic in this part of the town,” said Lee.

“Only donkeys!”

Late as it was, there was plenty of life in the quarter. From within the houses came the sound of guitars and singing; endless conversation. Cloaked figures loitered in the doorways or gossiped companionably from balcony to balcony overhead. Lee, counting the corners, turned to the left and presently knocked on a heavy oaken door. This alley ended in a cul-de-sac.

“Looks like a trap,” said Lee, “but there’s a way out in the rear.”

The door was opened by a neatly-dressed Portuguese woman, old before her time. This was Teresa Chavez. She started to frown at the soiled and bedraggled travellers. Lee, she knew. Lee pushed forward the little children and her face melted. She murmured compassionately and led the way through a tiled passage to the room at the back that William had engaged for such an emergency. It was a good-sized room and contained two big beds. The German woman’s harassed face lighted up at the sight as at a glimpse of heaven.

Lee, indicating the children to the landlady, said “Banho!”

The Portuguese woman’s voluble answer floored him. He could only shake his head and pull at his ears. However, it was clear that she agreed that baths were desirable. Never ceasing to talk, she dropped to her knees beside the littlest one and unfastened its jacket. The child, staring with round eyes, made no objection.

The mother understood the other woman better than Lee did. Pointing to the baby, she said “Katti,” to the little boy “Hansi,” and to the bigger girl “Trud’l.”

Flinging her arms around Katti, Teresa administered a whole fusilade of kisses. The alarmed child looked imploringly at her mother, but said nothing.

William presently arrived laden with bottles of milk, loaves of bread, butter, cheese, cooked meat and oranges. How the children’s eyes glistened! Their mother said firmly: “They must be washed before they eat,” and the three small faces fell.

“Have a heart!” said Lee. “They’ll have to be washed afterwards anyhow.”

The mother relented. The food was spread on the table and the children fell to. Lee watched them with delight. “Me, I’m fond of my food, too,” he said, “so I have a fellow-feeling.” When the edge of their appetite was taken off, they began to chatter quietly together between bites in German.

Meanwhile, William had gone downstairs to the kitchen with Teresa to consult about baths. The little house had two rooms on the street level and a kitchen below, that looked out on a tiny garden. William reported that there was no plumbing in the ancient house, but Teresa was already fetching water from the fountain, and there was plenty of fuel in the house to heat it.

“We will leave you now,” said Lee at last. “You are safe here, so have a good sleep. Teresa is provided with funds to purchase new clothes and whatever else you may need.”

Erbelding started to protest.

“I’m not paying for this,” said Lee, waving his hands. “The money is put up by the admirers of your books in America ... We’ll be back to-morrow,” he went on. “You mustn’t be anxious if it is late before we get here. We’ll be closely watched and we must take no unnecessary risk of leading them here.”

Lee and William backed out of the room, embarrassed by the travellers’ expressions of gratitude. Little Katti slipped out of her chair and, running to Lee, held up her arms to be lifted, so she could kiss him with a bread and buttery mouth.