Passport To Peril

DRUGGED WITH PAIN

I thought my imagination was playing tricks on me. I’d taken terrific punishment.

I heard the sound again. It could have been a shutter creaking in the wind.

Hermann brought Orlovska around with the water treatment.

“Where is the envelope?” Schmidt said again. Why didn’t the bastard put it to music? “What did you do with the envelope?”

I was sure I heard the sound once more on the porch behind me. It was probably a dog seeking shelter from the snow.

“Did you visit the railroad car?”

I thought, Here it comes.

Orlovska said yes.

“Did you go with Colonel Lavrentiev?” I held my breath.

Orlovska nodded her head.

I felt that someone was looking through the window in back of me. I thought my fevered imagination was running wild.

“When did you go with Lavrentiev?” Schmidt asked Orlovska.

“This evening,” she said in a barely audible voice. “Early in the evening.”

The doctor’s next question had to be “Where?” I listened but there was no sound from the porch behind me save the rustling of the wind.

“While the train was in the station?” the doctor said. “Answer me. While the train was in the Keleti station?” I figured he was trying to establish the time of her visit.

“No,” Orlovska said.

“Then you boarded the train in the yards?” He wanted to know whether she and the chief of the MVD had visited the train before or after I had gone with his two goons.

The countess shook her head.

“I see we shall have to employ more drastic treatment,” Schmidt said, “until you decide which it is. You tell me you boarded the train with Lavrentiev. You refuse to tell where or when.”

He picked up another instrument from the rug. It looked like an enormous pair of pliers, a machine to break bones. He held it in front of Orlovska and slapped her ashen face until she raised her head and opened her eyes.

“Jozsefvaros,” she said.

Schmidt slapped her again. “Fool. Passenger trains don’t stop at Jozsefvaros.”

Hermann, who’d been standing in the doorway at the other end of the room from me, interrupted.

“Excellenz, one moment.”

“What is it, Hermann?”

“Excellenz, I hear noise. There is someone outside, Excellenz.”

Hermann was right. There was someone outside. He picked that moment to send a bullet through one of the front windows, shattering the glass. The bullet buried itself in the ceiling.

The sound of voices speaking Russian came through the broken window.

Schmidt switched out the lights.

There was a second shot through the window. Hermann fired a burst from his tommy gun.

The voices grew louder, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I didn’t make much effort. Rescue by the Russians could only mean more trouble for me. It was fine for Orlovska who was sobbing hysterically. But, as far as I was concerned, there wasn’t much difference between Lavrentiev and Schmidt. At least I had felt sure that Schmidt would keep me alive until he found the Manila envelope. There would be no reason for the MVD to spare my life; Orlovska could tell them quickly where to find Blaye’s papers. If I lived even that long. I told you the doctor and Hermann had placed me in front of the window, which was in a direct line with the shattered front window. Sooner or later the Russians would probably send a bullet straight through that window.

Instead of burying itself in the ceiling, it would bury itself in me. Schmidt and Hermann, in any event, couldn’t hope to hold out for any length of time. The best they could do would be to take a few Russians with them. The latter couldn’t lose even if it meant destroying the building.

Schmidt shouted, “Hermann.”

“Hier, Excellenz.”

“They will try to come through this window. Move into the hallway. Shoot when they come through the window.”

“Ja wohl, Excellenz.”

Schmidt moved into the opposite corner. I saw his shadow cross the second window. I could still hear the Russian voices. I figured they were deciding a plan of attack.

The next bullet came through the window nearest the doctor. He didn’t fire in return. He’d apparently decided to wait until they stormed the place. He must have guessed the house was surrounded. I don’t think he had heard the sounds that I had heard from the back porch but he knew from the sounds of the voices outside that the Russians were there in strength.

The voices in front of the building became louder.

“Now,” Schmidt shouted to Hermann. “They will come now.”

There was another bullet through the window nearest Hermann. The redheaded German said, “That one was close, Excellenz.”

Either his trigger finger slipped or he thought he saw the Russians approaching the window because he fired another burst from the tommy gun.

The next thing I knew, someone clapped a huge hand over my mouth. I tried to yell, but the sound was drowned by the explosions from Hermann’s gun. My ropes were so tight I couldn’t struggle.

I felt myself lifted into the air, chair and all. My head whirled. I went through the French window which had opened behind me. I heard Orlovska scream.

I couldn’t see who was carrying me, someone of enormous strength.

I was carried the length of the porch and into the deep snow at the end.

There was a stand of pines a short way from the end of the house. We had almost reached the shelter of the trees when the shots came from the house.

I felt myself plunging into space. I landed with a sickening thud in the snow. I’d either been dropped so whoever was carrying me could fire back at the house or else he’d been hit.

There were answering shots but they came from somewhere off to the right.

The next thing I knew, my ropes had been cut and I rolled free of the heavy chair. Then someone picked me up with the fireman’s hold, and we moved again toward the shelter of the pines but slower and less steadily than before.

When we were well inside the woods, the man who had been carrying me set me on my feet. My legs gave way under me but he managed to prop me against a tree. It was darker than the inside of my pocket.

I expected to be left there. I thought he might be going back to the house for Orlovska or to get first aid for his wound; I was sure he’d been hit when he let me drop in the snow. But he stuck a cigarette in my mouth. I heard him mutter something and I figured he couldn’t find a match.

“I’ve got a match,” I said in Russian. It’s one of the first phrases in the book. “In my left pocket.” I couldn’t have held even a matchbox. Schmidt had ripped my hands.

I felt a hand in my pocket. Then I heard a match strike. It burst into flame. It lit my cigarette. I took a couple of deep puffs.

The hand drew back the lighted match. I saw the face of my rescuer, and the cigarette dropped from my lips into the snow.

I had expected to see a Russian soldier or a Hungarian gendarme. But the man standing next to me was neither. He was a tall, rawboned man with a wide smile.

It was Hiram Carr’s butler, Walter.