Eric Ambler - Judgment on Deltchev

At that moment the man with the light began to run forward, yelling hoarsely. The heavy pistol fired again as I rolled sideways and found myself on the edge of the road. I hesitated for only a split second. Then I scrambled to my feet and ran, swerving like a rabbit, for the trees on the other side of the road. They both fired, but by then I was a hopeless target for a pistol. I dived through the trees, came up against the boundary wall, and ran along it toward the lighted section.

I was safe now. I stopped to get my breath. There were people from the houses standing on the pavement opposite, talking and pointing toward the trees where the sound of the firing had come from. The two policemen I had passed farther back were approaching at a run. I was out of sight. My breath was beginning to come back, and with it my wits. I had not seen either of the attackers. I had no information about them to give. But even that would take a lot of explaining to the police, and they would certainly detain me while an interpreter was found and my story checked. If I could avoid the police altogether, I should do so. If, while they searched among the trees for the dead and wounded that were not there, I could make myself scarce, I would be saving them trouble. If, in fact, I now did what I should have done five minutes earlier — kept my head, walked back to a café, and there telephoned to the hotel for a car to fetch me — everyone would be much better off. I had begun to tremble violently. My ears were singing and felt deaf. I leaned against the Presidential Park wall fighting down a desire to vomit. Through the singing in my ears I could hear shouts from farther up the road. Then my head began to clear. Reaction or no reaction, if I was going to get away unobtrusively I would have to be quick about it. Keeping close to the wall, I started to walk.

It was an hour before the car arrived at the café, and by that time I had had several plum brandies. I was not drunk but I felt sleepy. It was silly of Aleko, I thought, to want to kill me. Very silly. I was perfectly harmless. However, I had now acquired another useless piece of information: I knew what it felt like to be shot at in civilian clothes; it was exactly the same as it felt when you wore a uniform. That was interesting. In the car I went to sleep and had to be wakened by the driver when we got to the hotel.

The reception clerk was asleep. I took my room key from the rack myself. The lift was not working. I walked upstairs slowly, yawning. I was really very tired. I was also beginning to feel stiff and bruised. If the water was hot (and late at night when nobody wanted it, it usually was hot) I would have a bath and attend to the knee I had cut on a stone. My suit was a mess too, but that could wait until the morning. A bath, then sleep; that was it. I felt curiously relaxed and happy. The odd thing was that this feeling had almost nothing to do with the plum brandy. It was because I had survived an ordeal.

I opened the door of my room. There was a small foyer with a cupboard and a hat rack between the door and the bedroom itself. I switched on the foyer light, remembered with a twinge of irritation that I had lost my hat and would have to buy one of the local Homburgs next day, and went into the bedroom.

My hand was on the bedroom light switch when I saw what was there. I stood quite still.

A woman was lying face-downwards across the bed. By the foyer light I could see that she had a loose raincoat of some kind spread about her as if it had been thrown there to cover her up.

I pressed the light switch, and the room was flooded with the bright hard light from the naked lamps in the gilt chandelier.

Her hair was dark and one of her tightly clenched hands concealed her face. I walked over to the bed, and a loose board cracked loudly. I looked down.

She stirred. Her hands moved and she rolled onto her side. The light poured down in her face and she raised a hand to shield her eyes.

It was Katerina Deltchev.

I shook the bed, not gently, and she sighed. Then, with a start and a gasp, she was awake. She sat up quickly and the thin raincoat she had thrown over her slipped to the floor.

‘Good evening,’ I said.

For a moment she stared at me, then she scrambled off the bed and looked round defiantly.

‘There’s no one else here,’ I added.

She drew herself up as if she were about to deliver an oath of allegiance. ‘Herr Foster,’ she said formally, ‘I must apologize for this intrusion, but it was unavoidable. I will explain. I-’ She broke off and looked down as she realized that she was in her stockinged feet.

‘They’re down there,’ I said. Her shoes had slipped off while she had been asleep and were lying beside the bed.

She opened her mouth to say something, then shut it again, went over to the bed, and put her shoes on thoughtfully. She was a young woman who was used to being in charge of a situation; now she was casting about for a way of taking charge of this one.

‘I am sorry-’ she began.

‘Quite all right,’ I said. ‘You wanted to see me, so you came here. I was out. You waited. You fell asleep. I am afraid I can’t offer you anything but a cigarette. Will you smoke?’

For a fraction of a second she weighed the possible moral advantage of a refusal; then she shrugged her shoulders. ‘Yes. Thank you.’

She took a cigarette and I lit it for her. She sat down again on the bed and looked at me calmly.

‘Herr Foster,’ she said, ‘it is not really quite as simple as that for you, is it?’

‘No, not quite.’

I went into the bathroom, dipped a towel in water, and wrung it out. Then I went back into the bedroom, sat down in the armchair, rolled the trouser leg up, and went to work with the towel on my cut knee. She watched uncertainly.

‘Who told you I was staying here?’ I asked.

‘There were three hotels where you might have been staying. This was the second one I telephoned.’

‘How did you know the room number?’

‘By asking for another room number when I telephoned. Of course I got the wrong number. The operator corrected me.’

‘Who let you in here?’

‘The floor waiter. I said I was your lover and gave him some money. Does it matter?’

‘Not a bit. It’s just that at the moment I am in a suspicious mood. Now, then. How do you get out of the house without being seen? What do you do?’

‘Our neighbours are friendly. Between our wall and theirs there is a tree. With two vine poles one can crawl from the top of our wall to the tree. From the tree one uses the branches to reach their wall. For a child it is easy. For a heavier person there is some danger, but it can be done.’

‘Then why did you ask me to deliver that letter for you, Fräulein? If it was so important you could have delivered it yourself.’

‘I did not wish to risk my life if there was another way.’

‘Are you risking your life now?’

‘Yes, Herr Foster. I am also risking yours.’

‘That I guessed.’

‘But only if I am found here.’

‘Splendid.’

‘If I get back tonight without being seen, I shall be safe too. The guards inspect us only in the morning.’

‘Good.’

‘I would not have come, Herr Foster,’ she said severely, ‘if it had not been absolutely necessary to see you.’

‘You didn’t have to leave the house to do that. I was there myself an hour ago.’

She shrugged. ‘I did not know. I wished to see you because-’

I interrupted her. ‘Do you know a man named Aleko?’

‘Aleko? It is common.’

‘Who was the Valmo you sent that letter to?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I see.’

‘It is true. Valmo was only a name I was given to send letters to. The letter was for someone else.’