Meanwhile I had about five thousand dollars in cash on me. I had five thousand dollars worth of time to find a man with a sixteen-and-a-half-inch neck, thirty-four-inch arms, a size ten shoe, and no intention of returning seventy thousand dollars that had fallen, almost literally, from the heavens into his hands.
As I repacked the bag carefully, putting the gaudy jacket on top, the way I had found it, I thought, well, at least there's one consolation - I won't have to spend any money on a new wardrobe to replace the one I had lost. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. I don't know what I would have done if the bag had been full of women's things.
*
I paid my bill and took a taxi to the Bahnhof and bought a first-class ticket for St Moritz. The only people I had spoken to on the plane coming over were the couple who were going to ski the Corvatch at St Moritz. They hadn't told me their names or where they were going to stay. I knew the chances of their being able to give me any useful information if I did find them were almost infinitesimal. But I had to start somewhere. Zurich had no further charms for me. It had rained the two days I had been there.
At Chur, an hour-and-a-half ride from Zurich, I had to change for the narrow-gauge railroad that mounted into the Engadine. I went down the first-class car until I saw an empty compartment and went in and put my coat and two bags on the rack over the seats.
The atmosphere on the new train was considerably different from the one on the express from Zurich, which had been businesslike and quiet, with solid, heavy types reading the financial pages of the Zricher Zeitung. Getting into the toy-like cars en route to the Alpine resorts, there were a lot of young people, many of them already in ski clothes, and expensively dressed pretty women in furs, with appropriate escorts. There was a feeling of holiday that I was in no mood to share. I was hunting and I wanted to think and I hoped that no one would come into my apartment to disturb me. Un-democratically, I closed the sliding door of the compartment, as a deterrent to company. But just before the train started, a man pulled the door open and asked, in English, politely enough, 'Pardon me, sir, are those seats taken?'
'I don't think so,' I said as ungraciously as possible.
'Honey,' the man called down the corridor. 'In here.' A fluffy blonde, considerably younger than the man, wearing a leopard coat and a hat to match, came into the compartment. I grieved briefly for all prowling animals threatened with extinction. The lady was carrying a handsome leather jewel case and smelled strongly of a musky perfume. A huge diamond ring graced the finger over her wedding band. If the world were better organized, there would have been a riot of porters and any other workers within a radius of ten blocks of the station platform. Unthinkable in Switzerland.
The man had no luggage, just some magazines and a copy of the International Herald Tribune under his arm. He dropped the magazines and paper on the seat opposite me and helped the lady off with her coat. Swinging it up to put it on the rack, the hem of the coat brushed against my face, tickling me and swamping me in a wave of scent.
'Oh,' the woman said, 'excuse, excuse.'
I smiled glumly, restraining myself from scratching at my face. 'It's a pleasure,' I said.
She rewarded me with a smile. She couldn't have been more than twenty-eight years old, and up to now she had obviously had every reason to feel that a smile of hers was indeed a reward. I was sure that she was not the man's first wife, maybe not even the second. I took an instant dislike to her.
The man took off the sheepskin coat that he was wearing, and the green, furry Tyrolean hat, with a little feather in the band, and tossed them up on the rack. He had a silk foulard scarf tied around his throat, which he didn't remove. As he sat down he pulled out a cigar case.
'Bill,' the woman said, complaining.
'I'm on a holiday, honey. Let me enjoy it.' Bill opened the cigar case.
'I hope you don't mind if my husband smokes,' the woman. said.
Not at all.' At least it would kill some of the overpowering aroma of the perfume.
The man pushed the cigar case toward me. 'May I offer you one?'
'Thank you, no. I don't smoke,' I lied.
He took out a small gleaming clipper and cut off the end. He had thick, brutal, manicured hands that went with his high-flushed, fleshy face and hard blue eyes and jaw. I would not have liked to work for him or be his son. I figured he was over forty years old. 'Pure Havana,' he said, 'almost impossible to find back home. The Swiss are neutral about Castro, thank God.' He used a thin gold lighter to start the cigar and leaned back, puffing comfortably. I looked out the window morosely at the snowy countryside. I had thought I was going to be on holiday, too. For the first time it occurred to me that perhaps I ought to turn around at the next station and start for home. Except where was home? I thought of Drusack, who was not going to St Moritz.
The train went into a tunnel and it was absolutely dark in the compartment. I wished the tunnel would go on forever. Self-pityingly, I remembered the nights at the St Augustine and thought, darkness is my element.
Sometime after we emerged from the tunnel, we were in sunlight. We had climbed out of the gray cloud that hung over the Swiss plain. The sunlight was somehow an affront to my sensibility. The man was dozing now, his head thrown back, the cigar dead in an ashtray. His wife had the Herald Tribune and was reading the comic strips, a rapt expression on her face. She looked foolish, her mouth pursed, her eyes childish and bright under the leopard hat. Was that what I had thought money was going to buy for me?
She became conscious that I was staring at her, looked up at me, giggled coquettishly. 'I'm a pushover for comic strips,' she said. 'I'm always afraid Rip Kirby is going to get killed in the next installment.'
I smiled inanely, looked at the diamond on her finger, earned, I was sure, in honest matrimony. She peered obliquely at me. I guessed that she never looked at anyone straight-on. 'I've seen you someplace before,' she said. 'Haven't I?'
'Perhaps,' I said.
'Weren't you on the plane Wednesday night? The club plane?'
'I was on it,' I said.
'I was sure I knew you from someplace before that. Sun Valley maybe?'
'I've never been in Sun Valley,' I said. ; That's the wonderful thing about skiing,' she said, 'you get to meet the same people all over the world.'
The man groaned a little, awakened by the sound of our voices. Coming out of sleep, his eyes stared at me with blank hostility. I had the feeling that hostility was his natural and fundamental condition and that I had surprised him before he had time to arrange himself for the ordinary traffic of society.
'Bill,' the woman said, 'this gentleman was on the plane with us.' From the way she said it, it sounded as though it had been an extraordinary pleasure for us all.
'Is that so?' Bill said.
'I always feel it's lucky to find Americans to travel with,' the woman said. 'The language and everything. Europeans make you feel like such a dummy. I think this calls for a drink-drink.' She opened the jewel case, which she had kept on the seat beside her, and brought out an elegant silver flask. There were three small chromium cups, one inside the other, over the cap, and she gave one to me and one to her husband and kept one for herself. 'I hope you like cognac,' she said, as she poured the liquor carefully into our cups. My hand was shaking, and some of the cognac spilled over on it. 'Oh, I'm so sorry,' she said.