But they came straight to the door. I heard the Russian voices. A flashlight probed the opening. When the arm came through, I fired. I hit it, too, because there was a yell of pain and a lot of violent cursing from the arm and his companions. The hit was dumb luck; my finger was so smashed that I had to pull the trigger instead of squeezing it and the gun jumped in my hand.
For a minute or so there was no sound from behind the door. I was counting the seconds to myself, trying to imagine how far Walter had progressed with the unconscious Hiram, how long to wait, if I had the choice, before making a break. Not that I was going to follow them once they reached the car. I might help to get them there—but I was going to the warehouse on Mexikoi ut in search of Herr Doktor Schmidt.
The flashlight stabbed through the doorway once more, and then they pulled the hoary trick of shoving out a uniform cap on the end of a bayonet. But I fired at that, and it quickly withdrew behind the wall, and there was dead silence again.
When I had counted almost to a hundred, I was sure they’d gone for the ladder.
I left the wall, crossed the narrow street to the sidewalk bordering the iron fence, and moved warily in the direction which Walter had taken. I had to cross directly in front of the door. I made it, either because the Russians were keeping well back from the opening or because I was shrouded in the shadows from the tombs on the other side of the fence.
I crossed the street again and followed Walter’s tracks by the reflected light from the arcs in the yards. I managed to keep up a sort of half-running, half-walking pace. I wondered how soon I’d run into a Russian patrol.
Two blocks and there was a low, open shed against the wall of the yards. I wasn’t more than a few feet away when I heard Walter’s voice. I hurried forward because I thought he must be talking to Hiram and the latter had regained consciousness. Walter must have put Hiram down in the shelter of the shed to look after the wound.
I was almost on top of them when I heard another voice, and it wasn’t Hiram’s.
It was the voice of Dr. Schmidt.
Chapter Twenty-Two
BLOOD ON THE SNOW
I stood where I was. When Schmidt came out of the shed and his body and the gun in his hand were outlined against the sky, I had plenty of time to aim. I held the Luger with both hands to steady my aim and I managed to squeeze the trigger as if I were squeezing a lemon. I should have emptied the eight bullets into his ugly body. But nothing happened.
My gun was jammed.
I saw Schmidt back off the sidewalk into the street as if it were all a dream. I watched him until I couldn’t see him any longer in the inky blackness along the cemetery fence on the other side of that narrow street.
I walked up to where Walter was standing. I could make out Hiram’s body stretched on the floor of the shed.
I didn’t have to ask whether Schmidt had Marcel Blaye’s Manila envelope. He wouldn’t have left without it. He’d surprised Walter with Hiram in his arms. Walter never had a chance to draw his gun. I supposed he hadn’t killed them because he didn’t want to advertise his presence to the Russians. He must have known all the time what we were up to in the yards. We’d done his dirty work for him.
I bent over Hiram, and he was still breathing. I took his gun from his pocket and aimed it at the end of the shed, and it fired okay. I left my jammed Luger with him.
I told Walter to keep on going with Hiram, to get him to the car. My watch said it was five minutes after six. Walter was to give Hiram first aid in the car. If I didn’t arrive by seven o’clock, he was to head for the Buda hills without me.
I crossed the street again, this time following Schmidt’s footprints in the snow.
The moon had been up half an hour or so, but there were heavy snow clouds in the sky, and the light from the moon was fitful. I knew that street afforded no exit for another two blocks. There was the high stone wall of the railway yards on one side and the cemetery fence on the other. Schmidt would hurry but he wouldn’t know I was behind him. I had to catch him in those two blocks, before he reached the main avenue where he’d have a car.
Every now and then the clouds would scud from in front of the moon, and I checked his tracks in the snow. The snow was fresh, and the street was infrequently used; those who were forced to travel it at night shunned the sidewalk that touched the cemetery. Schmidt’s were the only marks in the snow. They were easy to follow when there was light. There wasn’t a street lamp in sight or I should have spotted him when he passed them a block or even two ahead.
I was nearly at the end of the street and beginning to think I’d lost Schmidt when there was moonlight and I saw there were no footprints ahead of me. At first I didn’t believe my eyes but I backtracked, thinking he had given me the slip by crossing to the other side.
I found that the doctor’s footprints ended at the cemetery fence.
I knew then that he was heading for the inn on the other side, the place from which he had kidnapped Maria and where I had seen him that evening. The proprietor worked for Schmidt. The doctor would find refuge at the inn. Probably Hermann was waiting. It was a good deal shorter to go through the cemetery and much safer.
I managed to pull myself to the top of the iron fence although I opened up the wounds in my hands and they bled profusely. I went over and let myself down again by dropping my feet until they touched a headstone, jumping the rest of the way into the drifted snow.
There was a line of naked trees against the sky, and I found they bordered a road. The ground is too hard to open graves in the winter months, but the cemetery roads are plowed so that the dead can be trucked to receiving vaults until spring.
I followed the road away from the fence, through a line of squat black tombs, wall to wall like the homes of the living that faced the cemetery gates.
I walked five minutes or so, and the road swung sharply to the left. When I had made the turn, the moon came from behind the clouds, and I saw Schmidt. I think he must have heard my step on the snow, which was packed hard as ice at that point. I don’t think he knew until that moment that I was following. He wasn’t more than fifty feet from me.
We were in the dark again, almost immediately, before either could use his gun. We were like two blind men, in the middle of that city of the dead, hunting each other, each waiting for the light of the moon yet fearing the other might use it first.
Schmidt fired the first shot without waiting for the moon. I never believed he had nerves but I think that’s what happened. He must have aimed for the spot where he’d seen me standing. It was an error in judgment surprising in the Nazi doctor because I had been careful to put the wall of a tomb between myself and him.
I didn’t fire back. I knew where he was and he hadn’t located me.
The tombs paralleled the road. There was space behind them, between them and another marble row. The rest of the year it was a gravel path. I waded slowly through snow almost to my waist. I wanted to get in back of him. I didn’t stop to think he might be vanishing along that road while I was playing cowboy and Indian. His job was to get away with the envelope and mine to catch him if I could.
But he didn’t go. I can only guess why not. Perhaps he thought Walter was with me and that he was surrounded; a cemetery just before dawn can play queer tricks on a man’s nerves. Maybe he thought his shot was already bringing a Russian patrol inside the gates.
At any rate, Schmidt was still standing in the middle of the road when I came out from behind the tombs. As soon as there was a little light, I dropped him with one bullet. He screamed like a child and the sound cascaded.