I didn’t dare turn on the light. I tiptoed to the door, expecting to find it locked from the outside, but it opened.
The corridor was dark, but there was light showing under the door of the room next to mine. I raised my hand to knock and stopped in mid-air. I had no way of knowing whether Maria or Major Strakhov was in that room. I decided to knock anyway. If the major answered, I’d ask for an aspirin.
I knocked and there was no answer. I knocked again and nothing happened. I knocked a third time and then I heard Maria’s voice say, “Who is it? What do you want?” so I opened the door, walked in, and shut it and said, “It’s me, John Stodder. I’ve got to talk to you.”
I could see I’d wakened her from a sound sleep. When she’d rubbed her eyes and propped herself up in bed on one elbow, she took a look at me and started to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” I said. “Let me in on it. I need a laugh at this point.”
“Nothing,” she said, “except you’re the first man I ever met who came calling in a blanket.” I hadn’t realized I was still wearing the blanket that Otto had wrapped around me when he’d removed my clothes. My bare legs and feet were showing, I needed a shave, and my hair was matted like a hermit’s.
I didn’t know how to begin so I told her about Major Strakhov and how he had taken me for Marcel Blaye.
“You do look a lot like Monsieur Blaye,” Maria said. “I told you so when I first saw you in the compartment. You fooled me when your back was turned. But I don’t understand why Major Strakhov should think you’re Monsieur Blaye. I can’t imagine that he’d know anything about Monsieur.”
“Look,” I said. “It’s much simpler than that.” It wasn’t easy to say. I must have fumbled for words. “You see, I’m traveling on Marcel Blaye’s passport.”
I expected her to scream or faint or point her finger at me and call me a murderer. She didn’t do any of those things. She just looked at me with those big black eyes and said, “You’d better tell me the whole story.”
“Well,” I blurted out, “I told you my reasons for wanting to come to Hungary. I tried to get a visa on my American passport more than two years ago, but it never came through. I finally discovered that the Russians didn’t like what I’d written about them in a book. It was one of those correspondent books about my experiences in Budapest when the war began in Europe. But I’d made up my mind to get to Hungary, visa or no visa. So when I reached Vienna, one of my friends who’s still in Intelligence put me in touch with Herr Figl. He’s supposed to be the smartest document forger in Europe. I paid Figl five hundred dollars, and he handed me Blaye’s passport. I thought the name Marcel Blaye came out of Figl’s imagination.”
Maria didn’t say a word. She just kept looking at me. I knew then how important it was that she believe me—more important than Major Strakhov or what might happen in Budapest or anything to do with the jam I’d led us into.
“You can’t think I killed Blaye,” I said. “You don’t believe I had anything to do with getting the passport from him?”
It seemed an hour before she answered.
“No,” she said slowly, “I believe you.” Then she smiled. “You see, if you’d killed Monsieur Blaye you’d have killed me, too. You could have killed me in the compartment on the train. You could have killed me anytime after we left the Orient or you could have left me in the brook when I fainted. You didn’t have to take care of me but you did. No, I don’t think you’re a murderer.”
“I got you into this jam in the first place,” I said. “I promised I’d get you back to Vienna.”
“If you’d left me on the train,” Maria said, “I’m sure I wouldn’t be alive. I told you Schmidt was following me.”
I said we didn’t have a chance of escaping from the lodge. I said we’d have to play along with Major Strakhov. We’d try to get away from him on the train to Budapest. Maybe we’d have to wait for an opportunity until we reached the city.
“I’d give a lot to know what Blaye was up to,” I said. “It would make things a good deal easier.”
“Why don’t you look in the envelope he gave me to carry?” Maria asked. “It must have something to do with the deal or he wouldn’t have been so insistent that I take it.”
“Where is it?” I asked.
“Otto has it,” the girl said. “He took it from me out there when they found us.”
“I can’t go wandering around,” I said, “looking for an envelope. Maybe there’ll be a chance in the morning. What do you think is in it?”
“I don’t know,” Maria said, “but I’m sure that’s why Doctor Schmidt is following me. Monsieur made me promise in Vienna, before he left me, that I would keep the envelope with me. It has to have something to do with all this.”
“Look,” I said, “once we get to Budapest, I’ll leave you. I’ll put you on the first plane or train for Vienna or maybe you can go straight back to Geneva.”
Maria didn’t say a word. She put out her hand and drew my face down to hers and kissed me.
Chapter Four
UNWELCOME ESCORT
Our baggage was neatly stacked at one end of the platform when we arrived at the Hungarian frontier station the next morning. It had been carefully removed from the Orient and even more carefully searched. The job had been skillfully done, and we’d never have known except that the snooper had neglected to wash his hands and the odor of garlic was on everything.
The baggage wasn’t the only surprise that awaited us. The local from Vienna for Budapest was ready to leave as soon as its passengers satisfied passport examiners, customs guards, money control officials, health inspectors, and the MVD. There was a note for Marcel Blaye from Countess Orlovska. And to make it a really gala occasion, there was Herr Doktor Wolfgang Schmidt promenading the platform, as big as life and twice as ugly.
Otto had driven us to Hegyshalom in the Russian staff car, over the same rutted road we had walked the night before, through the gate in the high wire fence, and across the railway tracks. Major Strakhov pointed out, in a strictly impersonal way of course, that we had been extremely lucky to fall into the hands of Otto and his friends. I had miscalculated our position when we jumped from the Orient. I had remembered the border as it was before the war. It had been easy enough for me to sound off about friendly farmers to drive us to Vienna. But there were no farmers for miles; the Red Army had cleaned them out of the border zone. And the frontier was three miles behind us when we left the express; we were well into Hungary. If we had eluded Otto and then escaped death from exposure, we should have faced a frontier solid with barbed wire, machine-gun emplacements, searchlight towers, and sentries with police dogs.
Our clothes had been returned to us, neatly pressed by Hermann, and we had breakfasted on ham and eggs and coffee with Major Strakhov in front of a roaring fire. We might have been an archduke’s weekend guests instead of a Russian major’s prisoners. Strakhov entertained us with stories of his boyhood in Leningrad, and Maria never blinked an eye when he addressed me as Monsieur Blaye. I might have relaxed and enjoyed myself if I hadn’t pictured what would happen when we reached Budapest, when Major Strakhov learned from Countess Orlovska that I wasn’t Marcel Blaye.
The countess’s note, produced by the stationmaster at Hegyshalom, served only to deepen the mystery. Maria had said Blaye seemed very much in love with the countess who visited his Geneva office. Strakhov had added that she was “upset” to hear that Blaye had brought Maria—“your pretty secretary.”