The basle express, p.14
The Basle Express, page 14
“I must have been excited,” said Lombard apologetically. “But these will not—”
“They will do to wave at people to allay their suspicions till I can crash the barrier,” said Tommy calmly, and Lombard looked at him with something like horror. “You know, added Hambledon, “I have never been a policeman.”
“I believe that,” said Lombard emphatically, “without a moment’s hesitation.”
“The training,” pursued Hambledon, “excellent as it is, tends to cramp initiative. Another thing we might do is to have not only our passports at the ready but our official cards with them. We might with luck get through on those if we are stopped.”
Lombard agreed enthusiastically. “I am glad to hear that you are prepared to employ legal methods if only as a last resort.” He took out his official card, slipped it inside his passport, and put both in the door-pocket of the car to be immediately at hand.
“There’s Scharnitz ahead,” said Hambledon. “Where exactly is this frontier post?”
“Through the town and a little way past the station. It is a short distance outside the town.”
Hambledon slowed down for the narrow streets.
“Can one see the frontier post from afar off, or does one come upon it suddenly round a corner?”
“There is a curve. As we are going, a right-hand curve with a high wall. There is a slight up gradient. On the left—”
“Can you stop me just before I come into view of the post?”
“Certainly,” said Lombard. “But—’
“I will stop as I said, just out of sight of the frontier post, and you will please get out and walk on to a point where you can see both the post and me. We will wait until something slow and heavy comes along, a timber-tug loaded with tree trunks would be ideal. He will stop, go in to have his papers stamped, exchange a little heart)’ backchat with the frontier police, and climb slowly back into his vehicle. At that moment you take your handkerchief from your pocket as a signal and I will move forward, you will leap aboard with your customary rubber-ball-like agility, which always astonishes me. and we will dash past him and under the barrier while it is raised to let him pass. There’s the station, it can’t be far now.”
“It isn’t.”
“Is that all clear?”
“Quite. Do you choose which vehicle to follow?”
“I do,” said Tommy Hambledon. “I will make a long nose at it to indicate the object of my choice.”
“Why do you not pull up short of the post but within sight so that you may choose for yourself the exact moment to advance?”
“Because, my dear innocent warrior, though I don’t believe for a moment that Walter would report us to the police or that Wilberger would let him if he wanted to, Horaz may have done so. ‘Achtung! Achtung,! Is this the frontier post? A villain has stolen my beautiful cream-coloured Porsche, number so-and-so.’ Then they shut the barriers as soon as they—”
“Stop here,” said Lombard. Hambledon pulled in close to the right-hand wall and Lombard sprang out, crossed the road, and walked on about twenty yards to a point where he could see the red-and-white striped poles and the customs and frontier officials walking about them. Hambledon got out his own passport, put his official card into it, and looked up in surprise as Lombard came hurrying back.
“Very odd. The men are all in plain clothes. It almost looks as if something unusual had happened.”
“It would appear so.” said Hambledon. and his Lüger came out of his pocket to lie on his knees. “Get back to your place, this fellow might do.”
“This fellow” was a large ancient saloon car of German make loaded down with luggage on the roof as well as on the grid. It seemed to be well filled with passengers and was being inexpertly driven by a very young man, his face bright scarlet with effort and embarrassment, who was being instructed by an elderly man sitting next him. As they passed, the young driver bungled, with gnashing sounds, his gear-change, looked down to see what he was doing and almost rammed the wall. A few educational acidities floated back to Hambledon’s ears; the car swerved suddenly and drove on. He made the prearranged rude gesture for Lombard’s benefit and was rewarded by the sight of a very young face at the back window with its tongue sticking out in reply.
“I suppose,” said Tommy to himself, “it’s too much to hope that you’ll stamp on the accelerator instead of the brake and ‘open up dem pearly gates for me’ like a charging buffalo? More likely to block them up altogether. You want jam on it,” he reproached himself, putting the car into gear ready to make a quick start. There is always a certain delay while someone from the car walks across to the office to get his papers stamped, but there seemed to be some disorganization this morning. Frontier guards in plain clothes are a thought at which the well-trained mind boggles.
Lombard’s handkerchief came out; as Hambledon went forward he came running to leap in at the door which Tommy had opened for him.
“The owner did not get out—the man took the papers and—”
As the car topped the rise and the barrier carne into view, it could be seen that one of them was rising hesitantly and the ancient saloon was not yet moving. Hambledon lifted his foot momentarily, but the old car lumbered forward and the barrier rose at last. There were only two men ostensibly on duty and both were watching the saloon.
Hambledon changed into third and put his foot hard down. The murmur of the engine rose to a snarl and one of the men in mufti looked round to see the cream-coloured Porsche only thirty yards off and leaping at him. He uttered a loud yell and
brought the barrier clown again smartly, right across the luggage-encumbered roof of the old saloon. The Porsche is a long, low car and the speedometer needle was rising fast.
“That man on the left is one of the gang,” said Lombard calmly and drew his revolver from his pocket, but the alleged frontier guard had his already in his hand and fired several shots at close range at the Porsche as it roared past him. As the car shot under the barrier Hambledon ducked down upon the driving wheel but Lombard slid down in his seat, threw his head back and saw the red-and-white pole pass over a foot above his head.
“Car on the right probably theirs,” said Hambledon, “can you hit it?”
Lombard whirled round, gun in hand, and fired five shots into the front of a green Mercedes which was standing at the side of the road with its engine running. At the same instant a fusillade of shots broke out from the barrier and the driving mirror beside Hambledon shattered into fragments.
“They have dared to capture the frontier post,” said Lombard in a scandalized voice.
“Did you hit the car?”
“Oh, yes, I don’t know what damage I did, they are running round it,” said Lombard, looking back. “They don’t seem—we are out of sight.”
“Man on the right,” said Hambledon suddenly, and his Lüger was in his hand. “Hold her straight, I’ll—”
But the man, who had risen from behind a bush with a tommy gun in his hand, fired a burst at the front tyres. There was a loud bang as one of them burst, and the car swerved violently across the road out of control. Hambledon yelled to Lombard to jump for it as the Porsche hit the grass verge, turned end for end, rolled into the bushes, and burst into flames.
Hambledon’s progress was stopped by some bushes; he was mildly surprised to find himself not merely alive but still clutching his automatic. He wriggled round to face the road and saw the man with the tommy gun walking towards them. No doubt it must have seemed that there was nothing to fear from participants in a crash like that. He was quite young and looked a little alarmed and even apologetic, like a small boy who has fired an air gun at a cat and winged the vicar. Hambledon waited till he was only ten paces away and shot him dead.
From the point of view of someone’s trying to track someone else, there is much to be said for the Tyrol—from many other points of view also, of course—but Medeski was a man of one idea, to regain those papers, and he kept his mind tightly to his task. The advantage of hunting anyone in the Tyrol lies in the fact that it is mainly composed of precipitous mountains divided by narrow steep-walled valleys through which the roads run and must run. There are of course walkers’ tracks over the hills, but they are not even suitable for walkers, unless they are active, and certainly not for motorcycles. Once, therefore, a motorcyclist was clear of the streets of Seefeld on the Scharnitz road, he could confidently be looked for at successive points upon that road; if he failed to pass any one of them it meant that he had left the road before that point on foot. Presumably he would hide his machine behind bushes. Medeski, poring over his Wanderkarte in his clean, bare little bedroom, came correctly to this conclusion.
Moreover, there were not so many places where Eugene would leave the road. He would not, for example, cross the river where there was no bridge, nor where he would immediately be faced with unclimbable rock faces. If this place was one to which men habitually resorted, it must be reasonably easy of access. Medeski walked to Scharnitz along the road. There is a turning into the woods just before Giessenbach and here he sat down for a rest. He was rewarded by the sight of Eugene roaring past the turn without so much as a passing glance. Not there, not there, my child, not there. Medeski walked on.
He spent a couple of days making enquiries at roadside cafés about a friend whom he was to have met and in laying out a little money here and there as a reward for information, until the point of Eugene’s departure from the road was narrowed down to a short stretch between the far side of Scharnitz village and the frontier. Here there was a walkers’ track leading up to the Arn Spitze. Eugene usually went out in the afternoon; very well, Medeski would go up there in the morning. His kind land-
Frontier Post lady provided him with a packed lunch before he set off by train to Scharnitz.
He kept to the right side of the Bahnhofstrasse going up to Seefeld station because on the other side, where the shops are, he saw from afar the gangling figure of Eugene-as-Horaz loading luggage into a bus outside the Tourist Bureau. Medeski walked steadily by upon the opposite footpath and did no more than glance across when a gawky woman came down from the Karwendelhof Hotel waving some sheets of paper in her hand and talking loudly, presumably about them, in a voice like a peahen, to a man who was coming up to meet her. Her words were perfectly audible to Medeski but, alas, he did not understand English.
When he arrived at Scharnitz station he turned right, away from the town, and was immediately encouraged by the sight of a group of obviously serious walkers ahead of him; they carried stout sticks, wore sturdy boots, and strode out purposefully. One of them even had a coil of rope slung round him. They led the way across a bridge over the river. Medeski, not actually joining the party, trailed after them as they entered the woods, and the path began to climb. After a time he lost sight of them; they walked faster than he and, besides, he was delayed by looking for feasible turnings off the path. He investigated several places which looked possible but they all petered out and he plodded on again.
He had been walking for an hour or more and had passed the rest hut at the head of the Hasel Lahne when he heard steps and voices behind him of men not yet in sight. The voices were speaking German and, though what they said did not tell him anything definite—they were too guarded for that—it was clear that they had played some trick on somebody and were delighted about it. Not innocent delight, such as one might expect from harmless tourists, but with a suggestion of savagery about it.
Medeski left the path hurriedly and went to ground like a rabbit.
There were four men together, each of them carrying a bulging rucksack. They kept close together and the voice of the first was the voice of Eugene. Medeski waited until they had gone by out of sight and then followed on. He went past the point where they had turned off because he heard voices ahead which he took for theirs: it was not until he came to the stretch where the real rock climbing begins and one helps oneself up by a fixed wire rope that he realized that the voices he was hearing were those of the original walking party from Scharnitz coming back. He sat down upon a rock, opened his parcel of lunch, and waited for them. When they came down they saw a tidy little man—Medeski was constitutionally tidy—sitting at the side of the track eating buttered rolls and hard-boiled egg. They looked at him, at his shoes, at each other, and stopped.
“Excuse me, I beg,” said one of them in a particularly pleasant voice. “I hope the Herr will not think me rudely intrusive, but is the Herr thinking of going on to the top by himself?”
“I thank the Herr,” said Medeski, “but no. I think I have walked far enough.”
“Not wishing to interfere with the Herr’s pleasures for a moment,” went on the stranger, “but it is really not very safe up there for one man alone unless he is an experienced mountaineer.”
“Is there, then,” asked Medeski, “no one else further up the hill?”
“No one,” said another of the party, with a laugh. “We had the whole mountaintop entirely to ourselves.”
“And you met no one, as you were coming down?”
“No one at all. So, forgive me, you will not venture further?”
“Oh, no,” said Medeski truthfully. “I have come far enough. I shall but finish my lunch, have a little rest, and walk down again. I thank the Herren most sincerely for their kindly interest.”
“Not at all,” they said, and wished him a pleasant afternoon. When they had started again Medeski watched them out of sight.
“Most helpful,” he murmured to himself, “most. They met no one; therefore I have passed the turn. I shall not miss it when I go back.”
Chapter XIV. The Arn Spitze
The Austrian Frontier Post at Scharnitz appeared to have gone out of action. Cars came up on both sides and stopped, two or three abreast, while others came up behind; their owners, surprised to see no police on duty, got out with flapping papers in their hands and wandered into the offices on either side. Here also were no clerks on duty; the rubber stamps lay idle, the ruled and columned registers stared blankly at the ceiling. Notices and lists of dutiable articles, tacked with drawing-pins to the walls, rustled drily in the intermittent breeze while the travellers banged vainly upon the counters and uttered the equivalent of “Hi!” in at least six languages. Outside, at the rear of the accumulation on either side, impatient cars began to sound their horns.
One of the waiting crowd was an Englishman, unmistakeable in tweeds; another an American Army officer in uniform. They glanced at each other, their eyes met, and they moved towards each other, for upon such occasions as this the English-Speaking Union is not limited to membership of an organization but operates automatically.
“Surely,” said the Englishman, “this is a little unusual? There is generally someone about in these places.”
“Yes, sir,” said the American.”! come this way, sir, quite a lot and this is the first time I have found it unattended.”
“I find it hard to believe that they would all go to lunch simultaneously,” said the Englishman. “Especially without their hats.”
“Without their hats?” The American followed the Englishman’s glance towards a table at the back of the office where five uniform hats lay together. “And their keys!”
“You are right.” The Englishman listened and shook his head. “I thought I heard a banging noise somewhere but I can’t be sure with all this babble going on.”
“Soon stop that.” The American lifted his voice and spoke authoritatively in German. “Silence, please, for a moment. Quiet, please.”
One or two people looked at him indignantly for, indeed, this was not even the American Zone of Occupation, but there was a hush in which could faintly be heard the sound as of a door being kicked and a voice shouting something.
“Sounds like somebody’s gotten himself locked in,” said the American with a slow smile. “Sir, shall we make a two-man rescue party?”
“I’m with you,” said the Englishman. “Lead on.”
They passed the counter, picked up the keys, and went on through a doorway at the back. From here it was possible plainly to hear cries of wrath with bumps and bangs.
“I’ve never been inside a frontier post before,” said the Englishman in a pleased voice. “No further than the counter, I mean. Do they keep cells here for awkward customers, do you know?”
“I wouldn’t know from personal experiences,” said the American, “but I would say that some such facilities would just naturally be provided. Seems like it’s along here.”
It was easy to identify the door which contained those anxious to be let out; after some fumbling with the wrong keys it opened and frontier police and customs officials rushed out and along the passage into the office. Their rescuers offered each other cigarettes and strolled placidly after them. When they in their turn reached the office, one of the customs men was frantically jiggling the telephone and shouting into it. He suddenly replaced the receiver and announced dramatically that the wires had been cut.
“So excitable, these foreigners,” murmured the Englishman and the American looked at him.
“Well, wouldn’t you say they’d had something to get excited
The Am Spitze about? What is it all about, anyway? Hey, you!” He grabbed a passing official by the arm and brought him up standing. “What’s going on around here, anyway?”
“It is a gang of smugglers who seized the post and locked us all up. They said that they were running a big lorry through with contraband and if we did not see it we could not describe it. They said it would not be for long and they would leave the keys. Excuse me.” He freed himself and hurried away.
“I wonder whether they captured the German one, too,” said the Englishman.
“It was perfectly O.K. when I came through, perfectly O.K. I didn’t meet any big lorry, either. There was a crashed car burning but there were people round it. I didn’t stop.”
