The Salzburg Connection by Helen MacInnes Read Free Book Online Page A

it?”
    “Depends what you kill. Breakfast is ready. Shall we start?”
    That was a neat turn-aside from costs, thought Bryant. The fee for killing a chamois could come as high as four thousand Austrian schillings. It seemed that August Grell didn’t do too badly, considering he owned a simple little inn that charged fifty schillings a day in high season. He swallowed the hot coffee and hoped it would pull him together; all he wantedto do was lie down in front of that warm stove and sleep. He couldn’t eat much, after all. He was completely exhausted physically; and mentally he seemed to be dissolving in worry. He could scarcely listen to Anton’s constant chatter. He was thinking of August Grell and what kept him so long on the telephone. Or why he had even needed to use the telephone at all. Something is wrong, Bryant’s instincts kept telling him, something is wrong.
    “Look,” he told Anton, rising to his feet, reaching for his sweater, “I really must go. It’s well after ten. Time I was on my way to Salzburg.”
    “It only takes an hour and a half,” Anton protested. He looked almost alarmed, nervous.
    More like two hours in my condition, thought Bryant. Last night he had taken fully three, dawdling his way carefully through the night. “Sorry I can’t say good-bye to your father. Give him my thanks, won’t you? Perhaps I’ll bring my wife up here for some skiing in December. You do open then for skiers?”
    “Yes, of course! We have no ski lift here, of course, no special slopes. But there is good ski-running. That is the best sport anyway. Here—let me show on this map.” Anton had followed Bryant as he talked, and was now rummaging in a dresser drawer near the back entrance. “You can ski for thirty kilometres across—”
    “I’d be satisfied with three,” Bryant said. “You over-estimate me, Anton.” He unlocked the back door, began to pull its heavy weight inward.
    “Wait!” said Anton softly. “I think I hear my—”
    Bryant half turned his head to see where the blow was coming, ready to dodge. He was a split second too slow. Theside of Anton’s right hand, hard as steel, cracked the back of his neck. He keeled straight over like a tree under a woodsman’s axe. His hand fell away from the door, his face hit the floor, and he lay quite still.

3
    August Grell came out of his room to find Anton, a nervous look on his face that pinched his lips and tightened his eyes, waiting in the hall. Grell froze, then burst into anger. “He has left? Hell take you, you let him leave!”
    Anton listened in silence to a string of curses, but his eyes were widening and his lips beginning to ease before he asked too innocently, “Didn’t you want him to leave?”
    Grell looked more closely at the spreading smile. He ran through the dining-room, burst into the kitchen, halted abruptly. He stared back at Anton, then he went over to kneel beside Bryant. Yes, his suspicion was right. The man was dead. “You were too quick,” he told Anton grimly.
    “I aimed for the side of his neck, but he jerked his head around and the blow caught him right at the back of—”
    “So I see.” Grell rose to his feet, picking up Bryant’s sodden sweater.
    “There was no choice. He was leaving. He had the door open.” Anton felt the side of his hand. It was numb. He shrugged his shoulders. “Why did you bring him here anyway?”
    “Because I wanted him for questioning. I wanted no body found near Finstersee. I wanted no repeat of Lake Toplitz.”
    “It had its uses,” Anton suggested. “It scared them all.”
    “And made everything twice as difficult for us.” Grell glanced at his watch. “All right, all right,” he said irritably. “You take his jacket, wear it. Get him loaded into the front seat of the car and cover him with your cape.”
    “The back seat would be better—gives me more room.”
    “You won’t have time to move him out of the back seat into the front, and that’s where you’ll need