Read Online Background to Danger by Eric Ambler - Free Book Online Page B

Hotel Werner.
    The sky was greying by the time he got to his room.
    He flung his suitcase on the bed, drew the curtains and sank into a chair. His eyes were aching and, leaning over to the bedside lamp, he switched the light off. He sat still for a minute, then started to take off his tie. But even as he fumbled with the knot he felt sleep pressing on his eyelids. His fingers relaxed and his head fell slowly forwardas he slid into an uncomfortable doze. It must have been about twenty minutes later that he was disturbed by a knock at the door.
    He rose wearily to his feet. The knock was repeated. He walked to the door.
    “What is it?”
    “Service,
mein Herr,”
said a voice. “The gentleman may be cold. I have brought extra blankets.”
    Kenton unlocked the door, and turning away, started once more to remove his tie.
    The door opened. There was a quick movement behind him. The next instant he felt a terrific blow on the back of the neck. For a split second an agonising pain shot through his head and he felt himself falling forward. Then he lost consciousness.

6

ORTEGA
    Z ALESHOFF and Tamara arrived in Linz at ten o’clock in the evening and drove from the station, in a taxi, to an address on the other side of the town.
    Kölnerstrasse 11 was a grocer’s shop in a quiet residential quarter. Leaving his sister to pay off the taxi, Zaleshoff rang a bell at a side door. After several minutes’ waiting, the door opened an inch and a woman’s voice demanded hoarsely who it was who rang.
    “Rashenko?” said Zaleshoff.
    The woman opened the door. Motioning Tamara to follow him, Zaleshoff went in. Just inside the door was a flight of bare wooden stairs and, with the woman puffing and blowing ahead of them, the two went up slowly.
    On the second landing the woman opened a door leading off it and, grunting that Rashenko was on the top floor and that she couldn’t be bothered to go any farther, went inside and left them. Three more flights brought them to a landing over which the ceiling sloped steeply. There was only one door. Zaleshoff stepped forward to knock, paused, then turned to his sister.
    “You have never met Rashenko?”
    Tamara shook her head.
    “You must not be surprised at him. He was taken by some Czarist officers and badly treated. As a result he is, amongst other things, dumb.”
    The girl nodded and he rapped loudly on the door.
    The man who opened it was tall, white-haired and stooping. He was incredibly thin and his clothes hung about him in long folds, as though there were no body beneath them. His eyes were set deep in his head, so that it was impossible to see the colour of them, but they gleamed like two pin-points of light from the dark hollows. His thin lips stretched tightly in a smile of welcome when he saw Zaleshoff, and he stood aside to let them in.
    The room was so full of furniture that it was almost impossible to move. An unmade bed in one corner and a small stove in another contributed considerably to the general air of confusion. A wood fire burnt in the stove and the place was insufferably hot.
    Rashenko waved them to chairs, then sat down himself and looked at them expectantly.
    Zaleshoff took off his coat, folded it carefully over the back of his chair and sat down. Then he leaned forward and laid his hand gently on the other’s arm.
    “How are you, my friend?”
    The dumb man picked up a newspaper from the floor, produced a pencil from his pocket and wrote in the margin. Then he displayed it.
    “Better?” said Zaleshoff. “Good. This is my sister Tamara.”
    Rashenko wrote again and held the paper up.
    “He says,” said Zaleshoff, turning with a smile to Tamara, “that you are very beautiful. Rashenko was always considered an expert in these matters. You should be flattered.”
    The girl smiled. She found it extraordinarily difficult to say anything to the dumb man. He nodded vehemently and smiled back at her.
    “Have you heard from Vienna?” asked Zaleshoff.
    Rashenko