Read Online Be Shot For Six Pence by Michael Gilbert - Free Book Online

was a prisoner of war. I escaped from Germany into Poland. Then from Poland across Czechoslovakia into Hungary. I was a year in Hungary – some of it in prison. Then I got out, and was helped into Yugoslavia. Lisa was one of the people who helped me.”
    “Interesting,” said Lady. “She would have been at a romantic stage, of course.”
    “Of course,” I agreed.
    “You were friendly?”
    “Oh, very friendly.”
    He just looked at me. It didn’t matter to him. He wouldn’t have minded if I’d murdered her old mother. It would have been a Factor; something to be discounted, or overcome, or perhaps just ignored.
    “Then she will be a companion for you,” he said, “until Studd-Thompson returns. You had better ask her to fix you up.” As I turned to go he added: “There is one other thing. Here we are all of us guests. Our host is Baron Milo. We are free to do as we wish for the whole of the day, but he so far preserves the conventions of hospitality that he likes us to dine together at night. We meet at nine o’clock.”
    “I haven’t got a dinner jacket.”
    “Gheorge is your size. He will lend you one.”
    “All right,” I said, and made my escape.
    Lisa was waiting for me.
    “I have put your rucksack in your room,” she said. “I will show you where it is. Is that all the clothes you have?”
    “Every stitch,” I said. “But I can soon buy some more.”
    “Have you got some money?”
    “Lots of money.”
    “Good. There is a little man in Steinbruck will make you some clothes. It will take about two days.”
    “I wish I could introduce him to my tailor,” I said. “He has never made me the simplest garment in less than two months. What about lunch?”
    “We had better have that in the town. No one here eats much until the evening. Lady has some sandwiches sometimes when he is working very hard.”
    “You ought to have warned me.”
    “Of what?”
    “He’s a poisonous little man.”
    Lisa looked at me, cold astonishment in her eyes.
    “But he is not poisonous,” she said. “He is a great man.”
    “He couldn’t be greater than he thinks he is.”
    “Philip, don’t be so—” she cast round her diligently for the most wounding word in her vocabulary “—so insular. Just because he does not behave in a hearty manner and slap you on the shoulder and say, “Old boy, old boy.”
    “If he had I should have assumed he was a confidence trickster.”
    “What’s wrong with him then?”
    “Nothing really,” I said. “He dresses like a shopwalker and uses scent and has got an ego the size of a balloon – apart from that he’s all right.”
    For a moment Lisa looked as if she was going to be angry. Then she laughed.
    “Poor Phee-leep,” she said. “You have always to be indignant about somebody. Yes? I remember. That is because you are a Martian.”
    “You still go in for that fiddle-faddle?”
    “Because you do not understand it is no need to mock it.”
    My room was a nice one. I unpacked my rucksack, washed my face and put on my other collar. Whilst I was in the middle of these simple preparations there came a knock at the door and the gnome-like servitor came in. Thinking he had come to turn down the bed or something, I stood politely aside. But no. He had something to get off his chest. Having wound himself up, he pressed the button, and something came out which sounded like “affamissage”.
    “In case it’s any help,” I said, “I do speak Hungarian.”
    A broad smile split his oaken face.
    “That is well,” he said, with evident relief. “I have a message for you from your compatriot.”
    “From—?”
    “From the Herr Studd-Thompson, yes. It is a message in writing.”
    “He left a letter?”
    “Not for you, by name. He said to me, if I should go away, perhaps they will send someone in my stead. If it should be a little man, with brown skin and very light blue eyes and brown hair turning grey, then you will give him this letter.”
    I walked over to the