Read Online Heil Harris! by John Garforth - Free Book Online Page A

road. He walked three miles across desolate hilly country until he reached another part of the massive lake. A deserted cove with not an ice-cream seller or beach hut in sight. Steed sat on the rocks and waited. It was seven minutes to eleven.
    At eleven o’clock precisely a rowing boat came round the headland. Steed watched in alarm. The boat was being rowed by a lone girl of about twenty and as she saw him she waved. She was, Steed had to admit, rather fetching, but she wasn’t Heinrich Toppler.
    “Hello, you must be Steed.” She jumped gracefully out of the boat and shook hands. “I’m Heidi Toppler.” She was blonde and in thirty years she might become square and forbidding. For the moment she was buxom, blue eyed and athletic. “I was expecting Heinrich Toppler,” he said carefully.
    “He was my father, but he couldn’t make it.” She looked Steed in the eyes as she spoke and then decided she could trust him. “They murdered him six months ago when the N.P.D. discovered that he was a British agent during the war.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Thank you. I’ll settle with them when the opportunity arises.” She smiled, this time to show that Steed could rely on her. “They didn’t find my father’s radio or the code communication with London, so I decided to continue his work. Now, are we still in business?”
    “Of course. I’m delighted to be working with you.” Things were looking up at last. Steed followed her along the side of the lake saying the usual things about her charming country and her delightful command of the English language. He even leapt nimbly up the side of a cliff and lifted her over a mountain stream.
    “What,” she asked abruptly, “will you do with the treasure if you do find it?”
    Steed shrugged. “I’m not concerned with that. I expect the West German government will distribute it as they think fit. My only worry is to prevent a few troublesome people in England from getting their hands on it.”
    “Good,” said Heidi. “I will show you what I know.” They went down a steep slope to the edge of the water. “Be careful,” she called out, “it’s dangerous along this ledge. Lean back against the rocks.”
    Steed did as he was told, and about thirty feet further along they reached an artificial cave.
    “My father said this cave was formed by accident. They were trying to fill in the small inlet and instead they made a hole. Dynamite was tricky in those days. You had to be experienced with it.”
    The small cave was eighteen inches above water level and five feet in length. It contained eight human skeletons. “Good lord,” said Steed. They were male specimens, in perfect condition at the prime of life. Obviously they had been shot, because the rib cage of each was fractured where the heart had been. The bullets were still on the floor of the cave.
    “They were soldiers,” explained Heidi. “The odd buttons and metal pieces of their uniforms indicate that they were American soldiers, but my father said that was not so. They were S.S. men, and they were killed after they had brought the Nazi loot to this spot.”
    “Like pirates, shooting the men and burying them with the hidden treasure.” He looked around at the stone walls. “All we have to do is find the treasure.” Heidi shrugged indifferently. “The trail stops here. It might be buried under five hundred tons of mountain, or it may be sunk at the bottom of the lake somewhere. We hadn’t bothered much about that until I received your cable.”
    Steed examined the fall of rocks that had formed the far wall. As far as he could see it would take a gang of men and full quarrying equipment to shift that. And the lake would take days to search, assuming that frogmen didn’t freeze to death in that water.
    “Our chances of finding it,” she said as if she were reading his mind, “are nil without a properly organised regiment of men.”
    He sat down and considered the matter. “Do you smoke panatellas?”