Read Online The Salzburg Connection by Helen MacInnes - Free Book Online

she told him, decidedly, cheerful. “Except with you. You shouldn’t be up and dressed. Another day in bed would do no harm.”
    “I’m all right.” His voice was thick with his cold, his eyes looked more grey than blue, but the flush of fever had gone. “One day in bed is enough for me.” He switched off the light, pulled back the curtains, and stared out at a honeycomb of other people’s houses around their tight little courtyard.
    “You should stay indoors—”
    “We’ll see, we’ll see,” he said irritably. He was hungry, but the kitchen was a mess and his appetite was beginning to leave him. Anna never had been much of a housekeeper, but this morning she had surpassed herself. “Anna, you look awful. Will you go upstairs and make yourself decent, and we’ll get this mess straightened up so that a man can enjoy his breakfast?”
    “Yes,” she said, latching the coat back on its peg as she left. She climbed the stairs quickly. I’ll get him fed before I give him the news about Dick’s absence, she was thinking. Dick had said she could tell Johann everything. Everything that was, except the hiding place of the chest. Or about its contents. No one was to know that. Not at this time. And I was only told about it in case things went wrong, in case Dick never got back. She hadbeen given full instructions what to do if that happened. But she wouldn’t have to do anything. Dick would be home to take charge as he always did.
    She washed away the sticky streaks of tears, combed her fair hair into its soft wave, added lipstick to her pale lips for some courage. Johann was going to be angry. He was going to be more than angry. She went downstairs slowly.
    He had solved the problem of the dirty dishes by shoving them inside the small sink beside the pots and throwing a drying towel over the heap to get them out of sight. He had ground fresh coffee and was putting the kettle to boil. “That’s more like it,” he told her as he gave her a quick glance. “You’re short of food—there are three eggs and not much bread.”
    “I only want coffee.” She had made a big supper for Dick last night.
    “But what about Dick’s breakfast? He’ll need something when he wakes up.”
    “I’ll get some more food before then.” She began breaking the eggs into a bowl.
    “He takes it easy, doesn’t he?”
    “In between assignments. The book is all ready now. The photographs are waiting to go to Zürich. He may take them there this week.”
    “Why not mail them?”
    “Oh, Dick wants to see the publisher himself about some details. Well—he is not exactly the publisher. He’s the man who runs the Zürich office of the American publishing house. It’s a New York firm—” She stopped whisking the eggs, glanced across the kitchen. Johann did not seem impressed. “It’s a very important firm,” she told him severely.
    “I know, I know.”
    “It was a very generous advance: a cheque for three hundred American dollars.”
    I could live for three months on that, thought Johann. “Any chance your Zürich friend would like a book on mountain climbing?” He watched the answering smile on his sister’s face. No, she wasn’t unhappy. So there hadn’t been a quarrel between her and Dick. Yet why had she sat up all night? Breakfast first, he thought, and then I’ll find out. He sat down at the table to wait in silence. Anna’s cooking was better than her housekeeping provided no one disturbed her concentration. It was on the simple side, of course; Dick’s taste in food was simple. But what chance had she ever had of being taught how to run a house or bake Linzertorte? Aged fourteen she had been when the Russian shelling of Vienna had stopped and the horde of soldiers poured in from the east. There hadn’t been a woman or girl in that part of the city—yes, some had been younger than Anna, some five times her age—who hadn’t nightmare memories of that day of liberation. No one spoke of it any more; it was