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

as the girls turned away impressed, he had dropped the rope into the lake in front of his feet. And the weight had touched ground just about four metres down by his calculation. “He told me he asked you to find some way to see if the ledge existed, and you did. And you know, Johann, I don’t think you would have bothered if that informant’s story hadn’t been haunting you too.”
    “Well, after what happened at Toplitz—” He didn’t end the sentence. She knew about Lake Toplitz, that he could see by her face. But he was willing to bet that she hadn’t been told about the two bodies there, or how they had died. “When did he leave? Come on, Anna. Tell me it all.”
    So she told him. Everything except the hiding place, and about the chest’s contents. That was a promise she had to keep.
    “He might have taken me along,” Johann said bitterly when she had finished. “He needed another man.” If Finstersee contained anything at all, the Nazis would be watching.
    “You had a cold. You can’t go diving with a cold. Dick said that could make you pass out and—”
    “He rushed this job. I was laid up, and he seized the chance to ditch me. Doesn’t he trust me?”
    “Of course he does. It’s just that—just that—” She was in trouble, so she stopped.
    “It’s just that he wants that chest to go to the bloody Britishor the damned Americans.” His anger was returning.
    “He says that the only important thing is that the Nazis never find it again,” she flashed back at him. “And you like the British and Americans, so why swear at them? Besides, he is English, isn’t he? He found it, so it goes to them. Isn’t that fair?”
    “No! It was in an Austrian lake. It’s ours by right.”
    “But we are neutral. We’d do nothing with it. We’d lock it up safely and then forget about it. But the Nazis won’t forget. Nor the Communists. Dick says they’ll infiltrate our—”
    “That’s his excuse.” Johann paused. The contents of the chest must be valuable, then. “Did he tell you what was in it?”
    “He didn’t want to talk about that.” Which was true.
    “You really don’t know?”
    With difficulty, she kept her eyes from flinching. “He said I did not need to know that,” she said, feeling her throat go dry. But that was true, too. Dick refused at first. And then, when I insisted, he told me. Not so much because I insisted but because he realised he had to—in case something went wrong. But it didn’t, and now I can forget all about the chest. If only Johann doesn’t keep asking, asking, asking.
    But Johann was off on his own train of thought. “Then he knows!” Johann said swiftly. He thumped his fist on the table, spilling his coffee, rose to his feet. “I’m going to phone.”
    “Whom?”
    He halted. Felix Zauner was the man to deal with this problem: he had been with the Austrian State Tourist Department for a number of years, and then—after the Toplitz incident—he had gone into business for himself. He had opened a sports-equipment shop in Salzburg, a very small business which allowed him plenty of free time for his particular hobbyof skiing. He had a few branch shops, too, although that wasn’t known except by the men whom he had staked. Johann was one of them. Felix was the silent partner, with his name not even mentioned, far less over the door. He was equally casual about money matters or a share in the profits. All he needed were a few men he could trust who knew the mountains, and who wanted no Nazis or any other foreigners complicating Austria’s revival. His friendship with Johann was quite open; he liked Bryant and had a kind of gallant affection for Anna. But what had stopped Johann short on his way to the telephone was Felix’s words when they had last discussed the possibility of Nazi secrets hidden in lakes other than Toplitz. “Let them rot there,” Felix had said. “That’s what they deserve. Unless, of course, there’s definite evidence that the