The Sword and the Net полностью

Then she dropped her eyes to the magazine again—and Otto, the waiter at his elbow, ordered coffee. He would not go now, he would wait. The blank glance from those eyes had had something behind it; some awareness of his existence and effect; some recognition which he was just old and experienced enough to know as a sign that boded well.

His coffee came and he sipped at it—and dared another stare: it was still sufficiently in the manner of Nils, but he put, as it were, more behind it. Again she raised her eyes as if she sensed that his were upon her. And this time an electric thrill transfixed Otto. And this time, before she dropped her eyes to the magazine again, the almost invisible ghost of a smile creased the coiners of her mouth.

He finished the coffee and ordered more, and kept on looking, trying to combine the outward manner of a Nils with an inner message from his eyes. With each interchange, her dark-blue eyes grew more frankly interested, until at last they seemed to have an answer in them to the thrills which permeated him.

Then he saw with a sudden despair that she was paying her bill. The waiter took the note which she gave him and fumbled to make change and finally hurried away to get it while she collected handbag and gloves and pulled the fur-collared coat about her and glanced at a tiny, glittering watch upon her wrist. Otto stared sullenly, despondent—and then, on an instant, was plucked from his depths by a flash from her eyes and the slightest, almost imperceptible, movement of her head towards the door; a movement which made his heart leap up into his throat.

He was fortunate to catch the eye of his own waiter almost at once. He paid his bill, with some Nils-like fumbling in a massive ring-purse, as quickly as he might—and was making awkward way out to the street within a minute of her departure. He saw her in the vestibule, selecting something from the pile of papers on the news-stand. Somewhat un-Nils-like, he did not pause nor give any sign that he was aware of her but went out, shambling, through the revolving door and on to the pavement. He moved away from the entrance and the brilliant patch of light from the lamps they had just switched on against the sudden dusk. He took up his stand further down the pavement, beneath one of the trees which lined this whole thoroughfare, sprouting surprisingly from square inlets of dark soil in the paving.

He waited—and took counsel with himself. He was here in Stockholm to wait, and to wait, surely, in the manner of Nils. So there could be no possible wrong in Nils’ seeing how this adventure might turn out. . . .

He waited, for several minutes which seemed interminable. Then she came out of the hotel and turned in his direction. He watched her with rising admiration and excitement as she came towards him. She was tall, but not overly tall: she was erect without effort. And her hips swung gracefully as she moved.

With one casual-seeming glance over her shoulder, she came directly towards him. She was smiling fully now—and her charm miraculously was doubled. He stood away from the tree and waited for her. His heart was beating violently and his breath was short.

She halted in front of him, fairly close. And she spoke, in a deep, very faintly husky voice which matched the rest of her. She said:

“This is very . . . curious of me, to behave like this. You think so, too, don’t you?”

But she said it in German.

Time, of course, is purely relative, which is doubtless why it seemed so long to Otto before he answered. Actually, he did so with a scarcely perceptible pause which, even had it been noticed, would have been no more than natural; but so much conflict raged inside him, so many questions were asked and answered in his head, so great a decision taken and acted upon, that it seemed to him an unconscionable time until he spoke. He cursed his luck, for her obviously genuine racial kinship made her even more desirable. . . . He asked himself how it could possibly matter if he pretended to a slight knowledge of German, gained by Nils while at sea, since here was so obviously a woman who could have no connection whatsoever with espionage, direct or counter. . . . If he made some reply, enough to see where the adventure would end, how could he possibly be wrong? . . . And suppose it did end as he had been so ardently hoping, what harm could come when she was so patently of a class and position which must make any association with a Nils Jorgensen very necessarily clandestine to the nth degree? . . . If only he wasn’t so certain that the whole thing would come to nothing, its flimsy structure fall in ruins, if he did not understand her language and became in truth the oaf which some strange chemical reaction between them had made her see as something else! . . .

But he looked straight at her and made his eyes blank and shrugged lumpishly and said:

“What you say? I don’t understand.”

And he said it in Nils’ thickened, Dane-accented Swedish.