After the Fine Weather by Michael Gilbert Page B

the streets. Quite a few pedestrians were scurrying along between the swept piles of snow. A policeman stood at the corner directing traffic, the flaps of his cap pulled well down over his ears. It all looked peaceful enough.
    In the consular office, Evelyn was saying to Charles, “The average Lienzer simply doesn’t know what to make of it. The young Austrians are solidly behind Humbold. They’re queuing to join the Security Force. They are issued armbands and truncheons, and go round looking for people to hit on the head.”
    “It sounds like Berlin during a putsch.”
    “Or London during the general strike? Anyway, the arrest of Radler and Hammerle has shown people that Humbold means business. I don’t think anyone knows quite how far he intends to go.”
    “Does he know himself?”
    “I’m not sure. He could be a thoroughgoing, Nazi-inspired, Pan-German fanatic, with backing from Munich and the Ruhr. There’s an outfit in Munich which calls itself the Institute for Folk Culture and the Preservation of Historic Institutions in South Tyrol. They’ve got money to spare, most of it subscribed by Ruhr industrialists as a measure of tax evasion. This is the sort of lark they’d back to the hilt.”
    “Or else–?”
    “Or he might just be mad.”
    The telephone rang, and Charles picked up the receiver. It was a one-sided conversation. After three or four minutes Charles managed to say, “I don’t think I should do anything just yet. I’m going to try to get round to all our people this afternoon and this evening, to explain the situation to them.”
    “That was Colonel Cracker,” he said. “He’s one of our oldest residents. He tells me that he and his wife have a service rifle each, and a hundred and forty rounds of ammunition. He’d like to use them, too.”
     
    Charles had not reappeared by half past one, so Laura ate a solitary lunch. The snow had stopped falling, and the sky was like a damp, grey blanket. It looked close enough to touch.
    “More snow this evening,” said Frau Rosa. “Perhaps you will sleep this afternoon.”
    “There doesn’t seem to be much else to do,” Laura agreed. The radiators, now at full blast, had raised the temperature of the flat to an uncomfortable degree, and she had a headache. “I might lie down.”
    She was taking her shoes off when she heard the front doorbell ring; then the murmur of voices; then Frau Rosa knocked on the bedroom door.
    “A visitor for you,” she said.
    Laura put her shoes on again, went out, and found Joe Keller in the drawing-room.
    “Am I glad to see you!” she said. “Did you have any difficulty getting in?”
    “No difficulty getting in,” said Joe. “That’s the advantage of an apartment block. Anyone can slip in with the crowd.”
    “You were right, weren’t you?”
    “About what?”
    “Your nose for trouble.”
    “Oh, that. I have to confess that that wasn’t entirely intuition. We had a tip-off in Rome that there might be trouble when the Cardinal Bishop came down here. He was a hellraiser all right, wasn’t he?”
    “He looked a very sincere man.”
    “It’s the sincere men who are dangerous,” said Joe. “Give me insincerity and a quiet life.”
    “I should have thought this was just the sort of situation you revelled in.”
    “Ordinarily, yes. But there are circumstances here I hadn’t taken into account.”
    “Such as?”
    “Such as all the roads out being snowed up, the only available railroad track being blown up, and the wires being either cut or blocked, and the wireless under state control. You have to hand it to Colonel Julius. He got a security cordon round this state so quick – so goddam quick – you might have thought he’d got it all worked out in advance.”
    Laura had not been looking at him. Now she turned her head, and found his blue eyes on her, candid and guileless.
    “I suppose,” she said, “that he might have been expecting trouble – in a general sort of way, I