The Golden Horns. John Burke
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COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 1957, 2011 by John Burke
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidebooks.com
CHAPTER ONE
Within an hour of arriving at his hotel in Copenhagen, Martin Slade was called to the telephone.
It was in a small cupboard without windows. A dim light burned in the roof, and the walls were padded.
He took up the receiver, and said: “Martin Slade here.”
“Good evening. This is Henning Holtesen.” The voice was precise; the telephone gave it a metallic astringency. “So nice to know you are in Denmark again.”
Should he have known the name? It aroused no echo in his mind.
He said formally: “It’s nice to be here again.”
“You will remember that we met when you were here before. I felt I must welcome you back.”
Martin still did not remember, but muttered some suitable response. He was almost waiting for the next remark. Knowing the hospitality of this country, he was ready for the invitation when it came.
“May we invite you out here for a drink this evening?”
“That’s very kind of you,” said Mark, “but I’m a bit fagged after the journey.”
“Of course, of course. Then may I suggest tomorrow evening, for dinner? We shall have an early dinner and go on to the opening of the Ballet Festival. That is what you are here for, of course.”
“Of course,” echoed Martin. “But—”
“We will make sure that you arrive in good time.”
Henning Holtesen sounded persistent, and yet was in no way unpleasantly effusive. Here was the characteristic Danish pride in hospitality, the desire to offer a welcome to the visitor even if he were but a slight acquaintance. Martin had met it before. Even as he hesitated, slightly dazed, the voice was saying:
“May I send the car for you at six o’clock tomorrow evening?”
“You mustn’t trouble—”
“It is no trouble,” said the dry voice, with a quickening of pleasure.
Martin pulled himself together, and said: “I must be frank, Mr. Holtesen. It’s very bad of me, but I can’t place you. I’m awfully sorry—”
“Place me?” There was a pause, then: “Oh, I see. But of course. You cannot remember everyone you met here during the war, when you did so much for my country. Or”—was there a tinge of mockery now?—“after the war. I was an acquaintance of Eiler Nielsen. I believe you did some business together, and I met you at his place. You remember Eiler?”
Yes, Martin remembered Eiler.
He felt wary. Eiler Nielsen was part of a discarded past. Maybe this Henning Holtesen knew him casually; maybe he knew him too well.
Martin did not want to be mixed up in anything. That sort of life was over and done with, and he never wanted to be mixed up in anything again.
“I expect I shall remember you when I see you,” he said.
“That means you are coming. Good! I shall be so pleased. My wife, too, is looking forward to seeing you again.”
Not remembering the man himself. Martin certainly could not recall his wife. But it was more or less understood now that he would be going to dinner with them the following evening.
“Until tomorrow, then,” Holtesen said finally.
Martin put the receiver down.
He could always back out. He had been caught unawares, with the squeal of the train still ringing in his ears.
The journey was over now, and he was here. Tomorrow he could always telephone and plead some business engagement connected with the Festival. His editor, he would say, wanted a special feature article urgently, and this would necessitate his being elsewhere until the opening performance actually got started.
* * * *
In point of fact he very nearly telephoned first thing in the morning. Standing on the corner of turbulent Raadhuspladsen, he found that something in the spring gaiety of the young men and women on their bicycles made him feel misanthropic.
He stood there frowning—a tall Englishman in a stone-grey suit, his eyes slightly narrowed against the sun so that the deep lines in his face seemed to run down even more darkly than usual: an Englishman with a high forehead and dark brown hair, watching the fair-haired young men and women on their swarming, weaving bicycles...the flash of skirts and the turned heads…the tinkling of bells….
The morning was dust and noise and heat.
No, he thought. I won’t go to that dinner. I can’t be bothered.
There was more to it than mere unsociability. There was something he could not explain, even to himself. He did not want to be drawn into anything in Copenhagen, He was here as a music critic for the Ballet and Music Festival, and that was going to be that.
He thrust out his other memories. He wanted to meet no one he had known when he had worked in the Danish Resistance movement here, and certainly he wanted to meet no one with whom he had worked during those turbulent months afterwards.
He was conscious of a strange flickering intimation of danger, such as he had felt before in this city. But now there were no Gestapo men after him. No Gestapo, and no police.
The sensation was childish. He would not let himself give in to anything so absurd. He argued himself into deciding that he would accept Holtesen’s invitation.
The car arrived at his hotel on the dot. Within ten minutes Martin was being set down outside a tall house overlooking a park.
There were so many parks in Copenhagen. If he had been here before, his mind retained no picture of the place.
His host came to meet him in the hall.
He was an elderly man—not tall but with a slight stoop. He looked very thin and angular, and when they shook hands there was no strength in his fingers.
Martin did not, even now, remember him, but he had seen many faces in Denmark like this: those blue eyes staring out of a lean face in which the bones seemed to lie so close to the surface, thrusting up against the taut skin. His lips looked very dry, and although there was no telephone between himself and Martin Slade now, his voice had the same metallic whisper.
“I am glad to see you again, Mr. Slade.”
Holtesen put a hand lightly on his arm. It was a fine, frail hand, like that of a much older and weaker man. They went towards a large door.
As they entered the room a woman came towards them.
“I think,” said Holtesen, “you have met my wife?” Martin stopped abruptly. Perhaps he ought to have been prepared for this. Perhaps, somehow, he should have guessed; but that twitch of unease, that premonition this morning, had not been as clear as all that.
It was Birgitte.
CHAPTER TWO
There were five of them at dinner. Conversation flickered for a few moments and then began to burn steadily. They prodded cosy formalities towards the reassuring flame.
“Such a privilege,” Birgitte was saying, “to have a celebrated music critic at our table.”
Her eyes narrowed in a little grimace that he well remembered. Once it had been an intimate communication between them, a silly twitch of supposed affection. Now he found it distasteful.
It was wrong that she should be capable of turning it on again so readily. The two of them had parted, and would never come together again. She had always talked a great deal about marrying some rich man and apparently she had succeeded.
“After