The University of Texas at Austin

Law in Popular Culture collection

 
 
 

THE BEAUTIFUL RED DANUBE

A Paul and Alice Prye Mystery
 
 
 

Danube River
 
 
 
 
 
 

by Albert Borowitz©


Prologue   Ch. 1    Ch. 2   Ch. 3   Ch. 4   Ch. 5    Ch. 6    Ch. 7    Ch. 8    Ch. 9   Ch. 10   Ch. 11    Ch. 12   Ch. 13   Epilogue

Prologue

     Charles Boyer fastened his gleaming eyes on the young girl's face and said: "You haven't told me your wish." 
     Without a pause Danielle Darrieux answered him, firmly meeting his glance: "It is a simple one. I wish to be the first of us to die." 
     There was silence in the room. "Paul," Alice Prye asked, "are you awake?" She turned off the VCR and came back to the sofa. 
     "Sure, I'm awake; I guess my mind must have wandered for a minute." 
     "Then you missed the best scene, when Mary Vetsera tells Crown Prince Rudolph she loves him so much she doesn't want to survive him. When I first saw Mayerling at a film festival I thought those were about the most romantic words a woman had ever spoken. It's nonsense, I know that now, but it's hard to break old attachments. What do you think?" 
     "You're right now, it's nonsense, and dangerous nonsense at that; the man murdered her, and we've been wallowing in hearts and flowers for over a century." 
     Alice wouldn't turn her back on Charles Boyer without a struggle. "Is a suicide pact between desperate lovers a murder?" She propped her head against one of the sofa pillows that was formed of Laurel and Hardy heads; the Pryes were among the early crops of "couch potatoes." 
     "If one of two lovers shoots both, there's a murder involved, isn't there? But your adored Rudolph was a particularly unpleasant killer; he picked as his victim an inexperienced 17 year old girl whose head was easily turned by the vision of being found dead in the hunting lodge of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. She was nothing but a royalty 'groupie"'. 
     Alice laughed at him. "Mary wasn't as inexperienced as you're pretending - I've peeked at your Mayerling books - I'd call her sexually precocious. And I don't know why you put her down as a 'groupie' just because she wanted to meet the most glamorous man in Vienna. If you want to continue with this crime-history folly of yours, you must keep your jealousy under control. It's blunting your objectivity." 
     Paul, in fact, did not find Rudolph particularly appealing, but was trying to balance his harsh judgment of the prince with pretended disapproval of Mary (whose photographs he found perfectly charming). 
     "Many young girls wanted to meet the prince, husband and father though he was; I grant you that. But Baroness Mary Vetsera literally stalked him down allover the capital, just as her mother had unsuccessfully done before her. Mary was more persistent, though; she wangled an introduction to Rudolph at the races and when that led nowhere, she got her good friend Countess Larisch to arrange a meeting with the prince in adjacent boxes at the new Court Theatre. After that things went swimmingly." 
     Alice frowned. "You're much too hard on feminine wiles. It doesn't matter who took the first step. They fell in love, didn't they? It all ended in a beautiful tragedy at Mayerling, and Rudolph eventually turned into Charles Boyer, which is a fate even you can't seriously deplore." 
     "The point you refuse to see," said Paul, "is that Mary was chasing after a man who was bent on murder - or on a suicide pact, as you may prefer to call it; and that he didn't much care whether his victim was Mary or some other woman. A month before your Mayerling 'tragedy', Rudolph proposed a joint suicide to another girlfriend, Mitzi Caspar. Fortunately, she had the good sense to laugh in his face. By the way, it was Mitzi, not Baroness Mary with whom Rudolph spent his last night before leaving for Mayerling." 
     "He was a passionate man, no doubt about it," Alice said, undefeated. "And I wouldn't stress that Mitzi Caspar business too much on the cruise, Paul, you'll only annoy your audience. Some of them were probably sucking lollipops at their neighborhood theatres when the Mayerlinq movie was first released." 
     The Pryes were scheduled to fly the next evening to Bucharest, the rallying point for a cruise of the Danube River sponsored by East-Europa Tours, an educational travel company based in New York and San Francisco. In return for a modest reduction in his fare, Paul had been invited to lecture on the Mayerling case when the cruise ship reached Vienna. The centenary of the suicide had been celebrated in 1989 with an exhibition at the Hermesvilla in Vienna and a torrent of books proposing new solutions (most of them preposterous) of the mysterious events at the Mayerling lodge. During the 1989 Danube cruise, passengers deluged bewildered political science and art lecturers with questions about Prince Rudolph's death, and East-Europa's management decided that this year they would be prepared. Professor Paul Prye's interest in crime history was well known to many colleagues who lectured for the tour company, and recently some successful amateur sleuthing in London and New York had given him a certain notoriety. He was therefore tapped as East-Europa's Mayerling expert. 
     Art historian Alice Prye had an independent reason for returning to vienna; she planned to visit a great private collection of the expressionist paintings and drawings of Egon Schiele. Let Paul, as he seemed ready to do, debunk the Mayerling affair to his heart's content, but nothing could dampen Alice's enthusiasm for Schiele's tormented images. She held clearly in her acute visual memory all the details of the masterworks she would see for the first time in the original, the Reclining Woman with her wantonly inviting posture but impenetrable gaze, and the Self-Seer of 1911, where death appears as man's pale double, lurking unseen behind his back. 
     Alice had a sudden insight, which she decided not to risk mentioning to Paul for the moment given his iconoclastic mood. Still she felt strongly she was on to something true: the themes of Schiele were the same as those of Mayerling, closely intertwined, eternally Viennese themes. 
     Love and Death. 
Chapter 1

Bucharest

     The tour had started badly for the Pryes. In the first place, one of Alice's suitcases hadn't arrived with their flight and it was the one with the long evening gowns she planned to wear for their opera-going in Vienna. 
     Aurora Gabriel, the East-Europa "group coordinator," collected the widowed baggage checks and promised the nervous travelers that all missing luggage would be safely delivered to the cruise ship by the time they boarded tomorrow at Giurgiu. 
     Alice couldn't make up her mind whether to believe her. 
     Then too their day in Bucharest was a disappointment. Perhaps they had not seen the city at its best since little time had passed from the overthrow of Ceausescu and it wasn't all that clear how much had changed. In the morning the main attraction had been an open-air museum displaying village architecture from allover the country; it was swarming with moneychangers who had designs on American travelers' checks. Later in the day the Pryes had broken free of the group to visit the National Art Museum, which was housed in a wing of the former royal palace. The museum walls were bullet-pocked in testimony to the recent uprising, and the many artworks that had been damaged in the fighting had not yet been restored. On the other hand, Alice observed that the giant double portrait of the unsmiling Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu, which the curators had been forced by the former regime to exhibit, was mercifully gone. It was when they emerged from the museum, however, that the Pryes began to wonder whether the ghosts of the executed dictators still haunted the capital. As they turned to walk past the front of the main palace structure where government offices were located, a plainclothesman, who looked very much like an heir of the Securitate if he was not in fact a holdover from their ranks, stopped them with an unmistakable police gesture and motioned them to take the long way around the square which the palace faced. As they looked back, the Pryes observed that a crowd of Romanian pedestrians was streaming unimpeded past the palace entrance. Although they considered themselves no match for the armed sentry who guarded the gateway, the Pryes clearly had impressed the security man (clad in the obligatory khaki raincoat despite the unthreatening skies) as dangerous aliens. 
     When they returned to the Hotel Inter-Continental to change for the orientation dinner, they found that a message from East-Europa had been placed under their door. In addition to announcing the schedule for the following day, the bulletin notified them of a last-minute change in the tour faculty. Their art lecturer was indisposed, and at the last minute Dr. Oswald Parsons had been flown in from Frankfurt to take his place. 
     Alice couldn't believe her eyes. "That just about puts the icing on the cake, two weeks with Oswald Parsons." 
     "Who's he?", Paul asked. 
     "Who he was is more interesting. He used to be an art museum curator, but just about everywhere Oswald's gone controversy hasn't been far behind. Now he's cursed the entire u.s. art establishment and swears never to see New York again; he keeps body and soul together by lecturing for any cruise lines that will have him. It looks like he'll sail on forever without revisiting his native shores. That's why he's called the Man Without a Museum." 
     "Isn't cruising something of a comedown for him?" 
     "Not really," Alice answered. "When he was a curator he did more traveling than anything else; he just showed 'up for an occasional opening to greet his public. Now he's into full-time travel, and it doesn't make that much difference in his schedule." 
     "Is he a great lecturer?" Paul hoped for the best. 
     "Just you wait," Alice replied, venturing a perfunctory imitation of Eliza Doolittle. 
     Alice slipped an orange silk pocketed vest over her purple shirt and pants. After an expert application of cosmetics, she consoled herself for the discouraging day by perusing the passenger list. 
     The Pryes had found that in organized tours (particularly where the group was small) sightseeing, lectures and the often dreadful entertainment were far from the main attractions. Instead, from"the first moment they assembled, the tourists became investigators of their fellow-travelers' social and sexual relationships, inherited wealth, and stock market prowess. Everyone had ears cocked for revealing fragments of conversation, while their practiced eyes appraised the cost and label of ball gowns. The Pryes themselves were not immune from the plague of inquisitiveness that was as unavoidable in group travel as stomach ills in Mexico; Alice's specialty was ingenious interpretation of stateroom assignments to disclose interesting sleeping arrangements. 
     "Anything noteworthy?" Paul asked, catching sight of her in the mirror as he tightened the knot of his tie. 
     "Very little to report," Alice said, "it's quite a monogamous cruise. I don't think the romantically inclined go in for all this heavy lecturing. For the sake of completeness, however, I point out that cabin 7 is shared by James Rito and Arlene Bennett. Who knows? It may turn out that they've been blissfully married for years, and that she just insists on retaining her own name. It wreaks havoc with my research when couples play games like that." 
     "I think Rito and Bennett are at our table on the ship," Paul told her. 
     "Good," Alice said, throwing the tour roster aside and taking Paul's arm as he led her off to the party. "By the time we've reached Belgrade, they'll have no secrets left." 
     The initiation dinner party was lost in the echoing spaces of the Madrigal Room, advertised in the hotel brochure as possessing a "distinguished classical atmosphere". The ceiling blazed with elbowed glass chandeliers and the slip-covered Louis XV chairs were a nightmare in pink and purple. As they crossed the threshold the Pryes were swiftly separated; Aurora Gabriel, representing East-Europa in navy linen and brass buttons, linked an arm with Paul's and Alice was escorted by a fair-haired young man, who introduced himself as Kurt Lange, their tour leader from vienna. The Pryes were firmly steered in the direction of Dan Eggleston, the cruise photographer, who snapped them in the affectionate clutches of the two tour officials. As soon as the camera flashed, Aurora directed the Pryes to the hors d'oeuvres table and she and Kurt rushed back to the door to snare the next tourists.
     About 60 travelers were gathering in the hotel for tomorrow's Danube trip on the Anton Bruckner, a newly refitted Austrian cruise ship, and the Pryes, not the most gregarious of East-Europa's clients, had no intention of meeting them all. Setting themselves a more modest task, they sought out the passengers who would share their table. Their first finds were an attractive couple in their sixties, Bert and Kitty James. Kitty, a lively blonde in a twenties-type sailor dress with pleated skirt, said that their choice of the tour was a compromise. 
     "Mr. Wonderful here was shot down over Ploesti in World War II and put in a Romanian prison camp. out of nostalgia he wanted to drive allover the backroads of Transylvania for a couple of weeks, can you believe it? I told him to forget it, I'd give him one day in Bucharest, but the rest of our trip would have to be due west with a strong following wind." 
     "The winds blow east," Bert commented in a New England accent, but Kitty wasn't listening. "Have you met our newlyweds?" she asked the Pryes. When they confessed that they had fallen behind in socializing, Kitty led them to the far end of the hors d'oeuvres table where a trim young woman was selecting a caviar canape in defiance of the reproachful stare of her husband. "It's your fourth," the Pryes heard him say before Kitty interrupted and made the introductions. "Paul and Alice Frye of New York, meet Andy and Elizabeth Szabo of Detroit. The Szabos work on a Hungarian-language newspaper but have never been to Budapest before. She's travel editor and Andy's into ethnic news. They were married only two days ago, isn't that fantastic?" 
     Andrew Szabo stonily watched his wife devour her appetizer whole, and only then bent slightly from his height of six and a half feet to acknowledge Kitty's words. "We're pleased to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Prye. I speak for Liz as well, since she has her mouth full as usual. I don't know what it'll be like when we get all those midnight buffets." 
     "Give me a break," Kitty said. "It's not that kind of cruise. We get briefings for breakfast and lectures for lunch." 
     Before the Pryes moved off, Liz Szabo, having swallowed hard to dispose of the last of the caviar, put in a word for herself. "Don't listen to Andy anyway. This is definitely the last time I'm marrying a Nautilus freak." 
     "Really?" Bert James asked, eyeing Andy with new interest. "What's your routine?" Dapper Bert looked fit enough, in his lightweight madras jacket and narrow blue slacks, to be on the exercise machines himself, but Alice Prye doubted that was the case. More likely he was one of the tour's inevitable "people-persons", who would something fascinating about everyone he met. 
     As they searched for the bar Paul was surprised when a small bald man waved in their direction; he was flanked by a powerfully built, waistless woman sporting a patchwork quilted vest, and on his other side by the only man in the room dressed in a dark suit. Since the day's crowded agenda left little time for changing, the party had been announced as informal. 
     "Is he waving at us?" Paul asked, slowing his pace so that Alice could fill him in before they reached the little 
group. He had a dread of forgetting faces and names, and hoped the wave was for someone behind them. 
     "The wave's for me, I'm afraid. That's Oswald and Claudia Parsons, I don't think you've met them. She's a retired army officer." 
     Paul walked even more slowly. "He's married to that rather imposing woman?" he asked. 
     Alice smiled. "I don't think he really had any alternative; people say it was a military order." 
     As they came within closer range, Oswald Parsons shouted, ignoring Paul: "Alice, come meet one of our extraordinary colleagues. This is Arkady Grigoriev, he's a retired art history professor. Arkady tells me old art historians never die; they just lose their perspective." 
     The quiet man in dark gray winced at Oswald's words and gave Alice a melancholy smile. Grigoriev. She remembered the name from the roster. The cities in which the other passengers resided were listed after their names but in his case the entry had read: "A. Grigoriev, Soviet Union." Whatever part of his country he came from, it was unusual to meet a solitary Russian tourist on a U.S. sponsored cruise. In fact, only once before had 
the Pryes encountered vacationing Soviet travelers in Europe. It was in Rouen that they found themselves, much to their amazement, lost amid a boisterous Russian-speaking group making a pilgrimage to the local sites associated with Joan of Arc. 
     Alice introduced Paul to the Parsonses. Oswald feigned amusement as he said, "Oh, you're you. I understand that you're going to tell us more than we ever wanted to know about Mayerling." 
     For the first time Arkady Grigoriev broke his silence and, as if compelled to make amends for Oswald's rudeness, said quietly: "But I have always found the Mayerling affair most fascinating, Mr. Parsons. It was truly the end of an era." After a moment of reflection he added, "Unless we can say that the imperial era ended only in 1989, with the death of Zita, last empress of the Hapsburgs." 
     What Paul had first taken as politeness in Grigoriev he now attributed to a special historical interest that seemed to guarantee him at least one listener when it came time for him to deliver his Mayerling lecture. 
     Paul nodded to acknowledge this unexpected show of support and turned to exchange a few polite phrases with Claudia Parsons. Claudia, however, was a generous woman who preferred to bestow words rather than to exchange them. She told him in a rich baritone that she was a amateur organist and was looking forward to the private concert to be presented to the group on Bruckner's organ at st. Florian's Abbey near Linz. It was her ambition, now that she was retired, to hear all the great organs of Europe. The Passau organ they would also hear was the largest, but Anton Bruckner's association with St. Florian made its instrument much more exciting, didn't Professor Prye agree? Before he could reply, Claudia turned her back to him and boomed across the room to Dan Eggleston, who was chatting with Kitty James near the doorway. "Dan, could you photograph me again? I think I was blocked by Andy Szabo when you flashed me at the entrance. No surprise is it? Andy could blot out the sun." 
     Eggleston can't have missed all of her, Paul thought, appraising her massive shoulders. He left Alice chatting with Oswald and the Russian art professor and continued his hunt for their remaining tablemates, Arlene Bennett and James Rito. Having had no luck after a survey of the room, he walked back to the reception desk: he found that the name tags of the two travelers were still unclaimed. Aurora Gabriel stood nearby, posing for Dan Eggleston's camera with her arm draped incongruously around the back of a wheelchair in which an elderly man hunched forward, shivering strongly despite his heavy blankets. "Professor Prye, have you met Basil Drewry and his nephew Mark?" The invalid stared straight ahead, but Paul received a nod from a young man whom he had not noticed waiting patiently behind Aurora for Dan's flash to be triggered. 
     After the picture was taken, Paul shook hands with Mark and approached the wheelchair tentatively, wondering whether he should extend his hand to the uncle as well. Basil Drewry made the decision for him; he removed his right hand from the blanket and seized Paul's hand with a remarkably strong grip. He then began to lecture Paul on Balkan politics, obviously mistaking him for Kenneth Mestnik, who would be speaking to the group on communism in Eastern Europe: 
    "I hope you're not one of those 'containment' die-hards. If so, your time has long since gone by. For years I fought against Kennan at the state Department, and I'm glad he's lived long enough to see the whole house of Marxist-Leninist cards falling, just as I always told him it would, and that he can also read about Muscovites enjoying beauty contests and decent American hamburgers. My nephew Mark here is new to the investment banking game, and before he's over the hill like me he'll probably be gossiping about the first Russian insider trading scandal." 
     As his tirade thundered on, Basil Drewry continued to stare into space. Paul now realized that the old man was blind. It was remarkable how avid travelers never seemed to let disabilities get in their way; the Pryes had once watched a devoted middle-aged husband carry his beautiful wife, stricken with polio in the first year of their marriage, up to the heights of Delphi. 
     Paul asked Aurora Gabriel about Arlene Bennett and Jim Rito. Aurora told him they were arriving late but would join the group before the ship sailed tomorrow. She suggested that Paul and Alice choose their places for the dinner, which was about to begin after a few words of greeting from East-Europa. 
     The Pryes selected a table for two, their last haven before the enforced camaraderie of the cruise ship. They heard Aurora Gabriel confide to the assembled travelers that the average East-Europa group was one big happy family but that, on the basis of her observation of the cocktail hour, this group was even happier than most. After a few more remarks she turned the microphone over to Kurt Lange, who introduced the lecturers (even Paul had to stand to faint applause) and then launched into the "orientation" address. 
     After years of haranguing their classes and their own compulsory attendance at faculty meetings, the Pryes were not the most attentive listeners, so it didn't take them more than a few minutes to tune Kurt Lange out. The last comments Paul heard went something like this: 
     "* * * the only predictable thing about a Balkan tour is that it is unpredictable. So, please, if the buses aren't there when we arrive or the border officials seem to read your passports very slowly, don't blame East-Europa." 
Here Lange paused for his punchline: "Blame it on Eastern Europe." 
     He continued: "You may not remember everything our lecturers tell you about the politics of the Warsaw Pact, or the painting of the Danube School, but we always hope that our group members will learn two things: patience and flexibility." 
     Alice didn't allow the implied warning to chasten her holiday mood. She leaned across the table: 
    "I think the so-called Russian professor's a fraud." 
     "And how have you arrived at that lightning conclusion?" Paul asked. 
     "Whatever or whoever he may be, he's not an art historian. He thinks Caravaggio was born in Rome." 
     "Is that a terrible blunder? I might have made the same error myself. I seem to remember your parading me around half the churches in Rome to show me his paintings." 
     Alice remembered the occasion all too well. "Don't remind me, you complained all along the way. The only time you've behaved on any of our church tours was in Canterbury, and that was only because there was a mark on the floor where Becket was assassinated. But don't compare yourself with our friend Grigoriev, if that's his real name; you're not pretending to be an art historian. If he were what he claims to be, he'd know Caravaggio was born in a small town in Lombardy." 
     "Isn't that in the realm of little-known facts?" 
     "It could have been," Alice said condescendingly, "but the town's name happened to be Caravaggio." 
     The Pryes chatted on during dinner, which featured an unidentifiable part of a deer. After coffee, their conversation was interrupted by the noisy entrance of the hotel's small troupe of folk dancers. Their maneuvers were urged on by bagpipers and were climaxed by a solo performance of their leader, who brandished a long pole, surmounted by a goat's head, with which he threatened to whack the guests who sat at the front tables. 
     On the way back to the elevator the Pryes met a very young woman with curly red hair and a short skirt; Paul liked her at once but Alice kept her wits about her. 
     "Oh, you're on the Danube cruise," the woman said, spotting their name tags. "I'm in the group too. My name's 
Arlene Bennett; I'm afraid I've arrived too late for the dinner. Did I miss anything?" 
     Paul volunteered to be the spokesman. "Not much. We're a big happy family and nothing's going to work out right, that's what we've been told. You'll be sitting at our table on the boat, Table 5, isn't it?" He didn't know whether it was proper to ask whether her cabin-mate Jim Rito had also arrived. Social protocol was getting beyond him. 

*     *     *
     Alice, though, never tired of her explorations of the secrets that might be gleaned from a tour roster. 
Her bags were repacked and labeled and she was now free to take a closer look at the passenger list; after the cocktail hour she could now match many names and faces. 
     "Mark Drewry's rooming with Uncle Basil. That can't be much fun," she said. 
     "I don't know, it's probably quite instructive," Paul commented, recalling the diplomat's fervent words on the Decline of the East. "Arlene Bennett is quite attractive." 
     This was a kind of nonsequitur that Alice understood only too well, and she rose to the bait. "I suppose she's all right if you like a woman with a 'prow'." This was slim Alice's technical term for prominent breasts, which, in Arlene's case, had been displayed to good advantage by a low-cut satin blouse. 
     Moving to less disputable ground Alice asked: 
      "What do you think of our cruising honeymooners? I think 
they're rather sweet, that is, when they're not watching her weight." 
     Paul was in a contrary mood. "Frankly, I don't think we'll ever see them as guest stars on The Love Boat." 
     "Paul?" Alice asked him later when they were in bed. 
     "Mmrn," he murmured as he kissed a favorite place in the nape of her long neck. 
     "If Emperor Franz Joseph had let Rudolph marry Mary Vetsera, do you think they would have quarreled on their honeymoon?" 
     Paul had no answer for her. 
     "Who knows," he said. 
     "You're not at all quarrelsome tonight," she observed.

Chapter 2

Giurgiu

     During the afternoon ride to the Danube Bert James, who was dressed as impeccably as he had been last night in the Madrigal Room, acted as if he were running for mayor of Bus No. 2. It was Bert who volunteered to distribute the bottles of Evian water when the passengers became thirsty in the stuffy coach. As he passed down the aisle he had a handshake and a cordial word for everyone that went along with the refreshment, and he made a conscientious effort to memorize names, hometowns and even occupations, so that he would be well prepared for the next group party. 
     While Bert delivered his bottles, Kitty James entertained the Pryes with tireless observations on everything under the sun. For more than three decades she had anchored a local TV news broadcast, fighting off waves of would-be successors with her good looks, awesome energy, and an engaging patter that was spiced by what sounded to her like youthful slang. Although much of her jargon seemed outdated, and some of it was her personal invention, Kitty achieved her goal: she didn't sound her age any more than she looked it. 
     As they waited for passport clearance in the river port of Giurgiu, Kitty leaned across the aisle of the bus and said to Paul: "Did you notice how our Russian friend's been coming on to Arlene Bennett; the old guy's noticed she's got some pair o' stroikas. If Jim Rito doesn't arrive on the scene pretty soon, he's gonna be out of business." 
     Paul smiled, admiring her imagination. Grigoriev had been the last on their bus and had apologetically taken the last remaining seat next to Arlene; they had hardly spoken during the two-hour drive. But Kitty had a point: Where was Jim Rito? 
     The answer, the Pryes discovered after the immigration authorities finally permitted them to leave the buses, was that Rito was waiting for Arlene in the customs hall, having transferred to Giurgiu directly from the Bucharest airport where his flight had arrived at noon. Jim Rito, it turned out, was a New York lawyer, and since both the Pryes were children of stockbrokers with many friends in the legal profession, Paul asked him what firm he was with. 
     "I'm a partner with Hill and Martin." It was an eminent Wall street firm with a large underwriting clientele. Alice's father had been a close friend of its co-founder, Buzz Martin. 
     "And Arlene," Alice interposed, "I don't believe we've asked you about your work." 
     "I'm a lawyer too." She didn't offer any details, but Alice, determined to show that the Pryes were equal-opportunity questioners, persisted: "What's your firm?" 
     Arlene shrugged. "It's a small firm by New York standards. I don't think you would have heard of it." 
     The Pryes exchanged a look that they had perfected at many cocktail parties, a look that meant they had something to discuss when they got home. 
     Claiming their carry-on luggage, the Pryes walked to the pier where their ship was docked. Their first impression of the Anton Bruckner was favorable; it was freshly painted though not as long as the symphonies of the composer for which it was named. Despite the efforts of Kurt Lange and Aurora Gabriel to shepherd their flock, the Pryes found a great crush around the gangplank. One source of the problem was the ubiquitous Dan Eggleston, who stood at the ship's entrance photographing the passengers as they came aboard. 
Snapping the Pryes, he repeated a phrase with which he was welcoming all the tourists: "Last night's photos are on the bulletin board in the main lobby." 
     Another reason for the disorderly embarkation was an uprising by a group of early boarders who had found to their dismay that some of the missing bags had not been delivered to the Bruckner as promised. As they besieged Aurora Gabriel with their angry complaints, she found that a renewed protestation of faith in the air carrier would not carry the day, so she tried an appeal to sympathy. "I can well understand your annoyance," she told the, "since one of my suitcases has not yet been located." 
     The Pryes followed the instructions given at the orientation dinner, turning in their passports at the reception desk on the main deck and picking up their cabin key. As they turned down the corridor to find their cabin, which was located aft on the same deck, they were blocked by Mark Drewry who was exhibiting his uncle's wheelchair to a ship's officer. The officer seemed very polite, but the bad news was that he was shaking his head. Mark would not take no for an answer: 
     "It's collapsible, at least partially, that's true, but even so, we'll never be able to fit it in our cabin. And we can't put it in storage. I don't want to have to call for it constantly when my uncle needs it on the ship or when he goes ashore." 
     The ship's officer, who had obviously run out of arguments, surrendered. "All right, Mr. Drewry. You can keep the chair here in the lobby, so long as you don't obstruct the exit to the deck. And I would request that you collapse the chair and push it up as close to the wall as possible. Then it won't get in the way of people passing through, and at the same time it will be conveniently placed for your uncle's use." 
     The Pryes watched Mark Drewry hand a twenty-dollar bill to the officer. The young man was obviously taking no chances that the agreement just concluded might come unstuck. 
     Paul stepped aside to let Mark Drewry roll the wheelchair into the lobby. As he did so he saw the Szabos waiting at the desk for their keys. standing slightly behind Andy, Liz was running her fingers through his thick glossy hair, but he took no more notice of her than if she had been his barber. 
     The Pryes' cabin was surprisingly commodious, with a large picture window encased in the hull that would give them a fine view of the shoreline. Too bad there was no way of opening it to let in a river breeze if the weather should turn out to be mild, but at least they wouldn't have to find a deck chair or seek out one of the public rooms every time they wanted to see a passing landmark. Alice inspected the river in the dying sunlight. "The Danube isn't blue, it's green," she said. 
     A knock on the door announced the porter bringing their bags. Alice's eyes widened in triumph as she greeted her lost suitcase, now restored by the airline, that would enable her to shine in a form-fitting red gown at a Viennese performance of The Magic Flute. She was so radiant that Paul decided to be brave: 
     "Oswald Parson's lecturing in the lounge at 5:30 on the icons of Ruse. Are you game?" 
     Before she knew what she was saying, Alice agreed, but she first exacted her price in gossip: 
     "What do you make of Rito and Bennett? They seem to prefer solo flights across the Atlantic. You don't suppose they're Lindbergh fans?" 
     Paul proposed a boring explanation: "Maybe he was detained by work. They're in different law firms so there's no reason for their schedules to have been the same." 
     Alice was cross. "Don't be so damn high-minded. I'm sure you're as ready as I am to guess that they didn't want to run the risk of being seen together at Kennedy Airport." 
     "Then why are they willing to cruise together?" 
     Alice decided to humor him. "The odds of bumping into friends in a group of 60 Danube tourists aren't exactly stupefying. And maybe the two of them were able to arrange an advance look at the roster. Aren't lawyers supposed to be good at inspecting documents? In any event, I'll bet you a Bloomingdale's gift certificate that they don't fly home together." 
     "O.K. They don't want to be seen together in New York. Why is that?" 
     It was quiz time: Paul was treating Alice to one of his Socratic seminars, but she met the challenge. 
"He's married, she's married, or they're both married, but not to each other. Don't tell me the thought didn't cross your mind or you wouldn't have semaphored your best conspiratorial message to me when we met Rito." 
     "It's possible, I suppose," Paul conceded. 
     "If you're going to be agreeable now, I have an even better idea," Alice said, her mind speeding on. "Neither of them is married, but they're lawyers in different firms. Did you notice how reluctant she was to tell us where she worked? Maybe they're on opposite sides of a pending page-one securities trial, but a whole lot friendlier to each other out of court. It could be even worse than that. Bennett's several years younger than Rito, I can trust you to have noticed that. What if he sat as an arbitrator in one of her cases, and has just handed her a multimillion dollar award. Wouldn't that be a reason for them to keep their joint travel plans out of the Daily News?" 
     "If your last theory's right, they'd certainly be able to afford East-Europa's prices, I'll grant you that." Paul never ceased to marvel at her inventive readings of the social scene. 
     On their way to the interior stairway that led up to the lecture room, the Pryes stopped at the bulletin board to which the orientation party photos were tacked. "What do you think?" Alice asked as they examined the picture. 
Dan Eggleston had recorded their dubious expressions bracketed by the smiling faces of Aurora Gabriel and Kurt Lange. 
     "Gorgeous," Paul said. 
     "Professor Prye, one could hope for more precision. Me or Aurora? She seems to have quite a strong hold on your arm." 
     "You, of course; we'll buy it." Alice was remarkably photogenic, but Paul took no chances; he always purchased her cruise pictures. 
     The talk had just begun when the Pryes took their seats at the back of the lounge. Alice flashed an embarrassed smile to their boyish history professor Ken Mestnik, who sat at the next table, as if to assure him that they would arrive more promptly for his lectures. 
     Parsons was talking about the Bulgarian port of Ruse across the river, where they were to dock for the night. In the morning there would be a city tour, and the afternoon was at leisure before the ship cruised westward towards the Danube's Iron Gates. Oswald was ecstatic about the marvels that awaited them ashore: 
     "Indeed, Ruse is far more than Bulgaria's fourth city; it is blessed with some of the most extraordinary structures in the region, the remarkable sunken churches. The occupying Turks did not permit church spires to be higher than their mosques; the Bulgarians therefore laid the church floors far below ground so that they could construct lofty vaults without offending the Turks. Most extraordinary, indeed." 
     Paul turned his head towards Alice and saw to his amazement that she appeared to be taking notes. Looking more closely, he saw she had divided a sheet of cruise stationery into two columns and was alternately making marks in each. 
     "Learning a lot?" Paul whispered. 
     "Not really. I'm keeping score to see which word he’ll use more often, 'extraordinary' or 'indeed." 
     "How's the game going?" 
     "'Extraordinary' has taken an early lead." 
     As Paul continued to listened to Parsons, he was reminded of the Italian guide who many years before had led them through a palazzo on Isola 'Bella. Advertised as trilingual, the guide would stop at the threshold of each room to deliver a flowing discourse in Italian and a shorter explanation in French. His English comments were always the same five words: "Lovely furniture there, beautiful design." Oswald Parsons seemed to draw his adjectives from the same small pool. 
     When the lights went up, a small group of enthusiasts led by Kitty and Bert James clustered around Parsons, offering praise and questions. Arkady Grigoriev, however, remained seated at a table in front of the Pryes. 
     Leaning forward, Paul showed his gratitude for Grigoriev's defense of his Mayerling assignment by inquiring politely: 
     "What did you think of the lecture?" 
     "Most interesting," Grigoriev said, without turning around. "The Turks and the Bulgarians have never learned to live together in harmony." 
     Before dismissing Parson's audience, Kurt Lange told them that the ship library had a fine collection of travel books, including Danube Mile bv Mile, which was an exhaustive survey of their route along the waterway, describing all the settlements and monuments along the shore and charting the depths and navigation channels of the river. 
     Returning to their cabin to get ready for dinner, the Pryes heard a crackling noise on the second radio channel, to which Kurt Lange had instructed the group to stay tuned for cruise announcements and news summaries. One of the ship's staff read the evening's news bulletins in a strong Austrian accent. 
     "Ruse, Bulgaria. Tomorrow the deputy prime minister will arrive from Sofia to deliver a major address on democratization policies. A large crowd is expected to hear the speech outside communist Party headquarters in the main square." 
     Alice turned down the volume to reduce the static and said to Paul: "They're doing their best -- I know you'll tell me that -- but I wish we could find a Herald Tribune." 

*     *     *
     When the Pryes finished dressing, they found that they had 20 minutes to spare before dinner and set out to explore the ship. The Bruckner (about 300 feet long and 60 wide) had a crew of 40 Austrians. It had three principal decks: a lower deck (inevitably called Neptune), the main deck housing the restaurant and most of the cabins and ship offices, and an upper deck (Phoenix) with "penthouse suites", the lounge that doubled as lecture room and open deck space for sunning and sightseeing. Recent renovations had added a half-deck above the sun deck that was reserved for joggers. 
     The Pryes, following their own priorities, visited the restaurant first, daring to open the curtained doors for an introductory glance. The room was large enough to accommodate all guests at a single sitting. Most of the tables were set for six, but for the unsociable there were a few tables for two; and the clannish, if they made arrangements with the maitre d', could be seated in an alcove beyond the main dining room where they could laugh at their own inside jokes. 
     The sun deck above was empty. The light in the sky was fading, and there was nothing much to see anyway. God knows, Giurgiu wasn't exactly a beauty spot. The Pryes walked around the deck and found an outside stairway that led up to the jogging track. When they emerged from the stairs, they were startled to find that two couples were already loping around the half-deck. Grimly dedicated to their exercise, the joggers paid no attention to the Pryes, who stopped to let them pass. Paul wondered whether they would bother to come down for dinner. 
     Returning to the sun deck, the Pryes passed through the lounge, which had all its lights restored now that Oswald Parsons and his slides had departed. The lounge was about the same size as the restaurant below. On the dais the screen on which Oswald had projected his Ruse slides remained fully extended, and nearby was a blackboard for the difficult Balkan names that Mestnik would mention in his modern history talks. outside the lounge was a small library. 
     The Pryes opened the library door and found nobody there. Together they skimmed a few volumes from the meager display of fiction and then concerted a preemptive strike on the travel guides. 
     "What was the name of the jumbo river guide?" Paul asked. 
     "It was rather discouraging," Alice reminded him, "something like Every Inch of the Danube." 
     They searched the shelves twice but without success. If Kurt Lange was right that the volume had been in the library when the cruise began, someone had already borrowed it. Paul consulted the library register. "Nobody's signed it out," he said. 
     Alice pocketed their novels and made quickly for the door as she commented, "We must be traveling with a bunch of book thieves." 

Chapter 3 

Ruse 

     At a cocktail party before dinner (in which the appearance of schnitzel and Viennese pastries mit schlag seemed a bit premature since they were still tied up in a Romanian port), the captain and his officers were introduced.  The event was described in the East-Europa brochure as the "captain's welcome," but most of the tourists probably assumed it was included in the price. Captain Franz Wahl, bearded and well-banqueted, looked more like an orchestra conductor than a sea dog; the Pryes suspected that he left the steering and care of the engines to others. They didn't catch the ship doctor's name, but hoped that  their hoard of antibiotics would make more than a nodding  acquaintance unnecessary. The officer whom Mark Drewry had tipped  was Hugo Preger.  Paul Frye made a mental note of his name. The ship's complement of Kammerfraulein were also presented. The Pryes' blonde chambermaid, Brigitte, was a vision right out of Richard Wagner's Venusberg ballet, but Paul tried his best to look nonchalant. Brigitte did not go into the Pryes' scrapbook because their only memento of the party was Dan Eggleston's photo catching their acknowledgment of the captain's bored greeting.
     Neither Jim Rito nor Arlene Bennett appeared for dinner, but Bert and Kitty James more than compensated for their absence. Bert was enthusiastic about everyone he had met: 
     "The Szabos are a nice young couple, don't you think? And that Mark Drewry, he must be doing very well with his uncle's portfolio, he's certainly got some great investment ideas. As soon as we get to Budapest I'm going to call my broker. Also it's awfully nice of Mark to come on this trip with the old man. There can't be much in it for him, pushing that wheelchair around when he could be with people his own age." Bert beamed at the thought of Mark's altruism. 
     Paul Prye looked over at a table in the alcove where the Drewrys sat alone. Basil was swathed in blankets as on the previous evening and he was shivering as his nephew spoke to him. Unaware that he had lost Paul's attention, Bert continued: 
     "Have you met the Westovers?" 
     Paul's mind clicked back into place just in time: "No, I don't think so." 
     Delighted, Bert pointed to a distant table. 
     "There they are, Charles and Selma. Don't you remember her face from television? They own the Healthy Heart fast-food chain, and Selma always appears in the TV ads as the hostess who shows you the menu with a low cholesterol count." Here he lowered his voice though the Westovers were hardly within earshot. "The Wall Street Journal reports that the Westovers are being investigated by the IRS. It's something about deducting renovations to their summer place." 
     "And what did you think of Oswald Parsons' talk? He seems to be quite an expert on icons." 
     Alice threw herself into the spirit of the evening. 
     "He's practically an icon himself," she said. 

*     *     *
     During the visit to Ruse on the next morning the Pryes and the Jameses trailed closely behind a young, sweet-tempered Bulgarian guide named Ljudmila. She had a small voice and apologetically told the group when she introduced herself that this was her very first foreign-language tour and she was far from fluent in English. If she hoped for sympathy she was disappointed. A derisive chant, "Louder, Ljudmila," directed by Oswald Parsons, overwhelmed her words as she stood at the foot of a tall monument in the center of the square. 
Aurora Gabriel's efforts to silence the hecklers were unavailing; but Claudia Parsons, reddening with embarrassment, snatched away her husband's black beret which he was waving in the air to lead the chorus of his supporters. In the brief period of quiet that ensued, Ljudmila explained that Ruse had been an important site in the nineteenth-century struggle against Turkish domination; Bulgarian exiles had masterminded the uprising from Bucharest. 
     Ken Mestnik, trying to put some distance between himself and his fellow lecturer Parsons, had moved away from the monument with Arkady Grigoriev at his heels, trotting comically as he tried to keep pace with Ken's long stride. Ken's destination was a news kiosk plastered with an advertisement for a local theatre. Bending close to examine the Cyrillic letters, he remarked to Arkady: "I believe they're doing The Good Soldier Schweik. The winds of change must be blowing here. I can almost read the language; it looks like misspelled Russian." 
     As the tourists rejoined them with the Pryes in the lead, Grigorievanswered: "Bulgarian is an old language related to early Slavonic. I fear that the people here regard the Russian language as misspelled Bulgarian." 
     Ljudmila led the restive group to the Church of the Holy Trinity, one of the sunken churches of which Oswald Parsons had spoken. After inspecting the church interior, they were guided into the cramped space of the treasury where the collection of icons was displayed. The line moved very slowly, and the view of the small paintings was often obstructed, so the Pryes mixed their art appreciation with a bit of eavesdropping. 
     In front of them the Westovers were embroiled in a debate that had nothing to do with Bulgarian saints: 
     "It was you that hired the accountant, let's remember that," Selma was saying. 
     "O.K., then it's my fault. But how did I know the guy would be so uncreative. If I just wanted a bookkeeper, I wouldn't have had to pay such a fancy salary.” 
     "It isn't lack of imagination I'm complaining about," Selma retorted. "Of all the people we interviewed, you had to pick the loudmouth." Selma turned her back on her husband but silence didn't relieve her anger. In a few minutes she began her recriminations allover again, as if she and Charles were completely alone in the church treasury. Just before the Pryes stopped listening, she was saying. "What I can't stand is that we really overpaid. They owe us a refund and they know it." 
     Selma's ongoing grievances were matched in volume by Andy Szabo, who was talking past his wife's shoulder to Dan Eggleston: "I have a friend who's working on a new potion that will make a woman hate jewelry and furs but fall passionately in love with the man she's with." 
     "Yuppie," Alice murmured to Paul. "He's groping for something to believe in since the downfall of bottled water." 
     Jim Rito and Arlene Bennett were behind the Pryes. Since they had not joined the Pryes and Jameses for dinner, this was the first time Paul had had a chance to talk with Rito. Alice was right, of course, he must have been close to a decade older than Arlene, but there was not a trace of gray in his meticulously coiffed black hair, and he was close to beardless. Somewhere, perhaps it was at law school, Jim had been taught to be ingratiating.
     "Haven't we met before, Professor Prye? You are not by any chance a member of the Alumni Club of New York?" 
     Paul acknowledged that he did not belong to that elite company but recalled that he had spoken there in an evening program on crime literature. 
     Jim turned up the voltage of his perfect smile. "That must be what I was thinking of. I remember your remarks and how I agreed with everything you said, even when you took issue with the other panelists." 
     Alice had a strong allergy to flattery. "Are you sure it wasn't somewhere else we met?" she suggested. "My father used to take us to Buzz Martin's New Year's Day parties. Maybe we saw you there."
     Rito winced at the mention of Martin's name, and the conversation flagged. Arlene Bennett had listened silently,looking unhappy. As the Pryes moved into the next room, Alice thought she heard Arlene say: "This trip was your idea, Jim."
     When the church visit was over, the Pryes noticed that a crowd was beginning to gather in the main square. "They're coming to hear the deputy prime minister," Ljudmila told them, pointing to a platform that had been erected in front of Communist Party headquarters, constructed in stalinist monolithic style at its ugliest. 
     "This is no place for a picturesque lunch," Alice quickly decided. 
Waving goodbye to the Jameses, the Pryes hailed a taxicab and, trusting implicitly in their Fodor guidebook, drove off to inspect the river gorge to the south of the city. 
     En route Paul seemed lost in thought. Borrowing a favorite phrase her father had used in the family travels of her childhood, Alice said, "Goddam it, Paul, enjoy the scenery."
     Paul apologized for the monomania that always afflicted him when he had a forthcoming lecture on his mind. "I know I'm supposed to be looking at the Bulgarian countryside, but I keep seeing Mayerling." 
     Recognizing that she could not make him shift mental gears, Alice asked him: "Who knew that Rudolph and Mary had arranged a rendezvous at the hunting lodge?" 
     "Well, in the first place there were Loschek and Bratfisch." 
     "Who were they, or have you just made them up? They sound like minor characters from operetta." 
     "They were Rudolph's valet and coachman, the Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern of the Mayerling affair. Bratfisch picked up Mary in a fiacre at a remote gate of the palace and drove into the Vienna Woods where Rudolph's phaeton was waiting at the Red Barn Inn. The Crown Prince adroitly jumped into Mary's carriage and eluded his father's police spies, who followed the phaeton back to Vienna." 
     "Where did Loschek fit into the arrangements?" 
     "He was waiting at Mayerling to serve hot coffee. You don't suppose, do you, that a Viennese couple can do without coffee on a cold winter night, or that royalty can dispense with household service just because they've entered into a suicide pact?" 
     "Who else knew about the flight to Mayerling?" Alice asked, overriding his social commentary with the romantic lingo of the Charles Boyer film. 
     "Of course, the hyperactive go-between, Countess Larisch, had her hand in as usual. She helped Mary sneak away from home on the pretext that they were going shopping. And any number of servants had to be involved, someone to hide Mary at the palace gate, the driver of Rudolph's phaeton, and God knows who else." 
     "Was anyone else at the lodge?" 
     "Yes, the prince had two guests for shooting game, can you believe the coldbloodedness of the man? Count Hoyos was one of the invited hunters and Rudolph's brother-in-law, the Prince of Coburg, was the other. We're expected to believe that while they were dining on roast beef and venison and discussing the day's shoot, they didn't know that Rudolph had Mary hidden away in the bedroom. 
     "The next morning Rudolph and Mary were dead. It was Loschek who axed down the bedroom door and found them." 
     Alice listened attentively, her eyes scanting the rough-hewn beauty of the river gorge. 
     "And yet all those people knew something about those last days," she" said, acknowledging the trend of his thought. 
     "Yes," Paul said and he determined to put Mayerling out of his mind for the day, "that's a problem inherent in every conspiracy. Too many people know something." 

*     *     *
     Manuela Perez and her cousin Carlota took their seats in the last harbor shuttle bus. They were both disgusted that East-Europa had left so little time for shopping, and hoped that the schedule would be more sensible in the bigger cities. 
     The bus was just about to leave when Kurt Lange stepped aboard and took the microphone. He tapped it once or twice and then began to speak in the most comforting tones he could muster: 38 "Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I have some rather disturbing local news to report, but I can assure you that there is no cause for concern and that our ship will sail on schedule." 
     Manuela and Carlota exchanged puzzled looks as Lange proceeded. 
     "It seems that this afternoon there has been an attempt on the life of the deputy prime minister during his speech on the main square of Ruse. He was fired on from the crowd and seriously wounded. The assailant apparently escaped, and there is talk that he (or she) may have been a dissident ethnic Turk. Nevertheless, the police are searching all persons leaving the city in hopes of finding the weapon." 
     Manuela comforted her rather faint-hearted cousin: "Don't worry, we'll soon be back on the boat and out of Bulgaria. Thank God East-Europa keeps us moving." Her complaints about limited shopping time now forgotten, Manuela concentrated on Lange's instructions. 
     "All the other buses have gone through the procedures without a hitch - and this will surprise you greatly after yesterday's wait in Giurgiu - without a delay. Let me explain the procedures. When we leave the bus at the port I'll lead you into the immigration shed. You'll find a long trestle table before you as you enter. I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to empty all your purses, shopping bags, packages, everything onto the table. The 39 port security guards - most likely unsmiling, but don't let that alarm you - will pass along the table and inspect your possessions. 
     "This is the good news. We've arranged that I can be alongside the guards as they make their inspection, to deal with any misunderstandings that may arise. My Bulgarian is not wonderful, you'll notice that without my having told you, but discreet use of la-leva notes works wonders in this country. That's why East-Europa has given me a most generous allowance." 
     Lange's words seemed to have calmed most of the tourists, because very few questions were asked. 
     The bus reentered Ruse's main square. All seemed quiet, and there was no sign of the recent violence except that Communist Party headquarters were patrolled by a military detachment in combat gear. 
     The gate to the harbor was also heavily guarded. The bus discharged its passengers near a long metallic shed where a reinforced staff of inspectors awaited them. Neither Manuela nor Carlota had any difficulty with the young soldiers who probed their packages. It seemed to them that the young men hadn't the slightest interest in tablecloths and shawls. 

*     *     *
     Before dinner the Pryes joined Bert and Kitty James at the main deck bar. When they arrived they found that the Jameses were at least a couple of rounds ahead of them. Bert introduced Charles and Selma Westover; both had drooping eyelids suggesting that they might have been occupying their stools for quite a while. From what he had heard of the Westovers' quarrel in the church treasury, Paul concluded that their patronage of the barroom was probably not a bad idea. The Drewrys were also at the bar; Basil was sipping a scotch without ice while Mark listened to Bert James. The Drewrys hadn't been ashore at Ruse. 
     Bert was delighted that his audience had grown. "You're just in time, Pryes, I'll start over again. Have you heard about Oswald Parsons?" 
     Alice, guessing he had something new in mind, shook her head. 
     Bert wanted further confirmation. "You didn't come back on the first shuttle bus, did you? I don't think we saw you." 
     "We didn't come back on the bus at all," Paul reminded him. "We took a cab to see the river gorge." 
     Bert was not upset about his absentmindedness. It gave him all the more reason to be grateful to other people for setting him straight. "Oh, yes, of course, you waved goodbye in the square. Well, anyway, Oswald and Claudia - you met her, I think, at the orientation party - were with us on the first bus back to the port. Kurt Lange came along to help us clear the inspection at the immigration shed. And the whole thing went as smooth as silk, except, I should say, for Oswald Parsons." 
     "What in the world had he bought in Ruse, a used revolver with one bullet spent?" Alice liked the image. 
     "No," said Bert, welcoming the interruption since it allowed him to spin out his story a little longer. "The joke is that he hadn't bought anything at all. You see, what the Bulgarians were really interested in was his beret." 
     "His beret?" chorused the drinkers, including several newcomers who had taken places at the bar. Among them were Dan Eggleston, without his camera for the moment, accompanied by Ken Mestnik and Aurora Gabriel. Uninhibited by the presence of East-Europa staffers, Bert James savored the approaching payoff of his narrative: 
     "It seems that the assailant who escaped was described by many onlookers as a little man wearing a black beret. 
     "Parsons showed the police his passport but they were unimpressed. Two of them took him into a side room and started barking questions at him. They left the door open because they figured we wouldn't understand a word. Lange told us they were questioning him in Turkish." 
     "How did he get away?" Dan Eggleston asked. 
     "Search me," Bert said, and then laughed at his unintended pun, "I think he finally convinced them he didn't know a word of Turkish. Quite a story, isn't it?" 
     Alice agreed. "Extraordinary, indeed." 

Chapter 4 

The Iron Gates 

     After the Pryes returned to the ship on the second afternoon of the cruise, they were a little footweary. The port of call was Drobeta-Turnu Severin. A local guide had trooped them around the Roman camp of ancient Drobeta, which was located on a plateau formed by a terrace of the Danube. From there they surveyed the remaining pillars of Emperor Trajan's bridge, which the guide told them had been erected shortly after 100 A.D. by the architect Apollodorus of Damascus. Alice remarked to Arkady Gregoriev that public art had always been risky; Apollodorus seemed to have gotten small credit for his engineering triumph, since Trajan's successor Hadrian banished the great architect and later put him to death. The Russian nodded and responded with an aphorism that seemed designed to foreclose further conversation: "Political favor is a delicate blossom." 
     After paying respects to the Roman camp, the group inspected ruins of the invaders' thermal baths and were then marched at a vigorous pace to the forecourt of the Iron Gates Museum, named after the famous passage their ship would soon make through a gorge of the Carpathian mountains. 
     As the guide went ahead to collect the entrance tickets, Dan Eggleston turned back to photograph Trajan's bridge from above. A uniformed guard rushed forward to block his lens. Pointing towards military installations on the riverbank, the guard shook his index finger to give the well-established international signal of prohibition. Even though the dictatorship had fallen, the old restrictions to which the Pryes had already been introduced at the Bucharest palace were alive and well. Who was to say that the Romanians were entirely wrong? The Roman conquerors had crossed the Danube to vanquish the indigenous Dacian tribes, and the guards at the Drobeta museum were taking no chances with the unknown passengers on the Anton Bruckner. 
     The tour of the museum had begun promisingly. The Pryes lingered over a miniature reconstruction of the Roman bridge and metal replicas of the "Dacian wolves", animal-headed wind instruments that the ancient Romanians had blown in a vain attempt to frighten the enemy legions away. After being shown these highlights, the group threatened mutiny against the guide's deliberate rate of progress through the museum's other exhibits, including typical peasant rooms from the surrounding county and a basement aquarium. "East-Europa's bribed the guide," Charles Westover complained. "She's not going to let us back to the ship before it's time to herd us into the dining room." 
     Westover's prophecy turned out to be inaccurate. The Pryes now sat at a table in the ship's lounge, with at least an hour to spare before dinner. At the next table, Bert James was entertaining Dan Eggleston and Ken Mestnik with new variations on Oswald Parsons' misadventures at Ruse. Ken, giving his words an exuberant stress that made them sound like blank verse, countered with his own Danube tale: "I guess none of us who've worked the Danube can match Oswald's little drama. But the governments always seem to be a little edgy around here. This is the fourth time I've given my lectures on Balkan politics. Whenever I've talked ashore, whether in Bucharest, Belgrade or Bratislava, there always seems to be a fair sprinkling of secret police in the audience. I suppose I shouldn't complain though. It's actually a professor's secret dream to talk to people who not only have to come to his lectures but are obligated to listen to what he has to say." 
     Mestnik's next contribution was even more disturbing: "If you think the Bulgarians are bad, wait till you meet our friends the Yugoslavs. 
     "When we pass through the Iron Gates we'll soon be into territorial waters of Yugoslavia. Their river guards have a nasty habit of boarding tourist boats in the wee hours of the morning. If they're not offered enough to drink, or just got up on the wrong side of the bed, we can be in for an ordeal. They've been known to order all the tourists to assemble in the lounge so that their faces can be compared - as slowly as possible - to their passport photos." 
     "And then they let you go back to sleep?", asked Bert James hopefully. 
     "Sometimes, but that's when you're lucky. More often than not they will pick out a few cabins at random for searches that may be entirely pointless but are certainly thorough. Ithink you better keep your bathrobes close at hand tonight. Friend Lange will probably give everybody warning from the management on Channel 2." 
     "Those SS guys better stay out of my cabin, or they'll find they've got their hands full." These muscular words were spoken by Claudia Parsons, who brought her bottle of Schweppe's ginger ale over from the bar. 
     Ken Mestnik blushed to the hue of his university's famous beet. He was worried that Claudia might have overheard him joining in the gossip about Oswald's mishap. Paul Prye thought that Ken had no cause for alarm. It seemed to him that Claudia was well aware of her husband's gauche behavior and the hostile sentiments it could quickly evoke. As evidence, there was her deft seizure of Oswald's beret when he was heckling the Bulgarian guide. Then, there was Claudia's attachment to ginger ale. Paul had suspected from the time he first met her at the Bucharest party that she was a teetotaler -- at least at social gatherings, where it had become her bitter lot to keep a vigilant eye on her unpredictable husband. 
     The negativism of the conversation was getting to be too much for Kitty James. "Lighten up," she counseled, "let's be happy campers." Singling out Alice, she asked: "Well, was Mr. Strauss right when he called it the 'beautiful blue Danube', or was he just picking a title that would do well in 3/4 time?" 
     "The river may not be blue, but it is beautiful," Alice answered. In less than two days of cruising, she had been persuaded of that. The river was terribly polluted, they'd read that before corning, but that didn't affect sightseeing. Long before ecology had become fashionable, the peoples of the Danube, warring about everything else, had concurred in providing an unbroken screen of trees for the riverbanks. The lower part of the Danube was not thickly settled, and river traffic was light. Prospering forests, sometimes exploited for logging operations, shielded farmlands beyond, but even where industrial installations could be seen, the unending line of trees intervened to guard the waterway. 
     The Pryes, though, were distinctly let down by the Iron Gates. They had visualized a gauntlet of mighty mountains surging from torrential waters to eclipse their memories of Hong Kong and Rio de Janeiro. Instead, at intervals a range of hills rose to a modest height above the river. 
     At dinner, Jim Rito explained the change in the river; although he had arrived late in Romania, he clearly had done his Danube homework. "These gorges were once very deep, but in the 1970s Yugoslavia and Romania raised the river level to power the hydro-electric works we passed near Drobeta. It was all in the name of progress and the fraternal cooperation of the Socialist countries, but it certainly has cut the Iron Gates down a peg or two." 
     Alice was appeased. "The Yugoslavs can drown the Iron Gates without a peep out of me. All I ask is that they let me sleep tonight." 
     Ken Mestnik's lecture that evening was hardly an inducement to sweet dreams. Combining a broad historical vision and a dignified, melancholy style (more poignant because of his usual high spirits), he told of the ages-old tragedy of the Romanian people, situated in the pathway of marauding enemies. An ancient chronicler, Mestnik said, had written that Romanian territory, forever open to invaders, lay "on the road to evil." 
     When his head hit the unresisting pillow of the stateroom bed, Paul was still thinking about Mestnik's speech. Without prelude he commented to Alice, who was still doing her hair: "The history of this river is a lot gloomier than Die Fledermaus, that's been made clear." 
     "Forget about Romania and think about our future," Alice advised him, "it's Mestnik's old tour-stories about Yugoslavia that are giving me premature nightmares. I don't look forward to dealing with hostile Serbs in the early morning hours. Are you prepared to defend my honor?" 
     Paul gave her his best assurances. But the Yugoslav border guards let the Anton Bruckner pass without incident. 

Chapter 5

Belgrade 

     At the threshold of the French impressionist galleries on the second floor of Belgrade's National Museum Aurora Gabriel had a surprise announcement. 
     "I have a special treat in store for you. Kurt Lange was able to persuade the museum guides to allow our own Dr. Parsons to show us the French paintings. It wasn't easy, I can tell you that; Kurt would make a great labor negotiator. Now I'll turn you over to Dr. Parsons." 
     Oswald, standing beside a group of canvases by Camille and Lucien Pissarro, began to rock back and forth on his little feet before he spoke. 
     "Let me tell you the most important thing you'll ever learn about visiting art museums: don't put your weight on your heels. That's the reason most people wear themselves out before they've been through as many as two or three galleries. You must do as I am doing, put a spring in your step and keep your weight well forward, on the balls of your feet." 
     "Balls," Alice repeated dutifully in Paul's ear. 
     "Well," Oswald continued, "that's about all I have to say here. Let's move on to the next room." 
     For lunch the tourists who had come ashore were divided into three groups so that they could sample the charm of the city's small restaurants instead of being steered to a modern hotel. The Pryes' group were taken to Belgrade's oldest cafe, founded by a nineteenth-century physician who had given it a name that was little more than an address, "Cafe beside the Cathedral of the Holy Synod." The clergy, however, were outraged that the cathedral's name had been borrowed by a secular establishment. Forced to remove his signboard, the restaurateur gave vent to anti-authoritarian protest by substituting a new sign that bore only a question mark. To the present day the restaurant was known as the "Question Mark," not an inappropriate trademark for the mid-day meal of an amateur criminologist named Paul Prye. 
     The Pryes sat with Arkady Grigoriev at a sidewalk table. Dan Eggleston, after taking the mandatory photographs of the smiling tourists and another (perhaps for his own collection) of the famous signboard, joined them. 
     "Where do you live in Russia?" Dan asked Arkady casually, as if his query were a routine social ice-breaker. The Pryes had wanted to know more about Grigoriev from the moment they had met in Bucharest but they had been put off by the Russian's laconic conversation and by the vague identification of his address in the tour roster. They now hung on his answer to Dan, but it was disappointing: 
     "I have in my time lived allover the Soviet Union." His 
     country's name, as he pronounced it quickly, seemed to have two syllables at most. 
     Alice was emboldened to pitch in. "But Oswald Parsons mentioned that you've taught art history. Where have you done that?" 
     For the first time Arkady's tongue seemed to loosen a bit. Perhaps it was the effect of the Yugoslav white wine that he had begun to taste: 
     "Oh, you mustn't make too much of what Dr. Parsons told you. I am not an art historian, as you scholarly Americans understand the term. I have taught at the middle-school level and cannot boast any permanent appointment. I've taught wherever the Ministry of Education has found a need. Mrs. Prye, that word may not be appropriate, my English is not strong. I suppose the 'need' for art teachers in the Soviet Union is not great given our more pressing problems. But our country is, of course, vast and therefore my career has taken me to many places from Moscow to eastern Siberia." 
     The Pryes exchanged a marital signal. Grigoriev had detected from Alice's reaction to their Bucharest conversation about Caravaggio that he must have made a blunder and had been waiting for an opportunity to explain, however obliquely. He was obviously a careful man who did not like to be found in error. 
     Dan Eggleston's expression showed plainly that he was not satisfied by the explanation. He was the kind of companion that the Pryes often liked to meet at parties but would not have considered safe to invite to their house. Dan evidently felt that if he asked too many questions it was not his problem; Arkady was perfectly free to tell him off or to refuse to answer. It wasn't a matter of good manners but of playing the odds. Sometimes you got an answer and sometimes you didn't. 
     Dan put his next question in the form of a comment. "It's interesting to have you aboard with us. We don't see too many Russians on the American-sponsored tours." 
     The question did not overshoot Arkady's limits, whatever they were. 
     "That is correct, Mr. Eggleston, but I am convinced that you will see more of us in the future. We used to travel on trade missions, or in professional groups, but now we come to admire the European culture in which we are, to a large degree, participants. Perhaps, as we withdraw our troops from Eastern Europe, we will send you Soviet tourists instead. This will be the new parity of the 1990's." 
     Dan Eggleston warmed to the idea. "I hope you're right, we can always use the business. But, frankly, what really surprised me is that we see you here traveling alone. Is it hard to get permission?" 
     Grigoriev smiled. "Not as hard as you Americans might think. You see, a middle-school art teacher is not commonly the bearer of state secrets." 
     The Pryes could almost hear the veil of concealment (or was it privacy?) being drawn. There would be no more questions. 
*     *     *
     Paul and Alice had signed up for the second of the ship's kitchen tour groups. The first tour, which began shortly after the return from the Belgrade shore excursion, was running overtime and the Pryes waited in the restaurant for someone to guide them. Paul was the only man in the group and felt a little out of place, but Alice would not let him escape. Instead, she tried to include him in her conversation with Liz Szabo. Liz explained her husband's absence: 
     "Andy's got this thing about food. His mother was a beautiful woman who got enormously fat, and he's scared to death I'm going to suffer the same horrible fate. He knew there would be a lot of food on an Austrian cruise ship. I don't know to this day why he picked this tour." 
     "Kitty James mentioned something about your wanting to visit Budapest on your honeymoon." Paul remembered their introduction at the orientation dinner. 
     "That's right, but I'm sure we could have found a low-cal trip, without all that -- what do you call the poppyseed dumplings we get for every other dessert?" 
     "According to the chef, they're Waldviertler," Paul said. He had been struggling for years to master German. "But if Andy's complaining now, wait until we get to Budapest. We've got 
     a Hungarian banquet scheduled for Gundel's restaurant." 
     Alice tried to cheer Liz. "Actually, I've heard that the gypsy music cuts down on the calories, or maybe it just reduces the appetite." Paul suddenly brightened when he saw Ken Mestnik enter the restaurant to add to the token male representation. Ken, exuberant as ever, told them that he was a gourmet cook and always regarded the kitchen tour as a highlight of the Danube cruise. Like an industrial spy, he had brought along a notebook. Paul suspected that Ken was planning to make a list of the chef's secret ingredients. When Liz Szabo congratulated him on his Romanian lecture, the faintness of Ken's acknowledgment was not a sign of modesty. All his passion was bent on their admission into the chef's magic domain. 
     At last Aurora Gabriel arrived to serve as their escort, but when she ushered them into the kitchen, the Pryes were surprised to find that the prior group had not fully vacated the premises. The scene looked like a comic nightmare from a Marx Brothers movie that was too insane to have been released; Alice could even imagine its title on an art-deco marquee, Too Many Cooks. While the chef stood aside in helpless fury, visitors swarmed allover the kitchen, hefting cooking utensils, sniffing at spice jars, even poking into cabinets and freezers. It was clear from the direction of his stare that the chef blamed Aurora for the disorder. 
     The new group seemed unaware of the chaos. Most of their talk seemed to focus on the utilitarian stainless steel that covered almost all surfaces. Kitty James confessed that she'd never replaced her formica counter tops. Selma Westover had corian in her townhouse, but had just installed granite in her country kitchen. A haughty Spanish woman whom the Pryes had not met let it be known above the din that she had not visited her kitchen recently and could not describe it. 
     While crosscurrents of house and garden repartee swirled about him, Ken Mestnik solemnly admired slabs of beef that had been placed on the cutting boards to be sliced for the evening's entree of Tafelspitz. He flared his nostrils to inhale the fumes of a chive sauce that was brewing in a huge kettle. As Aurora finally motioned her charges to the door, Ken floated out as if in a trance. 
     It was a half hour after the kitchen had returned to normal that the chef said to the pastry cook: 
     "Haben Sie mein Messer gesehen?" 
     The chef was right to have been suspicious of the unruly Americans. He could not find his boning knife. After the pastry cook and he had searched the kitchen without success, the chef stalked off to complain to Hugo Preger. Amused but only too familiar with the chef's fiery temperament, the first officer promised to talk to the tour leader, Kurt Lange. 
     In the late afternoon the second channel came on. Kurt Lange spoke with all the insouciance at his command. 
     "We hope you've all enjoyed the kitchen tours. It's fire drill at 5:00 and Professor Mestnik at 5:30, then two nights and a day to relax on the Danube before we reach Budapest. 
     "I have a little message for you from the chef. No, it's not a change in the menu. You'll still have your choice of veal strips in cream sauce or prime boiled beef, followed by 'Gundel' pancakes to prepare you for our night in Budapest. It's a more personal matter the chef has asked me to bring up. It seems that during the kitchen tours the chef's favorite boning knife has been -- mislaid. It's a sharp knife, nothing to touch carelessly, with the name of the ship burned into the handle. Now it does not seem likely to me, despite the sensitivity of our chef, that one of you could have taken it as a souvenir. In any case, I would remind you that mementos of the cruise can be purchased at the gift shop near the reception desk on main deck. 
     "That's more than enough said, and I add the following only at the insistence of the chef. He's requested me to say that the return of the knife will be gratefully accepted, no questions asked. There, I've now done my duty, except to repeat that the chef, like all great artists, is a sensitive man. We'd all hate to see his cuisine deteriorate." 
     Alice was not at all pleased to be told that she was cruising the Danube with a kleptomaniac or a moody chef, or both, and she was not much happier to have to don her life jacket and rally near the life boats on the sun deck for the abruptly announced drill. 
     "This is ridiculous," she fumed to Paul as she took her station. "Have you ever heard of a fire-drill on a river boat? I guess we were lucky they didn't hand out parachutes on our Burgundy barge." Kitty James, overhearing Alice, offered an explanation: 
     "You don't see the point, shame on you; it's another photo opportunity. Hide your face, here comes Dan Eggleston." 
     Alice would have followed her advice if there had been anywhere to hide because she'd never looked her best in orange "Mae Wests." 
     Ken Mestnik, his mind probably on his next lecture, produced another justification for the drill that was uncharacteristically pedantic: 
     "It's probably a ritual in honor of St. Florian, the patron saint of Upper Austria. He was drowned in the Danube." 
     "That may be wonderful old-time religion," said Claudia Parsons, looking like a monument in her straining life-jacket, "but nowadays we can all swim." 
     Not everyone in the group agreed with her. A few passengers, nervously identifying their lifeboats, remarked that, left to their own devices, they'd never make it to the nearest shore. 
     While fire drillers waited for Captain Wahl to inspect their ranks, Bert James told the Pryes the results of his two days' study of social life on the Anton Bruckner. 
     "They claim we're near full capacity, but I don't believe it. We must be a lot closer to 40 aboard than 60. It must be all the political upheavals of the last year. Nobody wants to be caught in the middle of a - - -." He groped for a sufficiently melodramatic example. 
     "How about an assassination attempt in Ruse, for instance?" Kitty suggested to her vague husband. 
     "Oh, yes, I'd almost forgotten that for a moment." He lost his train of thought, and before he could rediscover it, Captain Wahl, speaking through a bullhorn, congratulated all the passengers on their jacket lacings and dismissed them. 
     At dinner, however, Bert had once again taken up the thread of the Anton Bruckner's social labyrinth. He told his tablemates: 
     "The ship doctor, Walther Hoppe, is a nice fellow, he's a graduate of the Vienna medical school. He seems to be traveling with his wife. At least I think he said she's his wife, but I may have lost something in translation. He's got some accent. Her name's Gisela; you must have noticed her, a real knockout with ashblond hair. 
     "By the way, Gisela's some kidder. She speaks flawless English, and when I asked where she had learned to speak so well, guess what .she told me." 
     "We wouldn't dare," Alice said. 
     "Well, without batting an eye, she said, 'I learned my English in bed. That's where I've picked up all my foreign languages; it's the one place you never have to use the subjunctive. '" 
     "She sounds like a dear," Kitty suggested. 
     Bert treasured his recollection before proceeding with his shipboard.survey. 
     "Anyway, where was I? It's a amazingly cliquish tour. There are the Spanish, of course, or maybe they're Venezuelans. They pretty much keep to themselves and spend a lot of time in the gift shop. Most of them seem to be down below on Neptune deck. 
     "Then we have the penthouse bunch. They've got the large cabins on the sun deck and seem to know each other from back home. They're the folks who keep the bartenders busy and don't seem all that keen on land excursions." 
     "Are the Westovers part of the penthouse set?" Alice asked. 
     "They live up there and probably have the biggest suite of all. But they seem to be treated like social outcasts; maybe it's because of all the publicity about their tax problem. Whatever the reason, the penthouse dwellers don't like them, and the result seems. to be that Charles and Selma -- when they're not cursing their accountant -- seem to be a tad more sociable to the mere mortals below. 
     "That brings me to the good guys, the salt of the earth, the folks in the main deck cabins. Us for example," he explained, circling the table with his benevolent look. Arlene Bennett smiled back wanly. 
     "By the way, Pryes and Ritos, you seem to be missing half the fun on board." 
     "That's Rito and Bennett," Jim reminded him. Paul did not think that Bert had intended more than a clumsy shorthand. 
     Before Bert could continue his report Aurora Gabriel drew up a chair. 
     "How are things going?" she asked their table. Alice thought Aurora wasn't making much of an effort to disguise the fact that she was "coordinating" them. The East-Europa training handbook must have ordered her to make her rounds of the tables on the first night out of Belgrade. 
     But Bert took her question as a spontaneous burst of friendly interest. "Well, it depends whether you're talking about the tour or the poker. Kitty and I are planning to get our revenge tonight. with pigeons like us aboard, I bet East-Europa doesn't have to pay you and the doc more than your fares." 
     Aurora's smile faded and she was hunting for a reply when Kitty came to her rescue. "Get over it," she told Bert irritably. "Don't blame Aurora and Hoppe; when it comes to cards, you just can't keep your heels out of the egg yolk. Sometimes I think you must be color blind." 
     Paul thought it best to ask Aurora about their next stop, Budapest. 
     "It's my first visit," she said in a confessional tone. "I'm afraid it's going to be a hectic day. We dock on the Pest side, and by the time we get back to the ship we'll barely have time to change for the dinner at Gundel's. Have you seen the brochure? The garden looks like it hasn't changed at all from the nineteenth century." She left them a pamphlet about the restaurant and moved on to talk to the Westovers and Mark and Basil Drewry. 
     "Which one's Hoppe?" asked Alice when Aurora had left. 
     Bert figured that Alice was more impressed with his anecdote about Gisela than she had let on. "He's sitting opposite the captain and Gisela's at his left." He leered at Paul, hoping for confirmation of his high opinion of Gisela, whose backless piquet dress was very flattering. 
     "She's lovely," Alice said, and Bert, who was satisfied, continued: 
     "Well anyway Walther and Gisela are great friends of the main deckers. After dinner we gather in the starlight Lounge for drinks and the night owls stay for poker. By the way, how is it Table 5 never joins us? You're missing the best part of the cruise. We can forgive Jim and Arlene for - what did Gilbert and Sullivan say? - 'seeking the seclusion that a cabin grants'. They're young and foolish. But what's your excuse, Pryes? People are beginning to talk." 
     Kitty was speechless, not her usual state, but nobody else took offense; the naivete of Bert's good humor was open for all to see. To reassure Kitty, the Pryes agreed to have their coffee with them in the Starlight Lounge. Jim Rito and Arlene Bennett, after a discreet and amicable conference, came along. 
     Table 5 was the first to arrive in the cocktail lounge. Waiting for their coffee to be brought, Bert maintained his shameless conviviality. 
     "This is the place where everybody lets their hair down. If you know your way around, it's a different woman every night." 
     The Pryes wondered what in the world he could be talking about, but judged from Kitty's bored reaction that it must be something pretty harmless. They were right. 
     Bert reached into his wallet for souvenirs of his first three nights on the rlver. with a pride that was only partly charade, he showed them photographs of his card table at the Starlight Lounge. The subject matter and pose were always the same. The focus was on Bert, his cards spread fan-like in his hands, a broad smile on his face that left only a few teeth concealed, and a woman's arms encircling his neck. One night it was Aurora Gabriel who embraced him and then her place was taken by Claudia Parsons, whose clasp seemed tighter. A third woman seemed embarrassed by the pose and quite out of place, as if she had been forced to poke her stylish head through a photographer's cardboard Calamity Jane in a wild-west amusement park: it was Gisela Hoppe, the ship doctor's wife. 
     One by one the Starlight regulars began to trickle in. Bert James greeted them all, determined to play host. The Westovers came in with Aurora Gabriel, and Claudia Parsons followed, her arm around Andy Szabo's waist. Paul and Alice were surprised to see Mark Drewry wheel his uncle up to the bar. 
     "The old man keeps late hours," Alice said to Paul. "There seems to be a lot of strength left in his elbow." 
     Believing they had now done their duty, the Pryes said goodnight to Bert and Kitty James. They noticed that Jim Rito and Arlene Bennett had already beaten them to the door. 

*     *     * 
     A little after 2:00 a.m. Captain Wahl, leaning over the railing as he enjoyed the night's last cigar, looked down on the main deck below. The deck was quiet, except that when he craned his neck to the right the captain caught sight of young Drewry pushing the wheelchair aft at a gentle pace. The old gentleman was completely covered with blankets to protect him against the early morning chill. "What a dutiful young man," Wahl thought as he gazed at the receding back of the figure pushing the chair, "just like children used to be." He threw his cigar into the Danube, and retired for the night. 
     About an hour later a sailor mopping the main deck saw a bulky rectangular object silhouetted against the railing thirty feet ahead of him. At first he thought it was a deck chair but when he approached he realized that its back and seat were not of canvas; it 'was the wheelchair that the elderly passenger used. The wheelchair was empty. Odd that it should be here. The invalid's young male nurse or companion, whatever he was, was accustomed to wheel the old man in the fresh air but why would he leave the chair here? Could the old man walk, at least with assistance? The sailor did not give the question much thought. He knew that First Officer preger had given his permission for the wheelchair to be kept in the lobby, and he had half a mind to collapse it and carry it back to its usual storage place. He thought better of the idea, though, and decided to mind his own business.

Chapter 6

On the Danube

     As the Pryes passed through the lobby on the way to breakfast, they witnessed what seemed at first like a replay of a scene on the afternoon they had boarded. At least the characters were the same, Mark Drewry and First Officer Preger. Mark's mood, however, was much more truculent: 
     "It's easy for you to tell me not to get excited. You don't have to worry about getting my 200 pound uncle to the restaurant. It's got to be somewhere on the ship, and I want it found now, even if it takes the whole crew." 
     The wheelchair, usually propped against the lobby wall was missing. The Pryes, not wanting to intrude, quickened their steps, but not before they caught Preger's words: 
     "It's probably out on deck somewhere. We stacked the deck chairs last night because it looked like rain; somebody must have borrowed the wheelchair and forgotten to return it." 
     Alice had another theory when they brought their breakfast diet of muesli and raspberry yogurt to a table for two next to the partition that divided the main restaurant, hung with viennese art nouveau wallpaper, from the more modestly decorated alcove that adjoined it. 
     "I'll bet it's two of our tippling friends from the starlight Lounge. After a few too many Mozart liqueurs, they probably swiped the wheelchair for a joy ride around the sun deck. Talk about poor taste!" 
     Before Alice offered her explanation Hugo Preger had found the empty wheelchair on the main afterdeck. 

*     *     *
     Brigitte was very knowing and tolerant despite her young years. She had a busy life of her own and during the Danube cruise was having a difficult time allotting her favors between two sailors she particularly liked. still she did her cabin work conscientiously, but without snooping (like some of the other chambermaids she could mention) to see what she could learn about the tastes or vices of the passengers. 
     It was not a shock to her to find blood on the bedsheets in Cabin 12 on the main deck. This was far from the first time that she had made such a discovery, and people said that cruises were themselves a kind of sexual stimulant. If anything surprised her it was that the women had waited so long to begin, but of course (and here Brigitte's usual tolerance momentarily failed her) Americans were so prudish. 
     She removed the bottom sheet and then found that she had to take the top sheet as well, for the blood had soaked through. Her superior (who also ran the laundry) would really be cross with Brigitte if she brought her such a difficult cleaning chore; it would be best to sneak into the laundry room when Frau Müller wasn't there and to intermingle the sheets with the other soiled linen. 
     After cleaning the bathroom, Brigitte emerged to pick up the bedlinen from the cabin floor where she had thrown it in a tangle. For the first time her eye was drawn to the wall behind the head of the bed. Radiating in starlike points were three large stains amid a galaxy of spatter that could have been left by a careless painter if they had not been of the same reddish color. 
     Brigitte did not take the bedsheets from the floor and left the cabin in search of Frau Müller. She prided herself on her ability to look calm under any circumstances. When she found Frau Müller and showed her the disturbing scene in Cabin 12, her supervisor gave her a stern instruction. Under pain of immediate dismissal Brigitte was not to mention her discovery to anyone; Frau Müller would herself bring the matter to the attention of Doctor Hoppe. 
     Brigitte swore to Frau Müller that she would remain silent. 
     Any promises of secrecy she made, however, were always subject to one undisclosed reservation. She never kept anything, not even a lover's name and qualifications, from her good friend Liesl. 

*     *     *
          When they had finished breakfast, the Pryes moved out onto the sun deck. After yesterday's unsettled weather, the sun had returned but ever since the day in Ruse it had been unseasonably cold. Despite all the talk about the greenhouse effect Paul and Alice were pessimistic travelers and were glad to be bundled up in sweaters and scarves. While Alice immersed herself in a biography of Egon Schiele in preparation for the exhibition she planned to attend in Vienna, Paul reviewed the draft of his Mayerling speech: 
Just as the English never tire of unmasking the definitive Jack the Ripper, so the Austrians show an inexhaustible power to invent new solutions for the Mayerling tragedy. Last year's centenary WLS marked not only by a flood of new books but by a major television documentary in Communist Hungary. In light of all the new theories, only a confessed fuddy-duddy can espouse the tradition that, in a suicide pact, Rudolph killed Baroness Mary Vetsera first and then shot himself. This seems like pretty dull stuff, when we are now told to believe that the prussians had Rudolph and Mary assassinated because they did not like Rudolph's liberal politics, or that Vienna's own sharpshooters polished off the prince when he couldn't bring himself to commit suicide. For people who love their Verdi, we have the new theory of Clemens Gruber, appropriately an opera archivist in Vienna, that the lovers were shot by vengeful relatives of Mary Vetsera who broke into their room at the hunting lodge after a drinking party. And for those who are determined to rid the Mayerling story of all its romance, Gerd Holler, a physician, theorizes that Rudolph had procured an abortion for Mary and shot himself after she bled to death. 

Before you sneer at our Austrian hosts, I should confide that books on Kennedy assassination conspiracies now fill three shelves in my library. 

In any event, there you have the theories. Before we take them up one by one, I will give a warning. I find that the more complicated the solution, the more likely it is to be wrong. 
     Paul's pencil hovered over this last sentence. It was an effective attention-grabber with which to cap an introduction to a lecture, but he was not certain it reflected his views as a historian. 
     As he was poised to strike it out, Kurt Lange gave them his peculiar Viennese greeting: 
     "Good morning, Professors Prye. You are both hard at work, I see, and I therefore regret having to disturb you, but the captain would like to see you in his quarters." 
     "Both of us?" Alice asked optimistically. 
     Lange found it hard to extricate himself from the ambiguity of his statement, and found it easier to agree. "Of course, why not." 
     The Pryes followed him up the exterior stairway to the sun deck and then to the captain's quarters which were located close to the starlight Lounge. Kurt knocked sharply on the door, and they were quickly admitted by Captain Wahl. The captain's stiff greeting did not vary much from the perfunctory welcome recorded on Dan Eggleston's photo at the first night's cocktail party. 
     The only other person in the room was Dr. Hoppe, who rose from his chair to shake their hands with a vigorous downward thrust that made him resemble a bellringer. 
     When they were all seated, Kurt Lange acted as spokesman. 
     "Professor Prye," he began, turning to Paul, "we've invited you here for a distressing reason." 
     Paul said nothing, so Lange, having little to show for his dramatic beginning, had to continue: 
     "Miss Gabriel is missing." 
     "Missing from the ship?" Paul asked, realizing immediately how foolish his question must have sounded. He had spoken only to give himself time to recover from his surprise. 
     Lange nodded almost imperceptibly. "We think she is missing from the ship." 
     These preliminaries exasperated Alice, who was far less patient than her husband. "When did you first miss her? I remember seeing her last night at dinner and I think afterwards as well." 
     Kurt Lange shrank before her comment. "We don't know exactly when she disappeared or how it happened, but we had best let Dr. Hoppe tell you what he found in her cabin. Mrs. Prye, you are welcome to stay, but I warn you that you may find what the doctor has to tell us quite unsettling." 
     Paul spoke for her. "Don't worry about Alice, Kurt. She's a lot tougher than she looks." 
     Dr. Hoppe was evidently persuaded, because his description of Cabin 12 was clinically detailed. When he had finished, Paul asked him: 
     "What did you make of the bloodstains?" 
     "Forensic science is not my field, Dr. Prye, but I have worked with emergency medical groups during my years of training. I believe that the volume of bleeding and particularly the stains on the wall indicate the use of a striking or cutting instrument." 
     "And does the volume of blood loss suggest to you that the wounds must have been fatal?" 
     At this point Dr. Hoppe paused for a moment's reflection and was guarded in his response. "I have, of course, thought about that" question but have reached no definite conclusion. There was, however, a great deal of blood spilled." 
     "This is dreadful news," Paul said, when it became apparent that Dr. Hoppe had nothing further to add. It seemed clear to Paul that their hosts had carefully allocated their respective roles for the meeting, and he looked expectantly at Kurt Lange and Captain Wahl to see which had been appointed as the next speaker. The choice fell on Lange, who gave Hoppe an approving glance and then explained the captain's invitation: 
     "You know, Professor Prye, this event leaves East-Europa in a very embarrassing position. Needless to say, we have no experience in dealing with emergencies of this kind. Tomorrow we dock in Budapest and, although the politics of that country seem to be taking a turn for the better, we have no wish to become embroiled with the Hungarian police authorities. In any event, we would hardly know what to tell them except that some act of . violence seems to have been committed in Cabin 12 and our group coordinator has disappeared. We are especially concerned because Miss Gabriel is one of your compatriots; we do not wish our American clients to become involved in European investigative procedures which may, at best, not resemble your own. Therefore we feel fortunate to have on board an American criminologist. It is the captain's wish, and ours, that you might be of some assistance to us in our difficulty." 
     Paul decided that he could do with a lot less vagueness. "What is it that you think I could do for you?" 
     Kurt Lange's response was much briefer than his introduction. "We hoped that you might find out whether the English-speaking passengers can shed any light on the disappearance." 
     At this point, the captain intervened abruptly like an anxious actor anticipating his cue. "Mr. Lange, we must not forget the - how do you say it? - Grundregeln." 
     "Ground rules," Lange explained, without pausing to inquire about the state of the Pryes' command of German. 
     "Yes," Captain Wahl resumed. "That is it exactly. The ground rules must, we regret, be very severe. In the first place, we have agreed this morning with the Vienna police that Cabin 12 is to be sealed until we disembark at the capital. Therefore, Professor Prye, we can unfortunately not permit you to view the cabin. This is perhaps no great loss to you since Dr. Hoppe has given you a very accurate description of the scene." 
     Alice was surprised when Paul answered promptly, "I can live with that." 
     Encouraged by his compliance, the captain went on. "It is also necessary that you not repeat to anyone outside these quarters what we have told you about Miss Gabriel's disappearance." Disappearance. There was that word again, Alice noticed; their hosts seemed to have reached firm agreement on the safest term to describe what had befallen Aurora Gabriel.      Irked by their solidarity, she asked mischievously: 
     "Is this also a ground rule laid down by the Vienna police?" 
     Captain Wahl took her on. "It is just common sense that we do not want to discuss the details. It is not wise to alarm the passengers without good reason." 
     Alice wondered whether the captain was speaking for East-Europa rather than in behalf of the police. The company obviously didn't want passengers to bailout in a panic and claim refunds. 
     Paul, intrigued by the prospect of another investigation, preferred to play along with Wahl's restrictions. "The passengers will soon notice Miss Gabriel's absence if they have not done so already. What will you tell them about her?" 
     Kurt Lange, master of the ship's public relations, swung back into the dialogue. "I suppose that I have been chosen to head the 'white lies' department. To any inquiries that may be made today we shall answer that she is indisposed. Tomorrow morning I will announce on the ship's information channel that she has had to leave us in Budapest because of a family emergency." 
     "But will they believe you?" Alice asked. 
     Lange's reply was confident. "They are on vacation. Ithink they will accept whatever I tell them." 
     Paul had not thought for a moment of turning down the assignment, however constricted it would be. "Who do I report to?" he asked cheerfully. 
     "To me," said Lange, with no disagreement on the part of Wahl or Hoppe. 
     "That will be fine," Paul said, and sensing that decisive action was necessary to prevent the captain from dismissing them, he began firing questions before Wahl had time to rise from his desk. "Has Miss Gabriel been on the Anton Bruckner before?" 
     Lange had obviously been deputed to field requests for information. 
     "No, this is her first trip with us." 
     "And is it also her very first cruise of the Danube?" 
     Lange looked to the captain for information, or perhaps for an instruction, but neither was forthcoming. Finally, the tour leader said: "I am afraid that we do not know." 
     "How long has she worked for East-Europa?" 
     This time Lange replied quickly without looking at the captain. "We do not know that either. I can tell you I have never worked with her before." 
     Paul was not satisfied. "This may be quite important. Would it be possible for you, without violating the 'ground rules', to ask East-Europa's offices to tell us the date of her hiring, background and previous employment, whatever they may have on record?" 
     Once again Lange looked over at captain Wahl, who nodded slightly. "We will do that," Kurt said, as the captain stood up to end the interview. 
     During their walk back to the lounge where Oswald Parsons was to lecture on the "abiding beauties of Budapest", Alice warned Paul: "If I were you, I wouldn't forget The Redheaded League." 
     "What do you mean by that?" Paul asked, grateful that for a change she was drawing a homily from Sherlock Holmes instead of Agatha Christie. 
     "You'll recall that the poor carrot top is given a completely imaginary assignment, while beneath his feet the villains are tunneling into the bank vault." 
     "I take it that despite my gray hairs, you're casting me as the gullible redhead and the trio we've just left as the conspirators." 
     "Not quite," Alice answered, "as I recall, Doyle's redhead didn't have the advantage of a perceptive wife." 

*     *     *
    Oswald Parsons' ecstasies over Budapest did not hold Paul Prye very long. When the talk was no more than 15 minutes old, Alice noticed she was alone; at New York academic seminars, Paul was famous for taking a seat with an unobstructed path to the nearest exit, but Alice had not realized the extent to which he had perfected his silent retreats. This time he had escaped to freedom without her catching him in the act. 
     Before she had a chance to become angry, however, he returned, whisperi