Read I Was Jack Mortimer (Pushkin Collection) for Free Online Page A

not fair… but not brown either…”—“Really? Not tall, not small, not old, not young, not fair, not brown? And what did he do when he got to the Bristol?”—“He paid the fare and went into the hotel.”—“What about his suitcases?”—“A… a hotel porter took them from the cab.”—“And went into the hotel with them, too?”—“Yes.”—“What about you?”—“I drove off.”—“So, he entered the hotel and the porter carried the suitcases in after him?”—“Yes.”—“You saw all this?”—“Yes.”—“Now, I put it to you that neither he nor his suitcases ever reached the hotel!”
    If the body was found, he, Sponer, was lost.
    Hundreds of people go missing in large cities every year. Without a trace. You don’t hear about it, but they disappear. There’s nothing in the newspapers about it. The papers report only the cases that have been solved. The unsolved ones are never reported in the papers. Hundreds of people, each one a grown person’s height, size and weight, disappear like something small that falls to the ground, like a matchstick that one throws away, like a button that pops off and suddenly is no longer there. Gone. Vanished into thin air. As though it never existed.
    How do they do it, how do they get rid of people? Do they cut them up, burn them somewhere, throw them into the river?
    Into the river!
    They say that a corpse thrown into the water first of all sinks, later rises to the surface for about half an hour, then sinks once more; but for a time it’ll have been floating on the surface. If it’s to stay under, it’s got to be weighted down, and stones are best for this. In a fast-flowing river a body will be carried along by the flow; for a couple of days the corpse will float above the weights holding it down, it’ll be swept along, fish will swim around it and nibble at it, it’ll sink to the bottom, be buried and crushed in the debris, ground into pulp and be gone for ever.
    Sponer had to throw the dead man into the Danube.
    Not much more than an hour ago, he hadn’t even known the man existed. Now that he no longer existed, he had to getrid of him somehow, because if the body were discovered it would be even more dangerous than if he’d murdered him, which, of course, he hadn’t.
    In order to turn back, he swung sharply to the left, but couldn’t make a complete U-turn and had to reverse. A man in an overcoat, carrying an umbrella and a briefcase, very likely a lawyer who was here on business and wanted to get back to the centre, hailed him from the pavement. Sponer did not answer and sped away.
    Seeing as it was raining, other people, too, had probably tried to hail him, but he hadn’t noticed.
    Now that he at least knew what he had to do, he began to think straight again. He could see where he was going. Previously he hadn’t taken anything in.
    The long rows of lamps swung to and fro over the wet, glistening streets. A strong wind had got up, and the rain was gradually beginning to ease off. The cloud cover was torn into white fluffy patches which raced over the pitch-black sky, now exposing, now concealing a full moon. Sponer could see this every time he crossed a wide intersection.
    He glanced at his watch. It was a quarter past eight.
    He slowed down. If he wanted to get to the Danube, he’d have to wait till he was sure he wouldn’t meet anyone there.

    When he approached the inner city, he turned right to make a detour and kill time, went through Josefstadt, and finallystopped in a side street off Burggasse, in the shadow of some dilapidated old houses.
    There were only a few small shops, belonging to suburban shopkeepers, with heavy, old-fashioned doors. The pavements were narrow, the cobbled surface uneven. Some of the windows in the street were lit dimly from within, and every now and then the pale moonlight fell on the tall chimney stacks and grey walls of the houses, where here and there the stucco had come away in large patches.
    The