Background to Danger Read Free

un-English accent, a very sound knowledge of European politics, and a quick and shrewd judgment of news values. The first was the most valuable. The majority of English men and women working abroad speak the language of the country fluently. Very few speak it as it should be spoken. Kenton was one of those who did. That advantage made the difference between getting and not getting an occasional crumb of exclusive news.
    It had been in search of such a crumb that he had come to Nuremberg. Some of the high Nazi officials were gathered together, and it had been rumoured that important decisions were to be made. Nobody had known what thedecisions were about; but they were almost certain to be unpleasant and, therefore, news.
    Ninety per cent of political reporting consists of waiting for conferences to end. The time is usually passed in a bar. At Nuremberg it was the Kaiserhof. When Kenton had arrived there had been several correspondents he knew already installed. Among them was the Havas Agency man, a Pole, whom he liked. It had been this Pole who had produced the poker-dice.
    Kenton had lost steadily from the first.
    Poker-dice is not a good game for those who don’t know when to stop, for it combines the most dangerous aspects of poker with the simplicity of dice. Large amounts of money can thus be lost, and won, quickly and effortlessly.
    By the time it had been learnt that the conference would issue no press
communiqué
that day, but resume the sitting on the morrow, Kenton had just five
Pfennige
left in his pocket. He had explained the situation to the other three players and, amid murmurs of regret and goodwill, drinks were called for. Over them, he had taken the opportunity to point out that the bankruptcy was merely temporary and that he possessed funds in Vienna. All that remained, he had added, was to get to Vienna. The Havas man had promptly volunteered a hundred marks. Feeling several sorts of worm, Kenton had accepted it as gracefully as possible, ordered and paid for another round of drinks, and left soon after for the station. There he had found that the only through train to Vienna that night carried first and second
luxe
only. If
mein Herr
wished to go third class there was a slow train that went as far as Linz in Upper Austria, where he could change for Vienna. He had resigned himself to waiting for the Linz train.
    He had been waiting for three-quarters of an hour when the Night Orient Express from Ostend came in, flecked with melting snow. Behind the steamy windows of the coaches,braided waiters hurried towards the first-class restaurant car. He heard the clatter of dishes and the clink of glasses. From where he stood out of the wind he could see a destination board on the side of one of the sleeping-cars—Wien, Buda-Pesth, Belgrade, Sofia, Istanbul. The Orient Express looked warm and luxurious inside and he was glad when it moved out. At that moment it seemed to epitomise all the security and comfort—bodily, financial and gastronomic—that he craved. He wallowed in self-pity.
    It would not have been so bad if his jaunty claim to funds in Vienna had been founded on fact; but it was not. He had no money whatever in Vienna. He was going there with the faint hope that a Jewish instrument maker he knew would lend him some. Kenton had been able to help him get his family out of Munich in the bad days of 1934 and the instrument maker had been grateful. But, for all Kenton knew, his old friend might have left Vienna. Or he might have no money to lend. That, Kenton told himself, would be far worse. He would have to explain that it didn’t matter at all really, and the little man would feel miserable. Jews were sensitive about such things. Still, it was his one chance, and in any case, he couldn’t be worse off in Vienna than he was in Nuremberg.
    He dug his fists deeper into his overcoat pockets. After all, he had been broke before—not always through his own folly either—and invariably something had turned