The Man Who Went Up In Smoke Read Free Page B

Budapest on the twenty-second of July, sent there by his magazine to write some articles. On the next Monday, he was to call the office here in Stockholm and read the text of a kind of regular column he writes every week. He didn't. It's relevant that Alf Matsson always delivered on time, as newspaper people say. In other words, he doesn't miss a deadline when it comes to turning in manuscripts. Two days later, the office phoned his hotel in Budapest, where they said that he 
was
 staying there, but he didn't seem to be in at that moment. The office left a message to say that Matsson should immediately inform Stockholm the moment he came in. They waited for two more days. Nothing was heard. They checked with his wife here in Stockholm. She hadn't heard anything either. That in itself wouldn't necessarily mean anything, as they're getting a divorce. Last Saturday the editor called us up here. By then they had contacted the hotel again and been told that no one there had seen Matsson since they called last, but that his things were still in his room and his passport was still at the reception desk. Last Monday, the first of August, we communicated with our people down there. They knew nothing about Matsson, but put out a feeler, as they called it, to the Hungarian police, who appeared 'not interested.' Last Tuesday we had a visit from the editor in chief of the magazine. It was a very unpleasant meeting."
    The redheaded man had definitely been upstaged. He bit on the stem of his pipe in annoyance and said, "Yes, exactly. Damned unpleasant."
    A moment later he added by way of explanation: "This is my secretary."
    'Well," said his secretary, "anyhow, the result of that conversation was that yesterday we made unofficial contact with the police at top level, which in turn led to your coming here today. Pleased to have you here, by the way."
    They shook hands. Martin Beck could not yet see the pattern. He massaged the bridge of his nose thoughtfully.
    'I'm afraid I don't really understand," he said. "Why didn't the editors report the matter in the ordinary way?"
    'You'll see why in a moment. The editor in chief and responsible publisher of the magazine—the same person, in fact—did not want to report the matter to the police or demand an official investigation because then the case would become known at once and would get into the rest of the press. Matsson is the magazine's own correspondent, and he has disappeared on a reporting trip abroad, so—rightly or wrongly—the magazine regards this as its own news. The editor in chief did seem rather worried about Matsson, but on the other hand, he made no bones about the fact that he smelled a scoop, as they say, news of the caliber that increases a publication's circulation by perhaps a hundred thousand copies just like that. If you know anything about the general line this magazine takes, then you ought to know… Well, anyhow, one of its correspondents has disappeared and the fact that he's done it in Hungary, of all places, doesn't make it any worse news."
    'Behind the Iron Curtain," said the red-haired man gravely.
    'We don't use expressions like that," said the other man. "Well, I hope you realize what all this means. If the case is reported and gets into the papers, that's bad enough—even if the story retained some kind of reasonable proportions and did get a relatively factual treatment. But if the magazine keeps everything to itself and uses it for its own, opinion-leading purpose, then heaven only knows what… Well, anyhow it would damage important relations, which both we and other people have spent a long time and a good deal of effort building up. The magazine's editor had a copy of a completed article with him when he was here on Monday. We had the dubious pleasure of reading it. If it's published, it would mean absolute disaster in some respects. And they were actually intending to publish it in this week's issue. We had to use all our powers of persuasion and