a line of French doors. The foyer, the shallow stairs curving around the elevator shaft, and the broad passage leading to the dining rooms and the bar were all covered in a heavy carpet patterned in blue and red.
While a boy in uniform carried up his single light-weight valise, Solo was shown his room by an elderly woman in a starched uniform and cap. Apart from the usual bedroom furniture, the vast floor space accommodated two armchairs, a settee, a desk, several low tables, and an enormous wardrobe that looked like a model of Chartres cathedral in mahogany.
Not quite knowing what to do, he sat in the lounge drinking a coffee and a brandy, read the papers, and finally climbed the stairs to his room. Nobody had made any attempt to contact him.
As he left, a busload of tourists was arriving. The foyer was full of suitcases, ranked like an army before the porter's lodge, and the revolving doors spun to disgorge more and more transatlantic visitors of both sexes, short, grim-faced and bespectacled to a tourist, in search of shelter for the night.
Solo had resigned himself to a breakfast comprising a cup of coffee and a single croissant, and so it was with some surprise that he saw the tray left on his bedside table the following morning. On it there were coffee, hot milk, orange juice, black bread, white bread, whole wheat bread, jam, marmalade, rolls, slivers of raw bacon, a shelled boiled egg naked in a glass, cold ham, and several enormous slices of Gouda and Edam cheese.
He jumped out of bed, showered, shaved, and carried the tray to the largest of the tables. Such a meal, he felt, should be attacked by a man properly seated rather than by a sybarite lounging in bed!
When he had eaten as much as he could, he drew back the curtains and walked out onto the tiny balcony projecting from the façade of the hotel four floors above the entrance.
The place was on a corner of a T-junction whose cross- piece was formed by the station concourse. Opposite it was a line of stores, arid the wide road between them forming the stem of the letter accommodated at its center the terminus of a tramway line. Queues of workers who had arrived by train were already crowding the island refuges on each side of the lines, waiting to board cars for the city center of Scheveningen. It was cold on the balcony, but the sky over head was free of clouds, and bars of pale sunshine slashed the cream stucco of the buildings across the road.
Solo drew the cord of his dressing gown tight and surveyed the scene. Two men were pushing a gigantic barrel organ into position at the edge of the sidewalk below his window. It rested on four wheels and was pulled by shafts. The body of the machine must have been twelve or fourteen feet high, and on the brightly painted, scalloped wood of its canopy, multicolored lettering spelled out the legend DIE GROOTE HELDINGEN.
One of the men began turning a large handle projecting from the back of the organ while the other guided into a neat stack an unending succession of punched sheets, which the instrument vomited out concertina-wise as the rollicking, wheezing, jolly music cascaded into the wintry air.
Before the first tune was over, coins were showering down from the hotel windows and bouncing across from the city-bound workers by the trams. Solo ducked back into his bedroom to get a handful of small change.
His first toss was badly judged—the coin, lobbed too vigorously, landed some way from the organ and rolled into the groove of a tramline. Determined to succeed with the second, he leaned down over the balcony rail and tossed it more carefully toward the waiting musician.
As he bent forward, the rifle on the fifth floor of the building opposite cracked, and a bullet smacked into the brickwork behind his head.
Even as the agent's mind registered the explosion, a second slug drilled the French door, sending fragments of glass tinkling to the floor. The third shot was dead accurate. It whined across the balcony a
While a boy in uniform carried up his single light-weight valise, Solo was shown his room by an elderly woman in a starched uniform and cap. Apart from the usual bedroom furniture, the vast floor space accommodated two armchairs, a settee, a desk, several low tables, and an enormous wardrobe that looked like a model of Chartres cathedral in mahogany.
Not quite knowing what to do, he sat in the lounge drinking a coffee and a brandy, read the papers, and finally climbed the stairs to his room. Nobody had made any attempt to contact him.
As he left, a busload of tourists was arriving. The foyer was full of suitcases, ranked like an army before the porter's lodge, and the revolving doors spun to disgorge more and more transatlantic visitors of both sexes, short, grim-faced and bespectacled to a tourist, in search of shelter for the night.
Solo had resigned himself to a breakfast comprising a cup of coffee and a single croissant, and so it was with some surprise that he saw the tray left on his bedside table the following morning. On it there were coffee, hot milk, orange juice, black bread, white bread, whole wheat bread, jam, marmalade, rolls, slivers of raw bacon, a shelled boiled egg naked in a glass, cold ham, and several enormous slices of Gouda and Edam cheese.
He jumped out of bed, showered, shaved, and carried the tray to the largest of the tables. Such a meal, he felt, should be attacked by a man properly seated rather than by a sybarite lounging in bed!
When he had eaten as much as he could, he drew back the curtains and walked out onto the tiny balcony projecting from the façade of the hotel four floors above the entrance.
The place was on a corner of a T-junction whose cross- piece was formed by the station concourse. Opposite it was a line of stores, arid the wide road between them forming the stem of the letter accommodated at its center the terminus of a tramway line. Queues of workers who had arrived by train were already crowding the island refuges on each side of the lines, waiting to board cars for the city center of Scheveningen. It was cold on the balcony, but the sky over head was free of clouds, and bars of pale sunshine slashed the cream stucco of the buildings across the road.
Solo drew the cord of his dressing gown tight and surveyed the scene. Two men were pushing a gigantic barrel organ into position at the edge of the sidewalk below his window. It rested on four wheels and was pulled by shafts. The body of the machine must have been twelve or fourteen feet high, and on the brightly painted, scalloped wood of its canopy, multicolored lettering spelled out the legend DIE GROOTE HELDINGEN.
One of the men began turning a large handle projecting from the back of the organ while the other guided into a neat stack an unending succession of punched sheets, which the instrument vomited out concertina-wise as the rollicking, wheezing, jolly music cascaded into the wintry air.
Before the first tune was over, coins were showering down from the hotel windows and bouncing across from the city-bound workers by the trams. Solo ducked back into his bedroom to get a handful of small change.
His first toss was badly judged—the coin, lobbed too vigorously, landed some way from the organ and rolled into the groove of a tramline. Determined to succeed with the second, he leaned down over the balcony rail and tossed it more carefully toward the waiting musician.
As he bent forward, the rifle on the fifth floor of the building opposite cracked, and a bullet smacked into the brickwork behind his head.
Even as the agent's mind registered the explosion, a second slug drilled the French door, sending fragments of glass tinkling to the floor. The third shot was dead accurate. It whined across the balcony a
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