The Lives of Harry Lime v1.0 Read online

  The Lives,

  of

  HARRY LIME

  by

  ORSON WELLES

  and others

  First Pock Book Edition 1952

  Copyright. All rights reserved

  This pocket book is printed from brand new plates made from completely reset, clear9 easy to read type

  Pocket Book Edition made and printed in Great Britain by

  JARROLD AND SONS LIMITED NORWICH

  for

  “NEWS OF THE WORLD”

  30 Bouverie Street, London, EC4

  Contents

  IT’S IN THE BAG by Orson Welles

  THE GOLDEN FLEECE by Orson Welles

  ART IS LONG AND LIME IS FLEETING by Sigmund Miller

  LOVE AFFAIR by Sigmund Miller

  SEE NAPLES AND LIVE by Sigmund Miller

  EVERY FRAME HAS A SILVER LINING by Robert Cenedella

  PARIS IS NOT THE SAME by Joseph Cochran

  FIVE THOUSAND PENGOES AND A KISS by Carl Jampel

  THE HAND OF GLORY by Jonquil Anthony

  THE HYACINTH PATROL by Virginia Cooke

  HORSEPLAY by Peter Lyon

  WORK OF ART by Bud Lesser

  ROGUE’S HOLIDAY by Peter Lyon

  A TICKET TO TANGIER by Orson Welles

  AN OLD MOORISH CUSTOM by Irvan Ashkinazy

  IT’S IN THE BAG

  by

  Orson Welles

  It all happened on a train going through the Balkans from Istanbul to Belgrade. There’s a mysterious veiled woman in it—naturally—and the whole thing ends up with me losing a suitcase full of money and getting a medal for doing it.

  The orient express—the Central Line that is—runs between Istanbul and Paris. I had left Istanbul because all I got there was a kick in the pants and a polite invitation to leave town. I wanted as much mileage between me and Turkey as possible so I had my ticket booked all the way.

  It’s one of those famous trains, you know, like the Flying Scotsman, the Chief, the 20th Century, the Blue Train and the Trans-Siberian. In the bad old days before the war the Orient Express—particularly as far as Athens—could be relied on to provide a better cross-section of weird animals than a travelling circus. But now, in the bad new days, the travelling companions you’re likely to find yourself with are rarely more than faces to break the monotony of the landscape.

  Take my own neighbour—a little Greek in a suit that looked as if it had been clipped out of a comic strip. His face, if you could call it a face, was just something that grew a few inches north of his neck. The only feature to indicate which side was front was a pair of eyes that looked like blackcurrants swimming in lemon-juice. All together not the prettiest companion I could have chosen and a personality about as charming as a wad of yesterday’s chewing-gum*

  His name was Stathacopoulos and he travelled with as many provisions as a fair-sized delicatessen. This was lucky as it transpired that I’d missed the last sitting for dinner, and he insisted on my sharing his. But he had plenty of what he was pleased to call the Vine of my country’, which, although tasting a little like concentrated essence of candy store with a bit of cough medicine thrown in, had the kick of the proverbial army mule. I took very little and he took quite a lot, and pretty soon Greece’s most relentless conversationalist was beginning to nod.

  ‘Well, if you don’t mind, old man,’ I said, ‘I think I’ll just turn off the light and try to catch up on a little shut-eye.’

  For some reason this alarmed him.

  ‘No, no, the light must remain on; in the dark I might go off to sleep.’

  ‘Do you a world of good, old man.’

  ’Tell me the truth, Monsieur. If you had ten thousand dollars in your pocket, would you go to sleep?’

  ‘I’ve got more than that,’ I said, ‘a whole lot more. And it doesn’t keep me from sleeping. And call me Harry.’

  ‘How much more?’ he asked.

  ‘A hundred thousand.’

  ‘A hundred thousand dollars, Harry?’

  ’That’s right. Well, thanks for the picnic, old man, and be sure to wake me up when we get to Belgrade.’

  I pretended to go to sleep and my grubby little friend, after picking his nails nervously with the broken blade of a penknife, settled down to watch me closely. I observed all this out of the corner of one slightly open eye and went on with a lot of fake snores for his benefit, praying all the time that the wine would finally be too much for him and he’d nod off. But there was no chance of that. No. He was going to stay awake if it killed him. I could have killed him out of sheer desperation.

  Finally, he leaned over and shook me. What was I going to do with my money when we got to the border, he wanted to know. His money was the result of some black market wangling, and he didn’t want the authorities to know about it I spun him a yam about my own activities—counterfeiting. My printer, ’ I told him, was a Pole, my watermark specialist came from Roumania, and my engravings-were done by a former chief technician of the German mint Then I pulled out a wad of bills and let him examine them in detail.

  Ten minutes later, with the assistance of another bottle of the local hooch, I allowed myself to be drawn into a business deal. Fifty thousand bucks’ worth of nice, crisp Yugoslav banknotes to be sold to Mr. Stathacopoulos at twenty-five per cent of face value if my partner in Belgrade would agree to it.

  I arranged to get out at the next stop and phone Belgrade.

  When the train pulled into the next whistle stop, I made like a bird for the stationmaster’s office. From where I sat by the window I could see my little Greek watching me from the train compartment. As the stationmaster got my call through, I gave Stathacouplos the old O.K. sign, and he produced a grin that looked as if his teeth hurt him.

  ‘Border Police?’ I said in a forced voice into the receiver. ’This is a tip. Don’t ask who I am. There’s a counterfeiter in compartment 25 of the Orient Express. I can’t tell you his name. He’s carrying a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of forged banknotes.’

  Back in the compartment, I told the Greek that the deal was on, but that we would have to hurry as I had to get off at the next stop to meet another client. We both brought out our money and were beginning to count it, when the compartment door was thrown open. In no time the compartment was full of cops, all shouting instructions at once. One finally ordered me in English: ‘Hands up, and do not touch that counterfeit money.’

  By this time the Greek was hysterical. ‘It’s not mine, I tell you, it’s not mine. It’s his, it’s all his.’

  ’Is that true,’ asked the English-speaking policeman.

  I admitted it.

  ’That’s right, it’s not mine,’ cried the Greek. ‘I am an honest business man. I don’t deal in false currency. I am a Greek subject. I insist on my constitutional rights…’ He was still talking like that when they took both me and the money off the train.

  When the jail door shut behind me I gave one minute’s silence to the memory of a certain little • Greek who must have discovered by then that he’d talked himself out of ten thousand bucks. And so to bed.

  Came the dawn; came the sweet scent of cabbage soup and black bread; came the chief of police. He was full of apologies.

  ‘My dear Mr. Lime, a thousand pardons! Belgrade have just informed us that your banknotes are in perfect order. How those silly train guards could ever have mistaken them for counterfeit is beyond me.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘I offer you, on behalf of the Peopled Democracy of Yugoslavia, my apologies.’

  And so, after a ball with the chief of police and one or two of the local celebrities—female celebrities that is—I found myself back on the Orient Express with
Mr. Stathacopoulos’s ten thousand bucks to finance the trip.

  Only this time there was a difference. In place of Mr. Stathacopoulos’s family reminiscences and fried fish, we are now sharing a compartment with a fine-looking chick, pickled in Bandit by Piquet and stacked like a proud frigate. Like the classic lady of mystery, she was even wearing a veil—but not so much of it that you couldn’t appreciate what lay behind. I was just figuring a way to get through the camouflage when she got the first word in ahead of me.

  ‘I wonder if you could perhaps have the goodness to help me down with my bag? It is rather heavy.’

  Of course, I was delighted. But she had been exaggerating, the way girls will: it wasn’t heavy at all. In fact, it hardly weighed more than my own little bag that didn’t contain anything except fifty thousand bucks and a toothbrush. And don’t think that I took my eyes off my own little bag for one moment, even while helping my lady friend down with her outsize bag. Harry may be gallant with the ladies, but Harry don’t have much trouble keeping the hair outa his eyes.

  After that we got quite pally, and I was just opening a bottle of something special that the local chief of police had given me as a farewell present, when a voice like Caucasian granite demanded from the doorway whether there was a vacant seat. I said ‘No*, but my girl friend said ‘Yes’, and our friendly little circle was now one too many.

  Well, as long as Olga—we were already on Christian name terms, you see—and I were alone in the compartment I didn’t mind this coy habit of the Orient Express of keeping its passengers in the dark while racing through a chain of tunnels. But now that we had company,. I began to feel a bit bashful about it. And with good reason—for when we got out of the next tunnel my little bag had gone.

  No, I didn’t raise the alarm. I didn’t pull the emergency cord, either. Not yet, anyway. I just looked at my two fellow-travellers and thought things over. What worried me was not so much who’d taken the bag but how they’d gotten rid of it. The window was closed, the door was shut, the baggage rack was in plain sight, and neither the girl nor the man could have hidden it on his person. Then what? Under the seat? I dropped a coin and started looking for it. What did I find? The coin, of course. No bag.

  I was still turning it over in my mind when Olga broke the silence. ’The tunnel, it has made the air rather bad, has it not? Perhaps you could open the window a bit, Monsieur?’

  ‘Perhaps. As a rule these damn windows stick. It takes about three strong men and one derrick to raise them.’

  ‘Perhaps the other gentleman could help.’

  ‘I regret, but I am blind.’

  That seemed to rule out the man. So while I went through the motions of trying to open the window, I watched the reflection of my girl friend in the glass. As I was saying, you have to be patient in my line of business, even if it makes you look like a fool spending half an hour trying to get a train window open—but in the end I was rewarded. Yes, it was in the big bag, of course: my little bag was in the big one…Very cute.

  Just then we went into another tunnel. I figured that all I had to do now when we got out of it was to grab the big bag and get my money back. If the girl didn’t carry a rod, that shouldn’t be too tough. Anyway, that’s what I thought. But when we did come out into daylight again, it turned out that Old Harry had been outsmarted for the second time. Now the big bag had disappeared. How? I’ll give you one guess—through the window that I had so obligingly opened for Olga. So what now? Well, the old emergency cord, of course.

  Almost before the train had stopped I was out of it and well into the tunnel. But somebody was behind me. And as I was running and stumbling through the tunnel a nasty thought occurred to me: maybe it was the blind man after all who had tossed out the bag. If so, he’d have all the advantage over me in the dark. And at that moment I stumbled over something and fell.

  But what I had fallen over wasn’t the bag, and what my fingers touched wasn’t money, but a face—a man’s face. It couldn’t see who it was, but I didn’t need to, for suddenly I had it all figured out. The Greek must have sent the dame with the trick bag after me to get back his dough. She had an accomplice placed in the tunnel to pick up the bag. The whole thing was timed perfectly—a bit too perfectly, because when Olga tossed out the bag it hit her accomplice on the noddle and knocked him cold.

  Just then, a voice called just behind me: ‘Mr. Lime! Hullo, Mr. Lime! ’

  So help me! it was my old chum the chief of police. Pretty soon I was surrounded by policemen all patting me on the back and shouting ‘Bravo*. When we got out of the tunnel the police chief made a little speech.

  ‘Mr. Lime, on behalf of the Yugoslav People’s Democracy, I extend my most profound appreciation and gratitude for this astounding exhibition of quick action and bravery. Why, it must have taken enormous strength to knock out a man as powerful and dangerous as Leonov! ’

  ‘Leonov,’ I said. ‘You mean you know him?’ ‘Know him! Why, Mr. Lime, he is our public enemy Number One. Everybody knows him.’

  I decided to take the plunge. ‘Just one thing. I wonder if any of your men have happened to stumble over a suitcase…?’.

  - ‘Indeed we have. A large suitcase with a fortune of money inside.’

  ’Thank heaven for that.’

  ‘It was the property of his sister—a dangerous woman, sir. It is indeed fortunate that we have been able to intercept that money. It was intended, naturally, for the financing of more sabotage…’

  ‘Now just a minute.’ I interrupted, ‘let me tell you about that money.’

  ‘No need at all, sir. We understand everything, and the money has, of course, been confiscated by the proper authorities. And as a reward for your glorious effort, you will receive…’

  ‘Yes. What will I receive?’

  ’The highest decoration that the People’s Democracy of Yugoslavia can bestow.’

  ‘A medal! Who wants a medal? I tell you the money is mine.’

  ‘I beg your pardon.’

  This obviously wasn’t going down too good, but I tried to explain what had happened. The police chief cut me short with: ‘Sir, that’s a very mercenary attitude, if you’ll forgive me for saying so…’

  ‘I don’t care.’ I hollered. ‘I want my money.’ you would be very mistaken to try and set yourself against the will of the People’s Government. Others have tried it, and well…take a piece of friendly advice, sir.’

  ‘Well, what’s the pitch?’

  ‘Settle for the medal.’

  And that is how I got me a nice big medal. Yeah, Harry Lime was a real live hero, which cost him a lot of dough.

  THE GOLDEN FLEECE

  by

  Orson Welles

  I’ve not told you the story about how 1 went halfway around the world and almost got my head blown off for my trouble. And, by the way, have you ever known a girl with yellow eyes? If$ a queer story, no matter how you look at it. It begins with a bullfight and ends with a naval engagement on the China Sea. There’s a woman in it, of course …

  It all started in the little seaport of Algeciras, and, like every other town in Spaing there’s a bullring there. I don’t know how you feel about bullfights, but if it’s Sunday in Spain, it’s a little hard to stay away from them. A bullfight is to Spain what an opera is to Italy—it’s the only thing in the country that starts on time. I’d been dawdling over my shellfish and beer, so I only got in for the second faena.

  Soldadito was in the ring. He was younger then, and braver than he is now, but I’ve never been one of his fans. Too much ballet dancing for me and not enough bullfighting. But we won’t go into that: I could talk about the corrida all night, but I promised you a story about adventure on the high seas…Well, it’s beginning right now.

  Soldadito is dedicating the bull. He is paying this compliment to the lady seated next to me. For the first time I glance at her—and the glance freezes into a stare. She has very dark red hair, very pale ivory skin, and very bright yellow eyes. X mean ye
llow—like a cat’s. I won’t dwell on her—I’d like to, but I won’t. It’s enough to say that this kid could stop traffic on the Indianapolis speedway.

  The bullfighter turns, tosses his hat to her in the classical gesture over the shoulder, and moves into the sunlight towards the bull. But as far as I am concerned, the bullfight is over.

  ‘You must watch the ring, Senor.’ Her voice was low, her eyes were mocking.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘It is very pleasant to feel your eyes upon me,’ she went on, with just a trace of an indefinable foreign accent. ‘I adore being stared at, but just now don’t you think it’s a bit disrespectful to our friend Soldadito? ’

  ‘He is no friend of mine. And if he’s a good friend of yours, Senorita, permit me to inform you that he is my enemy.’ I bowed slightly from the waist, but my eyes never left hers.

  She smiled. ‘He is very graceful, don’t you think?’ There was silence for a moment as she waited for my answer. Then she went on: ‘Yours was also a graceful speech, Senor.’

  We were silent until the bullfighter had made his kill, and then, while the crowd went wild applauding, she turned towards me again.

  ’That was a beautiful kill, wasn’t it, Mr…What is your name?’

  ‘Lime. Harry Lime,’ I replied. And then, grudgingly, I added, ‘Yes. It was a good kill.’

  ‘I will call you Harry. The bull kneeled like a penitent at his feet. The beast seemed to be asking the Torero’s pardon.’ Her voice was light and mocking.

  ‘It should have been the other way round,’ I replied.

  She laughed. ‘Ah, you are already jealous. I adore that. Tell me, Harry, what are you doing in Algeciras?’

  ’Oh, just looking around.’

  ‘And what are you looking for?’

  It was my turn to smile. ‘No need to look any longer,’ I replied, ‘I’ve found it.’