We were hospitably received by a courtly old gentleman, Baron von Iname, to whom I explained the reason for our visit. One of his daughters offered to do the honors, saying that her father was extremely deaf. We followed her to a handsome drawing room on the second floor, where several other members of the family were gathered in conversation around a large table set with coffee things. In one of the wall panels was a concealed door, which the daughter of the house opened by pressing a hidden spring. Leading the way, she took us into a room about twenty feet square filled with violins, violas and ’cellos. They hung in rows from the ceiling, like hams in a smokehouse. Fräulein von Iname said that the collection of musical instruments at Innsbruck was a very fine one. We were standing in a Stradivarius forest.
When we passed back into the drawing room, the father whispered a few words to his daughter. She turned to us smiling and said, “Father asked if I had pointed out to you the thickness of the walls in this part of the castle. He is very proud of the fact that they date from the fourteenth century and that our family has always lived here. He also asks me to invite you to take coffee with us.”
Knowing that coffee was valued as molten gold, I declined the invitation on the grounds that we had a long trip ahead of us. Thanking her for her courtesy, we left. It was after eleven when we got back to Munich. We had driven a little more than three hundred miles.
Bad weather and bad luck attended us all the way to Hohenfurth the next day. Less than an hour out on the Autobahn, we came upon a gruesome accident—an overturned jeep and the limp figures of two GIs at one side of the road, the mangled body of a German soldier in the center of the pavement. An ambulance had already arrived and a doctor was ministering to the injured American soldiers. The German was obviously beyond medical help. As soon as the road was cleared, we continued—but at a very sober pace.
On the other side of Salzburg we had carburetor trouble which held us up for nearly two hours. It was after five thirty when we reached Linz. We stopped there for supper and I had a few words with the colonel who had looked after us so well a few days before. He seemed surprised to see me again, and rather agitated.
“You can get through this time,” he said, “but don’t try to come back this way.”
“What do you mean, sir?” I asked, puzzled by his curt admonition.
Apparently annoyed by my query, he said brusquely, “Don’t ask any questions. Just do as I say—don’t come back this way.”
At supper I saw Lieutenant Anderson again and I broached the subject to him. “Does the colonel mean that the Russians are expected to move up to the other side of the Danube?” I asked.