Part 22 (1/2)
CHAPTER TWENTY.
Emprison'd in black, purgatorial rails.
keats: The Eve of St. Agnes
As timothy and I emerged from the Gasthaus, it came somehow as a surprise to realize that it was full light. Cloud or mist still hung round the summit of the mountain, so that it was impossible to see into the distance, but the visibility was now two or three hundred yards, and clearing every moment. The air seemed thin, grey and chill, but the hot coffee had worked wonders for us.
I said: ”Have you the foggiest idea what time it is? I didn't put my watch on.”
”Nor did I, but I noticed the time by the kitchen clock. It's about half past four.”
”It's a mercy that didn't get smashed too. Poor Frau Becker. Lewis seems pretty sure she knows nothing about it, so the worst she'll suffer is being deprived of her husband's company for a bit.”
”I'd have said the worst was the bust dishes.”
”You've got something there. Oh gosh, and the gra.s.s is wet. It's beastly cold, isn't it?”
”What's that to us?” said Timothy buoyantly. ”Intrepid, that's us. Archie Goodwin also ran.”
I said, a little sourly: ”You got some sleep, I didn't.”
”There's that,” he admitted. ”And then you've had a pretty rough time, belting about like that on the roof.”
”I suppose you don't reckon you had it rough, being hit on the head by Sandor in the stable? Or do you take that kind of thing in your stride? Look, for goodness' sake, don't try to go at such a speed. This gra.s.s is beastly slippery, and there's a lot of loose rock about. And you're carrying that thing.”
”That thing” was Sandor's automatic, which Timothy handled with what was to me a terrifying and admirable casualness.
”I hope you do know all about those things?”
He grinned. ”Well, yes, it's dead easy. As a matter of fact this is rather a neat little thing. My grandfather had an old Luger left over from the war. The first war. I used to go potting rabbits with it.”
”You loathsome boy. I wouldn't have thought it of you.”
”Oh,” he said cheerfully, ”I never got one. Have you any idea how difficult it is to pot at rabbits with a Luger?”
”I can't say that I have.”
”As a matter of fact it's impossible. My hands so far are pretty clean of blood, but at this rate whether they'll stay so or not I just have no idea. I say, that was some sc.r.a.p up there in the kitchen, wasn't it?
Why did he burn Sandor's hand? To frighten him and make him talk?”
”I don't think so. It was a private thing.”
”Oh? Yes, I remember, he said so. You mean they got across one another in the circus or something?”
I shook my head. ”Sandor hit me.”
His eyes flew to my bruised face. ”Oh . . . oh, I see.” I could see myself that his admiration for Lewis had soared to the edge of idolatry. I thought with resignation that men seemed in some ways to pa.s.s their lives on an unregenerately primitive level. Well, I could hardly cavil. I had had a fairly primitive reaction myself to my husband's eye-for-an-eye violence in the kitchen. That I was coldly ashamed of it now proved nothing.
”Well, whatever it was for,” said Timothy, ”it did the trick. He didn't know how fast to spill the beans.
Did you understand any of it?”
”No,” I said. Lewis's quick interrogation-since it included the Beckers-had been in German. ”Suppose you tell me now.”
So, as we hurried down through the damp greyness, he pa.s.sed the main items across to me. The important thing from our point of view I knew already: that (as Lewis had overheard before he even entered the room) Sandor had managed to cache the drugs on his way up the mountain, in a tree on a section of railway that Lewis and I had short-circuited. He had in fact got to the Gasthaus only a few minutes before we did, and had still been telling Becker about his flight with the drugs when Lewis arrived under the window to listen. This bit of information Lewis could probably have got out of them later: where the luck had come in was in the timing of his own attack through the window. He had managed to delay it just long enough to hear the Vienna number that Sandor had given over the telephone.
So there had not been much difficulty with Sandor. Tim was right; I had seen for myself that he hadn't known how fast to talk. I supposed that, as well as his immediate fear of Lewis, there was some hope of leniency if he turned State's Evidence. And Becker had followed suit. At first he had tried to shout Sandor into silence but soon changed his tune when he realized how much Lewis knew. And presently the facts- and the names-began to emerge. . . .
”Not everything by a long chalk,” said Tim, ”but then they're only messengers. But Lewis says there'll be plenty to find when the police start to take the Gasthaus apart, and he did get the Vienna number just before Sandor had to slam the phone down. Of course, the exchange may have put the call through before they knew he'd rung off, and the Vienna end may have got the wind up; but Lewis says they'll hardly fold their tents like the Arabs when it might just be a wrong number, and even if they tried, they couldn't clean up before Interpol starts moving. In any case there'll be more than enough for Interpol to get a wedge in here and there, and crack the ring open. I suppose, if Sandor was pa.s.sing the stuff along through Yugoslavia into Hungary, Interpol could fix a trap up to catch the people at the other end. Or so Lewis seems to think.”
Something about his voice as he spoke made me shoot a glance at him. Not quite authority, not quite patronage, certainly not self-importance; but just the unmistakable echo of that man-to-woman way that even the nicest men adopt when they are letting a woman catch a glimpse of the edges of the Man's World. Timothy had joined the club.
I said, not quite irrelevantly: ”He thinks a lot of you, too. Now, for heaven's sake, I hope we can find this blighted tree where Sandor said he'd put the stuff.”
”The stretch between the tunnels. A lonely, blasted pine. It's just as good,” he said joyously, ”as a one-eyed Chinaman with a limp. Oh, we'll find it, don't you worry! There's the railway again now.”
We had gone at a fair speed down the first long slope of rock-strewn gra.s.s, cutting across one of the arms of the rack railway. This went in a wide sweep for some quarter of a mile to the right but curved back again to pa.s.s about two hundred and fifty yards below us. We could just see the pale-coloured cutting in the rock where the line lay, and, beyond it, the grey distances of morning with one or two darker shapes of bushes looming like ghosts. The gra.s.s was soaking. The thick turfs squelched under our feet like sponges, and the longer fronds swung heavy with drops like dimmed crystals which drenched us to the knee. Everywhere among the grey rocks there were clumps of some large violet gentian,just unfurling, a sight which would have stopped me in my tracks at any time but this. As it was, I don't think I even took particular trouble not to tread on them, but hurried on down the hill, intent only on one thing, speed.
We reached the shallow cutting where the railway ran and I jumped down into it with a thump. Behind me Timothy slithered with a rattle of stones and a sharp lamentable phrase as he slipped on the wet gra.s.s and almost lost his balance.
”Watch it. Are you okay?”
”Yes. Sorry. I wish I'd my boots here. These shoes are murder on wet gra.s.s. Can you see the next bit of line below this?”
”Not from here. The slope's more gradual, but we'll go straight on.” Once again we ran forward and down over the tufted alpine gra.s.s. Timothy was ahead of me now. Visibility was getting better, and the colours even seemed to be growing warmer towards sunrise. On this part of the mountain there were more bushes, thick clumps of juniper and mountain rhododendrons, and sometimes we had to make longish detours round hollows where rocks had fallen in long since, and which were treacherously overgrown with thistles and long gra.s.s.
In front of me Timothy faltered, seemed to cast round like a hound at fault, and then stopped. I came up to him.
”What is it?”
”There's no sign of the railway. Surely it should be there?” He turned a dismayed face to me. ”Supposing we've lost it? When it went back there to the left it must have been going round the other side of the mountain. We're probably on the wrong bit altogether now. ... It all looks so much alike. I wish to goodness we could see farther. ... If only we could see right down, we'd probably be able to see the lake and the village and everything, then we'd know where we were. D'you think we'd better go back to find the railway and follow it down?”
”Surely not. I don't see how we can have missed it. Wait a minute, Tim, stand still. It's getting clearer every minute. . . . Look down there. . . . No, farther to the right. That tree, that dead one, with the divided trunk. It's just the way he described it. What d'you bet that's the very one? Straight bang on the target, who'd have thought it? Come on!”
He caught at my arm as I ran past him. ”But where's the railway? Between two tunnels, he said.”
”Don't you see?” I threw it at him over my shoulder. ”That's why we can't see the line. . . . We're probably crossing the upper tunnel now. Between the tunnels, the line'll be in a cutting. I'll bet you it's lying down there, just below that little cliff where the pine is. Come on, let's look.”
And sure enough, it was. The dead pine stood, split and hollow, clinging to the face of a low cliff, and there, some fifteen feet below its exposed roots, ran the railway. Seventy yards down the track yawned the black exit of the first tunnel, and about the same distance the other way was the entrance to the second. It was the place.
”Bang on,” I said. ”This is it. How's that for radar?”
”Do you home on to drink as well as drugs?” asked Timothy. ”Vanessa March, dope hound. This is terrific! Let's have a look!”