gentle pats of the towel, put on clean socks and my shoes, washed the dirty socks, and stretched them on a bush in the sun. When I started to wash the pan out he suddenly blurted, 'Wait a minute. I think I'll risk it.' 'Okay. I guess you could probably make it to Rijeka barefooted.' The test was never made because our host appeared and spoke, and Wolfe got up and headed for the door of the house, and I followed. The ceiling of the room we entered wasn't as low as I had expected. The wallpaper was patterned in green and yellow, but you couldn't see much of it on account of the dozens of pictures, all about the same size. There were rugs on the floor, 131 carved chests and chairs with painted decorations, a big iron stove, and one small window. By the window was a table with a red cloth, with two places set -- knives and forks and spoons and napkins. Wolfe and I went and sat, and two women came through an arched doorway. One of them, middleaged, in a garment apparently made of old gray canvas, aimed sharp black eyes straight at us as she approached, bearing a loaded tray. The other one, following, made me forget how hungry I was for a full ten seconds. I didn't get a good view of her eyes because she kept them lowered, but the rest of her boosted my rating of the scenery of Montenegro more than the Black Mountain had. When they had delivered the food and left I asked Wolfe, 'Do you suppose the daughter wears that white blouse and embroidered green vest all the time?' He snorted. 'Certainly not. She heard us speaking a foreign tongue, and we paid extravagantly for food. Would a Montenegrin girl miss such a chance?' He snorted again. 'Would any girl? So she changed her clothes.' 'That's a hell of an attitude,' I protested. 'We should appreciate her taking the trouble. If you want to take off your 132 shoes, go ahead, and we can rent the haystack by the week until the swelling goes down.' He didn't bother to reply. Ten minutes later I asked him, 'Why do they put gasoline in the sausage?' At that, it wasn't a bad meal, and it certainly was needed. The eggs were okay, the dark bread was a little sour but edible, and the cherry jam, out of a half-gallon crock, would have been good anywhere. Someone told Wolfe later that in Belgrade fresh eggs were forty dinars apiece, and we each ate five, so we weren't such suckers. After one sip I gave the tea a miss, but there was nothing wrong with the water. As I was spreading jam on another slice of bread our host entered and said something and departed. I asked Wolfe what. He said the cart was ready. I asked, what cart? He said to take us to Rijeka. I complained. 'This is the first I've heard about a cart. The understanding was that you report all conversations in full. You have always maintained that if I left out anything at all you would never know whether you had the kernel or not. Now that the shoe's on the other foot, if you'll excuse my choice of metaphor, I feel the same way.' I don't think he heard me. His belly was 133 full, but he was going to have to stand up again and walk, and he was too busy dreading it to debate with me. As we pushed back our chairs and got up, the daughter appeared in the arch and spoke, and I asked Wolfe, 'What did she say?' 'Sretan put.' 'Please spell it.' He did so. 'What does it mean?' 'Happy going.' 'How do I say, 'The going will be happier if you come along5?' 'You don't.' He was on his way to the door. Not wanting to be rude, I crossed to the daughter and offered a hand, and she took it. Hers was nice and firm. For one little flash she raised her eyes to mine and then dropped them again. 'Roses are red,' I said distinctly, 'violets are blue, sugar is sweet, and so are you.' I gave her hand a gentle squeeze and tore myself away. Out in the yard I found Wolfe standing with his arms folded and his lips compressed, glaring at a vehicle that deserved it. The horse wasn't so bad -- undersized, nearer a pony than a horse, but in good shape -- but the cart it was hitched to was nothing but a big wooden box on two ironrimmed wheels. Wolfe turned to me. 134 T 'He says,' he said bitterly, 'that he put hay in it to sit on.' I nodded. 'You'd never reach Rijeka alive.' I went and got the knapsacks and our sweaters and jackets, and my socks from the bush. 'It's only a little over a mile, isn't it? Let's go.' 135 FR1;Chapter 8 To build Rijeka all they had to do was knock off chunks of rock, roll them down to the edge of the valley, stack them in rectangles, and top the rectangles with thatched roofs; and that was all they had done, about the time Columbus started across the Atlantic to find India. Mud from the April rains was a foot deep in the one street, but there was a raised sidewalk of flat stones on either side. As we proceeded along it, single file, Wolfe in the lead, I got an impression that we were not welcome. I caught glimpses of human forms ahead, one or two on the sidewalk, a couple of children running along the top of a low stone wall, a woman in a yard with a broom, but they all disappeared before we reached them. There weren't even any faces at windows as we went by. I asked Wolfe's back, 'What have we got, fleas?' He stopped and turned. 'No. They have. 136 The sap has been sucked out of their spines. Pfui.' He went on. A little beyond the center of the village he left the walk to turn right through a gap in a stone wall into a yard. The house was set back a little farther than most of them? and was a little wider and higher. The door was arched at the top, with fancy carvings up the sides. Wolfe raised a fist to knock, but before his knuckles touched, the door swung open and a man confronted us. Wolfe asked him, 'Are you George Bilic?' 'I am.' He was a low bass. 'And you?' 'My name is unimportant, but you may have it. I am Tone Stara, and this is my son Alex. You own an automobile, and we wish to be driven to Podgorica. We will pay a proper amount.' Bilic's eyes narrowed. 'I know of no place called Podgorica.' 'You call it Titograd. I am not yet satisfied with the change, though I may be. My son and I are preparing to commit our sympathy and our resources. Of you we require merely a service for pay. I am willing to call it Titograd as a special favor to you.' 'Where are you from and how did you get here?' 'That's our affair. You need merely to 137 know that we will pay two thousand dinars to be driven twenty-three kilometers -- or six American dollars, if you prefer them.' Bilic's narrow eyes in his round puffy face got narrower. 'I do not prefer American dollars and I don't like such an ugly suggestion. How do you know I own an automobile?'
'That is known to everyone. Do you deny it?' 'No. But there's something wrong with it. A thing on the engine is broken, and it won't go.' 'My son Alex will make it go. He's an expert.' Bilic shook his head. 'I couldn't allow that. He might damage it permanently.' 'You're quite right.' Wolfe was sympathetic. 'We are strangers to you. But I also know that you have a telephone, and you have kept us standing too long outside your door. We will enter and go with you to the telephone, and you will make a call to Belgrade, for which we will pay. You will get the Ministry of the Interior. Room Nineteen, and you will ask if it is desirable for you to cooperate with a man who calls himself Tone Stara -- describing me, of course. And you will do this at once, for I am beginning to get a little impatient.' 138 Wolfe's bluff wasn't as screwy as it sounds. From what Telesio had told him, he knew that Bilic would take no risk either of offending a stranger who might be connected with the secret police, or calling himself to the attention of headquarters in Belgrade by phoning to ask a dumb question. The bluff not only worked; it produced an effect which seemed to me entirely out of proportion when Wolfe told me later what he had said. Bilic suddenly went as pale as if all his blood had squirted out under his toenails. Simultaneously he tried to smile, and the combination wasn't attractive. 'I beg your pardon, sir,' he said in a different tone, backing up a step and bowing. 'I'm sure you'll understand that it is necessary to be careful. Come in and sit down, and we'll have some wine.' 'We haven't time.' Wolfe was curt. 'You will telephone at once.' 'It would be ridiculous to telephone.' Bilic was doing his best to smile. 'After all, you merely wish to be driven to Titograd, which is natural and proper. Won't you come in?' 'No. We're in a hurry.' 'Very well. I know what it is to be in a hurry, I assure you.' He turned and shouted, 'Jube!' 139 He might just as well have whispered it, since Jube had obviously been lurking not more than ten feet away. He came through a curtained arch -- a tall and bony youth, maybe eighteen, in a blue shirt with open collar, and blue jeans he could have got from Sears Roebuck. 'My son is on vacation from the university,' Bilic informed us. 'He returns tomorrow to learn how to do his part in perfecting the Socialist Alliance of the Working People of Yugoslavia under the leadership of our great and beloved President. Jube, this is Mr. Tone Stara and his son Alex. They wish to be driven to Titograd, and you will --' 'I heard what was said. I think you should telephone the Ministry in Belgrade.' Jube was a complication that Telesio hadn't mentioned. I didn't like him. To get his contribution verbatim I would have to wait until Wolfe reported, but his tone was nasty, and I caught the Yugoslav sounds for 'telephone' and 'Belgrade,' so I had the idea. It seemed to me that Jube could do with a little guidance from an elder, and luckily his father felt the same way about it. 'As I have told you, my son,' Bilic said sternly, 'the day may have come for you to do your own thinking, but not mine. I think these gentlemen should be conveyed 140 to Titograd in my automobile, and, since I have other things to do, I think you should drive them. If you regard yourself as sufficiently mature to ignore what I think, we can discuss the matter later in private, but I hereby instruct you to drive Mr. Stara and his son to Titograd. Do you intend to follow my instruction?' They exchanged gazes. Bilic won. Jube's eyes fell, and he muttered, 'Yes.' 'That is not a proper reply to your father.'
'Yes, sir.' 'Good. Go and start the engine.' The boy went. I shelled out some Yugoslav currency. Bilic explained that the car would have to leave the village by way of the lane in the rear, on higher ground than the street, which the mud made impassable, and conducted us through the house and out the back door. If he had more family than Jube, it kept out of sight. The grounds back of the house were neat, with thick grass and flowerbeds. A walk of flat stones took us to a stone building, and as we approached, a car backed out of it to the right, with Jube at the wheel. I stared at it in astonishment. It was a 1953 Ford sedan. Then I remembered an item of the briefing Wolfe
