“Good night, Dom! That’s final notice!”
“OK! Pass out, I’ve finished.”
Toddy passed out with the aplomb of an exhausted child. They had had to rise in the middle of the night to drive down to the airport. Dominic, however, lay awake and alert. Toddy might not know where this chap Terrell had got himself killed, but according to Dominic’s pricking thumbs Tossa knew. Tossa knew, and stage by stage she was taking them there, to the very region, to the very spot. What did she know of the Tatras, unless that Terrell had dived to his death somewhere round their granite planes? Why mention them, unless of fixed intent?
Dominic’s father was a C.I.D. Detective-Inspector in a county force on the Welsh borders. Maybe there’s something to police parentage that sets you nosing for mysteries wherever you go. Or maybe there was really something about Tossa’s shuddering anticipation that justifiably set his flesh crawling. Whichever it was, Dominic was a long time falling asleep.
They camped the next night, a little way short of the Czech border, in the beautiful, rolling, forest-and-meadow land of the Palatinate. And in the morning they crossed the frontier.
Waidhaus was quiet, efficient and polite, the Customs house poised on the edge of a sharp dip. Beyond the barrier the road curved away into Czechoslovakia, straightened again, and immediately began to climb; and there before them, on either side all youns the way, were the white buildings of the Czech Customs offices; and drawn up in the roadway on the near side of the barriers were at least a dozen cars, buses and caravans, from which at least fifty people had spilled out to flourish carnets and passports at harassed but amiable Czech officials.
It took them an hour to get through. There were more papers to be dealt with here, passports and visas, the carnet, the insurance document, as well as a polite and good-humoured pretence at examining their baggage, and a genuine scrutiny of the car.
“For the first time,” said Christine approvingly, “I feel as if someone cares whether we’ve arrived or not. It got almost insulting, being waved from one country into another like tossing the morning paper over the gate.”
“Not so cynical as the French,” Toddy allowed judicially, in an undertone, distributing their cleared passports. “Not so disdainfully efficient as the Germans. I like to see officials who sweat over the job, and aren’t past getting excited. That immigration chap took a liking to your passport photograph, Tossa—even showed it to his mate at the other table. Come to look at it,” he admitted, studying it impartially, “it isn’t at all bad.”
“Thank you!” said the saturnine young Czech who had been feigning to examine Tossa’s suitcase, without so much as disarranging the one tissue-wrapped party dress she had popped in at the last moment “in case.”
“Everything is in order. You can proceed.”
They piled eagerly into the van again, Dominic at the wheel. The Customs man signalled to the young soldier who held the chain of the barrier, and up went the pole. Gravely they acknowledged the salutes that ushered them through into a new country, and wormed their way through the congestion of cars and under the quivering pole.
“We’re in!” breathed Christine, staggered to find it so easy.
“No iron curtain, no nothing,” agreed Toddy, astonished in his turn. “A bit like crashing the sound barrier, though.”
The van climbed out of the frontier hollow, between slopes of silver birches, under the distant shadow of the first of many castles, a gaunt ruin on a lush, wooded hill. They were surging merrily into full speed, when a second barrier loomed in sight, barring their road, and a tall wooden watch-tower beside it. The very young soldier on guard there glared with a solemnity beyond his seventeen years, as Dominic slowed to a discreet halt before the bar, and waited dutifully to see what was required of him.
With unshaken gravity the boy lifted a telephone from its stand in the box beside him, and consulted some unknown authority.
“No iron curtain?” whispered Christine, between apprehension and the giggles.
“Shut up, idiot!” hissed Toddy. “He’s only doing his job.”
The boy replaced the telephone with deliberation, walked round them, eyeing the girls with a curiosity that brought the transaction down to a completely human level, and hoisted the pole, motioning them through with only the most austere inclination of his head. He was very young, and took his duties seriously.
They saluted this gateman, too, but apart from a quickening spark in his eye he preserved his motionless dignity. Possibly he treasured the girls, acknowledging his services decorously from the rear windows; but if he did, he wasn’t admitting it. Only when they were well away from him, soaring up the slope, did he suddenly lift one arm above his head, in a wave as impersonal as the hills.
They never even saw it; all their attention was fixed eagerly ahead, as Dominic accelerated happily towards the crest of the rise, among the shimmering birch trees.
A man’s figure rose suddenly and joyously out of the ditch beside the road, and stood on the verge, energetically thumbing them to a standstill. A young, round, glowing face under a sunburst of blond hair beamed at them confidently, and had no doubts whatever of its warm and friendly welcome. A small rucksack swung from the cajoling arm that flagged them down. In the other hand he held a large open sandwich, which he balanced expertly as he ran alongside them and signalled, from ingenuous blue eyes and beaming mouth, his pleasure in having hooked so interesting, so rewarding a ride. The GB plate, the number, the girls, one glance and he had them all weighed up.
Dominic wound the window right down, and said: “Hallo!” As an obvious greeting he didn’t see why it shouldn’t do just as well as any other; but in spite of Tossa’s predictions he was hardly prepared to be addressed promptly and fluently in his own language.
“Good morning!” said the beaming young man, tilting his open sandwich just in time to retrieve a slipping gherkin. “Please excuse that I trouble you, but if you go to Prague, may I ride with you? If you have room?” He knew they had room, he had practically measured their cubic content with that one expert flick of a blond eyelash. “I could be of help, if you do not know the road. To work my passage, I shall be the guide, if you permit?”
Toddy not only permitted; he applauded. He enjoyed driving, but to him navigating was a chore. He cast a glance behind him at the empty road, and was out of the front passenger seat like a greyhound from its trap.
“It’s all yours! Here, give me your rucksack, I’ll stow it in the back with our stuff, and you take this seat.”
“But you are sure? The ladies will not mind if I ride with you? I should not like to be a burden, and some people
