He did not, therefore, linger to take another quick glance into the hall, or he might have seen the waiter shut himself firmly into the telephone box and begin dialling a number. But even if he had been within earshot he would not have learned much, for it was not in English that the English-speaking waiter began:
“I am speaking from the Hotel Sokolie. Comrade Lieutenant, I think you should know that there is a young English lady here who is asking many questions about the dead man Terrell.”
They drove back to the Riavka at last, drugged with mountain air and bemused with splendour. Even though the highest leap of the funicular to Lomnice Peak had been out of commission—as it so often is by reason of its extreme height and free cable—they would never forget the bleached, pure, bony world of the Rocky Lake, half-way up, and the far-away, sunlit view of the valley five thousand feet below them, or the steely, shoreless waters of the lake with the clouds afloat on their surface, incredibly clear and still in a bowl of scoured rock, its couloirs and crevices outlined in permanent snow. The mirror of winter in the dazzling sunlight of summer remained with them, a picture fixed and brilliant in the mind’s eye, all the way home.
Tossa had taken a great many photographs, and talked rather more than usual. The twins had hopes of her. The time would come, they felt, when they would even cease to think of her instinctively as “poor Tossa!” After all, with a mother like she had, she’d be doing extremely well if she managed to be normal at twenty. Even better, Dominic showed distinct signs of being interested, which was exactly what Christine, at least, had had in mind. And what a day! The stone-pure, sunlit, withering summits, and then this soft but lofty valley to cradle them at the sleepy end of it!
“I have to write to my mother,” said Tossa resignedly, over dinner. “At least a postcard, otherwise there’ll be trouble. Stick around, I won’t be long.”
Whatever she did now, whether she went or stayed, talked or was silent, Dominic couldn’t help finding some hidden significance in it. He was uneasy in her presence, but he had no peace at all when she was absent. After a few minutes he left the others in the dining-room, and went out to the bar to buy stamps. That, at least, was his excuse; what he really wanted was to be where he could keep a silent and unobtrusive guard on Tossa.
He could not quite bring himself to follow her upstairs; things hadn’t reached that pass yet. But from the bar, with the door standing wide open on the scrubbed pine hall, he would hear her if she called. Crazy, he fretted, to be thinking in such terms; and yet she was certainly meddling in something which was of grave concern to other and unknown people, and they were all these miles from home, in territory the orthodox Briton still considered to be inimical.
Dana turned from her array of bottles behind the bar, and gave him his stamps. She looked at him in a curiously thoughtful way, as if debating what to do about him. He was turning away when she said suddenly: “Dominic!”
“Yes?” He turned back to her, shaken abruptly by the recollection that she and her family were directly involved in this mystery of Terrell’s death. Her brother, that tough, stocky young forester, burned to dull gold by the yellowing mountain sun, was the man who had kept the score in the card game at the Hotel Sokolie, and left behind him, apparently quite light-heartedly, a scrap of paper which had drawn Terrell here to his death.
“I do not know,” said Dana very gravely, “what it is that is troubling Miss Barber, but I think I should perhaps tell you that to-day she thought of one more question to ask me.”
“Since we came home?” His choice of phrase astonished him, yet it had come quite naturally; he couldn’t think of any people in Europe with whom he’d felt so quickly at home, if it hadn’t been for this distorted shadow in the background.
“Yes, since then. She asked me which room Mr. Terrell occupied while he was staying here.” Her eyes were searching his face closely; he felt almost transparent before that straight, wide glance.
“And which room
“The one in which you and your friend are sleeping,” said Dana.
He had a feeling that she knew exactly what he was going to do, and that there was no point whatever in attempting to dissemble it or postpone it. He said: “Thank you!” quite simply, not even defiantly, and walked out of the bar and straight up the stairs. The pale, scented treads creaked; she would know every step he took. Tossa, very busy upstairs, might hear the ascending footsteps, but would not recognise them; he was only too well aware that she hadn’t had any attention to spare for learning things about him. None the less, he approached his own bedroom door very softly, and turned the handle with extreme care, pushing the door open before him suddenly but silently.
Tossa, on her knees at the chest of drawers, the bottom drawer open before her, brushed the lining paper flat and shoved the drawer to in one smooth movement, swinging to face him with huge eyes wary and challenging. He saw in the braced lines of her face excitement and consternation, but no fear, and that frightened him more than anything. Then she saw who it was who had walked in upon her search, and something happened to her courage. It was not, perhaps, fear that invaded her roused readiness, but a trace of shame and embarrassment, and a faint, formidable glimmer of anger.
“Oh, it’s you!” she said, too brightly. “Maybe you know where Toddy’s put the big map. I thought it was here somewhere. I couldn’t remember how to spell some of the names.” Her breathing wasn’t quite in control, but the solid, sensible note was admirable, all the same.
“It’s still in the van,” said Dominic, in a tone to match hers.
She got up and dusted her knees, unnecessarily, for the floor was spotless and highly waxed. “Damn! It would be. Where’s the road map, then, the pocket one?”
There was no way past that solid front. He found the map for her, and let her walk out with it, and with all the honours. But when she was gone he closed the door carefully, and took the room to pieces. For whatever it was she was looking for—and he was reasonably sure of the answer to that—she certainly hadn’t yet had time to find it. If, of course, it was here at all. And if it was, he wasn’t going to miss it.
Nothing under the linings of the drawers; she’d reached the last one, no need to look there again. Nothing under the rugs; the crevices between the pine boards were sealed closely and impermeably. No chimney, of course, except the stack of the tiled stove in the corner. He explored the accessible area inside the metal door, and found nothing. Nothing under the pelmet of the heavy curtains. Nothing in the huge, built-in wardrobe; he examined every hanger, every board of the floor. One side of it was for hanging clothes, the other had six shelves, ingeniously and improbably filled with Toddy’s few belongings. Dominic stood and looked at them glumly for a moment, and then began at the top one, and tested them all to see how tightly and immovably they fitted.
The third shelf, just at shoulder-level, stirred ever so slightly in its place.
With his left hand he eased it carefully out as far as it would go, no more than a fraction of a fraction of an inch,
