The Piper on the Mountain

and with the finger-tips of his right hand he felt along the rear edge of it, running his nails deep into the crevice. Two-thirds of the way along, something rustled and stirred, dislodged a centimetre from its place. A corner of something white showed beneath the shelf. He edged it gingerly lower, and drew out a long slip of paper, carefully folded to be narrower than the thickness of the shelf, and perfectly invisible when inserted behind it.

And there it was in his hand, when he had unfolded it; four columns of figures, headed by initials, broken by periodical tottings-up, the score of an unknown card game. Nothing at all odd about it that he could see, until he realised that it was scribbled on good-quality manuscript music paper, and suddenly holding it up to the light, found the upper half of an English firm’s water-mark glowing at him from the close texture.

Even then it took him a full minute to think of turning it over. On the other side was noted down, in slashing strokes by a ball pen, a few bars of music, that rushed across the paper impetuously, only to be scored through impatiently a moment later, and left hanging upon an unresolved chord. Dominic hadn’t worked very hard at his piano lessons when he should have done, but he could decypher enough of this to see that it was the opening of what seemed to be a rather sombre prelude for piano. Maybe a nocturne; or maybe he was merely rationalising from the few lines of verse that were scrawled above the abortive essay, in a passionate hand and in good English:

Come, shadow of mine end, and shape of rest,

And like to death, shine through this black-faced night.

Come thou, and charm these rebels in my breast,

Whose raving fancies do my mind affright.

Dominic stood staring at it for a moment, recognising Dowland, and frozen to a stillness of pure wonder at finding him here in this vehement and impersonal landscape; those poignant, piercing words of loneliness among these aloof and unmoved mountain outlines startled like frost at midsummer.

Then, without stopping to reason or doubt, he marched out of the room with the wisp of paper in his hand, and straight to the room the girls shared. Tossa was feverishly writing her postcard there, to have something to show for her absence. She looked up at him warily and coldly, as at an enemy. Whoever pursued her now was her enemy, and must simply be prepared for the hurt, and contain it, and go on doggedly, if he wanted to help her. Dominic laid the slip of paper on the table in front of her, and said in a flat, detached voice:

“I think this may be what you were looking for.”

Chapter 5

THE MAN ON THE SKYLINE

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She gave him one flaring glance, bright and tense at the edge of panic, and then dropped her gaze to the torn half-sheet of paper, and sat staring at it with painful concentration for a long minute. Once she read through the few scrawled lines of verse and scanned the twenty bars of music without taking in a word or a note. The second time, frowning fiercely, she grasped at least the sense of the words, and in a moment she turned the page, and surveyed the columns of figures. With no change in her expression she looked up at Dominic, and stared him fairly and squarely in the eye.

He expected her to say flatly: “What is this, a joke? I wasn’t looking for anything, except the map. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” For a moment, indeed, she had intended to do just that, but when he stared back at her with that intent and sombre face, waiting for her to lie to him, and disturbed and disappointed in advance, she found that she couldn’t do it. What was the use, anyhow, if she couldn’t be convincing? She couldn’t guess what he knew, but it was enough to make him quite sure of himself. She hadn’t been aware of pursuit until now, and suddenly it seemed as if she had been running to evade him ever since they left England.

“Thank you!” she said, and with a deliberation somewhat spoiled by the unsteadiness of her fingers she folded the paper away into her writing-case. She waited, and there was silence, but he didn’t go away and accept his dismissal; she had never thought he would. “Now I suppose you’re going to ask me why I was looking for it, and what it is?”

“I know what it is,” said Dominic bluntly. “It’s the paper Ivo Martinek happened to have in his pocket the day your stepfather watched him and his friends playing cards in the Hotel Sokolie. He used it to keep the score on. And I know why you were looking for it. Because your stepfather picked it up afterwards in curiosity, and got so excited about it he left the lake and came over here, to find out more about it. Where it had come from, or who owned it, or who wrote those few lines of ‘Come Heavy Sleep’ on it, and the few bars of music. Not Ivo, that’s certain, but somebody Ivo rubs shoulders with pretty casually. Or was it that he knew who was involved, as soon as he saw the handwriting?”

Tossa closed her writing-case with a slam. “Have you been spying on me long?” she asked in a viciously sweet tone.

It didn’t hurt as much as he’d expected, because he was ready for it; he knew how she felt, and was even disposed to be on her side. He couldn’t afford to stand on his dignity, since he’d kicked it from under him, perforce, the moment Tossa’s safety and well-being became more important.

“Quite a time, ever since Siegburg, when you first gave yourself away. Call it spying if you want to, I don’t mind. I don’t care what you call it, or how badly you think of me for it, just as long as it’s effective when the pinch comes. Because if you can’t see that you’re running head-down into trouble,” he said urgently, “for God’s sake wake up! Whatever you’ve got on your mind, quit trying to carry it alone. What do you think friends are for?”

“I can’t tell you anything,” she said defensively, shaken by the warmth of his tone.

“All right, I’m not asking you to, not yet. I’ll tell you, instead. Ever since your stepfather got killed, you’ve been steering us steadily towards this place. First you suggested a carnet for the van, then Czech visas, then at Siegburg you started talking about coming straight into Slovakia, here, to the Tatras. That was when I began to get the idea, and after that it wasn’t so hard to follow up the later developments. Suddenly you knew about a wonderful little place in Zbojska Dolina, that you’d never mentioned before. And when we were here, you took us off the path up the valley, just at the right place to locate the spot where Terrell fell and was killed. I know, I asked Dana, last night, and she told me just what she’d told you. And then you suggested a trip over into the High Tatras, and took us straight to the right resort, the one where Terrell was staying before he moved here, and even to the right hotel. And that’s something you didn’t get from Dana, because she said she didn’t know, and I believe her. But you know. You had it from somebody else, before we ever came here.”

“Dana must have known,” Tossa said involuntarily. “It was her brother who…” She caught herself up too late, jerking her head aside to evade his eyes.

“Who was there playing cards in the Hotel Sokolie, and left behind that bit of paper? Yes, evidently Terrell noticed him, all right, but that doesn’t prove he ever noticed Terrell. He was with three friends, drinking coffee and