The Piper on the Mountain

with the gun, whatever his powers as a shot, had just demonstrated that he was still up there on the opposite mountainside, and could not possibly out-run them on their way down to the hut. Behind them they heard the sound of stones rolling, the faint slither of scree. Perhaps the spent bullet had started a minor slide. They didn’t stop to investigate. Hand in hand they ran, untidily, blindly, bruising themselves against rocks, slipping on the glossy grass, until they reached the main path, and settled down to a steady, careful run.

Across the meadows they could race silently, the thick turf swallowing their footsteps; and beyond, through the broken heathland, they relaxed their speed a little, feeling themselves almost safe, almost home.

“Dominic—he didn’t hit you? You’re sure?”

“No, I’m all right, he didn’t hit me. But, Tossa…”

“Yes?”

“We can’t keep quiet now. This is murder. You’ll have to tell everything you know.”

“I can’t! You don’t understand.”

“You’ll have to tell how this happened. If you don’t I shall. And it was to him you promised not to tell anything—wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said faintly. They were in the darkness of the forest now, above the brook, and they had to go gently, partly because they found themselves suddenly very tired and unsteady, partly because the path was narrow and the night deeper here. He folded his arm about her, and they moved together, warmly supporting each other.

“He’s dead, Tossa. It’s for him you have to tell the truth, now. That releases you.”

“No,” she said, shivering. “You don’t understand. I’ll tell you, but I can’t tell people here. I can’t! You’ll see that I can’t.”

“Never mind, don’t worry now. Let’s get home and find the twins. We’ll talk it over, we’ll see how best to handle it.”

Touching each other in the darkness, holding fast to each other where the path was tricky, confounded them almost more than their momentary head-on encounter with death. They were close to the deep green basin where the hut lay; the lighted windows shone upon them through the trees. Hand in hand they stumbled across the open grass towards the door of the bar.

Chapter 7

THE MAN WHO WASN’T IN CHARGE

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The first look at their soiled and shaken faces effectively cut off all questions and exclamations, shocking the twins into silence. The significant jerk of Dominic’s head drew them after him up the stairs, unresisting, to an urgent council of war.

In the girls’ bedroom, secure from surprise at the far end of a creaky wooden corridor, Tossa sat down on her bed and unburdened herself of the whole story at last: how she had blundered into the affair by accident, through reading Robert Welland’s note left for her mother, how he had come back to reclaim it, too late, and made the best of it by telling her everything, and so putting her under the sacred obligation to keep it secret. She told them everything she had learned about Karol Alda, why he must be somewhere here, close at hand, and why it was almost certain that he was a double murderer. The newspaper photograph, the half-sheet of music paper, passed from hand to hand in a stunned silence.

“I believe my stepfather recognised this handwriting as soon as he saw it in the Hotel Sokolie. He must have seen it regularly when they were both at the Marrion Institute, and it was his job not to forget things like that. I think he followed Ivo Martinek over here to look for Alda. I don’t suggest the Martineks know anything much, or even that they’re particularly close to Alda. This place is an inn, the local people do use it, and that piece of paper could easily have been left here some time when Alda was here, maybe sitting over a beer, playing with an idea he had in his mind. He’s a musician, too, it seems he was a very good one. He didn’t get this right. He tore off the false start and left it on the table. Maybe Ivo just picked it up out of curiosity, and felt interested enough to pocket it. Something like that, something quite casual and harmless, because he didn’t think twice about making use of it when he wanted a paper to score their card game, and he didn’t bother to take it away with him afterwards. But it did prove Alda was somewhere in the vicinity of the Martineks, known and accepted there. So my stepfather came to look for him here. And he was killed here, up the valley where we went the first day. Opposite the place where Mr. Welland was killed tonight.”

“And for the same reason,” said Toddy positively, his face sharp with excitement. “Because they both located him! Isn’t it plain? This chap Welland was to try to trace him, and report back to the Institute through the embassy in Prague. And he’d done it! He was in Zilina when we came through, and saw you there, and you tipped him off where he could find you. And three days later he turns up on the telephone, asking you to meet him. He’d found him! He’d been to Prague to send the notification they’d agreed on, and he came back here to keep an eye on events in the meantime. You were a complication.”

“My guess is,” said Christine, gnawing her knuckles furiously, “he was worried about you turning up on the scene. He’d been thinking it over, and he wanted to have a word with you to-night to get you to lay off. Maybe to tell you whatever he knew, as the best way of satisfying you. But certainly to warn you not to start anything.”

“Whatever he had to say to me,” said Tossa, “couldn’t be said over the telephone. Maybe he was going to tell me where Alda was, maybe he wasn’t. What difference does it make now? Whoever killed him was taking no chances. And now what do we do?”

“We report the death,” said Dominic forcibly, “and cooperate with the police.”

Toddy gaped between the fists that clutched his disordered hair. “Are you crazy? Can’t you see this is a hand we’ve got to play against the police? Against the Czech authorities, against every soul round us? Can’t you see there’s a little matter of national security involved? Tossa’s told you, the affair’s top secret, and big enough to kill for. She’s pledged to keep everything to do with the Marrion Institute secret, and that goes for us, too.”

“You’re seeing this as a real-life spy thriller,” said Dominic without heat. “I’m seeing it as a murder. Murder is something I don’t play spy games with. Odd as it may seem to you, I believe that the professional police everywhere are dead against murder, and when they run up against it their instinct is quite simply to try to find out who did it, and get him. If you ask me, do I think that goes in a Communist country, yes, I think it goes in every country, and always will, as long as people are people and professionals are professionals. It’s a queer thing about police—by and large, in spite of a few slip-ups, they don’t like crime. And I come from a police family, and I don’t like it, either. So either we go to the police or I go to the police. Whichever way you like.”