The Piper on the Mountain

“We go,” said Tossa, faintly but finally. “We have to, I do see that. We owe it to him and to them. Only I can’t tell everything. I can’t tell about the Institute, or anything that’s mixed up with security. You may be right about the police, Dom, they may be absolutely on the level. Only I’m bound, don’t you see that? I’m not entitled to take any risks, it isn’t for me to judge.”

“You can tell them about the shooting,” urged Christine, “without mentioning the background. You could say you went up the valley for a walk after dinner, and heard the shot, and found him in there. There’s no need to say you went there to meet him.”

“That’s it! You’d be giving them everything that could possibly help them over Welland’s murder. If they’re genuinely interested in solving it,” said Toddy sceptically, “though that’s a laugh, if ever I heard one. You were out together, you two, you blundered into it without meaning to. That’s all you need say.”

“Even just to cover ourselves,” admitted Christine, frowning over the perilous tangle that confronted them, “we’d have to go that far. But there’s no need to go any further. What are we supposed to do, go there and say: ‘Please, some of your confidential agents have wiped out two of ours because they got too near to something hot. Do something about it!’? I like to think I’m honest, but my God, I don’t take it to those lengths!”

“And supposing there’s nothing whatever official or approved about this murder?” demanded Dominic. “Supposing it’s a completely private act, and the police are just as interested in catching the criminal as you are. You think it’ll make no difference to their chances, our keeping back nine-tenths of the facts?”

“You can’t,” protested Toddy savagely, “be as simple as you’re acting!”

“Wish I could say the same for you, but apparently you can. All right, we can’t drag the Institute into it, but we could still tell the truth about to-night, we could still say he telephoned Tossa and asked her to meet him, we could even say why—that she didn’t feel satisfied about her stepfather’s death, and came here to see for herself, and Mr. Welland was in her confidence and wanted to help her. Half of which,” said Dominic, scrubbing at his tired forehead, still pallid with dust from the white-washed wall of the chapel, “they’ll know already, and if you doubt that you’re even simpler than I thought. But make up your minds, and let’s get going. I’m for telling as much of the truth as we can.”

“And I’m for using our gumption and telling as little as possible.” Toddy set his jaw obstinately. “Didn’t you hear, there are plans of secret work involved, valuable stuff, dangerous stuff. Of course it’s no private murder. You just heard the shot, and went in and found him. For God’s sake, whose side are you on?”

“Christine?” appealed Dominic, ignoring that.

“I’m with Toddy,” said Christine, roused and belligerent. “Let’s face it, we’re in enemy territory over this, we can’t co-operate.”

Dominic looked down at Tossa’s tormented face, and gently touched her hand. “It’s up to you, Tossa. Whatever you say, I’ll go along with.”

She shook her head helplessly, and didn’t look up; after a moment she said huskily: “I can’t! I’d like to. I’d much rather, but I can’t. I’m with them, Dominic.”

“All right, we’ll do it that way.” He looked at Toddy, who alone had enough German to be sure of communicating, where none of them had Slovak, and English was somewhat less common an accomplishment than in Prague. “Will you telephone, please, Tod? You’ll have to ask Dana which is the right place to call, but all you have to get over is that we’re reporting a death, and where they’ll find him, and that we’re coming in with our statements. We shall have to, so why not now? Find out where we should check in, and I’ll be getting the van out.”

Liptovsky Pavol, St.-Paul-in-Liptov, turned out to be a small town of perhaps five short streets, all of them converging on the vast cobbled square in front of the church. Two of the streets, which were a yard or so wider than the others, conducted the main road in and out of this imposing open space, which in fact was not a square at all, but a long wedge-shape, inadequately lit, completely deserted except for two or three parked Skodas and an ingenious homemade body on a wartime Volkswagen chassis, and scalloped on both long sides with deep arcades, beneath which the van’s lights fingered out the glass of shop windows. The short side of the wedge was the municipal buildings, the only twentieth-century block in sight; and in the rear quarters of this town hall there were two rooms which did duty as the police office for the sub-district.

It was past ten o’clock by the time they found it, and locked the van on the cobbles outside; but they were not surprised to see the door open and the lights on inside the dingy passage-way, since their telephone call would obviously have alerted the local force, and presumably sent someone clambering and cursing out to the chapel in Zbojska Dolina long before this. In such a quiet little place the police office would surely be closed and abandoned around five o’clock, at normal times.

They had agreed on the way that Dominic was to do the talking. Of the two who had been on the scene, presumably the Slovaks would expect the man to act as spokesman, the girl to confirm what he said. Even such small points affect one’s chance of being believed without question.

The passage was vaulted, with peeling plaster, and belonged to some older building, now largely replaced. There was an open door at one side of it, and a steep wooden staircase within. Dominic climbed it slowly, his throat dry and constricted, every step carrying him deeper into a strange land. What if Toddy was right? What if the damned cold war was still almost at freezing point, and he was in enemy territory? He had felt nothing but friends round him here, but suddenly he was a little afraid. “He speaks English,” Toddy had reported, coming back confounded from his telephone call. “Good English!” It had frightened Toddy more than anything else, when it ought to have reassured him and made things easier; and it was frightening Dominic now. With an interpreter you have also a protective barrier, you can plead misunderstanding, you can be inarticulate and still credible. With this man he was deprived of any insulation. But at least he was warned.

“Pod’te d’alej!” said a leisurely, rumbling bass voice, in reply to his tentative knock on the door at the top of the stairs. And next, in the same easy tone: “Come in, please!”

He spoke excellent English, almost unaccented. Learned from records? Certainly not only from the book.

Dominic opened the door and went in, the other three filing closely behind him. Toddy closed the door after them. The room was small, twelve by twelve at most, and bare, furnished with a couple of chairs in front of the desk, and two more behind, a battered typewriter, two tall, narrow filing cabinets, and a small, iron stove. The walls were painted a dull cream, and scaling here and there. Behind the desk somebody had used the wall as a convenient tablet for notes, calculations, and pencilled doodlings, perhaps while hanging on the telephone, or filling in very dull duty hours with nothing to do. It would be very surprising indeed if there was much crime in Liptovsky Pavol.

“Nadporucik Ondrejov?” asked Dominic with aching care. To the best of his