knowledge the correct translation of the rank was “lieutenant,” like an army rank, but he didn’t feel certain enough of his facts to use it. He preferred at least to pay his host the compliment of attempting to pronounce his Czechoslovak title.
The elderly countryman behind the desk took his broad behind off the office chair, and rose to straddle the floor like a farmer his lands.
“Come in, come in! Yes, I’m Ondrejov.” The younger man who had been sitting on the rear corner of the desk rose, flicked an eyebrow at his superior, intercepted and recorded the answering twitch of the grey, bushy head, and walked away into the inner room, closing the door gently after him. “Please, Miss Barber, take this chair. Miss Mather? Be seated, please! And you are Mr. Felse? Yes, we were waiting for you. It was good of you, it was right, to notify us at once.”
He might have been sixty, or five years less or more, there was no dating him. He had probably looked much the same for ten years, and wouldn’t change for twenty more. Grey at fifty, and still sporting curly, crisp grey hair at eighty-five. No, ninety, he looked remarkably durable. He was not the long, rangy Slovak shape, with great, elegant, shapely bones, but short and sturdy and running to flesh, broad-beamed and broad-breasted, broad-cheeked and wide-eyed, broad-jowled and stubble-chinned, with a bright, beery face. Perhaps of mixed blood, the most inscrutable product in the country, looking now Czech, now Slovak, almost at will. In the high-coloured face the blue, bright, knowing eyes were clear as sapphires, and limpid as spring-water. He was in his shirt-sleeves, his tie comfortably loosened round a bull-neck. Dominic felt better; this was what Mirek Zachar, of fond memory, would have called a “country uncle.” He warned himself vainly that what he felt might be only a false security. He was so tired that it would be dangerous to relax.
“We were grateful for your call. You may rest assured that everything is in hand. Now, naturally, I should like to hear the story directly from you. Please, Mr. Felse! You may speak quite freely. For the moment this is not official.” He smiled benevolently into Dominic’s tired, drawn face. “You are wondering about my English. It is not so strange. People of my generation here learned English because we had relatives in England or in America. In America especially. We learned English in the hope of going there some day to join them. I was there for five years, before the war, and now I keep up my English from books. My children have forgotten it, my grandchildren do not learn it. They speak excellent Russian, and I am out of date. Times change. It is not matter for regret, only for interest. But I like to use my assets. You need not be afraid that I shall not understand you. Please, speak!”
They were as tongue-tied, after that, as if they had really been confronted with the grim, smooth police official of cold-war fiction, and a good deal more at a loss. Nevertheless, Dominic set to work and ploughed his way doggedly through their agreed story, disliking it more with every word, but making a good job of it.
“Miss Barber and I were out for a walk this evening, after dinner. We ate rather early, I think it must have been about twenty minutes to eight when we went out. We took the road up the valley, and when we got near that small chapel on the hillside there we thought we’d go up and have a look at it.”
Lieutenant Ondrejov, a model listener, did not once interrupt, not even with an intelligent and helpful question, but neither did he leave the narration to plod along unencouraged. His round, good-humoured face was encouragement itself, he helped the story along with an occasional sympathetic nod of understanding. They could hardly expect much excitement from him, since he knew already the crucial fact of the murder; but no one could complain that he wasn’t responsive. At the end of it he leaned back in his chair with a gusty sigh, and looked from one to another of them thoughtfully, scrubbing at his bristly chin with thick, adroit finger-tips.
“I understand, yes. You went up the valley together, you and Miss Barber?”
“Yes,” said Tossa gruffly, lifting the lie from Dominic’s shoulders this time. It was the first time Ondrejov had heard that odd, touching little voice of hers, and it made him cock an eye at her with twinkling interest, his grey head on one side.
“And you were together when you heard the shot, and entered the chapel?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me, did you know this man at all? The dead man?”
“Not know him, exactly. But we’d seen him once before,” said Dominic firmly, “when we were driving through into Slovakia.”
“In the hotel at Zilina?” suggested Ondrejov affably.
Four hearts lurched sickeningly towards churning stomachs. He had tugged the ground out from under them like a mat, and the fall, though they sat still and kept their faces obstinately blank, knocked the breath out of them, and the invention with it. He was guessing, with preternatural accuracy, but guessing. He
“In a hotel somewhere on the way,” said Dominic. “We came through so many places, I forget names.”
Ondrejov leaned over his desk and wagged a finger at them admonishingly. “Children, children, never try to deceive the old ones. It may be a long time since they were boys, but they have had two refresher courses with their sons and grandsons, and that is much more dangerous. Now, do you want to tell me anything more? Or to think again about what you have already told me?”
Dominic said: “No!” for all of them. What else was there to say? However disastrously, they were committed now.
“Good! Then let us see if we can contribute something, too.” He tilted his chair back, and reached behind him to turn the handle of the inner door. “
Into the room, as fresh and pink and blond as ever, walked Miroslav Zachar, and took up station solidly at his chief’s left elbow, confronting with a heightened colour but a placid and purposeful face his four erstwhile friends.
“Mirek,” said Ondrejov heartily, slapping the young man resoundingly on the back, “I think you should explain to our young guests exactly what you are doing here. Tell them everything, we have nothing to hide from them.”
“I am here,” said Mirek simply, “because I discovered the body of Robert Welland this evening. I reported it by telephone from the nearest connected house, which happens to be over the north wall there, in another valley—you would not know the path. Then I waited with the body until the detail came out there, and returned here to report fully in person.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Ondrejov, “it would help if you explained in full your connection with the affairs of these young people, and how you came to be on the scene tonight. From the beginning!”
“Certainly!” He looked from face to face round the four of them, looked them all fully and firmly in the eyes.
