The Piper on the Mountain

alter?” Where would have been the point? All their lies were already demolished, and to think up new ones now would be worse than useless. They were silent, watching him with closed faces and apprehensive eyes. “In that case you must see my predicament. And you should also take into consideration the fact that as yet the cartridge- shell has not been found, and since the bullet is still embedded in the dead man’s skull, and only an autopsy can recover it for examination, so far as we know up to now it could as well be from a pistol as a rifle. Couldn’t it?”

Tossa was the last to see where he was leading her. She stared from behind these serried facts as through bars, and shook her head helplessly, trying to shake away the sense of nightmare that oppressed her.

“None of us has a gun, or ever had one,” said Dominic quickly and quietly. “Certainly Tossa couldn’t have had one on her last night. I was following her every step of the way.”

“But at a safe distance. And certainly is a large word. A small pistol is not so difficult to conceal.”

“She was never out of my sight for more than a few seconds.”

“The few seconds when the shot was fired.”

“But this is fantastic!” cried Toddy wildly. “For God’s sake, how could she cart a gun about with her without my sister seeing it, sooner or later? How could she get it into the country?”

“Oh, come, Mr. Mather! Are you really suggesting our frontier staff are so thorough? Did they even open your cases at Rozvadov?”

Tossa put up her hands wonderingly, and touched her throbbing temples and drawn cheeks as though to satisfy herself that she was still in her own day-to-day flesh, and not astray in a bewildering and terrifying dream.

“But I’ve never even touched a gun, not once in my life. If you really believe I had one, then where is it now? What did I do with it?” Her voice was so heavy that she could hardly lift the syllables. Like her eyelids, like her heart.

“Ah, that is an open question. The obvious thing to do with it would be to toss it out of the window immediately. But the valley is large enough, and the dusk by then was deep enough, to make it a very open question indeed. So no doubt you will realise, my dear Miss Barber, why I am obliged to keep you, for the present, in custody.”

The next ten minutes were confused, noisy and angry. Tossa sat mute and numb in the middle of the storm, too tired to distinguish voices any more, too disoriented to know friend from foe, too deeply aware of having lied, and forced Dominic to lie, to put up any fight for her own liberty. Christine had an arm clasped tightly about her shoulders, and was adding a soprano descant to Toddy’s spirited impersonation of an Englishman at bay. Toddy raved about police states, conspiracies and frame-ups, and threatened everything from diplomatic intervention to gunboats. In the heart of her desperate confusion and solitude Tossa remembered inconsequently that Czechoslovakia had no coastline, and laughed, genuinely laughed, but no one noticed except, perhaps, Ondrejov, who noticed everything, whether he acknowledged it or not. He looked like a good-humoured, clever peasant, and he sat here behind his desk manipulating them all. She suspected that he was very much enjoying Toddy. There couldn’t be much theatre in Liptovsky Pavol.

“Now, now, my dear boy, I guarantee that Miss Barber shall be well treated, and we’ll take every care of her. And since it’s too late now for the rest of you to think of going back to Zbojska Dolina to-night, I’ll make arrangements for beds for all of you, and we’ll call the hut and tell the Martineks you’re staying here.”

“That isn’t good enough! You know very well that you’ve no right to detain Miss Barber. As the person in charge of this case, you will be held responsible.”

Pale with rage, Toddy stood between Tossa and her captors, his nostrils pinched and blue with desperation, as gallant as he was ineffective. Dominic, deep sunk in his own silence and doubt, stared hard at Ondrejov, and wished he could read his mind, but it was impenetrable. Did he really suspect Tossa? Or had he quite another motive for this move? He swung in an agony of indecision between two opinions. The one thing of which he was in no doubt at all was that it was his job to get Tossa out of this. Toddy could make as much fuss and noise as he liked, it wouldn’t be done that way. If Ondrejov had been what Toddy claimed he was, he would have laid Toddy flat long before this. And let no one think he couldn’t do it single-handed, as old as he was!

“In charge? I in charge of the case?” Ondrejov’s blue, bright eyes widened as guilelessly as a child’s. “You think such cases as this are left to the uniformed branch here? No, no, I am waiting at this moment for the plain-clothes people to arrive from Bratislava. I am responsible to them. That is why I am compelled to hold you available, you see, my field of action is strictly limited. The men from Scotland Yard,” he said, pleased with this flight of fancy, “will be here in a matter of a few hours. You may put your objections and make your statements to them.”

“Then at least,” said Toddy valiantly, hunted into a corner but still game, “I demand that the British Embassy in Prague shall be contacted at once, and informed that Miss Barber is being held on suspicion.”

“The British Embassy,” said Ondrejov, dwelling upon the luscious syllables with sensuous pleasure, “has already been informed. As a matter of courtesy, you understand, Mr. Welland being a British national and a member of their staff. They will also be informed that Miss Barber is here, and may be held on suspicion of murder. By to- morrow morning, no doubt, someone will be flying in to take care of her interests, and I can assure you I shall make no objections.”

They fell back and studied him afresh in silence, with something of the embarrassment of people who have flung their full weight against an unlatched door and fallen flat on their faces, but with a residue of distrust, too. Did he mean it? It appeared that he did, for he wasn’t even troubling to lay any great emphasis on the correctness of his proceedings; but what he intended should follow from them was another matter. Perhaps he was simply covering himself, and making sure that all the awkward decisions should be left to his superiors, when they came. That was human and credible enough, in any country, in any force.

“When it comes to the point,” said Dominic, on the heels of the dubious silence, “Tossa has nothing to be afraid of.” He was curiously in doubt, himself, whether he was speaking for her or for Ondrejov. “As soon as the bullet’s recovered it will clear her completely. Because it will be a rifle bullet.”

“Now that,” said Ondrejov, fixing him with a bright and calculating eye, “is a sensible observation. To-morrow,” he went on briskly, dropping the pretence of harmlessness as blithely as he would have dropped a cigarette-end, “I suggest you may all prefer to move to the hotel here, and remain near Miss Barber. When you have satisfied yourselves that there are people present to take care of her interests, perhaps you, Mr. Felse…” The blue eye dissected him again, with analytical detachment and interest. “… will be so good as to drive your van back to Zbojska Dolina to settle the bill and collect your luggage.”

He still sounded like a country uncle, but one you wouldn’t care to fool with; and there was no mistaking that this was an order.