positively know whether he was right or not. And at his request they had showed it to Bunty; and Bunty did know. It was a long time ago, but Bunty, after all, had handled not only the bookings but also the publicity on that tour. It was not merely a matter of knowing the faces; she knew the photograph.
The glasses were powerful, and seemed to find light where the naked eye could find none, though she realised as soon as she looked again without them that the moon had emerged again, and was pouring a pale wash of silver across the surface towards the farther shore. Below her several boats were rocking gently on the water, and a shouting, laughing company was piling aboard food, drink, lanterns, guitars, game girls and husky boys. Oars rattled hollowly into rowlocks, there was a good deal of scuffling and scrambling for places. Bunty heard a motor sputtering experimentally; that would surely be Helmut, whose ambition knew no bounds. She lengthened the focus of the glasses again, and made a thoughtful sweep along the shore opposite, just as the wave of moonlight reached it. It looked almost close enough to touch. She fixed on the forward wash of the tide of light, and let her sweep keep pace with it; and for a moment she felt like a surf-rider. Round towards the bowl of darkness below the Goldener Hirsch, stroking the advancing light across the close-set trunks of the trees like fingers over the strings of a harp.
Thus she saw by pure chance, and was the only one to see, the figure that suddenly lunged forward out of the trees beneath the hotel. A man, tall, curiously top-heavy, bursting straight out of the shadow towards the water. The licking tongue of light found pallor about his shoulders, darkness below, a head bent somewhat forward. It had no time to find features or inform her of details, though her eyes in that instant had photographed more than she realised; for at that same moment Helmut got his motor-boat rocketing into life, and with a huge bass-baritone bellow of triumph shot out across the lake, a torch spearing the air before him and a lantern glowing bravely at the stern,three blonde girls trailing scarves in the slip-stream, and the first three or four rowing boats labouring valiantly after. The figure at the edge of the trees recoiled on the instant, and vanished into cover. Appearing and disappearing were almost one movement, so abruptly was he come and gone. There had been a lift of the head, alert to record the gaily-coloured invasion of his solitude, a glimpse of a regular oval of pallor that told her nothing about his face except that he was clean-shaven. But the vehement movements said young and the aplomb of his responses said he was as quick on the uptake as a wild beast. Bunty ranged the whole rim of the lake there, and tried to penetrate the belt of trees, but she saw no more of him, and no movement to indicate where he passed.
There was, however, nothing about him that could possibly be imaginary, not even in retrospect. Bunty lowered the glasses, and watched the hilarious progress of Helmut’s aquacade towards the very curve of shore where the apparition had emerged and vanished. She was unreasonably disturbed. Who recoils like that from being observed by good-natured, harmless souls bent on nothing but fun? Poachers? Where poachers had the sympathy of most people, barring officials, it seemed far-fetched.
True, now she came to think of it, that top-heavy appearance of his, and the slight stoop, the bending of the head, these were all consistent with the fact that he had been carrying something. Something pale. Why else that pallor there at his shoulder? It wasn’t warm enough to be running around at night in shirt-sleeves. That was it, he had been hurrying head-forward, bent under something he carried… And as soon as she had thought of it in those terms, she was almost certain it could not have been a net, even if night-poachers here used a net. No, something heavier than that. Nets are nylon now, they weigh almost nothing. This man had been carrying a considerable weight. Not too much for him, he had moved freely and forcefully under it. Nevertheless, something heavier than a net.
Heavy and pale, and turning him into an asymmetrical shape. The bulk poised on one shoulder.
A small core of ice seemed to spring to life in Bunty’s heart. For the more she thought about that shape draped upon the stranger’s shoulder, the more did it put on a positive and eloquent form, and confront her, in spite of all her sound, sensible skepticism, with the idea of a girl’s limp body in a light-coloured garment, something long and wide-skirted, a housecoat or a negligee. Her weight nicely balanced on the man’s shoulder, one arm and hand dangling. Nets don’t have hands, whatever they have! Was she imagining it now, after the event?
But why should he start back and hide himself so promptly, so instinctively, if his movements were innocent? And where, come to that, was he heading in such a hurry before Helmut scared him away? For he had started out of the trees at speed, straight towards the water. And there was no boat in all that sweep of shore, no landing stage below the hotel, nothing but the strip of gravel and then dark water.
She reached this point, and the short hairs rose on her neck. What business could he have had with the lake at this hour? What, except the business someone had had with Friedl? Maybe he was still there, somewhere among the trees in hiding, waiting for the revellers to get tired at last, and go home to bed.
She had a feeling that she was imagining things, probably making the world’s fool of herself. But one girl had been drowned, only two nights ago. And that had been murder.
Bunty made up her mind. There was another girl at the heart of this affair, and where could be the harm in making sure that she was safe in her bed? Midnight or not, there was no sense in waiting; and after all, they had known each other once, however briefly and however long ago. She dropped George’s glasses on the bed, and went straight downstairs to the telephone booth in the hall.
Gisela, startled out of her beauty sleep by the extension ’phone beside her bed, was scandalised at the very suggestion.
‘But Miss Tressider went to her room at nine o’clock, she will have been asleep for a long time. I cannot disturb her. Can it not wait until to-morrow, if you are staying in Scheidenau?’
‘No,’ said Bunty crisply, ‘it can’t. Or at least, that’s exactly what I want to find out, whether it can or not. I tell you what, you have keys, you slip up and have a look if she’s all right, and if she is, I’ll call her to-morrow.’
Though even so, she thought doubtfully, there were other girls who might equally be in danger, supposing Friedl’s killer was a random defective just breaking out after long harmlessness. What mattered was whether she had really seen what she supposed. But always her mind came back to Maggie. Who else stood so hapless and so alone in the storm-centre of all these happenings?
‘I am sorry,’ said Gisela indignantly, ‘I cannot do such a thing.’
‘All right, then,’ said Bunty. ‘I can! I’m coming over.’
Gisela was waiting for her in the vast vaulted lobby of the Goldener Hirsch when she arrived, out of breath, a quarter of an hour later. It would have been quicker to get Helmut to ferry her over, but Helmut was weaving inspired circles round the grouped rowing boats in the centre of the lake, and his massed choir was singing, pleasantly enough but very loudly:
