'Ah. You are still the Countess Zerkowski.'
'At the moment I am still the Countess Zerkowski.'
'Are you in your own part of the world?'
'More or less. I grew up as a child in this part of the world. For a good portion of each year we used to come here in the autumn to a Schloss not very many miles from here.'
He smiled and said thoughtfully, 'What a nice word it is. A Schloss. So solid-sounding.'
'Schlцsser are not standing very solidly nowadays. They are mostly disintegrated.'
'This is Hitler's country, isn't it? We're not far, are we, from Berchtesgaden ?'
'It lies over there to the northeast.'
'Did your relations, your friends — did they accept Hitler, believe in him? Perhaps I ought not to ask things like that.'
'They disliked him and all he stood for. But they said 'Heil Hitler'. They acquiesced in what had happened to their country. What else could they do? What else could anybody do at that date?'
'We are going towards the Dolomites, are we not?'
'Does it matter where we are, or which way we are going?'
'Well, this is a voyage of exploration, is it not?'
'Yes, but the exploration is not geographical. We are going to see a personality.'
'You make me feel –' Stafford Nye looked up at the landscape of swelling mountains reaching up to the sky — 'as though we were going to visit the famous Old Man of the Mountain.'
'The Master of the Assassins, you mean, who kept his followers under drugs so that they died for him wholeheartedly, so that they killed, knowing that they themselves would also be killed, but believing, too, that that would transfer them immediately to the Moslem Paradise — beautiful women, hashish and erotic dreams — perfect and unending happiness.'
She paused a minute and then said:
'Spell-binders! I suppose they've always been there throughout the ages. People who make you believe in them so that you are ready to die for them. Not only Assassins. The Christians died also.'
'The holy Martyrs? Lord Altamount?'
'Why do you say Lord Altamount?'
'I saw him that way — suddenly — that evening. Carved in stone — in a thirteenth-century cathedral, perhaps.'
'One of us may have to die. Perhaps more.'
She stopped what he was about to say.
'There is another thing I think of sometimes. A verse in the New Testament — Luke, I think. Christ at the Last Supper saying to his followers: 'You are my companions and my friends, yet one of you is a devil.' So in all probability one of us is a devil.'
'You think it possible?'
'Almost certain. Someone we trust and know, but who goes to sleep at night, not dreaming of martyrdom but of thirty pieces of silver, and who wakes with the feel of them in the palm of his hand.'
'The love of money?'
'Ambition covers it better. How does one recognize a devil? How would one know? A devil would stand out in a crowd, would be exciting — would advertise himself — would exercise leadership.'
She was silent a moment and then said in a thoughtful voice:
'I had a friend once in the Diplomatic Service who told me how she had said to a German woman how moved she herself had been at the performance of the Passion Play at Oberammergau. But the German woman said scornfully: 'You do not understand. We Germans have no need of a Jesus Christ! We have our Adolf Hitler here with us. He is greater than any Jesus that ever lived.' She was quite a nice ordinary woman. But that is how she felt. Masses of people felt it. Hitler was a spell-binder. He spoke and they listened — and accepted the sadism, the gas chambers, the tortures of the Gestapo.'
She shrugged her shoulders and then said in her normal voice, 'All the same, it's odd that you should have said what you did just now.'
'What was that?'
'About the Old Man of the Mountain. The head of the Assassins.'
'Are you telling me there is an Old Man of the Mountain here?'
'No. Not an Old Man of the Mountain, but there might be an Old Woman of the Mountain.'
'An Old Woman of the Mountain. What's she like?'
'You'll see this evening.'
'What are we doing this evening?'
'Going into society,' said Renata.
'It seems a long time since you've been Mary Ann.'
'You'll have to wait till we're doing some air travel again.'
'I suppose it's very bad for one's morale,' Stafford Nye said thoughtfully, 'living high up in the world.'
'Are you talking socially?'
'No. Geographically. If you live in a castle on a mountain peak overlooking the world below you, well, it makes you despise the ordinary folk, doesn't it? You're the top one, you're the grand one. That's what Hitler felt in Berchtesgaden , that's what many people feel perhaps who climb mountains and look down on their fellow creatures in valleys below.'
'You must be careful tonight,' Renata warned him. 'It's going to be ticklish.'
'Any instructions?'
'You're a disgruntled man. You're one that's against the Establishment, against the conventional world. You're a rebel, but a secret rebel. Can you do it?'
'I can try.'
The scenery had grown wilder. The big car twisted and turned up the roads, passing through mountain villages, sometimes looking down on a bewilderingly distant view where lights shone on a river, where the steeples of churches showed in the distance.
'Where are we going, Mary Ann?'
'To an eagle's nest.'
The road took a final turn. It wound through a forest. Stafford Nye thought he caught glimpses now and again of deer or of animals of some kind. Occasionally, too, there were leather jacketed men with guns. Keepers, he thought. And then they came finally to a view of an enormous Schloss standing on a crag. Some of it, he thought, was partially mined, though most of it had been restored and rebuilt. It was both massive and magnificent, but there was nothing new about it or in the message it held. It was representative of past power — power held through bygone ages.
'This was originally the Grand Duchy of Liechtenstolz. The Schloss was built by the Grand Duke Ludwig in seventeen ninety,' said Renata.
'Who lives there now? The present Grand Duke?'
'No. They're all gone and done with. Swept away.'
'And who lives here now then?'
'Someone who has present-day power,' said Renata.
'Money?'
'Yes. Very much so.'
'Shall we meet Mr Robinson, flown on ahead by air to greet us?'
'The last person you'll meet here will be Mr Robinson, I can assure you.'
'A pity,' said Stafford Nye. 'I like Mr Robinson. He's quite something, isn't he? Who is he really — what nationality is he?'
'I don't think anybody has ever known. Everyone tells one something different. Some people say he's a Turk, some that he's an Armenian, some that he's Dutch, some that he's just plain English. Some say that his mother was a Circassian slave, a Russian grand duchess, an Indian begum, and so on. Nobody knows. One person told me that his mother was a Miss McLellan from Scotland . Ithink that's as likely as anything.'
They had drawn up beneath a large portico. Two menservants in livery came down the steps. Their bows
