by Helen Wells
“I only wish,” Dr. Portman said to Cherry afterward, “that more of these skiers knew how to ski. I advised that girl to take lessons from Val, or one of his instructors.”
Cherry answered the doctor in the best French she could muster. With daily use of French, she was growing more fluent. Dr. Portman had not burst into laughter at one of her boners for several days now.
“When you begin to think in French, Cherry,” the doctor encouraged her, “then—ah, then! In the meantime, my wife says I am to bring you home tonight to dinner so that she and the children may meet ma nourrice américaine.”
Cherry had a happy time at their house. The Portmans fed her luscious Swiss foods. She sat on the floor and played with their children.
Paul Junior attended Val’s school, in a class for the little ones. Their ski instructor was a girl who also acted as nursemaid for the day. She was Val’s cousin Jenny from the next village.
Val invited Cherry to meet his cousin—a pleasant and charming girl whom Cherry liked right away—and to meet Jenny’s class, eight of the very youngest, rosiest skiers.
These eager, tiny beginners, bundled up in ski suits, boots, caps, mufflers, mittens, and scarfs, looked like dolls sliding on miniature skis. Aged three to about six, they kept squealing, romping, tumbling down. Val helped Jenny pick them up and set them right side up again.
“Stay in line!” Val said, wiping one tiny girl’s nose.
“Yes, Val.” She slid clumsily on her skis, skidding, and sat down backwards in a snowdrift. “Look, Val. Look, Jenny! I made my sitzmark.”
Everybody then wanted to make his sitzmark. Instead, Jenny started a game of tag. Every one of the eight liked that even better. Jenny’s game, Val murmured to Cherry, would teach the children how to get up quickly and easily when they tumbled. “Keep your feet close together, snow bunnies,” Jenny called. “And don’t sit down between your skis.”
The lesson went on. The children in the ski school’s snowy yard—the beginners’ area—always attracted an audience. Among the people watching, Cherry saw a stack of improbable orange-red hair. Only one person in the village had such hair—the actress. So Madame Sully felt strong enough to leave the chateau—that was news!
Madame was chattering with a gnarled man in leather garments. Cherry did not remember seeing him in the small village before. The actress wore another “notice me” costume, all in white with an immense muff of orange fox.
“La Sully looks out of place with that man,” Cherry said softly to Val.
Val had noticed the odd couple, too. “Yes, it is a funny thing. They both were here yesterday and now again today.”
“Who’s the man?” Cherry asked.
“I’ve never seen him before,” Val said.
“For that matter, who is Madame Sully? We only know that she was on the stage in Paris about ten years ago. What’s she been doing since then?”
Val said, “I have an idea. We had a Parisian journalist staying at our chateau, Claude Regnier, a very nice friendly fellow. Why don’t I ask Claude to look up Madame Sully in the newspaper files?” Cherry nodded, and Val said, “I’ll phone Claude in Paris.”
Next day Madame pointedly stayed in her room most of the day. Cherry did not see the gnarled man in the leather coat again.
But when she came home for lunch, she found that someone must have searched her room. Bureau drawers, suitcase, closet, all looked discreetly ransacked. Worse, Cherry found that someone had placed a gold bracelet watch in her coat pocket. She had never seen the watch before.
“Someone is trying to frame me,” Cherry thought in alarm. Using a handkerchief to preserve any fingerprints, she brought the watch to Papa Nicholas at the desk and told him what had happened.
“Ha, that explains it,” he said. “Madame Sully came to Mama and me this morning, and—forgive me—accused you of stealing her watch when you were in her room the other day.”
“But I didn’t, Mr. Nicholas!”
“Of course you didn’t, Cherry. We refused to hear a word against you. I told Madame I would call the police to investigate—and oh, la la, how quickly she backed down! She said perhaps a maid had mislaid it.” He patted Cherry’s hand. “Don’t worry about this incident, my dear.”
But how could she not worry? Hendrix’s threat—that he’d have someone watch her—was coming true. And now Cherry remembered another incident.
She had stopped in a café late Tuesday afternoon after work for a hot chocolate. Madame Sully was in the café using the wall telephone. When she saw Cherry she hung up—but Cherry had heard her ask the operator for a number in the Jura region.
The next day Cherry was still feeling apprehensive about her room being searched, when she saw Lenk again. This time she saw him close up.
Cherry was strolling home from the clinic at dusk along the main cobbled street, in no hurry to go indoors. Several men and women were enjoying the mild air as they sat at sidewalk café tables sipping coffee. Suddenly she saw Lenk. He sat half out of sight, at a rear table, where the uneven sidewalk narrowed. She stepped back, her heart wildly beating.
Lenk turned impatiently to snuff out his half-smoked cigarette. The strong electric light streaming from the café window caught him like a spotlight. Every brown hair of his head and of his mustache stood out sharply. He glanced at his elaborate wrist-watch. Cherry watched him throw away his cigarette, then pick up his coffee cup with his left hand.
A cut on the man’s hand was healing but still fresh. It resembled the wound Dr. Portman had treated—that impatient man with a gun in his jacket pocket—
Cherry felt as if her arms and legs had turned to lead. Somehow she managed to walk on.
“Why am I afraid?” Cherry wondered as she gained the next corner. She remembered that hostile encounter on the staircase of her hotel. She glanced back at the man sitting at the café table.
Now he seemed to her to be the same man she and Marie had seen in Lugano, ill at ease, drab in his serviceable tweed suit with the scarf tossed around his heavy shoulders.
“Why am I afraid of a staid old fellow like Jacob Lenk?” Cherry asked herself. “But he looked different close up—Funny, I thought of him close up as Jack Lenk. Not Jacob at all! Are Jacob and Jack the same person? Or brothers or cousins who look alike?”
She wished she could remember whether the awkward man in Lugano had been left-handed. She did not think he was, but she could be mistaken. She walked home, musing.
Calmer now, Cherry realized she had shut out of her mind a terrifying fact. Lenk’s healing left hand strongly resembled the mysterious patient’s wounded left hand. Resembled it so markedly that Lenk and that hostile patient, Hendrix, with the red car, might be the same man!
She remembered seeing Toni driving a red sports car on the evening of the same day she had seen Lenk talking to him. Toni had said he had rented the car, but Val had been skeptical. Was it possible that Lenk-Hendrix had lent Toni his red car?
“I certainly hope Toni isn’t connected with Hendrix,” Cherry thought. Then she chided herself, “I mustn’t jump to conclusions. I’m not at all sure Lenk and Hendrix are the same man.”
The first person she met as she entered the chateau was Toni. The boy was working in the room-size closet that held ski equipment. He looked sulky.
“Hello, Toni!” Cherry smiled her very friendliest. Toni grunted good evening. She wondered how to coax him into a better mood, so that he would be willing to talk freely to her—about Lenk. She said:
“Toni, would you advise me about ski boots? The old pair doesn’t fit right. The boots seem too loose.”
“Don’t fit!” Toni looked up, alert. “You could have a bad accident! It’s a good thing you asked. Does Val know this? You’re his pupil.”
“No. I just realized it myself,” Cherry said. This was true. “I thought I’d ask you, since you’re around and Val isn’t, and you’re both expert skiers.”
Toni’s eyes burned with pleasure. “Sit down, Miss Cherry
.”
They sat down together on a bench in the hall. Toni painstakingly explained the importance of properly fitted boots. How he loved skiing! Now that Toni was in a good humor, Cherry switched the conversation to the subject of Lenk.
“Thanks for all your good advice. By the way, I saw a friend of yours—”
“I noticed the other day your poles don’t fit you very good, either,” Toni said. He had not even heard what she had said. “Poles are awfully important.”
“That’s so. I do need poles. By the time I buy boots, though, I won’t have enough money left for poles. Not for a while.”
“Huh.” Toni jumped up off the bench like a jack-in-the-box. “Excuse me. Got to finish waxing some skis.”
He bolted. Cherry followed him to the supply closet, rather surprised, but then Toni was unpredictable. She said from the doorway:
“You were nice to lend me your poles my first day on the slopes. They fit me perfectly.”
“If you’re hinting to borrow my poles,” Toni burst out, “because I’m not skiing so much since I came to work here—! Let me tell you, Miss Cherry. I don’t ever lend my ski things! Not to nobody!” Toni was blazing mad.
“I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression,” Cherry said in astonishment. “Honestly I wasn’t asking, or hinting. I’ll manage all right with some of the poles right here in this supply room. But must you nearly bite my head off, Toni?”
His face twisted into a grin. “Excuse me,” he said in embarrassment. He glanced warily at Cherry; he’d been rude to this guest. “Say, Miss Cherry, I’ve got an extra pair of metal shoe trees. I’ll lend them to you. Keeps the soles of your ski boots straight.” He floundered. “And I have some of the best wax for skis in my room, too. Lend you that.” Toni bowed and made a funny face.
“Thank you. That’s nice of you,” Cherry said. “I’d be glad to have them.” She let him save face. How touchy he was, how violently he had reacted to an imagined request.
Well, Toni was in no mood to be approached now with questions about Lenk. The boy might just explode again. She’d have to wait.
Cherry went in to dinner. The French couple who shared her table had dined early and left. When coffee was served, Val came to sit with her. Nearby, Madame Sully held forth to a captive audience of one waiter, hearing nobody but herself.
“I want to know something, Cherry,” Val said in a low voice. “Has Toni been rude to you? I happened to pass by and saw Toni glaring at you. If he didn’t behave himself nicely, Cherry, I’ll speak to him so that he won’t ever try that again.”
She was glad to see that Val was not so blind as his mother feared, on the brothers-on-skis topic of Toni. Cherry repeated her and Toni’s conversation. “He was just touchy,” she said to Val. “And he did apologize—in his way.”
“Well, if that’s all—” Val’s blue eyes cleared. “Know what’s bothering Toni? He’s used to being out on the ski slopes every day. Staying indoors now, even part of the time, makes him cranky.” Val poured more coffee for her. “My father says it’s like training a wild colt to wear a bit and harness. Maybe so. Toni surely is tense and moody.”
“But I see Toni outdoors every day on errands.”
“Yes, my father sends him to Morten several times a week. He gets in some skiing, too, nearly every day,” Val said. “I think he skis all day on Sunday—probably alone. He vanished again last Sunday! Without a word to anybody about where he was going. What a crazy chance to take!”
“Doesn’t anyone ever see Toni out skiing on Sundays? I mean, besides Joe Wardi.”
Cherry knew skiers starting from Eagle’s Peak had a wide choice of superb ski runs—the long, steep runs of Le Solitaire Mountain across the valley; all sorts of challenging descents on nearby Mont d’Argent and Mont Vert; a four-mile run down Il Guardiano Mountain, which straddled the Swiss-Italian border. She asked:
“Aren’t these tracked runs exciting enough even for Toni?”
“I guess not,” Val said. “You see, Toni has to try his own neck-breaking trails where no one’s ever skied before.”
Cherry listened and could sympathize. But certain things about Toni warned her off.
“Val, may I ask you a question about Toni? Or rather about a man he knows, named Jacob Lenk, Jack for short.”
“I don’t know him,” Val said.
Cherry described the man. Val still did not know him.
Cherry, remembering the two men’s rather furtive meeting in the shadows, said, “So Toni didn’t mention Jack Lenk to you?”
“Why should he?” Val defended Toni.
“Yes, fair enough.” But she did wonder why Toni disappeared without a word on Sundays….
Late the next morning, she carefully selected a pair of ski boots, while Dr. Portman remained in the empty clinic. It was a glorious day, exceptionally mild. Everybody who could manage it was up on one sunny mountain slope or another to ski or picnic or just suntan and watch.
She did not linger over her shopping, except for a long, loving look at a display of Swiss watches. “So beautiful! So expensive, too, some of them,” Cherry thought. She walked on to the Chateau Nicholas.
She found the small hotel almost deserted on this lovely day. In the dining room Mama and Papa Nicholas and Cherry sat down together in front of a big window to enjoy their lunch. The other guests and Val and Toni were somewhere up on Mont d’Argent.
“Though Toni may be back soon,” Papa Nicholas said, “to bring the Duvallier children down. I must grab Toni before Madame Sully sends the poor boy on another of her errands!”
That was why, after lunch, Cherry went to look for Toni, carrying her new ski boots. She really could use the metal shoe trees and special wax he had offered. And since he had been so encouraged by her asking his opinion, and done his best to advise her, the least she could do was to show him the new boots. She was carrying an American ski magazine with photographs of North American ski resorts to give him as a kind of thank-you.
The door to Toni’s room was ajar. Was he in there? Or had he carelessly left his door open?
“Toni!” Cherry called softly. No answer, but a rustling sound came from within. “Toni?”
The door swung open silently as if beckoning to her to enter. It gave Cherry a turn. She peered in; the small, plain room was empty. Then she saw the wide-open window, curtains flapping. In the wind the door swung to and fro.
“I’ll just step in and leave this ski magazine,” Cherry thought.
The shoe trees Toni had promised her were on the floor with some of his ski paraphernalia. As she laid the magazine on the bed, Cherry saw something that startled her. Sticking out slightly from under Toni’s pillow was the corner of the notebook she had seen in Madame Sully’s lap.
Cherry stared down at the notebook. She had no right to read it. But—in view of Madame’s evasiveness and Toni’s Sunday disappearances and his dubious connection with Jack Lenk—wouldn’t it be stupid to ignore this discovery?
Opening it, Cherry read a list of names and street addresses that meant nothing to her. No cities or towns were given. Many of the names sounded Italian or Italian-Swiss. She hastily riffled through the notebook. Checks and crosses alongside the names suggested some code or system—for business purposes? Or for some hidden purpose?
Cherry fumbled in her purse for pencil and paper. She copied a few names and street addresses as fast as she could. Then she replaced the notebook and got out of the room.
“Wait!” Cherry told herself. She didn’t dare leave the American ski magazine! Toni would guess she’d been there—she was the only American at the chateau. Racing back, Cherry snatched up the magazine from the bed and fled.
CHAPTER VI
Rescue Patrol
“YES, I KNOW THESE STREETS,” VAL SAID. HE WAS READING the notes Cherry had scribbled while in Toni’s room. “—Piazza del Duomo, 92 Via Montenapoleone, 105 on the same street, 27-A Via Larga.” Val read a few more addresses and handed the list back to her. “T
hese are the fashionable shopping streets in Milan.”
Cherry knew that Milan, located in the north of Italy, was Italy’s leading business and industrial city—rich, busy, very modern. And Milan was not far from here. She asked Val:
“Do you recognize the names in my notes?”
“No, but very likely these are shops.”
They looked at the list together. The names gave no clue as to what sort of shops. Val asked her curiously:
“Where did you get this list? Tell me, why are you so interested?”
Cherry explained how she had stopped at Toni’s room and found the notebook. “And the other day when I went to Madame Sully’s room I saw the same green notebook in her lap!”
Val frowned. “Are you sure? Seems extraordinary…. Well, it might explain why Madame has so many errands for Toni. Look at this, Cherry. It arrived today.”
Val handed Cherry an airmail letter postmarked Paris. She read:
My dear Val: According to back newspaper files here, your actress friend Blanche Sully has been caught once at shoplifting and once as an accomplice in an attempted robbery. Both times she paid a fine and got off. My parents say they saw Blanche Sully act, years ago, but never since her two arrests.
Glad to be of any help to you, Val. Remember me to your family. Tout à vous,
Claude Regnier
“Arrests!” Cherry handed the letter back to Val. “What do you suppose Madame is up to now? With Toni’s help? Is that why Toni vanishes on his skis every Sunday?”
“I’d hate to think of our house being used for a racket!” Val said angrily. Then he controlled his temper. “We’d better do some thinking. Let’s find out what we can about the notebook, for a start.”
He led Cherry to the hotel desk, opened the registry, and found the actress’s signature, a huge, heavy script, followed by her address in Paris.
“Was the handwriting in the notebook anything like this?” Val asked.
“No, Val, the handwriting in the notebook is small, neat, plain, and—well, it’s businesslike. Like a bookkeeper’s or a clerk’s.”