by Desmond Cory
“I don’t; but I know enough to pick out the sense every now and again. Don’t interrupt the oracle. This chap Gruber is really just as likely to be Mayer as Mann is; he’s a complete dark horse in any case, but we’re dead sure he’s mixed up with Mayer in some way because of what happened on the train. Then there’s our friend Johann Biel, who seems authentic enough, but – when you come to think of it – answers perfectly well to Mayer’s description also.”
“If it comes to that, and if you dyed your hair – so do you.”
Johnny smiled crookedly. “That’s the hell of it. But… I’m no mountaineer.”
“You know, that’s rather an odd thing.”
“What is?”
“The one thing all these people have in common is that they’re all mountain-climbers. Or claim to be. Though I suppose anybody can say they’re climbers.”
“That had occurred to me,” Johnny. “I’m not all that dense. It doesn’t include von Knopke, but then he doesn’t have to have an excuse for being here. And it makes us stick out like a couple of sore thumbs.”
“We’ve got Biel as a sort explanation.”
“A pretty thin one, if you ask me. I say, we’d better be as friendly as we possibly can when we see him next; the better friends we appear, the better our story… But you’re wrong, you know, when you say that anybody can claim to be a mountaineer – just like that. Not in this sort of company. It’d be like somebody who’d never been up in a ’plane claiming to be a pilot in an R.A.F. officer’s mess. No.” Johnny stood up abruptly and walked over to the window. “I only know one thing. And that is, the more I see of that ruddy mountain the less I like it.”
They were greeted, on their entry into the dining-room, by Johann Biel, who showed every exterior sign of delight and gratification at meeting them again so soon. The only other occupant of the room was Helmut, looking even browner and balder in the natural light of day; Frau Mann and Martin were presumably still engaged in their preparations for the meal, and Herr Gruber still squatting remotely behind his Paper Curtain. Johnny and Marie-Andrée settled down to the consumption of an excellent schnitzel, and to a cross-fire of question and comment from Herr Biel. Helmut, who had risen politely on their entry and had then sat down as though struck smartly behind the knees, handled his knife and fork in an unprofessional silence until Biel had partially relapsed; whereupon he raised one eyebrow – the left – leered gently at Marie-Andrée, and inquired whether she and the Herr had enjoyed their morning walk.
“Thank you,” said Marie-Andrée, “it was most interesting. We must have walked for miles – right up to the beginning of those woods.”
“Ah, yes. The Berghof Forest. You must be careful if you intend to explore that area; it is very easy to get lost in the Berghof.”
“I have been lost there myself,” said Biel. “I’m sure you remember the occasion, Herr Helmut. Last year.”
Helmut laughed heartily.
“It was really no joking matter. I was lost for more than thirty hours. It would not have mattered so much in the ordinary way; but, by the time I had regained my bearings and made my way back to the Old Man, I had only time to reach the spur before the weather closed down and made it quite impossible for me to continue. I was very disappointed.”
“But Herr Biel intends to remedy the matter shortly, I believe.” Helmut pushed his plate forwards, and made an almost imperceptible gesture to the maidservant. “When are you thinking of resuming your attack?”
“I don’t know. Possibly tomorrow.”
“Ah. Well, you would do well to take a guide with you this time, or you may be lost yet again. If Herr Mann were here, of course, he might be willing… but he is away, unfortunately. If you like, I will send for Georg Aigen; he knows the route like the back of his hand.”
“As a matter of fact, I made inquiries this morning. But it seems he is ill; or so his wife tells me. Luckily the brother is free and has agreed to take me up; it is all arranged.”
“Young Hans? Yes, he’s all right. None of the others are any good at all, but you won’t go far wrong with one of the Aigen family. It is possible that Herr Gruber will wish to accompany you.”
Biel looked up in surprise. “Herr Gruber?”
“Of course, you have not yet been introduced. Perhaps you noticed him sitting outside, however.” Biel nodded, satisfied. “He is a keen mountaineer, as I know from previous years, and he is anxious to tackle the Old Man before the snows loosen. And if you take the only available guide with you—”
“That is perfectly all right. Je mehr, desto besser. The boy, too; I will take him if he wishes. But… but I am sure we are boring poor Frau Videl almost to tears.”
“That is so,” agreed Helmut gallantly. “Our apologies.”
“Not at all, it’s very interesting. Isn’t it, dear?” Johnny looked non-committal “Do you have to go through the forest, Herr Biel, as it’s so easy to get lost?”
“Oh yes.” Biel, thus given a free hand, dived happily back into his favourite subject. “You see, the direct route up the ice cliff is impossible. One can, it is true, go up the west side; but that route is overlooked by the Russians – who do not like intruders – and involves an enormous detour, anyway. What is more, the slopes there are very smooth and loaded with snow, which makes them very dangerous indeed at this time of year; there are many avalanches. The Bernhof route, on the other hand… I should really have a map… I should be delighted to show it to you when we have finished lunch. But the woods are not so much of an obstacle as all that. If one does not get lost and if one starts early in the morning, it is possible to be through the forest and out on to the Hunting Horn by three o’clock. And from there, it is an easy two-hour scramble to the first hut.”
Marie-Andrée dropped a fork and Johnny, whose air of melancholy resignation had, if anything, deepened slightly, stooped to pick it up.
“Oh… I’m sorry: thank you, dear… What is the Hunting Horn, Herr Biel?”
Biel looked amused. “I didn’t mean to confuse you – I do not mean this inn. No; the Hunting Horn is the main east spur of the mountain, running right up to the peak. It is, in fact, the name of the mountain itself, as marked on the maps; the Old Man is merely the affectionate local appellation.”
“Oh, I see. And the inn’s named after it, then?”
“I must admit,” said Helmut, also enjoying the joke, “that of the two, the mountain has been here considerably the longer.”
“Go on, Herr Biel; what do you do then?”
“Well – by then you are usually tired enough to bed down for the night. The next morning, you continue up the flank of the Horn, over rough scree, and by the afternoon you’re doing some serious climbing on the rock face. About four hundred metres of it. Then you come out on to the plateau, you have an hour or so’s stiff uphill walking, and you come to the next hut.”
Johnny said, “What are these huts, exactly?”
“They’re put there for the convenience of mountain-climbers… Rough old timber shacks, not more than shelters really; but they are dry and they do keep you warm at night. When the blizzards come, Herr Gott! – you’re glad of them. I remember I was once caught on the north spur of the Mädchen, in the eastern Dolomites…”
Biel told another of his soporific little stories while the others sipped their coffee, concluding it with a surprising rush. “… So you see they can be handy, very handy, at times.”
Johnny nodded sagely. “Are there many of them on the Old Man?”
“Three. It is a three-day climb, you understand; and they are placed conveniently at the end of each day’s journey.”
“So the last one,” said Marie-Andrée, “is right at the very top?”
Biel chuckled. “Not at the very top. The last five or six hundred metres of the Old Man are very tough going, one of the stiffest climbs in this part of Europe. No; it’s well below the summit. One leaves in the morning, you see, climbs to the top, and returns to the hut in the evening.” Her
r Biel drank his coffee with a self-satisfied air, rather as if he had accomplished his climb by explaining it in words of one syllable, and pushed his cup across the table. “Now that we have finished our meal, perhaps you would like me to show you the map?”
“Very much,” said Marie-Andrée.
“And afterwards, I must go and check my equipment. And,” he nodded politely to Helmut, “I will speak to Herr Gruber and see if he wishes to make the climb with me. Are you ready now, Frau Videl?”
Johnny did not go with them. Instead, he walked out of the front door; hardly noticing that the chair in which Herr Gruber had been sitting was now empty. He turned left and skirted the building, until he had passed its far corner and could see in its entirety, glowering gigantically against the vivid blue of the sky, the great mass of the Old Man. Low down and to the east, flung against the mountain’s huge ramparts like a wave against a cliff, the Bernhof Forest surged away to the skyline. Johnny glanced down at his watch.
One-thirty. Ninety minutes to go until three o’clock. And at that hour – according to Biel’s computations – a figure far too small to be visible would be plodding its way steadily upwards, threading its way through the last scattered outposts of that great army of trees, pushing forwards on to the long clean spur of the Hunting Horn itself. Herr Mann had gone on business all right; Herr Mayer was revisiting the diamond cache. Somehow, he had scented trouble.
And Johnny’s eyes, wrinkled against the glare of sun and snow, took on a deeply speculative expression as he realised just how difficult it was going to be to catch him.
Just below that ruthless, jagged peak where the Old Man clawed at the skies was the third hut of the Hunting Horn, an infinitesimal speck on the vast brutality of the mountain, too small to be seen and yet large enough to focus the attention of all Europe. For somewhere within that speck were minute particles of carbon; particles of a sufficient value to throw Europe’s diamond markets into complete confusion.
Johnny lit a cigarette, without removing his eyes from the mountain peak; and contemplated the brilliance of the hiding-place. Whoever had thought of it was, in his way, a genius. And Mayer now was relying not on subtlety, but on speed; was relying not on the success of a disguise, but on his ability to climb and escape from the mountain before Johnny had time even to establish his bearings. Mayer was confident that, even if followed, he could never be caught.
And certainly it seemed almost impossible to do so. But Johnny, his eyes beginning to water from his continued gaze at the face of the mountain… Johnny knew that he would have to try.
“And I always knew it,” he said to the Old Man. “I always knew it, you bastard.”
AFTERNOON
THERE was very little difficulty involved in finding Hans Aigen’s house; in a village the size of Oberneusl, where every villager knew all the others and had done so all his life, it was merely a question of asking the first person who came along. This Johnny did; and duly received instructions in the barely comprehensible Styrian dialect to proceed to the end of the village and there to look for a single-story house built of timber, with bright red gables, on the right-hand side of the road and standing well back from it. This also Johnny succeeded in doing. He paused at the gate to throw away the stub of his cigarette, then pushed up the heavy wooden latch and marched down the narrow, stony path to the front door.
Johnny’s plan of approach was vague in the extreme. He was merely acting on the information he had acquired at lunch; to wit that, while his elder brother was indisposed, Hans Aigen was the only reliable local guide to the tortuous paths of the forest and the even more tortuous route up the Hunting Horn. Therefore, by foul means or even fair if necessary, Johnny had to steal a march on the unsuspecting Herr Biel and persuade Aigen to take him in pursuit of Mayer, not early the following morning but immediately… Johnny might well have been less optimistic had he enjoyed a wider acquaintance with the habits of the Austrian peasantry; who – while they admittedly have the word “immediately” included in their vocabulary – have over a period of centuries conveniently forgotten its significance. But of that interesting fact Johnny had no inkling.
Definite inkles began to come to him, however, when the most persistent and extravagant of knockings failed to summon Herr Aigen to the front door. Johnny fumed quietly, and came to the conclusion that Aigen was either not at home or had no intentions of allowing his privacy to be disturbed. He retreated a few paces and, glancing desperately round him, observed a very elderly gentleman with a thick grey beard, who was leaning on the low stone wall by the gate and eyeing him with interest.
Johnny advanced upon him hurriedly. “Excuse me,” he said. “Do you know where Herr Hans Aigen may be found?”
“He is not,” suggested the ancient, “in his house?”
“It would appear not.”
“Ah,” said the ancient. He drew a large tobacco pouch from his pocket and began, ruminatively, lovingly, to fill his pipe.
“You don’t know where he might be?” .
“Ah.” The ancient eyed his pipe with satisfaction, bit on the stem, drew a box of matches from somewhere about his person, selected a match, struck it, allowed a gust of wind to blow it out, sighed, struck another, and finally applied it to the bowl of his pipe…The whole procedure could not, Johnny thought, have taken very much longer than five or six minutes… “Hard to say,” he said, sucking contemplatively.
Johnny placed his hand on the gate; less as a positive movement than as an expression of a sudden desire to squeeze something very, very firmly.
“… Of course, he could be round at his brother’s.”
“His brother’s, yes, of course. Where does his brother live?”
“Don’t think he is, though,” continued the beaver obliviously. “’Cause I’ve just come from there meself, and he wasn’t there then.”
Johnny raised his eyes to heaven, and opened the gate.
“Very odd,” said the ancient, who was at last showing signs of coming to grips with the subject. “Haven’t seen young Hans around all day. Not even in the keller.”
Johnny stared at him. “Do you usually?”
“Ah. Every day. Quite a few people noticed young Hans wasn’t in today, now I come to think of it. Yes, I remember old—”
But Johnny had turned again, and was halfway up the path. The bearded gentleman remained standing there with his mouth half open; this being the position in which it had ended, and it being obviously less trouble to leave it there than to carry out further finicking adjustments… He watched Johnny swerve aside from the path towards the nearest window, stoop to peer inside, then break the glass with a sharp blow of the elbow. His mouth opened slightly wider as the window swung open and Johnny, with an adroit movement, inserted himself through it; he leaned comfortably on the wall to await developments.
Johnny had meanwhile crossed the room in four quick strides, and was kneeling beside the body of Hans Aigen.
—Who had obviously met his end in a manner that had been both swift and unexpected; had, moreover, been carried out with considerable ruthless efficiency. Who had been stabbed once, hard and clean, straight through the back of the neck; an expert’s blow, thought Johnny, if he had ever seen one. There was no trace of the weapon; but judging by the nature of the wound, it had been broad-bladed and heavy. Hans Aigen had been dead even before he had reached the floor, and had stayed motionless in the position in which he had fallen; which was flat on his tummy with one arm beneath his body.
Johnny gave the wound a cursory examination, then stepped back and looked round the room, wiping his fingers fastidiously on a handkerchief. There was nothing at hand in any way helpful; the room was large and timbered, with roughly-plastered walls and a minimum of strictly utilitarian furniture; in the huge iron grate, a wood fire had burnt completely out, and a poker rested in the fender nearby. The table near the window gave evidence of having been used to support the deceased’s breakfast plates, and not since… But clues didn’t rea
lly matter. There was not the slightest doubt as to the identity of the murderer; nor as to his motives. Karl Mayer had covered his tracks with a typically Germanic thoroughness.
Johnny went back to the window, and vaulted outside again. The bearded gentleman, still lounging on the wall, noted that his bearing was jaunty; had he been nearer – and aware of what Johnny had discovered – he would have been surprised to see that the expression on the eccentric fellow’s face was cheerful. Johnny was, perhaps, callous in many respects; but his enjoyment of the situation was not in the slightest degree sadistic. It was merely that now, for the first time, skullduggery had come right out into the open, and Johnny knew exactly where he was standing. At last he was feeling at home.
He nodded brightly to the bearded gentleman, whose mouth – predictably – fell open; and he set off at a sharp pace back towards the inn. His air was abstracted. He was searching his brain for some means of getting to the all-important third hut before Mayer, and of doing so without a reliable guide… The only conceivable way was by air; helicopter or something. Which was anything but practical. One can’t casually pick up helicopters from the wilder regions of Styria; and even if one could, the aircraft would have about as much chance of stooging around within the Russian zone as a snowflake of performing comparable evolutions in hell. And – even if all else were possible – descending from a helicopter on to the rugged shoulders of the Old Man could be no-one’s idea of a Bank Holiday… But what other possibilities were there?
He reached the drive of the inn without finding any hint of a solution to the problem. Tramping moodily towards the inn building, Johnny was pleased to see Marie-Andrée advancing towards him at a smart trot; not because he considered it feasible that she would have a ready-made answer to the conundrum, but because she was at any rate capable of taking his mind off it.
“… So there you are. Where’ve you been?”
Johnny halted beside her and grinned apologetically. “I went down to see Hans Aigen.”