Читать книгу Chief Inspector Pointer's Cases - 12 Golden Age Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding - Страница 27

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AT Verona, that swarming little ant-heap, Pointer was wakened by the hotel porter early next morning.

A message had come from Count di Monti, to whom Pointer had telegraphed on leaving Genoa. The count, the head of the family, was not at his palazzo in the town, but out at Castello Grigio, near Rovereto.

Would the signore take the trouble to go on to the latter station, by train? It was on the direct line over the Brenner Pass into Austria, and but an hour and a half further up. The count much regretted that he was not in Verona, but he would send his car to meet the ten o'clock morning train on the chance.

Pointer told the man to say that he would come on as suggested. Then he himself telephoned to the Palazzo di Monti. The major-domo replied that the count was away at Verona at his Rovereto property, Castello Grigio.

At the station before Rovereto a young man in a chauffeur's livery looked into Pointer's compartment. Was the signore going to the Castello Grigio? Pointer said that he was. The chauffeur smiled and touched his cap. He had been sent by the count to execute a commission for him in a neighbouring village, and was to have the honour of driving the gentleman to the Castello. Saluting, he closed the door, and waited outside in the corridor till they reached Rovereto, lying like a handful of dice rolled, on to a green cloth, where he piloted Pointer through the turnstile to a fine Lancia car outside.

It was a pretty country, and soon a turn took them into a charming valley. The Castello Grigio was about an hour from Rovereto by car, Pointer had been told at the Verona hotel. At the end of that time they drew up at a huge pile. Pointer doubted whether it would be "passed" as fit for a human habitation by any council in England, but some of the grim windows, set in walls fourteen feet thick, had lace curtains to them.

The portico, which looked as though intended for a "Big Bertha" emplacement, was gay with geraniums, among which an awning umbrella gave a note of homeliness.

These things Pointer noticed, as also the fact that the man himself opened the door, and with a "Di qua, signore, la prego," ushered him into a large, airy room.

One side was taken up by lace-curtained windows. Three large windows. So the curtains—they were new ones he saw now—were only in this one room. Humph. But Pointer was handicapped by not knowing Italian family-customs. All this might be customary. And again, it might not.

The man returned.

"The Signor Conti offers a thousand excuses, but he will be here in a very few minutes. He hopes the signore will take lunch with him." The man had the manners of a well-trained servant. Pointer looked about him.

The room was very sparsely furnished. But the things were beautiful. A scratch on the arm of his chair caught his eye. It was very recent, and showed rough handling. The carpet, too, was large for the room, and lay a little up on the walls. Pointer turned a corner back. The floor beneath had not been swept for generations, judging by the depth of the dust; but then, again, that might be usual in Italian country houses, where there was no mistress.

The door opened. Cangrande di Monti stepped in. He held up his hand with a charming smile.

"A truce until after lunch, my dear Chief Inspector. When you have had a talk with my father I shall be quite at your disposition. I think you will feel differently about me before long than you do now. A moment!"

He helped the man carry in a long narrow table of the kind familiar in old paintings. A beautiful lace runner lay on its polished top. It was set with old silver, and crystal thin as bubbles.

"Sorry to crowd you—permesso—"

Pointer stepped back hastily as the table was borne towards him He stepped back into a yawning hole, and fell with a crash that knocked the wind out of him.

"Dear, dear!" On the second di Monti's mocking face grinned down at him some twelve feet away.

"You've not hurt yourself, I hope?" An automatic glittered in his hand "Please don't move while Giuseppe searches you."

After the grating of bolts, a door in the little cellar opened. Pointer lay quite still. Giuseppe found his revolver, and then looked up.

"That is all. He has no knife but this penknife."

"Take it, too. Leave his cigars. Search him carefully for another weapon." When the cellar door was bolted again, di Monti went on, "You thought yourself, doubtless, very clever, Mr. Spy, when you followed me here. When you telephoned about my father last night, I told Bonvecchio what to say, and Giuseppe and I made ready for you. A little quick the work, perhaps, but it sufficed. We even set out some flower pots. Giuseppe did most of the cutting of that hole in the carpet. He does so dislike the police. A trait I understand. And now for a companion. I should be sorry if you were to get bored in the long, very long, hours ahead of you. Fetch the gaoler!" Di Monti turned to the man who had rejoined him. The servant was away for some minutes, during which his master apparently walked about the room, humming softly to himself.

"I thought that you might inquire if my father were really at the Castello Grigio. He is, but, you see, this does not happen to be that castello. Ah, here is the companion I promised you."

Pointer heard the clink-clank of a chain, and then there looked down at him a wolfish dog, with bristling hair and bared teeth.

"If you say one word, I shall drop him down there and set him on you." Di Monti looked as though he were half-minded to do it anyway. "A Maremma sheep dog has never a sweet disposition, and this one is peculiarly unamiable. He was to be shot. But when a little bird told me that you were coming after me, I saved him up—for you. He is not only large, but so agile! And now I must take my leave. I regret that this being, as I said, not Castello Grigio, but the Castello Vecchio, an out-of-the-way ruin, it will be a bit lonely, and also a bit hungry —but there is always Carlo."

A more ferocious expression than that on di Monti's face Pointer had never seen, unless it were the dog's.

"You are wondering how long I intend to keep you locked up here?" di Monti went on tauntingly. "Pray nod, if I am right."

Pointer did not oblige him, but di Monti thrust out his jowl and answered his own remark.

"It entirely depends on how long you—last. This is an interesting castle. You came to explore it, you fell into one of those old chambers, the one that held the lady I talked of at Stillwater House not so long ago. But I forget, that was before you came on the scene. When Giuseppe comes, in a month or so, he will at once notify the carabinieri Take up the carpet carefully, Giuseppe, I will help you carry it up to the attic again Say 'a riverderla' to the signore, though I am afraid," di Monti turned his savage face to Pointer with a horrid smile, "I am afraid you will not see him, when next he has the felicity to see you, or what Carlo leaves of you."

Pointer heard the two men struggle with the carpet, then the door of the upper room closed. After some time the great outer entrance clanged shut, and the car hummed away down the grass-grown drive.

Pointer looked at the door of his cellar. It was very old, but stout enough to last out his time if he had no weapons but his hands. Leisurely he extracted his cigar case. A thick, podgy case, looking none too well made. He touched a spot with his thumb, and lifted out a shallow tray which held the unusually flat cigars he apparently favoured. Inside was a flat glass bottle, a file not much longer than a nail-file, but of the stoutest steel, a skeleton key, and a few other interesting and equally useful oddments. Similar articles were in his left sole, but the cigar-case was simpler. The top of his umbrella or stick held other emergency aids. The very cholera belt he wore was a roll of silk rope in a neat holder. His waistcoat buttons were not what they seemed. Pointer was always prepared. He had to be.

One of the cigars held a neat little saw, another a gimlet, still another was a handle. He made a hole in the door and pulled back the bolt with a steep loop made for the purpose. Then he began on the upper fastening. There were four in all, and had been oiled to permit of his own imprisonment. It was a tedious but very simple matter to free himself and step on out into the garden. Luckily the dog had been thoughtfully fastened into the room overhead, for he had taken a violent dislike to the Chief Inspector at first sight. Pointer climbed the handsome wrought-iron gates with a feeling that it was almost unsportsmanlike to escape so easily from what had cost so much thought and trouble to get him into.

Following the direction of the road which most of the horse-shoes faced, he soon came to a hamlet of sorts. Here he got a mount to carry him on. A little later he found a larger town with a garage, and after that all was simplicity itself.

In quite a comfortable car he drove back to Verona, where Bond and Cockburn's private information had told him that a large Fascist meeting was to be held this week. The streets were even more crowded than yesterday, and everywhere were little squads of the Camicie Nere, the Blackshirts, their top-locks crested like so many dark-feathered cockatoos.

The Italian soldier walks his newly-acquired, or "redeemed," land as simply as Tommy Atkins, and with as little swagger. But the Fascisti are out to make an impression. They were in cheerful mood, calling across to each other little staccato cries of their own. A crowd of Fascist boy-scouts clattered along, the spindly little boys of Italy, but eager as so many terriers. Flags were floating from the houses, the gay green, white and red flashing open and shut as the wind tossed them. Even the old Arena looked alive to-day.

Pointer stopped at a wandering ice-cream vender. "What is up?"

The man laughed. "The Fash' are giving a dinner tonight to the leader of the new Majubaland exploration party. The name has just been published."

He held out a newspaper. A "soot and whitewash" travesty of Cangrande di Monti stared truculently out from the front page of the Liberta.

Pointer bought the paper, and stopped in a café to look at it. He laughed as he skimmed through the article below the portrait, for of all the noble natures which Italy has yet produced, di Monti seemed to be the very flower. The dinner in honour of this paragon was to take place at eight, in the old Palazzo del Consiglio, the Fascist headquarters. It was not far off five now.

Reading on Pointer saw that Cangrande's name as leader of the expedition had only been telegraphed from Rome at two-thirty.

No wonder that di Monti had been in a hurry at the Castello. One word from the Scotland Yard man, and his dream might have been dispelled for ever.

Pointer decided to see him at once.

The number of flags outside the beautiful old Consiglio Palazzo made him step in and inquire.

"Yes," some one in a black shirt assured him with pride, "Count Cangrande's here, holding a special meeting at the Veronese Fascisti. No one could intrude."

"It is no intrusion. I am from London. Come over expressly in connection with the recent stay of Count Cangrande there."

"Oh, in that case—" and bowing like a half-shut clasp-knife the man motioned him towards an attendant.

"His illustrious name?" asked the servant, hand on latch.

"I will announce myself," Pointer said loftily, and opened a door farther down.

The large room into which he stepped was crowded. He had come in just behind a long table, covered with a flag, at which sat three officers. Cangrande was the one on the right.

Pointer had not seen him in uniform before. His high black boots, his soft gray-green breeches and coat, Sam Browne belt, black shirt, showing its line at neck and wrists, and, when he turned a double row of ribbons on his breast, on one of which glittered three hard-won tiny silver stars, and the high black cap of the Fascisti, a cross between a Cossack and a Belgian cap was not becoming in itself, but its note of sombre harshness suited di Monti.

No one noticed the entry of the only figure not wearing at least a black stock, for the Fascist cry of Eia-eia-Alala was thundering up, each man rising and swinging out his right hand and arm in the greeting of the Roman Legions. Then the song of the Unknown Soldier, la Canzone del Mute Ignoto, rolled through the room, and Pointer looked about him. Every face was alight. Some were marked by little else but egotism, ruthlessness, or intolerance. But taken as a whole, a finer looking lot of young men he had never seen, nor was likely to see. They were not here to serve self-interest. In this world where money rules, they bent the knee to something higher. It was as though there swept through that crowded room a spirit from the realm of idealism and passionate selflessness. Pointer could almost hear the beating of its wings. He saw again the Thousand Heroes of Garibaldi rallying to the call. For Pointer knew the Italy of immediately after the Great War. The Chief Inspector had spoken with those who had seen men flung shrieking into their own blast furnaces at Turin amid Communist cheers. He had been present in Bologna when a partially disabled officer had had his uniform cut off him with knives that streaked the rags with his blood.

One of the men beside di Monti stepped forward.

In this meeting which was Italian, and not party—according to him—he said that he wished to mention some of the war services of the man to whom was to be entrusted the important charge of governing the newly-acquired Oltrajuba.

He ran over di Monti's war record. It was a fine one.

Twice after Caporetto the count had collected a mere handful of wounded men, and, calling over his shoulder the historic cry of the Great Liberator, "Here, Italians, we die!" had made a desperate stand against incredible odds at some bend in the road, some slope of the track, some point, whose selection was as much a credit to his brains as to his pluck.

Di Monti listened with eyes on his hands, which were clasped lightly on the hilt of his sword. About his mouth was a suggestion of reverie. Once only he looked up. Across to a little hunchback standing in the back row line of starred ribbons across his narrow chest, neatly in a waiter's black. The man caught the glance. Up and out shot a toil-worn hand in a salute at once friend and proud. A comrade saluting a comrade.

Di Monti's harsh mouth softened for a second. Straight back to crippled back he and this man had stood, never expecting to see more of life than clubbed rifle butts whirling in the air, and stabbing bayonets and Monti's own flashing, dripping, broken sword.

Suddenly di Monti turned and caught sight of Pointer. The Italian was singing, and he finished the line without a tremor of his strident voice.

Then he stepped back.

"A word with you in private," Pointer said quickly.

"Impossible."

"Then in public."

"Impossible. If it comes to words—one from me and you would be torn to pieces."

"Costly pieces, Count di Monti," Pointer said coldly. "I think the price would ruin your party." Pointer jaw was well to the fore. Di Monti stared at him and he stared back. The chairman turned questioningly.

"This gentleman brings me a message of congratulation from London, and some very urgent news," di Monti explained to him. "May I be excused a moment?"

They slipped out of a side door. Some one filled in the gap with a speech, some one else started La Giovanezza, the song of youth, the song of the Fascisti, and then more speeches.

Finally di Monti came in again. He was very pale. As for Pointer, he walked away from the hotel deep in thought. Di Monti had sworn solemnly to him that he was innocent of the murder of Rose Charteris, that he was caught in a web of circumstantial evidence possibly, but that he was not guilty. His desperate attack on Pointer's life made the assertion ring false, but the count maintained that that had been simply a way of gaining time until his own election should be ratified. He did not stoop to try to pass it off as less than it was—an attempted brutal murder, but he insisted that he had had an anonymous letter from England, warning him that Pointer was going to have him detained at once, pending an extradition order, which Scotland Yard had already applied for. Pointer had stood awhile, looking at his boot-tips.

"If I go straight to your Duce with the account of what happened to me this morning, where will you be?"

Di Monti was very pale. He said nothing.

"If you will give me your word of honour—I will trust it—to come to England any time within the next ten days, I shall be silent on that point. If you do not give me your word, I go to Signor Mussolini at once, and you will be arrested at once," Pointer went on.

Flight again for di Monti was out of the question. He would not try to escape from his own country, his new position. Both men knew as much.

"You mean that I am to come to England to be arrested for the murder of Miss Charteris?" di Monti asked slowly.

"That's as may be. Even so, you would have a chance of proving your innocence, a chance of an acquittal. You will have none if I go to your chief with the story of what has just happened to me at the Castello. I have witnesses who helped me to get out."

"I might have known that you wouldn't come alone!" di Monti said bitterly. He walked up and down the room for some minutes. "I must agree. I give you my word of honour as an officer and a gentleman to come if you summon me within ten days."

"Not necessarily to be arrested." Pointer did not want a suicide; and di Monti was capable of anything. "Possibly merely to help the case."

Di Monti gave him a long look, and uncovered his teeth in an incredulous smile, then, with a curt nod, he returned to the council room, and Pointer walked on downstairs.

He dismissed the young Italian from his mind for the time being. Pointer wanted to find the professor. Rose's father might hold the key to the whole involved series of events which had taken place that Thursday night at Stillwater. Di Monti said that he had not been near his family. As he was quite willing for Pointer to check that statement by a talk with his father, the Chief Inspector accepted his word.

That registered letter that Rose had received had been sent from Bolzano. To Bolzano, Pointer was therefore bound.

He telephoned to the old count. A telephone message obtained a hearing often when a caller was kept waiting. He spoke of himself over the wire as Gilchrist, Professor Charteris's family solicitor. Had the professor made any arrangement to stay with Count di Monti? A feeble voice told him that the professor had. He was to have come to Verona to the Palazzo di Monti on May first, and spend the week-end there. But he had telephoned from Genoa earlier, asking whether his visit could be put forward a week, as otherwise he must give it up. It had not been possible for the count to do this, much as he regretted the fact. There the matter had rested. The voice of the old man showed that he thought himself somewhat summarily treated, for he had had no word from his once-invited guest of explanation or apology.

Pointer caught the night train up to Bolzano. He had much to think about as the train wound up beside the Adige.

The next morning he woke to true Bolzano weather, though the year was unusually cold. May, as a rule, is hot in this wonderful little spot of Europe where north and south meet, where the grape ripens under the pine trees, where the same valley can show glacier and coral formations. Pointer liked Bolzano. Though he thought its old name of Bozen suited it better. There is something angular and wooden about the Tirol word that goes with the gables, and turrets, and arched passages of the busy town, where the swifts swoop like hounds on the scent down the main streets, dodging under the elbows of passers-by, and chasing each other like children at tag through the arcades.

The professor stopped at the Hotel Laurin.

Pointer knew by inquiries made already from England that he had arrived on the Sunday before Rose's death, alone, and had left, alone, the next day. His only luggage had been a suit-case, which he had sent to the station early on Monday morning, saying that it was to be forwarded to Meranoo.

Pointer found that it had been duly forwarded and fetched from the latter station. Either the professor, or some one else, had handed in the scontrino and been given the bag. But who had produced that voucher?

Pointer's first walk was to the Bolzano post-office, where he verified the registered letter sent off on the Monday before Rose's death, some twelve days ago now.

He was shown the duplicate slip, which stated:

Assegno L.—Charteris. Hotel Laurin.

Destnario—Charteris. Medchester.

The hour, Pointer learnt, must have been before noon, as at that time the clerks had been changed, and the one in whose writing the slip was made out had gone off duty for the day.

At the hotel he learnt that the professor had shown no preference either for people or for solitude. Some of his meals he had taken in the dining room, some in his own bedroom. Apparently he had acted like any ordinary traveller.

Pointer began to be more certain than ever that the murderer had made a mistake, that he had expected that registered letter's enclosure to contain—what?

What was it, what could it have been, that might have been enclosed instead of that memo, that might have been wanted by some one who thought that some important piece of news might have been sent to the daughter by the father, news so important that at all costs to the receiver, at all risks to the criminal, it must be prevented from being passed on?

Where was the professor? What had happened to him between Bolzano and his promised visit to Meranoo?

A railway line runs between the two towns, but Charteris had expressly spoken of walking over the Mendel. Where could his walk have led him that no word of his only child's murder seemed to be able to reach him? The Mendel Pass is not out of the world. It is a favourite summer resort, with most up-to-date hotels, where every well-known English newspaper would be taken.

Pointer went for a walk along the old dyke, planted with trees and shrubs, broad as the king's highway, that keeps the river in bounds.

He loved nature as only the man can who spends his life in towns. And that walk is unique. With the chanting Talfer rushing past, clear as crystal, with vineyards stretching on either hand, with feudal castles and gleaming farmhouses, and tiny white churches like, candles dotted here and there, on the slopes of the green hills of Tirol that rise on every side, while far away, as though looked at through gauze, towers the great Rosengarten range, set like a throne of the high gods against the sky.

Just now it was still hung with veils of white over its own changing purple and grays. At sunset it might show itself for a brief moment of incredible beauty, a garden of red roses blowing, tossing, blooming, only changed by the spell of King Laurin to stone, as runs the Ladine legend.

Pointer stood drawing in deep breaths of the dry, pure air, hanging fresh pictures in the gallery for which he cared most, his memory gallery.

An impression of being stared at made him turn. A little man had come up behind him, and was standing examining him attentively, from his English hat to his English boots. Pointer had an odd feeling as he looked back at him. The man was unlike any other whom the Chief Inspector had ever seen, and Pointer felt that the difference was racial, not individual. He had never met a specimen of the primitive man before who still exists here and there in Europe, and he was surprised at strong sensation, half repulsion, half interest, which he felt.

The man was about five feet in height, very sturdily built, and conveying a sense of—not bad proportions but different proportions to what we call the normal. He was thickset, with next to no neck, and with odd, haunch-like hips. On his well-shaped—but still differently-shaped head, the hair grew straight, and coarse, and thick, like cocoanut fibre mat, to below the line of his low collar. He was clean-shaven, with a fawn-like face, and small eyes, brown and soft, and shifting quickly. On meeting Pointer's stare, he turned and walked away.

A gardener was sweeping the walk.

"Do you know who that little man is?"

"That's Ladiner Toni. A guide from the Paesi Ladini."

"A good guide?"

"Very good. But now, of course, with the snow so late, there's little climbing to be done. He's been in Bozen a lot lately, but as a rule, other springs, one never saw him."

Sauntering down in the town proper, Pointer again noticed the little man, and also that he was deliberately following him.

The Englishman stopped in at one of the multitudinous wine rooms that are growing less of a curse to the drink-loving inhabitants under Fascist government. As he drank his glass of rough Tirol wine, a face peered around at him for a second, eyed him wistfully, and melted away. The eyes seemed to want to ask a question, and yet not dare.

The waitress knew him at once on Pointer's speaking to her.

"As a rule, he's up and away in his mountains. They're wild birds, the Ladini. But lately, two or three tourists have told me that he followed them about. I'm afraid poor Toni has found the year a bad one."

"Can you send for him? I should like to speak to him."

But Toni had melted away.

Back at the hotel Pointer could not learn whether Charteris had engaged any guide in the town or not. Bozen is a walking, not a mountaineering centre. He got the address of Ladiner Toni and his character from the Carabinieri. He lived in Saint Christina, a tiny village in the Val Gardena.

The detective officer took the motor diligence to its mouth, and set out for Toni's house. His father had been the schoolmaster. The driver knew Toni well. He, too, agreed that he had changed of late. He was in and out of Bolzano all day long, hanging around the station, or the post-office chiefly, though he would as like as not spend hours on the promenades or in the big square. He seemed to be always on the lookout for some one, the driver thought. Perhaps some one who had not paid him up.

Pointer was in the little village before he knew it, so dark were the tiny wooden houses that they melted into the earth around them. That of the teacher's widow was like a toy gingerbread cottage.

An old woman, sitting by her spinning-wheel, looked up. She, too, was short and squat, but her brown eyes were very bright.

"Come in. You are looking for my son?" She spoke Italian or German with equal effort. "He will be in soon."

Pointer took a stool and watched her, nimble brown fingers.

"You want a guide, perhaps, Signo?"

All through their talk of the weather she eyed him closely.

The door, opened, and the little man entered. At sight of him, Pointer knew that he had not had his tramp for nothing. A curious pallor came into the man's swart face. His eyes flickered backwards and forwards from Pointer to his mother.

"This gentleman wants to see you, Toni."

"Well?" he asked in German, in a throaty, husky voice. "I hear you're a good guide among the Dolomites, and I want one."

"There's no climbing when the snows are melting." A watchful, suspicious intentness was in the little man's face. He was breathing rapidly. The wheel had stopped, and the old woman, too, was staring at their guest.

"I want you to show me some of the valleys around here. The carabinieri said you were trustworthy, and that what you don't know of the Dolomites towards Cadore isn't worth knowing. I will leave the pay to you, but I want a Ladiner."

"Why?"

"Because I want to hear your legends as we walk."

The wheel turned again. A sudden flurry of spring snow was flung against the window. Pointer had first heard of the Ladine folk lore from the driver that morning. He had spoken of Toni's mother as a repository of those legends, beautiful and haunting.

"Toni, put on more wood, and I will tell you how the snow first came to us mortals."

It was like rolling back the world to King Alfred's days, Pointer thought, as the old woman span and told him wild poetry of moon princesses and gnomes and trolls.

He looked at Toni, who was carving a pipe, and thought of gnomes. But the man's face was honest. He was a good guide, the Carabinieri had said. Pointer would not admit that his work made him need it more than other men, but for a fortnight of every year the Chief Inspector went to Switzerland, and spent his days high up, climbing among ice and the snows that never melt.

Living in a white world, and yet a world all colour, sea-green crevices, sky-blue hollows, long, lilac shadows, and at dawn and sunset every tint of the rainbow to walk on. To be a good guide was, in his eyes, the highest rating that a man could have.

To refill his pipe, Pointer had to hunt for his tobacco pouch. He laid some of the contents of his pockets on the table as he did so. Prominent among them, face up, was the photograph of Professor Charteris.

There was a hissing intake of breath from Toni. The wheel stopped its purr. In the little mirror in the palm of his hand Pointer saw the woman's face. She was staring at her son in piteous uncertainty. Pointer glanced casually at Toni, who lifted a pair of frightened, irresolute eyes. The Englishman continued to speak of the storm as he replaced the objects.

"Can you put me up overnight? I only need an armchair."

He preferred it to any bed the house could have given him, though Toni offered his own pallet.

Pointer settled himself for the night after a supper which made him turn pale for days to think on. He was well wrapped up, and with his legs on a second chair, did very well. Late in the night he heard some one come down the ladder and tiptoe into the room. It could only be Toni, for his mother was next door. From beneath his lashes, Pointer saw him in the moonlight creeping forward, his face distorted with timidity and anxiety. There was nothing in his hands. Pointer guessed what he was after. With the sigh of a sleeping man, he turned in his chair, so that his coat fell open—the photograph pocket in sight.

Toni crept closer. Tiny fingers, which again gave Pointer an odd thrill of physical repulsion which his mind did not share, touched him The photo was pulled out with a difficulty that to the detective was a certificate of the little fellow's previous honesty. Then Toni tiptoed to his mother's room. The door creaked slowly open and then shut. Followed a long whispered dialogue, during which Pointer took a nap. Ladine was not one of his accomplishments.

Back crept Toni. Half-way back went the photograph, then Pointer awoke and caught his wrist.

"A thief!"

"Oh, God!" Toni cried in fright. The door opened. His mother stood on the threshold holding a lamp high above her head with trembling hands. In the heavy folds of her nightdress and cap tied under her chin, she looked like a little white statue of fear.

"What does this mean?" Pointer asked as sternly as possible, for he felt as though he were terrifying two children, "I shall have to hand you over to the Carabinieri."

"I will explain." The mother came quite close. "No, Toni, let your mother explain. Only the truth is ever right. We must take the consequences. My son was having another look at a photograph you laid on the table this evening. It is of a relative? A friend?"

"One does not carry the pictures of strangers about with one. What do you know of the man?"

Again that agonised look exchanged between mother and son.

"Let go of my Toni, who did no harm except to listen to his mother's foolish, oh, foolish words! Now, we will all sit down, and I will tell you the dreadful truth."

"Mother, you will catch cold. Let me wrap a blanket around you." Toni rolled her up like a mummy, with only the wise little face showing.

"That man in the photograph came here just two weeks ago. On a Monday. The snows were hard and firm on the mountains then, and he had been here before. He had climbed with Toni the two last years in succession for a couple of days. Well, he came here in the afternoon, walking as you did from where the diligence put him down. He intended to stop the night and set off at four next morning, for the Val de la Saljeres, as we call it. A place which we here of Dla-ite avoid. The stones of an old watercourse are there. We Ladines know the truth of it, but you of the other people tell a different tale. This man—a sort of school-master like my blessed Antoni, he said he was—"

She paused inquiringly. Pointer nodded.

"Well, he wished to go there, and then go on later over to Meranoo by the Mendel. My son was willing. He liked the man. You did like him, didn't you, Toni?" She quavered, tears in her eyes.

"I did. He understood. He never laughed at the things we know."

"They set off in the morning about four, he and Toni, and by nine they should have been up in the Saijeres valley. But before twelve my Toni came running back. Happy Heaven! How he was running!" She undid a hand to wipe her eyes, but the tears were coming too fast now for her to speak. Toni patted the roll about where her shoulder would be.

"Tell no more, mother. I will show him everything to-morrow. I cannot explain in words as you can, but I will show him everything."

"Everything?" Again the two pairs of eyes clung

Toni swallowed and nodded. He was trembling violently. Pointer, with his purely physical dislike of him, thought again that it was not as a man trembles, but as an animal shivers.

"You will be ready in the morning at four? It will be wet, but the Val Saijeres lies low. It is only an uphill walk." Toni spoke quite resolutely.

"Good. I'll be ready. Now suppose we make your mother some tea or coffee."

But Toni poured into a saucepan some rough red wine mixed with water, dropped in a tablespoon of the black-brown honey of Tirol and some cloves, and stirred it all with a stick of cinnamon to a foamy froth This he poured into three cups. Pointer had tasted worse.

The old woman put her cup down with a shaking hand.

"It is a beautiful house, this of my husband's, but here in the valley there is only money. Happiness lies up on the hills." She left them.

Toni got up. "No, I will not speak now," he mumbled. "I am not good at talk like mother, but I will show you."

Pointer felt sure that he would be as good as his word, and fell into a sound sleep.

The old lady was astir with them next morning, heating up some of the buckwheat dumplings of their supper, and wrapping a couple in cabbage leaves for them to carry.

Toni took up his ice-axe with a strange look at its pointed tip. Then they set off by the swing of his lantern's light, and plodded on and up into a wild and stony region. True Dolomités were these, Lis Montes Palyes, Toni called them, and pallid and gray they were. Between this savage world the Saljeres Valley wound up, and up, with a prehistoric aqueduct at its upper end.

About eight, Toni, who had plodded along dumbly, stopped.

"We came here just like now, that man and I. Here he stopped to light his pipe, and said he would rest. I, too, sat down. On this rock here. My ice-axe I laid here. As I sat I heard a sound some way off. But this valley has so many invisible people living in it that I paid no heed. The mountain spirits do not harm me or any one in my charge. From this place a shorter way runs to the place he wanted to see, but we have had a very hard and late winter, and I was not sure whether the snow would not be too deep for him. He was not a young man. I asked him if I could climb up to that ridge there and look. If the path was open, we should be at the end of the gorge in a few minutes, but it would take me some twenty minutes to reach the rock. He said he wanted a rest, as his breathing showed. So I left my ice-axe where I had laid it beside him, and climbed that ridge you see to a little platform beyond, which you can't see. The track was deep in snow, as I thought. I was looking at it when suddenly I was told that something was wrong with the man. I ran back and I found him"—Toni began to tremble, that animal shuddering that seemed to crinkle his very skin—"I found him—around this bend. Here, on this new place. He must have moved into the sun when I had gone. But I found him—dead. Lying back with his head this way, and my ice-axe here beside him. Its point was red, and his head was red. There was a deep hole in it on top. He was quite dead. Some one had killed him with my ice-axe while I was away, and some one had robbed him of everything in his pockets, even to his handkerchief. I looked because I did not know his name. He had come two years, but there was no need of names. I rushed up that ridge there to see, but I saw nothing I shouted, but though a man over there heard me, he was a Croderes, and they never come. I was frightened—my man, my axe, and everything stolen from him—I lifted him into a cave I know of close to here. You see that stone?"

Pointer nodded with tense jaw.

"It rolls away. Behind it is a cave, dry and ice-cold. Ice-water washes around it. I put him in there, and ran home and told mother. She was as frightened as I, and it takes a lot to frighten mother"—Pointer thought of the little white-faced wisp, and smiled to himself—"and we decided to leave him there and say nothing. He is there now, and that is why I waited every day in Bolzano. I knew that some one would come looking for him. This is the rock."

Pointer helped him to get the stone away. It could be levered with the ice-axe quite easily. He stooped and entered an icy-cold hole in the rock, where, on the dry tufa, lay the body of an elderly man, frozen stiff. Pointer recognised it by the many portraits he had seen as Professor Charteris. As Ladine Toni had said, the pockets were empty. The head wound must have been made by some such instrument as the axe's point. The Chief Inspector crawled out again. Toni watched him like a half-timid, half-trusting animal.

"No one saw this affair, I suppose? No one knows of it but your mother and you?"

"A Croderès lives up there," Toni pointed. "He is a chamois-hunter. He might have seen something, but it would take a lot of money to find out."

"Why so? Surely he would speak if appealed to."

Toni shook his head helplessly.

"You mean he was there when this man was killed?" Pointer asked again.

Toni nodded several times.

"I saw him on his ledge when I looked for the short cut."

"Why won't he tell what he saw, supposing he saw the murder?" persisted the detective officer.

Toni looked haggard.

"I and my mother have plenty to live on with our big garden, but money—money enough for a Croderès—" Again he shook his head feebly.

"Can we get up to the hut of this Cro—" Pointer let the word fade away in the approved fashion of a stranger speaking an uncertain tongue.

Toni nodded after looking at the soles of Pointer's boots. They were well nailed.

"What am I to do about—him?"

Pointer did not commit himself. "What is a Crodere?" he asked instead.

Toni gave his little helpless wriggle.

"It is just a name we use. Some people say they belong to us, Ladines. There are not many left. They only live among the rocks, chiefly, towards Cadore."

"And are they so fond of money?"

"They are Croderès."

"So I gathered. But why do they love money so?"

Toni looked at him in silence, but after awhile he began to talk as they climbed the fairly easy goat path. Pointer pieced together from his disjointed confidences' the account of a race of mountain miners and hunters, who looked like ordinary men and women, and lived like them, but who were really stone men. They could feel nothing, neither love nor hate, anger nor joy, pain nor pleasure.

They are always even-tempered, he went on, and never harm any one on purpose, but a Croderès would see a child roasted alive if it happened to fall into the fire, though by merely putting out his hand he could save it. They have no hearts, no feelings, but they have clever brains, and they love money, though it can do nothing for them. A Croderès can feel neither heat nor cold.

Pointer again felt as though he were in a world unknown. Piffle, of course, but such strange, eerie piffle.

Suddenly Toni stopped. A moment more and they stood on a wide, smooth stone, evidently the entrance to a cave. A man stood inside watching them. He was about Toni's height, but broader, with longer arms. His hair was as thick, but curly. His eyes, however, were different—of a curious ice-blue, the eyes of a Siamese cat. Otherwise there was nothing odd about his tanned face. He looked rather stupid, but quite good-natured—when his eyes were downcast.

"The gentleman wants to talk to you, Seppi."

"I am inquiring about a friend of mine. He was up here in the mountains a fortnight ago yesterday. Do you happen to remember an accident of any kind on that day?"

The man looked at him placidly, turned, and went back into his cave as though to fetch something.

"He won't come out again, not unless the sun shines," Toni muttered.

"Is it permitted to enter?" Pointer asked in Italian.

"Prego, prego!" The man acquiesced civilly, going on with his work of clipping the ears of some chamois masks which he was mounting. The only chairs were boulders. A little fire flickered on a huge rock that served the man as table. A pot of glue stood in the centre; shears and taxidermist's knives lay on a slab beside it.

"I will pay well for reliable information."

"What will you pay?" Seppi's voice was husky and very even.

Pointer laid ten two-lire pieces in front of him, and kept his hand on them. Ice-blue eyes met gray eyes for a second.

"What age was your friend? What did he wear?"

Pointer told him.

"Yes, I saw him."

The man went on with his humming,

"Ste Ii a vardar, El Latemar."

Pointer pushed across two of the coins.

"He was sitting on a rock in the valley," the rock man said briskly.

"Did you see anything else?" Another coin was shoved across, and so it went on, Pointer feeding the man as though he were some sort of talking automaton.

"I saw Toni go up to a ledge to see how the short cut was. I saw him shade his eyes and peer at it. I saw the old man in the valley move around a corner on to a rock in the sun. I saw another man come along the valley, pick up the ice-axe, and come crouching half around the corner. I saw Toni dislodge a stone. At its rattle the second man slipped back again around the bend. I saw that he meant to kill the old man." Seppi spoke as unconcernedly as though he had been describing army manoeuvres.

"Why didn't you shout?"

"And scare away the chamois? I was glad to see that the man intended to use an ice-axe and not a gun. He came on a second time with the axe up, and crashed it down into the head of the old man sitting with his back to him. The man fell off the boulder."

"Could you see what Toni was doing?"

"He had just reached the flat rock which would show him the short cut."

"Couldn't he see the murder?"

"Of course not. There is that crag between. See for yourself. The man raised the axe again, but evidently the other man was dead. I saw him examine him with care, or rob him. I couldn't see clearly which it was. Then he jumped up and ran behind the corner again, and on out of sight around that bend you see from here. I saw him no more."

"Could you describe him?"

The description was hopeless. Middle size, middle dark, rather young, full beard, soft hat, oldish cape over his coat. It would have fitted three-quarters of the men who had passed that way.

Pointer arranged with the man to pay him the amount of a day's chamois hunting should he need him to report the murder to the Carabinieri. The man agreed, asked for something on account, and, as he stretched out his hand, passed it accidentally through the flame. He held it there for a second, till Toni's exclamation made him look at it. With perfect unconcern he picked off the black flesh, and shoved the hand into his pocket.

"I must tie it up. It is a nuisance that I was not looking."

"Does it hurt?" Pointer asked, watching him closely. The man laughed shortly.

"Nothing can hurt me. That's the danger. You can lose an arm without noticing what's wrong, if you don't look out."

As he walked back to the cottage with Toni, Pointer was still not sure if that apparently painless burn had been acting, or the result of self-suggestion, or some sort of Yoga.

"Do nothing till you hear from me again," he told Toni.

"I want time to think things over. I may have to speak to the Carabinieri about the matter, but I shall be able so to put it that you are seen to be innocent, I think. Will you leave it to me?"

Toni shivered.

"The carabinieri—they are so quick! Always in such a hurry to act!"

"I think I shall be able to make their maresciallo understand, and it is the only way. The only way, Toni, believe me."

For Pointer there never was but one way—the way of the law.

Toni licked his dry lips.

"You—you think so?"

"Courage!" Pointer laid a kindly hand on his shoulder. "You have a good reputation. You are a good guide, and a good guide is not a man to lightly suspect of murder. Then there is your cold-blooded friend up there—"

"But he saw no more than I knew. I told you the man was killed by a blow from my ice-axe."