Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated), page 594
Never in his life had he driven a car at such breakneck speed. Twice he was held up by wood-cutters’ waggons, and once in a village he had to back out and make a round to avoid a wedding procession. But when he reached the great Saluzzana road there was good going, and he was at Santa Chiara by a little after four. The inn was shuttered, but he drove the car into a farm shed, and gave the farmer money to keep an eye on it till his return. In two miles he was at the mouth of the gorge which led to the col, and turned up the track by the stream side. Twilight had fallen, and he looked up the cleft into a pit of dark vapour, out of which loomed menacingly a black sentinel crag.
A great peace was on his spirit, peace which was more than the absence of care, and was almost happiness. He felt as if a burden had fallen from his shoulders. For one thing he was drawing again upon the strength of that body which for years he had so scrupulously tended. Not since the Arctic ice had he used his muscles to the full, and they responded like a young horse at the first feel of turf. Also he felt as if he were in some sense in sight of his goal. His duty had narrowed to a strait road which he could not miss, and the very fact that he could have no prospect but must wait for light increased his certainty. He was being led, and he rejoiced to follow. But indeed there was no room for self-examination, for his first purpose must be speed. He went up the steep track among the boulders and pine-boles like a hunter running to cut off a deer.
Above a waterfall the gorge flattened out into an upland glen strewn with the debris of old rock-falls. This made slow travelling, for the bigger rocks had to be circumvented, the track had disappeared, and sometimes there was scarcely room for passage between the cliffs and the gorge of the torrent. Beyond that the ravine bent to the right, and a long steep had to be scaled, down which the stream fell in a chain of cascades. It was dark now, though the white water was still plain, and bits of old snowdrifts. There was one point where the only passage was between the gorge of the stream and a rock which seemed perilously poised. He felt it shake as he passed, and he realised that at any minute it might fall and block the road, since there was no possibility of a circuit on either hand among the sheer crags. He passed in safety and then had the main slope to breast. The rocks were glazed by the recent snowstorms, and even his nailed boots bit on them with difficulty. This was the most arduous part of the road, but he did not slacken his pace. Often he slipped and fell, and there were parts where it took all his skill and strength to surmount some icy boiler-plates. When he reached the top his watch told him that it was nearly seven. He was not yet half-way across.
After that for a little it was easier going. The slope was less violent and the road was mostly across shaly screes and patches of snow. He was far above the pines now, above even the coarsest herbage. The wind which had been drifting intermittent snow-showers had dropped, and the air seemed to be sharpening to frost. He still strode furiously, but the lack of the need for the severer kind of exertion left him leisure for his thoughts. . . .
He was back in Eilean Bàn, and the time was afternoon. Just of late it had always been afternoon; still, golden weather, when the ardours of day were beginning to melt into the peace of evening. He was on the west side of Sgurr Bàn, his favourite place, a long way to the west, for he was conscious that he was very near the sea. Hitherto the sea had always eluded him, however far he rambled, though he was never out of sound of its murmuring. But now two strange things had happened. One was that he knew — though how he knew it he could not tell — that never before in all his dreams had he been so close to the sea. Surely a very few steps more must take him to the white sands, where the tides were never silent. The other was that Nigel had escaped him. It was a long time since Nigel had gone off to play by himself; usually he stuck very close to his side, clutching his hand, and babbling like a brook. He could still hear him only a little distance away shouting among the hazels. But he wondered what fancy had taken Nigel off by himself. . . .
The pale bright skies of the isle disappeared, and he was looking at a narrow saddle between rocks. It was light now, for the moon was rising. He was at the col, and a freer air blew in his face.
Far below him the Val d’Arras lay in a deep olive gloom. The hotel was out of his sight, blocked by a shoulder of hill, but there was enough light to see the valley narrowing northward towards the pass. He felt quickened and braced and utterly tireless. He had made good time, and unless he were hung up on the descent he must reach the inn before the others. Eilean Bàn vanished from his thoughts, and he addressed himself to the precipitous screes that led to the first shelf.
It was a wild descent, now in the darkness of a cleft, now in open moonshine when he was forced on to the face. He did not trouble to look for the track, for in his head he had a general picture of the route. Often he would slip for yards, and once on a patch of snow he had a furious glissade which ended miraculously at a rock above an ugly drop. A little stream began, and at one time he had to take to its channel and got soaked to the skin. The first flat shelf was a slower business, for the way had to be picked among ankle-twisting boulders. With the second shelf the trees began, gnarled old relics, with ugly pitfalls in the shape of rotting trunks. But the moist smell of vegetation cheered him, for it told him that he was nearing the valley. At one corner he caught a glimpse of the hotel. There was a light in a window. Who were assembled behind that light?
Almost before he knew it, he had reached the valley floor. He straightened himself, and wrung out the wet from his sopping trousers. He looked at his watch, and had a moment of pride. In five hours he had finished a course to which most mountaineers would have allotted ten, and he was as fresh as when he had started. He forded the stream at a shallow, and ran towards the light which twinkled a mile down the valley.
He must move carefully, for he was now on enemy’s ground. He left the track, and approached the hotel from behind, where the hill rose steeply. He vaulted the wall of the little garden and tip-toed stealthily towards the back-door.
As he approached it it opened, and a man emerged and looked up, yawning, at the sky as if to prospect the weather. He was an oldish man, very square and stocky, and he had in his hand a frying-pan. He dropped it as the stranger came out of the earth and stood before him.
“Great God, Amos,” Adam cried, “what are you doing here?”
The old man peered and blinked.
“Losh, it’s the Colonel,” he whispered. “I cam here wi’ her leddyship — the Marchioness, ye ken. We’ve been ryngin’ about Italy.”
“Who are here?”
“Just Mr Creevey and her leddyship and masel’.”
Adam pushed past him through the kitchen and into the little hall, where before a cheerful stove sat a man and a woman beside the remains of supper. He had not grasped Amos’s information, for the sight of Jacqueline made him stand and gasp. He had no eye for Creevey’s surprised face or his outstretched hand.
“Are you mad?” he asked her. “Do you know that you have come into a place of death?”
CHAPTER III
I
The three made a strange group around the glowing ashes of the stove — Creevey and Jacqueline as neat as if they had been denizens of a common summer hotel, and Adam wet and dishevelled and about him the tang of wild weather.
Jacqueline, under the spell of his demanding eyes, felt her wits wandering. What had happened? What was his purpose? Why did he talk fiercely of death? She had to make some kind of answer.
“I came by accident,” she stammered. “I have been motoring in Italy. . . . I used to come to this inn long ago. . . . I wanted to see the place again.”
“And I,” said Creevey, “am here by misfortune. I have been left stranded by an infernal aeroplane which should have taken me to Paris.” He spoke cheerfully, for indeed he was relieved in mind. There had been no assignation, for Melfort’s surprise at the sight of the lady was too real to be assumed. At the meaning of his words he could make no guess, but apostles must be permitted a little melodrama.
Adam strode to the door. It was a heavy thing, which could be fastened by a thick bar let down from the adjacent wall. He dropped the bar and called for Amos.
“Go out,” he said, “and look down the valley. There’s a moon. See if anyone is coming up the road. By car or on foot.”
“They’ll hae to be on foot,” said Amos, “for somebody has broke doun the brig a mile back.”
“So much the better. If anyone appears in that last mile, come back and warn us at once. It is now half-past ten. If they don’t come by midnight we may assume we are safe for the night.”
He cut himself a wedge of cold pie.
“Forgive me,” he said, “but I’ve had no food since midday. I have come over the col from the Val Saluzzana, and I didn’t take it easy. Thank God I’m in time.”
“Time for what?” Creevey asked a little sharply. He disliked mysteries, and Adam’s peremptoriness offended him.
“Time to warn you. And, I hope, to save your life.”
He seemed to be about to explain further when Amos appeared again from the back part of the house.
“There’s no muckle prospect doun the road,” he announced. “The mune’s ahint the hill noo and the clouds are comin’ up. It looks as if they were bankin’ for mair snaw. There’s naebody to be seen.”
A light broke in on Adam.
“Of course. Fool that I am! They are not coming up the valley. That would leave too obvious traces. They are crossing the mountains by the Marjolana pass and are coming in here from the north. From the Staubthal. They can’t arrive till morning. They have isolated this place on the south, and to-morrow they will complete the cordon. Well, that gives us some hours’ grace.”
He flung wood on the stove, and sat himself in a wicker chair. He took from his knapsack a pair of stout nailed boots and thick socks. “I brought these for you,” he said to Creevey. “I think you may need them.”
“For God’s sake have done with mystifications, Melfort,” Creevey cried. “What is all this fuss about? For the last ten hours I seem to have been in a lunatic world!”
Adam smiled.
“You have been in a lunatic world much longer than that, and perhaps you are a little responsible for its lunacy. That is what the fuss is about.”
“You are in danger, Adam,” Jacqueline put in. “Mr Falconet told me.”
“I? Oh, no doubt. But I am not the one that matters. I will tell you what I know, but half of it is guess-work.”
He turned to Creevey.
“You remember Berlin in August? You saw how Loeffler was guarded and you thought it natural, for he was head of a nation and therefore the chief mark for the discontented. He was in greater danger than you thought, and he ran some heavy risks before he got to the London Conference. But have you never considered that others may be in the same position? Not such conspicuous public figures as Loeffler, but men who have aroused as deep antagonisms. Remember that the desperate to-day have good information and look below the surface of things. They have organised themselves like an army.”
“Do you mean me?” Creevey asked.
“Why not you? Everyone who knows anything is aware that you have more power to-day than most Governments. You use it, shall we say, in a certain way. To you that way is natural and reasonable, but to other people it may seem an infamous way, the way of the wrecker. Madness, you think? Yes, but an effective kind of madness. A disintegrated world lets loose strange forces which do not bother about the conventions.”
Creevey did not answer, for he recalled some curious things that had been happening lately, words casually dropped, cryptic warnings, inexplicable little hindrances. He had set them down to a perverse chance, but he remembered that the notion had flitted over his mind that there might be purpose behind them.
“Do you know a man called La Cecilia?” Adam asked.
Creevey shook his head.
“Or a Baron von Kilderling?”
The name seemed familiar to Creevey, but he could not place it.
“Or a Dr Gratias?”
This stirred his memory. He had met Gratias, who had been the head of a big German industrial combine which crashed in the inflation period. The man had once had a great reputation, not without its sinister element, and he had marked him down as one to be watched. Lately he had disappeared from view, and he had sometimes wondered a little uneasily what had become of him. Not a month ago he had instructed his people to try to get news of Dr Gratias.
Adam saw that he had moved him. He told in detail what he knew of the inner circle of the Iron Hands, of the meeting at the Rhineland eating-house, of what happened during Loeffler’s visit to Lamancha. Then he told of his sight of Cecilia and von Kilderling that very day in Arsignano, and his talk with the former. He said nothing of his own plan to get Creevey to himself; that had failed and might be forgotten.
At first Creevey did not speak. He sat with his big head sunk on his chest and his eyes half closed. That which he had believed impossible had come to pass. The world of reason, on which he had so firm a hold, had dissolved into a chaos of crude passions. His alert intelligence told him that this hideous transformation had always been a possibility. As for Adam’s tale he must credit every word, for he had too strong a respect for Adam’s acumen to think that he could be mistaken. He was a brave man, but this sudden crumbling of foundations sent a chill to his heart.
“What do they want with me?” he asked hoarsely.
“I do not think that you will live long in their hands,” was Adam’s reply. “Some time to-night the aeroplane in which you are supposed to be travelling will be wrecked and your death will appear in the evening papers to-morrow. That report will not be contradicted if our friends can help it.”
“You are in danger, too? You risk your life in coming to warn me? Why do you do it? We have never been friends. I was under the impression that my doings were not so fortunate as to have your approval.”
Again Adam smiled, and there was that in his smile, in his fine-drawn face, and the steady friendliness of his eyes, which stirred in Creevey a feeling which no human being had ever evoked before. So novel it was that he scarcely listened to Adam’s words.
“I didn’t approve of you. But I have always admired you, and thought that some day you would awake. I have a notion that this may be the awakening. For you are going to escape — make no mistake about that. You will escape, though we have to climb the Pomagognon.”
“But how?” Jacqueline had been roused out of her first stupefaction, and was struggling to grasp a situation which she had never forecast. Her first thought had been that her mad escapade had added to Adam’s burden. Then she remembered her car, the only means of transport at their disposal. If danger was coming from the north, might they not escape by the south?”
“My car is all right,” she said. “I lied about it to you, Mr Creevey. It is in perfect order, backed in among the trees beyond the broken bridge. Let us go off by it at once. It’s the only way.”
Adam shook his head.
“Not a ghost of a chance. If our friends are coming up the valley they will meet us. If they are coming down the valley, as I am certain they are, the route to the south will be picketed. Those gentry leave nothing to luck. They have already made the road difficult and broken the bridge. Amos says it had been hewn down with axes and that the cuts were fresh. I am afraid there is no hope in that direction.”
“Then we are caught. We cannot get into Switzerland.”
“We must get into Switzerland. Once there we are safe. Falconet is at Grunewald — and more than Falconet. Once in the Staubthal we are out of their net.”
“Can’t we get away from the inn and hide in the mountains?”
“How long could we keep hidden? It is going to be wild weather and we should starve. Besides, the men we have to deal with are old hands at the game. They won’t be plump sedentary folk like Gratias, but the real Iron Hands, like Cecilia and Kilderling, men who will take any risk and can endure any fatigue. They have the best mountaineers in Europe at their command. It would be a lost game to play hide-and-seek among the hills with the people who will come over the pass to-morrow.”
Jacqueline dropped her hands on her knees with a gesture of despair. But the sight of Adam’s face gave her hope.
“Our chance,” he said, “lies in our start. I know the Marjolana route and I know the Saluzzana, and I do not believe that they can be here before eight o’clock to-morrow. If the roads forward and backward are shut to us we must take to the flank. We must try the col by which I crossed to-night from the Val Saluzzana. At Santa Chiara you strike the main road over the Staub.”
“Then let’s start at once.” Jacqueline’s anxiety had made her eager for instant movement.
“Impossible. The moon is down, and the road is not easy. If I were alone I might do it in the darkness, but I could not take another with me. We must have daylight — and a little sleep first. Remember that we are dealing with athletes and trained mountaineers.”
Creevey had gone white, but by an obvious effort he kept his composure.
“Won’t they have men on the col?” he asked.
“They may — in which case we are done. But I don’t think so. Few people know it and fewer use it. It was my own discovery, and was shared with about half a dozen Italian officers, most of whom are now dead. . . . But we may be followed, and must allow for that. They will have men with them who are experts at winter hunting and can follow spoor. That means that we shall be in rather a hurry.”
