He pointed to the slip on the table.
‘You have seen the orders?’
I nodded.
‘The long day’s work is over. You must rejoice, for your part has been
the hardest, I think. Some day you will tell me about it?’
The man’s face was honest and kindly, rather like that of the engineer
Gaudian, whom two years before I had met in Germany. But his eyes
fascinated me, for they were the eyes of the dreamer and fanatic, who
would not desist from his quest while life lasted. I thought that
Ivery had chosen well in his colleague.
‘My task is not done yet,’ I said. ‘I came here to see Chelius.’
‘He will be back tomorrow evening.’
‘Too late. I must see him at once. He has gone to Italy, and I must
overtake him.’
‘You know your duty best,’ he said gravely.
‘But you must help me. I must catch him at Santa Chiara, for it is a
business of life and death. Is there a car to be had?’
‘There is mine. But there is no chauffeur. Chelius took him.’
‘I can drive myself and I know the road. But I have no pass to cross
the frontier.’
‘That is easily supplied,’ he said, smiling.
In one bookcase there was a shelf of dummy books. He unlocked this and
revealed a small cupboard, whence he took a tin dispatch-box. From
some papers he selected one, which seemed to be already signed.
‘Name?’ he asked.
‘Call me Joseph Zimmer of Arosa,’ I said. ‘I travel to pick up my
master, who is in the timber trade.’
‘And your return?’
‘I will come back by my old road,’ I said mysteriously; and if he knew
what I meant it was more than I did myself.
He completed the paper and handed it to me. ‘This will take you
through the frontier posts. And now for the car. The servants will be
in bed, for they have been preparing for a long journey, but I will
myself show it you. There is enough petrol on board to take you to
Rome.’
He led me through the hall, unlocked the front door, and we crossed
the snowy lawn to the garage. The place was empty but for a great car,
which bore the marks of having come from the muddy lowlands. To my joy
I saw that it was a Daimler, a type with which I was familiar. I lit
the lamps, started the engine, and ran it out on to the road.
‘You will want an overcoat,’ he said.
‘I never wear them.’
‘Food?’
‘I have some chocolate. I will breakfast at Santa Chiara.’
‘Well, God go with you!’
A minute later I was tearing along the lake-side towards St Anton
village.
I stopped at the cottage on the hill. Peter was not yet in bed. I
found him sitting by the fire, trying to read, but I saw by his face
that he had been waiting anxiously on my coming.
‘We’re in the soup, old man,’ I said as I shut the door. In a dozen
sentences I told him of the night’s doings, of Ivery’s plan and my
desperate errand.
‘You wanted a share,’ I cried. ‘Well, everything depends on you now.
I’m off after Ivery, and God knows what will happen. Meantime, you
have got to get on to Blenkiron, and tell him what I’ve told you. He
must get the news through to G.H.Q. somehow. He must trap the Wild
Birds before they go. I don’t know how, but he must. Tell him it’s all
up to him and you, for I’m out of it. I must save Mary, and if God’s
willing I’ll settle with Ivery. But the big job is for Blenkiron—and
you. Somehow he has made a bad break, and the enemy has got ahead of
him. He must sweat blood to make up. My God, Peter, it’s the solemnest
moment of our lives. I don’t see any light, but we mustn’t miss any
chances. I’m leaving it all to you.’
I spoke like a man in a fever, for after what I had been through I
wasn’t quite sane. My coolness in the Pink Chalet had given place to a
crazy restlessness. I can see Peter yet, standing in the ring of
lamplight, supporting himself by a chair back, wrinkling his brows
and, as he always did in moments of excitement, scratching gently the
tip of his left ear. His face was happy.
‘Never fear, Dick,’ he said. ‘It will all come right. Ons sal’n plan maak.‘
And then, still possessed with a demon of disquiet, I was on the road
again, heading for the pass that led to Italy.
The mist had gone from the sky, and the stars were shining brightly.
The moon, now at the end of its first quarter, was setting in a gap of
the mountains, as I climbed the low col from the St Anton valley to
the greater Staubthal. There was frost and the hard snow crackled
under my wheels, but there was also that feel in the air which
preludes storm. I wondered if I should run into snow in the high
hills. The whole land was deep in peace. There was not a light in the
hamlets I passed through, not a soul on the highway.
In the Staubthal I joined the main road and swung to the left up the
narrowing bed of the valley. The road was in noble condition, and the
car was running finely, as I mounted through forests of snowy Pines to
a land where the mountains crept close together, and the highway
coiled round the angles of great crags or skirted perilously some
profound gorge, with only a line of wooden posts to defend it from the
void. In places the snow stood in walls on either side, where the road
was kept open by man’s labour. In other parts it lay thin, and in the
dim light one might have fancied that one was running through open
meadow-land.
Slowly my head was getting clearer, and I was able to look round my
problem. I banished from my mind the situation I had left behind me.
Blenkiron must cope with that as best he could. It lay with him to
deal with the Wild Birds, my job was with Ivery alone. Sometime in the
early morning he would reach Santa Chiara, and there he would find
Mary. Beyond that my imagination could forecast nothing. She would be
alone—I could trust his cleverness for that; he would try to force
her to come with him, or he might persuade her with some lying story.
Well, please God, I should come in for the tail end of the interview,
and at the thought I cursed the steep gradients I was climbing, and
longed for some magic to lift the Daimler beyond the summit and set it
racing down the slope towards Italy.
I think it was about half-past three when I saw the lights of the
frontier post. The air seemed milder than in the valleys, and there
was a soft scurry of snow on my right cheek. A couple of sleepy Swiss
sentries with their rifles in their hands stumbled out as I drew up.
They took my pass into the hut and gave me an anxious quarter of an
hour while they examined it. The performance was repeated fifty yards
on at the Italian post, where to my alarm the sentries were inclined
to conversation. I played the part of the sulky servant, answering in
monosyllables and pretending to immense stupidity.
‘You are only just in time, friend,’ said one in German. ‘The weather
grows bad and soon the pass will close. Ugh, it is as cold as last
winter on the Tonale. You remember, Giuseppe?’
But in the end they let me move on. For a little I felt my way
gingerly, for on the summit the road had many twists and the snow was
confusing to the eyes. Presently came a sharp drop and I let the
Daimler go. It grew colder, and I shivered a little; the snow became a
wet white fog around the glowing arc of the headlights; and always the
road fell, now in long curves, now in steep short dips, till I was
aware of a glen opening towards the south. From long living in the
wilds I have a kind of sense for landscape without the testimony of
the eyes, and I knew where the ravine narrowed or widened though it
was black darkness.
In spite of my restlessness I had to go slowly, for after the first
rush downhill I realized that, unless I was careful, I might wreck the
car and spoil everything. The surface of the road on the southern
slope of the mountains was a thousand per cent worse than that on the
other. I skidded and side-slipped, and once grazed the edge of the
gorge. It was far more maddening than the climb up, for then it had
been a straight-forward grind with the Daimler doing its utmost,
whereas now I had to hold her back because of my own lack of skill. I
reckon that time crawling down from the summit of the Staub as some of
the weariest hours I ever spent.
Quite suddenly I ran out of the ill weather into a different climate.
The sky was clear above me, and I saw that dawn was very near. The
first pinewoods were beginning, and at last came a straight slope
where I could let the car out. I began to recover my spirits, which
had been very dashed, and to reckon the distance I had still to travel
. . . And then, without warning, a new world sprang up around me. Out of
the blue dusk white shapes rose like ghosts, peaks and needles and
domes of ice, their bases fading mistily into shadow, but the tops
kindling till they glowed like jewels. I had never seen such a sight,
and the wonder of it for a moment drove anxiety from my heart. More,
it gave me an earnest of victory. I was in clear air once more, and
surely in this diamond ether the foul things which loved the dark must
be worsted . . .
And then I saw, a mile ahead, the little square red-roofed building
which I knew to be the inn of Santa Chiara.
It was here that misfortune met me. I had grown careless now, and
looked rather at the house than the road. At one point the hillside
had slipped down—it must have been recent, for the road was well
kept—and I did not notice the landslide till I was on it. I slewed to
the right, took too wide a curve, and before I knew the car was over
the far edge. I slapped on the brakes, but to avoid turning turtle I
had to leave the road altogether. I slithered down a steep bank into a
meadow, where for my sins I ran into a fallen tree trunk with a jar
that shook me out of my seat and nearly broke my arm. Before I
examined the car I knew what had happened. The front axle was bent,
and the off front wheel badly buckled.
I had no time to curse my stupidity. I clambered back to the road and
set off running down it at my best speed. I was mortally stiff, for
Ivery’s rack was not good for the joints, but I realized it only as a
drag on my pace, not as an affliction in itself. My whole mind was set
on the house before me and what might be happening there.
There was a man at the door of the inn, who, when he caught sight of
my figure, began to move to meet me. I saw that it was Launcelot Wake,
and the sight gave me hope.
But his face frightened me. It was drawn and haggard like one who
never sleeps, and his eyes were hot coals.
‘Hannay,’ he cried, ‘for God’s sake what does it mean?’
‘Where is Mary?’ I gasped, and I remember I clutched at a lapel of his
coat.
He pulled me to the low stone wall by the roadside.
‘I don’t know,’ he said hoarsely. ‘We got your orders to come here
this morning. We were at Chiavagno, where Blenkiron told us to wait.
But last night Mary disappeared . . . I found she had hired a carriage
and come on ahead. I followed at once, and reached here an hour ago to
find her gone . . . The woman who keeps the place is away and there are
only two old servants left. They tell me that Mary came here late, and
that very early in the morning a closed car came over the Staub with a
man in it. They say he asked to see the young lady, and that they
talked together for some time, and that then she went off with him in
the car down the valley . . . I must have passed it on my way up . . .
There’s been some black devilment that I can’t follow. Who was the
man? Who was the man?’
He looked as if he wanted to throttle me.
‘I can tell you that,’ I said. ‘It was Ivery.’
He stared for a second as if he didn’t understand. Then he leaped to
his feet and cursed like a trooper. ‘You’ve botched it, as I knew you
would. I knew no good would come of your infernal subtleties.’ And he
consigned me and Blenkiron and the British army and Ivery and
everybody else to the devil.
I was past being angry. ‘Sit down, man,’ I said, ‘and listen to me.’ I
told him of what had happened at the Pink Chalet. He heard me out with
his head in his hands. The thing was too bad for cursing.
‘The Underground Railway!’ he groaned. ‘The thought of it drives me
mad. Why are you so calm, Hannay? She’s in the hands of the cleverest
devil in the world, and you take it quietly. You should be a raving
lunatic.’
‘I would be if it were any use, but I did all my raving last night in
that den of Ivery’s. We’ve got to pull ourselves together, Wake. First
of all, I trust Mary to the other side of eternity. She went with him
of her own free will. I don’t know why, but she must have had a
reason, and be sure it was a good one, for she’s far cleverer than you
or me . . . We’ve got to follow her somehow. Ivery’s bound for Germany,
but his route is by the Pink Chalet, for he hopes to pick me up there.
He went down the valley; therefore he is going to Switzerland by the
Marjolana. That is a long circuit and will take him most of the day.
Why he chose that way I don’t know, but there it is. We’ve got to get
back by the Staub.’
‘How did you come?’ he asked.
‘That’s our damnable luck. I came in a first-class six-cylinder
Daimler, which is now lying a wreck in a meadow a mile up the road.
We’ve got to foot it.’
‘We can’t do it. It would take too long. Besides, there’s the frontier
to pass.’
I remembered ruefully that I might have got a return passport from the
Portuguese Jew, if I had thought of anything at the time beyond
getting to Santa Chiara.
‘Then we must make a circuit by the hillside and dodge the guards.
It’s no use making difficulties, Wake. We’re fairly up against it, but
we’ve got to go on trying till we drop. Otherwise I’ll take your
advice and go mad.’
‘And supposing you get back to St Anton, you’ll find the house shut up
and the travellers gone hours before by the Underground Railway.’
‘Very likely. But, man, there’s always the glimmering of a chance.
It’s no good chucking in your hand till the game’s out.’
‘Drop your proverbial philosophy, Mr Martin Tupper, and look up
there.’
He had one foot on the wall and was staring at a cleft in the
snow-line across the valley. The shoulder of a high peak dropped
sharply to a kind of nick and rose again in a long graceful curve of
snow. All below the nick was still in deep shadow, but from the
configuration of the slopes I judged that a tributary glacier ran from
it to the main glacier at the river head.
‘That’s the Colle delle Rondini,’ he said, ‘the Col of the Swallows.
It leads straight to the Staubthal near Grunewald. On a good day I
have done it in seven hours, but it’s not a pass for winter-time. It
has been done of course, but not often. . . . Yet, if the weather held,
it might go even now, and that would bring us to St Anton by the
evening. I wonder’—and he looked me over with an appraising eye—’I
wonder if you’re up to it.’
My stiffness had gone and I burned to set my restlessness to physical
toil.
‘If you can do it, I can,’ I said.
‘No. There you’re wrong. You’re a hefty fellow, but you’re no
mountaineer, and the ice of the Colle delle Rondini needs knowledge.
It would be insane to risk it with a novice, if there were any other
way. But I’m damned if I see any, and I’m going to chance it. We can
get a rope and axes in the inn. Are you game?’
‘Right you are. Seven hours, you say. We’ve got to do it in six.’
‘You will be humbler when you get on the ice,’ he said grimly. ‘We’d
better breakfast, for the Lord knows when we shall see food again.’
We left the inn at five minutes to nine, with the sky cloudless and a
stiff wind from the north-west, which we felt even in the deep-cut
valley. Wake walked with a long, slow stride that tried my patience. I
wanted to hustle, but he bade me keep in step. ‘You take your orders
from me, for I’ve been at this job before. Discipline in the ranks,
remember.’
We crossed the river gorge by a plank bridge, and worked our way up
the right bank, past the moraine, to the snout of the glacier. It was
bad going, for the snow concealed the boulders, and I often floundered
in holes. Wake never relaxed his stride, but now and then he stopped
to sniff the air.
I observed that the weather looked good, and he differed. ‘It’s too
clear. There’ll be a full-blown gale on the Col and most likely snow
in the afternoon.’ He pointed to a fat yellow cloud that was beginning
to bulge over the nearest peak. After that I thought he lengthened his
stride.
‘Lucky I had these boots resoled and nailed at Chiavagno,’ was the
only other remark he made till we had passed the seracs of the main
glacier and turned up the lesser ice-stream from the Colle delle
Rondini.
By half-past ten we were near its head, and I could see clearly the
ribbon of pure ice between black crags too steep for snow to lie on,
which was the means of ascent to the Col. The sky had clouded over,
and ugly streamers floated on the high slopes. We tied on the rope at
the foot of the bergschrund, which was easy to pass because of the
winter’s snow. Wake led, of course, and presently we came on to the
icefall.
In my time I had done a lot of scrambling on rocks and used to promise
myself a season in the Alps to test myself on the big peaks. If I ever
go it will be to climb the honest rock towers around Chamonix, for I
won’t have anything to do with snow mountains. That day on the Colle
delle Rondini fairly sickened me of ice. I daresay I might have liked
it if I had done it in a holiday mood, at leisure and in good spirits.
But to crawl up that couloir with a sick heart and a desperate impulse
to hurry was the worst sort of nightmare. The place was as steep as a
wall of smooth black ice that seemed hard as granite. Wake did the
step-cutting, and I admired him enormously. He did not seem to use
much force, but every step was hewn cleanly the right size, and they
were spaced the right distance. In this job he was the true
professional. I was thankful Blenkiron was not with us, for the thing
would have given a squirrel vertigo. The chips of ice slithered
between my legs and I could watch them till they brought up just above
the bergschrund.
The ice was in shadow and it was bitterly cold. As we crawled up I had
not the exercise of using the axe to warm me, and I got very numb
standing on one leg waiting for the next step. Worse still, my legs
began to cramp. I was in good condition, but that time under Ivery’s
rack had played the mischief with my limbs. Muscles got out of place
in my calves and stood in aching lumps, till I almost squealed with
the pain of it. I was mortally afraid I should slip, and every time I
moved I called out to Wake to warn him. He saw what was happening and
got the pick of his axe fixed in the ice before I was allowed to stir.
He spoke often to cheer me up, and his voice had none of its
harshness. He was like some ill-tempered generals I have known, very
gentle in a battle.
At the end the snow began to fall, a soft powder like the over-spill of
a storm raging beyond the crest. It was just after that that Wake
cried out that in five minutes we would be at the summit. He consulted
his wrist-watch. ‘Jolly good time, too. Only twenty-five minutes
behind my best. It’s not one o’clock.’
The next I knew I was lying flat on a pad of snow easing my cramped
legs, while Wake shouted in my ear that we were in for something bad.
I was aware of a driving blizzard, but I had no thought of anything
but the blessed relief from pain. I lay for some minutes on my back
with my legs stiff in the air and the toes turned inwards, while my
muscles fell into their proper place.
It was certainly no spot to linger in. We looked down into a trough of
driving mist, which sometimes swirled aside and showed a knuckle of
black rock far below. We ate some chocolate, while Wake shouted in my
ear that now we had less step-cutting. He did his best to cheer me,
but he could not hide his anxiety. Our faces were frosted over like a
wedding-cake and the sting of the wind was like a whiplash on our
eyelids.
The first part was easy, down a slope of firm snow where steps were
not needed. Then came ice again, and we had to cut into it below the
fresh surface snow. This was so laborious that Wake took to the rocks
on the right side of the couloir, where there was some shelter from
the main force of the blast. I found it easier, for I knew something
about rocks, but it was difficult enough with every handhold and
foothold glazed. Presently we were driven back again to the ice, and
painfully cut our way through a throat of the ravine where the sides
narrowed. There the wind was terrible, for the narrows made a kind of
funnel, and we descended, plastered against the wall, and scarcely
able to breathe, while the tornado plucked at our bodies as if it
would whisk us like wisps of grass into the abyss.
After that the gorge widened and we had an easier slope, till suddenly
we found ourselves perched on a great tongue of rock round which the
snow blew like the froth in a whirlpool. As we stopped for breath,
Wake shouted in my ear that this was the Black Stone.
‘The what?’ I yelled.
‘The Schwarzstein. The Swiss call the pass the Schwarzsteinthor. You
can see it from Grunewald.’
I suppose every man has a tinge of superstition in him. To hear that
name in that ferocious place gave me a sudden access of confidence. I
seemed to see all my doings as part of a great predestined plan.
Surely it was not for nothing that the word which had been the key of
my first adventure in the long tussle should appear in this last
phase. I felt new strength in my legs and more vigour in my lungs. ‘A
good omen,’ I shouted. ‘Wake, old man, we’re going to win out.’
‘The worst is still to come,’ he said.
He was right. To get down that tongue of rock to the lower snows of
the couloir was a job that fairly brought us to the end of our tether.
I can feel yet the sour, bleak smell of wet rock and ice and the hard
nerve pain that racked my forehead. The Kaffirs used to say that there
were devils in the high berg, and this place was assuredly given over
to the powers of the air who had no thought of human life. I seemed to
be in the world which had endured from the eternity before man was
dreamed of. There was no mercy in it, and the elements were pitting
their immortal strength against two pigmies who had profaned their
sanctuary. I yearned for warmth, for the glow of a fire, for a tree or
blade of grass or anything which meant the sheltered homeliness of
mortality. I knew then what the Greeks meant by panic, for I was
scared by the apathy of nature. But the terror gave me a kind of
comfort, too. Ivery and his doings seemed less formidable. Let me but
get out of this cold hell and I could meet him with a new confidence.
Wake led, for he knew the road and the road wanted knowing. Otherwise
he should have been last on the rope, for that is the place of the
better man in a descent. I had some horrible moments following on when
the rope grew taut, for I had no help from it. We zigzagged down the
rock, sometimes driven to the ice of the adjacent couloirs, sometimes
on the outer ridge of the Black Stone, sometimes wriggling down little
cracks and over evil boiler-plates. The snow did not lie on it, but
the rock crackled with thin ice or oozed ice water. Often it was only
by the grace of God that I did not fall headlong, and pull Wake out of
his hold to the bergschrund far below. I slipped more than once, but
always by a miracle recovered myself. To make things worse, Wake was
tiring. I could feel him drag on the rope, and his movements had not
the precision they had had in the morning. He was the mountaineer, and
I the novice. If he gave out, we should never reach the valley.
The fellow was clear grit all through. When we reached the foot of the
tooth and sat huddled up with our faces away from the wind, I saw that
he was on the edge of fainting. What that effort Must have cost him in
the way of resolution you may guess, but he did not fail till the
worst was past. His lips were colourless, and he was choking with the
nausea of fatigue. I found a flask of brandy in his pocket, and a
mouthful revived him.
‘I’m all out,’ he said. ‘The road’s easier now, and I can direct you
about the rest . . . You’d better leave me. I’ll only be a drag. I’ll
come on when I feel better.’
‘No, you don’t, you old fool. You’ve got me over that infernal
iceberg, and I’m going to see you home.’
I rubbed his arms and legs and made him swallow some chocolate. But
when he got on his feet he was as doddery as an old man. Happily we
had an easy course down a snow gradient, which we glissaded in very
unorthodox style. The swift motion freshened him up a little, and he
was able to put on the brake with his axe to prevent us cascading into
the bergschrund. We crossed it by a snow bridge, and started out on
the seracs of the Schwarzstein glacier.
I am no mountaineer—not of the snow and ice kind, anyway—but I have
a big share of physical strength and I wanted it all now. For those
seracs were an invention of the devil. To traverse that labyrinth in a
blinding snowstorm, with a fainting companion who was too weak to jump
the narrowest crevasse, and who hung on the rope like lead when there
was occasion to use it, was more than I could manage. Besides, every
step that brought us nearer to the valley now increased my eagerness
to hurry, and wandering in that maze of clotted ice was like the
nightmare when you stand on the rails with the express coming and are
too weak to climb on the platform. As soon as possible I left the
glacier for the hillside, and though that was laborious enough in all
conscience, yet it enabled me to steer a straight course. Wake never
spoke a word. When I looked at him his face was ashen under a gale
which should have made his cheeks glow, and he kept his eyes half
closed. He was staggering on at the very limits of his endurance . . .
By and by we were on the moraine, and after splashing through a dozen
little glacier streams came on a track which led up the hillside. Wake
nodded feebly when I asked if this was right. Then to my joy I saw a
gnarled pine.
I untied the rope and Wake dropped like a log on the ground. ‘Leave
me,’ he groaned. ‘I’m fairly done. I’ll come on . . . later.’ And he shut
his eyes.
My watch told me that it was after five o’clock.
‘Get on my back,’ I said. ‘I won’t part from you till I’ve found a
cottage. You’re a hero. You’ve brought me over those damned mountains
in a blizzard, and that’s what no other man in England would have
done. Get up.’
He obeyed, for he was too far gone to argue. I tied his wrists
together with a handkerchief below my chin, for I wanted my arms to
hold up his legs. The rope and axes I left in a cache beneath the
pine-tree. Then I started trotting down the track for the nearest
dwelling.
My strength felt inexhaustible and the quicksilver in my bones drove
me forward. The snow was still falling, but the wind was dying down,
and after the inferno of the pass it was like summer. The road wound
over the shale of the hillside and then into what in spring must have
been upland meadows. Then it ran among trees, and far below me on the
right I could hear the glacier river churning in its gorge’ Soon
little empty huts appeared, and rough enclosed paddocks, and presently
I came out on a shelf above the stream and smelt the wood-smoke of a
human habitation.
I found a middle-aged peasant in the cottage, a guide by profession in
summer and a woodcutter in winter.
‘I have brought my Herr from Santa Chiara,’ I said, ‘over the
Schwarzsteinthor. He is very weary and must sleep.’
I decanted Wake into a chair, and his head nodded on his chest. But
his colour was better.
‘You and your Herr are fools,’ said the man gruffly, but not unkindly.
‘He must sleep or he will have a fever. The Schwarzsteinthor in this
devil’s weather! Is he English?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘like all madmen. But he’s a good Herr, and a brave
mountaineer.’
We stripped Wake of his Red Cross uniform, now a collection of sopping
rags, and got him between blankets with a huge earthenware bottle of
hot water at his feet. The woodcutter’s wife boiled milk, and this,
with a little brandy added, we made him drink. I was quite easy in my
mind about him, for I had seen this condition before. In the morning
he would be as stiff as a poker, but recovered.
‘Now I’m off for St Anton,’ I said. ‘I must get there to-night.’
‘You are the hardy one,’ the man laughed. ‘I will show you the quick
road to Grunewald, where is the railway. With good fortune you may get
the last train.’
I gave him fifty francs on my Herr’s behalf, learned his directions
for the road, and set off after a draught of goat’s milk, munching my
last slab of chocolate. I was still strung up to a mechanical
activity, and I ran every inch of the three miles to the Staubthal
without consciousness of fatigue. I was twenty minutes too soon for
the train, and, as I sat on a bench on the platform, my energy
suddenly ebbed away. That is what happens after a great exertion. I
longed to sleep, and when the train arrived I crawled into a carriage
like a man with a stroke. There seemed to be no force left in my
limbs. I realized that I was leg-weary, which is a thing you see
sometimes with horses, but not often with men.
All the journey I lay like a log in a kind of coma, and it was with
difficulty that I recognized my destination, and stumbled out of the
train. But I had no sooner emerged from the station of St Anton than I
got my second wind. Much snow had fallen since yesterday, but it had
stopped now, the sky was clear, and the moon was riding. The sight of
the familiar place brought back all my anxieties. The day on the Col
of the Swallows was wiped out of my memory, and I saw only the inn at
Santa Chiara, and heard Wake’s hoarse voice speaking of Mary. The
lights were twinkling from the village below, and on the right I saw
the clump of trees which held the Pink Chalet.
I took a short cut across the fields, avoiding the little town. I ran
hard, stumbling often, for though I had got my mental energy back my
legs were still precarious. The station clock had told me that it was
nearly half-past nine.
Soon I was on the high-road, and then at the Chalet gates. I heard as
in a dream what seemed to be three shrill blasts on a whistle. Then a
big car passed me, making for St Anton. For a second I would have
hailed it, but it was past me and away. But I had a conviction that my
business lay in the house, for I thought Ivery was there, and Ivery
was what mattered.
I marched up the drive with no sort of plan in my head, only a blind
rushing on fate. I remembered dimly that I had still three cartridges
in my revolver.
The front door stood open and I entered and tiptoed down the passage
to the room where I had found the Portuguese Jew. No one hindered me,
but it was not for lack of servants. I had the impression that there
were people near me in the darkness, and I thought I heard German
softly spoken. There was someone ahead of me, perhaps the speaker, for
I could hear careful footsteps. It was very dark, but a ray of light
came from below the door of the room. Then behind me I heard the hall
door clang, and the noise of a key turned in its lock. I had walked
straight into a trap and all retreat was cut off.
My mind was beginning to work more clearly, though my purpose was
still vague. I wanted to get at Ivery and I believed that he was
somewhere in front of me. And then I thought of the door which led
from the chamber where I had been imprisoned. If I could enter that
way I would have the advantage of surprise.
I groped on the right-hand side of the passage and found a handle. It
opened upon what seemed to be a dining-room, for there was a faint
smell of food. Again I had the impression of people near, who for some
unknown reason did not molest me. At the far end I found another door,
which led to a second room, which I guessed to be adjacent to the
library. Beyond it again must lie the passage from the chamber with
the rack. The whole place was as quiet as a shell.
I had guessed right. I was standing in the passage where I had stood
the night before. In front of me was the library, and there was the
same chink of light showing. Very softly I turned the handle and
opened it a crack . . .
The first thing that caught my eye was the profile of Ivery. He was
looking towards the writing-table, where someone was sitting.
Nguồn: Wikisource English — Mr Standfast/Chapter 17. Văn bản được nhập và định dạng lại; CC BY-SA 4.0, có thể áp dụng điều khoản bổ sung của tác phẩm.