The Piper on the Mountain gfaf-5 Read online

  He asked to see Sir Broughton Phelps, and in his innocence really seemed to expect to be haled through the barriers on sight. He would not state his business, except to stress that it was urgent. When he was told that no one got to see Sir Broughton without a Ministry permit, he adjusted promptly and without undue surprise to this check, but he did not go away, nor did he withdraw his demand. Instead, he asked if a message could be taken in to the Director or his Chief Security Officer, so that they might make up their own minds whether to see him or not. The ex-sergeant-major saw nothing against this; and the stranger scribbled a few words on his visiting-card, sealed it down in an envelope, in a way which might have been slightly offensive if he had not just had it impressed upon him how stringent security arrangements round here were, and handed it over.

  The messenger delivered this billet to Adrian Blagrove’s secretary, who preferred, understandably, to hand it over to his chief unopened. So it happened that Blagrove was the first to withdraw the card and read what the stranger had written.

  Robert Bencroft Welland (said the card)

  Assistant Commercial Secretary

  British Embassy, Prague I,

  Thunovská 14,

  CSSR.

  And above the name was scribbled in a vehement, cornery hand:

  Terrell’s accident was no accident.

  Robert Bencroft Welland came in gravely, displaying no signs of elation at having penetrated the first protective layers, and no haste about completing the feat. He accepted a chair and a cigarette, and settled his brief-case conveniently on the carpet beside his feet. Shut in together, they contemplated each other across the desk which had been Terrell’s.

  “Mr. Welland,” began Blagrove very soberly, “you appear to be suggesting something which doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone else, even as a possibility. The Slovak police were quite satisfied of the facts of poor Terrell’s case, and made very full and correct reports which apparently convinced our authorities just as completely. I take it this is an unofficial approach, or you would have been sent here already provided with the means of reaching me, and wouldn’t have had to write me—this little billet.” It glanced coyly between his closed fingers for an instant, and vanished again. “May I ask if you’ve confided your doubts to anyone in Prague? Any of your superiors?”

  “No, I haven’t. I came to the Marrion Institute because it seemed to be the party most affected by Terrell’s death, and what I believe to be the facts about it. I came over only yesterday, on a week of my leave, and I had some enquiries to make before I was ready to come to you.”

  “Presumably, since you’re here,” said Blagrove drily, “your enquiries produced positive results. You realise you’re the only person who has questioned the circumstances of Terrell’s accident?”

  “I could hardly let that influence me, could I?” said the young man mildly, with such simplicity that Blagrove took another and closer look at him. Under thirty, probably, of medium height and lightly built, neat, tow-coloured hair, all very presentable, all very ordinary. Put him among an office-full of civil servants, and you could lose him in a moment. Except that the good-natured face, earnest and dutiful to the point of caricature, had a little too much jaw for comfort, and confronted his seniors with a pair of wide-set blue eyes of startling directness and obstinacy. He looked, at first glance, like all the others of his class and profession; but at second glance it was clear that being on his own wouldn’t stop him from doing whatever he felt he had to do.

  “Perhaps,” suggested Blagrove carefully, “you’d better tell me just why you’re not satisfied.”

  “In the first place, because I knew Terrell, and I’ve seen the place where he was found. Oh, I didn’t know him well, but it so happens I’ve climbed with him, last year in the Zillertal, so I know his class. He was an excellent climber, on a rope or alone. The Zillertaler Alps were his proper league. But the Low Tatras, where he was found, are walking country. Not alpine stuff at all, but open, grassy slopes and rounded summits, with wooded valleys. You could find a few practice pitches there, rock outcrops, scrambles, that kind of thing. But nothing to tempt a man like Terrell. So the first question, even if I’d known nothing more, is: “What was he doing there at all?”

  “I see nothing to prevent even a climbing man from fancying a walking holiday now and again, for a change,” objected Blagrove reasonably.

  “Nothing whatever. Except that they just don’t do it. Hardly any of them, and certainly not Terrell. Once you’re as proficient as he was, you lose interest in the mild stuff. The climbs have to get harder all the time, and higher. Failing that, you just go somewhere new, where at least they’re different, unknown. But you don’t go back to walking and scrambling. And for that matter, even if you did go back, you certainly wouldn’t fall off a perfectly good traverse path, even at a blind corner, like the place where they found him.”

  “I shouldn’t like to be so sure it couldn’t happen. The skilled and experienced sometimes fail to give all their attention to the easy bits.” Blagrove was playing somewhat irritably with the card he held in his fingers. “Unless you have something more than that to go on….”

  “Oh, I have. You see, Terrell got in touch with me early this year, and asked my advice about good climbing country in the High Tatras. You don’t know that part of the world? There’s this great, open valley of the river Váh, running east-west, and to the south of it these broad, rolling crests of the Low Tatras. Then to the north, sickle-shaped, like this, and much more concentrated, there’s the cluster of the High Tatras, the highest peaks in the whole Carpathian range. These are for climbers. Anything up to nearly nine thousand feet, granite, three hundred or so peaks packed into about fifteen miles length, and magnificent country. I advised him to book in at Strba Lake, or at Tatranská Lomnice. And he did. He booked for two weeks at the lake. So what was he doing across the Váh valley in the Low Tatras?”

  Blagrove raised his brows. “He could surely have changed his mind. How do you know he went ahead with his booking?”

  “For the best reason in the world,” said Welland flatly. “Because I made the reservation for him, as long ago as April. And I know he turned up on time at the hotel, because he dropped me a card on arrival. He said nothing then about moving. On the contrary, he confirmed the arrangement we’d made by letter earlier. I was supposed to go along and spend the week-end climbing with him on Krivan. Only, you see, before the week-end came we got the news at the embassy that he’d been found dead—fifty kilometres away across the valley, in the Low Tatras, where he’d never intended going. He’d checked out from Strba Lake on the third day, and gone away to a small inn in one of the valleys in the other range. No mystery about what he did, up to that point. The only mystery is why?”

  “And you think,” said Blagrove, his hands still and alert before him on the desk, “that you know why?”

  “No, not yet. All I have is certain indications that may suggest reasons. As, for instance, that at some time after his arrival at the lake, something happened within his knowledge, something that caused him to pay his bill there and then, and go rushing off across the valley. No one at the hotel could account for it. He just left. But something happened that made him leave. If it had been simply something that disinclined him to stay where he was, made him dislike the place or con-struct uncomfortable there, he’d most probably have transferred to another hotel, somewhere along the range, or come back to Prague! Instead, he made his way for some reason to this one particular valley in the Low Tatras, not even a very frequented place. Whatever it was that happened didn’t just drive him away from Strba Lake—it led him to Zbojská Dolina. And believe me, it can have had nothing to do with climbing. Do I interest you, Mr. Bla-grove?”

  “You interest me, yes, up to a point. You didn’t say any of this to your superiors in Prague?”

  “No, I didn’t. One doesn’t like to start hares of that kind without making sure first of as many facts as possible. I had some lea
ve to come, and I used it to come over here. Whatever drew Terrell to the Low Tatras, it can’t have been something private and personal from his own past, because he had no connections there, this was his first visit. He knew nothing of the country, he knew none of the people. I thought, knowing what his work was, and what it might sometimes involve, that there might be a link with something he’d handled or known about in the course of his duty. I hoped to get an interview with his widow, but she wasn’t in when I called at her flat.”

  “She’s in Slovakia at this moment,” said Blagrove, “seeing about having her husband brought home.”

  “Ah, so that’s it, I see. Well, since I could get nothing from her I spent the afternoon and evening among the press files, going back over the details—only the published details that are open to everybody, of course, but you’d be surprised how much that covers—the details of any reportable work handled by Terrell during the last few years. I have friends among the pressmen. I didn’t tell them what I wanted, I didn’t know myself. I just picked over their memories and then worked backwards through the files. I thought somewhere there must be something to dig up, something that would tie in at one end to Terrell, and at the other end to Slovakia—with a lot of luck, even to that part of Slovakia.”

  Blagrove let out his breath in a soft, cautious hiss, and braced his shoulders against the back of his chair. “And you found something?”

  “I found,” said Welland with deliberation, “the unfinished case of Charles Alder.”

  In the moment of silence they stared steadily at each other.

  “Or of course,” said Welland, “if you prefer it, the case of Karo Alda.”

  It was a pity. It was really a pity. To have the whole affair tucked away peacefully in its coffin as an accident would have been so much simpler and more satisfactory; but there were two good reasons for abandoning, here and now, any attempt to dissuade this young man from pursuing his enquiries further. First, he wouldn’t be dissuaded; the supererogatory jaw was set, and the uncompromising eyes expected and would countenance only a zeal for justice the equal of his own. And second, to assume the responsibility for smothering a matter as serious as this was too great a risk. It would have to go to higher authority, however vexatious the results might be.

  “I think,” said Adrian Blagrove, pushing back his chair, “I really think you’d better come with me to the Director, and tell him the whole story.”

  Sir Broughton Phelps sat forward at his desk with his lean jaw propped broodingly on a closed fist, and scarcely took his eyes from the visitor’s face as Welland repeated the tale of his reservations and his discoveries, until he reached Charles Alder’s name.

  There was an expectant pause there. Welland looked a little pale and a little anxious when it prolonged itself beyond his expectations. He would have liked someone else to contribute something, a hint of appreciation, or at least belief; better still, a grain of confirmation. But when no one obliged, he did not look any the less convinced or any the less obstinate.

  “I know you must be much better informed than I am, sir, about this case of Alder’s. But if you want me to sum up everything as I find it, I’ll willingly go on.”

  “Please do,” said the Director, fingering the clipped silvery hair at his temple. “I assure you you have my very serious attention.”

  “What I found, of course, was the dossier—or the published part of it—compiled by Terrell after Alder’s disappearance. Otherwise I wasn’t conscious of ever having heard of the man before. So my information comes, virtually, from Terrell himself. Alder was a refugee who came over here with his parents in 1940, and settled in England. He was then fifteen years old, and already something of an infant prodigy, musically and mathematically. I believe they often go together. His father was a physicist, and after a probationary period he was allowed to work here. He proved valuable, and before the end of the war all three of them were naturalised. The boy had studied physics, too, but soon began to distinguish himself in his own special fields, as composer and performer, and in the world of pure mathematics. Perhaps he was even a genius. After the war he did quite a lot of experimental flying, and originated some minor improvements in aircraft, ending up in this Institute, where he was associated with a number of important modifications in aircraft and car design. Also, it seems, he sometimes had differences with the government and his superiors. He objected to the exclusively military use of innovations which he seems to have considered could be beneficial in civil life. And he didn’t like techniques of his evolving to be kept under wraps, when he believed they could be adapted to help with necessary processes in underdeveloped countries. He seems to have been a difficult colleague of individual views, insubordinate, unwilling to conform against his judgment. And he must have been really brilliant, because according to a Guardian article I found, about the time he vanished he was definitely in the running for the directorship of this Institute, and at his age that was fantastic.” The young man raised his direct and daunting eyes, and looked the present Director full in the face. “Can you confirm that, sir?”

  “I can and I do.” Phelps committed himself without hesitation. “The man was brilliant. He was a computer that thought and reasoned. No programming, no minding, no servicing necessary. We spend millions trying to construct an Alder, and then wear out bright young men feeding it. When we get a genuine one as a free gift from heaven we usually fail to recognise him. But difficult he certainly was. Go on, finish your exposition.”

  “Finally, after both his parents were dead, Alder wished and offered to resign from here. I don’t know exactly why, I suppose he was disturbed by a feeling of alienation from the aims of this place, and maybe he felt out of sympathy with policy in general. Anyhow, he was obviously valuable, and he was persuaded to think it over while he took some leave that was due him. I take it the authorities here hoped he would change his mind and stay on. He went off into Savoy alone. And he never came back.

  “When he failed to return on time, there were rumours and an alarm, and Terrell was sent to France to follow up his tracks, until they ended without further trace in Dauphiné. It was automatically assumed that he’d departed behind the Iron Curtain, but no more was ever heard of him from any quarter. He could have come to grief somewhere in the mountains, being alone there. But the obvious inference was that he’d turned traitor. And Terrell was the man who followed up his case, and compiled a very damning dossier out of all those small unorthodoxies in Alder’s professional life and attitudes. I’d say that that dossier made it impossible for him ever to come back—supposing, of course, that he’d wanted to change his mind.”

  “Happily we have no reason to suppose anything of the kind,” said the Director tartly. “You don’t seem to have wasted your time, Mr. Welland. You find all this relevant?”

  “I think it becomes very relevant, sir, when you remember that Charles Alder was born Karol Alda, of a Czech father and a Slovak mother. Especially when you add to that the fact that the mother’s birth was registered at Liptovsky Mikulás, not twenty miles from Zbojská Dolina.”

  “Let me understand you clearly. You are suggesting, I take it, that Alder may be there in those parts now—that he may have gone back to his old country and his old allegiance?”

  “I am suggesting that it is more than a possibility. I should also hazard that that is exactly what you must have believed he would do.”

  “And you’d be right, naturally. But the fact remains that there has never been any indication, not the slightest hint, that he did so.” He got up abruptly from his desk and began to walk the room, not restlessly, but with a controlled, energetic step, like a man starved of proper exercise making the most of cramped quarters. The two younger men followed his pacing with alert eyes, and waited. “You think Terrell may actually have seen Alda?”

  “Something unexpected happened to him, something that drew him across the river valley to Zbojská Dolina. It could be connected with Alda. I don’t claim more than that.
”

  “But you imagine more, much more. You think, don’t you, that either he saw Alda, or picked up somehow a clue to his whereabouts? And that he followed it up, and got himself pushed off a mountainside when he got too close for comfort. That’s what you think, isn’t it?”

  Welland paled a little at seeing it posed before him in this pointblank fashion; even he had a trace of the diplomat’s dislike of formulating anything too exactly. But he stared back gallantly, and said emphatically: “Yes.”

  Blagrove stirred protestingly. “But, good lord, the case is six years old now! It’s no longer important. Times have changed, the cold war’s a dead issue, or dying, trade’s developing. Even if Terrell did turn up unexpectedly on his trail, why should Alda even care any more? Neither Terrell nor any of us could be any threat to him there. And would it be worth killing the man just for plain spite?”

  “But isn’t that missing the point of what Sir Broughton said a minute ago?” argued Welland intently. “You expected him to turn up in Czechoslovakia. Word of where they are always leaks out eventually, doesn’t it? But not a word ever leaked out about Alda. So wherever he is, secrecy is vital—to him, and to whoever is cashing in on his work now. Six years of successful concealment argues it’s important enough to murder for. I believe there’s something going on right now, right there in the Low Tatras, that has to be kept absolutely secret, and that Alda is at the heart of it. I believe Terrell found out, or they thought he had found out, what he couldn’t be allowed to report.”

  “If there is anything in this,” began Phelps, after a long and pregnant pause, “and I’m not admitting yet that there necessarily is, but if there is—then you realise it’s happened in a place and in circumstances which practically put it out of our power to investigate. If he is there, and if he is being kept as tightly wrapped as all that, then we must assume that this is national business. In which case we must also assume that the Czech authorities, if not the police on the spot, know all there is to be known about this death.”