Thornley pulled out his knife and motioned to them to wait. He disappeared back towards the road they had left, lopping off a thin branch from every third or fourth pine, as he passed. Van Cortlandt exchanged glances with Richard. The idea was good; the cuts on the trees were white and jagged. When Thornley returned he seemed pleased. He must have found his way back in record time. As they followed Richard down through the trees he used his knife continuously. It slowed up their pace, but now that they were so near their objective there was little they could do but wait until the clear afternoon light had given way to the dusk of the evening—except for spying out the lie of the land. So they went slowly, walking carefully in order to make no noise while Thornley worked silently and unhurriedly. The spires had disappeared as they descended through the wood. Richard, who led the way, hoped that his sense of direction was as adequate as Thornley’s trail blazing. He would soon know, for at last they were reaching the edge of the wood. A steep bank and a garden were all that separated them from Dreikirchen. Behind the cover of the trees overshadowing the bank they lay and watched.
The fathers who had built the community had had an eye for balance and neatness. Into a curve of the wooded hillside, which had formed both a shelter and a background, they had built their miniature castle with its large chapel. Two smaller chapels flanked the main buildings on either side, standing at a respectful distance, and round these were grouped a few cottages. The effect was that of a semicircle which paralleled the curve in the hill, so that the small castle, as the centre of the crescent, dominated everything.
From where they lay they could see the road which came from the south. Straight, broad and white, it approached the centre of the curve of buildings in a dramatic sweep. That was something, Richard thought, which the founding fathers had never even imagined. He remembered the map on which this road had been marked only as roughly as the track which they had followed. Anni had been right. Dreikirchen had changed.
In front of them was the garden which lay behind the right-hand chapel. It was the kitchen garden with its rows of neatly planted vegetables protected on one side by a hedge of red-currant bushes, which stretched from the bank almost to the chapel itself. On its other side, the side which adjoined the garden of the castle and the large chapel, there was a row of fruit trees. Pear-trees, Richard thought. They were obviously intended as a screen, so that anyone walking in the castle’s flower garden wouldn’t have his eye offended by the patchwork quilt of vegetables. They served the purpose well enough, for it was difficult for the three men to see the flower garden. It would be better to move behind the castle itself, and from there they would be able to see not only the flower garden but whatever lay behind the third chapel. For the curve of the buildings now hid that completely.
“Mark this spot,” whispered Richard. The others nodded, and looked at the shapes of the trees and bushes, at the outcrop of rock behind which they lay. It wasn’t easy, but it had to be remembered. If they got safely away from the castle and were in a hurry as they probably would be, then they would have to depend on being able to find the blazed trail quickly. Without the trail they might miss the car. It was unpleasant to imagine what it would be like to be searching desperately for the car on an unknown road with pursuers behind them. The best thing to remember, thought Richard grimly, was the outcrop of rock which lay about twenty feet away from the red-currant bushes. If they could reach the red-currant bushes, he added to that thought.
Under the cover of the trees they worked their way carefully along to the back of the castle. It gave them the view they had hoped for. It was easy to see that an approach would be more difficult through the castle garden, planted with rose-trees and small flowering shrubs, than it would be through the kitchen garden. There was much less cover here. As for the ground behind the third chapel, it was quite hopeless. It consisted of tennis courts and a stretch of grass. There was no sign of life from the cottages on this side of the castle, either…no movement, no sounds of men’s voices. If it hadn’t been for the curl of smoke which came from the back of the castle, where a low, narrow building had been added as an afterthought, they might have been looking at a picture in a German calendar.
Richard motioned the others to go farther back into the wood. They reached some bushes, and sat down behind them. They talked in whispers.
“I can do the scouting,” said Thornley. “I’ve done some deer stalking. This should be easy.” He drew his diary from a pocket, and began making a rough diagram of the buildings and gardens. Richard and van Cortlandt exchanged glances. Thornley was obviously the best man for the job. Richard remembered the way he had climbed the balcony of the Pertisau house.
“All right,” he said. “We’ll watch from the top of the bank.”
“This is how I’ll go,” Thornley said. He traced a line on the diagram with his pencil. He would use the red-currant bushes and reach the right-hand chapel. From there he would follow the path in the kitchen garden which seemed to enter a kind of shrubbery as it reached the line of pear-trees. That would bring him to the right wing of the castle, to the back of it where the smoke came from. Then he could perhaps find out who was in that part of the building, or a possible back entrance to the place, or whatever was to be seen or heard.
“All right,” Richard said again.
Thornley didn’t waste any time. He was already moving quietly down through the trees, in a slantwise direction which would bring him out of the wood near the red-currant hedge.
Van Cortlandt abandoned the plans he had been making while they had watched the castle. He would have liked something with more action than this—one of them to have made some kind of distraction, while the other two rushed the place. The trouble was that they had no weapons worth a nickel, not compared with the arsenal they might expect to face. Still, there seemed to be no one there; perhaps just a cook in the kitchen where the smoke came from, and Frances in a locked room upstairs with someone left to guard her while the others held their jamboree in Innsbruck or searched for Richard. All Thornley’s caution would then be a waste of good time. He had the gloomy afterthought that Frances might not be there after all; that had been worrying him ever since they left Innsbruck. In that case, they would have to imitate old Barney Finnigan…
They had traced their steps to the edge of the wood again, and had lain behind a fallen tree which would protect them from being seen. They themselves could see through its skeleton roots. As soon as Thornley reached the pear-trees and followed the path towards the shrubbery at the side of the house, they could watch him. If anything went wrong before he reached the trees, then they would have to depend on their hearing. Richard raised himself to listen, but van Cortlandt shook his head. He was right; there was nothing.
They waited in the silence of the wood, and watched the tops of the trees moving gently against the background of the evening sky. The strain was beginning to tell on Richard. Again the fear came back to him that they might be on the wrong trail. Frances might be a hundred miles from here—injured, dead. He began to count the branches above him. Anything, anything, to keep him from thinking.
22
VIKINGS’ FUNERAL
Thornley felt a sudden wave of excitement as he neared the edge of the wood and saw the small chapel and the quiet little houses beside it. It was the kind of feeling he had when he’d stand patiently waiting for the birds to break cover; only this time he was one of the birds. It wasn’t the excitement of fear or nervousness. It was the excitement of expectation. He had always lived in the country, and what might have been difficult for Richard or van Cortlandt seemed fairly simple to him.
He moved confidently and quickly, knowing that under cover of this string of bushes he could only be seen from the woods behind him. In that case he would be seen even if he went slowly and carefully—and time was short: they could hardly wait until complete darkness, for he felt that the castle might not remain deserted so very much longer. This was what Henry called playing a hunch; well, he
was going to play it as hard as he could.
He had almost reached the chapel. He flattened himself out under the last clump of bushes and waited. So far so good. He strained to hear any sound from the cottages or the chapel, but they were completely silent. What was more, the doors and windows of the cottages were shut. It would be strange for anyone inside them to sit that way on a warm summer’s evening. He measured the short dash to the chapel with his eye, and timed it neatly. He stood flat against the wall, hidden from the main buildings. In two or three moments he would slip round the corner of the chapel and reach the path. The fruit trees would shelter him from the castle gardens, the large shrubs growing along the path would shelter him from the castle’s windows; the only danger lay in being seen from the other end of the path. As he waited, motionless, he became aware that the windows beside him were not the usual high, narrow windows of a church. They were square and broad, with ordinary glass. He edged to one and looked cautiously inside over his shoulder. The interior was very strange for a chapel indeed—it was a very complete gymnasium. He gained confidence; only now would he admit to himself that the responsibility of discovering Dreikirchen’s existence had worried him. Now he was pretty sure of its purpose. It would be the natural place for Frances to be taken if von Aschenhausen hadn’t turned her over to the regular police, and it wasn’t likely that he had done that. This was more a case for secret police, with abduction, not arrest, as their weapon.
He left the security of the east wall of the chapel, and entered the kitchen garden. Fortunately the path curved to suit the arm which the buildings formed. He was hidden from the end of the path where it probably skirted the castle. If he could reach the pear-trees, then at least the path would be safer because of the shrubbery. At this point it was rather unpleasant. There wasn’t much shelter in a row of cabbages, or on the long north side of the chapel.
He had reached the pear-trees. As he did so, he side-stepped into the shrubbery. The path itself was now too open. It curved straight to a door in the castle itself, a side-door just where the low wing was joined to the main building. The smoke from the wing was curling up steadily. Kitchen, almost certainly, thought Thornley, and regained his breath in the shelter of the bushes. The door had been unexpected. In fact, it had given him a jolt as he had come round the path and suddenly met it staring at him from the end of the path. It meant he would have to push his way carefully and slowly between the thick shrubs, sometimes almost through them. Not the pleasantest way of travel, he thought savagely. The earth here hadn’t the clean wholesomeness of the earth in a wood. It seemed dank and stale, and a fine dust from the branches and leaves blackened his hands.
He had almost reached the castle wall… And then he heard voices; at first distant, and then gradually getting louder. But they were far enough away to be indistinguishable. He must get almost to the end of the bushes before he would be near enough to hear them. The voices were clearer; two men were talking. Only two, he was sure of that. But he still couldn’t hear any words. He knelt down on the mouldering earth. He pushed down gently the branch in front of him. It let him see the side of the castle right up to the front corner. He saw that there was a broad path along this wall of the castle, which must cross the path from the kitchen garden in front of the side-door.
Thornley moved his head to let him get a clearer view of the front corner of the castle. He dared not push the sheltering branch any more to the side. He judged that the men were walking in front of the castle, that any moment they would appear at the corner. The voices were coming nearer, and he could hear the heavy footsteps of men aware of their own authority… And then there was a laugh, the belly laugh a man gives when he has just heard an unexpected end to a good story. The trooper who had laughed was still enjoying the joke when they reached the corner of the path. They were in their shirtsleeves, and capless, but they still wore revolvers at their side and the one who had laughed carried a loaded cane. He beheaded the large yellow daisies growing at the side of the path as he listened to his companion. They paused as they turned in their walk, and both looked up at the same window as if they had heard something. They were silent for a moment, listening. Then the one who had laughed said something to the other which made them both snicker, and they began their walk back along the front of the castle, and the corner of the building hid them.
Thornley wondered they had not heard his heart-beats. The man who had laughed and chopped off the flower heads was the one who had questioned him last night when he had returned to Innsbruck with van Cortlandt. Anyway, he had found out that there were two of them in front of the castle. They weren’t on guard; they had lounged too much for that. But they were armed. It looked as if no one at the castle expected any uninvited guests. And why should they? This was one of their own strongholds, and once their prisoners disappeared from their own homes the shock or the fear which petrified their friends ended all help for them. It took weeks, even months, for anyone who was mad enough to ask to discover what had happened to those who had disappeared. So why worry about a foreigner who had walked into an alley and had “vanished” at the other end? Her friends couldn’t even make inquiries about her; they couldn’t afford to. Thornley smiled grimly as he moved back towards the path from the kitchen garden. That was how these blighters worked it. Bribe enough men with a sense of power, reward them with luxury and grandeur, and they’d be loyal terrorisers. It was Faust all over again. Body and soul for sale to the man who could give them the things they had always wanted. And the greater the sale, the greater the rewards.
Thornley had reached the path. There, at the edge of the shrubbery, he could see clearly across the rose beds to the bank of the wooded hill. Would he go back now, or would he try to find out who was in the place he thought was the kitchen? The smoke was rising in greater volume. When he had first seen it, it had only been a trickle. He looked at the door. Could he risk stepping on to the path to reach the wall, and perhaps a window? The two men pacing in front of the castle would have nearly reached the other end of it. Then they would probably turn and come back. Now was the time to move… And then the door opened, and as Thornley automatically drew back into the bushes, he heard a thin voice raised in its anger as high as a woman’s.
The voice followed a man out into the path.
“Don’t waste any time, either,” it screeched. “I’ve had enough of you. Everyone else does the work while you stuff your belly. Go on, now.”
The young man paused, his mouth stuffed with a large piece of cake.
“Shut your gab. If you’re late, then get on with your work. What do you think you are anyway?” He came slowly down the path, grumbling to himself. “It’s Hermann this and Hermann that. As if I hadn’t my own job to do. As if I were a…” He didn’t finish, but pitched forward suddenly on his face. Thornley pocketed the torch again, and dragged the man into the bushes. Quite a neat rabbit punch, he thought. Pity if it had broken the torch. He reached for one of the heavy stones which edged the pathway and cracked the man over the head with it for good measure. He used his own handkerchief as a gag, and the man’s belt and necktie to truss him neatly. The only place from which his attack could have been seen was from the woods. He hoped to God that Myles and van Cortlandt had been watching.
They had. They had seen him clearly as he had come out of the kitchen garden, had seen him hesitate as he left the cover of the pear-trees, had seen him slip into the shrubbery. They waited for some minutes, wondering what on earth he had found interesting there. They hadn’t heard the voices, but they began to understand when they heard a man’s laugh. They strained their eyes, but they could see no one, not until a trooper walked slowly down the path, past the bushes, to drop suddenly like a stone. Then they saw Thornley again as he had pulled the body into the shrubbery. Van Cortlandt grinned: this was more like it. They waited impatiently… But there was no further movement, no signal which they were hoping for.
Thornley waited. He was listening for the voices: the men should
have reached this side of the castle again by this time. What was detaining them? Or was he misjudging the length of the minutes in his anxiety? And then he heard them. Almost there; pause; turn. They were walking away again. He relaxed, and looked at the man beside him. He was out cold—for a long, long time. He stepped back on to the path, and waved.
The others had seen him, thank heaven. He watched them scramble down the bank near the pear-trees, and then it was difficult to see them. If they hurried they would manage it. His anxious eyes saw them again for a moment. They were moving quickly and silently. They had reached the end of the trees, and like him they had noticed the door at the end of the path. Like him, they shied from it, and worked their way along towards him by way of the shrubbery.
They found him examining the man’s revolver. He gave a satisfied nod, and slipped it into his pocket.
“Complications,” Thornley whispered quietly. “Two thugs in front; one overworked cook in the kitchen; and this.” He pointed with his foot.
“Cook next on the list?” Richard whispered back. Van Cortlandt was testing the knots; he seemed satisfied.
Thornley nodded. “Thugs due back any minute. Quietly…” He motioned them to follow him, and led them to the point where he had watched the two men. Their feet made no noise in the mouldering soil, and the green branches could bend without breaking. And then they heard the voices and were motionless. Richard and van Cortlandt looked carefully through the branches as Thornley had done. Van Cortlandt pursed his lips in a silent whistle as he saw one of the men. That was the guy all right, the one who had questioned him last night when they got back from Pertisau. So Thornley might have found the right track after all. He looked at the Englishman thoughtfully. Bob was looking at the watch on his wrist. Pause; turn; walk back— he would soon have this timed to a nicety.