“Who else was talking about these things?”
“Only my uncle and these two men. They were asking him about you. You see, my uncle spent part of his time in the Zillertal when he was in the North Tyrol. He has friends there.”
He stared at the darkened mountains. The Alpine Glow had ended. The peaks were now black shadows in a night sky. Torches were being lit around the garden of the Hotel Post. The dancing would soon begin now.
Eva Mussner seemed to sense the direction of his thoughts, for she gripped his arm. “What can we do?” she asked. “What can we do?”
“What can we do?” he repeated. “Don’t be a fool asking unanswerable questions. You are only putting us all in danger.”
She drew back quickly from him. “Then why did you let me talk? Why did you let me go on hoping that here was someone who would listen to me?”
“Look, I never let you go on hoping. Don’t start inventing things.” Additional things, he added to himself. “Besides, what can anyone do? We’ve no guns. Nothing. Bare hands against revolvers and machine guns, eh? And nothing would be solved. Violence would bring reprisal.”
“You’ve no guns? Not one of you here has a gun? You’ve all handed them over to the Germans like a batch of ninnies?”
He smiled and said, “We’ve no guns.” Not handed over but hidden, and well-hidden for the day on which they would be needed.
“Why, even my uncle had more sense than that,” she said. “He has a gun.”
“Doesn’t he trust his new friends? Or is he afraid of his old ones?” Lennox asked derisively. He began walking towards the garden of the Hotel Post.
Eva Mussner didn’t follow him. He looked round in some surprise. He hadn’t expected to be able to shake her off as suddenly as this. She was running towards the alley which led to the Mussner house. She was running home to her uncle, to tell him and his German friends that it was useless to try to find out anything from this Peter Schichtl, for there was obviously nothing to be found out.
Lennox should have been congratulating himself: he should have felt delighted. But somehow the feeling of satisfaction was tempered with bitterness. He had almost believed her. Somehow he was angry that anyone as lovely and intelligent as Eva Mussner had joined the Judas gang.
20
The dancing was about to begin.
Lennox, on the fringe of the crowd, saw that no Germans had yet appeared. Eight o’clock that girl had said. That gave about fifteen minutes of grace. Before then he would be meeting Johann near the church. (It was just as well he hadn’t complicated Johann’s emotions about a plan which might not be used. Now the plan would have to be used.) And then he realised that he was preparing to act on what the Mussner girl had said, and his anger about her turned against himself. Bloody fool, he said to himself. Bloody fool. He knew she was a collaborationist of the worst kind—the kind that tries to trip up his own countrymen—and yet he had been thinking in terms of “eight o’clock,” and of a German car with two potentially dangerous spies in it, racing to Kastelruth and the expert on airfields. He wished desperately that he could talk to the men at Schönau about this. They would know what to do. But the responsibility was his. He looked round at the people beside him. They felt some of the danger. They didn’t know it all. The responsibility was all his.
The musicians, their energy restored by a hasty supper, were grouping together under a flowering chestnut-tree. The red-faced man who was involved with the tuba tried a few muted blasts. There was a stirring among the people. Some of the younger women had taken off their hats. Lennox noted that their partners were only very young boys or fatherly men. They formed up in a long queue, with the first couple ready to climb up the three wooden steps to the dance platform and lead off the first measure. Lighted torches had been fixed in sockets on the wooden poles at each corner of the platform. The last curious child was pulled firmly down from his perch on the surrounding railing. The drummer was anxiously eyeing the concertina-player.
Something wasn’t quite in order. There was a stirring, a rustling, a murmur among the waiting pairs of dancers. They parted, either as if they were pushed aside or were avoiding someone. And then that someone was climbing the three steep steps, was standing alone on the wooden platform. It was Eva Mussner.
She gripped the railing’s balustrade with one hand as if to steady herself. Her other hand was hidden under her apron. She said, with her clear voice carrying across the crowded garden out into the street where Lennox stood, “Go home at once. Leave here—now. The Germans are coming in a few minutes to gather men into their lorries. If they cannot find men they will take boys and women as hostages. Go. Show them that you are unwilling. Show them that if they do this to us then we know that they are worse than the Italians. Show them that if it is trouble they are seeking then they’ll get it.”
Lennox stood unmoving, rigid. Only his mind was active as his eyes watched.
Somewhere a man shouted. Shouted in anger. The crowd was silent. Their distrust of this girl left them doubting, hesitating. The man shouted again. It was Mussner himself, pushing his way to the platform. Two Germans in black uniforms followed him. There was a stirring among the people, as if by the anger in these three men’s faces they began to hesitate in their doubt. As Mussner leaped up the stairs and gripped his niece’s shoulder they began to believe her words. Eva Mussner struggled against the strength of her uncle.
Lennox raised his voice and yelled. “Quick. Scatter into the darkness. Quick.”
The Nazi policeman halted and turned to look in his direction. But the crowd was moving at last as if the authority of his shout at that moment had decided them. “Quick. Scatter,” other voices were calling. “Quick; into the darkness.”
The crowd increased its speed. It was pouring out of every side of the garden. Men and women and children hurried past Lennox as he stood jammed against the shadow of the inn wall. They were half-running now, but there was no panic. For instance, a child stumbled and one of the fair-haired girls stooped to pick him up and then hurried on. The men were helping the older women. The first waves of people were already disappearing into the dark side-roads which would lead them up into the woods. From the distance came the sound of lorries in low gear, pulling their way into the village.
“Here they come. Quick!” Lennox yelled. The last doubtful straggler broke into a run. The two Nazi policemen, unable to move in the surge of people, had grasped the man nearest them. Lennox saw the tuba player swing the large brass instrument, as if it were a battering ram, and knock the Germans sideways. And then the tuba player and the man he had freed were running towards him. Lennox himself started out of the safety of the shadows. He was half-way to the platform and Eva Mussner when the first shot rang out. It came from the platform. Eva Mussner had fired it.
Lennox saw Mussner crumple and fall, and he knew he could not help the girl now. The Nazi policemen were too quick to answer; their revolvers were drawn and they had fired at the platform. The last fringes of the crowd, now reaching the roadway, turned to stare back at the garden. They saw Eva Mussner falling to lie beside her uncle. One of the policemen fired again at the girl. But her body lay still. The last of the people at Hinterwald’s feast-day moved quickly away among the dark houses.
Lennox began running too. Behind him there were the shouts of the two Germans in civilian dress, of the other Nazi policemen. He caught up with the tuba player. Together, they raced out of the garden. The tuba player was cursing the Germans, over and over again. As they separated Lennox could still hear him, stumbling through the darkness, cursing the Germans.
Lennox, as he raced up a sidepath, saw the two lorries arriving in the village street behind him. But the street was already emptied as the garden had been. The German soldiers were left to stare at the German policemen and the torches on the platform, at a tuba and scattered hats and a dropped shawl lying on the grass.
Lennox halted at the edge of a small belt of trees, and regained his sense of direction.
He heard movements near him, but they weren’t Germans. The officer in command had given no order for pursuit: he probably realised it was useless, with his men blundering about over strange ground in this darkness. Perhaps he even saw the ridiculousness of such pursuit. Its little chance of success only made the Germans more of a laughing stock. Lennox listened until he was almost certain he was right in his guess. That was the most he could allow himself. He couldn’t go back to see. He had to reach Johann. They had a job to do. Now the job was more urgent than ever. If Eva Mussner’s death was to be justified the job had to be done and done well.
As he made his way quickly towards the church Lennox kept thinking of the last moments in the Hotel garden. At this moment he seemed to see it all more clearly than he had seen it then. It had happened so quickly that his eyes hadn’t believed. Eva Mussner had suddenly freed herself from her uncle’s grasp, just as the two German spies had appeared. That was the moment she had chosen. Of that Lennox was convinced. She had waited until most of the people were gone, until the Germans could see her plainly. And she had uncovered her right hand, which she had held stubbornly under her apron. She had a revolver, and she had fired it at Mussner. The Germans had taken no chances then. The man who fired that Lüger had been near enough to kill.
Lennox stared into the dark masses of shadows to the south-west of the church. The shrine of Saint Johann was over there, but he couldn’t see it. His eyes seemed still blinded by the flaring torches lighting an emptied garden and German faces turning towards the platform as they forgot the fleeing people. He still saw the heavy bulk of Mussner falling at the girl’s feet, the sort of useless way she then held the revolver. He still saw the way she had fallen too as the German bullet retaliated. Flaring torches, an emptied square, and one collaborationist less to be killed. And a girl willing to die to prove to the Germans that she alone was guilty, to prove to her people that she was innocent.
“Here! Here!” The urgent whisper was Johann’s. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
Lennox regained his breath. “The people got away. Scattered. An alarm was given, but our plans stand. We have still a job to do.” He was beginning to see more clearly now in the shadow of the tree under which Johann had waited. “Where’s the rope?”
“Sent it on ahead—special delivery. I felt we might have to make a quick dash. Besides, that rope’s heavy. Too much like work carrying it.” Johann started to move away from the village, travelling westward, following trees as far as they would shelter them.
“Whom did you send?” Lennox’s voice was worried.
Johann grinned widely. “Don’t worry, cousin. They can be trusted. They will arrive with the rope just about the time we reach the place.”
They had better, Lennox thought grimly. He didn’t even answer Johann’s question about the shots from the village. “Later,” he said impatiently. “Later—when we’ve finished our job.” He forced himself to keep up with Johann’s quick pace. If you didn’t admit you were exhausted then you weren’t exhausted. He had failed Eva Mussner once: he wasn’t going to fail her a second time.
21
There was nothing to do now but wait.
Lennox sat wearily beside the tree. Across the road from him Johann was sitting equally well hidden. He was worrying too, Lennox realised, although that cheery grin was still probably in place. For every now and again there would be a flick of movement to the darkened rope which stretched between them.
Lennox gave up wondering if the rope was strong enough, if wind-shield height would be the most effective, if the trees were well chosen to bear the strain. He looked at the dark road, twisting and curving down the hillside. At night, with no moon yet strong enough to light the rise and fall of ground, he could not be sure that this was the best place. He had to rely on Johann for this choice. He tried to reassure himself by looking at the bridge on his right. He could hear the strong fall of the torrent under it, and the noise of the rushing waters gave him at least an assurance of depths.
The steep hillside, falling away from the scattered trees on Johann’s side of the road into a short precipice, had seemed abrupt and dangerous enough to him in the darkness. Yet, standing over there, looking down into sharp crags hidden by the night’s blackness, he had wished he could have seen this part of the road by daylight. Or even by moonlight. Then he would know whether the rope, strung across this road obliquely—with Johann’s tree in advance of his chosen one—would be a real weapon or just a simple-minded trap. Behind him was the hillside down which he and Johann had slithered. Up there, to his left, were the two boys who had brought the rope to this place. They were keeping watch on the long curve of road descending from Hinterwald along this hillside towards Kastelruth. The boys were to let them know when the first headlights were approaching. They were to let them know whether it was a car’s headlights or a lorry’s. Lennox had no interest any more in the lorries.
It was strange that when this plan had first formed in his head, as he had climbed down from Schönau this afternoon, he had been thinking of merely stopping a lorry. Just something to halt it to give those inside a chance to scatter over the hillside. Some might have escaped. It had struck him as funny, at that time, that he should have first come up to these mountains by planning his own escape, and that he should now be leaving them by planning escape for others. But now those others had escaped, not through him, but through a girl. She had been right in sensing that her people should be warned publicly and forced to make an open choice. Now those of them who had thought they could stay neutral, and still keep their independence, knew that there was no choice. After tonight and that girl’s death there could be only those who were either anti-German or pro-German. She had forced the issue before the Germans could bewilder her people with smiles and false promises. She had been right, and he had been wrong. She was dead, and he was alive.
From the hillside above him he heard the noise of a dislodged stone. He was ready by the time the boy reached him. The hoarse, excited whisper said, “Headlights. Car first, travelling fast. Two lorries a mile behind, moving slowly.”
“Right.” Lennox flapped the rope sharply three times and felt an answering tug from Johann. They lifted the rope carefully, pulling it even and taut, and secured it tightly round their trees. Perhaps because of the wire woven into it, it did not feel as if it were sagging. Lennox was wondering whether the blotched colouring of the rope would show—patches of the stain had come off on the boys’ hands and clothes as they carried it here—and then decided that perhaps these shadings would be better than a rope forming too much of a black line. Certainly, it didn’t form a white line, and it wasn’t obvious to his eye at the moment. But headlights might pick it up, even if its oblique stretch would lessen that danger. All he could do now was to trust the curving road which made headlights less effective. They ought to swing out over the ravine as the car came round that corner, and before they were focusing on the road properly the rope would be struck.
He hoped to God that Johann had moved away from the tree to his piece of chosen cover. If the car skidded it was likely to fall in his direction. This rope would only have halted a slow-moving lorry. But a quickly moving car by its own speed would have more damage done to it. That was what they hoped for, anyway. Johann had insisted on taking that side of the road. He could, so he had solemnly sworn, hang on to a mountainside by his eyelashes if necessary.
The noise of rushing water had obliterated the sound of the car’s approach. Lennox heard it just before he saw the headlights’ yellow glare probing into the darkness. He had only time to flatten himself behind the tree. The grim sequence of noise was too confused, too quick, to be analysed. The rope snapped, and whipped dangerously over his head back around the tree. We have failed, he thought desperately; failed, God damn us to everlasting hell. And then he heard only the sound of rushing water. He raised his head.
The car was hanging on the edge of the road, its rear wheels on the last foot of ground. The rope had shat
tered its windscreen, and had been cut by the frame. The driver had lost control, and the road was torn where the wheels had skidded deeply into its surface.
Lennox couldn’t be sure that the four men in the car were dead. They seemed lifeless—two, at least, were unpleasant to look at—but they might only be stunned and injured. For a moment he stood looking at the two men in civilian clothes who had watched from the Kasal barn, the two men who had made such amiable Allied airmen. The others in the car were the two policemen who had questioned him in the Schichtl house that afternoon. Well, here was a combination that would work no more together. Whatever they knew would never be written down as a report.
“Let’s give it a push,” Johann said urgently. “There’s a good drop into the torrent.”
Lennox was already reaching into the car, feeling for the reverse. Then it only needed a very short push indeed. The torrent was silenced as the car’s wild plunge ended. Lennox backed slowly away from the edge of the precipice, his ears still shocked by the sudden smash after the tense moment of waiting. The torrent’s voice lifted once more.
“Now your rope,” Johann’s practical voice said. He had already uncoiled the length from his tree. “We have less than two minutes.”
The boy who had brought the warning of the car’s approach was already unwinding the rope from the tree beside which Lennox had lain. The other boy had come down from his vantage-point to see what had happened. He helped, too. The rope was uncoiled and laboriously unknotted. The two boys, carrying its folds between them, started over the hill.