"I can"t help what you think," Smith said kindly, patting her on the back. "Where"s your gear?"
"Fifty yards. And stop patting me in that--that avuncular fashion."
"Language, language," Smith said. "Come on, let"s fetch it."
They trudged upwards through the deep snow, Mary holding his arm tightly. She said curiously: "What on earth excuse did you give for coming back up here? Lost a cuff-link?"
"There was something I had to come for, something apart from you, although I gave a song-and-dance act of having forgotten about it until the last moment, until it was almost too late. The radio code-book inside Sergeant Harrod"s tunic."
"He--he lost it? He dropped it? How--how could he have been so criminally careless!" She stopped, puzzled. "Besides, it"s chained--"
It"s still inside Sergeant Harrod"s runic," Smith said sombrely. "He"s up here, dead."
"Dead?" She stopped and clutched him by the arms. After a long pause, she repeated : "He"s dead! That--that nice man. I heard him saying he"d never jumped before. A bad landing?"
"So it seems."
They located the kit-bag in silence and Smith carried it back to the edge of the cliff. Mary said: "And now? The code-book?"
"Let"s wait a minute. I want to watch this rope."
"Why the rope?"
"Why not?"
"Don"t tell me," Mary said resignedly. I"m only a little girl. I suppose you know what you"re doing."
"I wish to G.o.d I did," Smith said feelingly.
They waited, again in silence, side by side on the kit-bag. Both stared at the rope in solemn concentration as if nylon ropes at seven thousand feet had taken on a special meaning-, fulness denied nylon ropes elsewhere. Twice Smith tried to light a cigarette and twice it sputtered to extinction in the drifting snow. The minutes pa.s.sed^ three, maybe four: they felt more like thirty or forty. He became conscious that the girl beside him was shivering violently--he guessed that she had her teeth clamped tight to prevent their chattering--and was even more acutely conscious that his entire left side--he was trying to shelter her from the wind and snow--was becoming numb. He rose to leave when suddenly the rope gave a violent jerk and the piton farther from the cliff edge was torn free. The loop of the rope slid quickly down past the piton to which it was anch.o.r.ed and kept on going till it was brought up short by its anchor. Whatever pressure was on the rope increased until the nylon bit deeply into the fresh snow on the cliff-edge. Smith moved across and tested the pressure on the rope, at first gingerly and tentatively then with all his strength. The rope was bar-taut and remained bar-taut. But the piton held.
"What--what on earth--" Mary began, then broke off. Her voice was an unconscious whisper.
"Charming, charming," Smith murmured. "Someone down there doesn"t like me. Surprised?"
"If--if that spike hadn"t held we"d never have got down again." The tremor in her voice wasn"t all due to the cold.
"It"s a fair old jump," Smith conceded.
He took her arm and they moved off. The snow was heavier now and even with the aid of their torches visibility was no more than six feet, but, by using the rocky out-crop as a bearing, it took Smith no more than two minutes to locate Sergeant Harrod, now no more than a featureless mound buried in the depths of the snow-drift. Smith brushed aside the covering shroud of white, undid the dead man"s tunic, recovered the code-book, hung the chain round his neck and b.u.t.toned the book securely inside his own Alpenkorps uniform.
Then came the task of turning Sergeant Harrod over on his side. Unpleasant Smith had expected it to be, and it was: impossible he hadn"t expected it to be, and it wasn"t--not quite. But the effort all but defeated him, the dead man was stiff as a board, literally frozen solid into the arms outflung position into which he had fallen. For the second time that night Smith could feel the sweat mingling with the melted snow on his face. But by and by he had him over, the frozen right arm pointing up into the snow-filled sky. Smith knelt, brought his torch close and carefully examined the back of the dead man"s head.
"What are you trying to do?" Mary asked. "What are you looking for?" Again her voice was a whisper.
"His neck is broken. I want to find out just how it was broken." He glanced up at the girl. "You don"t have to look."
"Don"t worry." She turned away. "I"m not going to."
The clothes, like the man, were frozen stiff. The hood covering Harrod"s head crackled and splintered in Smith"s gauntleted hands as he pulled it down, exposing the back of the head and neck. Finally, just below the collar of the snow smock, Smith found what he was searching for--a red mark at the base of the neck where the skin was broken. He rose, caught the dead man"s ankles and dragged him a foot or two down the slope.
"What now?" In spite of herself Mary was watching again, in reluctant and horrified fascination. "What are you looking for now?"
"A rock," Smith said briefly. There was a cold edge to the words and although Mary knew it wasn"t intended for her, it was an effective discouragement to any further questioning.
Smith cleared the snow for two feet around where Harrod"s head had lain. With hand and eyes he examined the ground with meticulous care, rose slowly to his, feet, took Mary"s arm and began to walk away. After a few steps he hesitated, stopped, turned back to the dead man and turned him over again so that the right arm was no longer pointing towards the sky.
Half-way back to the cliff-edge, Smith said abruptly :
"Something struck Harrod on the back of the neck. I thought it might have been a rock. But there was no rock where he lay, only turf."
"There was a rocky outcrop near by."
"You don"t break your neck on a rocky outcrop, then stand up and jump out into a snow-drift. Even had he rolled over into the drift, he could never have finished with his head seven feet out from the rock. He was struck by some hard metallic object, either the b.u.t.t of a gun or the haft of a knife. The skin is broken but there is no bruising for the neck was broken immediately afterwards. When he was unconscious. To make us think it was an accident. It must have happened on the rock--there was no disturbance in the snow round Harrod--and it must have happened while he was upright. A tap on the neck, a quick neck-twist, then he fell or was pushed over the edge of the outcrop. Wonderful stuff, stone," Smith finished bitterly. "It leaves no footprints."
Mary stopped and stared at him.
"Do you realise what you"re saying?" She caught his speculative and very old-fashioned look, took his arm and went on quickly: "No, I mean the implications. I"m sorry, I"m sorry, of course you do. John, I--I"m scared. Even all those months with you in Italy--well, you know, nothing like this--" She broke off, then continued: "Couldn"t there --couldn"t there be some other explanation?"
"Like he hit himself on the back of the head or the abominable snowman got him?"
She looked at him steadily, her dark eyes far too large in what could be seen of her hooded face. "I don"t deserve that, John. I am frightened."
"Me, too."
"I don"t believe you."
"Well, if I"m not, it"s d.a.m.n well time I started to be."
Smith checked his descent when he estimated he was about forty feet from the base of the cliff. He took two turns of the nylon round his left leg, clamped it with his right, took a turn round his left arm, pulled off his right gauntlet with his teeth, stuffed it inside his tunic, eased out his Luger, slid the safety catch and went on his way again, checking his speed of descent with his gauntleted left hand. It was a reasonable enough expectation that whoever had tried to pull down the rope would be waiting there to finish off the job.
But there was no reception committee waiting, not, at least, at the spot where he touched down. He traversed a quick circle with his torch. There was n.o.body there and nothing there and the footprints that must have been there were long obscured by the drifting snow. Gun in one hand, torch in the other, he moved along the cliff face for thirty yards then moved out in a semi-circle until he arrived back at the cliff face. The rope-puller had evidently opted for discretion. Smith returned to the rope and jerked it. In two minutes he had Mary"s kit-bag down and, a few minutes later, Mary herself. As soon as she had stepped out of the double bowline, Smith undid the knot, pulled the rope down from the top of the cliff and coiled it. So numbed and frozen were his hands by this time that the operation took him nearly fifteen minutes.
Rope over one shoulder, her kit-bag in the other, Smith led Mary to the fissure in the cliff side.
"Don"t pitch the tent," Smith said. Unroll it, put your.sleeping bag on one half, get into it and pull the other half of the tent over you. Half an hour and you"ll be covered with drifting snow. The snow will not only keep you warm, it"ll hide you from any somnambulists. I"ll be along in the morning before we leave."
He walked away, stopped, looked back. Mary was still standing where he had left her, looking after him. There was no sag to her shoulders, no particular expression to her face, but for all that she looked oddly defenceless, lonely and forlorn, a quality as indefinable as it was unmistakable. Smith hesitated, then went back to her, unrolled her tent and sleeping bag, waited till she had climbed in, zipped up the bag and pulled the other half of the, tent up to her chin. She smiled at him. He fixed the sleeping bag hood, pulled a corner of the tent over it and left, all without saying a word.
Locating his own tent was simple enough, a steady light burnt inside it. Smith beat the snow from his clothes, stooped and entered. Christiansen, Thomas and Carraciola were in their sleeping bags and were asleep or appeared to be. Torrance-Smythe was checking over their store of plastic explosives, fuses, detonators and grenades, while Schaffer was reading a paper-back--in German--smoking a cigarette-- also German--and faithfully guarding the radio. He put down the book and looked at Smith.
"O.K.?".
"O.K." Smith produced the code-book from his tunic. "Sorry I was so long, but I thought I"d never find him. Drifting pretty badly up there."
"We"ve arranged to take turns on watch," Schaffer said. "Half an hour each. It"ll be dawn in three hours."
Smith smiled. "What are you guarding against in these.parts?"