‘You knew that board was loose,” she said slowly.
‘Of course. I loosened it myself, a fortnight ago.’
‘You — you knew about this as far back as then?’
‘Whatever else?’ Heidi smiled. ‘Good luck, cousin.”
Mary sank on to the bed and sat there motionless for ten minutes after Heidi had gone, then rose wearily to her feet and crossed to her window. Her window faced to the north and she could see the line of pylons, the lights of the village and, beyond that, the darkened waters of the Blau See. But what dominated the entire scene were the redly-towering flames and billowing clouds of black smoke reaching up from some burning building at the far end of the village. For a hundred yards around it night had been turned into day and even if there had been a local fire brigade to hand it would have been clearly impossible for them to approach anywhere near the flames. When that fire went out all that would be left would be smoking ashes. Mary wondered vaguely what- it might mean.
She opened her window and leaned out, but cautiously. Even for a person as depressed as she was, there was no temptation to lean too far: castle walls and volcanic plug stretched vertically downwards for almost three hundred feet. She felt slightly dizzy.
To the left and below a cable-car left the castle header station and started to move down to the valley below. Heidi was in that car, leaning out a partially opened window and hopefully waving but Mary’s eyes had again blurred with tears and she did not see her. She closed the window, turned away, lay down heavily on the bed and wondered again about John Smith, whether he were alive or dead. And she wondered again about the significance of that fire in the valley below.
Smith and Schaffer skirted the backs of the houses, shops and Weinstuben on the east side of the street, keeping to the dark shadows as far as it was possible. Their precautions, Smith realised, were largely superfluous: the undoubted centre of attraction that night was the blazing station and the street leading to it – was jammed with hundreds of soldiers and villagers. It must, Smith thought, be a conflagration of quite some note, for although they could no longer see the fire itself, only the red glow in the sky above it, they could clearly hear the roaring crackle of the flames, flames three hundred yards away and with the wind blowing in the wrong direction. As a diversion, it was a roaring success.
They came to one of the few stone buildings in the village, a large barn-like affair with double doors at the back. The yard abutting the rear doors looked like an automobile scrap yard. There were half-a-dozen old cars lying around, most of them without tyres, some rusted engines, dozens of small useless engine and body parts and a small mountain of empty oil drums. They picked their way carefully through the debris and came to the doors.
Schaffer used skeleton keys to effect and they were inside, doors closed and both torches on, inside fifteen seconds.
One side of the garage was given over to lathes or machine tools of one kind or another, but the rest of the floor space was occupied by a variety of vehicles, mostly elderly. What caught and held Smith’s immediate attention, however, was a big yellow bus parked just inside the double front doors. It was a typically Alpine post-bus, with a very long overhang at the back to help negotiate mountain hairpin bends: the rear wheels were so far forward as to be almost in the middle of the bus. As was also common with Alpine post-buses in winter, it had a huge angled snow-plough bolted on to the front of the chassis. Smith looked at Schaffer.
‘Promising, you think?’
“If I was optimistic enough to think we’d ever get back to this place,’ Schaffer said sourly, ‘I’d say it was very promising. You knew about this?’
‘What do you think I am? A bus-diviner? Of course I knew about it.’
Smith climbed into the driver’s seat. The keys were in the ignition. Smith switched on and watched the fuel gauge climb up to the half-full mark. He located the headlamps switch and turned it on. They worked. He pressed the starter button and the engine caught at once. Smith killed it immediately. Schaffer watched the performance with interest.
‘I suppose you know you need a PSV licence to drive one of those, boss?’
‘I have one around somewhere. Leave half the explosives in the back of the bus. And hurry. Heidi might be down with the next car.’
Smith climbed down from the driver’s seat, went to the front doors, unbolted both, top and bottom, and pushed gently. The doors gave an inch, then stopped.
‘Padlocked/ Smith said briefly.
Schaffer surveyed the massive steel plough on the front of the bus and shook his head sorrowfully.
‘Poor old padlock,’ he said.
The snow had stopped but the wind from the west was now very strong. The cold was intense. Masses of ragged dark cloud hurried across the sky and the entire valley was alternatively cast into the deepest shadow or bathed in contrastingly dazzling light as the moon was alternatively obscured by the clouds or shone through the shifting gaps between them.
But there was no alternating light and shade at the far end of the village: the station still burnt furiously enough to render the moon’s best efforts pretty ineffectual.
A cable-car was coming slowly down the valley, less than a hundred yards now from the lower station. Impelled by the powerfully gusting wind, it swung wildly, terrifyingly, across the night sky. But as it approached the end of its journey the motion quickly dampened down and disappeared altogether as it approached the station.
The cable-car jerked to a stop. Heidi, the only passenger, climbed out: understandably enough, she was looking rather pale. She walked down the steps at the back of the station, reached ground level then stopped dead as she heard the softly-whistled first few notes of ‘Lorelei’. She whirled round, then slowly approached two shapes, clad all in white, huddled by the side of the station.
‘The Major Smiths of this world don’t drive off cliff-tops,’ she said calmly. She paused, then stepped forward suddenly and gave each man a quick hug and kiss on the cheek. ‘But you had me a little worried there.’
‘You just keep on worrying like that,’ Schaffer said. ‘No need to worry about him, though.’
Heidi waved a hand in the direction of the other end of the village. From the cable-car station on the lower slopes they had an excellent if distant view of the fire. ‘Are you responsible for this?’ she asked.
‘It was a mistake,’ Smith explained.
‘Yeah. His hand slipped,’ Schaffer added.
‘You two should audition for a turn on vaudeville,’ Heidi said dryly. Suddenly serious she said: ‘Mary thinks you’re both gone.’
‘Weissner doesn’t,’ Smith said. The car that went over the cliff went without us. They’re on to us.’
‘Hardly surprising,’ she murmured. ‘Or hadn’t you noticed the size of the fire.’ She paused, then went on bleakly: ‘They’re not the only ones who are on to you. Kramer knows you’re British agents after General Carnaby.”
‘Well, well, well,’ Smith said thoughtfully. ‘I wonder what little bird has been whispering in Kramer’s shell-like ear. One with a very long-range voice, methinks.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Nothing. It’s not important.’
‘It’s not important! But don’t you see?’ Her voice was imploring, almost despairing. ‘They know — or will any minute — that you’re alive. They know who you are. They’ll be expecting you up there.’
‘Ah, but you overlook the subtleties, my dear Heidi,’ Schaffer put in. ‘What they don’t know is that we are expecting them to be expecting us. At least, that’s what I think I mean.”
‘You’re whistling in the dark, Lieutenant. And one last thing: your friends are being brought up to the castle any time now.’
‘For interrogation?’ Smith asked.
‘I don’t expect they’ve been asked up for tea,’ she said acidly.
‘Fair enough,’ Smith nodded. “We’ll go up with them.’
“In the same car?’ The words didn’t question Smith’s sanity, but the tone and expression did.
‘Not “in”. With.’ Smith peered at his watch. “The post-bus in Sulz’s garage. Be there in eighty minutes. And oh! — bring a couple of crates of empty beer bottles.’
‘Bring a couple of — oh, all right.’ She shook her head in conviction. ‘You’re both mad.’
‘Shines through in our every word and gesture,’ Schaffer agreed, then, suddenly serious, added: ‘Say a prayer for us,’ honey. And if you don’t know any prayers, keep your fingers crossed till they ache.’
‘Please come back,’ she said. There was a catch in her voice. She hesitated, made to say more, turned and walked quickly away. Schaffer looked after her admiringly as she walked down the street.