Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 24, No. 4. Whole No. 131, October 1954

Duello by Stephen Barr

Although we had not intended it, this issue of EQMM has turned into a sort of ’tec tour — a cross-country crime excursion, a private-eye pilgrimage, a ratiocinative ramble round the world. In the United States you will detect in Boston, New York, and other points west and south; and in the rest of this travel issue you will visit Hawaii, an island in the Mediterranean, Greece, Monte Carlo — and now you are about to climb a dangerous peak in the Swiss Alps. Be careful!

The less high mountains of Switzerland have a special kind of loneliness and quiet in summer, far from snow, abandoned by skiers, full of warm distant sounds or closer insect humming. The stillness of an English moor, but with a thinner silence, and a vista unblurred by haze.

The fields of late alpine daffodils lay far below us, our hotel a tiny thing we could have touched. Above was the winding path to the summit, hiding and reappearing, and a far-off chalet. My companion Couts and I walked easily, still cool at this early hour, still concerned with our mutual revelation of the night before. I was in love with his wife and she with me, and when Couts found out about this he fell in love with her himself. At least, he knew that he must kill me; and so I knew that I must kill him.

Nothing appeared above the surface to hint that our old friendship was replaced by a fierce and dogged rivalry. No change in look or intonation disclosed the submerged nine-tenths of ice. Indeed, I had had no hint of his intention until a trifling incident at the hotel the night before brought it out.

The terrace where we had dined, watching the valley darken beneath us, had a black iron railing. We finished our coffee and went over to it. Couts took off his big jacket and d raped it on a table behind us; and I placed my two hands on the rail to find that it had been freshly painted. I pulled back so quickly that I bumped into the table. My hands, groping behind me, came to rest on his jacket.

In an instant his rage, so well locked in, came up volcanically. One would have thought that I had besmirched not his jacket but his wife, and of course in a sense I had. He calmed down almost at once, apologizing; but we both knew.

So we went up the path the next morning as we had planned in all friendliness, ignoring the dreadful intimation of the night before, and I knew what was in his mind. At about 10 o’clock we stopped to rest and drink from a hollowed log watering-trough. Then we ate our bread and chocolate, and looked at the distant, newly risen peaks.

“Meredith.”

“Yes?” I said.

“Let’s go another way. Through the woods.”

“Why?” I said.

“It’ll be slower, of course, but I rather hate this path. We can get back to it above the ridge.”

“No, I’ve tried that, it’s no good. The pine needles are too slippery and we’d be hours late getting back.” Couts shrugged his great shoulders and we went on by the path, tediously pushing against the increasing heat. Gnats circled our heads and the dim clonk of cowbells came to us, sometimes ahead and sometimes from below.

“I don’t know about you,” I said after a while, “but I’m bloody thirsty. There’s a waterfall.”

“All right, lead the way.”

We clambered through stunted saplings and orange tiger-lilies, our movements impeded by the difficult footing. Ahead was the impoverished splashing of a little water dropping a great distance. Behind me Couts’s heavy breathing came suddenly close; his hand gripped on my shoulder. I whirled.

“You were right about the pine-needles,” Couts said. “Even this is... the change of tempo... I’m too heavy, I expect.”

Yes, I thought, but quick, quick as a Kodiak bear.

We came to the waterfall almost at the top of its uneven and headlong staircase. Under our feet the ground sloped, soapy with pine-needles and rotted toadstools. Flecks of dead leaves paused at the brink of the fall before swooping out of sight.

We squatted exactly and carefully side by side a yard apart, neither looking at the other.

“We may as well drink,” I said. “Put our cupped hands in the water, you know.”

His weight, his speed, his strength, I thought. I must find a way of countering them... At every instant I knew that he was aware of me, of our surroundings, and of our mutual intention.

As I reached out with my two hands to the water I tightened my foothold. At the undetailed fringe of my vision I saw where he would have to stand when he came forward. But Couts merely stooped and plucked at the ground. As I turned, he held out a boulder, brown and damp on one side with earth. His face was pink, perhaps with the exertion.

“Let’s throw this down, it’ll make a capital rattle!” I stepped quickly to one side as he hurled it at the rock-shelf over which the water folded. The stone split in two and was lost in the froth. “I think I won’t drink any water now,” Couts said. “I think fat men drink too much water, anyway. I’ll wait till we get to the last spring up the path.”

I looked at myself in an imaginary mirror; not as big, not as strong and as fast as Couts. But I was less afraid. I had my plan.

The noise of gnats became louder as we left the water sounds behind us. We came out into the hard bright path.

“Twelve o’clock. We’d better shove on,” Couts said.

The path at last spread itself out and was lost in short harsh grass. Here behind the rounded crest — for one must approach from the rear or be stopped by a precipitous wall of rock — the way was clear.

Toward us was coming a figure, hard to make out at first.

“Forestry man, isn’t he?” said Couts.

“Yes, I think so.”

“Wonder what he’s lugging.”

He came striding downhill toward us, a lumpy dark man in the foresters’ uniform, carrying a metal case. He nodded to us as he passed.

We continued to climb. In the broad air I found I could hear every scrape of grit under our feet now, every twist of cloth as Couts struggled up behind me... (No one can see us. Does he imagine he can kill me here? Is it possible he doesn’t know that I can hear his every movement, that I can run downhill faster... faster... until he falls, tripped by his own strength and weight?)

We reached the top of the mountain, a small plateau, less than a dance-floor. We smiled at each other, not falsely.

“We must touch the tripod,” said Couts ceremoniously, “to show we got to the top.”

We walked over to the iron tripod which marks the summit of most Swiss mountains. I touched it and felt wet paint.

“That forester. He must have just painted it.” I glanced foolishly at the black paint on my hands and tried to wipe it off on the grass.

“Aren’t you thirsty?” I said.

“I am, rather, but I must try and get rid of some of this.” He pointed to his fat. “I’ll walk about.”

I went over to the sharp edge, where our dance-floor dropped away into sudden overwhelming air. I put my hands in my pockets and looked at the miniscule quilt of fields crossed by the accident of roads and the strong line of the river. A dot was our village, and a piece of white confetti beyond was our hotel.

Behind me I suddenly heard nothing.

I counted my own heartbeats, knowing his terrible speed, and then I ducked. Rather I fell, collapsed on my side, and Couts blurted over me with frog eyes and his huge hands outstretched. There was no sound of his falling. I only saw for one dreadful moment, his back with the handprints I had made the night before. I looked at my paint-stained hands, the newly painted tripod, and I knew that he had won after all.