The Black Mountain

X

Meta did not seem to be shocked by the display of an unattached human finger on her dining table, but she was. The proof is that she filled her husband’s cup with steaming so-called coffee and returned the pot to the stove without asking her guests if they wanted some, which was not like her. When she was back in her chair Wolfe spoke.

“An impressive exhibit, Danilo, no doubt of that. Naturally you expect a question, and I supply it. Where’s the rest of him?”

“Where it won’t be found.” Danilo sipped. “This method of confirming a removal is not a Montenegrin custom, as you know. It was introduced to us by the Russians a few years ago, and we have indulged them by adopting it.”

“It seems extreme — not the finger, the removal. I assume that when you left us you went to tell someone that he was lurking in this neighborhood, and to give instructions that he be found and removed.”

“That’s right.”

Wolfe grunted. “Only because he had followed us to your house?”

“No.” Danilo picked up the exhibit, wadded the paper around it, got up and went to the stove, opened the door, tossed the thing in, closed the door, and returned to his chair. “It will smell a little,” he said, “but no more than a morsel of lamb. Jubé has been a nuisance ever since he started going to the university. For a year now he has made things harder for me by trying to persuade Gospo Stritar that my true loyalty is to the Spirit of the Black Mountain — and also, I have reason to believe, trying to persuade Belgrade. He was already condemned, and by following you here he merely presented an opportunity.”

Wolfe lifted his shoulders an eighth of an inch and let them down. “Then it was no disservice to lead him here. I don’t pretend that I’m not impressed by the dispatch and boldness with which you grasped the opportunity.” His eyes moved to Meta. “And I assure you, Mrs. Vukcic, that the grotesque table decoration served with the coffee has not diminished our gratitude for an excellent meal. I speak for Mr. Goodwin too, because he has none of your words.” He returned to Danilo and sharpened his tone. “If I may return to my affair? I must see Josip Pasic.”

“He can’t come,” Danilo said bluntly.

“I ask you to reconsider.”

“No.”

“Then I’ll have to go to him. Where is he?”

“That’s impossible. I can’t tell you.”

Wolfe was patient. “You can’t? Or you won’t?”

“I’m not going to.” Danilo put his hands flat on the table. “For the sake of my uncle, Mr. Nero Wolfe, I have shaken your hand and so has my wife, and we have shared bread with you. But for the sake of what he believed in and supported, I will not run the risk of betraying one of our most carefully guarded secrets. It is not necessary to question your good faith; your rashness is enough. You may already have been recognized.”

Wolfe snorted. “In this outlandish getup? Nonsense. Besides, I have arranged for a diversion. Paolo Telesio communicates with you by mail, using this address, and those communications are intercepted by the secret police and inspected before they are delivered to you; and you and Telesio, knowing that, have occasionally taken advantage of it. Is that true?”

Danilo was frowning. “Apparently Paolo has higher regard for your discretion than I have.”

“He knew me before you were born. Does the interception delay delivery to you considerably?”

“No. They work it fairly well.”

“Did you get a letter from Telesio today?”

“No.”

“Then tomorrow, I suppose. He mailed it in Bari yesterday afternoon. In it he tells you that he has just received a cablegram from New York, signed Nero Wolfe, reading as follows: ‘Inform proper persons across Adriatic I am handling Vukcic’s affairs and assuming obligations. Two hundred thousand dollars available soon. Will send agent conference Bari next month.’ Telesio’s letter will say that it came in English and he has put it in Italian. As I say, it is a diversion for the police. For you it has no validity. I promised Telesio I would make that plain. To the interceptors it should be plain that Nero Wolfe is in New York and has no intention of crossing an ocean.”

Danilo, still frowning, objected, “Belgrade has people in New York. They’ll learn you’re not there.”

“I doubt it. I rarely leave my house, and the man in my office, answering my telephone, named Saul Panzer, could flummox Tito and Molotov put together. There’s another purpose the cablegram may possibly serve, but that’s an off-chance. Now for Josip Pasic. I intend to see him. You spoke of the risk of betraying a carefully guarded secret, but if it’s what I assume it is, I already know it. Marko never told me explicitly that weapons and ammunition were being smuggled in to you, but he might as well have. He said that certain costly and essential supplies were being stored at a spot in the mountains less than three kilometers from the place where I was born, and he identified the spot. We both knew it well in boyhood. It must have been near there that Carla was killed. It must be there, or nearby, that this Josip Pasic is so importantly engaged that you refuse to call him away. So my course is simple. I don’t fancy spending another night cruising the mountains, and we’ll stay the night in Titograd, heaven knows where, and go tomorrow. We shall betray no secrets heedlessly, but we have to find Pasic.”

He pushed back his chair and stood up. “Thank you again, Mrs. Vukcic, for your hospitality. And you, Danilo, thank you for whatever you consider to deserve thanks.” He switched to English. “If you’ll get the knapsacks, Archie? We’re leaving. What time is it?”

I looked at my wrist as I arose. “Quarter to ten.”

“Sit down, you fools,” Danilo growled.

Wolfe ignored it. “You can do us one more favor,” he suggested. “Tell me, is there a hotel in town with good beds?”

“By God,” Danilo growled. In Serbo-Croat “by God” is “Boga ti” — good for growling. Danilo repeated it. “By God, without papers, with nothing but money, you would go to a hotel! You’d get a good bed all right! Gospo Stritar is a man who is capable of a thought, or you would be in jail now, and not in bed either! He merely decided you would be more interesting loose, and by God he was correct! You tell me to my face you know where our cache is, and tomorrow in the sunshine, like going to a picnic, you will go there, doubtless to the very spot, and shout for Josip Pasic!”

He calmed down a little. “Only,” he said, “you would be dead before you got there, and that would be nothing to regret. You may be fit to live in America, but not here. There are only twenty-two men in Montenegro who know where that cache is, and you two are not with us, so obviously you must die. Damn it, sit down!”

“We’re going, Danilo.”

“You can’t go. While I was out I made other arrangements besides Jubé. There are men out front and out back, and if you leave and I don’t go to the door with you and give a signal, you won’t get far. Sit down.”

Wolfe told me, “There’s a snag, Archie,” and sat, and I followed suit.

“I would like to say something, Danilo,” Mrs. Vukcic said quietly.

He frowned at her. “Well?” he demaned.

She looked at Wolfe, at me, and back at her husband. “These men are not crazy like you and me,” she told him. “They are not doomed like us. We try to pretend there is hope, but our hearts are dead, and we can only pray that someday there will be real life for Ivan and Zosha, but we know there can be none for us. Oh, I don’t complain! You know I love you for fighting instead of giving in like the others, and I’m proud of you — I am, Danilo — but I don’t want to be afraid of you. It is too easy for you to say these men must die, and it makes me afraid, because they are the only hope for Ivan and Zosha, men like them. I know you had to kill Jubé Bilic, I can understand that; but these men are our friends, or anyway they are the friends of our children. Do you love anybody?”

“Yes. I love you.”

“And the children, I know. Do you love anybody else?”

“Who else would I love?”

She nodded, her black eyes flashing. “That’s what I mean, you see? These men can still love people! They came so far, so many thousands of miles into danger, because they loved your Uncle Marko and they want to find the man who killed him. What else did they come for? All I want — I want you to understand that, and I know it isn’t easy because it wasn’t easy for me — we can’t have that kind of love, but we can understand it, and we can hope for Ivan and Zosha to grow up to have it someday. You can’t just say these men must die.”

“I can say whatever is necessary.”

“But it isn’t. And anyway, you didn’t mean it. I know how you say a thing when you mean it. You must forgive me, Danilo, for speaking, but I was afraid you would go on like that until you couldn’t back down. It made my heart stop beating to hear you say these men must die, because that is exactly wrong. The real truth is that these men must not die.”

“Bah.” He was scowling at her. “You talk like a woman.”

“I talk like a mother, and if you think that is something no fine, brave man should listen to, I ask you, who made me a mother? You can’t wipe it out now.”

All I knew was that it was no longer a very nice party, and all I could do was watch their faces, including Wolfe’s, and listen to their voices, and try to guess what was up. Also I had to keep an eye on Wolfe’s left hand, because we had arranged that he would close his left fist and open it again if a conversation reached a point where I should be ready to join in with the Marley or the Colt. It was damned unsatisfactory. As far as I knew, Danilo might be scowling at his wife because she was begging him to stick a knife in me so she could have my green jacket to make over for Ivan and Zosha. I heard their names three times.

Wolfe put in, “You’re in a fix, Danilo,” he said sympathetically. “If you let us go we might unwittingly endanger your plans, I admit it. If you have us removed, you will affront the memory of Marko and all he did for you, and also, if you listen to your wife, you will forfeit your claim on the future. I suggest a compromise. You say it is always best to go there at night. Take us there now. If it is impossible for you to leave, get someone to take us. We will be as circumspect as occasion will permit.”

“Yes, Danilo!” Meta cried. “That would be the best—”

“Be quiet,” he commanded her. He leveled his deepset eyes at Wolfe. “It would be unheard of, to take strangers there.”

“Pfui. A stranger to my own birthplace?”

“I’ll take you to the coast instead, tonight, and arrange for you to cross to Bari. You can wait there for word from me. I promise to do all I can to find the man who killed Marko, and to deal with him.”

“No. I have made a promise to myself that has priority, and I will not delegate it. Besides, if you failed I would have to come back; and anyway, if you sent me a finger how would I know who it had belonged to? No, Danilo. I will not be diverted.”

Danilo got up, went to the stove, opened the door, and looked in at the fire. I suppose Wolfe’s mention of a finger had reminded him that he had a cremation under way and he wanted to check. Apparently he thought it needed stoking, for he got some sticks of wood from a box and poked them in before he closed the door. Then he came and stood directly behind my chair. Since Wolfe’s last words had sounded like an ultimatum, and since I didn’t care for the idea of a knife in my back without even catching sight of it, I twisted around enough to get a glimpse of it on its way. His hands were buried in his pockets.

“You’re barely able to stand up,” he told Wolfe. “What about your feet?”

“I’ll manage,” Wolfe said without a quaver. “Must we walk the whole way?”

“No. We’ll ride twenty kilometers along the Cijevna, as far as the road goes. From there it’s rough and steep.”

“I know it is. I herded goats there. Do we leave now?”

“No. Around midnight. I must go and make arrangements for a car and driver. Don’t step outside while I’m gone.”

He went. I must say for him that once he had accepted a situation he didn’t waste any time bellyaching. As soon as the door had closed behind him I went at Wolfe.

“Now what? Has he gone for another finger?”

He said something to Meta, and she replied, and he pushed back his chair and stood up, flinching only a little. “We’ll go in the other room,” he told me, and moved, and I followed, leaving the door open, not to be rude to our hostess. He lowered himself onto his former chair, put his palms on his knees, and sighed as far down as it would go. “We’re in for another night of it,” he said glumly, and proceeded to report. First he sketched it, and then, when I insisted, filled it in. He was in no humor to oblige me or anyone else, but I was in no humor to settle for a skeleton.

When he had finished I sat a minute and turned it over. I had certainly seen sweeter prospects. “Is there such a thing,” I asked, “as a metal dinar any more? A coin?”

“I doubt it. Why?”

“I’d like to have one to toss, to decide which side Danilo is really on. I admit his wife thinks she knows, but does she? As it stands now, I could name at least fourteen people I would rather have take me for a ride than Marko’s nephew.”

“I am committed,” he said grumpily. “You are not.”

“Phooey. I want to see your birthplace and put a plaque on it.”

No comment. He sighed again, arose from his chair, crossed to a sofa with a high back that was against the far wall, placed a cushion to suit him, and stretched out. He tried it first on his back, but protruded over the edge, and turned on his side. It was a pathetic sight, and to take my mind off it I went to another wall and looked at pictures some more.

I think he got a nap in. Some time later, when Danilo returned, I had to go to the sofa and touch Wolfe’s arm before he would open his eyes. He gave me a dirty look, and one just as dirty to Danilo, swung his legs around, sat, and ran his fingers through his hair.

“We can go now,” Danilo announced. He had on a leather jacket.

“Very well.” Wolfe made it to his feet. “The knapsacks, Archie?”

As I bent to lift them Meta’s voice came from the doorway. Her husband answered her, and Wolfe said something and then spoke to me. “Archie, Mrs. Vukcic asks if we would like to look at the children, and I said yes.”

I kept my face straight. The day that Wolfe would like to climb steps to look at children will be the day I would like to climb Mount Everest barefooted to make a snowman. However, it was good public relations, and I don’t deny he might have felt that we should show some appreciation for her contribution to the discussion of our future. I know I did, so I dropped the knapsacks and gave her a cordial smile. She led the way through the arch and up a flight of narrow wooden stairs, uncarpeted, with Wolfe and me following and Danilo bringing up the rear. On the top landing she murmured something to Wolfe, and we waited there while she disappeared through a doorway and in a moment rejoined us, carrying a lighted candle. After going to another door that was closed, she opened it gently and crossed the sill. With the heavy shoes we were wearing it wasn’t easy to step quietly, and with the condition Wolfe’s feet were in it wasn’t easy for him to tiptoe, but by gum he tried, and made, on the bare floor, quite a little less noise than a team of horses.

They were in beds, not cribs, with high wooden posts, against opposite walls. Zosha, who was on her back, with one of her long black curls across her nose, had kicked the cover off, and Meta pulled it up. Wolfe, looking down at her, muttered something, but I can’t say what because he has always refused to tell me. Ivan, who was on his side with an arm stretched out, had a smudge on his cheek, but you have to make allowance for the fact that when Meta put them to bed unexpected guests had arrived and she had been under pressure. When Meta turned away with the candle, and Wolfe and I followed, Danilo stayed by Ivan’s bed, and we waited for him at the foot of the stairs, with Meta holding the candle high to light him.

In the living room Danilo spoke to Wolfe, and Wolfe relayed it to me. “We’ll go first, by a route I know, not far, and Danilo will follow. We won’t want the knapsacks on our backs in the car, so if you’ll carry them?”

We shook hands with Meta. I picked up the luggage. Danilo escorted us to the front door and let us out, and we were loose again. It was past midnight and the houses were all dark, and so was the street, except for one dim excuse for a light at the corner a hundred yards away. We headed in the other direction. When we had gone some fifty paces I stopped and wheeled to look back, and Wolfe grumbled, “That’s futile.”

“Okay,” I conceded, “but I trust Danilo as far as I can see him, and now I can’t see him.”

“Then why look? Come on.”

I obeyed, with my arms full of knapsacks. There were some stars, and soon my eyes were adjusted enough for objects thirty feet off and for movements much farther. Before long we came to a dead end and turned left. At the next intersection we turned right, and in a few minutes went left again and were on a dirt road with ruts. There were no more houses, but ahead in the distance was a big black outline against the sky, and I asked Wolfe what it was.

“Sawmill. The car’s there.”

He sounded more confident than I felt, but he was right. When we approached the outline it became a building surrounded by other outlines, and closer up they became stacks of lumber. I saw the car first, off the road, in between the second and third stacks, which were twice as high as my head. We went up to it. It was a car all right, an old Chewy sedan, and the hood was warm to my hand, but it was empty.

“What the hell,” I said. “No driver? I have no road map.”

“He’ll come.” Wolfe opened the rear door and was climbing in. “There’ll be four of us, so you’ll have to ride with me.”

I put the knapsacks in, taking care not to drop them on his feet, but stayed out on the ground. With my hands free, I had a strong impulse to get the Marley in one and the Colt in the other, and I had to explain to myself why it would be a waste of energy. If someone not Danilo arrived I certainly wasn’t going to shoot on sight, and I wouldn’t even know what his viewpoint was until Wolfe interpreted for me. I compromised by transfering the Colt from my hip to my side pocket.

It was Danilo who arrived. Hearing footsteps, I looked around the corner of the lumber pile and saw him coming down the road. When he was close enough to recognize I took my hand out of my pocket, which shows the state of mind I was in. According to me, he was as likely to saw off our limb as anyone. He turned in, brushing past me, went to the car and spoke to Wolfe, turned, and pronounced a word that sounded something like Steven. Immediately a man appeared beside him, coming from above. He had jumped down from the lumber pile, where he had been perched, probably peeking down at me, while I had been talking myself out of drawing my guns.

“This is Stefan Protic,” Danilo told Wolfe. “I have told him about you and your son Alex. Seen anything, Stefan?”

“No. Nothing.”

“All right, we’ll go.”

Danilo got in with Wolfe, so I circled the car and climbed in beside Stefan. He gave me a long, hard, deliberate look, and I returned it as well as I could in the darkness. About all I could tell was that he was some shorter than me, with a long narrow face that certainly wasn’t pale, and broad shoulders. He started the engine, which sounded as if it would appreciate a valve job, rolled into the road, and turned right, without turning his lights on.

I can’t tell you anything about the first three miles, or five kilometers, of that ride, because I saw nothing. I had already suspected that European drivers had kinks that nothing could be done about, and now concluded that Stefan’s was an antipathy for lights, when suddenly he flashed them on, and I saw why we had been bumping so much. You couldn’t have driven that road without bumping if it had been lined on both sides with continuous neons. I remarked over my shoulder, “If you’ll tell this bird to stop I’d rather get out and run along behind.”

I expected no reply but got one. Wolfe’s voice came, punctuated by bumps. “The main routes from Podgorica are north and south. This is merely a lane to nowhere.”

Podgorica again. Also he wasn’t going to have me casting slurs at Montenegro, which was pretty generous of him, considering the kind of reception Montenegro was giving us.

In another mile or so the road smoothed off a little and started up and began to wind. Wolfe informed me that we were now along the Cijevna, and on our right, quite close, I caught glimpses of the white of a rushing stream, but the engine was too noisy for me to hear it. I remembered that one evening after dinner I had heard Wolfe and Marko discussing the trout they had caught in their early days, Marko claiming he had once landed one forty centimeters long, and I had translated it into inches — sixteen. I swiveled my head to ask Wolfe if it was in the Cijevna that he and Marko had got trout, and he said yes, but in a tone of voice that did not invite conversation, so I let it lay.

The road got narrower and steeper, and after a while there was no more Cijevna, anyhow not visible. Stefan shifted to second to negotiate a couple of hairpin turns, tried to get going in high again, couldn’t make it, and settled for second. The air coming in my open window was colder and fresher, and in the range of our lights ahead there were no longer any leaves or grass, or anything growing; nothing but rock. I had seen no sign of a habitation for more than a mile, and was thinking that Wolfe must have been hatched in an eagle’s nest, when suddenly space widened out in front of us, and right ahead, not fifty feet away, was a stone house, and the car stopped with a jerk. I was making sure it was really a house and not just more of the rock, when Stefan switched off the lights and everything was black.

Danilo said something, and we all piled out. I got the knapsacks. Stefan went toward the house, came back in a moment with a can, lifted the hood and removed the radiator cap, and poured water in. When that chore was finished he got in behind the wheel, got turned around with a lot of noisy backing and tacking, and was gone. Soon I was relieved to see, down below, his lights flash on.

Wolfe spoke. “My knapsack, Archie, if you please?”