Mr. Standfast by John Buchan (mystery books to read .TXT) 📕

examined the car I knew what had happened. The front axle was bent, and the off front wheel badly buckled.

I had not time to curse my stupidity. I clambered back to the road and set off running down it at my best speed. I was mortally stiff, for Ivery’s rack was not good for the joints, but I realized it only as a drag on my pace, not as an affliction in itself. My whole mind was set on the house before me and what might be happening there.

There was a man at the door of the inn, who, when he caught sight of my figure, began to move to meet me. I saw that it was Launcelot Wake, and the sight gave me hope.

But his face frightened me. It was drawn and haggard like one who never sleeps, and his eyes were hot coals.

“Hannay,” he cried, “for God’s sake what does it mean?”

“Where is Mary?” I gasped, and I remember I clutched at a lapel of his coat.

He pulled me to the low stone wall by the roadside.

“I don’t know,” he said hoarsely. “We got your orders to come here this morning. We were at Chiavagno, where Blenkiron told us to wait. But last night Mary disappeared⁠ ⁠… I found she had hired a carriage and come on ahead. I followed at once, and reached here an hour ago to find her gone⁠ ⁠… The woman who keeps the place is away and there are only two old servants left. They tell me that Mary came here late, and that very early in the morning a closed car came over the Staub with a man in it. They say he asked to see the young lady, and that they talked together for some time, and that then she went off with him in the car down the valley⁠ ⁠… I must have passed it on my way up⁠ ⁠… There’s been some black devilment that I can’t follow. Who was the man? Who was the man?”

He looked as if he wanted to throttle me.

“I can tell you that,” I said. “It was Ivery.”

He stared for a second as if he didn’t understand. Then he leaped to his feet and cursed like a trooper. “You’ve botched it, as I knew you would. I knew no good would come of your infernal subtleties.” And he consigned me and Blenkiron and the British army and Ivery and everybody else to the devil.

I was past being angry. “Sit down, man,” I said, “and listen to me.” I told him of what had happened at the Pink Chalet. He heard me out with his head in his hands. The thing was too bad for cursing.

“The Underground Railway!” he groaned. “The thought of it drives me mad. Why are you so calm, Hannay? She’s in the hands of the cleverest devil in the world, and you take it quietly. You should be a raving lunatic.”

“I would be if it were any use, but I did all my raving last night in that den of Ivery’s. We’ve got to pull ourselves together, Wake. First of all, I trust Mary to the other side of eternity. She went with him of her own free will. I don’t know why, but she must have had a reason, and be sure it was a good one, for she’s far cleverer than you or me⁠ ⁠… We’ve got to follow her somehow. Ivery’s bound for Germany, but his route is by the Pink Chalet, for he hopes to pick me up there. He went down the valley; therefore he is going to Switzerland by the Marjolana. That is a long circuit and will take him most of the day. Why he chose that way I don’t know, but there it is. We’ve got to get back by the Staub.”

“How did you come?” he asked.

“That’s our damnable luck. I came in a first-class six-cylinder Daimler, which is now lying a wreck in a meadow a mile up the road. We’ve got to foot it.”

“We can’t do it. It would take too long. Besides, there’s the frontier to pass.”

I remembered ruefully that I might have got a return passport from the Portuguese Jew, if I had thought of anything at the time beyond getting to Santa Chiara.

“Then we must make a circuit by the hillside and dodge the guards. It’s no use making difficulties, Wake. We’re fairly up against it, but we’ve got to go on trying till we drop. Otherwise I’ll take your advice and go mad.”

“And supposing you get back to St. Anton, you’ll find the house shut up and the travellers gone hours before by the Underground Railway.”

“Very likely. But, man, there’s always the glimmering of a chance. It’s no good chucking in your hand till the game’s out.”

“Drop your proverbial philosophy, Mr. Martin Tupper, and look up there.”

He had one foot on the wall and was staring at a cleft in the snow-line across the valley. The shoulder of a high peak dropped sharply to a kind of nick and rose again in a long graceful curve of snow. All below the nick was still in deep shadow, but from the configuration of the slopes I judged that a tributary glacier ran from it to the main glacier at the river head.

“That’s the Colle delle Rondini,” he said, “the Col of the Swallows. It leads straight to the Staubthal near Grunewald. On a good day I have done it in seven hours, but it’s not a pass for wintertime. It has been done of course, but not often.⁠ ⁠… Yet, if the weather held, it might go even now, and that would bring us to St. Anton by the evening. I wonder”⁠—and he looked me over with an appraising eye⁠—“I wonder if you’re up to it.”

My stiffness had gone and I burned to set my restlessness to physical toil.

“If you can do it, I can,” I said.

“No. There you’re wrong. You’re a hefty fellow, but you’re no mountaineer, and the ice of the Colle delle Rondini needs