The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

gentleman wants to talk to you, Seppi."

      "I am inquiring about a friend of mine. He was up here in the mountains a fortnight ago yesterday. Do you happen to remember an accident of any kind on that day?"

      The man looked at him placidly, turned, and went back into his cave as though to fetch something.

      "He won't come out again, not unless the sun shines," Toni muttered.

      "Is it permitted to enter?" Pointer asked in Italian.

      "Prego, prego!" The man acquiesced civilly, going on with his work of clipping the ears of some chamois masks which he was mounting. The only chairs were boulders. A little fire flickered on a huge rock that served the man as table. A pot of glue stood in the centre; shears and taxidermist's knives lay on a slab beside it.

      "I will pay well for reliable information."

      "What will you pay?" Seppi's voice was husky and very even.

      Pointer laid ten two-lire pieces in front of him, and kept his hand on them. Ice-blue eyes met gray eyes for a second.

      "What age was your friend? What did he wear?"

      Pointer told him.

      "Yes, I saw him."

      The man went on with his humming,

       "Ste Ii a vardar, El Latemar."

      Pointer pushed across two of the coins.

      "He was sitting on a rock in the valley," the rock man said briskly.

      "Did you see anything else?" Another coin was shoved across, and so it went on, Pointer feeding the man as though he were some sort of talking automaton.

      "I saw Toni go up to a ledge to see how the short cut was. I saw him shade his eyes and peer at it. I saw the old man in the valley move around a corner on to a rock in the sun. I saw another man come along the valley, pick up the ice-axe, and come crouching half around the corner. I saw Toni dislodge a stone. At its rattle the second man slipped back again around the bend. I saw that he meant to kill the old man." Seppi spoke as unconcernedly as though he had been describing army manoeuvres.

      "Why didn't you shout?"

      "And scare away the chamois? I was glad to see that the man intended to use an ice-axe and not a gun. He came on a second time with the axe up, and crashed it down into the head of the old man sitting with his back to him. The man fell off the boulder."

      "Could you see what Toni was doing?"

      "He had just reached the flat rock which would show him the short cut."

      "Couldn't he see the murder?"

      "Of course not. There is that crag between. See for yourself. The man raised the axe again, but evidently the other man was dead. I saw him examine him with care, or rob him. I couldn't see clearly which it was. Then he jumped up and ran behind the corner again, and on out of sight around that bend you see from here. I saw him no more."

      "Could you describe him?"

      The description was hopeless. Middle size, middle dark, rather young, full beard, soft hat, oldish cape over his coat. It would have fitted three-quarters of the men who had passed that way.

      Pointer arranged with the man to pay him the amount of a day's chamois hunting should he need him to report the murder to the Carabinieri. The man agreed, asked for something on account, and, as he stretched out his hand, passed it accidentally through the flame. He held it there for a second, till Toni's exclamation made him look at it. With perfect unconcern he picked off the black flesh, and shoved the hand into his pocket.

      "I must tie it up. It is a nuisance that I was not looking."

      "Does it hurt?" Pointer asked, watching him closely. The man laughed shortly.

      "Nothing can hurt me. That's the danger. You can lose an arm without noticing what's wrong, if you don't look out."

      As he walked back to the cottage with Toni, Pointer was still not sure if that apparently painless burn had been acting, or the result of self-suggestion, or some sort of Yoga.

      "Do nothing till you hear from me again," he told Toni.

      "I want time to think things over. I may have to speak to the Carabinieri about the matter, but I shall be able so to put it that you are seen to be innocent, I think. Will you leave it to me?"

      Toni shivered.

      "The carabinieri—they are so quick! Always in such a hurry to act!"

      "I think I shall be able to make their maresciallo understand, and it is the only way. The only way, Toni, believe me."

      For Pointer there never was but one way—the way of the law.

      Toni licked his dry lips.

      "You—you think so?"

      "Courage!" Pointer laid a kindly hand on his shoulder. "You have a good reputation. You are a good guide, and a good guide is not a man to lightly suspect of murder. Then there is your cold-blooded friend up there—"

      "But he saw no more than I knew. I told you the man was killed by a blow from my ice-axe."

      CHAPTER NINE

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      POINTER had plenty to think about as he took the motor coach back to Bolzano that afternoon. So the professor was dead. He had half-feared as much these many days past, Charteris had sent off that letter to his daughter on the Monday, and had been killed the next day, while she was murdered the Thursday following, the day of its arrival in England. The Professor had not been attacked in the train before he got out at Bolzano, though the first-class coaches are usually quite empty so early in the year. It would have been an easy matter to knock him on the head and fling him out, en route. Much less troublesome and dangerous than to track him to that lonely valley.

      Pointer believed that the guide's life had only been saved by his having gone on to that upper point. For the murderer came doubtless prepared with a revolver or gun to account for both, if need be.

      Why was the professor's life suddenly in danger, when it seemed to have been safe up till then? Rose's murder, Pointer felt sure, was connected with the letter she had received. Could he link up her father's death with it? Not unless—unless something had happened in Bolzano which he might have been supposed to describe, or send on to her. They had pillaged his body. Were they looking for something which they expected he would have on him, and which, not finding, they assumed had been sent in the letter that he had registered to his daughter in England the day before? They must have found the receipt for the letter in his note-case.

      In all likelihood, a message must have been sent to England, a telegram probably, telling her murderer to be on the lookout.

      But what could have happened in the quaint little town to cause such a scheme to be necessary. Money? Inheritance? Something momentous it must have been.

      Pointer did not doubt Toni's honesty. "Yes," he murmured to himself, "it looks as though something very important had happened that Monday in Bolzano before twelve, before the professor sent that registered letter, and took the postauto on to the Grödner Tal."

      Pointer made his way to the Sotto Prefectura, and roamed its passages, and blundered in and out of its rooms, with as little attention paid him as though he had been a blue-bottle. At last, by mere luck, he found an elderly, pleasant-faced Italian, who looked up, and to his oft-repeated, "Il Sotto-Prefetto?" replied, "I myself. To what do I owe the honour?"

      Pointer laid his credentials down on the table and explained them. The Italian looked them over very carefully, then rose and bowed, glanced at the collar lying beside him, evidently decided that decorations need not be worn, and bowed again as he sat down.

      "I am over here to try to trace