by Rex Stout
They weren't. I took my time and made sure. I suspected Bua when I put a piece of fuzz from my jacket on his nostrils, holding his lips shut, and it floated off, but two more tries showed that it had been only a current in the air. "No shamming," I reported. "It was close quarters. If you wanted any --" "This is what I wanted. Let him down." I went and took the chain off the peg and eased it up. I suppose I should have been 229 more careful, but my nerves were a little ragged, and when I saw his feet were on the floor I loosened my grip, and his weight jerked the chain out of my hands as he collapsed on the stone. I went to him and got out my pocket knife to cut the cord from his wrists, but Wolfe spoke. "Wait a minute. Is he alive?" I inspected him. "Sure he's alive. He just passed out, and I don't blame him." "Will he die?" "Of what? Did you bring smelling salts?" "By heaven," he blurted with sudden ferocity, "you'll clown at your funeral! Tie his ankles and we'll go upstairs. I doubt if the shots could have been heard outside even if there were anyone to hear them, but I want to get out of here." I obeyed. There was a choice of ropes to tie his ankles with, and it didn't take long. When I finished, Wolfe was at the door with a lantern in his hand, and I got one from the shelf and followed him out and up the fifteen steps. We went up faster than we had come down. He said we had better make sure there was no one else in the fort, and I agreed. He knew his way around as well as if he had built it himself, and we covered it all. He even had me climb the ladder to the tower, while he stood at the 230 foot with my Colt in his hand, talking Albanian -- I suppose warning anyone in the tower that if I were attacked he would pump them. When I rejoined him intact we went back to ground level and on outdoors, and he sat down on a flat rock at the corner nearest the trail. On its surface beside him was a big dark blotch. "That's where Pasic killed the dog," I remarked. "Yes. Sit down. As you know, I look at people when I talk to them, and I don't like to stretch my neck." I sat on the blotch. "Oh, you want to talk?" "I don't want to, I have to. Peter Zov is the man who murdered Marko." I stared at him. "What is this, a hunch?" "No. A certainty." "How come?" He told me what the man in the chair had said. 231 Chapter 13 I sat for a minute and chewed on it, squinting at the sun. "If you had told me before we walked in," I said, "it would have taken just one more bullet." "Pfui. Could you have shot him hanging there?" "No." "Then don't try to saddle me with it." I chewed on it some more. "It's cockeyed. He killed Marko. I killed the birds that killed Carla." "In a fight. You had no choice. With him we have." "Name it. You go down and knife him. Or I go and shoot him. Or one of us challenges him to a duel. Or we shove him off a cliff. Or we leave him there to starve." I had an idea. "You wouldn't buy any of those, and neither would I, but what's wrong with this? We turn him over to Danilo and his pals and tell them what you heard. 232 That ought to do it." "No." "Okay, it's your turn. We may not have all day because company may come." "We must take him back to New York." I guess I gaped. "And you scold me for clowning." "I'm not clowning. I said with him we have a choice, but we haven't. We are constrained."
"By what?" "By the obligation that brought us here. What Danilo's wife told him was cogent but not strictly accurate. If personal vengeance were the only factor I could, as you suggested, go and stick a knife in him and finish it, but that would be accepting the intolerable doctrine that man's sole responsibility is to his ego. That was the doctrine of Hitler, as it is now of Malenkov and Tito and Franco and Senator McCarthy, masquerading as a basis of freedom, it is the oldest and toughest of the enemies of freedom. I reject it and condemn it. You look skeptical. I suppose you're thinking that I have sometimes been high-handed in dealing with the hired protectors of freedom in my adopted land -- the officers of the law." "Not more than a thousand times," I protested.
233 "You exaggerate. But I have never flouted their rightful authority or tried to usurp their lawful powers, and being temporarily in the domain of dictatorial barbarians gives me no warrant to embrace their doctrines and use their methods. Marko was murdered in New York. His murderer is accountable to the People of the State of New York, not to me. Our part is to get him there." "Hooray for us. The only way to get him there legally is to have him extradited." "That isn't true. You're careless with your terms. Extradition is the only way to get him there by action of law, but that's quite different and of course impossible. The point is to get him under the jurisdiction of civilized law without violating it ourselves." "I see the point all right. How?" "That's it. Can he walk?" "I should think so. I heard no bones crack. Shall I go and find out?" "No." He got to his feet with only a couple of grunts during the operation. "I must speak with that man -- Stan Kosor. I don't want to leave you here alone, because if someone should come you couldn't talk except with the gun, so I'll try this first." He faced the direction of Montenegro and beckoned, using the whole length of his arm, again and again. I booked it as a one-to-ten 234 shot, because first, Kosor might not be up in the niche at all, and second, if he was there I doubted if he trusted Wolfe enough to cross the border to him. I lost the bet. I don't know how the man got down from the crag so quickly unless he just let go and slid, but I hadn't even begun to look for him in earnest when my eye was attracted by movement, and there he was on the bend in the trail where it emerged from a defile. He strode along until he reached the spot where the trail began to widen for the space in front of the fort, stopped abruptly, and called something. By then I had seen that it wasn't Kosor but Danilo Vukcic. We had been honored. Wolfe answered him, and he came on. They jabbered. Danilo sounded and looked as if he didn't believe what he heard, got persuaded apparently, and looked at me with a different expression from any he had had for me before. Deducing that I was being admired for my prowess with small arms, I yawned to show that it was nothing out of the ordinary. Then they got into a hot argument. After that was settled, Wolfe did most of the talking, and there was no more arguing. Evidently everything was rosy, for they shook hands as if they meant it, and Danilo offered me a hand and I took 235 it. He was absolutely cordial. When he went he turned twice, once at the far edge of the wide space and once just before he disappeared into the defile, to wave at us. "He's a different man," I told Wolfe. "Report, please?" "There isn't time. I must talk with that man, and we must get away. I told Danilo what happened. He insisted on going down to look at them, but I said no. If he had gone alone he might have come back with a collection of fingers, including Zov's, and if we had gone along and Zov had been conscious he would have seen us together on friendly terms, which wouldn't do. We're going to take Zov out the way we came, and Danilo is going to try to stop us and fail." "I'm not going to shoot Danilo." "You won't have to, if he does as agreed, and he will. I would prefer not to go back down there. Will you go? If he can move, bring him here." "Leave his wrists tied?" "No. Free him." I entered the fort by the door, crossed to the entrance to a narrow passage, and after a couple of turns was in the long corridor. At the top of the fifteen steps I turned on my flashlight. Why I got a gun in my hand 236 as I approached the door of the room I don't exactly know, but I did. The lantern on the shelf was still burning. I made the rounds of the three casualties, checked that they still weren't shamming, and then went to Zov. He was stretched out, in a different position from when we left him, with his eyes shut, motionless. I took my knife and cut the rope on his ankles, and then the cord on his wrists, which were red and bruised and swollen, and when I let go of them he tried to let them fall dead to the floor but botched it. I stood and looked down at him, thinking how much I could simplify matters if I forgot doctrines for just two seconds. Another thought followed it. Was it possible that Wolfe had had that in mind when he sent me down alone, on the chance that I would come back up and report that Zov had kicked off? Let Archie do it? I decided no. I had known him to pull some raw ones, but no. "Nuts," I told Zov. "Open your eyes." No sign. I kicked his shoulder, just gently, but the shoulder had had a hard day, and he winced. I stooped and grabbed an ear and started to lift him by it, and his eyes opened and focused on me. I let the ear go, hooked my fingers in his armpits fro
m be237 hind, raised his torso, and hauled him on up. He clutched at my sleeve and said something, and I took hold of his belt in the rear and started him for the door, and he did fine. I was afraid I might have to carry him up the steps, but he made it on his own, though I kept a good hold on the belt for fear he might tumble and break his neck and Wolfe would think I had pushed him. After that there was nothing to it. Halfway down the corridor I shifted from his belt to his elbow, and when we got to the door, in sight of Wolfe, I broke contact. I had some vague feeling that I preferred to have him go on to Wolfe without my touching him. He went to the rock and sat down, and Wolfe moved over a little. "Well, Mr. Zov," Wolfe said, "I'm glad you can walk." "Comrade Zov," he said. "If you like, certainly. Comrade Zov. We'd better be moving. Someone might come, and my son has done enough for one day." Zov looked at his wrists. It was just as well he didn't have a mirror to look at his face. The flat nose and slanting forehead would never have been a treat, but with the sun on them, and still twitching from spasms, they were something special. 238 He looked at Wolfe. "You were in Titograd yesterday afternoon. How did you get here?" "Surely that can wait. We must get away." "I want to know." "You heard me mention the Spirit of the Black Mountain. I had been told that one of its leaders could be found here near the border, and we came to find him. We did so, and talked with him, and we were disappointed. We decided to cross into Albania, and saw this fort, and were about to enter, when we heard a scream. We went in to investigate, and you know what we found. We interfered because we disapprove of torture. Violence is often unavoidable, as it was on your mission to New York, but not torture. If that's how --" "How do you know of my mission to New York?" "We heard that Russian talking to you. If that's how the Russians do things, we are not their friends. We intend to return to Titograd and see Gospo Stritar. He impressed us." Wolfe stood up without grunting. "Let's go. But did they take anything from you? Weren't you armed?" "We can't go through the mountains in the daytime. We'll have to hole up -- I know a place -- until dark." 239 "No. We're going now." "That's crazy. We'll never reach the valley alive. It's risky enough at night." Wolfe tapped him on the shoulder. "It's your nerves. Comrade Zov, and nc>
