I landed quite softly and, as I scrambled to my feet, the report of a gun nearly deafened me. I span round. Carla was standing on the belvedere, leaning over the wooden rail so that she could see along the front of the hut. She had a sporting piece in her hands—about a twelve bore—and smoke was curling up from one of the twin barrels. Her scarlet ski suit stood out like a smear of blood against the white background. She broke the piece and reloaded with a cartridge from her pocket. As she snapped back the breech, she noticed me. ‘You stay away,’ she said. ‘This is not your business.’ The gun was pointed at me for a moment. She was like a jungle cat defending her young. Her eyes still had that wild look. She was beyond reason—in the grip of a kind of madness.
Her eyes quickly strayed from me back along the front of the building. She turned suddenly and waded through the snow to the steps. Then she disappeared from view.
I crossed to the rail and leaned over. She was making her way slowly along the front of the building towards the top of the slittovia, her head back so that she looked up to where the glow of the flames showed red in the farthest bedroom window.
Mayne’s head appeared at the window. There was a stab of flame as he fired. The scarlet ski suit was jerked back suddenly like a puppet on a string. It turned slightly and sagged. But it fetched up in a sitting position in the snow and raised the gun. There was a blast of red-and-yellow fire, the crash of a shot and Mayne’s head was withdrawn. He fired at her twice after that as she sat huddled in the snow. The second time Carla did not reply.
A moment later Mayne’s legs appeared through the window. They were picked out quite plainly in the glow of the flames. Carla slowly raised her gun and fired both barrels. The distance was only a matter of some forty feet. There was a horrible scream of agony. The legs writhed convulsively and were withdrawn. Carla slowly broke the piece and reloaded. The flames brightened suddenly inside the bedroom and then burned red. The glow seemed to sweep right up to the glass of the window and then a great tongue of flame licked up out of the casement, hissing as it turned the snow that hung from the roof to steam. The white icing of snow that covered the roof seemed to draw back from the flames. It wilted visibly. A piece of the gabling fell in. A great column of steam rose hissing towards the cold curtain of the stars. A gout of flame followed it through the gaping rent in the roof. The trees glowed warmly and the snow all round the hut was coloured a gay pink.
Mayne’s head suddenly appeared again amidst the flames at the window. He fired three times at Carla. The little stabbing flames of his gun were hardly visible in the glare. Carla fired one barrel. That was all. Then she rolled over and buried her face in the snow.
Mayne dropped his gun. He was pulling at the window frame, trying to drag himself out. He appeared to be wounded. When he was half-out, his stomach supporting him on the window sill, he began to scream. It was a horrible sound—very animal and very high pitched. A draught had been created by the hole in the gable roofing and a great wave of flame rolled over him and roared up out of the window. I saw his hair catch fire. It burned like a piece of furze. The skin of his face blackened.
He gave a convulsive, agonised heave with his hands and fell head first from the window, a human torch, his whole body blazing furiously. He hit a drift of snow beyond the slittovia platform. A cloud of steam rose from the spot. The flames were instantly extinguished. A great black hole was burned in the snow.
‘The poor devil!’ Joe said. He was standing beside me, half-dressed. ‘Is that damned Contessa of yours mad?’
‘I think she’s dead,’ I said. ‘Finish putting on your clothes. I’ll go and see if there’s anything we can do.’
Another piece of the roofing went as I made my way to the head of the slittovia. Sparks and steam rose high into the night and were whipped away by the wind. Carla’s body was huddled in the snow close to the platform at the top of the sleigh track. It was quite still. The scarlet of her ski suit glowed brightly in the lurid light. I turned her over. Her eyes stared wide out of a face covered in wet snow. There was a patch of blood in the hollow her body had made in the snow. A bullet had shattered her shoulder. Two more had struck her in the chest. The stains were a darker red than her ski suit. She was dead.
I crossed the platform then and made for the dark hole where Mayne had fallen. His body lay right below the spot where the fire was fiercest. Great gouts of flame were licking through the broken gabling. The wind was driving the fire through the wooden building, fanning the flames so that they looked like the exotic petals of some fearful jungle flower, writhing in horrid carnivorous ecstasy. One glance at Mayne told me that there was nothing to be done for him. His body was a charred and blackened mass, lying in a pool of melted snow. It was twisted and unnatural. And where the clothing had fallen away from one arm, the unburned flesh was pock-marked with shot. His had been an unpleasant death.
Joe joined me then. ‘Dead?’ he asked.
I nodded. ‘Nothing we can do. Better go and get your cameras. I’ll give you a hand.’
Joe did not move. He was staring up at the flaming building. There was a crash. The whole gable that had roofed Mayne’s room seemed to crumple. We scrambled back through the snow just in time. It collapsed with a roar. The flames licked round this fresh wound with increasing fury. Sparks flew and were driven into the night. A set of beams, charred and eaten by the fire and still blazing, fell across Mayne’s body. They stood for a second, up-ended in the snow. Then they keeled over against the side of the building, their bases hissing and blackened, the upper ends still flaming. The wood of the hut flooring caught and began to burn. ‘Better hurry, Joe,’ I said.
But all he said was, ‘Christ! What a film shot!’
‘What about Aldo and his wife, and Anna?’ I said, shaking his arm.
‘Eh? Oh, they live downstairs. They’ll be all right.’
We found them round the back, dragging their belongings out into the snow. At least, the two women were. Aldo was wandering about helplessly, wringing his hands and muttering, ‘Mamma mia! Mamma mia!’ I imagine he felt pretty sick at having helped Carla to escape.
We got Joe’s gear out and dumped it in the snow. It was whilst I was doing this that I suddenly remembered the skis. Without them it would take me hours to get down to Tre Croci. I stumbled round to the front of the building again. My heart sank at the sight of it. The whole front was ablaze now. Half the roof was gone and where the staircase had been the upper storey was nothing more than gaunt, blackened beams pointing flaming fingers at the moon. The door of the machine-room stood open as Engles and Keramikos had left it. It was already blackened with the heat and beginning to smoulder. The flooring above the concrete room was alight and the supports all round it flaming. At any moment the whole structure might collapse on top of it.
I rolled quickly in the heat-thawed snow till my clothes were sodden. Then, with a wet handkerchief tied round my face, I sloshed through the melting snow and in through the black, gaping doorway. The inside of that concrete room was like an oven. It was full of smoke. I couldn’t see a thing. I stumbled over the pick Engles had used to batter in the door and felt my way to the corner where we had put the skis. Several fell as I touched them. But the clatter they made was scarcely audible above the roar of the flames overhead. I felt along the warm concrete wall with my hands and found a bundle still tied together. With these over my shoulder, I stumbled through the red gap of the doorway, out through the blazing pine supports and into the cold, sodden snow.
I set the skis down, points upwards, in a drift and looked back at the blaze. As I did so, one of the pine supports near the entrance to the machine-room splintered and flared. The blazing floor above it sagged dangerously. A moment later several supports gave with loud cracks and a burst of flame. The flooring, which they supported, slowly buckled, and then the whole blazing façade above folded inwards and sank with a roar of flame and broken wood. Myriad sparks rushed into the night and the flames roared up through the gap in a solid sheet.
Joe came round the end of the building then. I beckoned to him and began to unfasten the skis. When he came up, he said, ‘How did this fire start, Neil?’
‘Petrol,’ I said, fastening on a pair of skis. ‘Carla set light to it.’
‘Good Lord! Whatever for?’
‘Revenge,’ I told him. ‘Mayne had double-crossed her and jilted her. He’d also planned to murder her.’
He stared at me. ‘Are you making this up?’ he asked. ‘Where’s Valdini?’
‘Mayne shot him,’ I said. I had finished putting on the skis. I straightened up then and found Joe’s face a picture of incredulity in the ruddy glare. ‘I’ve got to get down to Tre Croci,’ I told him. ‘I must get to a phone. I’ll take the slalom run. Will you follow me? I’ll tell you all about it down at the hotel.’ I did not wait for his reply. I put my hands through the leather thongs of the sticks and started off across the snow.
The slalom wasn’t an easy run. It was very steep, following pretty much the line of the slittovia, snaking down almost parallel to it. I took it as slowly as possible, but the fresh snow was deep and I was only able to break my speed by snow-ploughing in places. Stem turns were difficult and I often had to brake by running into the soft snow at the side of the run or by falling.
After the lurid light and the roar of the flames at the hut, it was strangely dark and silent going down through the woods. Moonlight filtered through the feathery web of the pine branches and the only sounds were the wind whipping the topmost branches and the hiss of my skis through the snow.
I suppose it took me about half an hour to get down that run. It seemed much longer, for my ski suit was wet through and it was very cold. But my watch showed the time to be only one forty-five as I passed the hut where Emilio lived at the bottom of the slittovia. I looked up the long white avenue of the cable track gleaming brightly in the moonlight. At the top, the white of the snow seemed to blossom into a great, violent mushroom of fire. It was no longer possible to discern the shape of the hut. It was just a flaming mass, white at the centre, fading to a dull orange at the edges and throwing out a great trailer of sparks and smoke, so that it looked like a meteor rushing through the night.
When I reached the hotel I found everybody up and bustling to form a party to go up and fight the flames. I was immediately surrounded by an excited crowd, all dressed in their ski clothes. I asked for the manager. He came fussing through the group round me, a stout, important-looking little man with a sallow, worried face and lank, oily hair. ‘You all right, signore? Are there any hurt?’
I told him the fire had hurt no one, that it was quite beyond control and would soon burn itself out. Then I asked if I could use his office and his telephone. ‘But of course, signore. Anything I can do, you have but to command.’ He put two electric fires on for me, had a waiter bring me a drink and a change of clothing and had a hot meal conjured for me out of the kitchen, all in an instant. It was a big moment for him. He was showing his guests how good and generous a host he was. He nearly drove me frantic with his constant enquiries after my health. And all the while I had the telephone pressed to my ear. I spoke to Bologna, Mestre, Milan. Once a line was crossed and it was Rome talking to me. But Trieste or Udine—no.
Joe came puffing in just as I was talking to Bologna for the third time. He looked as though he had had a lot of falls. He was wet with snow and flopped exhausted into an arm-chair. He had his baby camera still slung round his neck. He gave the little manager fresh scope. Brandy was rushed to the scene. He was stripped of his ski suit and swathed in a monstrosity of a dressing-gown decked with purple-and-orange stripes. More food was brought. And whilst all this was going on and in the intervals of my telephonic tour of the main exchanges of Italy, I tried to give him some idea of what had been happening up at Col da Varda. I did not mention the gold, and this omission left loopholes in the story, so that I do not think he really believed it all.
But in the midst of his questions, Trieste suddenly asked me why I did not answer. I asked for the military exchange and got through to Major Musgrave at his hotel. His voice barked at me sleepily down the line. But annoyance changed to interest as I mentioned Engles’ name and told him what I wanted. ‘Right-ho,’ was the reply, thin and faint as though at a great distance. ‘I’ll ring Udine and have ’em move off at once. The carabinieri post at Cortina, you say? Okay. Tell Derek they ought to be there about nine-ish, unless the road is blocked.’ It was all settled in a matter of a few minutes, and I put the phone down with a sigh of relief.
The little manager had exhausted himself by then. Everyone had gone back to bed. I looked out into the hall. The hotel was quiet again. The porter slept, curled up in a chair by the stove. A big clock ticked solemnly below the staircase. It was ten past four. I went back into the office. Joe was asleep in the arm-chair, snoring gently. I pulled the heavy curtains aside and peered out. The moon was setting in a great yellow ball behind the shoulder of Monte Cristallo. The stars were brighter, the sky darker. Only the faintest glow showed at the top of the slittovia. The fire was burning itself out. I pulled a chair up to one of the electric heaters and settled myself down to await Engles’ phone call.
I suppose I must have dozed off, for I don’t remember the passage of time and it must have been after six when I was woken by the sound of voices in the hall. Then the door of the room was thrown open and Engles staggered in.
I remember I started to my feet. I hadn’t expected him. His face was white and haggard. His ski suit was torn. There was blood on the front of his wind-breaker, and a great red stain just above the left groin. ‘Get through to Trieste?’ he asked. His voice sounded thin and exhausted.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘They’ll be at the carabinieri post about nine.’
Engles gave a wry smile. ‘Won’t be necessary.’ He stumbled over to the desk and collapsed into the leather-padded swivel-chair. ‘Keramikos is dead,’ he added.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
He stared vacantly at the typewriter that stood on the polished mahogany. He lurched slowly forward and removed the cover. Then he pulled the typewriter close to him and inserted a sheet of paper. ‘Give me a cigarette,’ he said. I put one in his mouth and lit it for him. He didn’t speak for a moment. He just sat there with the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth and his eyes fixed on the blank sheet of paper in the typewriter. ‘My God!’ he said slowly. ‘What a story! It’ll make film history. A thriller that really happened. It’s never been done before—not like this.’ His eyes were alight with the old enthusiasm. His fingers strayed to the keys and he began to type.
Joe woke with a grunt at the sound of the typewriter and stared at Engles with his mouth open, as though he had seen a ghost.
I watched over Engles’ shoulder. He wrote:
THE LONELY SKI-ER
SCENARIO OF A THRILLER THAT REALLY HAPPENED
The click of the keys slowed and faltered. The cigarette dropped from his lips and lay on his lap, burning a brown mark on the white of his ski suit. His teeth were grinding together and beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. He raised his fingers to the keyboard again and added another line:
by Neil Blair
He stopped then and stared at it with a little smile. A froth of blood bubbled at his lips. His wrists went slack so that the fingers raised a jumble of type arms. Then he gently keeled over and slipped to the floor before I could catch him.
When we picked him up, he was dead.
10
The Lonely Skier
I WAS FILLED with a bitter hatred for that gold as I looked down at Engles’ body, sprawled limp in the easy-chair in which we had placed it.
What was there in gold? Little bricks of a particularly useless metal—no more. It had no intrinsic value, save that its rarity made it suitable for use as a means of exchange. Yet, though inanimate, it seemed to have a deadly personality of its own. It could draw men from the ends of the earth in search of it. It was like a magnet—and al
l it attracted was greed. The story of Midas had shown men its uselessness. Yet throughout history, ever since the yellow metal had first been discovered, men had killed each other in the scramble to obtain it. They had subjected thousands to the lingering death of phthisis to drag it from deep mine shafts, from places as far apart as Alaska and the Klondyke. And others had dedicated their lives to a hard gamble in useful products in order to procure it and store it back in underground vaults.
To get hold of this particular little pile of gold, Stelben had slaughtered nine men. And after his death, though the gold was buried in the heart of the Dolomites, it had attracted a group of people from different parts of Europe to squabble and kill each other over it.
Of all the people whom it had drawn up the slittovia to Col da Varda, I was the only one left alive. They had not been a particularly attractive group of characters: Stefan Valdini, gangster and procurer; Carla Rometta, a crook and little better than a common prostitute; Gilbert Mayne, alias Stuart Ross, deserter, gangster and killer; Keramikos, a Nazi agent with Greek nationality. They had all died because of that gold.
And now—Derek Engles.
He had had his faults. But he had been a brilliant and attract-ive personality. He might have been one of the great of the film world. And now all that remained of him was a body sprawled lifeless in an easy-chair in a mountain hotel in Italy. He would never direct another film. He had even had to pass on to me the responsibility for telling the story of Col da Varda.
Joe was leaning over the body, ripping the clothing away from the wound in the groin. ‘Doesn’t look like a bullet,’ he said as he laid bare the white skin of the stomach.
The Lonely Skier Page 18
