Christine shut her eyes for a moment to reckon up the days since they had left England. “Monday! Yes, I suppose he could be. Back to the grindstone after a week-end in Slovakia. But the way the car’s parked, I’d have thought he was going our way.”
Dominic had been thinking the very same thing, and was thinking it still; and the thought had first entered his mind in the instant when Tossa’s eyes had encountered those of the Englishman in the distant corner, held his gaze just long enough to register detached and unrecognising curiosity, and moved on just in time to avoid any suggestion of rudeness. For the man hadn’t been quite so adroit. He hadn’t the kind of face that gives much away, but for one instant there had been a kindling of his eyes, a sharpening of his attention, the unmistakable, instantaneous light of recognition. It was gone in an instant, too, without trace. He looked at her now with interest and approval across the room but as if he had never seen her in his life before.
Because he had recovered himself, and suppressed what she must not be allowed to see? Or because he had taken a hint from her cool, impersonal glance, and responded in kind as soon as he had grasped what she wanted? If the second, then they were in this curious affair together, and yet separately, for plainly he hadn’t expected Tossa to show up here in the middle of Europe, but equally plainly he had hastened to conform to what she desired when she did inexplicably appear. And if the first? Then Tossa wasn’t acting; he knew her but she did not know him, and there was something in the air important enough—or sinister enough—to make it expedient for him to dissemble his knowledge.
Dominic drank his coffee, and let their chatter ricochet round him; he was beginning not to like this secrecy at all. Tossa’s affairs were her own, but after all, here they were seven hundred miles or more from home, in an alien, and some would even have said an enemy, country. There had been one death, a death which began now to look more and more suspect. Beyond question Tossa was up to something, biting off, perhaps, much more than she could chew. And what could he do? Nothing, not even question her or offer help, unless she showed a disposition to want it, and that was the last thing he expected from Tossa. Nothing in the world he could do, except, perhaps, stay close to her and keep his eyes open.
When they paid for their coffee and left, Tossa walked out without so much as a glance in the stranger’s direction; but Dominic, looking back quickly from the doorway, saw that the waiter was just threading his way between the tables towards the Englishman’s corner.
In the foyer Tossa halted, rummaging like a terrier in the depths of her overcrowded handbag after powder and comb. “You go ahead, I’ll be with you in a minute.” She wandered off questingly towards the back of the hall, and left them to make their way out into the sunshine without her.
Dominic let the others go on ahead, and halted on the pavement a step aside from the doorway. The wide glass door was fastened fully open, and the dimness of the wall behind turned it into a very passable mirror. It showed him, darkly but distinctly, a segment of the foyer which included the door of the kavarna, just swinging back after the passage of a waiter with a tray of beer-tankards. A moment more, and the door swung again, more sedately, and the solitary young man came out into the hall, looked round him quickly, and began to read the cinema posters on the baize notice-board.
The clack of Tossa’s sandals echoed lightly from the rear corridors, and she came into sight, first a pale shadow in the glass, then rapidly growing clearer and closer. She passed by the young man without a glance, busily stuffing her powder compact back into her bag. Something oblong and small dropped out of the bulging outer pocket just before she snapped the catch.
Dominic ought, of course, to have turned in at the doorway to meet her, and called her attention at once to whatever it was she had let fall. Instead, he leaped away from the wall like a scalded cat, and by the time she emerged he was strolling round the corner after the others, looking back at the turn for her, and waiting to be overtaken. She came up with him brisk and smiling, and even slipped her hand in his arm as they fell into step together, a thing she had never done before.
He had hardly understood what he himself had just done, and why, until he felt her fingers close warmly on his sleeve, and realised with a startling surge of bitterness that even that touch was merely a part of her camouflage. It wasn’t that he blamed her for making use of whatever came to hand, if she had such an urgent need to cover her secret; but he did resent being made the recipient of a first small mark of intimacy for so humiliating a reason. It hadn’t dawned on him until then that she might be going to matter very much indeed in his life. And this, he thought bitterly, counting the seconds before the MG man should come hurrying after them, is a fine time to realise it!
Toddy and Christine had the map spread out against the side of the van, and were tracing the next stage of the drive.
“We are about to enter,” proclaimed Toddy, turning from his explorations to report to the late-comers, “the spectacular gorge of the Váh, clean through the Little Fatras, passing close by the romantic ruins of Strecno castle and Stary Hrad—to name but a few! Come on, pile in. I’m driving.”
The young man from the MG came bustling round the corner at that moment, and seeing them already embarking, broke into a light run, and waved an arresting arm.
“Excuse me! Just a moment!”
Nearly two minutes, thought Dominic. Time to read a few words, or write a few words, or both. Provided she passed him something a message could be hidden in properly.
She had. What the young man held out, as he came up panting and smiling, was her little leather comb-case, an ideal receptacle for a folded slip of paper.
“Excuse me, I was in the hall just now, I believe you dropped this as you were leaving.”
She took it, astonished and charmingly vexed at her own carelessness, and voluble in thanks to him.
“Not at all! I’m glad I caught you in time.” He withdrew a step or two, making it clear he had no wish to detain them. “You’re on holiday?” He looked round them all, memorising faces, his smile a shade too bright, but then, he had every mark of a naturally shy and serious young man. “You’re going on into the mountains?”
They made dutiful conversation, as one does when the encounter can be only a couple of minutes long, and probably will never be repeated. There is an art in touching deftly and graciously, and leaving a pleasant warmth behind on such occasions. On the whole, the young do it better than anyone.
“I’m sure you’ll like it in Slovakia. There’s lovely country to be explored here. Well, bon voyage! Have a good time!”
He drew back a few more steps, and then wheeled and walked smartly away from them. Tossa, with admirable calm, shoved the comb-case into her bag without a glance, and climbed into the van.
And no one else, thought Dominic, handing Christine in after her, had noticed a thing amiss with that little scene. Or could he really be sure of that? The twins would have given tongue at once, almost certainly. But who could be sure how much this pleasant fellow Miroslav noticed, or how deep he was? Or, for that matter, he thought for the first time, and with a sudden sickening lurch of his heart, who or what he was?
“Didn’t play that one very well,” said Christine critically, as they took the road eastwards out of Zilina. “After hooking him so neatly, too.”
“Too little!” responded Tossa automatically. “I threw him back. Anyhow,” she added wickedly, with a smile of pure defiance, “I got my bait back, didn’t I?”
The oddest thing in their three-day acquaintance with Mirek happened when he took his leave of them. And of all people, it was Tossa who precipitated it.