“You have good reason to hope so, Counsellor,” said Ondrejov earnestly. “My man is already very, very dead.”
“Well, as you know, there were four who ran gallantly to protect Miss Barber, and to argue eloquently that she should be released in their custody. I did not put her in that somewhat risky situation, naturally, since by then I was convinced that one of them had designs on her life. But I did, with planned safeguards, allow them a chance at Mr. Felse. A chance which his own enterprise considerably complicated.
“We have now reduced our four to two. But we still have those two people to choose from, and the motives are surely taking form. Both of these men gained by ensuring Mr. Alda’s disgrace. One of them, as I have learned, assisted Terrell in the compilation of the notorious dossier, was advanced in his profession as a result, and has now stepped into Terrell’s shoes. The other became head of the Marrion Institute, a promotion which would have been unlikely if Mr. Alda had continued—I believe the word is ‘clean’.”
“It isn’t enough,” said Alda, suddenly and with authority. “Neither motive is strong enough for murder. For his whole career, for his reputation, a man might take such desperate measures. But my return now, even my vindication, would not have unseated anyone or disgraced anyone. Even if they all conspired to produce that dossier on me, and so quickly, all they had to do was sit tight and plead that they had acted throughout in good faith. They wouldn’t be broken for that, either of them. Believe me, I know my England. They would be supported and covered to the limit, short of something like murder. I might get my reputation back, a little finger-marked. They wouldn’t lose theirs.”
“They do not discard their failures?” Ondrejov asked with interest.
“On the contrary, they promote them.”
“And we are too quick to discard ours. Somewhere there must be a workable compromise.” He scrubbed his chin with hard knuckles till the bristles rasped, and spared one twinkling glance to enjoy the lofty forbearance of Freeling’s face. “Well, I accept your judgment. Then there must be more.”
Dominic looked at Tossa, and she looked back at him with all her being open and happy behind her eyes, drawing him in. He closed his fingers on hers. “Tossa, do you remember, you told us at the Riavka that there were note-books that vanished?” It was a detail she had forgotten to mention, in her haste, when rushing through her story to Ondrejov, an hour ago. “Tell them about that. What Welland told you.”
She caught the glitter of his excitement without understanding it, and turned quickly to look at Alda. “Mr. Welland said they told him at the Marrion that you took all your papers away with you, when you went. All your notes, all your plans… They told him the potential value was enormous, that you had planned work with you that could easily account for murder.”
“Notes? Plans?” Alda met her eyes across the circle with a grey-blue stare of detached astonishment. “I never intended to leave. I went on holiday with a rucksack, and when I got back to Briançon I found myself already a traitor. I took nothing with me. What I stood up in, a change of shirt and underclothes, some music paper, and a little money. Nothing more.”
“But you had projected work?” said Dominic intently. “Ideas that might have worked out and been worth a lot? You had them there, in the Institute?”
“Oh, yes, several. Some might have foundered. Most would have worked out. But I give you my word I left them there.”
“Yet Robert Welland told me,” said Tossa, her shining eyes fixed eagerly on Ondrejov, “that somebody there in the Institute—he didn’t say who, but one of them—told him Mr. Alda had removed all his notes and papers. He said nobody knew it, except the Institute and the Ministry.”
“And, don’t you remember,” Dominic took up just as ardently, appealing to Alda, “up there in your hut you told me about the crop-sprayer? The helicopter adaption? One of your ideas, put on the market by a commercial firm in France? How many years’ work would it have taken, to put it into production?”
“Three. Four, perhaps, without me. It was a completely new engine, driving a re-designed three-blade rotor. I was glad to see it produced for ordinary, human uses. But someone else must have hit on it. Why should my design turn up in France?”
“Because it was safer than selling it in England,” said Dominic. “Are you even sure it’s the only one?”
“No,” admitted Alda, startled. “How can I be sure? There could be others. I shouldn’t care, I shouldn’t think myself robbed. Better they should be used in the open market than filed for Institute modulations. They were always military! And we were not even a military establishment.”
“And how many were there in all, in these notebooks?” asked Ondrejov. “How many such marketable projects?”
“It’s hard to remember. Perhaps as many as nine or ten, at this same stage. Some others merely conceived and sketched out.”
“A fortune!” said Ondrejov, and sat back with a long breath of fulfilment, spreading his hands peacefully on the table. “Is it enough to kill for now? To keep this from being uncovered? Would they have kept their jobs then? Their reputations? Either of them could have done it. You are gone, your papers are there. How easy, if the idea dawns in time, to make away with them, and say: You see, his flight was premeditated, he removed everything! Who would doubt it? Who would stop to wonder? It is a time of hysteria, press and public would make enough outcry to cover one man’s orderly retreat with a stolen fortune under his arm. Either of them could have done it. Either of them was a natural repository for Welland’s reports—one the Director, the other the Security Officer. Both of them turn up here. Either of them could have followed Welland to his rendezvous and shot him, and then returned from the scene, the one by plane back to Prague, the other to the White Carpathians—three or four hours by car, what is that?—in time to be fittingly surprised and distressed when he heard of Miss Barber’s detention. Either of them could have acted on my hints, and followed Mr. Felse this morning, waiting to pick him off and make away with another possible witness. Mr. Blagrove could have hired a car in Mikulás—was that why you had difficulty, Counsellor?—Sir Broughton Phelps already had a car, hired in Bratislava. One of them had bought a ZKM 581 hunting rifle, with telescopic sights and the special sixteen-cartridge magazine. Which?”
The knock on the door and the abrupt burr of the telephone came at the same moment.
“Come in!” shouted Ondrejov, and reached for the telephone. “Ondrejov! No, islo to! Dobre, dobre!” Hanging upon the telephone with held breath, and watching the door with snapping, sparkling blue eyes, he saw Adrian Blagrove enter the room, his long face wary, his long lips faintly disdainful, his aloof eyes more than a little defensive.
“D’akujem, uz to viem,” said Ondrejov gently to the telephone. “Viem, kto to je.” He hung up. “I know,” he repeated in English, more to himself than to them, “I know now who he is.”
He pushed the instrument away from him wearily but contentedly, to the length of his arm. “They have found the car from Bratislava, a little above the place where you hid your van, Mr. Felse, but better hidden. He had more cause to hide. And in the head of the valley they have also found Sir Broughton Phelps. What remains of him.”
Chapter 12