The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ with a prehistoric aqueduct at its upper end.

      About eight, Toni, who had plodded along dumbly, stopped.

      "We came here just like now, that man and I. Here he stopped to light his pipe, and said he would rest. I, too, sat down. On this rock here. My ice-axe I laid here. As I sat I heard a sound some way off. But this valley has so many invisible people living in it that I paid no heed. The mountain spirits do not harm me or any one in my charge. From this place a shorter way runs to the place he wanted to see, but we have had a very hard and late winter, and I was not sure whether the snow would not be too deep for him. He was not a young man. I asked him if I could climb up to that ridge there and look. If the path was open, we should be at the end of the gorge in a few minutes, but it would take me some twenty minutes to reach the rock. He said he wanted a rest, as his breathing showed. So I left my ice-axe where I had laid it beside him, and climbed that ridge you see to a little platform beyond, which you can't see. The track was deep in snow, as I thought. I was looking at it when suddenly I was told that something was wrong with the man. I ran back and I found him"—Toni began to tremble, that animal shuddering that seemed to crinkle his very skin—"I found him—around this bend. Here, on this new place. He must have moved into the sun when I had gone. But I found him—dead. Lying back with his head this way, and my ice-axe here beside him. Its point was red, and his head was red. There was a deep hole in it on top. He was quite dead. Some one had killed him with my ice-axe while I was away, and some one had robbed him of everything in his pockets, even to his handkerchief. I looked because I did not know his name. He had come two years, but there was no need of names. I rushed up that ridge there to see, but I saw nothing I shouted, but though a man over there heard me, he was a Croderes, and they never come. I was frightened—my man, my axe, and everything stolen from him—I lifted him into a cave I know of close to here. You see that stone?"

      Pointer nodded with tense jaw.

      "It rolls away. Behind it is a cave, dry and ice-cold. Ice-water washes around it. I put him in there, and ran home and told mother. She was as frightened as I, and it takes a lot to frighten mother"—Pointer thought of the little white-faced wisp, and smiled to himself—"and we decided to leave him there and say nothing. He is there now, and that is why I waited every day in Bolzano. I knew that some one would come looking for him. This is the rock."

      Pointer helped him to get the stone away. It could be levered with the ice-axe quite easily. He stooped and entered an icy-cold hole in the rock, where, on the dry tufa, lay the body of an elderly man, frozen stiff. Pointer recognised it by the many portraits he had seen as Professor Charteris. As Ladine Toni had said, the pockets were empty. The head wound must have been made by some such instrument as the axe's point. The Chief Inspector crawled out again. Toni watched him like a half-timid, half-trusting animal.

      "No one saw this affair, I suppose? No one knows of it but your mother and you?"

      "A Croderès lives up there," Toni pointed. "He is a chamois-hunter. He might have seen something, but it would take a lot of money to find out."

      "Why so? Surely he would speak if appealed to."

      Toni shook his head helplessly.

      "You mean he was there when this man was killed?" Pointer asked again.

      Toni nodded several times.

      "I saw him on his ledge when I looked for the short cut."

      "Why won't he tell what he saw, supposing he saw the murder?" persisted the detective officer.

      Toni looked haggard.

      "I and my mother have plenty to live on with our big garden, but money—money enough for a Croderès—" Again he shook his head feebly.

      "Can we get up to the hut of this Cro—" Pointer let the word fade away in the approved fashion of a stranger speaking an uncertain tongue.

      Toni nodded after looking at the soles of Pointer's boots. They were well nailed.

      "What am I to do about—him?"

      Pointer did not commit himself. "What is a Crodere?" he asked instead.

      Toni gave his little helpless wriggle.

      "It is just a name we use. Some people say they belong to us, Ladines. There are not many left. They only live among the rocks, chiefly, towards Cadore."

      "And are they so fond of money?"

      "They are Croderès."

      "So I gathered. But why do they love money so?"

      Toni looked at him in silence, but after awhile he began to talk as they climbed the fairly easy goat path. Pointer pieced together from his disjointed confidences' the account of a race of mountain miners and hunters, who looked like ordinary men and women, and lived like them, but who were really stone men. They could feel nothing, neither love nor hate, anger nor joy, pain nor pleasure.

      They are always even-tempered, he went on, and never harm any one on purpose, but a Croderès would see a child roasted alive if it happened to fall into the fire, though by merely putting out his hand he could save it. They have no hearts, no feelings, but they have clever brains, and they love money, though it can do nothing for them. A Croderès can feel neither heat nor cold.

      Pointer again felt as though he were in a world unknown. Piffle, of course, but such strange, eerie piffle.

      Suddenly Toni stopped. A moment more and they stood on a wide, smooth stone, evidently the entrance to a cave. A man stood inside watching them. He was about Toni's height, but broader, with longer arms. His hair was as thick, but curly. His eyes, however, were different—of a curious ice-blue, the eyes of a Siamese cat. Otherwise there was nothing odd about his tanned face. He looked rather stupid, but quite good-natured—when his eyes were downcast.

      "The 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 СКАЧАТЬ