Chapter Seventeen. The Col of the Swallows

Mr. Standfast

by John Buchan

He pointed to the slip on the table.

'You have seen the orders?'

I nodded.

'The long day's work is over. You must rejoice, for your part
has been the hardest, I think. Some day you will tell me about
it?'

The man's face was honest and kindly, rather like that of the
engineer Gaudian, whom two years before I had met in Germany. But his
eyes fascinated me, for they were the eyes of the dreamer and
fanatic, who would not desist from his quest while life lasted. I
thought that Ivery had chosen well in his colleague.

'My task is not done yet,' I said. 'I came here to see
Chelius.'

'He will be back tomorrow evening.'

'Too late. I must see him at once. He has gone to Italy, and I
must overtake him.'

'You know your duty best,' he said gravely.

'But you must help me. I must catch him at Santa Chiara, for it
is a business of life and death. Is there a car to be had?'

'There is mine. But there is no chauffeur. Chelius took
him.'

'I can drive myself and I know the road. But I have no pass to
cross the frontier.'

'That is easily supplied,' he said, smiling.

in one bookcase there was a shelf of dummy books. He unlocked
this and revealed a small cupboard, whence he took a tin dispatch-
box. From some papers he selected one, which seemed to be already
signed.

'Name?' he asked.

'Call me Hans Gruber of Brieg,' I said. 'I travel to pick up my
master, who is in the timber trade.'

'And your return?'

'I will come back by my old road,' I said mysteriously; and if
he knew what I meant it was more than I did myself.

He completed the paper and handed it to me. 'This will take you
through the frontier posts. And now for the car. The servants will
be in bed, for they have been preparing for a long journey, but I
will myself show it you. There is enough petrol on board to take you
to Rome.'

He led me through the hall, unlocked the front door, and we
crossed the snowy lawn to the garage. The place was empty but for a
great car, which bore the marks of having come from the muddy
lowlands. To my joy I saw that it was a Daimler, a type with which I
was familiar. I lit the lamps, started the engine, and ran it out on
to the road.

'You will want an overcoat,' he said.

'I never wear them.'

'Food?'

'I have some chocolate. I will breakfast at Santa Chiara.'

'Well, God go with you!'

A minute later I was tearing along the lake-side towards St
Anton village.

I stopped at the cottage on the hill. Peter was not yet in bed.
I found him sitting by the fire, trying to read, but I saw by his
face that he had been waiting anxiously on my coming.

'We're in the soup, old man,' I said as I shut the door. In a
dozen sentences I told him of the night's doings, of Ivery's plan and
my desperate errand.

'You wanted a share,' I cried. 'Well, everything depends on you
now. I'm off after Ivery, and God knows what will happen. Meantime,
you have got to get on to Blenkiron, and tell him what I've told you.
He must get the news through to G.H.Q. somehow. He must trap the
Wild Birds before they go. I don't know how, but he must. Tell him
it's all up to him and you, for I'm out of it. I must save Mary, and
if God's willing I'll settle with Ivery. But the big job is for
Blenkiron - and you. Somehow he has made a bad break, and the enemy
has got ahead of him. He must sweat blood to make Up. My God,
Peter, it's the solemnest moment of our lives. I don't see any
light, but we mustn't miss any chances. I'm leaving it all to
you.'

I spoke like a man in a fever, for after what I had been through
I wasn't quite sane. My coolness in the Pink Chalet had given place
to a crazy restlessness. I can see Peter yet, standing in the ring
of lamplight, supporting himself by a chair back, wrinkling his brows
and, as he always did in moments of excitement, scratching gently the
tip of his left ear. His face was happy.

'Never fear, Dick,' he said. 'It will all come right. Ons sal
'n plan maak.'

And then, still possessed with a demon of disquiet, I was on the
road again, heading for the pass that led to Italy.

The mist had gone from the sky, and the stars were shining
brightly. The moon, now at the end of its first quarter, was setting
in a gap of the mountains, as I climbed the low col from the St Anton
valley to the greater Staubthal. There was frost and the hard snow
crackled under my wheels, but there was also that feel in the air
which preludes storm. I wondered if I should run into snow in the
high hills. The whole land was deep in peace. There was not a light
in the hamlets I passed through, not a soul on the highway.

In the Staubthal I joined the main road and swung to the left up
the narrowing bed of the valley. The road was in noble condition,
and the car was running finely, as I mounted through forests of snowy
Pines to a land where the mountains crept close together, and the
highway coiled round the angles of great crags or skirted perilously
some profound gorge, with only a line of wooden posts to defend it
from the void. In places the snow stood in walls on either side,
where the road was kept open by man's labour. In other parts it lay
thin, and in the dim light one might have fancied that one was
running through open meadowlands.

Slowly my head was getting clearer, and I was able to look round
my problem. I banished from my mind the situation I had left behind
me. Blenkiron must cope with that as best he could. It lay with him
to deal with the Wild Birds, my job was with Ivery alone. Sometime
in the early morning he would reach Santa Chiara, and there he would
find Mary. Beyond that my imagination could forecast nothing. She
would be alone - I could trust his cleverness for that; he would try
to force her to come with him, or he might persuade her with some
lying story. Well, please God, I should come in for the tail end of
the interview, and at the thought I cursed the steep gradients I was
climbing, and longed for some magic to lift the Daimler beyond the
summit and set it racing down the slope towards Italy.

I think it was about half-past three when I saw the lights of
the frontier post. The air seemed milder than in the valleys, and
there was a soft scurry of snow on my right cheek. A couple of
sleepy Swiss sentries with their rifles in their hands stumbled out
as I drew up.

They took my pass into the hut and gave me an anxious quarter of
an hour while they examined it. The performance was repeated fifty
yards on at the Italian post, where to my alarm the sentries were
inclined to conversation. I played the part of the sulky servant,
answering in monosyllables and pretending to immense stupidity.

'You are only just in time, friend,' said one in German. 'The
weather grows bad and soon the pass will close. Ugh, it is as cold
as last winter on the Tonale. You remember, Giuseppe?'

But in the end they let me move on. For a little I felt my way
gingerly, for on the summit the road had many twists and the snow was
confusing to the eyes. Presently came a sharp drop and I let the
Daimler go. It grew colder, and I shivered a little; the snow became
a wet white fog around the glowing arc of the headlights; and always
the road fell, now in long curves, now in steep short dips, till I
was aware of a glen opening towards the south. From long living in
the wilds I have a kind of sense for landscape without the testimony
of the eyes, and I knew where the ravine narrowed or widened though
it was black darkness.

In spite of my restlessness I had to go slowly, for after the
first rush downhill I realized that, unless I was careful, I might
wreck the car and spoil everything. The surface of the road on the
southern slope of the mountains was a thousand per cent worse than
that on the other. I skidded and side-slipped, and once grazed the
edge of the gorge. It was far more maddening than the climb up, for
then it had been a straight-forward grind with the Daimler doing its
utmost, whereas now I had to hold her back because of my own lack of
skill. I reckon that time crawling down from the summit of the Staub
as some of the weariest hours I ever spent.

Quite suddenly I ran out of the ill weather into a different
climate. The sky was clear above me, and I saw that dawn was very
near. The first pinewoods were beginning, and at last came a
straight slope where I could let the car out. I began to recover my
spirits, which had been very dashed, and to reckon the distance I had
still to travel ... And then, without warning, a new world sprang up
around me. Out of the blue dusk white shapes rose like ghosts, peaks
and needles and domes of ice, their bases fading mistily into shadow,
but the tops kindling till they glowed like jewels. I had never seen
such a sight, and the wonder of it for a moment drove anxiety from my
heart. More, it gave me an earnest of victory. I was in clear air
once more, and surely in this diamond ether the foul things which
loved the dark must be worsted ...

And then I saw, a mile ahead, the little square red-roofed
building which I knew to be the inn of Santa Chiara.

It was here that misfortune met me. I had grown careless now,
and looked rather at the house than the road. At one point the
hillside had slipped down - it must have been recent, for the road
was well kept - and I did not notice the landslide till I was on it.
I slewed to the right, took too wide a curve, and before I knew the
car was over the far edge. I slapped on the brakes, but to avoid
turning turtle I had to leave the road altogether. I slithered down
a steep bank into a meadow, where for my sins I ran into a fallen
tree trunk with a jar that shook me out of my seat and nearly broke
my arm. Before I examined the car I knew what had happened. The
front axle was bent, and the off front wheel badly buckled.

I had not time to curse my stupidity. I clambered back to the
road and set off running down it at my best speed. I was mortally
stiff, for Ivery's rack was not good for the joints, but I realized
it only as a drag on my pace, not as an affliction in itself. My
whole mind was set on the house before me and what might be happening
there.

There was a man at the door of the inn, who, when he caught
sight of my figure, began to move to meet me. I saw that it was
Launcelot Wake, and the sight gave me hope.

But his face frightened me. It was drawn and haggard like one
who never sleeps, and his eyes were hot coals.

'Hannay,' he cried, 'for God's sake what does it mean?'

'Where is Mary?' I gasped, and I remember I clutched at a lapel
of his coat.

He pulled me to the low stone wall by the roadside.

'I don't know,' he said hoarsely. 'We got your orders to come
here this morning. We were at Chiavagno, where Blenkiron told us to
wait. But last night Mary disappeared ... I found she had hired a
carriage and come on ahead. I followed at once, and reached here an
hour ago to find her gone ... The woman who keeps the place is away
and there are only two old servants left. They tell me that Mary
came here late, and that very early in the morning a closed car came
over the Staub with a man in it. They say he asked to see the young
lady, and that they talked together for some time, and that then she
went off with him in the car down the valley ... I must have passed
it on my way up ... There's been some black devilment that I can't
follow. Who was the man? Who was the man?'

He looked as if he wanted to throttle me.

'I can tell you that,' I said. 'It was Ivery.'

He stared for a second as if he didn't understand. Then he
leaped to his feet and cursed like a trooper. 'You've botched it, as
I knew you would. I knew no good would come of your infernal
subtleties.' And he consigned me and Blenkiron and the British army
and Ivery and everybody else to the devil.

I was past being angry. 'Sit down, man,' I said, 'and listen to
me.' I told him of what had happened at the Pink Chalet. He heard
me out with his head in his hands. The thing was too bad for
cursing.

'The Underground Railway!' he groaned. 'The thought of it
drives me mad. Why are you so calm, Hannay? She's in the hands of
the cleverest devil in the world, and you take it quietly. You
should be a raving lunatic.'

'I would be if it were any use, but I did all my raving last
night in that den of Ivery's. We've got to pull ourselves together,
Wake. First of all, I trust Mary to the other side of eternity. She
went with him of her own free will. I don't know why, but she must
have had a reason, and be sure it was a good one, for she's far
cleverer than you or me ... We've got to follow her somehow.
Ivery's bound for Germany, but his route is by the Pink Chalet, for
he hopes to pick me up there. He went down the valley; therefore he
is going to Switzerland by the Marjolana. That is a long circuit and
will take him most of the day. Why he chose that way I don't know,
but there it is. We've got to get back by the Staub.'

'How did you come?' he asked.

'That's our damnable luck. I came in a first-class six-cylinder
Daimler, which is now lying a wreck in a meadow a mile up the road.
We've got to foot it.'

'We can't do it. It would take too long. Besides, there's the
frontier to pass.'

I remembered ruefully that I might have got a return passport
from the Portuguese Jew, if I had thought of anything at the time
beyond getting to Santa Chiara.

'Then we must make a circuit by the hillside and dodge the
guards. It's no use making difficulties, Wake. We're fairly up
against it, but we've got to go on trying till we drop. Otherwise
I'll take your advice and go mad.'

'And supposing you get back to St Anton, you'll find the house
shut up and the travellers gone hours before by the Underground
Railway.'

'Very likely. But, man, there's always the glimmering of a
chance. It's no good chucking in your hand till the game's out.'

'Drop your proverbial philosophy, Mr Martin Tupper, and look up
there.'

He had one foot on the wall and was staring at a cleft in the
snow-line across the valley. The shoulder of a high peak dropped
sharply to a kind of nick and rose again in a long graceful curve of
snow. All below the nick was still in deep shadow, but from the
configuration of the slopes I judged that a tributary glacier ran
from it to the main glacier at the river head.

'That's the Colle delle Rondini,' he said, 'the Col of the
Swallows. It leads straight to the Staubthal near Grunewald. On a
good day I have done it in seven hours, but it's not a pass for
winter-time. It has been done of course, but not often. ... Yet,
if the weather held, it might go even now, and that would bring us to
St Anton by the evening. I wonder' - and he looked me over with an
appraising eye -'I wonder if you're up to it.'

My stiffness had gone and I burned to set my restlessness to
physical toil.

'If you can do it, I can,' I said. 'No. There you're wrong.
You're a hefty fellow, but you're no mountaineer, and the ice of the
Colle delle Rondini needs knowledge. It would be insane to risk it
with a novice, if there were any other way. But I'm damned if I see
any, and I'm going to chance it. We can get a rope and axes in the
inn. Are you game?'

'Right you are. Seven hours, you say. We've got to do it in
six.'

'You will be humbler when you get on the ice,' he said grimly.
'We'd better breakfast, for the Lord knows when we shall see food
again.'

We left the inn at five minutes to nine, with the sky cloudless
and a stiff wind from the north-west, which we felt even in the
deep-cut valley. Wake walked with a long, slow stride that tried my
patience. I wanted to hustle, but he bade me keep in step. 'You take
your orders from me, for I've been at this job before. Discipline in
the ranks, remember.'

We crossed the river gorge by a plank bridge, and worked our way
up the right bank, past the moraine, to the snout of the glacier. It
was bad going, for the snow concealed the boulders, and I often
floundered in holes. Wake never relaxed his stride, but now and then
he stopped to sniff the air.

I observed that the weather looked good, and he differed. 'It's
too clear. There'll be a full-blown gale on the Col and most likely
snow in the afternoon.' He pointed to a fat yellow cloud that was
beginning to bulge over the nearest peak. After that I thought he
lengthened his stride.

'Lucky I had these boots resoled and nailed at Chiavagno,' was
the only other remark he made till we had passed the seracs of the
main glacier and turned up the lesser ice-stream from the Colle delle
Rondini.

By half-past ten we were near its head, and I could see clearly
the ribbon of pure ice between black crags too steep for snow to lie
on, which was the means of ascent to the Col. The sky had clouded
over, and ugly streamers floated on the high slopes. We tied on the
rope at the foot of the bergschrund, which was easy to pass because
of the winter's snow. Wake led, of course, and presently we came on
to the icefall.

In my time I had done a lot of scrambling on rocks and used to
promise myself a season in the Alps to test myself on the big peaks.
If I ever go it will be to climb the honest rock towers around
Chamonix, for I won't have anything to do with snow mountains. That
day on the Colle delle Rondini fairly sickened me of ice. I daresay
I might have liked it if I had done it in a holiday mood, at leisure
and in good spirits. But to crawl up that couloir with a sick heart
and a desperate impulse to hurry was the worst sort of nightmare.
The place was as steep as a wall of smooth black ice that seemed hard
as granite. Wake did the step-cutting, and I admired him enormously.
He did not seem to use much force, but every step was hewn cleanly
the right size, and they were spaced the right distance. In this job
he was the true professional. I was thankful Blenkiron was not with
us, for the thing would have given a squirrel vertigo. The chips of
ice slithered between my legs and I could watch them till they
brought up just above the bergschrund.

The ice was in shadow and it was bitterly cold. As we crawled
up I had not the exercise of using the axe to warm me, and I got very
numb standing on one leg waiting for the next step. Worse still, my
legs began to cramp. I was in good condition, but that time under
Ivery's rack had played the mischief with my limbs. Muscles got out
of place in my calves and stood in aching lumps, till I almost
squealed with the pain of it. I was mortally afraid I should slip,
and every time I moved I called out to Wake to warn him. He saw what
was happening and got the pick of his axe fixed in the ice before I
was allowed to stir. He spoke often to cheer me up, and his voice
had none of its harshness. He was like some ill- tempered generals I
have known, very gentle in a battle.

At the end the snow began to fall, a soft powder like the
overspill of a storm raging beyond the crest. It was just after that
that Wake cried out that in five minutes we would be at the summit.
He consulted his wrist-watch. 'Jolly good time, too. Only
twenty-five minutes behind my best. It's not one o'clock.'

The next I knew I was lying flat on a pad of snow easing my
cramped legs, while Wake shouted in my ear that we were in for
something bad. I was aware of a driving blizzard, but I had no
thought of anything but the blessed relief from pain. I lay for some
minutes on my back with my legs stiff in the air and the toes turned
inwards, while my muscles fell into their proper place.

It was certainly no spot to linger in. We looked down into a
trough of driving mist, which sometimes swirled aside and showed a
knuckle of black rock far below. We ate some chocolate, while Wake
shouted in my ear that now we had less step-cutting. He did his best
to cheer me, but he could not hide his anxiety. Our faces were
frosted over like a wedding-cake and the sting of the wind was like a
whiplash on our eyelids.

The first part was easy, down a slope of firm snow where steps
were not needed. Then came ice again, and we had to cut into it
below the fresh surface snow. This was so laborious that Wake took
to the rocks on the right side of the couloir, where there was some
shelter from the main force of the blast. I found it easier, for I
knew something about rocks, but it was difficult enough with every
handhold and foothold glazed. Presently we were driven back again to
the ice, and painfully cut our way through a throat of the ravine
where the sides narrowed. There the wind was terrible, for the
narrows made a kind of funnel, and we descended, plastered against
the wall, and scarcely able to breathe, while the tornado plucked at
our bodies as if it would whisk us like wisps of grass into the
abyss. After that the gorge widened and we had an easier slope, till
suddenly we found ourselves perched on a great tongue of rock round
which the snow blew like the froth in a whirlpool. As we stopped for
breath, Wake shouted in my ear that this was the Black Stone.

'The what?' I yelled.

'The Schwarzstein. The Swiss call the pass the
Schwarzsteinthor. You can see it from Grunewald.'

I suppose every man has a tinge of superstition in him. To hear
that name in that ferocious place gave me a sudden access of
confidence. I seemed to see all my doings as part of a great
predestined plan. Surely it was not for nothing that the word which
had been the key of my first adventure in the long tussle should
appear in this last phase. I felt new strength in my legs and more
vigour in my lungs. 'A good omen,' I shouted. 'Wake, old man, we're
going to win out.'

'The worst is still to come,' he said.

He was right. To get down that tongue of rock to the lower
snows of the couloir was a job that fairly brought us to the end of
our tether. I can feel yet the sour, bleak smell of wet rock and ice
and the hard nerve pain that racked my forehead. The Kaffirs used to
say that there were devils in the high berg, and this place was
assuredly given over to the powers of the air who had no thought of
human life. I seemed to be in the world which had endured from the
eternity before man was dreamed of. There was no mercy in it, and
the elements were pitting their immortal strength against two pigmies
who had profaned their sanctuary. I yearned for warmth, for the glow
of a fire, for a tree or blade of grass or anything which meant the
sheltered homeliness of mortality. I knew then what the Greeks meant
by panic, for I was scared by the apathy of nature. But the terror
gave me a kind of comfort, too. Ivery and his doings seemed less
formidable. Let me but get out of this cold hell and I could meet
him with a new confidence.

Wake led, for he knew the road and the road wanted knowing.
Otherwise he should have been last on the rope, for that is the place
of the better man in a descent. I had some horrible moments
following on when the rope grew taut, for I had no help from it. We
zigzagged down the rock, sometimes driven to the ice of the adjacent
couloirs, sometimes on the outer ridge of the Black Stone, sometimes
wriggling down little cracks and over evil boiler-plates. The snow
did not lie on it, but the rock crackled with thin ice or oozed ice
water. Often it was only by the grace of God that I did not fall
headlong, and pull Wake out of his hold to the bergschrund far below.
I slipped more than once, but always by a miracle recovered myself.
To make things worse, Wake was tiring. I could feel him drag on the
rope, and his movements had not the precision they had had in the
morning. He was the mountaineer, and I the novice. If he gave out,
we should never reach the valley.

The fellow was clear grit all through. When we reached the foot
of the tooth and sat huddled up with our faces away from the wind, I
saw that he was on the edge of fainting. What that effort Must have
cost him in the way of resolution you may guess, but he did not fail
till the worst was past. His lips were colourless, and he was
choking with the nausea of fatigue. I found a flask of brandy in his
pocket, and a mouthful revived him.

'I'm all out,' he said. 'The road's easier now, and I can
direct YOU about the rest ... You'd better leave me. I'll only be a
drag. I'll come on when I feel better.'

'No, you don't, you old fool. You've got me over that infernal
iceberg, and I'm going to see you home.'

I rubbed his arms and legs and made him swallow some chocolate.
But when he got on his feet he was as doddery as an old man. Happily
we had an easy course down a snow gradient, which we glissaded in
very unorthodox style. The swift motion freshened him up a little,
and he was able to put on the brake with his axe to prevent us
cascading into the bergschrund. We crossed it by a snow bridge, and
started out on the seracs of the Schwarzstein glacier.

I am no mountaineer - not of the snow and ice kind, anyway - but
I have a big share of physical strength and I wanted it all now. For
those seracs were an invention of the devil. To traverse that
labyrinth in a blinding snowstorm, with a fainting companion who was
too weak to jump the narrowest crevasse, and who hung on the rope
like lead when there was occasion to use it, was more than I could
manage. Besides, every step that brought us nearer to the valley now
increased my eagerness to hurry, and wandering in that maze of
clotted ice was like the nightmare when you stand on the rails with
the express coming and are too weak to climb on the platform. As
soon as possible I left the glacier for the hillside, and though that
was laborious enough in all conscience, yet it enabled me to steer a
straight course. Wake never spoke a word. When I looked at him his
face was ashen under a gale which should have made his cheeks glow,
and he kept his eyes half closed. He was staggering on at the very
limits of his endurance ...

By and by we were on the moraine, and after splashing through a
dozen little glacier streams came on a track which led up the
hillside. Wake nodded feebly when I asked if this was right. Then
to my joy I saw a gnarled pine.

I untied the rope and Wake dropped like a log on the ground.
'Leave me,' he groaned. 'I'm fairly done. I'll come on later.' And
he shut his eyes.

My watch told me that it was after five o'clock.

'Get on my back,' I said. 'I won't part from you till I've
found a cottage. You're a hero. You've brought me over those damned
mountains in a blizzard, and that's what no other man in England
would have done. Get up.' He obeyed, for he was too far gone to
argue. I tied his wrists together with a handkerchief below my chin,
for I wanted my arms to hold up his legs. The rope and axes I left
in a cache beneath the pine-tree. Then I started trotting down the
track for the nearest dwelling.

My strength felt inexhaustible and the quicksilver in my bones
drove me forward. The snow was still falling, but the wind was dying
down, and after the inferno of the pass it was like summer. The road
wound over the shale of the hillside and then into what in spring
must have been upland meadows. Then it ran among trees, and far
below me on the right I could hear the glacier river churning in its
gorge' Soon little empty huts appeared, and rough enclosed paddocks,
and presently I came out on a shelf above the stream and smelt the
wood-smoke of a human habitation.

I found a middle-aged peasant in the cottage, a guide by
profession in summer and a woodcutter in winter.

'I have brought my Herr from Santa Chiara,' I said, 'over the
Schwarzsteinthor. He is very weary and must sleep.'

I decanted Wake into a chair, and his head nodded on his chest.
But his colour was better.

'You and your Herr are fools,' said the man gruffly, but not
unkindly. 'He must sleep or he will have a fever. The
Schwarzsteinthor in this devil's weather! Is he English?'

'Yes,' I said, 'like all madmen. But he's a good Herr, and a
brave mountaineer.'

We stripped Wake of his Red Cross uniform, now a collection of
sopping rags, and got him between blankets with a huge earthenware
bottle of hot water at his feet. The woodcutter's wife boiled milk,
and this, with a little brandy added, we made him drink. I was quite
easy in my mind about him, for I had seen this condition before. In
the morning he would be as stiff as a poker, but recovered.

'Now I'm off for St Anton,' I said. 'I must get there
tonight.'

'You are the hardy one,' the man laughed. 'I will show you the
quick road to Grunewald, where is the railway. With good fortune you
may get the last train.'

I gave him fifty francs on my Herr's behalf, learned his
directions for the road, and set off after a draught of goat's milk,
munching my last slab of chocolate. I was still strung up to a
mechanical activity, and I ran every inch of the three miles to the
Staubthal without consciousness of fatigue. I was twenty minutes too
soon for the train, and, as I sat on a bench on the platform, my
energy suddenly ebbed away. That is what happens after a great
exertion. I longed to sleep, and when the train arrived I crawled
into a carriage like a man with a stroke. There seemed to be no
force left in my limbs. I realized that I was leg-weary, which is a
thing you see sometimes with horses, but not often with men.

All the journey I lay like a log in a kind of coma, and it was
with difficulty that I recognized my destination, and stumbled out of
the train. But I had no sooner emerged from the station of St Anton
than I got my second wind. Much snow had fallen since yesterday, but
it had stopped now, the sky was clear, and the moon was riding. The
sight of the familiar place brought back all my anxieties. The day on
the Col of the Swallows was wiped out of my memory, and I saw only
the inn at Santa Chiara, and heard Wake's hoarse voice speaking of
Mary. The lights were twinkling from the village below, and on the
right I saw the clump of trees which held the Pink Chalet.

I took a short cut across the fields, avoiding the little town.
I ran hard, stumbling often, for though I had got my mental energy
back my legs were still precarious. The station clock had told me
that it was nearly half-past nine.

Soon I was on the high-road, and then at the Chalet gates. I
heard as in a dream what seemed to be three shrill blasts on a
whistle. Then a big car passed me, making for St Anton. For a second
I would have hailed it, but it was past me and away. But I had a
conviction that my business lay in the house, for I thought Ivery was
there, and Ivery was what mattered.

I marched up the drive with no sort of plan in my head, only a
blind rushing on fate. I remembered dimly that I had still three
cartridges in my revolver.

The front door stood open and I entered and tiptoed down the
passage to the room where I had found the Portuguese Jew. No one
hindered me, but it was not for lack of servants. I had the
impression that there were people near me in the darkness, and I
thought I heard German softly spoken. There was someone ahead of me,
perhaps the speaker, for I could hear careful footsteps. It was very
dark, but a ray of light came from below the door of the room. Then
behind me I heard the hall door clang, and the noise of a key turned
in its lock. I had walked straight into a trap and all retreat was
cut off.

My mind was beginning to work more clearly, though my purpose
was still vague. I wanted to get at Ivery and I believed that he was
somewhere in front of me. And then I thought of the door which led
from the chamber where I had been imprisoned. If I could enter that
way I would have the advantage of surprise.

I groped on the right-hand side of the passage and found a
handle. It opened upon what seemed to be a dining-room, for there
was a faint smell of food. Again I had the impression of people
near, who for some unknown reason did not molest me. At the far end
I found another door, which led to a second room, which I guessed to
be adjacent to the library. Beyond it again must lie the passage
from the chamber with the rack. The whole place was as quiet as a
shell.

I had guessed right. I was standing in the passage where I had
stood the night before. In front of me was the library, and there
was the same chink of light showing. Very softly I turned the handle
and opened it a crack ...

The first thing that caught my eye was the profile of Ivery. He
was looking towards the writing-table, where someone was sitting.