From here on, please have in mind the warning I put at the front of this. As I said, I have had to do some filling in, but everything important is reported as Wolfe gave it to me.
Sure, it was five o’clock of a fine April Sunday afternoon, Palm Sunday, and our plane was unscheduled, and Bari is no metropolis, but even so you might have expected to see some sign of activity around the airport. None. It was dead. Of course there was someone in the control tower, and also presumably someone in the small building which the pilot entered, presumably to report, but that was all except for three boys throwing things at a cat. From them Wolfe learned where a phone was and entered a building to use it. I stood guard over the bags and watched the communist boys. I assumed they were communists because they were throwing things at a cat on Palm Sunday. Then I remembered where I was, so they could have been fascists.
Wolfe came back and reported. “I reached Telesio. He says the guard on duty at the front of this building knows him and should not see him get us. I phoned a number he gave me and arranged for a car to come and take us to a rendezvous.”
“Yes, sir. It’ll take me a while to get used to this. Maybe a year will do it. Let’s get in out of the sun.”
The wooden bench in the waiting room was not too comfortable, but that wasn’t why Wolfe left it after a few minutes and went outside to the front. With three airplanes and four thousand miles behind him, he was simply full of get-up-and-go. It was incredible, but there it was: I was inside sitting down, and he was outside standing up. I considered the possibility that the scene of his youthful gestes had suddenly brought on his second childhood, and decided no. He was suffering too much. When he finally reappeared and beckoned to me, I lifted the bags and went.
The car was a shiny long black Lancia, and the driver wore a neat gray uniform trimmed in green. There was plenty of room for the bags and us too. As we started off, Wolfe reached for the strap and got a good hold on it, so he was still fundamentally normal. We swung out of the airport plaza onto a smooth black-top road, and without a murmur the Lancia stretched its neck and sailed, with the speedometer showing eighty, ninety, and on up over a hundred — when I realized it was kilometers, not miles. Even so, it was no jalopy. Before long there were more houses, and the road became a street, then a winding avenue. We left it, turning right, got into some traffic, made two more turns, and pulled up at the curb in front of what looked like a railroad station. After speaking with the driver Wolfe told me, “He says four thousand lire. Give him eight dollars.”
I audited it mentally as I got my wallet, certified it, and handed it over. The tip was apparently acceptable, since he held the door for Wolfe and helped me get the bags out. Then he got in and rolled off. I wanted to ask Wolfe if it was a railroad station, but there was a limit. His eyes were following something, and, taking direction, I saw that he was watching the Lancia on its way. When it turned a corner and disappeared he spoke.
“We have to walk five hundred yards.”
I picked up the bag. “Andiamo.”
“Where the devil did you get that?”
“Lily Rowan, at the opera. The chorus can’t get off the stage without singing it.”
We set out abreast, but soon the sidwalk was just wide enough for me and the bags, so I let him lead. I don’t know whether one of his youthful gestes had been to pace off that particular route, which included three straightaways and three turns, but if so his memory was faulty. It was more like half a mile, and if it had been much farther the bags would have begun to get heavy. A little beyond the third turn, in a street narrower than any of the others, a car was parked, with a man standing alongside. As we approached he stared rudely at Wolfe. Wolfe stopped practically against him and said, “Paolo.”
“No.” The man couldn’t believe it. “Yes, by God, it is. Get in.” He opened the car door.
It was a little two-door Fiat that would have done for a tender for the Lancia, but we made it — me with the bags in the back, and Wolfe with Telesio in front. As the car went along the narrow street, with Telesio jerking his head sidewise every second to look at Wolfe, I took him in. I had seen dozens of him around New York — coarse, thick hair, mostly gray; dark, tough skin; quick black eyes; a wide mouth that had done a lot of laughing. He began firing questions, but Wolfe wasn’t talking, and I couldn’t blame him. I was willing to keep my mind open on whether Telesio was to be trusted as a brother, but in less than a mile it was already closed about trusting him as a chauffeur. Apparently he had some secret assurance that all obstructions ahead, animate or inanimate, would disappear before he got there, and when one didn’t and he was about to make contact, his split-second reaction was very gay. When we got to our destination and I was out of it on my feet, I circled the Fiat for a look at the fenders. Not a sign of a scratch, let alone a dent. I thought to myself, a man in a million, thank God.
The destination was a sort of courtyard back of a small white two-story stuccoed house, with flowers and a little pool and high walls on three sides. “Not mine,” Telesio said. “A friend of mine who is away. At my place in the old city you would be seen by too many people before I know your plans.”
Actually it was two hours later that I learned he had said that, but I’m going to put things in approximately where people said them. That’s the only way I can keep it straight.
Telesio insisted on carrying the bags in, though he had to put them down to use a key on the door. In a small square hall he took our hats and coats and hung them up, and ushered us through into a good-sized living room. It was mostly pink, and one glance at the furniture and accessories settled it as to the sex of his friend — at least I hoped so. Wolfe looked around, saw no chair that even approached his specifications, crossed to a couch, and sat. Telesio disappeared and came back in a couple of minutes with a tray holding a bottle of wine, glasses, and a bowl of almonds. He filled the glasses nearly to the brim, gave us ours, and raised his.
“To Ivo and Garibaldi!” he cried.
We drank. They left some, so I did. Wolfe raised his glass again. “There is only one response. To Garibaldi and Ivo!”
We emptied the glasses. I found a comfortable chair. For an hour they talked and drank and ate almonds. When Wolfe reported to me later he said that the first hour had been reminiscent, personal and irrelevant, and their tone and manner certainly indicated it. A second bottle of wine was needed, and another bowl of almonds. What brought them down to business was Telesio’s raising his glass proposing, “To your little daughter Carla! A woman as brave as she was beautiful!”
They drank. By then I was merely a spectator. Wolfe put his glass down and spoke in a new tone. “Tell me about her. You saw her dead?”
Telesio shook his head. “No, I saw her alive. She came to me one day and wanted to go across. I knew about her from Marko, on his trips to meet them from over there, and of course she knew all about me. I tried to tell her it was no job for a woman, but she wouldn’t listen. She said that with Marko dead she must see them and arrange what to do. So I brought Guido to her, and she paid him too much to take her across, and she went that day. I tried—”
“Do you know how she got here from New York?”
“Yes, she told me — as a stewardess on a ship to Naples, which was mere routine with certain connections, and from Naples by car. I tried to phone you before she got away, but there were difficulties, and by the time I got you she had gone with Guido. That was all I could tell you. Guido returned four days later. He came to my place early in the morning, and with him was one of them — Josip Pasic. Do you know of him?”
“No.”
“Anyway he is too young for you to remember. He brought a message from Danilo Vukcic, who is a nephew of Marko. The message was that I was to phone to you and say these words: ‘The man you seek is within sight of the mountain.’ I knew you would want more and I tried to get more, but that was all Josip would say. He hasn’t known me for many years as the older ones have. So that was all I could tell you. Naturally I thought it meant that the man who had killed Marko was there, and was known. Did you?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you come?”
“I wanted something better than a cryptogram.”
“Not as I remember you — but then, you are older, and so am I. You are also much heavier and have more to move, but that is no surprise, since Marko told me about you and even brought me a picture of you. Anyway, now you are here, but your daughter is dead. I can’t believe how you got here. It was only Friday, forty-eight hours ago, that I phoned you. Josip came again, not with Guido this time, in another boat, with another message from Danilo. I was to inform you that your daughter had died a violent death within sight of the mountain. Again that was all he would say. If I had known you were coming I would have tried to keep him here for you, but he has gone back. In any case, you will want to see Danilo himself, and for him we will have to send Guido. Danilo will trust only Guido. He could be here — let’s see — Tuesday night. Early Wednesday morning. You can await him here. Marko used this place. I believe, in fact, he paid for this wine, and he wouldn’t want us to spare it, and the bottle is empty. That won’t do.”
He left the room and soon was back with another bottle, uncorked. After filling Wolfe’s glass he came to me. I would have preferred to pass, but his lifted brows at my prior refusal had indicated that a man who went easy on wine would bear watching, so I took it and got another handful of almonds.
“This place isn’t bad,” he told Wolfe, “even for you who live in luxury. Marko liked to do his own cooking, but I can get a woman in tomorrow.”
“It won’t be necessary,” Wolfe said. “I’m going over.”
Telesio stared. “No. You must not.”
“On the contrary. I must. Where do we find this Guido?”
Telesio sat down. “You mean this?”
“Yes. I’m going.”
“In what form and what capacity?”
“My own. To find the man who killed Marko. I can’t enter Yugoslavia legally, but among those rocks and ravines what’s the difference?”
“That’s not the problem. The worst Belgrade would do to Nero Wolfe would be to ship him out, but the rocks and ravines are not Belgrade. Nor are they what you remember. Precisely there, around that mountain, are the lairs of the Tito cutthroats and the Albanian thugs from across the border who are the tools of Russia. They reached to kill Marko in far-off America. They killed your daughter within hours after she stepped ashore. She may have exposed herself by carelessness, but what you propose — to appear among them as yourself — would be greatly worse. If you are so eager to commit suicide, I will favor you by providing a knife or a gun, as you may prefer, and there will be no need for you to undertake the journey across our beautiful sea, which is often rough, as you know. I would like to ask a question. Am I a coward?”
“No. You were not.”
“I am not. I am a very brave man. Sometimes I am astonished at the extent of my courage. But nothing could persuade me, known as I am, to show myself between Cetinje and Scutari day or night — much less to the east, where the border crosses the mountains. Was Marko a coward?”
“No.”
“That is correct. But he never even considered risking himself in that hive of traitors.” Telesio shrugged. “That’s all I have to say. Unfortunately you will not be alive for me to say I told you so.” He picked up his glass and drained it.
Wolfe looked at me to see how I was taking it, realized that I would have nothing to take until he got a chance to report, and heaved a deep sigh. “That’s all very well,” he told Telesio, “but I can’t hunt a murderer from across the Adriatic with the kind of communications available, and now that I’ve got this far I am not going to turn around and go home. I’ll have to consider it and discuss it with Mr. Goodwin. In any event, I’ll need this Guido. What’s his name?”
“Guido Battista.”
“He is the best?”
“Yes. That is not to say he is a saint. The list of saints to be found today in this neighborhood would leave room here.” He passed a fingertip over the nail of his little finger.
“Can you bring him here?”
“Yes, but it may take hours. This is Palm Sunday.” Telesio stood up. “If you are hungry, the kitchen is equipped and there are some items in the cupboard. There is wine but no beer. Marko told me of your addiction to beer, which I deplore. If the phone rings you may lift it, and if it is me I will speak. If I do not speak you should not. No one is expected here. Draw the curtains properly before you turn lights on. Your presence in Bari may not be known, but they reached to Marko in New York. My friend would not like blood on this pretty pink rug.” Suddenly he laughed. He roared with laughter. “Especially not in such a quantity! I will find Guido.”
He was gone. The sound came of the outer door closing, and then of the Fiat’s engine as it turned in the courtyard and headed for the street.
I looked at Wolfe. “This is fascinating,” I said bitterly.
He didn’t hear me. His eyes were closed. He couldn’t lean back comfortably on the couch, so as a makeshift he was hunched forward.
“I know you’re chewing on something,” I told him, “but I’m along and I have nothing to chew on. I would appreciate a hint. You’ve spent years training me to report verbatim, and I would like you to give a demonstration.”
His head lifted and his eyes opened. “We’re in a pickle.”
“We have been for nearly a month. I need to know what Telesio said from the beginning.”
“Nonsense. For an hour we merely prattled.”
“Okay, that can wait. Then begin where he toasted Carla.”
He did so. Once or twice I suspected him of skipping and stopped him, but on the whole I was willing to accept it as an adequate job. When he was through he reached for his glass and drank. I let my head back to rest on my clasped hands, and so was looking down my nose at him.
“On account of the wine,” I said, “I may be a little vague, but it looks as if we have three choices. One, stay here and get nowhere. Two, go home and forget it. Three, go to Montenegro and get killed. I have never seen a less attractive batch to pick from.”
“Neither have I.” He put his glass down and took his watch from his vest pocket. “It’s half-past seven, and I’m empty. I’ll see what’s in the kitchen.” He arose and went for the door through which Telesio had gone for the wine and almonds. I followed. It certainly would not have qualified as a kitchen with the Woman’s Home Companion or Good Housekeeping, but there was an electric stove with four units, and the pots and pans on hooks were clean and bright. Wolfe was opening cupboard doors and muttering something to himself about tin cans and civilization. I asked if I could help, and he said no, so I went and got my bag and opened it, got the necessary articles for a personal hour in a bathroom, and then realized that I hadn’t seen one. However, there was one, upstairs. There was no hot water. An apparatus in the corner was probably a water heater, but the instructions riveted to it needed a lot of words, and rather than call Wolfe to come up and decode, I made out without it. The cord of my electric shaver wouldn’t plug into the outlet, and even if it had fitted there was no telling what it might do to the circuit, so I used my scraper.
When I went back downstairs the living room was dark, but I made it to the windows and got the curtains over them before turning on the lights. In the kitchen I found Wolfe concentrated on cuisine, with his shirt sleeves rolled up, under a bright light from a ceiling fixture, and the window bare. I had to mount a chair to arrange the curtain so there were no cracks, after making a suitable remark.
We ate at a little table in the kitchen. Of course there was no milk, and Wolfe said he wouldn’t recommend the water from the faucet, but I took a chance on it. He stuck to wine. There was just one item on the menu, dished by him out of a pot. After three mouthfuls I asked him what it was. A pasta called tagliarini, he said, with anchovies, tomato, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper from the cupboard, sweet basil and parsley from the garden, and Romano cheese from a hole in the ground. I wanted to know how he had found a hole in the ground, and he said — offhand, as if it were nothing — by his memory of local custom. Actually he was boiling with pride, and by the time I got up to dish my third helping I was willing to grant him all rights to it.
While I washed up and put away, Wolfe went upstairs with his bag. When he came down again to the living room he stood and looked around to see if someone had brought a chair his size during his absence, discovered none, went to the couch and sat, and drew in air clear down to the tagliarini he had swallowed.
“Have we made up our mind?” I inquired.
“Yes.”
“That’s good. Which of the three did we pick?”
“None. I’m going to Montenegro, but not as myself. My name is Toné Stara, and I’m from Galichnik. You have never heard of Galichnik.”
“Right.”
“It is a village hanging to a mountain near the top, just over the border from Albania in Serbia, which is a part of Yugoslavia. It is forty miles southeast of Cetinje and the Black Mountain, and it is famous. For eleven months of each year only women live there — no men but a few in their dotage — and young boys. It has been that way for centuries. When the Turks seized Serbia more than five hundred years ago, groups of artisans in the lowlands fled to the mountains with their families, thinking the Turks would soon be driven out. But the Turks stayed, and as the years passed, the refugees, who had established a village on a crag and named it Galichnik, realized the hopelessness of wresting a living from the barren rocks. Some of the men, skilled craftsmen, started the practice of going to other lands, working for most of a year, and returning each July to spend a month at home with their women and children. The practice became universal with the men of Galichnik, and they have followed it for five centuries. Masons and stonecutters from Galichnik worked on the Escorial in Spain and the palaces at Versailles. They have worked on the Mormon Temple in Utah, the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec, the Empire State Building in New York, the Dnieperstroi in Russia.”
He joined his fingertips. “So I am Toné Stara of Galichnik. I am one of the few who one July did not return — many years ago. I have been many places, including the United States. Finally I became homesick and curious. What was happening to my birthplace, Glichnik, perched on the border between Tito’s Yugoslavia and Russia’s puppet Albania? I was eaten by a desire to see and to know, and I returned. The answer was not in Galichnik. There were no men there, and the women suspected me and feared me and wouldn’t even tell me where the men were. I wanted to learn and to judge, as between Tito and the Russians, and between them both and certain persons of whom I had vaguely heard, persons who were calling themselves champions of freedom. So I made my way north through the mountains, a hard rocky way, and here I am in Montenegro, determined to find out where the truth is and who deserves my hand. I assert my right to ask questions so I may choose my side.”
He turned his palms up. “And I ask questions.”
“Uh-huh.” I wasn’t enthusiastic. “I don’t. I can’t.”
“I know you can’t. Your name is Alex.”
“Oh. It is.”
“It is if you go with me. There are good reasons why it would be better for you to stay here, but confound it, you’ve been too close to me too long. I’m too dependent on you. However, the decision is yours. I don’t claim the right to drag you into a predicament of mortal hazard and doubtful outcome.”
“Yeah. I’m not very crazy about the name Alex. Why Alex?”
“We can choose another. It might not increase the risk of exposure for you to keep Archie, and that would make one less demand on our vigilance. You are my son, born in the United States. I must ask you to suffer that presumption because no lesser tie would justify my hauling you back to Galichnik with me. You are an only child and your mother died in your infancy. That will reduce the temptation for you to indulge your invention if we meet someone who speaks English. Until recently I repressed all sentiment about my homeland, so I have taught you no Serbo-Croat and no Serbian lore. At one point, while I was cooking, I decided you should be a deaf-mute, but changed my mind. It would create more difficulties than it would solve.”
“It’s an idea,” I declared. “Why not? I practically am anyway.”
“No. You would be overheard talking with me.”
“I suppose so,” I conceded reluctantly. “I’d like to take a crack at it, but I guess you’re right. Are we going to Galichnik?”
“Good Heavens, no. There was a time when sixty kilometers through those hills was only a frolic for me, but not now. We’ll go across to a spot I used to know, or, if time has changed that too, to one that Paolo—”
The phone rang. I was up automatically, realized I was disqualified, and stood while Wolfe crossed to it and lifted it to his ear. In a moment he spoke, so it was Telesio. After a brief exchange he hung up and turned to me.
“Paolo. He has been waiting for Guido to return from an excursion on his boat. He said he might have to wait until midnight or later. I told him we have decided on a plan and would like to have him come and discuss it. He’s coming.”
I sat down. “Now about my name...”