Silhouette in Scarlet - Elizabeth Peters [47]
‘The first thing is to find Gus.’
‘How?’
‘I think he’s here, on the island.’ I explained why I thought so. Leif nodded.
‘It is reasonable. But if you are wrong?’
‘Then I’m wrong. But what’s the harm in looking? We can’t make a move until Gus is free.’
‘What kind of move?’ He put his arm around me.
I pulled away. ‘Not now, Leif. I’m not in the mood.’
‘Rest and be still for a moment,’ Leif said softly. ‘You are forcing yourself beyond your strength. Your heart is pounding.’
He had cause to know. I tried to relax. Even my teeth were clenched.
The wind stitched the water into little white ruffles, and a flock of fleecy clouds glided serenely across the sky. Above the emerald hills snowcapped mountains shone in the sun.
‘It’s no use,’ I said, wriggling out from Leif’s embrace. ‘I can’t relax, I can’t sit still, and I don’t want you to pat me and ask stupid questions. I want you to do something.’
‘I will do whatever you want. Only tell me.’
‘I’m trying to think. With the boats out of commission, there’s no way of getting off the island. Maybe you could swim to shore; maybe I could. But I doubt that Gus is able, not with that leg of his.’
‘That is right. I have a plan.’
‘Yes?’ I turned hopefully.
‘We find the old man.’ Leif tossed this off as if it were a matter of locating a pair of misplaced spectacles. ‘Then you take him to a hiding place. In the trees, or – or somewhere. I will swim the lake and go for help.’
‘What about your brother?’
Leif didn’t answer immediately. Lips pressed tightly together, forehead furrowed, he appeared to be wrestling with thoughts too painful for utterance. Finally he said, ‘I will take care of Georg. But, Vicky – tell him nothing. Tell Smythe nothing. We can trust no one except our two selves.’
Much as I hate having the narrative interrupted by long paragraphs of description, I guess I had better give you some idea of the terrain, since it figures prominently in suceeding events. As I said, the shape of the island was roughly triangular, the sides longer than the base, and the end blunted. The house was located on this blunt end. Behind the house the land rose, culminating in a plateau of rough pasture that formed the central portion of the island. The western side of the triangle was heavily wooded, in a belt that curved northward and expanded to fill the base of the triangle. On the east the land sloped down to the water, ending in a boggy section of swampland. Searching for Gus, and for any other useful piece of information we might encounter, Leif and I followed a gravelled path that encircled the house. Behind the main building lay a group of sheds and stables, a big beautiful stone barn, and, in their own hedged enclosure, several small cottages that had probably housed servants in the days when the main house was fully staffed. Though their tiny yards were free of weeds, and their windows shone cleanly, they appeared to be unoccupied – even by a prisoner.
As we approached the barn, a man stepped out from behind the wall. He had the swarthy, brachycephalic look of a southern Italian or Sicilian, but I was unable to confirm this identification by his speech, since he said not a word.
He simply showed us his rifle. We took the hint.
‘Could Gus be in one of those sheds?’ I asked, when we were out of earshot.
‘More likely the man is guarding tools that we might use as weapons.’
Our path led through a gate in a high stone wall, into a grove of trees. Unlike the natural woodland that fringed much of the island, these giant firs appeared to have been planted as a windbreak. They were well tended, and the ground was free of underbrush. The breeze murmured in the high branches; the sound of our footsteps was deadened by a thick layer of fallen needles.
Coming out of the trees, we climbed a steep slope and found ourselves on the plateau. In the middle of the pasture I saw a group of men – or, to put it more accurately, the torsos of a group of men. The high