Free Ellis Peters - George Felse 05 - The Piper On The Mountain by Ellis Peters

in the kavarna?” She had adopted the Czech word for café, it came more naturally now than the French; and since in English both were borrowed, why not use the native one?
    “If you know the code,” said Toddy, “you can tell by the registration letters which embassy it belongs to. Do you know, Mirek?”
    “It is someone from the British Embassy,” said Mirek at once.
    Tossa’s warm, rose-olive complexion protected her from betrayal by pallor or blushing, and her silences were quite inscrutable. She looked the MG over, and dismissed it from her notice. “Come on,” she said impatiently, “I’m famished for that coffee.” And she led the way in through the cool, dim foyer, shoving the kavarna door open with a heave of her shoulder, and marching across the room to appropriate a table by the window.
    “Mostly Czechs,” reported Christine confidently, looking round with interest as she sat down at the marble-topped table, scaled to allow half a dozen people to spread their elbows comfortably.
    A white-aproned waiter came bustling to take their order. They left the talking to Mirek. Their only complaint against him was that he made everything too easy; but the time was coming when he would leave them to their own limited resources.
    “Got him!” Christine proclaimed with satisfaction. “Don’t look round yet, he’s looking this way. In the corner away to the left, close to the mirror. Wait a moment, I’ll tell you when you can look. But that’s him! He couldn’t be anything but English. Mirek, do
we
go around looking as conspicuous as
that
?”
    “Hurry up!” protested Toddy. “I’m getting a stiff neck, trying not to turn round. Can I look yet?”
    “Not yet. I’ll tell you when.
Now, quick
! He’s just talking to the waiter.”
    She was right, of course. There was only one person there who had to be English. You could almost say he had to be an English diplomat. Quite young, about thirty, dressed for the country, but so correctly that he retained a look of the town. Nondescriptly fair, rather lightly-boned among these solid square Czechs and gaunt, rakish Slovaks, withdrawn, gentle, formal. The cut of his sportscoat gave him away, and the Paisley silk scarf knotted in the throat of his open shirt. Even the way he drank his coffee was unmistakably English.
    “Funny!” sighed Toddy. “You never notice anything special about people when they’re at home. Man, does it stick out here!” He plumped his chin into a resigned palm, groaning. “I give up! I bet from over there I look just like that!”
    “Oh, not quite,” said Mirek comfortingly. “One could say, perhaps, English on sight, but not
embassy
English. More student English. It is a distinction.”
    “Thank you! Thank you very much! I don’t
want
to be identifiable at a hundred yards.”
    “Why not?” said Mirek disarmingly. “Are you ashamed of it?”
    “He looks lonely,” said Christine. “Shouldn’t we pick him up? It would be quite easy. He’s giving Tossa the eye, anyhow.”
    Tossa turned and gave the distant customer a long, considering look. Not a muscle of her smooth oval face quivered. “Not my type,” she said, after a merciless scrutiny, and turned back to her coffee. “Anyhow, he’s probably heading the other way, back to Prague.”
    Christine shut her eyes for a moment to reckon up the days since they had left England. “Monday! Yes, I suppose he could be. Back to the grindstone after a week-end in Slovakia. But the way the car’s parked, I’d have thought he was going our way.”
    Dominic had been thinking the very same thing, and was thinking it still; and the thought had first entered his mind in the instant when Tossa’s eyes had encountered those of the Englishman in the distant corner, held his gaze just long enough to register detached and unrecognising curiosity, and moved on just in time to avoid any suggestion of rudeness. For the man hadn’t been quite so adroit. He hadn’t the kind of face that