Free Horizon by Helen MacInnes Page A

come up to visit you once a week. Your brother who lives in Bozen has provided excellent identification papers proving I am your nephew from the North Tyrol. The story is plausible, I know: I came here this winter, after being discharged from the German army, and the wounds I got in North Africa keep me close to this house. You’ve done your best for me. I know all that. But I also know your risk is greater than mine. I’ll lose one life if I am caught. But you’ll lose everything—Johann’s life, your friends’ lives, this house, everything. So, Frau Schichtl, I know this isn’t a prison. But I still feel a prisoner. That’s a fact about me.”
    Frau Schichtl said slowly, “I don’t understand.” She passed a flat hand over the side of her brow, smoothing the soft curls at the temple into the heavy sleekness of her hair.
    “I am not a prisoner of your friends,” Lennox said gently, “I’m a prisoner of events.”
    “But so are we.”
    He shook his head impatiently. “My job for six months has amounted to sitting here and doing nothing. That’s a fine way, I must say, to fight a war.”
    “But that wasn’t your fault. Or ours. We’ve been waiting, like you, for instructions. We could act, all of us, but we might do the wrong things. We might bring the Germans down on uslike an avalanche, and then we never could do anything. Then, when we were needed, we would be unable to help. Don’t you see, Peter, we’ve got to wait until we get the right orders? But we may never get them. Something’s gone wrong. The Allies don’t even know we are waiting for one small sign from them.”
    “Surely—” Frau Schichtl began, and then stopped. The lines at the side of her mouth deepened. Her eyelids drooped as if to hide the hurt look in her eyes. Suddenly she came to life again. She shrugged her shoulders, and there was a difficult smile on her lips.
    “I know,” she said, in a low voice. “I’ve thought of all of that too.” And as Lennox stared at her in amazement, she began to straighten the tablecloth, smoothing off the crumbs of bread into her cupped hand. Then she laid two plates neatly opposite each other, and two cups for milk. For a moment he wondered if she had waited to eat breakfast with Johann. And then he saw that she was lifting the kerchief and green cape which hung on one of the wooden pegs near the door. She was leaving, as she did each morning, for the small school down in the village of Hinterwald. Last autumn Frau Schichtl had volunteered to become a teacher again. The Italian teachers had gone, and Frau Schichtl had taken over the job of keeping the school open. That, as she had explained with one of her infrequent smiles, at least prevented a stranger from coming into the Hinterwald to teach—a stranger sent by the Germans. Now she was gathering together the text-books she had studied last night and the notebook in which she had so carefully prepared today’s lessons. Her pupils would have been amused at the homework which their new teacher had to do.
    “Who has come here with Johann?” Lennox asked, lookingpointedly at the two cups on the table.
    Frau Schichtl’s thoughts came back into the small room. She said quickly, “I meant to tell you. It’s my brother. He has some special news for you, and for the others.”
    “The man from Bozen,” Lennox said softly. “So he’s here.” He smiled, and then he began to laugh.
    Frau Schichtl looked at him almost sadly. “That’s the first time I’ve heard you laugh,” she said, “and I don’t know why you are laughing.”
    “I was thinking what a fine soldier I’ve become. I didn’t even hear your brother or Johann arrive. I’d have done just as well if they had been a couple of Germans.”
    “In that case,” Frau Schichtl said, “I would have found a way of wakening you.” She didn’t say, as she might well have done, “Please don’t think that everything is perfectly normal and safe just because I try to give the