Free The Angry Mountain by Hammond Innes Page B

me. “He often used to speak of his friends in the R.A.F.” She glanced down at my leg and then pulled up a chair for me. “Mr. Reece said you might be able to help us.” Her voice was rather husky and she spoke English with a queer mixture of accents.
    I sat down, comparing the girl in front of me with the memory of the photograph in Tu č ek’s office. Some trick ofthe light caused her hair to gleam just the way it had gleamed in the photograph. It was beautiful hair—a reddish gold, the real Venetian Titian. And she had freckles just as Tu č ek had said. They mottled the pale golden skin of her face in a way that gave it a gamin quality. But the face wasn’t quite the same as the face in the photograph—it was older, more set, as though she had had to come to grips with life since the photograph had been taken. I remembered how I’d last seen that photograph, smiling up at me from the floor of Tu č ek’s ransacked office. She wasn’t smiling now and there was no laughter in her eyes. Her face looked small and pinched and there were dark rings under her eyes. And yet, as I met the level gaze of her eyes, I was conscious again of that sense of something personal in her face. It suddenly became important to me that she should smile again as she’d been smiling in the photograph. “I’ll do anything I can,” I murmured.
    â€œThank you.” She turned to Reece. “Is there any news please?”
    He shook his head. “Not much I’m afraid. Farrell saw your father only once.” He hesitated, and then said, “Does the name Sismondi mean anything to you, Hilda?”
    She shook her head.
    â€œYour father never hinted that he might be forming a business partnership with Sismondi?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHe wasn’t planning to form a company here in Milan?”
    Again she shook her head. “No. We were to have a holiday here, and then we were going to England.” Her voice sounded puzzled. “Why all these questions?”
    Reece gave her the gist of what I’d told him. When he had finished she turned to me. “You will go and see this Sismondi?” I think she knew at once that I didn’t want to. “Please,” she added. “He may know where my father is.” She reached out and caught hold of my hand. Her fingers were cold and their grip was hard and urgent. “This is ourlast hope, I think.” Her eyes were fixed on my face. “Can you imagine what it has been like for him in Czechoslovakia all these months since they take over? It has been terrible— always living on the edge of catastrophe. And it had happened before, you see—with the Germans. My mother was murdered. And his father. To have to leave Czechoslovakia twice—that is very hard, I think. We plan to build a new life in England. And now—” She shrugged her shoulders. I thought,
if she breaks down now it will be horrible.
But she didn’t. Somehow she kept control of herself and in a small, tight voice, she said, “So you must help me, please.”
    â€œI’ll do anything I can,” I said. I was completely under the spell of her urgency.
    â€œAnd you will go to speak with this Sismondi?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThank you. As soon as I hear you are the Dick Farrell who is a friend of my father’s I know you will help.” She leaned suddenly closer. “Where do you think he is? What do you think has happened?”
    I didn’t say anything and when she saw I had nothing to tell her she bit her lip. Then she got quickly to her feet. “I would like a drink please. Alec.”
    They went through into the bar. She didn’t say anything to me as she left. She kept her face turned away. I think she didn’t want me to see how near she was to breaking point.

Chapter III
    I had all afternoon to think it over. And the more I thought about it, the less I liked it. What