Free After the Fine Weather by Michael Gilbert Page A

and cushions, and shelves of books, and family photographs, and Charles’ old pipes in a rack, and a watercolour on the wall of Penzance painted by their mad aunt Sylvia.
    “I’ve no idea. At the moment it’s a sort of private fight between the Austrians and the Italians. Dr Pisoni’s taking it very seriously. So is his government. The border of Sillian and the Brenner had been closed.”
    “Closed? How could they?”
    “Not officially closed. But they’ve instituted a special visa, which you can’t get at the frontier. So anyone who wants to get through has to go back to Bolzano. It amounts to the same thing.”
    “I see,” said Laura. She looked out again at the drifting snow. “If the frontier’s shut at Sillian, and the Grossglockner’s blocked by snow, just how does anyone get to Lienz – or out of it, for that matter?”
    “There’s a lower road, to Villach and Klagenfurt. But if we get any real snow, that gets blocked too.”
    “Could you fly?”
    “There isn’t an airfield near Lienz that I’d care to land on. Not in this weather.”
    The telephone in the entrance hall rang, and Charles went out to answer it. Laura resumed her inspection of the street. The centres of the road were still black and shiny, but the snow was piling in the gutters and on the outer edges of the pavement.
    Charles came back.
    “Better get your hat and coat,” he said. “We’re wanted. That was Colonel Julius.”
    “He wants us?”
    “Actually, it’s you he asked for. But I think I’d better come along too, don’t you?”
    Laura said, “You needn’t imagine I’m going alone.”
     
    “She is the younger sister of the British Vice-Consul, Hart. She spent three weeks in Rome before coming here.”
    “In Rome!”
    “That is so, Colonel.”
    “Where before that?”
    “She came straight from England. Or so she said. She was recuperating from an illness.”
    “That is the first time I have ever heard of Rome as a sanatorium,” growled Colonel Schatzmann.
    “I understand that the illness was not very serious. It was more a holiday than a convalescence.”
    “Hm. And what had her brother to say to his superiors in Vienna?”
    Major Osler consulted his notes. “Ostensibly,” he said, “the object of the telephone call was to ask for the assistance of the commercial adviser. That was clearly a blind.”
    “Yes.”
    “The real message was in code. The significant words were ‘Penelope’ and ‘mole’. There was also a reference to the game of dice.”
    “And the meaning of it?”
    “Our cipher department is working on it now.”
    “Good.” The buzzer on the Colonel’s desk sounded, and he picked up the receiver and listened to the message. Then he said to Osler, “It is Miss Hart. Her brother is with her. I do not think we can refuse to allow him to be present.”
    “It might be more proper.”
    The Colonel rose to his feet. He really did look remarkably like a bear balancing on its hind legs. He scratched the back of his thick neck and said, “I was not thinking of propriety. I was thinking of tactics. If her brother is with her, I think I will have Inspector Moll here – get him, will you? – and Dr Kippinger.”
    It looked like a selection board, thought Laura, when she was shown into the room. The huge man in the middle must be Colonel Schatzmann. The stolid, flat-faced person on his right was a policeman in any language. The third man looked like a scientist. He had white hair, a trim mouth, and inverted semicircular glasses which had slipped down the knife-edge of his nose.
    “It was kind of you to come,” said the Colonel. Like many Austrian officials, he spoke very passable English. “I am afraid that Inspector Moll–” the man, hearing his name, inclined his head briefly – “does not speak English, and I shall have to interpret for him. Your brother will see that I do this fairly.”
    “We would not for a moment imagine that you would do anything else,” said Charles.
    “I am