Rex Stout: The Black Mountain

“Checking on you?” I asked Wolfe.

“I doubt it. What for?” He said something to Drogo and then to the bluecap, and we started off, with Drogo in the lead and the bluecap with the bags in the rear. After a stretch on concrete and a longer one on gravel of a color I had never seen, we came to a hangar, in front of which a small blue plane was parked. After the one we had crossed Europe in it looked like a toy. Wolfe stood and scowled at it a while and then turned to Drogo and resumed the noises. They got louder and hotter, then simmered down a little, and finally ended by Wolfe telling me to give him ninety dollars.

“Hitchcock said eighty,” I objected.

“He demanded a hundred and ten. As for paying in advance, I don’t blame him. When we leave that contraption we may be in no condition to pay. Give him ninety dollars.”

I shelled it out, was instructed to give the bluecap a buck and did so after he had handed the luggage up to the pilot, and steadied the portable stile while Wolfe engineered himself up and in. Then I embarked. There was space for four passengers, but not for four Wolfes. He took one seat and I the other, and the pilot stepped on it, and we rolled toward the runway. I would have preferred not to wave to Drogo on account of the extra sawbuck he had chiseled, but for the sake of public relations I flapped a mitt at him.

Flying low over the Volscian hills — see map — in a pint-sized plane was not an ideal situation for a chat with my fellow passenger, but it was only ninety minutes to Bari, and something had to get settled without delay. So I leaned across and yelled to him above the racket, “I want to raise a point!”

His face came around to me. It was grim. I got closer to his ear. “About the babble. How many languages do you speak?”

He had to jerk his mind onto it. “Eight.”

“I speak one. Also I understand one. This is going to be too much for me. What I see ahead will be absolutely impossible except on one condition. When you’re talking with people, I can’t expect you to translate as you go along, but you will afterward, the first chance we get. I’ll try to be reasonable about it, but when I ask for it I want it. Otherwise I might as well ride this thing back to Rome.”

His teeth were clenched. “This is a choice spot for an ultimatum.”

“Nuts. You might as well have brought a dummy. I said I’ll be reasonable, but I’ve been reporting to you for a good many years and it won’t hurt you to report to me for a change.”

“Very well. I submit.”

“I want to be kept posted in full.”

“I said I submit.”

“Then we can start now. What did Drogo say about the arrangements for meeting Telesio?”

“Nothing. Drogo was told only that I wanted a plane for Bari.”

“Is Telesio meeting us at the airport?”

“No. He doesn’t know we’re coming. I wanted to ask Mr. Hitchcock about him first. In nineteen twenty-one he killed two Fascisti who had me cornered.”

“What with?”

“A knife.”

“In Bari?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you were Montenegrin. What were you doing in Italy?”

“In those days I was mobile. I have submitted to your ultimatum, as you framed it, but I’m not going to give you an account of my youthful gestes — certainly not here and now.”

“What’s the program for Bari?”

“I don’t know. There was no airport then, and I don’t know where it is. We’ll see.” He turned away to look through the window. In a moment he turned back. “I think we’re over Benevento. Ask the pilot.”

“I can’t, damn it! I can’t ask anybody anything. You ask him.”

He ignored the suggestion. “It must be Benevento. Glance at it. The Romans finished the Samnites there in three hundred and twelve B.C.”

He was showing off, and I approved. Only two days earlier I would have given ten to one that up in an airplane he wouldn’t have been able to remember the date of anything whatever, and here he was rattling off one twenty-two centuries back. I went back to my window for a look down at Benevento. Before long I saw water ahead and to the left, my introduction to the Adriatic, and watched it spread and glisten in the sun as we sailed toward it; and then there was Bari floating toward us. Part of it was a jumble on a neck stretched into the sea, apparently with no streets, and the other part, south of the neck along the shore, had streets as straight and regular as midtown Manhattan, with no Broadway slicing through.

The plane nosed down.

From here on, please have in mind the warning I put at the front of this. As I said, I have had to do some filling in, but everything important is reported as Wolfe gave it to me.

Sure, it was five o’clock of a fine April Sunday afternoon, Palm Sunday, and our plane was unscheduled, and Bari is no metropolis, but even so you might have expected to see some sign of activity around the airport. None. It was dead. Of course there was someone in the control tower, and also presumably someone in the small building which the pilot entered, presumably to report, but that was all except for three boys throwing things at a cat. From them Wolfe learned where a phone was and entered a building to use it. I stood guard over the bags and watched the communist boys. I assumed they were communists because they were throwing things at a cat on Palm Sunday. Then I remembered where I was, so they could have been fascists.

Wolfe came back and reported. “I reached Telesio. He says the guard on duty at the front of this building knows him and should not see him get us. I phoned a number he gave me and arranged for a car to come and take us to a rendezvous.”

“Yes, sir. It’ll take me a while to get used to this. Maybe a year will do it. Let’s get in out of the sun.”

The wooden bench in the waiting room was not too comfortable, but that wasn’t why Wolfe left it after a few minutes and went outside to the front. With three airplanes and four thousand miles behind him, he was simply full of get-up-and-go. It was incredible, but there it was: I was inside sitting down, and he was outside standing up. I considered the possibility that the scene of his youthful gestes had suddenly brought on his second childhood, and decided no. He was suffering too much. When he finally reappeared and beckoned to me, I lifted the bags and went.

The car was a shiny long black Lancia, and the driver wore a neat gray uniform trimmed in green. There was plenty of room for the bags and us too. As we started off, Wolfe reached for the strap and got a good hold on it, so he was still fundamentally normal. We swung out of the airport plaza onto a smooth black-top road, and without a murmur the Lancia stretched its neck and sailed, with the speedometer showing eighty, ninety, and on up over a hundred — when I realized it was kilometers, not miles. Even so, it was no jalopy. Before long there were more houses, and the road became a street, then a winding avenue. We left it, turning right, got into some traffic, made two more turns, and pulled up at the curb in front of what looked like a railroad station. After speaking with the driver Wolfe told me, “He says four thousand lire. Give him eight dollars.”

I audited it mentally as I got my wallet, certified it, and handed it over. The tip was apparently acceptable, since he held the door for Wolfe and helped me get the bags out. Then he got in and rolled off. I wanted to ask Wolfe if it was a railroad station, but there was a limit. His eyes were following something, and, taking direction, I saw that he was watching the Lancia on its way. When it turned a corner and disappeared he spoke.

“We have to walk five hundred yards.”

I picked up the bag. “Andiamo.”