The Dark Frontier A. Decker (i like reading TXT) 📖

on leave. His mother never joined them. The altitude was not good for her circulation, she said. But his father always insisted that the Alps were nothing by comparison with the mountains in Kashmir. So tame, like the difference between a wild tiger and a spoilt hearthside cat, he said. He promised to take Frank with him one day when he was old enough to see for himself. He never did. But the crunching of the snow beneath their feet now as Frank and Patricia walked up the narrow streets at the foot of the Weissfluh mountain recalled these memories of his father, his tales of savage exotic beauty, and filled him with a sense of having been there so real that he began to wonder whether he had. He was transported to another world, just like the dreams Patricia lived so vividly with Bartok.

The chalet stood modestly alone in darkness on the edge of the forest that draped away up the mountainside. The path that had been cleared through the snow to the front door testified to how thoroughly the place was looked after in the absence of its owner.

“Just wait here a minute and look after the suitcases,” Frank said, “while I go and fetch the key.”

He left her standing beneath a solitary lamp that seemed pathetically inadequate for illuminating the length of the road it had been given to serve. What little light it managed to let out appeared to catch only on the initials of Patricia’s name that were emblazoned in brass on her suitcase – and glinted at him through the gloom and darkness.

The man who played janitor to the property, a certain Gaudenz Cavegn, lived in the next house about fifty metres along the road. Although it lay around the corner, just out of view behind a bank of snow, the still mountain air – crystal clear and cushioned against the sounds of habitation by the freshly laid carpet of white – ensured that it remained within comfortable calling distance.

When Frank knocked on the solid wooden door of the house, the noise echoed through the valley with a loneliness that seemed out of place, almost sinister, after the bustle of activity they had just left behind at the station. Only the muffled resonance of an occasional vehicle on the main street below competed for the night air. The resounding effect of his fist on the door made Frank slightly self-conscious when he knocked a second time. But still nothing stirred in the house. It seemed darker and more lifeless even than the forest that ran uncomfortably close to the building. Resigned to the prospect of having to search for a hotel room for the night, which would not be easy on a Friday that was enjoying the influx of next week’s holidaymakers, he made his way back to Patricia.

But she was nowhere to be seen. The emptiness of the road where he had left her tore an instant chasm of terror through his heart. The suitcases too had gone. Their absence lent her disappearance an air of finality. The gleaming initials of her name shone now through his memory with a cruel vengeance. The narrow street lay still and deserted. Like a face with no features. A dumb witness to secrecies it could never betray. Frank stood helplessly in the road not knowing what to do. Or where to look.

‘Why had she not called me if she needed help?’ he asked himself. ‘She knew that I was only round the corner.’

Her absence overwhelmed every fibre in Frank’s body. It was not simply the sudden loss of substance to his life, its meaning cruelly erased. Above all, it was knowing what a shaky frame of mind she was in and the kind of turmoil she had suffered these last few hours. He was seized by a panic that told him the only course left open was to run back down to the main street as fast as the snowcovered road would permit, in the vain hope that he might find some evidence, the slightest trace, of her.

As futile as it was stupid. He knew she would not even have been able to carry both suitcases down that steep slippery slope without help. He thought of Breitner.

When he reached the town centre the quiet self-contained activity that he found there mocked his foolishness with its indifference. But the image of her that was embedded now in his memory – her dark fragile form against the snow as she stood waiting for him in the lamplight, bracketed by the suitcases one each side of her – stalked his reluctance to believe that she was gone.

He picked his way slowly back up the road to the chalet that was to have been their heaven for the next two or three weeks. Hoping with the superstition only a madman could entertain that he would find her there just as he had left her, that it had all been a bad dream, he was struck instantly by a new difference that set his pulse racing. The chalet, which had been in darkness before, was now lit up in every window. Frank stopped in his tracks. Dumbstruck by the lights, and by the sinister implications that beamed out over the snow towards him.

A growling male voice rumbled through the darkness as he approached. A voice that was instantly familiar to Frank. It was the voice of Gaudenz Cavegn. He had the strong, compact walk of a man experienced at dealing with the rigours of mountain life. While his voice was unmistakable, the features of his face were lost to the shadows of the night, until he was close enough for the condensation of his breath to take the chill off Frank’s face. It was a breath that came with more than a hint of his home-distilled brandy. And the fabric of his clothes infiltrated the air with the essence of pipe smoke. Cavegn blocked his way and scowled. But showed no