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

in his step and pathos in his eyes. “I was just about to take a pot of tea. Would you charming people care to join me?”

Frank had the distinct impression that he had been waiting all afternoon for them.

“We’d be delighted to join you for a coffee,” he replied, surprising himself with the ring of sincerity. But tea was anathema to him, so the colonel would have to meet them halfway if he wanted their company. It was for Patricia’s sake that he had made the gesture, and her smile did not escape him as the colonel led them to a far corner of the lobby with the pleased pride of a little boy taking his parents off to show them his secret den.

“Don’t like to be too close to the bar at this time of day. Too much of a temptation.”

The colonel pulled out a chair for Patricia and, in so doing, drew attention to Frank’s own lack of manners, which he suspected was the colonel’s intention. Over the throng of people gathering after their return from a day on the slopes, the sound of a piano carried across the lobby to their table. It drew with it a melody as languorous and melancholy as it was familiar. But he could not quite place it. All he knew was that it seemed grossly incongruous in the setting, even though the pianist was plainly doing his best to match it to the warm homecoming mood of the guests.

“‘The Man I Love’,” Patricia said. She glanced across at Frank as she spoke, the words carried by a silky warmth that came unexpectedly after the frosty afternoon together. “It’s a beautiful song when Billie Holiday sings it. Why can’t people leave well alone?”

“It doesn’t fit, does it?” Frank agreed. “But then neither would Bartok.”

“What’s Bartok got to do with it?” she asked.

“Nothing at all,” he replied. “It was simply an observation.”

“Then it was a silly observation. You know I love them both – passionately.” She teased him with an almost imperceptible pause that was just long enough to let the full enchantment of her last word sink into the willing flesh of his heart, before she added: “But then, you’re not French. You wouldn’t feel it with the same passion.”

With those words, Patricia lowered her voice, leaned over to the colonel and whispered in his ear. The ex-army wallah rose from his chair muttering “Of course my dear. My pleasure,” and strode off like a man with a mission. With burning curiosity, Frank watched him approach the pianist and engage in a brief exchange of words.

“Don’t have time for music myself, especially this modern stuff,” the colonel said when he returned and sat back in his chair. “Except maybe Elgar once in a while. ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ – that sort of thing, you know.”

How fitting, Frank thought. But the colonel was not finished. He wanted to lead the conversation down a path he felt more comfortable on. He turned ominously to Frank.

“Have you done the Cresta Run yet, old boy?”

At that moment, Frank noticed the music change.

“‘These Foolish Things’,” he exclaimed, fully aware of the ludicrous smile that instantly lit up his face as he ignored the colonel’s question. He recalled the Billie Holiday record he had bought for Patricia and looked across at her, a delicious teasing sparkle in her eyes.

“We were there this afternoon,” she said, replying to the colonel for him when it became plain that Frank’s mind was somewhere else altogether at that moment.

“This afternoon?” the colonel said with a sceptical expression, evidently puzzled by Frank’s words. “It would have been closed then.”

“It was,” Frank affirmed.

“Just plucking up the courage, eh? When are you going down?”

“Well, I hadn’t really…”

“What? You can’t come to St Moritz without doing the Cresta Run. The ladies expect it, you know.” He sent a conspiratorial wink in the direction of Patricia, who surprised Frank by her amusement. What was it about this man that appealed to her? Frank asked himself. He was certainly not as he imagined her father to be.

“Did it regularly myself when I came here with the chaps, you know. Wager I could still manage it today. Not in the sixty-odd seconds it took me in those days of course. Maybe foolish, as you say. Takes nerves of steel, you know, but I wager I could still do it today.”

‘Nerves of steel’, Frank repeated silently to himself, while in the background the piano continued its refrain. Was it that little gesture of Patricia’s – just one of those foolish things – which was beginning to concentrate his mind?

“Tell me, colonel, with your experience as a military man, what takes more nerve? To ride the Cresta Run or to kill a man?” Frank asked.

He saw the teasing amusement in Patricia’s face flicker like a light in the first gust of a storm. She knew the implication. But the colonel was undeterred by the question.

“Couldn’t tell you, old chap. Never looked upon the enemy as men. More like rats in the cellar. Excuse the bluntness, my dear,” he added, putting an apologetic hand on Patricia’s arm. To Frank’s disappointment, she accepted the gesture with a smile that he would have seen as darkly seductive had it been directed at him. But the colonel appeared not to notice. He still had the army in mind. “The discipline of military training, you know. As long as you don’t think of them as men, it’s not a problem. Now, the Cresta Run is a different cup of tea altogether. Tame that, and you can do anything.”

“Colonel,” Patricia interjected at last, “I’m afraid you must excuse us. We have to go and dress for dinner.” She was plainly unsettled by the direction the conversation had taken. Frank sensed she was angry with him for allowing it to happen. A feeling he felt was vindicated by the afterthought she added as they got up to leave: “Frank was wondering whether you would care to join us for