Where Eagles Dare

'There was something I had to come for, something apart from you, although I gave a song-and-dance act of having forgotten about it until the last moment, until it was almost too late. The radio code-book inside Sergeant Harrod's tunic.'

'He--he lost it? He dropped it? How--how could he have been so criminally careless!' She stopped,

It's still inside Sergeant Harrod's runic,' Smith said sombrely. 'He's up here, dead."

'Dead?' She stopped and clutched him by the arms. After a long pause, she repeated : 'He's dead! That--that nice man. I heard him saying he'd never jumped before. A bad landing?'

'So it seems.'

They located the kit-bag in silence and Smith carried it back to the edge of the cliff. Mary said: 'And now? The code-book?'

'Let's wait a minute. I want to watch this rope.'

'Why the rope?'

"Why not?'

'Don't tell me,' Mary said resignedly. I'm only a little girl. I suppose you know what you're doing.'

'I wish to God I did,' Smith said feelingly.

They waited, again in silence, side by side on the kit-bag. Both stared at the rope in solemn concentration as if nylon ropes at seven thousand feet had taken on a special meaning-, fulness denied nylon ropes elsewhere. Twice Smith tried to light a cigarette and twice it sputtered to extinction in the drifting snow. The minutes passed^ three, maybe four: they felt more like thirty or forty. He became conscious that the girl beside him was shivering violently--he guessed that she had her teeth clamped tight to prevent their chattering--and was even more acutely conscious that his entire left side--he was trying to shelter her from the wind and snow--was becoming numb. He rose to leave when suddenly the rope gave a violent jerk and the piton farther from the cliff edge was torn free. The loop of the rope slid quickly down past the piton to which it was anchored and kept on going till it was brought up short by its

'What--what on earth--' Mary began, then broke off. Her voice was an unconscious whisper.

'Charming, charming,' Smith murmured. 'Someone down there doesn't like me. Surprised?'

'If--if that spike hadn't held we'd never have got down again.' The tremor in her voice wasn't all due to the cold.

'It's a fair old jump,' Smith conceded.

He took her arm and they moved off. The snow was heavier now and even with the aid of their torches visibility was no more than six feet, but, by using the rocky out-crop as a bearing, it took Smith no more than two minutes to locate Sergeant Harrod, now no more than a featureless mound buried in the depths of the snow-drift. Smith brushed aside the covering shroud of white, undid the dead man's tunic, recovered the code-book, hung the chain round his neck and buttoned the book securely inside his own Alpenkorps uniform.

Then came the task of turning Sergeant Harrod over on his side. Unpleasant Smith had expected it to be, and it was: impossible he hadn't expected it to be, and it wasn't--not quite. But the effort all but defeated him, the dead man was stiff as a board, literally frozen solid into the arms outflung position into which he had fallen. For the second time that night Smith could feel the sweat mingling with the melted snow on his face. But by and by he had him over, the frozen right arm pointing up into the snow-filled sky. Smith knelt, brought his torch close and carefully examined the back of the dead man's head.

'What are you trying to do?' Mary asked. 'What are you looking for?' Again her voice was a whisper.

'His neck is broken. I want to find out just how it was broken.' He glanced up at the girl. 'You don't have to look.'

'Don't worry.' She turned away. 'I'm not going to.'

'What now?' In spite of herself Mary was watching again, in reluctant and horrified fascination. 'What are you looking for now?'

'A rock,' Smith said briefly. There was a cold edge to the words and although Mary knew it wasn't intended for her, it was an effective discouragement to any further questioning.

Smith cleared the snow for two feet around where Harrod's head had lain. With hand and eyes he examined the ground with meticulous care, rose slowly to his, feet, took Mary's arm and began to walk away. After a few steps he hesitated, stopped, turned back to the dead man and turned him over again so that the right arm was no longer pointing towards the sky.

Half-way back to the cliff-edge, Smith said abruptly :

'Something struck Harrod on the back of the neck. I thought it might have been a rock. But there was no rock where he lay, only turf.'

'There was a rocky outcrop near by.'