Died in the Wool Read Free

not heard at that height. The driver changed down and the engine whined and roared. Pieces of shingle banged violently on the underneath of the car.
    â€˜Hallo!’ said the passenger. ‘Is this the top!’ And a moment later: ‘Good God, how remarkable!’
    The mountain tops had marched away to left and right. The head of the Pass was an open square of piercing blue. As they reached it the black cloud drew back like a curtain. In a moment it was behind them and they looked down into another country.
    It was a great plateau, high itself, but ringed about with mountains that were crowned in perpetual snow. It was laced with rivers of snow water. Three lakes of a strange milky green lay across its surface. It stretched bare and golden under a sky that was brilliant as a paladin’s mantle. Upon the plateau and the foothills, up to the level of perpetual snow, grew giant tussocks, but there were no forests. Many miles apart, patches of pinus radiata or lombardy poplars could be seen and these marked the solitary homesteads of the sheep farmers. The air was clear beyond belief, unbreathed, one would have said, newly poured out from the blue chalice of the sky.
    The passenger again lowered the window, which was still wet but steaming now, in the sun. He looked back. The cloud curtain lolled a little way over the mountain barrier and that was all there was to be seen of it.
    â€˜It’s a new world,’ he said.
    The driver stretched out his hand to a pigeon-hole in the dashboard where his store of loose cigarettes joggled together. His leather coat smelt unpleasantly of fish oil. The passenger wished that his journey was over and that he could enter into this new world of which, remaining in the car, he was merely a spectator. He looked at the mountain ring that curved sickle-wise to right and left of the plateau. ‘Where is Mount Moon?’ he asked. The driver pointed sweepingly to the left. ‘They’ll pick you up at the forks.’
    The road, a pale stripe in the landscape, pointed down the centre of the plateau and then, far ahead, forked towards the mountain ramparts. The passenger could see a car, tiny but perfectly clear, standing at the forks. ‘That’ll be Mr Losse’s car,’ said the driver. The passenger thought of the letter he carried in his wallet. Phrases returned to his memory. ‘…the situation has become positively Russian, or, if you prefer the allusion, a setting for a modern crime story…We continue here together in an atmosphere that twangs with stretched nerves. One expects them to relax with time, but no…it’s over a year ago…I should not have ventured to make the demand upon your time if there had not been this preposterous suggestion of espionage…refuse to be subjected any longer to this particular form of torment…’ And, in a pointed irritable calligraphy the signature: ‘Fabian Losse.’
    The bus completed its descent and with a following cloud of dust began to travel across the plateau. Against some distant region of cloud a system of mountains revealed glittering spear upon spear. One would have said that these must be the ultimate expression of loftiness but soon the clouds parted and there, remote from them, was the shining horn of the great peak, the cloud piercer, Aorangi. The passenger was so intent upon this unfolding picture that he had no eyes for the road and they were close upon the forks before he saw the sign post with its two arms at right-angles. The car pulled up beside them and he read their legends: ‘Main South Road’ and ‘Mount Moon’.
    The air was lively with the sound of grasshoppers. Its touch was fresh and invigorating. A tall young man wearing a brown jacket and grey trousers, came round the car to meet him. ‘Mr Alleyn? I’m Fabian Losse.’ He took a mail bag from the driver, who had already begun to unload Alleyn’s luggage and a large box of