Horizon by Helen MacInnes Read Free Book Online

to have forgotten Johann. By the time he had finished his ration of food he had learned that Peter Lennox was an infantry man, enlisted in the Territorials in August 1939, who had seen service in North Africa, Greece, Crete, and then in North Africa again. He had been wounded and captured in the fall of Tobruk. He had been held in two other Italian prison camps. Because of attempted escapes he had been transferred to this one.
    The colonel was thoughtful for a minute. Then he asked suddenly, “What were you in civilian life?” Lennox hesitated, and then—steeling himself against the usual smile which his answer to that question always roused—he answered, “I used to paint.”
    But the colonel didn’t smile. He looked at the shape of Lennox’s hands. He noted the mocking scar on the right hand. “An artist?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Know your way around, abroad?”
    “Some places, sir.”
    “Know Austria?”
    “Yes, but not this part of the Tyrol.”
    “You know the Northern Tyrol?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Know it well? Where did you stay?”
    Lennox repressed a smile, remembering how little his travels had to cost. “I stuck to out-of-the-way places, sir.” Not Salzburg. Not Innsbruck. Not St. Anton. Not for me.
    “Would you say that you would find the North and South Tyrol similar?”
    Lennox stared. Whatever the reason for these questions he didn’t at all like it.
    “Yes, sir. At least, I’ve seen many a Johann Schichtl in the North. I think the most obvious difference is in the shapes of the mountains.”
    The colonel was still watching him carefully. He asked unexpectedly, “Didn’t you try for a commission when you joined the army?”
    “I prefer this way, sir.”
    The colonel smiled at that. He wasn’t so very surprised. He had already decided that this young man with the shock of brown hair, hard grey eyes, and unsmiling mouth had his own ideas about what he wanted to do. Probably he had chosen to be a private in the infantry because he obviously thought you suffered most as a private in the infantry. Well, if this man thought service was measured by suffering he certainly had served well. The colonel wondered for a moment if Lennoxhad been a pacifist in the nineteen-thirties. Probably.
    And then the American major returned. His information wasn’t pleasant. There had been nine men in the hospital; three of them couldn’t walk. Of the other prisoners, twenty-three were weakened by malaria. Of the five wounded in the hall tonight, only two could travel. They, like the malaria cases, would have to be considered passengers. They weren’t fit for active combat.
    The colonel’s face was tight and grim once more. He was looking at Johann Schichtl, as if his eyes could gauge the Austrian’s worth. When time was short you had to depend on your capacity to judge character by what you saw in a man’s face. The difficulty with Johann was that he was still a boy, without any definite character written on his round red-cheeked face. His blue eyes were honest and eager. His mouth was capable of two expressions: a friendly curve and a rebellious line. At the moment it was the rebellious line which straightened his lips and gave his good-natured chin an angry, disappointed set.
    The colonel turned to Lennox, and spoke in halting French. “You knew him for some months. Did you feel you could trust him?”
    “I didn’t trust him then, sir.”
    “But you trusted him this afternoon.”
    “Only since Miller was killed, sir.”
    The colonel stared. “You don’t seem very clear about it,” he said sharply in English.
    “Yes, sir,” Lennox agreed. The trouble is, he was thinking, when you tell people the truth they won’t believe you. If he had said he trusted Johann because he had helped them against abatch of lousy Fascists he would have lied. He hadn’t trusted Johann then. This afternoon Johann’s politics had run a parallel course with the prisoners’ hopes. That was why he had fought with them.