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may have gone back to his old country and his old allegiance?”
    “I am suggesting that it is more than a possibility. I should also hazard that that is exactly what you must have believed he would do.”
    “And you’d be right, naturally. But the fact remains that there has never been any indication, not the slightest hint, that he did so.” He got up abruptly from his desk and began to walk the room, not restlessly, but with a controlled, energetic step, like a man starved of proper exercise making the most of cramped quarters. The two younger men followed his pacing with alert eyes, and waited. “You think Terrell may actually have
seen
Alda?”
    “Something unexpected happened to him, something that drew him across the river valley to Zbojská Dolina. It could be connected with Alda. I don’t claim more than that.”
    “But you imagine more, much more. You think, don’t you, that either he saw Alda, or picked up somehow a clue to his whereabouts? And that he followed it up, and got himself pushed off a mountainside when he got too close for comfort. That’s what you think, isn’t it?”
    Welland paled a little at seeing it posed before him in this pointblank fashion; even he had a trace of the diplomat’s dislike of formulating anything too exactly. But he stared back gallantly, and said emphatically: “Yes.”
    Blagrove stirred protestingly. “But, good lord, the case is six years old now! It’s no longer important. Times have changed, the cold war’s a dead issue, or dying, trade’s developing. Even if Terrell did turn up unexpectedly on his trail, why should Alda even care any more? Neither Terrell nor any of us could be any threat to him there. And would it be worth killing the man just for plain spite?”
    “But isn’t that missing the point of what Sir Broughton said a minute ago?” argued Welland intently. “You expected him to turn up in Czechoslovakia. Word of where they are always leaks out eventually, doesn’t it? But not a word ever leaked out about Alda. So wherever he is, secrecy is vital—to him, and to whoever is cashing in on his work now. Six years of successful concealment argues it’s important enough to murder for. I believe there’s something going on right now, right there in the Low Tatras, that has to be kept absolutely secret, and that Alda is at the heart of it. I believe Terrell found out, or they thought he had found out, what he couldn’t be allowed to report.”
    “If there is anything in this,” began Phelps, after a long and pregnant pause, “and I’m not admitting yet that there necessarily is, but
if
there is—then you realise it’s happened in a place and in circumstances which practically put it out of our power to investigate. If he
is
there, and if he is being kept as tightly wrapped as all that, then we must assume that this is national business. In which case we must also assume that the Czech authorities, if not the police on the spot, know all there is to be known about this death.”
    “I’m convinced,” said Welland vehemently, “that they do. The local police know about mountains, they can’t have failed to see what a queer sort of accident it was for an experienced man. Yet within a day they’d closed the case. I think they’ve had their orders.”
    “Even if you believed in their honesty,” said the Director drily, “our position would be the same. I can’t impress upon you too strongly, Mr. Welland, that everything to do with this Institute is top secret. In this case or any case that involves us in any way, nothing whatever may be confided to foreign authorities, friendly or otherwise. There can be
no
overt enquiries.”
    “No, sir, I realise that. But I’m there on the spot. I week-end in the mountains quite frequently, they’re used to me. I move about quite freely, I speak the language a little. I could look into it myself, without alerting anyone.”
    He offered them a dutiful silence, but neither of them, it seemed, had