“Inspector Zgut sends his greetings,” I said. The owner immediately emerged from his reverie.
“A wonderful man!” he said in a lively and quite normal-sounding voice. “How is he?”
“Not bad,” I said, handing him the basket.
“I see he hasn’t forgotten the evenings he spent here in front of my fireplace.”
“He can’t talk about anything else,” I said and turned towards the car again—but the owner grabbed my hand.
“Not another step!” he said sternly. “I’ll call Kaisa. Kaisa!” he bellowed.
A dog jumped out onto the porch: a magnificent Saint Bernard, white with yellow spots, powerful and big as a calf. As I already knew, he was the last remnant of the dead mountaineer, if you didn’t count a few scraps on display at the inn’s museum. I wouldn’t have minded watching this dog with a woman’s name unload my bags, but the owner was already steering me towards the house with a strong hand.
As we walked down a dimly lit hall, I caught a whiff of the warm smell of an extinguished fireplace and saw the dull varnished gleam of fashionably low tables; we turned left and the owner shoved his shoulder against a door with the word “Office” on it. Once the jingling, bubbling basket had been installed in a corner, and myself in the comfortable armchair, the owner flung open the huge ledger on his desk.
“Before we begin, allow me to introduce myself,” he said, picking at the tip of his fountain pen intently with a fingernail. “Alek Snevar, inn owner and mechanic. Naturally you noticed the wind turbines on your way through Bottleneck?”
“So those were turbines?”
“Yes. Wind-powered engines. I designed and built them with my own two hands.”
“Really?” I murmured.
“Yes. By myself. And not just them.”
“And where is it going?” asked a shrill female voice behind my back.
I turned around. In the door was a chubby little number holding my suitcase. She was about twenty-five years old, all rouged up and with wide-open, wide-set blue eyes.
“This is Kaisa,” the owner explained. “Kaisa! This man brings us greetings from Mr. Zgut. You remember Mr. Zgut, Kaisa? Of course you remember him.”
Kaisa blushed instantly and, shrugging her shoulders, covered her face with a hand.
“She remembers,” the owner explained to me. “Now she’s getting it… Hmmm… How about I put you in number four. It’s the best room in the inn. Kaisa, take Mr.… er…”
“Glebsky,” I said.
“Take Mr. Glebsky’s suitcase to room number four… Phenomenally stupid,” he explained with a touch of pride, when the little dumpling had stashed herself away. “Remarkable, in her own way… So then, Mr. Glebsky?” He stared at me expectantly.
“Peter Glebsky,” I recited. “Police Inspector. On leave. For two weeks. Alone.”
The owner diligently wrote each of these facts into the ledger in huge gnarled letters; as he wrote the Saint Bernard came in, claws tapping on the linoleum. He looked at me, gave me a wink, and then suddenly, with a roar that sounded like a bundle of firewood collapsing, slumped down near the safe and lay his head on his paw.
“That’s Lel,” the owner said, screwing the cap of his pen back on. “Sapient. Understands three European languages. No fleas—but he does shed.”
Lel sighed and shifted his snout to the other paw.
“Come,” said the owner, as he stood up. “I’ll show you to your room.”
We crossed the hall again and climbed the stairs.
“Dinner is at six,” the owner said. “Though you can get a snack anytime, or a refreshing drink for that matter. At ten there’s a light supper. Dancing, billiards, cards, conversation around the fireplace.”
We went down the corridor on the second floor and turned left. At the very first door the owner stopped.
“Here it is,” he said, in that same muffled voice. “After you.”
He flung the door open, and I went in.
“Ever since that unforgettable, terrible day…” he began, and suddenly grew quiet.
The room didn’t look bad, though it was a little gloomy. The curtains were half-drawn; an alpenstock lay on the bed for some reason. There was a smell of freshly smoked tobacco. Someone’s waterproof jacket was draped over the back of an armchair; a newspaper was on the floor next to it.
“Hmm…” I said, puzzled. “It looks like someone’s already staying here.”
The owner didn’t respond. His eyes were glued to the table. There was nothing out of the ordinary on it, except a large bronze ashtray, in which a straight-handled pipe lay. A Dunhill, I guessed. Smoke rose from the pipe.
“Staying…” the owner said eventually. “Well, why not?”
I didn’t know what to say to this, so I waited for him to go on. I couldn’t see my suitcase anywhere, but there was a checkered rucksack with a bunch of hotel-stickers on it in the corner. It wasn’t my rucksack.
“Everything has remained as he left it before his climb,” the owner went on, his voice growing stronger. “On that terrible, unforgettable day six years ago.”
I looked dubiously at the smoking pipe.
“Yes!” the owner cried. “There’s HIS pipe. That’s HIS jacket. And that over there is HIS alpenstock. ‘Don’t forget your alpenstock,’ I said to him that very morning. He just smiled and shook his head. ‘You don’t want to be stuck up there forever!’ I shouted, a cold premonition passing over me. ‘Porquwapa’, he said—in French. I still don’t know what it means.”
“It means ‘Why not?’” I said.
The owner nodded sadly.
“That’s what I thought,” the owner said. “And there’s HIS rucksack. I refused to let the police rummage through his things…”
“That’s HIS newspaper, then,” I said. It was clearly yesterday’s edition of the Mur Gazette.
“No. Of course the newspaper isn’t his,” the owner said.
“I got that impression too,” I agreed.
“The newspaper isn’t his, of course,” the owner repeated. “And someone else, naturally, has been smoking the pipe.”
I muttered something about a lack of respect for the dead.
“Not at all,” the owner retorted thoughtfully. “It’s much more complicated than that. It’s much more complicated, Mr. Glebsky. But we’ll talk about that later. Let’s get you to your room.”
But before we left he peeked into the bathroom, opened the closet door and then closed it again, and walked over to the window. He swatted the curtains a few times. It seemed to me like he wanted to look under the bed too, but restrained himself.
We went out into the hallway.
“I remember Inspector Zgut telling me that he specialized in so-called ‘safecrackers,’” the owner said after a short silence. “And may I ask what your specialty is—if it’s not a secret?”
He opened the door to room number four for me.
“A boring one,” I said. “Bureaucratic crimes, embezzlement, forgery, fraudulent papers…”
I liked my room immediately. Everything in it was squeaky clean, the air smelled fresh, the desk was absolutely dust-free, outside the clear window lay a view of the snow-covered valley and purple mountains.
“A pity,” the owner said.
“What do you mean?” I asked absently, as I glanced in at the bedroom. Kaisa was still there. She’d opened my suitcase and put away my things, and was busy fluffing the pillows.
“Then again, it’s really not a pity at all,” the owner remarked. “Haven’t you ever noticed, Mr. Glebsky, how much more interesting the unknown is than the known? The unknown makes us think—it makes our blood run a little quicker and gives rise to various delightful trains of thought. It beckons, it promises. It’s like a fire flickering in the depths of the night. But as soon as the unknown becomes known, it’s just as flat, gray and uninteresting as everything else.”