A second figure must by this time have moved forward towards him in the darkness, for another voice said harshly: “Have you light?”
“Yes.”
“Light your own face so that we can see you.”
His torch was pretty feeble but it gave light enough; he was still lying down and in the yellowish beam he saw that his interlocutors had been standing up addressing the darkness over his head. Now they knelt and stared long and earnestly at him. “Who are you?” said the deep-voiced one. Methuen rose to his knees and gave his cover-name, adding that he had been sent out by headquarters with a message for Black Peter; on the way he had met Marko by accident, had witnessed his death, and was on the way to deliver both messages to the White Eagles. He himself was a Yugoslav who had emigrated to Paris fifteen years before, he added, and had recently been infiltrated to help with the battle.
The men withdrew and muttered together, while Methuen turned off his torch and waited; he took the extra precaution of moving a dozen paces to his right in the dark. Presently the voices approached again and one said: “Very well. We should get going.” Methuen scrambled to his feet and came out to meet the muleteers. He found to his delight that a number had brought water-bottles and other more powerful drinks — plum brandy, the ubiquitous rakia of Serbia — and more than one smelt strongly of it. There seemed in all to be about a dozen muleteers and they seemed a fairly well-disciplined lot despite the smell of shlivovitz which clung to some of them, for there was hardly any talking and chatter among them.
The mules formed up in a long straggling line and the man who seemed to be in charge of the party came to join Methuen. He was a bulky-looking Serbian wood-cutter (and Methuen later was to learn that he was the brother of the dead Marko): “You must lead now”, he said simply, “and become our eyes.”
While the daylight held Methuen had taken the precaution to take a bearing on the Janko Stone with the help of his tiny oil-compass and Capella which was clear and high in the northwest. It was to be presumed that the terrain, like that which they had already traversed, offered no difficulty, being grassy and soft. Nevertheless it is always nerve-racking to be responsible for the direction of a pack of mules and twelve men, when you have never traversed the road before: when you are not certain of the reception you will receive on arrivaclass="underline" moreover when you have no idea what the password is.… So Methuen rambled on to himself as he climbed into the uncomfortable wooden saddle of the foremost mule and urged the column forward with a great show of certainty. Most of the men walked beside their animals, and after half an hour of torture Methuen decided that their choice was the right one, and followed suit.
The leader of the party drew up beside him and walked along, talking amiably in the darkness as they sweated and stumbled upwards towards the clouds. He lived beyond Rashka on the mountain range which runs eastwards in the direction of Nish. “Difficult country to hide in,” he said. “We lost many men to the Communists.” (He spat expressively into the darkness at each mention of the word.) Methuen set himself to draw the fellow out and was delighted by the ease with which the peasant, having once given his confidence to him, felt no further need for reticence.
“Do you think”, said Methuen, “the mules will be enough to transport it?” The peasant shrugged his shoulders and said: “If it is carbon or wood or tea, I can give you an answer. But for gold who can say? Is it big? Is it small? Is it dust?” Methuen stopped in his tracks and gave a snort of sheer surprise which was succeeded by a spasm of furious anger against his own short-sightedness. For he had really known the answer to the problem all the time. Only blind stupidity had kept him so long in the dark. For now, at the mention of the word “gold” he remembered the mysterious disappearance of the gold reserves belonging to the National Bank of Yugoslavia at the outbreak of the war with Germany.
When Hitler’s troops poured southward into Serbia some sort of attempt had been made to get the gold reserves away to safety. Those belonging to the largest bank in Yugoslavia, however, had been taken somewhere into south Serbia and — by all accounts — lost. At any rate, during the war both Chetnik and Partisan hunted feverishly for the treasure which both believed to be buried somewhere in the mountains of Serbia. The Germans, and later the Russians, had both shown considerable interest in the matter; but without any result. After the so-called liberation — which turned out to be a worse slavery than ever — the government tried to trace the group which had been put in charge of the bullion when it was taken south in a lorry. But it seemed that they had been murdered by Partisans during the war. Not a soul knew the whereabouts of this large sum of.… Methuen whistled to himself. “It must be the key to the whole thing,” he told himself triumphantly. “At any rate it is the only key which unlocks every door.”
Still staggered by his own stupidity he went back over every stage of his inquiry and tested against a single hypothesis: if the White Eagles had located the treasure what would they be likely to do? The answer followed very naturally: try and guard it, try and tell the exiles about it, try and get it out by submarine.… The gnomic verses which had been broadcast returned to his mind in the light of this new knowledge and he had no difficulty now in deciphering what the message was which lay behind the words.
But as the corollary of the first question one should ask another; namely, what would the Communists do if they found out about the treasure? The answer was short and ugly: surround the place, wipe out the Royalists, and get it.
“You can see, too,” said Methuen to himself sleepily, “that the size of it makes it important. I seem to remember a figure of about fifteen or twenty million being quoted in the newspapers. The Royalists would be rich enough to found their movement on something stronger than faith. One could buy arms and agents.…” He understood now the importance that Vida had placed upon the discovery; and understanding that he felt once more how dangerous was his own position, for people with so much to lose would stick at nothing — as witness Vida’s own death. Presumably she had been considered a dangerous person, perhaps a traitor.…
“I suppose,” said Methuen to himself, “I should really go back to Belgrade at once.” He turned and watched the dark strings of mules on the mountain-side behind him for a moment. “Mission accomplished. Thank you very much.” He imitated Dombey’s voice congratulating him on having cleared up the mystery and smiled. “A good agent would clear out now,” he admitted, “but there is no transport back.” He was committed to the adventure.
CHAPTER TWELVE. At the Janko Stone
They marched onwards until nearly four o’clock, along the back-bone of the range. Then Methuen called a halt for half an hour for he was not only very tired himself by this time: he was also a trifle anxious about the nature of their reception at the Janko Stone. In the darkness, without the right password, they might easily be mistaken for Communist troops and ambushed. He judged it wiser to arrive in the early dawn light when one would be able to see and be seen. Besides, he had no clear idea about the headquarters of the White Eagles; they could not maintain a group on this exposed situation — a plateau open to aerial reconnaissance. There must be somewhere a huge depression in the crown of the highest hill — or perhaps a disused quarry.