Wolfe shook his head. “No,” he said bluntly. “To help your movement on its merits, no. No blow for freedom should be discouraged or scorned, but in this remote mountain corner the best you can do is tickle the tyrant’s toes and die for your pains. If by any chance you should succeed in destroying Tito, the Russians would swarm in from all sides and finish you. I came to get a murderer. For years I have made a living catching wrongdoers, murderers in particular, and I don’t intend to let the one who killed Marko escape. I expect you to help me.”
“The one who killed Marko is only a tool. We have larger plans.”
“No doubt. So have I, but this is personal, and at least it rides in your direction. It may be useful to make it clear that your friends in distant places cannot be slaughtered with impunity. I offer no bribe, but when I get back to America I shall probably feel, as the executor of Marko’s estate, that his associates in a project dear to him deserve sympathetic consideration.”
“I don’t believe you’ll ever get back. This isn’t America, and you don’t know how to operate here. Already you have made five bad mistakes. For one thing, you have exposed yourselves to that baby rat, Jubé Bilic, and let him follow you here.”
“But,” Wolfe objected, “I was told by Telesio that it would place you in no danger if we were seen coming here. He said you are being paid by both Belgrade and the Russians, and you are trusted by neither, and neither is ready to remove you.”
“Nobody trusts anyone,” Danilo said harshly. He left his chair. “But this Jubé Bilic, for a Montenegrin, has at his age a fatal disease of the bones. Even Montenegrins like Gospo Stritar, who work for Tito and have his picture on their walls if not in their hearts, have only contempt for such as Jubé Bilic, who spies on his own father. Contempt is all right, that’s healthy enough, but sometimes it turns into fear, and that’s too much. Do I understand that Jubé followed you to this house?”
Wolfe turned to me. “He wants to know if Jubé followed us here.”
“He did,” I declared, “unless he stumbled and fell in the last two hundred yards. I saw him turn the corner into this street.”
Wolfe relayed it. “In that case,” Danilo said, “you must excuse me while I arrange something.” He left the room through the door toward the back of the house, closing it behind him.
“What’s up?” I asked Wolfe. “Has he gone to phone Room Nineteen?”