“We can go now,” Danilo announced. He had on a leather jacket.
“Very well.” Wolfe made it to his feet. “The knapsacks, Archie?”
As I bent to lift them Meta’s voice came from the doorway. Her husband answered her, and Wolfe said something and then spoke to me. “Archie, Mrs. Vukcic asks if we would like to look at the children, and I said yes.”
I kept my face straight. The day that Wolfe would like to climb steps to look at children will be the day I would like to climb Mount Everest barefooted to make a snowman. However, it was good public relations, and I don’t deny he might have felt that we should show some appreciation for her contribution to the discussion of our future. I know I did, so I dropped the knapsacks and gave her a cordial smile. She led the way through the arch and up a flight of narrow wooden stairs, uncarpeted, with Wolfe and me following and Danilo bringing up the rear. On the top landing she murmured something to Wolfe, and we waited there while she disappeared through a doorway and in a moment rejoined us, carrying a lighted candle. After going to another door that was closed, she opened it gently and crossed the sill. With the heavy shoes we were wearing it wasn’t easy to step quietly, and with the condition Wolfe’s feet were in it wasn’t easy for him to tiptoe, but by gum he tried, and made, on the bare floor, quite a little less noise than a team of horses.
They were in beds, not cribs, with high wooden posts, against opposite walls. Zosha, who was on her back, with one of her long black curls across her nose, had kicked the cover off, and Meta pulled it up. Wolfe, looking down at her, muttered something, but I can’t say what because he has always refused to tell me. Ivan, who was on his side with an arm stretched out, had a smudge on his cheek, but you have to make allowance for the fact that when Meta put them to bed unexpected guests had arrived and she had been under pressure. When Meta turned away with the candle, and Wolfe and I followed, Danilo stayed by Ivan’s bed, and we waited for him at the foot of the stairs, with Meta holding the candle high to light him.
In the living room Danilo spoke to Wolfe, and Wolfe relayed it to me. “We’ll go first, by a route I know, not far, and Danilo will follow. We won’t want the knapsacks on our backs in the car, so if you’ll carry them?”
We shook hands with Meta. I picked up the luggage. Danilo escorted us to the front door and let us out, and we were loose again. It was past midnight and the houses were all dark, and so was the street, except for one dim excuse for a light at the corner a hundred yards away. We headed in the other direction. When we had gone some fifty paces I stopped and wheeled to look back, and Wolfe grumbled, “That’s futile.”
“Okay,” I conceded, “but I trust Danilo as far as I can see him, and now I can’t see him.”
“Then why look? Come on.”
I obeyed, with my arms full of knapsacks. There were some stars, and soon my eyes were adjusted enough for objects thirty feet off and for movements much farther. Before long we came to a dead end and turned left. At the next intersection we turned right, and in a few minutes went left again and were on a dirt road with ruts. There were no more houses, but ahead in the distance was a big black outline against the sky, and I asked Wolfe what it was.