HIGH JUSTICE

Originally published in Collier’s, June 3, 1939, as by “Will F. Jenkins.”

It was night in the world below, and the valleys were already in darkness. The climb had been a hard one, and the four men arrived at the shelter hut just before darkness reached the heights. They saw tiny twinkling lights, miles down and miles away. Houses and villages and hotels. Up here were only the hut—dark and bleak and glazed with ice—and a vast cold vacancy of snow. But, comfort aside, there were compensations.

The sun had set, and they made the last hundred feet up a gentle incline, with a thousand-foot precipice to their left, in the many-colored light of the afterglow. Also there was thin cold air like wine—refreshing to laboring lungs.

They reached the hut. Kettermann, the guide, put down his ice ax and worked to open the battered door. The others waited, their panting breaths growing gradually more even. The door creaked open. Kettermann went in. He produced a candle and lighted it inside. Young Hans—the other guide—crowded forward with the spirit lamp. He gathered icicles from the hut roof, to melt. They made loud bumping noises as they went into the little pan. The stove made a shuddering sound as it caught, and presently the pan sang unmusically while the ice fragments turned to water. One of the two American climbers—the younger—gazed out at the pinnacles.

“I still don’t believe what I’m seeing,” he said, staring.

The other man fumbled in his pocket. He got out a cigarette and lighted it.

“Very pretty, Sam,” he said uninterestedly. “Very pretty. But I’m going in the hut. Stay out here if you like. It’ll be cold presently, when the wind comes.” He paused and added: “Bruce fell from here, you know. This spot. Bruce was—there. He stepped back too far. That’s all there was to it. Watch out.”

He crowded into the hut.

* * * *

There was a sort of platform before the hut. It was made of mud and stone, and it stretched for quite ten feet from the hut door to the edge of the cliff. It was smooth and level. And it was amazing to find a level space here. This was two thirds of the way up to the summit. That anyone should have gone to the trouble of making a level platform here—where perhaps fifteen people in a whole climbing season might elect to pass a single night—was so extraordinary as to be unbelievable.

After a day of climbing, ten feet of level ground was so unfamiliar as to be intoxicating. Young Sam walked across it, and the absence of effort was startling. He found himself trampling high, lifting his feet absurdly, feeling actually dizzy with the sensation of level walking.

He almost went over the edge.

He stopped short with a jerk and a startled gasp. He stood rigid, pressing back with his toes to keep his own momentum from toppling him over. There was sheer black emptiness before him, only inches from his toes.

Voices murmured in the hut: Kettermann rumbling in his thick Swiss-German to young Hans. The other climber—Steve—did not speak. The young man outside moved cautiously backward. Bruce had walked off this place into nothingness. Now, a year later, he’d almost followed him.

Young Sam fumbled shakily in the earth at his feet. He found a small stone, perhaps a quarter-pound in weight. He tossed it out into the blackness into which Bruce had fallen. Then he counted, listening for the sound when it hit.

He did not hear that sound. The night was filled with a singing silence such as comes only among high peaks and glaciers. The silence was made up of a multitude of tiny happenings. Little cracklings, oddly resonant. Frost.

Sam was well away from the edge, now, but he backed still farther in a sudden startled caution.

His companion came out of the hut.

“Coffee’s ready, Sam,” he said tonelessly.

The younger man stammered: “I—threw a rock off,” he said foolishly, “and—and I didn’t hear it hit!”

Kettermann put his head out.

“There is no wind, chentlemen,” he observed professionally. “Maybe we eat where there is most room?”

He spoke gruffly and unintelligibly to Hans. Hans came out with the folding cups. They steamed fiercely in the thin, cold air. Kettermann moved his ice ax from where it leaned against the hut wall. He produced his pipe and filled it deliberately, resting with the assurance of one who though employed was nevertheless the leader of the party. Hans gave the coffee and food to the two Americans, and then squatted down himself.

“A good climb today, Kettermann,” said the American called Steve. “Just one ticklish place. Really ticklish, that is.”

“Ja, Mein Herr. Just one.” Kettlemann spoke with the precision of a man who has learned English for strictly business reasons. “The young chentleman showed much wisdom. He kept still. If he had moved—”

Young Sam was embarrassed. He’d been horribly scared, but right in the middle of his panic something coldly efficient had taken control of his muscles. Now he was glad it had happened. He could count on something efficient taking control in an emergency, hereafter. He had acquired confidence.

“I was frightened,” he said awkwardly, “but I’m glad…”

His voice trailed off. Kettermann nodded approvingly.

“It is no shame to be scared,” he said with heavy precision. “To be not scared is sometimes worse.”

The older American said slowly:

“In a way, Sam, it was lack of scare—overconfidence—that killed Bruce. He stepped backward right off the edge of the platform here. I saw it. It was terribly simple. He was one of the best climbers I ever knew. We’d come up here without guides, just the two of us, and we’d had a cup of coffee and something to eat, and we sat out here because there was an hour’s calm after sunset, just like tonight. But he was restless and presently he began to pace back and forth on the platform—this platform—because he wasn’t worn out even with the climb we’d made. Wonderful stamina, Bruce!” And he pulled out a cigarette, and struck a match to light it, and puffed.

“Then he looked up at something on the slope behind us, there. I don’t know what he thought he saw. He looked up in the starlight, and took a step backward, as if to get a clearer view of it over the hut rooftop. And there wasn’t anything to step back on.”

The younger American looked out in the starlight to the unguarded edge just ten feet from where he sat with his empty coffee cup. He closed his lips tightly, remembering that he’d almost stepped off that edge himself, a few minutes since. There was silence. It became burdensome. Sam broke it, awkwardly:

“It must have been pretty bad for you, Steve.”

Steve said heavily:

“It was bad.… That night especially, up here all by myself. When he fell, it was dead calm. But the wind blew later. It seemed to me that wind devils howled all night long. I thought the hut would go over, once or twice.”

Kettermann smoked impassively. Again it was Sam, the younger American, who broke the silence.

“And you couldn’t be sure, then, that he wasn’t just—injured,” he said sympathetically. “There wasn’t any way to find out until daylight. That must have been bad. But it must have been even worse, facing Bella.…”

Steve said grimly:

“That was very bad. And there were some people who whispered. I’d been in love with Bella before she met Bruce. Some people suspected that Bruce’s fall might not have been accidental, or that at least I might have gotten to him and rescued him. They didn’t know how far he fell! It’s a thousand feet sheer, here!” Then he added detachedly: “When Bella marries me next month, most of those whispers will turn up again.”

Young Sam said wryly :

“I didn’t tell you, but I nearly went over myself, just now. Just because the platform’s level. Maybe I can do some good, if any whispering starts up.”

Steve said evenly:

“That’s one reason I brought you here, Sam. In the morning I’ll show you something else.”

Kettermann smoked. The younger guide, Hans, had listened patiently, trying to piece together the occasional words he understood into a coherent discussion. Now he spoke, unintelligibly. Sam thought he said something about a bet, a wager. Kettermann rumbled to him in reply. His Swiss-German was hard to understand at best, and now it seemed as if he purposely mumbled so that he would be even less understandable than usual.

“Ach! Gott!” said Hans. He nodded soberly.

The candlelight streamed out the door across the platform. It made a spreading fan of yellow light that was cut off—and horribly—by the edge of the platform.

“But—er—nobody really believes anything wrong of you, Steve. Why, it would be silly to go around pushing people off cliffs! Nobody’d get away with it. Would they, Kettermann?”

Kettermann puffed twice, and let the smoke trickle from between his lips. “Sometimes, maybe,” he said.

“I mean,” said Sam, “they’d certainly be caught. You—er—you guides would know if a man had been killed by accident or not. You’d have a sort of feeling…”

Kettermann puffed again and said gruffly but precisely:

“Sometimes, yes. And it is bad for climbing if many people get killed. If somebody uses the mountains to kill somebody, he strikes at our bread and butter.” He added abruptly: “So we do not like it.”

He closed his lips in a tight line. Hans wiped his mouth and mumbled something humbly inquiring. Kettermann nodded.

Steve laughed. It was not at all humorous.

“You’re beginning to see,” he told his companion. “I was here with Bruce when he fell to his death. We were alone; without guides. You know what people whispered. I’d been in love with Bella, and he’d married her. Now Bella’s going to marry me next month. You’re her brother. And I’ve wondered if you didn’t come on this climb with me just to see if my story checked up with the spot where the thing happened!”

Young Sam said:

“Look here, old man. I damn near went over the edge myself. Of course I see why Bruce fell. Of course!”

“You didn’t answer me,” said the older man grimly. “But let it go. Even if Bella has a lingering doubt—which she hasn’t—what you’ll tell her will make her realize how idiotically reasonable it was for Bruce, good climber as he was, to topple a thousand feet from a shelter hut. If you came along to check my story, it’s all right with me. If you didn’t, I’m still glad you made the climb.”

Sam squirmed.

“Your story’s checked. That is, it would be if I’d had any doubts.”

“I know,” said Steve. He spoke somberly. “But it’s looked bad all the way. Bruce is still down there, you understand. His body never was brought in. He’s under a disintegrating cliff face. It rains rock all day long. You saw some of that!”

The younger man nodded unhappily. He had seen what a rock face is like when the rock particles loosened by frost split off and fall. Every minute of every hour of daylight and most of the night, stones fall down the steep cliff faces. This party had come up a ridge, but they’d seen stones of all sizes from pebbles to monsters like locomotives go crashing and bouncing down into the valley below, from the cliff faces away from their route.

Climbing such a cliff face would be a form of suicide, and no slow one, either. No guide would attempt it. Even to arrange an attempt to recover a human body under such a bombardment from overhead would be difficult or impossible. Which was why, down below, there was still a tiny patch of storm-frayed cloth, with perhaps a white bone or two showing through: Bruce. It could be seen from the platform in the daylight.

“You see my idea,” said Steve heavily. “Tongues are going to wag when I marry Bella. I can’t stop them, but I did want somebody to see—”

The younger man said warmly:

“I never had the slightest doubt, Steve!” He believed it, now. “You’re oversensitive!”

“I wanted you,” said Steve doggedly, “to see where he fell from and where he fell to. When the whispers start, if you can’t offer proof that I didn’t throw him off, at least you’ll be able to testify that he must have been killed instantly. I didn’t go off and leave him to suffer while I saved my own neck! I owe it to Bella that people shouldn’t believe anything worse than that I murdered Bruce.”

“I’ll take care of it, old man,” promised Sam stoutly. “Damn it, I nearly went over myself. Of course I’ll tell them.”

The older man subsided. The younger seemed to fall into busy thought. Kettermann smoked phlegmatically. Peaks lifted their heads toward the heavens all about them, palely phosphorescent in the darkness. Hans said something softly to Kettermann. Again about a wager of some sort.

“Ja,” grunted Kettermann.

“Kettermann,” said Sam suddenly, “if I’d stepped off the edge, here, how far would I have fallen before I touched?”

The guide grunted, drew his pipe from between his teeth, and spat meditatively. Then he said precisely:

“I think three hundred, maybe three hundred and fifty meters. No less, Mein Herr.”

“A thousand feet easily. Sheer fall. Any man would be killed instantly. Nobody could fall a thousand feet and live even a second, could he, Kettermann?”

“It has happened, even that,” said Kettermann, with deliberate precision of utterance. “I would not say how often, Mein Herr.”

The younger American said vexedly: “It’s hard to believe.…”

Kettermann scowled at the darkness. Sucking on his pipe, and wrinkled, he looked like a gargoyle in the candlelight.

“It was a chentleman,” he said with heavy care for his speech, “who was climbing with a friend. He fell. His friend did not. He fell a great way—three hundred meters. He should have died at once. But he did not die.”

Again it was the younger American who said:

“Well?”

“Nobody knows but me,” said Kettermann, sucking absorbedly at his pipe, “because his body is under a cliff that rains rock all the time. It is deadly, that cliff. Deadly! Nobody would go after the body because of the falling rocks, and it is bad business not to bring in a body. It is suspicious.”

Steve said tonelessly:

“You see, Sam?”

The younger man nodded. Kettermann went on again with painful precision :

“Ladies in the hotels thought that they could see the body with the telescopes on the hotel terraces. They looked, and maybe they saw a flowering bush, but they said, ‘How terrible!’ to one another, with much enjoyment. It was bad business. Bad business! It did not help guides to get work!”

“Go on!” said the younger American.

“I told other guides that the poor chentleman’s body should be brought in. And I said that at the coldest part of the night, just before dawn, the rain of rocks is least. It might be done then. And I thought that the chentleman’s family would give a reward. So I went to get the body. I studied the way with a telescope, and I picked a path. I climbed to a place to wait for the safest time—and it was cold! Gott! How cold it was!—and then I finished the climb. It was hard climbing in starlight only. I would not like to do that again! But I got to the body. It was a year and more that the chentleman had fallen. He was only bones and cloth. He should have been easy to carry away. But I did not carry him.”

“Why,” asked Sam impatiently. “Why not?”

“He had been murdered. Mein Herr.”

“But what—how—”

“He had fallen more than three hundred meters,” said Kettermann with stolid precision, “and yet he lived after he hit. For a while. I do not know how long. I do not know how. But I saw. He was broken and crushed, but somehow he had written with a pencil on a leaf of a notebook, and he had weighted it with a stone that protected the writing. And then he had died. He had written the name of the friend he was climbing with, and underneath he wrote that his friend had murdered him. And I remembered that the man he accused of murder had seemed to be very sorry for the dead chentleman’s death.”

“But—didn’t you tell the police?” asked Sam uncertainly.

“It was—” Kettermann counted on his fingers, “last Thursday, Mein Herr. The day you chentlemen employed me to guide you.”

Silence. Steve, the older man, stood up suddenly.

“I’m going to turn in,” he said tonelessly. “I’m tired.”

But he did not go. He stood restlessly on his feet.

A little wisp of breeze, thin and icy, came out of the quiet solitudes and died away again. It was the precursor of stronger winds to come. Sam frowned. Kettermann’s story contained one point of direct importance to him and to Bella.

“Look here!” he said. “You’ll tell the police when we get back, no doubt, but meanwhile you said you’d risked going under a disintegrating cliff face at dawn. Is it safe then?”

“No, Mein Herr. It is never safe. But the least fatal time is before the sun rises.”

Sam said:

“The gentleman who fell from this platform was my brother-in-law. I understand his body can still be seen from up here, in daylight. Would you go under this cliff with me, to recover it? I’ll pay well enough, if it can be done! Can we do it?”

Kettermann smoked. He seemed to be considering. Then he absently brought his ice ax before him. He fingered it thoughtfully.

“Many places I would not try,” he said deliberately. “But this place, ja. We can reach the chentleman’s body.”

The older American said harshly: “But I tried to get Bruce’s body right after his fall. No guide would try to approach it. It was agreed to be too dangerous!”

“It is dangerous, Mein Herr,” agreed Kettermann stolidly. “Ja. But it can be done. I have done it. Thursday!”

Then the American named Steve made a queer, stricken sound. He had been teetering back and forth on his feet. Now he stood rigid, staring at the grizzled guide. And Kettermann watched him warily, the ice ax in his hand.

“Mein Herr?” said Kettermann.

Steve made another queer sound in his throat. Then he turned and walked steadily to the edge of the platform. But he did not pause there. He walked off.

Kettermann put out his hand as Sam sprang to his feet with a cry, but the young man tore himself free. His ears waited in hysterical frenzy for the sound of an impact to come up from below. He felt that he would go mad when that sound came.

But no sound came. The young American stood there, panting, and no sound came, and no sound came, and no sound came.… And then the voice of Kettermann beat into his consciousness.

“You should be calm,” said Kettermann, with heavy precision. “He walked over the cliff by himself, Mein Herr. You saw it. But we will say that he fell like the other chentleman. There will be no scandal. It is bad to have scandal about the mountains.”

“You mean,” Sam cried thinly, “he pushed Bruce off and—and Bruce lived after that fall—and wrote—”

“No, Mein Herr,” he said in a queer mixture of pedantic precision and apology. “Only the chentleman believed that he lived and wrote. I would not go under this cliff, Mein Herr! Himmel! Nein! It is too dangerous! But I knew the chentleman Bruce, and he was a good climber. And there were whispers, as that chentleman”—he indicated the cliff edge—“said. And I believed those whispers, but Hans did not, because this chentleman”—again the jerk of the thumb toward the abyss—“was openhanded. So Hans betted with me that I was wrong. And so I told the story of a climb I did not do and a discovery I did not make, to see if Hans was right or I was.”

“Then you—your story was a damned lie!” cried Sam furiously. But he stopped short suddenly, realizing.

“Yes, Mein Herr, it was a lie,” admitted Kettermann precisely. “And that is bad. But also it is bad when a chentleman uses the mountains to kill another chentleman. It is murder, and it is bad for the guide business.”

He said something in his guttural Swiss-German to the younger guide, Hans. Sam snapped in half-mad suspicion :

“What’s that you’re saying now?”

“I just reminded Hans, Mein Herr,” said Kettermann stolidly, “that I won the bet he betted me, and he owes me twenty Swiss francs.”