chair cushions. Joe, keeping as quiet as possible, established himself in a chair, where he silently cursed his injured ankle.
Staring at the phone on the little table at his elbow, he contemplated getting in touch with his home base in Chicago. John's wife Angie ought to be minding the office, and there might possibly be a thing or two that she could do to help.
Before Joe could make up his mind about the call, room service arrived, inevitably awakening his colleagues. Maria roused herself and stretched, catlike. 'Strange dreams…' she murmured, her expression one of remote dissatisfaction.
The two younger people were glad to join Joe in an experience of white linen and what looked like silver, with food and coffee suggesting anything but proximity to the wilderness. Joe, with one foot propped up on cushions, consumed a delicious though unavoidably gloomy breakfast, then ordered an extra pot of coffee.
From time to time he glanced at Bill Burdon's unused sleeping bag, which lay accusingly in a corner of the room, still rolled up.
Over breakfast the three discussed the situation. They'd had only the brief and somewhat garbled radio messages from Bill, assuring them that he was all right, though having trouble finding his way back.
Maria said: 'That just doesn't sound right to me. From the way Bill described his background, his experience, I'd expect him to be able to find his way home from the North Pole.'
Joe looked at his watch. 'I think it's still too early to call in the Park Rangers. He said he might have to wait for sunrise to start back, so let's give him a little longer. You two finish eating and get some rest. If we don't hear from him by ten o'clock or so, we'd better start looking.'
Observing the difficulty with which Joe hobbled about the hotel room, Maria suggested that maybe he ought to see the local doctor. But he shook his head, reluctant to do that. He didn't think any bones were broken, and there was probably little any doctor would be able to do for him, except tell him that he ought to rest. He sat down with his foot propped up on the bed. At least the swelling wasn't any worse. John and Maria offered contradictory advice as to whether heat or cold would be best to apply at this stage.
As soon as they had finished eating, both John and Maria proclaimed themselves ready to get back into action. Joe, silently praising the resilience of youth, grunted approval. In a few minutes the two younger people had left the hotel and were descending in clouded winter daylight to search the slope immediately below the Tyrrell House. They were going to look for some clue to Bill's fate, or, failing that, anything that might help explain last night's strange events.
Maria and John had hardly left the hotel when another tap sounded at Joe's door. He opened it to discover Brainard, gazing anxiously back over his shoulder in the direction of the lobby, then almost pushing over his aunt's chief investigator in his eagerness to get into the room.
'Somebody after you?' Joe inquired.
Brainard affected not to hear that. Staring as Keogh hobbled back to his chair after closing the door, he commented disapprovingly: 'That looks fairly serious.'
'I'll manage.' Joe eased himself back into his chair. 'I've got some young people to handle whatever legwork needs to be done. Who are they and what do they want?'
'Who?'
'The people who are after you. I'm assuming there's more than one. I'm assuming also that you're the one who shot off a gun last night.'
G. C. Brainard sat down and closed his eyes. 'A federal offense here in the Park, I know.'
'That's right.'
'But there are other things that worry me more.' Digging into a jacket pocket, Brainard produced a heavy- caliber, stubby-barreled revolver. 'I want your advice on what to do with this.'
'Do the other things that worry you more have any connection with your missing daughter?'
Brainard blinked at him. He seemed saddened and even injured by the suggestion. 'No, nothing directly to do with her. Why?'
'Because the job your aunt Sarah originally wanted me to do was to get her back. Now everyone, my client, and you, the girl's father, are trying to edge me away from that. Tell me, Mr. Brainard, how did you come to adopt Cathy?'
'I'm concerned about my daughter. I want her to be all right,' said Brainard, in an injured tone. His eyes looked hurt.
'So tell me about the adoption.'
'All right, if you think it'll help. My late wife and I adopted Cathy in 1978, when she was—four. We were childless, so…'
Joe probed for more details. As far as he could learn, the Brainards had adopted Cathy largely at Aunt Sarah's urging. Sarah had apparently encountered the girl through some kind of charitable work with which she was then involved, and had been drawn to her. But at that time the old lady had been already in her sixties, too old to be approved as an adoptive parent.
Brainard suddenly blurted, 'I can't believe I'm actually carrying a gun.'
'Can I take a look at your weapon?' Joe asked.
When Brainard gingerly handed over the gun, Joe broke it open and inspected the loading.
'What're you looking for?'
'I was wondering,' said Joe, 'if your bullets might be made of wood.'
'What?' No comprehension showed in Brainard's face.
'Never mind.'
The stocky man shook his head. 'It was dumb of me to carry that thing; I hardly know one end from the other. I'm liable to kill someone I'm not aiming at. If you're willing to help me out, maybe you can get rid of it for me?'
Joe put the pistol down carefully on the arm of his chair. Later, he thought, he would unload and disassemble it, and pack the pieces away separately in his own luggage.
Then he faced Brainard. 'If you expect me to help you,' he said to him, 'you'd better tell me why you're carrying a gun. Who are you afraid of, and why?'
The other closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. A pulse beat visibly in the side of his throat, just below his unshaven jaw. 'I owe some people a lot of money. Jesus, how did I ever get myself into such a mess.'
'What kind of people?' Though to Joe it seemed fairly obvious from the way Brainard was behaving.
Brainard's eyes came open, and he lifted his head slowly. 'Mainly a man named Tuller. Ever hear of him? But why should you, I suppose there are a thousand like him. I think he's in with some branch of the New York mafia. Loans out money at a nice clean fifty per cent per month. I thought I had a chance to make a killing, clean up a lot of old debts…'
'How much?'
'I borrowed eighty thousand. He wanted a hundred and twenty back by the middle of December, about two weeks ago. I couldn't pay, I couldn't come close to paying, and so here I am. Aunt Sarah won't hand out that kind of money, and I don't blame her.'
'Maybe you're here hoping to get something from her, or from Tyrrell, that you can sell.'
'Hoping to stay alive until I can do something like that.' Brainard tried to smile. 'But no such luck. Now I'm on the edge of dead.' He did smile. 'Get me out of here, somehow, Keogh. Get me away from this bottleneck and give me a running start somewhere. There won't be any conflict with what you're doing for my aunt. You'll be well paid, I've got enough cash stashed away for that.'
'No thought of going to the police?'
The other made a sound somewhere between a moan and a laugh. His soft hand bounced on the chair-arm as if he were testing the hardness of the wood. 'That would really put the seal on it. They'd really kill me, then. So far, I don't think they're actually quite ready to do that. It's just that I have this prejudice against having my balls smashed, or my kneecaps broken.'
Joe nodded thoughtfully. 'If you help me out a little first, then I'll see what I can do for you.'
'Help you how?'
'To begin with, tell me all you can about Tyrrell.'
