Having learned all this, I put it to use. I picked up my glass and saluted the kid on the other side of me.

"Skdl, Cousin Elin," I said.

She looked me in the eyes, as custom demanded, and smiled. "Skdl, Cousin… Matthew? That is the same as our Matthias, is it not? Do you speak any Swedish at all?"

I shook my head. "I knew a few words when I was a boy, but I've forgotten most of them."

"That is too bad," she said. "I speak English very badly."

"Uhuh," I said. "Half the population of America should speak it as badly as you do. How did you happen to hear of me in Stockholm?"

She said, "It is very simple. You like to hunt, do you not? A man in Stockholm whose business is arranging hunts for foreigners called up old Overste Stjernhjelm at TorsAter-Overste means Colonel, you know. There is an Aighunt at TorsAter in a week or two. Torsдter is the family estate near Uppsala, one of our two big University towns, sixty kilometers north of Stockholm, about forty of your English miles. Aig, that is our Swedish moose, not as big as your Canadian variety-"

She wasn't getting very far. I said, "Cousin, why don't you just tell the story? When you throw me a word I don't know, I'll stop you."

She laughed. "All right, but you said you didn't know Swedish… There are usually not many strangers at the Torsдter hunt. It is a small neighborhood affair, but the man in Stockholm said he had an American client, a sportsman and journalist who wanted to write about some typical Swedish hunting, and it would be very nice if Colonel Stjernhjelm would invite him to be a guest. The colonel was not really interested, until he heard that your name was Helm. He remembered that a cousin of his had emigrated to America many years ago and shortened his name. He remembered that there had been a son. The colonel, like many of our old retired people, is very interested in genealogy. Having made certain from his records that you were a member of the family, he tried to reach you in Stockholm, but you had already left. He knew I was planning a visit here, so he called me and asked me to get in touch with you.',

I grinned. "Just get in touch?"

She said, with some embarrassment, "Well, he did want me to let him know what kind of a person you were. So you must behave yourself while I have you under observation, Cousin Matthias, so I can write a favorable report to the colonel. Then he will invite you hunting, I am sure."

I said, "All right, I'll be good. Now tell me how we got to be cousins."

"Very, very distant cousins," she said, smiling. "It is rather complicated, but I think it was this way: back in 1652, two brothers von Hoffman came here from Germany. One of them married a Miss Stjernhjelm, whose brother was a direct ancestor of yours. The other married another nice Swedish girl and became an ancestor of mine. I hope this is quite clear. If it is not, I'm sure Colonel Stjernhjelm will be delighted to explain it to you when you return south. He has all kinds of genealogical tables at Torsдter."

I glanced at her. "Sixteen fifty-two, you say?"

She smiled again. "Yes. As I told you, it is not a very close relationship."

Then, for some reason, she blushed a little. I hadn't seen a girl do that in years.

Chapter Fifteen

WazN it was time to leave, our host was shocked to learn that Lou and I had arrived in a car and now intended to drive back to the hotel. It seems that the Swedish laws against drunken driving are so strict that you don't ever drive to a party unless one occupant of the car intends not to drink at all. Otherwise you play safe and take a cab. We were, of course, quite sober and capable, our host agreed, but we'd both imbibed detectable quantities of alcohol, and we couldn't be allowed to run the risk. A taxi would take us to the hotel, and somebody would deliver our car there in the morning.

At the hotel, we climbed the stairs in silence, and stopped at Lou's door.

"I won't ask you in for a drink," she said. "It would be a crime to dump whisky on top of all that lovely wine and cognac. Besides, I don't think I could stay awake. Good I night, Matt."

"Good night," I said, and crossed the hail to my own room, let myself in, closed the door behind me, and grinned wryly. Apparently she'd decided to give me some of my own medicine: two could play it cool as well as one. I yawned, undressed, and went to bed.

Sleep washed over me in a wave, but just as I was losing my last contact with reality, I heard a sound that made me wide awake again. Somewhere an ancient hinge had creaked softly. I listened intently and heard the click of a high heel in the hall; Lou was leaving her room. Well, she could be paying a visit to the communal plumbing. Her room, like mine, boasted only a small curtained cubicle with a lavatory and a neat little locker containing a white enamel receptacle for emergency use.

I waited, but she didn't return. I didn't even consider trying to follow her. It was a complicated game we were playing, but I still thought the guy who would win was the guy who could act dumbest. To hell with her and her midnight expeditions. It was something I knew that she didn't know I knew. It was a point for our side. Well, call it half a point. I turned over in bed and closed my eyes.

Nothing happened.~ Suddenly I had the keyed-up feeling you get from a lot of liquor partially neutralized by a lot of coffee. Sleep was no longer anywhere around. I stood it as long as I could; then I got up and walked around the bed to the window and looked out. The window was a casement type without screens, standard in this country. There was something strange and a little shocking about standing at a second-floor window completely exposed to the great outdoors. You get so used to looking at the world through wire netting that you feel naked and unsafe when it's taken away.

Although it was midnight, the sky was still lighter than it would have been in Santa Fe, New Mexico: we have black night skies at home, with brilliant stars. This wasn't much of a display, by comparison. My window faced a

– lake. I'd forgotten the name, but it would end in -jдrvi, since jдrvi was the Finnish word for lake and, as Lou had pointed out, the Finnish influence was strong here, within a hundred miles of the border. Standing there, I could feel geography crowding me-a feeling you never get at home. But here I was standing in a wedge of one little country, Sweden, thrust up between two others, Norway and Finland. And behind Finland was Russia and the arctic port of Murmansk…

A movement in the bushes drew my attention, and Lou Taylor came into sight some distance away. She'd left her coat in her room, apparently. With her dark hair, in her black dress, she was almost invisible. By the time I saw her, it was too late for me to duck out of sight. She was already looking up toward my window, where my face would be shining like a neon sign against the blackness of the room behind me. She turned quickly to warn the person with her, but he didn't catch the signal in time. As he straightened up, after ducking a branch, I recognized the big, footballplayer shape of the man I'd met in her Stockholm hotel room: Jim Wellington.

I stood therewatching them. Having already been seen, ~they took time to finish whatever they'd been talking about.

She asked a question. Whatever she wanted, he wasn't giving it. He turned and disappeared into the bushes. She made her way into the clear, with due regard for her dress and nylons and fragile shoes. She vanished around the corner of the hotel without looking up at me again.

It was getting cold in the room. I closed the window and drew the shade. The bed didn't attract me any more strong]y than before. I found my dressing gown, put it on, and turned on the light. I stood for a moment looking at the films from the day's shooting lined up on the bureau: five rolls of color and three of black-and-white. This didn't actually mean that I'd taken more subjects in Kodachrome; on the contrary, I'd taken less, but color is trickier than black-and-white and therefore I habitually protect each color exposure by bracketing it with two others, one longer and one shorter. It's cheaper in the long run than going back for retakes.