Allen looked up at her in a half-scared astonishment, then shook his head wearily. "I'm sorry, Miss Haynes, I don't know what-"

She hooked her long-nailed fingers into talons and lunged for him but I'd been waiting for it. So had both Goin and Conrad. She struggled like a trapped wildcat, screaming invective at Allen, then suddenly relaxed, her breath coming in harsh, rasping sobs.

"Now then, now then, Judith," Otto said. "There's no-"

"Don't you "now then" me, you silly old bastard!" she screamed. Filial respect was clearly not Judith Haynes's strong point but Otto, though clearly nervous, accepted his daughter's abuse as if it were a matter of course. "Why don't you find out instead what this young swine's done to my husband? Why don't you? Why don't you!" She struggled to free her arms and as she was trying to move away we let her go. She picked up a torch and ran for the door.

"Stop her," I said.

Heyter and Jungbeck, big men both, blocked her flight.

"Let me go, let me out!" she shouted. Neither Heyter nor Jungbeck moved and she whirled round on me. "Who the hell are you to-I want to go out and find Michael!"

"I'm sorry, Miss Haynes," I said. "You're in no condition to go to look for anyone. You'd just run wild, no trace of where you'd been, and in five minutes" time you'd be lost too and perhaps lost for good. We're leaving in just a moment."

She took three quick steps towards Otto, her fists clenched. her teeth showing again.

"You let him push me around like this?" This with an incinerating glare in my direction. "Spineless, that's you, absolutely spineless! Anybody can walk over you!" Otto blinked nervously at this latest tirade but said nothing. "Aren't I supposed to be your bloody daughter? Aren't you supposed to be the bloody boss? God's sake, who gives the orders about here? You or Marlowe?"

"Your father does," Goin said. "Naturally. But, without any disrespect to Dr. Marlowe, we don't hire a dog just to bark ourselves. He's a medical man and we'd be fools not to defer to him in medical matters."

"Are you suggesting I'm a medical case?" All the colour had drained from her cheeks and she looked uglier than ever. "Are you? Are you, then?

A mental case, perhaps?"

Heaven knows I wouldn't have blamed Goin if he'd said "yes" straight out and left it at that but Goin was far too balanced and diplomatic to say any such thing and, besides, he'd clearly been through this sort of crisis before. He said, quietly but not condescendingly: "I'm suggesting no such thing. Of course you're distressed, of course you're overwrought, after all it is your husband that's missing. But I agree with Dr. Marlowe that you're not the person to go looking for him. We'll have him back here all the quicker if you co-operate with us, Judith."

She hesitated, still halfway between hysteria and rage, then swung away. I taped the gash on Allen's head and said: "That'll do till I come back. Afraid I'll have to shave off. a few locks and stitch it." On the way to the door I stopped and said quietly to Goin: "Keep her away from Allen, will you?"

Goin nodded.

"And for heaven's sake keep her away from Mary darling."

He looked at me in what was as close to astonishment as he was capable of achieving. "That kid?"

"That kid. She's next on the list for Miss Haynes's attentions. When Miss Haynes gets around to thinking about it, that is."

I left with the same four as previously. Conrad, the last out, closed the door behind him and said: "Jesus! My charming leading lady. What a virago she is!"

"She's a little upset," I said mildly.

"A little upset! Heaven send I'm in the next county if she ever gets really mad. What the hell do you think can have happened to Stryker?"

I have no idea," I said, and because it was dark I didn't have to assume an honest expression to go with the words. I moved closer to him so that the others, already fanned out in line of search, couldn't hear me.

"Seeing we're such a bunch of odd-balls anyway, I hope an odd request from another odd-ball won't come amiss."

"You disappoint me, Doctor. I thought you and I were two of the very few halfway normal people around here."

"By the prevailing standards, any moderate odd-ball is normal. You know anything of Lonnie's past?"

He was silent for a moment then said: "I've has a past?"

"We all have a past. If you think I mean a criminal past, no. Lonnie hasn't got one. I just want to find out if he was married or had any family. That's all."

"Why don't you ask him yourself?"

"If I felt free to ask him myself, would I be asking you?"

Another silence. "Your name really Marlowe, Doe?"

"Marlowe, as ever was. Christopher Marlowe. Passport, birth certificate, driving licence-they're all agreed on it."

"Christopher Marlowe? just like the playwright, eh?"

"My parents had literary inclinations."

"Uh-huh." He paused again. "Remember what happened to your namesake-stabbed in the back by a friend before his thirtieth birthday?"

"Rest easy. My thirtieth birthday is lost in the mists of time."

"And you're really a doctor?"

"Yes."

"And you're really something else, too?"

"Yes."

"Lonnie. Marital status. Children or no. You may rely on Conrad's discretion."

"Thanks," I said. We moved apart. We were walking to the north for two reasons-the wind, and hence the snow, were to our backs and so progress was easier in that direction, and Allen had come stumbling from that direction. In spite of Allen's professed total lack of recall of what had happened, it seemed likely to me that we might find Stryker also somewhere in that direction. And so it proved.

"Over here! Over here!" In spite of the muffling effects of the snow Hendriks's shout sounded curiously high-pitched and cracked. "I've found him, I've found him!"

He'd found him, all right. Michael Stryker was lying face down in the snow, arms and legs outspread in an almost perfectly symmetrical fashion. Both fists were clenched tight. On the snow, beside his left shoulder, lay a smooth elliptical stone which from its size-it must have weighed between sixty and seventy pounds-better qualified for the name of boulder. I stooped low over this boulder, bringing the torch close, and at once saw the few dark hairs imbedded in the dark and encrusted stain. Proof if proof were required but I hadn't doubted anyway that this was what had been used to smash in the back of Stryker's skull. Death would have been instantaneous;

"He's dead! Jungbeck said incredulously.

"He's all that," I said.

"And murdered!"

"That, too." I tried to turn him over on his back but Conrad and Jungbeck had to lend their not inconsiderable weights before this was done.

His upper lip was viciously split all the way down from the nostril, a tooth was missing and he had a peculiar red and raw looking mark on his right temple.

"By God, there must have been a fight," Jungbeck said huskily. "I wouldn't have thought that kid Allen had had it in him."

"I wouldn't have thought so either," I said.

"Allen?" Conrad said. "I'd have sworn he was telling the truth. Could he-well, do you think it could have happened when he was suffering from amnesia?"

"All sorts of funny things can happen when you've had a bump on the head," I said. I looked at the ground around the dead man, there were footprints there, not many, already faint and blurred from the driving snow: there was no help to be gained from that quarter. I said: "Let's get him back."

So we carried the dead man back to the camp and it wasn't, in spite of the uneven terrain and the snow in our faces, as difficult a task as it might have been for the same reason that I'd found it so difficult to turn him over-the limbs had already begun to stiffen, not from the onset of rigor mortis, for it was too soon for that yet, but from the effects of the intense cold. We laid him in the snow outside the main cabin. I said to Hendriks: "Go inside and ask Goin for a bottle of brandy-say that I sent you back for it, that we need it to keep us going." It was the last thing I would ever have recommended to keep anyone warm in bitter outdoor cold, but it was all I could think of on the spur of the moment. "Tell Goin -quietly-to come here."