A brown circular object lay in the palm of his hand. She took it, placed it in the palm of her own hand, straightened-still on her knees-and swung in a slow semicircle showing us what she held. Then, her hand outstretched towards him, she looked at Allen. We all looked at Allen. The brown leather button in her hand matched the still remaining buttons on Allen's tom coat.

9

I'm not sure how long the silence went on, a silence that the almost intolerable hiss of the lamps and the ululating moan of the south wind served only to deepen. It must have lasted at least ten seconds, although it seemed many times as long, a seemingly interminable period of time during which nobody moved and nothing moved, not even eyes, for Allen's eyes were fixed on the button in Judith Haynes's hand in fascinated uncomprehension , while every other eye in the room was on Allen. That one small leather-covered button held us all in thrall.

Judith Haynes was the first to move. She rose, very slowly, as if it called for a tremendous effort of both mind and muscle, and stood there for a moment, as if irresolute. She seemed quiet now and very resigned and because this was the wrong reaction altogether I looked past her towards Conrad and Smithy and caught the eyes of both. Conrad lowered his eyes briefly as if in acknowledgement of a signal, Smithy shifted his gaze towards Judith Haynes and when she began to move away from the body of her husband both of them moved casually towards each other to block off. her clearly intended approach to Allen. Judith Haynes stopped, looked at them and smiled.

"That won't be necessary at all," she said. She tossed the button to Allen who caught it in involuntary reaction. He held it in his hand, staring at it, then looked up in perplexity at Judith Haynes, who smiled again.

"You'll be needing that, won't you?" she said and walked in the direction of her allocated room.

I relaxed and was aware that others were doing so also, for I could hear the slow exhalation of breaths of those standing closest to me. I looked away from Judith Haynes to Allen and that was a mistake because I had relaxed too soon, I'd been instinctively aware that the seemingly quiet and sad resignation had been wholly out of character but had put it down to the effects of the shattering shock she had just received.

"You killed him, you killed him!" Her voice was an insane scream but no more insane than the demented fury with which she was attacking Mary Darling who had already stumbled over backwards, the other woman falling on top of her, clawing viciously with hooked fingers. "You bitch, you whore, you filthy slut, you-you murderess! You're the person who killed him! You killed my husband! You! You!" Sobbing and shrieking maniacal invective at the terrified and momentarily paralysed Mary Darling who had already lost her big horn-rimmed spectacles, Judith Haynes wound one hand round the unfortunate Mary's hair and was reaching for her eyes with the other when Smithy and Conrad got to her. Both were big strong men but she fought with such crazed and tigerish ferocity -and they had at the same time to cope with two equally hysterical dogs that it took them quite some seconds to pull her clear and even then she clung with the strength of madness to Mary's hair, a grip that Smithy ruthlessly and without hesitation broke by squeezing her wrist until she shrieked with pain. They dragged her upright and she continued to scream hysterically with all the strength of her lungs, no longer attempting even to mouth words, just that horrible nerve-drilling shrieking like some animal in its dying agony, then the sound abruptly ceased, her legs buckled and Smithy and Conrad eased her to the floor. Conrad looked at me. "Act tiAo?" He was breathing heavily and looked pale.

"No. This is real. Will you please take her to her cubicle?" I looked at the shocked and sobbing Mary but she didn't need any immediate assistance from me, for Allen, his own injuries forgotten, had dropped to his knees beside her, raised her to a sitting position and was using a none-too clean handkerchief to dab at the three deep and ugly scratches that had been torn down the length of her left cheek. I left them, went into my cubicle, prepared a hypodermic and entered the cubicle where Judith Haynes had been taken. Smithy and Conrad were standing watchfully by and had been joined by Otto, the Count, and Goin. Otto looked at the syringe and caught my arm.

"Is that-is that for my daughter? What are you going to do to her? It's all over now, man-good God, you can see she's unconscious."

"And I'm going to see that she bloody well stays that way," I said. "For hours and hours and hours. That way it's best for her and best for all of us. All right, I'm sorry for your daughter, she's had a tremendous shock, but medically I'm not concerned with that, I'm just concerned with how best to treat her for the condition she's in now which is frankly unbalanced , unstable, and highly dangerous. Or do you want to have a look at Mary darling again?"

Otto hesitated but Goin, calmly reasonable as always, came to my help.

"Dr. Marlowe is perfectly right, Otto. And it's for Judith's own good, after such a shock a long rest can only help. This is the best thing for her."

I wasn't so sure about that, I'd have preferred a strait jacket, but I nodded my thanks to Goin, administered the injection, helped bundle her into a zipped sleeping bag, saw that she was covered over and above that with a sufficiency of blankets and left her. I took the dogs with me and put them in my own cubicle-I don't much like having animals, especially highly strung ones, in the company of a person under sedation.

Allen had Mary Darling seated on a bench now but was still dabbing her cheek. She'd stopped sobbing now, was just breathing with long quivering in-drawn gasps and, scratches apart, didn't seem much the worse for an experience that must have been as harrowing as it was brief. Lonnie was standing a few feel? away, looking sorrowfully at the girl and shaking his head.

"Poor, poor lassie," he said quietly. "Poor little girl."

"She'll be all right," I said. If I do a halfway job the scratches won't even scar." I looked at Stryker's body and decided that its removal to the tractor shed was clearly the first priority: apart from Lonnie and Allen no one had eyes for anything else and even although out of sight would not necessarily be out of mind the absence of that mutilated body could hardly fail to improve morale.

I wasn't talking about young Mary." Lonnie had my attention again.

I was thinking about Judith Haynes. Poor, lonely lassie." I looked at him closely but I should have known him well enough by then to realise that he was incapable of either dissimulation or duplicity: he looked as sad as he sounded.

"Lonnie," I said, "you never cease to astonish me." I lit the oil stove, put some water on to heat, then turned to Stryker. Both Smithy and Conrad were waiting and words were unnecessary. Lonnie insisted on coming with us, to open doors and hold a flashlight: we left Stryker in the tractor shed and went back to the main cabin. Smithy and Conrad went inside but Lonnie showed no intentions of following them. He stood there as if deep in thought, seemingly oblivious of a wind now strong enough to have to lean against, of a thickening driving snow now approaching the proportions of a blizzard, of the intense and steadily deepening cold. I think I'll stay out here a bit," he said. "Nothing like a little fresh air to clear the head."

"No, indeed," I said. I took the torch from him and directed its beam at the nearest hut. In there. On the left." Wherever else Olympus Productions may have fallen short in the commissariat department, it hadn't been in the line of alcoholic stimulants.

"My dear fellow." He retrieved his torch with a firm grasp. I personally supervised its storage."