He jammed his chin down on his chest, and his hands into the pockets of his brown jumpsuit. “Didn't sell anybody any bum stocks either,” he finished in a mutter, but without rancor.
"You loved him a lot, didn't you?” John asked.
"Well, sure I loved him.” He began to say more but stopped. He pinched his long, lumpy nose between thumb and forefinger.
Minor asked another question. “Do you think Dr. Henckel has a point when she says Professor Tremaine's to blame for taking your brother and the others out on the ice when there was danger of an avalanche?"
"Didn't know she said it."
"She had a Park Service report on it,” John said. “She was showing it to you and Dr. Judd a few nights ago. “I understand she gave it to you to read."
"She did?” Pratt's eyebrows drew together. “In the bar? Is that what that was?"
"You didn't read it?"
"I looked at it. Didn't see much point in reading it. That was all over and done with a long time ago."
"Do you still have it?” Minor asked.
"No, I probably threw it away. Maybe it's in my room. Be glad to look for it, if you want."
"Please do,” Minor said. “So you don't hold Tremaine responsible for the death of your brother?"
The pipe had gone out. Pratt leaned over, using a small folding knife to scrape the sour-smelling Bottle into an ashtray, taking his time. “Now look,” he said reasonably, deliberately, keeping his eyes on his work. “I didn't kill Tremaine, and my brother didn't kill this Fisk or anybody else. I don't hold with grudges, and neither did Jimmy. There's more important things in life."
"I'm glad to hear you say it,” Minor said pleasantly.
Pratt nodded and gathered his long legs under him. “That it, then?"
"One more thing,” John said. “Any objection to letting us into your room?"
"Guess not,” Pratt said. Then a moment later: “What for?"
"I just want to test for myself the kind of sounds that come through from Tremaine's room."
"Sure.” He dug in a zippered leg pouch for his key and handed it to John. “There you go. You can leave it at the desk."
"You can come with us. It'd probably be better if you did."
"No, thanks. You boys go ahead and do your job. I'll go and be first in the chow line."
John stood by Pratt's bed while Minor followed his instructions, working the shower next door in Tremaine's bathroom. As Pratt had told them, turning off the water produced a hollow double clank in the pipes, sufficient to awaken someone drowsing in Pratt's room. Neither the tap at the sink nor the toilet produced similar noises.
He got up, went into Pratt's bathroom, and knocked on the wall.
"Hello?” Minor said on the other side, his measured voice distinct.
"Fine!” John yelled. “Now try it from the bedroom.” He heard the floor creak as Minor left the bathroom, but nothing more.
A few seconds later the floor creaked again and Minor returned to Tremaine's bathroom. “Could you hear me?” he called through the wall.
"Not a thing,” John called back.
"Which seems to mean,” he told Minor a few moments later, as they clumped along the wooden walkway back to the main building, “that Tremaine'd just taken a shower when he heard a noise in his room-"
"Or maybe heard it while he was still in the shower, and turned the water off."
"No, because Pratt said four or five minutes went by after the shower got turned off."
"Assuming Pratt's telling the truth."
"True. Anyway, Tremaine calls out a hello and then-what?"
"Presumably he doesn't get an answer, he comes out of the bathroom, and he's killed by the intruder he's discovered."
"Doing what?"
"Looking for the manuscript, I suppose."
"Maybe,” John said.
"What else?"
"I'm not sure, Julian. I need to think about this some more.” They reached the lodge building and trotted up the short flight of steps. “Lunchtime."
"Shall we stop by the Icebreaker Lounge first?"
"Little early in the day, isn't it? Anyway, the bar doesn't open till five. I've got some vodka in my room if you can't make it till then."
"Very amusing, John. As a matter of fact I had something else in mind."
Chapter 17
But I don't know who those bones belonged to,” Professor Worriner said simply. “I never did, except for one of them."
Gideon restrained his dismay. “But the article said you identified them as James Pratt's and Steven Fisk's. You mean the paper got it wrong?"
"I'm afraid they slightly misrepresented what I said. Tell me, have you found the popular press particularly reliable in such matters?” He smiled, his gentle gray eyes suddenly lighting up. “Let me see, don't I recall a recent reference to some of your remarks in one of the national tabloids…?"
Gideon winced. Six months earlier he had given an abstruse all-university lecture ("Human Evolution: A Non-teleological Perspective") in which his thesis had been that, while the “logic” of evolution was comprehensible looking backwards, you couldn't use it to look ahead. Evolution-that is, adaptation-didn't “advance” or “progress"; it responded to the pressures of the moment. If there were a biological or reproductive advantage to being large, for example, humans would get larger. If there were an advantage to being small, they would get smaller. Somebody in the audience had raised his hand and asked a question: You mean we could all evolve into midgets? Yes, Gideon had said. Well, how long would something like that take, somebody else had wanted to know. It would depend, Gideon had told him. lf, for some unimaginable reason, everyone over five feet tall stopped having children right now, today, six-footers could be biological oddities in a few generations; by 2050, say.
Somehow, Inside Dope had gotten hold of it. “Scientist Says We're Becoming Midgets!” the headline had screamed from the checkout stands. “By A.D. 2050 Humans Will Be Four-Foot Freaks, Claims U. of Washington Professor.” With Gideon's picture. Copies were still making the rounds on campus. He'd be lucky if he lived it down by 2050.
"No, not wholly reliable,” he said, laughing. “All right, just what did you say?"
"I said that one of the fragments, which consisted of a third of a mandible, including two teeth, had been conclusively identified as coming from Steven Fisk-"
"Identified from dental work?"
"Of course. How else are we poor anthropologists to make conclusive identifications? We had a time tracking down the dentist, I can tell you that.” He broke a chocolate-chip cookie in half, then snapped one of the halves into two smaller pieces, placed one in his mouth, and chewed deliberately. The thin sheet of platysmal muscle at the front of his throat jumped. “There were several other fragments: the superior half of a right scapula, an almost complete left humerus, and a mid-shaft segment of a second left humerus. All were male."
"Two left humeri? So you knew for sure you had at least two people."
"Precisely. Two men, as I think you'll agree when you see the fragments. And inasmuch as there were only two males lost in the avalanche, and we already knew from the teeth that one was Steven Fisk, the other had to be James Pratt. Nothing too esoteric there."
"But, except for the mandible, you couldn't say which bones belonged to which man."
"No, not with certainty. Well, not even with uncertainty, if it comes to that. That is exactly what I put in my report, but the press was a little carried away."
"Only a little, really. You did determine that you had the remains of two people, and you knew who they were. You just couldn't apportion the fragments piece by piece.” He shrugged. “Same problem I'm having."
"It's kind of you to put it that way, but it throws a monkey wrench in what you hoped to learn, doesn't it? Would you care for some more coffee? It's Viennese roast; decaffeinated, I'm afraid."