“I don’t understand!” he said sternly.
Lel barked twice and went out into the lobby.
“Aha,” said the owner, standing up. “Someone’s arrived.”
We followed Lel. We were flush with the spirit of hospitality. Lel was standing by the front door. Strange scratching and whining sounds were coming from the other side. I grabbed the owner’s hand.
“Bear!” I whispered. “A grizzly. Do you have a gun? Quickly!”
“That’s no bear, I’m afraid,” the owner said in his dull voice. “It’s HIM. At last. We need to unlock it.”
“We do not!” I said.
“We do. He paid for two full weeks, but only stayed one. We have no right. They’ll take away my license.”
The sound of scraping and whimpering came from behind the door. Lel was acting strangely: he stood with his side to the door, staring at it with an inquisitive expression, and giving the air a big sniff from time to time. In my opinion, this was exactly how a dog would behave when confronted with a ghost for the first time. While I was searching agonizingly for a good reason not to open the door, the owner came to his own decision. He bravely reached out and slid the bolt open.
The door opened, and a snow-caked figure slowly collapsed at our feet. All three of us rushed towards him, dragging him into the lobby and turning him onto his back. The snow-caked man groaned and stretched out. His eyes were closed and his long nose was white.
Without losing a second, the owner burst into a frenzy of activity. He woke up Kaisa, ordered her to heat up some water, poured a glass of hot port down the stranger’s throat, rubbed his face with a wool mitten, and then announced that we needed to get him in the shower. “Peter—armpits,” he ordered. “I’ll get the legs.” I carried out his order, experiencing no small shock when I saw that the stranger was missing an arm, his right one, up to the shoulder. We dragged the poor guy into the shower and lay him on the bench, at which point Kaisa ran in wearing only a nightgown, and the owner told me that he would take it from here.
I went back to the fireplace and finished my port. My head was totally clear; I was capable of analyzing and comparing events with unusual speed. The stranger’s clothes were out of season. A short jacket, flared pants and dress shoes. Only someone who was traveling by car would wear something like that to a place like this. Which means that something had happened to the car, and he’d been forced to make his way to the inn on foot. No doubt over quite a distance, considering how exhausted and cold he looked. Then I understood. It was obvious: he’d been coming here by car, and got hit by the avalanche at Bottleneck. So this was Hinkus’s friend! We had to wake up Hinkus… Maybe there were still people back at the car, who’d been wounded and couldn’t move. Maybe they were already dead… Hinkus had to know…
I ran out of the den and up to the second floor. As I passed the shower, I heard the water gushing fiercely and the owner chastising Kaisa for her stupidity in a fierce whisper. The hallway light was out; I spent quite a while finding the switch, and then even longer knocking on Hinkus’s door. Hinkus wasn’t answering. Well, then, he must still be on the roof! I was horrified. Had he fallen asleep up there? What if he’d frozen! I rushed frantically up the attic stairs… there he was, sitting on the roof. He was sitting in the same position as before, bundled up, with his head hidden in the huge collar and his hands pulled into their sleeves.
“Hinkus!” I shouted.
He didn’t move. I ran up to him and shook his shoulder. I couldn’t believe it. Hinkus collapsed, gently giving way beneath my hand.
“Hinkus!” I cried in agitation, involuntarily trying to catch him.
The coat opened, and out fell some clumps of snow and the fur hat; only then did I realize that this wasn’t Hinkus: it was just a snowman with his fur coat wrapped around it. That was the moment when I sobered up at last. I looked quickly around me. The small bright moon was hanging directly over my head, and I could see everything, as if it were day. There were many sets of footprints on the roof, but they were all the same: it was impossible to tell whose was whose. The snow beside the chaise longue had been trampled, scattered and dug through—maybe because of a scuffle, maybe in order to gather snow for the snowman. The snow-covered valley was white and clear as far as the eye could see, the dark stripe of the road led north before disappearing in the blue-gray fog that was hiding the mouth of Bottleneck.
Stop, I thought, attempting to get a hold of myself. Let’s try and figure out why Hinkus needed all these props. He wanted to make us think he was sitting on the roof, of course. Meanwhile, he’d been somewhere else, doing something completely different… the tuberculosis was fake, he wasn’t such a sad-sack… But what was he doing, and where? I examined the roof again thoroughly, attempting to make some sense of the footprints, but I couldn’t understand anything; I searched through the snow but found only a pair of bottles—one of which was empty, and the other of which still had a little brandy in it. It was the undrunk brandy that really got to me. I knew that things had to be really serious if Hinkus was willing to throw away five crowns’ worth of brandy. I slowly went back down to the second floor; I knocked on Hinkus’s door again, and again no one answered. Just in case, I tried the handle. The door opened. Ready for anything, and with my hand held out in front of me in order to ward off any possible attacks from the darkness, I went in and, after fumbling hurriedly for the switch, turned on the light. Everything in the room looked the same as it had been before: the trunks stood in their old places, though both of them were open. Hinkus wasn’t there, of course: but I hadn’t expected to find him here. I sat down next to the trunks and carefully went through them again. They were also exactly as they had been, with one small exception: the gold watch and Browning were both gone. If Hinkus had fled, he would have taken the money. It was a good-sized wad, heavy. That meant he was here. Or, if he’d left, that he intended to return.
One thing was clear to me: a crime was about to be committed. What kind of crime? A murder? Burglary? I quickly rejected the idea of murder. I simply couldn’t imagine anyone killing anybody here, or think of why they’d do it. But then I remembered the note that they’d slipped Du Barnstoker, and began to feel sick. Though it was clear from the note that they would only kill Du Barnstoker if he tried to run away…
I turned off the light and went out into the hallway, closing the door behind me. I went to Du Barnstoker’s room and tried the handle. The door was locked. Then I knocked. No one answered. I knocked a second time and put my ear against the keyhole. Vaguely, an obviously half-asleep Du Barnstoker’s voice called back: “One minute, I’m just…” The old man was not only alive, he wasn’t preparing his escape. I didn’t want to have to explain myself to him, so I jumped into the stairwell and pressed myself against the wall beneath the attic stairs. A minute later I heard the key snap, and the door creak. Du Barnstoker’s voice said, in amazement, “Strange…” The door creaked again, the key clicked. Everything was okay—at least for now.