It was addressed: Tom Halliday, Ice Cold Mine, via Haines Junction, Yukon, Canada. ‘You know her writing better than I do,’ I muttered, knowing it was hers and wondering how it had got there. Tony couldn’t have put it there,’ I said. ‘I’d have seen him.’ And I told him my movements.
‘Who then?’ His voice trembled, a note of panic almost.
‘Where is she?’ I asked.
He hesitated. Then suddenly he thrust it at me. ‘They’ve got her, the bloody scheming bastards. They’ve got her hidden up somewhere, and now…’ His voice was breaking, his face screwed up, on the edge of tears. ‘Read it,’ he cried. ‘You read it. Then tell me what I ought to do. My God! I never thought …’ And he suddenly collapsed on to the bench beside me and buried his face in his hands.
The kettle had been whistling urgently and he got up again, slowly. ‘If it wasn’t you slipped it under the door, and it wasn’t Tony — who? Do you think that sound I heard…?’ But he shook his head. ‘I’d have seen anybody — anybody as close as that.’ I don’t think he expected me to answer; he was really asking himself the questions as he reached for the tea tin, turned off the gas and poured water into the pot, his movements those of a man in a daze. ‘Sugar?’
I shook my head, staring down at the envelope, the letter underneath it a scribbled scrawl in a neat sloped hand. It was Miriam’s writing all right:
Darling — I was picked up in Vancouver and brought here by boat almost a fortnight ago, just as I thought I had found you a backer for your Stone Slide project. Enclosed is my wedding ring as proof I am held here, surety apparently that you will carry out instructions already given you. ‘More personal reminders’ of my presence here could follow if they don’t hear from you soon. I don’t know who these people are or what their purpose is, but for God’s sake do what it is they want and get me out of here. You are mixed up in something you didn’t tell me about and I am very, very frightened. Love — M.
A steaming mug of tea had appeared at my elbow and I drank it gratefully, the scalding liquid almost burning my mouth as I read that wretched little note through again, still finding it almost unbelievable. And it didn’t sound like Miriam. ‘Where’s the ring? She says she enclosed a ring.’ He held it out to me, a platinum circle that gleamed dully in the light from the dirty window, the pattern so worn it was almost smooth. Probably it had been dictated to her, the last part anyway. ‘Is she right?’ I asked. ‘About you being mixed up in something? You said something about being in trouble.’
‘Did I?’ He had sat himself down beside me. ‘What do I do now? What the hell do I do?’ He was talking to himself again.
‘You’d better tell me what it’s all about,’ I said, still staring down at the letter, wondering how it had got here, where it had come from. Where had she written it? They’d taken her there by boat, she said. But almost anywhere on the Canadian coast could be a boat journey. And who were they? ‘Well?’ I asked.
He shook his head, not saying anything.
‘You’re in trouble and you don’t know what to do. How the hell can I help you if I don’t know what the trouble is?’ His hands were trembling, his eyes wide and staring blankly. He had put on a thick polo-necked sweater, but he was still shivering, his body seemingly stricken with ague, his mind gone into some sort of limbo of its own.
I put my hand on his arm, gripping it hard. ‘Somebody is holding your wife hostage — who? Do you know?’ I had to shout the question at him again before my words registered, and all he did was shake his head. ‘Why?’ I shouted at him. ‘What do they want you to do?’
He shook his head again, not answering.
‘You said you were in trouble — what trouble?’
He rounded on me then, his face distorted. ‘Shut up and let me think, can’t you? I got to think. I got to think — what to do.’ And suddenly he was crying, his nerves all gone to hell and his shoulders heaving to the sobs that shook his whole body.
I picked up the letter, thrusting it under his nose. ‘Read it,’ I said. ‘Read it again. It’s your wife, and she’s in danger. Have you got yourself mixed up in something political — extremists?’
‘Political extremists?’ He looked at me, staring wildly and neighing that silly laugh of his.
Terrorists then?’
He just stared at me. ‘You d-don’t understand,’ he breathed.
‘It’s you that don’t seem able to understand,’ I told him, waving the letter at him. ‘This is Miriam — your wife. She’s in danger, and she’s asking you for help.’
‘Later,’ he mumbled. ‘We’ll talk about it later.’
‘I won’t be here later.’
‘Yes you will — I need you.’ He was still mumbling, but his voice had taken on a higher pitch. ‘And M-Miriam — she’ll be all right.’
‘Will she? How do you know?’ And once more I asked him what it was they wanted.
He shook his head, and when I tried to insist, he turned on me, his voice suddenly losing all control as he screamed, ‘You stupid little fornicating bastard, do you think I don’t care? I’m worried sick, so shut up. Shut up, d’you hear, and let me think. Miriam will be all right. I’ll see to that — somehow.’ He said that slowly, getting to his feet and pouring more tea.
I looked at my watch. It was almost three-thirty. But when I said it was time I started back, he insisted I stayed the night. ‘There’s spare bunks, plenty of food, and I need you, Philip.’ He was pleading now. ‘I really do. I need you. There’s legal matters …’ His voice trailed away as he finished his tea, gulping it down as though he was half dead of thirst. ‘It’s the Cascades, you see. The BC property. That’s what they want.’
‘Wolchak?’ I asked.
‘Wolchak?’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know who it is.’
‘He mentioned a man named Mandola.’
‘You saw Wolchak, did you?’
I nodded.
‘And that’s how you know about Mandola?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mandola’s one of them — but whether he’s the boss man …’ He gave a little shrug. ‘More tea?’
I shook my head.
He got up, taking the mugs to the sink. ‘I’ll tell Mac to get across to the main track right away. Tony can let Kevin know you’ll be down tomorrow.’ He had reached up to a line of wall hooks hung with old anoraks and mud-stained overalls and oilskins, taking down a hand transmitter and moving to the door. ‘Won’t be long,’ he said. ‘Works better a few hundred yards away on the trail to the Squaw. We’re a bit blocked here for shortwave transmission into the Gully.’ He shut the door and I was left on my own, wondering whether to stay on with him or go down with Tarasconi. There was still time if I went now. I could be back at the Lodge and phoning the police by six at the latest.
But would that help Miriam? I picked up that note and read it again, seeing her shut up in some little hut somewhere on the coast of BC, or it could be in America, across the Strait of Juan de Fuca in the State of Washington. If only she had been able to tell us what sort of a boat, how long the passage. As it was, I had nothing to tell the police. Her note would merely alert them to Tom’s presence in the Yukon, and it wasn’t for me, his solicitor, to do that when I knew he was in trouble.
I got up and went to the door to knock out my pipe. The wind had dropped and it was less cold. I could see him standing in silhouette against a westering gleam of sun where a bench end slipped over the shoulder of the mountain, the walkie-talkie close against his face, the aerial antenna standing like a stalk growing out of his head.
I refilled my pipe, still uncertain what to do, knowing only that it was Miriam I had to consider, but quite unable to think of anything I could do, except contact the authorities. I saw Tom push the aerial down into the body of the transmitter and start back along the track towards me, and I think at that moment I had almost decided to keep my rendezvous with Tony and get back to the Lodge and a telephone as soon as possible. But then he reached me, his gaunt face drained of colour, a scared look in his eyes. ‘Two men,’ he said. ‘Both with rifles. Mac saw them going down the main track.’