"I didn't know this person was a friend of yours, Dr. Hemlock."
"He's in charge of the climb."
"Oh?" the manager asked with extravagant innocence. "Is someone going to climb our mountain?"
"Stop it."
"Perhaps Herr Bowman could find a place in the village? There are cafes that—"
"He's going to stay here."
"I am afraid that is impossible, Herr Doctor." The manager's lips pursed tightly.
"All right." Jonathan drew out his wallet. "Make up my bill."
"But, if you leave..."
"There will be no climb. That's correct. And your incoming guests will be very angry."
The manager was the essence of agonized indecision.
"Do you know what I think?" Jonathan said. "I think I saw one of your clerks sorting a batch of telegrams in your inner office. It's possible that Mr. Bowman's was among them. Why don't you go back and look them over."
The manager grasped at the offer to save face and left them with a perfunctory bow.
"You met the others yet?" Ben asked, looking around the lobby with the undisguised distaste of a competitor.
"They haven't arrived."
"No shit? Well, they'll be in tomorrow then. Personally, I can use the rest. My hoof's been acting up the last couple of days. Gave it too much workout while you were at the place."
"How's George Hotfort?"
"Quiet."
"Is she grateful that I didn't turn her over to the authorities?"
"I guess. She ain't the kind to burn candles."
The manager returned and performed a masque of surprised delight. He had found Ben's telegram after all, and everything was in order.
"You want to go directly to your room?" Jonathan asked as the uniformed bellhops collected Ben's luggage.
"No. Guide me to the bar and buy me some beer." They talked late into the night, mostly about the technical problems of the Eigerwand. Twice Ben brought up the Mellough incident, but both times Jonathan turned him back, saying they could talk about it later, maybe after the climb. Since he had arrived in Switzerland, Jonathan had come more and more to believe that he would make the climb. For long periods of time, he forgot what his real mission was. But this fascination was too expensive a luxury, so before turning in for the night he asked to borrow again all the correspondence between Ben and the climbers who would arrive the next morning.
Jonathan sat up in his bed, the letters arranged in three stacks on the blankets, one for each man. His concentration circumscribed by the tight pool of his bedside lamp, sipping at a glass of Laphroaig, he tried to fashion personalities from the scant evidence of the correspondence.
Jean-Paul Bidet. Forty-two years old. A wealthy manufacturer who had by dint of unsparing work expanded his father's modest shop into France's foremost producer of aerosol containers. He had married rather late, and had discovered the sport of mountain climbing while on his honeymoon in the Alps. He had no climbing experience outside Europe, but his list of Alpine conquests was formidable. He had made most of his major climbs in the company of famous and expensive guides, and to a degree it was possible to accuse him of "buying" the peaks.
From the tone of his letters, written in a businessman's English, Bidet seemed congenial, energetic, and earthy. Jonathan was surprised to discover that he intended to bring his wife along to witness his attempt at the meanest mountain of them all.
Karl Freytag. Twenty-six years old. Sole heir to the Freytag industrial complex specializing in commercial chemicals, particularly insecticides and herbicides. He had begun climbing during college holidays, and before he was twenty he had formed an organization of German climbers over which he presided and which published a most respectable quarterly review of mountaineering. He was its editor-in-chief. There was a packet of offset reprints from the review that described his climbs (in the third person) and accented his capacities as a leader and route-finder.
His letters were written in a brittle, perfect English that did not admit of contractions. The underlying timbre suggested that Freytag was willing to cooperate with Herr Bowman and with the international committee that had sponsored the climb, but the reader was often reminded that he, Freytag, had conceived of the climb, and that it was his intention to lead the team on the face.
Anderl Meyer. Twenty-five years old. He had lacked the means to finish his medical studies in Vienna and had returned to earning his living as a carpenter with his father. During the climbing season he guided parties up his native Tyrolean Alps. This made him the only professional in the team. Immediately upon being forced to leave school, Meyer had become obsessed with climbing. By every means from scrimping to begging, he had managed to include himself in most of the major climbs of the last three years. Jonathan had read references to his activities in the Alps, New Zealand, the Himalayas, South America, and most recently in the Atlas Range. Every article had contained unreserved praise for his skill and strength (he was even referred to as a "young Hermann Buhl") but several writers had alluded to his tendency to be a loner and a poor team man, treating the less gifted members of his parties as anchors against his progress. He was what in gambling would be called a plunger. Turning back was, for him, the ultimate disgrace; and he would make moves on the face that would be suicide for men of more limited physical and psychic dispositions. Similar aspersions had been cast on Jonathan, during his years of active climbing.
Jonathan could form only the vaguest image of Meyer's personality from the letters. The veil of translation obscured the man; his English was stilted and imperfect, often comically obtuse because he translated directly from the German syntax, dictionary obviously in hand, and there were occasional medleys of compounded nouns that strung meaninglessly along until a sudden terminal verb tamped them into a kind of order. One quality, however, did emerge through the static of translation: a shy confidence.
Jonathan sat in bed, looking at the piles of letters and sipping his Scotch. Bidet, Freytag, Meyer. And whoever it was might have been alerted by Mellough.
KLEINE SCHEIDEGG: July 9
He slept late. By the time he had dressed and shaved, the sun was high and the dew was off the meadow that tilts up toward the north face of Eiger. In the lobby he passed a chatting group of young people, their eyes cleansed, their faces tightened by the crisp thin air. They had been out frolicking in the hills, and their heavy sweaters still exuded a chill.
The hotel manager stepped around the desk and spoke confidentially. "They are here, Herr Doctor. They await you."
Jonathan nodded and continued to the dining room entrance. He scanned the room and discovered the group immediately. They sat near the floor-to-ceiling windows that gave onto the mountain; their table was flooded with brilliant sunlight, and their colorful pullovers were the only relief from the dim and sparsely populated room. It looked as though Ben had assumed, as the natural privilege of his experience and age, social command of the gathering.
The men rose as Jonathan approached. Ben made introductions.
"Jonathan Hemlock, this here's Gene-Paul Bidette." He clearly was not going to have anything to do with these phony foreign pronunciations.
Jonathan offered his hand. "Monsieur Bidet."
"I have looked forward to meeting you, Monsieur Hemlock." Bidet's slanted peasant eyes were frankly evaluative.
"And this is Karl Freytag." Amused, Jonathan matched the unnecessary force of Freytag's grip. "Herr Freytag?"
"Herr Doctor." He nodded curtly and sat down. "And this here's Anderil Mayor." Jonathan smiled professional approval into Meyer's wry, clear blue eyes. "I've read about you, Anderl," he said in German.
"I've read about you," Anderl answered in his soft Austrian accent.