The Mammoth Book of Terror

DAVID CASE WAS BORN in upstate New York and since the early 1960s he has lived in London, as well as spending time in Greece and Spain. His acclaimed collection The Cell: Three Tales of Horror appeared in 1969, and it was followed by Fengriffen: A Chilling Tale, Wolf Tracks zn& The Third Grave, the latter appearing from Arkham House in 1981. More recently, a new collection entitled Brotherly Love and Other Tales of Faith and Knowledge was published by Pumpkin Books.

A regular contributor to the legendary Pan Book of Horror Stories during the early 1970s, his powerful novella “Pelican Cay” in Dark Terrors 5 was nominated for a World Fantasy Award in 2001.

Outside the horror genre, Case has written more than three hundred books under at least seventeen pseudonyms, ranging from mild porn to Westerns. Two of his short stories, “Fengriffen” and the classic werewolf thriller “The Hunter”, were filmed as And Now the Screaming Starts! (1973) and Scream of the Wolf (1974), respectively.

Ramsey Campbell has suggested that “Case’s problem as a writer was that he was ahead of his time: the gruesome violence of his tale ‘Among the Wolves’ can hold its own against the most extreme of today’s horror fiction, partly because rather than encouraging the reader to gawk at the spectacle, the gruesomeness of Case’s tale seeks to make one feel what the victim feels.”

Last published thirty years ago, I am delighted to present this disturbing novella to a new generation of horror fans . . .

THERE WAS SOMETHING ABOUT the killings which went beyond horror. All murder is horrible enough, of course, but one recognizes contingencies, one comprehends motivations and provocations and circumstances, and can understand, objectively, how a man may be driven or guided to murder. I feel I can glimpse into the dark minds which direct murder for profit, can dismember the warped violence of hatred and revenge, can pity the remorse of a killer swept helplessly along on uncharted currents and even, with a chill of grisly perception, understand the mangled patterns of a madman’s mind reflected in mutilation or the insane fear of punishment which drives a sex maniac to destroy his innocent victim in the wake of satiated lust. These things are horrible, indeed, but they are conceivable – are no more than a distortion of normal human emotion, ambition, passion, greed – a magnification of urges which all men feel and most men keep bound and imprisoned in the deepest dungeons of the subconscious, shackled by the sensibilities. Sometimes – all too often – these shadowed impulses strike off the fetters of restraint and burst ravening from the corporal cell to stalk their prey, to command their former gaolers to violence. And then the crime is done. But somehow these murders were different. They invoked a feeling beyond such motivations as rage and fear, beyond even insanity as we have come to define it. It must have been a madman, there can be little doubt of that. No sane mind could have directed such crimes, no creature of chemical balance could have committed them. And yet – how can one express it? – the specific horror of these murders was that they seemed so utterly natural . . .

I knew rather more about these crimes than the average person, through mere circumstance – was in at the start, so to speak; for the morgue was an extension of the museum in which I was pursuing my research. The museum was attached to the university, and the morgue was in awing of the university medical centre. One supposes it was a convenient arrangement. The medical students required cadavers, and unidentified and unclaimed bodies gravitated to the morgue; and for the good of medical progress – but I have no wish to moralize on this point. Things are done, things often are necessary, an accomplished fact is a fact, no more. I mention it only to set the scene, as it were, for my casual and superficial involvement – an involvement, I must admit, due more to morbid curiosity than any more elevated motives. I am a scientist and, quite naturally, I am curious about behaviour which does not fit the natural patterns, which floats suspended at some unexplored level of the sentient sea and defies the tides and waves of society.

I had been doing my research for some time – far longer than originally intended, for research, by its very nature, feeds upon itself and grows, extends and spreads strange and devious branches from the fundamental roots – and so, quite naturally, I came to know a number of people connected with the museum and the university and, by extension, the morgue. I became acquainted with Detective-Inspector Grant of the homicide squad and with Doctor Ramsey who performed the autopsies for the police. With Ramsey, in fact, an arrangement had developed. We found that our homes were quite close, in the same suburb, and in time we began to share the task of driving into town, alternating our motorcars to lessen the traffic and parking difficulties on the campus grounds. He proved an interesting and congenial fellow and the arrangement was very satisfactory. We became more than acquaintances, if less than friends. And it was through Ramsey, indirectly, that I came to see the first body . . .

It was my day to drive and I’d left the museum library and walked across the campus to the medical centre. It was a fine autumn day with brilliant leaves floating like colourful barques on a gentle breeze. Young couples strolled hand in hand across the lawns, and students reclined in the lee of oak and elm, talking of philosophy and love. It was a pleasant setting, slightly tinged with nostalgia – not at all the sort of time and place in which to encounter horror. I went into the medical building and down resounding corridors to Ramsey’s office. He wasn’t there, and his secretary told me he had been summoned to the morgue. She wrinkled her nose at the word and I didn’t blame her. I had no liking for the morgue myself. It was not a place to spend an autumn day. But I went on down the stairs and along a corridor and entered the antechamber, a stark room with a tiled floor and a ramp leading up to street level and large metal doors. It was down this ramp that ambulance and hearse descended to disgorge their still burdens before rising, lightened once again, into the sunlight. It was a place of grim silence and foreshadowing. Worst of all, to me, was the smell – that sharp antiseptic scent. Does any odour smell as much of decay and corruption as antiseptic? It eats at the very core of sensation, invoking the essence of death – of more than death, of that which has never known life. The scent of decay and disease is foul but natural, that of antiseptic carries the stench of sterility. It parted like morbid mist before my passage and dampened my footfalls on the tiles.

I stopped at the glass cubicle.

The attendant looked up reluctantly from a lurid paperback, recognized me and nodded. The nod served to lower his eyes once more to the novel and he was already pursuing his pleasures as he gestured me through. I passed on to the operating-room, where Doctor Ramsey was washing his hands at the sink. His white gown was splattered with dark stains and he washed his hands carefully, rubbing them together like struggling serpents in soapy froth. There was a slab in the centre of the room and a shrouded form on the slab. Ramsey looked up with a solemn face and nodded. I advanced, avoiding the slab.

“Will you be long?” I asked.

“No. The necropsy is finished. I’m waiting for Grant to arrive. Identification.” The way he said it you could tell he didn’t like that part of it. Maybe he didn’t like any part of it. He took off the blood-stained gown and stuffed it in the hamper.

“No sense letting them see the blood, eh?” he said. “Somehow the relatives always react more to seeing blood on a gown than to seeing the corpse.”

“Accident case?” I asked.

“It was no accident.”

I looked at him. He shrugged.

“The man was strangled,” he said.

“Oh. Hence Inspector Grant of homicide.”

“Exactly.”

“I’ll wait outside.”

Ramsey moved his head.

“Yes. An unpleasant case. The only relative is a niece. Young, I gather. I hope they weren’t very close. It’s always rough when they were. And pointless.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“We know who the man was. No doubt of that. But legal procedure demands positive identification by a relative. It’s funny how authority must always punish the innocent in the search for the guilty. Or maybe not funny.”

“Indicative maybe.”

“Maybe,” he said, and showed a sad smile. I turned to leave, and just then Grant came through past the cubicle. A uniformed policeman and a girl followed. Grant’s face was set and the cop looked stern. The girl was quite young and gazed around the room with big eyes. She seemed frightened. Of authority, perhaps. She was also rather pretty – pretty enough for the attendant to raise his attention from the vicarious thrills of his novel and regard her bottom. It struck me as a reaction perfectly suited to an attendant at a morgue. It annoyed me, too. But the man was young and had seen a good many bodies wheeled past his cubicle. Perhaps the sum total of his experience rested in the passage of death, and one must be tolerant.

Grant spoke softly to the girl, gestured to the cop and crossed the room. I noticed that his countenance was set more rigidly than normal and a lock of hair had fallen over his brow. He looked very much the way a police detective is supposed to look.

“Finished?” he asked Ramsey.

“Yes.”

“Lab boys been here?”

“Yes. I sent my report round with them.”

Grant seemed to notice me for the first time. We exchanged quiet greetings and he turned back to Ramsey.

“Anything that will help us?”

“I shouldn’t think so. Must have been in his seventies. Hardening of the arteries, chronic . . .”

“Skip that. We know who he was, we can get those details from the reports. Not that they’ll mean a goddamn thing. I mean any clue as to who did it? Or why?”

“Nothing. Nothing I could see. Not my job.”

“It was strangulation, wasn’t it?”

“Oh yes. Definitely.”

Something in the doctor’s tone caused Grant to look sharply at him.

“I mean his neck wasn’t broken. He was asphyxiated. Must have been a rough death.”

“They’re all rough,” said Grant, and his eyes shifted towards the girl. She was standing just inside the door, very pale, very frightened. The attendant was still regarding her. “This is the rough part for us. The identification. The girl’s only nineteen, hardly knew the old boy, and we have to put her through this. Well . . .”

He gestured. The uniformed cop took the girl’s arm and led her forward. Ramsey walked over to the head of the slab and Grant stood beside the girl. His shoulders shifted. I had the impression he wanted to put his arm around her. But he didn’t. He was a policeman and he couldn’t. He nodded and Ramsey drew the sheet down. He drew it down only enough to expose the face and I heard the girl draw her breath in with a sort of whimper. I looked down. I was surprised to see how old the man had been. I’d heard Ramsey say he was in his seventies, but somehow it hadn’t registered – age seems irrelevant in discussing a corpse. But seeing him was different. Ramsey had obviously done his best to make the face seem relaxed and natural. But even so I could tell he’d died hard. The lips were forced upwards by the pressure of a swollen tongue and the eyes bulged beneath closed lids. The girl stared for a moment and then covered her face with both hands and turned away. Ramsey drew the sheet back over the old grey face.

“Miss?” Grant said gently.

She nodded behind her hands. It wasn’t exactly a positive identification, but it satisfied the formalities, and Grant turned to the cop and said, “Take Miss Smith outside.” He waited until they had left, then sighed.

“This will be a bad one,” he said. “There’s always so much public outrage when some old guy gets knocked off. So much interest and interference. And there seems to be no motive behind this one. Just a nice old guy. Killed in his own room. His landlady sort of took care of him, I guess. Anyway, she found the body this morning. Bringing him a pot of tea. He was on his bed and she thought he was sleeping. Then she looked down . . .well, you know how they look with their tongues sticking out black and their eyes popping. She dropped the teapot, I can tell you that. The killer must have entered by the front door. Just walked in. Had to go right past the landlady’s room, too, but she heard nothing. I think she’s a bit deaf, although she got annoyed when I asked her about her hearing. Must be deaf or she wouldn’t have been annoyed, eh? Just walked in cool as a cucumber and strangled the old boy and walked out again. Obviously not robbery. Nothing missing. Hell, he had nothing worth taking as far as that goes. Lived on a pension. Trimmed the hedge in return for his meals. Had a few friends his own age and drank an occasional glass of beer with them. No enemies as far as we know. No opportunity to make an enemy, the way he lived. Just a quiet old chap waiting to die . . .”

“Well, the waiting is over,” Ramsey said.

“For him, yeah.”

Ramsey and I both looked at Grant.

“For us, it’s just beginning,” he said. “A crime without motives. Well, you know what that means. We wait for the next one.”

“You think he’ll kill again?” I asked.

“The mad ones always do,” Grant told us. He pursed his lips; became aware of the displaced lock over his brow and brushed it back impatiently. “They kill and they kill again, and all we can do is wait until a pattern develops, a general motivation rather than a specific motive. Oh, we get them in the end. The pattern always emerges. But it isn’t a line on a graph or a pin stuck in a map. The pattern is made by the corpses of the victims. A man can have nightmares about that, you know. Any man. You dream of a tapestry, and it’s all vague shapes and forms and then you get closer and see the design is made up of dead men. It isn’t a tapestry then, it’s a filigree of intertwining limbs and arched torsos. And faces. The faces staring out from the pattern, mouths open in silent screams of accusation, eyes wide in sightless fear. A man . . . well, he dreams.”

Grant broke off abruptly; looked rather ashamed of the intensity with which he’d been speaking and jammed a cigarette in his mouth. It was the first time I’d ever thought of a policeman as human, I think. He puffed on the cigarette, his cheeks sinking in, his eyes thoughtful.

“Would you say it was the work of a madman, Doc?” he asked. “I mean, from the examination . . .”

Ramsey looked troubled.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “Some aspects . . . and yet . . . Well, it’s all in my report, Inspector. Black and white. It will mean more if you read it than if I talk about it. A report is always more objective and logical.”

“Sure. I’ll read it.”

Grant turned as if to leave and then turned back, the cigarette in his teeth, his cheeks hollow.

“I’m delaying,” he said. “I don’twant to face that kid again. Have to, of course. But what if she asks me why the old man was killed? People ask cops things like that, you know? And will she feel better if I tell her it was a maniac? That there was no purpose, no reason; that nothing was gained by his death? Oh, I’m supposed to tell her I can’t discuss it at the present time. Against regulations. Not allowed. But will that make her feel better? You drag some kid in and make her look at a dead body . . . ah, hell. It’s not pleasant, Doc.”

Ramsey nodded; looked at his hands thoughtfully. His hands had been scrubbed spotlessly clean, and there was nothing there to see. But he looked. I stepped back, feeling I was intruding. Grant’s eyes had gone blank and his brow furrowed. The ash dropped unnoticed from his cigarette, a long ash that disintegrated when it hit the tiles and looked very improper in that sanitary and disinfected chamber. Somehow the ash looked too clean on that sterile floor.

“I hope to God it wasn’t a maniac,” he said very softly.

Ramsey lowered his eyes. I took another step back. Then Grant turned sharply and walked out with his shoulders square. The attendant did not look up from his book, and it was some time before Ramsey looked up from the floor . . .

We left the building and walked across to the parking lot. Most of the motorcars had gone by this time and the big concrete space looked strangely abandoned and neglected and forlorn. Ramsey hadn’t spoken; he seemed to be pondering something – something both disagreeable and interesting – his expression that of a little boy using a stick to poke at the decaying carcass of a dead animal. He was thinking about the murder, of course, and I sensed he was considering that part which was in his report and which he hadn’t wanted to talk about. It had captured my interest and, by this time, we were close enough to speak openly.

“Well? Was it a madman?” I asked, when we were in the car.

Ramsey shrugged.

I made an elaborate task of fitting the keys into the ignition but did not start the engine.

“There was something – some aspect – in your report, which troubles you, wasn’t there?”

“There was, yes.”

“None of my business, of course . . .”

He waved a hand.

“Oh, it isn’t that. It troubled me because . . . well, because it was unusual. And gruesome. I’ve been a doctor too long to get upset by violence and bloodshed, John. But this was different. It was . . . well, calculated. Ghastly but calculated. The fact itself implied frenzy and rage, and yet there was none of that in evidence. It was as if the killer had coldly and deliberately set about his ghoulish act .

The term startled me.

“Ghoulish?” I asked.

“Oh, perhaps I’m being too dramatic. But . . . well, when behaviour normally associated with maddened impulse and blind fury is suddenly transposed to an act of rational logical expedience . . . well, it shakes a man. We are all prisoners of our own perceptions, you know. We have all learned to see things in a certain way and to interpret them in the light of our training and experience. And when a familiar object or action is suddenly glimpsed out of context . . . seen from a different angle . . . it causes turmoil within our preconceived limitations. It takes a while to get our bearings, to adjust our stance, to focus properly . . .”

“What on earth happened?” I asked.

Ramsey didn’t seem to hear my question.

“When I was younger, I used to ice-skate,” he said, speaking slowly. I blinked. I thought he was deliberately, and rather discourteously, changing the subject, and I reached for the ignition keys. But Ramsey continued. “I learned to skate quite well,” he said. “I was never particularly adept at sports or games but in ice-skating I seemed to be more talented than most. I enjoyed it enormously. I learned to figure-skate, to cut designs across the ice. People used to watch me, admiring my abilities. But there was one strange thing. I wouldn’t skate when it was dark. All the young people used to go to the rink at night, but the very thought gave me a chill. I had a vague dread – a fear even – of what lay beneath the ice at night. I visualized it – saw it in cross-section, as it were. There I was, cutting my smooth figures across the flat, predictable surface of the ice, and beneath that level there was the dark body of unfrozen water. The ice and water were related and yet they were not the same. I fashioned my designs at one plane while beneath me lay uncharted depths and inconceivable forms. So it is with life – with the human mind. We live our allotted years and carve out patterns upon a solitary level of existence, content and satisfied perhaps, and then something happens which opens a window, just for an instant, through the surface and allows us to glimpse the deeper, darker dimensions with which we share existence. We peer through this hole, we see cowled shapes and malformed concepts bloated in the waters and we shudder and look away until the ice freezes over once more and our world is smooth and flat again. Our world is as we know it, as we wish it, and we skate off and leave our pitiful little etching under our runners. And yet, from time to time, those broken areas of open waters appear to disrupt our placid world. Most men shun the glimpse, ignore the depths, pretend the ice is solid. But not all men. In the minds of a few, the hole does not freeze over quickly enough, they stare too long through the break – long enough for something to rise and crawl from that hole and take possession of the upper levels . . .”

Ramsey coughed and looked out through the windscreen.

“Madness?” I said.

“Who knows? Not sanity, surely. But madness belongs to our surface ice. After all, it is we who have defined it. It is our minds which have hardened into ice. What may come up from below, from those regions we have not labelled and named because we have not conceived of them . . .”

He shrugged and we sat in silence for a time. I began to feel uncomfortable and once more reached for the ignition. Ramsey’s eyes slid sideways at the motion.

“Yes, I am surely being too dramatic,” he said. “I was reacting to a personal awareness. The facts scarcely warrant such imagery. And yet they are disturbing. I expect I owe you an explanation.”

I was far too curious to decline. I waited. The keys still waited in the ignition. Ramsey, who seldom smoked, asked for a cigarette. He inhaled and then studied the smoke, as if wondering whether he were doing it properly. Then, his voice very matter-of-fact now, he said, “The remarkable aspect of the murder is this: the victim was killed by human teeth.” And he stared at me.

“Good Lord,” I said.

Ramsey nodded.

“But you told Grant he’d been strangled . . .”

“And so he had. Indeed he had. He had been strangled by the pressure of human jaws.”

I shook my head.

“That is the extraordinary thing – the combination of the two. I’ve seen corpses who had been strangled by human hands before. I’ve heard – although I’ve never encountered it, thank God – of instances where a man, in a fit of blind rage or insane passion, had committed murder with his teeth. But the combination is quite unique. The flesh was not even broken on the throat. There had been no attempt to tear or slash, nor even any bloodshed. The pressure of those jaws had been applied slowly and carefully. Thoughtfully, even. Obviously, the killer did not want his clothing stained by blood. It appears he had used his teeth strictly for convenience. For efficiency.”

“But why?” I asked.

“I can only surmise . . . you see the object of my rambling talk of darkness beneath the ice? Of course. It is exactly that. It is alien to me and I can only draw conclusions within my own frame of reference. They are undoubtedly inaccurate. But this is what I assume. The killer, for some unknown reason, wished to kill this old man. He had no desire to torture the man, for every action was designed to bring death. There were no bruises or contusions to imply a beating, no signs of any attempt to cause suffering, no wounds other than the death grip. The killer, again for unknown reasons, did not use a weapon. I can reconstruct the scene within my own scheme of deduction. The victim was probably sitting or lying on his bed. It was a small furnished room with only a straight backed chair, and I think it likely he used the bed to relax. He was, after all, an old man. He would have wanted what comfort was available to him. But that is irrelevant. The murderer came in through the door. Whether he was known to the victim or not would, of course, alter the preliminary movements. But that, too, is irrelevant here. Whether already there, or forced there, the old man wound up on the bed, on his back. The killer knelt over him, one knee on either side of his chest and placed his hands on the man’s throat. The man struggled – his fingernails were broken where he clawed at the killer’s hands and forearms – but he was old and weak. The killer tightened his grip remorselessly. I feel sure there was no haste, no frenzy. He merely closed his hands with great deliberation. But perhaps this was the first time he’d committed murder with his bare hands. This seems likely. And it always takes a long time, relatively speaking, to choke a man to death. It must seem very long indeed to the killer . . . and to the victim. The old man’s tongue came out, his eyes ballooned, and yet he did not die. It undoubtedly seemed, to the killer, that he had been strangling the man for sufficient time to kill him. And his mind was working, calculating. It occurred to him that he was not able to bring sufficient pressure to bear with his hands – that some air was still passing into those lungs. At this point, most men would surely have panicked. They would have shaken the man violently and snapped his neck, or seized a heavy object – there was a large glass ashtray beside the bed, I understand – and bludgeoned him into unconsciousness. But not our killer. There was no panic, no frenzy. He misjudged the time factor and then he sorted all the aspects out quite logically in his mind and decided that more pressure was necessary to complete the act. And when he had decided this, he followed the rational course . . .”

“Rational,” I whispered.

“Absolutely rational. He lowered his head and placed his mouth upon the man’s throat and proceeded to close his jaws. He didn’t snap, he didn’t tear, he used his teeth not as fangs but as a vice. The human jaws are very powerful. They are capable of exerting incredible strength. And so, after a while, the old man was dead and the killer unclenched his teeth and that was that.”

I stared at Ramsey. I could feel the blood draining from my face, heavy and sluggish. He read the contortion of my countenance and nodded.

“Oh yes,” he said. “It was horrible.”

“To use his teeth for . . . efficiency!”

“Exactly. That was the point that disturbed me.”

“It must have been a maniac,” I said.

“Or a philosopher,” said Ramsey, and he looked at me and I looked at him and after a while I started the motorcar and drove away. The traffic was light. The wind blew and the leaves fell and as the sun slipped down behind the afternoon angles I felt a distinct chill at my spine.

The second murder occurred several days later.

I wasn’t present at the identification this time, and came to hear of the crime through a particularly sensational newspaper story – a borrowed newspaper, as it were, belonging to one of the regular visitors to the museum. Museums seem to be addictive. They each have a set of regulars who have formed the habit of frequent visits, and in the course of my research, I came to meet several of these people time and time again. One of these was a middle-aged gentleman who walked with a stiff leg and used a malacca cane, a quiet and dignified man who always nodded pleasantly, wore well-cut tweeds, and seemed a trifle lonely. I usually encountered him wandering through the natural history rooms but in this instance we met in the library. I had just finished my book and was about to go to lunch when he entered, his cane tapping through the resounding silence of leather and oak. He took a seat next to me and placed a folded newspaper on the table. I glanced over to nod and happened to notice the headlines.

“So the killer has struck again,” I said.

“It would appear so.”

“May I see your paper?”

“Of course.”

He handed it to me and I unfolded it.

“Not the paper I usually take,” he said, smiling, as if to apologize for the gutter press. It did not, in fact, seem the sort of paper this rather dignified gentleman should subscribe to, and I had always avoided it. But it carried a very detailed account of the crime, stressing the sensational aspects. The story had been written from the point of view of one of the children who had discovered the body. He was twelve years old. It was the sort of thing that sold newspapers, no doubt of that.

“It’s a terrible thing,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“These deaths.”

“Death? Oh, death is natural.”

His attitude surprised me.

“Death, yes. But not murder.”

He shrugged and tilted his hand in a gesture.

“Murder? But what is murder other than a form of death? It is only unnatural in legal terms, you know. Murder did not exist before we came to define it; before we made laws against it. It is law which is unnatural, not murder.”

I looked at him, wondering if he were serious. He seemed so.

“I’m sure it didn’t seem natural to the victims,” I said.

“Oh? I should think it did. It may have seemed unjust, but certainly natural. But then, at the moment of death, one does not think in forensic terms.” He smiled slightly. “Death is a jealous concept. It will not tolerate other thoughts to exist with it envelops the mind, it refuses to share with alien sensations.”

“You seem well acquainted with the subject, sir.”

He smiled again.

“Oh, I’ve held the concept of death,” he said. “I’ve been very very close to dying and, I assure you, it was the most natural thing in the world.”

“What manner of death?”

“By violence,” he said. “By violence.”

I could not picture him in conjunction with violence. I waited for him to continue, but he said no more; sat there with that slight smile. After a moment I turned to the newspaper.

The twelve-year-old boy and several other lads had been playing by the river at the old disused wharf. There was always a great deal of debris in the water at that point. The docks and pilings had collapsed over the years and timber and planks had broken away to float in the river while the pilings which still stood acted as a bottleneck, gathering the various flotsam of the river. The children had developed a game in which the debris was an enemy fleet of warships and they were a defending shore battery, using rocks and stones for ordnance. It was an exciting game. The object was to sink the enemy ships before they came into contact with the pilings and the youths were positioned along the embankment and on the dock. They were laughing and shouting and having a fine time. Their artillery was proving accurate and effective and they had already sunk an orange crate destroyer and scored several crashing hits upon an empty oil can escort vessel. Suddenly one shouted a warning. The enemy fleet was being reinforced by a new ship which came floating out from beneath the pilings in treacherous sneak attack. It appeared to be a gnarled log dripping with moss and sea weed and it floated just below the surface. The children decided it must be a nuclear submarine and posed a most serious threat; knew they had to sink it before it could release its missiles and turned the full force of their lithic ordnance on it. They bombarded it from all sides and with every calibre. Small stones cascaded around the object, and larger rocks hit the water with great splashes, causing the submarine to roll and sway in the riled waters. But all the awesome might they unleashed proved ineffective. The submarine was actually rising to the surface. In desperation three of the youths joined forces to lift a huge slab of stone and carry it out on the dock, directly above the menacing ship. The slab was an aeroplane piloted by a suicide pilot willing to give his life for his country. They took careful aim and tilted the stone from the edge of the dock. It fell, turning in the air, and scored a direct hit amidships of the submarine. The vessel seemed to crack in half. The bows and stern rose up and the children howled in victorious glee. And then, very very slowly, the log rolled over and spread out arms and it wasn’t a log at all. The children fell silent. They stared in shocked disbelief. This was something unique, beyond the rules of their game, and for some time they stood lined along the dock, gaping down at the body. It was an old woman. Her body bobbled about and her grey hair spread out like moss around her bloated face, writhing on the surface. And then comprehension came and they ran for help with shouts which were not of gaiety . . .

The police were summoned and they dragged the body out. It was the old flower seller who had a stall on the embankment, not far from the wharf. Investigation showed she had been dragged to the water and immersed until she drowned. There were no injuries on her body and she must have been conscious the whole time. The time of the murder was estimated at nine o’clock the night before, about the hour she usually closed her stall. There was still light at nine o’clock. There were invariably people strolling on the embankment and along the docks and perhaps young lovers had stood, hand in hand, directly above the old woman dying beneath the pilings. It was an eerie thought. One could not help but wonder what thoughts had screamed through her mind during those eternal instants of silent struggle, while the water felt like an avalanche of hard rocks pouring into her erupting lungs. It was far easier to imagine her thoughts than to conceive of those dark concepts in the mind of her killer – the mind of a man who killed without motive, without reason, without passion.

It seemed obvious that the killer was the same man who had strangled the old pensioner a few days before. The two murders fitted the same pattern of having no pattern. The woman had no known enemies and no one could possibly have profited by her death. The killing had been cold and efficient. The police had no clues and asked anyone who might have been in the vicinity to contact them whether they had heard or seen anything or not. Anyone who had noticed a man with wet clothing anywhere in the city was asked to notify the authorities. The theory was that it was the work of a maniac. It seemed the only solution. The thought of a madman is always terrifying and this was magnified by the fact that the victims had been old and helpless and had died without reason. The police stated it was likely the man would kill again – would go on killing at regular intervals until he was captured. I had a sudden image of Detective Inspector Grant poring over all the details of the two crimes, trying desperately to project and predict and prevent, and knowing with painful frustration that he had insufficient data – and that there was only one way in which to acquire more data and that implied more victims. He would be chain-smoking cigarettes, pacing across his office, snapping at his subordinates, cross with his wife. But they would understand the great unrest of his thoughts, and would tolerate his surly behaviour. And thinking of tolerance, I found myself contrasting Grant with this gentleman whose newspaper I held – who looked at the murders in such a calm and unexpected way. I looked up from the paper; glanced sideways at him. He was turning the pages of a large volume with vague disinterest. I placed the paper on the table and he closed the book; folded the paper neatly.

“Thank you.”

“Why of course,” he said.

“Say what you will, it’s a gruesome business.”

“Oh, I daresay the papers make it seem worse than it is, you know. Circulation and all that. The human fascination with the macabre. I find myself fascinated with that strange fascination. As a scientist . . .”

“A scientist?” I said, interrupting him with an abrupt impulse to change the subject. I did not wish to hear his opinions on human failings – if indeed he thought them failings, for he had a tendency to make the unexpected statement; to view from unconsidered angles.

He nodded slowly.

“What is your field?”

“I am a naturalist.”

I raised my eyebrows slightly at the old-fashioned term and he interpreted the gesture correctly; nodded and repeated the word. “Yes, a naturalist. I use the old word deliberately – to imply that I have spread myself over the natural sciences rather than specializing. A fault of modern thinking, specialization.”

“But surely knowledge is accumulating too quickly for a man to encompass everything?”

“Ah, but is that valid? If all knowledge is related – and it must be, if there is any basic law to the universe – then isn’t a shallow immersion in a wide subject better than penetration to blind and limited depths? I have always wished to form conclusions which draw all the branches of natural science into a tighter pattern. An ambitious goal, certainly, and yet in some ways curiously limited.” He paused, peering at me sharply. I had the impression he was judging my comprehension and his glance was curious – his countenance resigned and placid on the surface, yet with sharp inquiry coming through. It was like a flash of sudden lightning exposing the inner fabric of the storm clouds for a brilliant instant. Then it faded. “Oh, I fully understand the necessity for specialists,” he continued. “Men – men of that sort of mind – must probe the depths of limited fields and form little cones of knowledge – little submerged and isolated studies from which more well rounded scholars may draw as they grope for a totality. Necessary, yes. But it seems a shame that knowledge has outpaced the evolution of the mind, does it not?” And again that keen glance probed me.

“You interest me.”

“Yes? I’ve always believed that a man who has wide interests will prove interesting.”

“And are you pursuing your interests here at the museum? I’ve seen you quite often and wondered if you might be doing research of some nature.”

“Nothing specific. In point of fact, I come to the museum for pleasure. As some might go to the opera or the theatre. I dearly love to wander through the natural history halls. But research – no, my research is in the field. It was, at least, until my accident. Now I must content myself with less strenuous studies. Although recently I have been able to do a bit of field work. Just a bit. An application of former conclusions.”

“Accident?”

“My leg. I lost my leg, as you may have noticed.”

He glanced down.

“Oh, I didn’t realize,” I said, a trifle embarrassed.

“I’ve managed to adapt myself to it. One does, you know. I have an artificial limb, of course, but I’d have adapted without it. That’s the story of survival. But it hinders field research, nonetheless.”

This fact seemed to sadden him. He fell into a thoughtful silence. Then he looked up and smiled.

“But we’ve not been introduced,” he said. He held out his hand. His grip was firm.

“Claymore,” he said. “Edward Claymore.”

I told him my name. His name had a familiar ring and after a moment I placed it; said, “I believe I’ve read one of your books. Dealing with ecology, was it?”

“You please me. One has vanity, of a sort. Of a sort. One hopes one’s ideas are of value. And valid, of course. Yes, ecology has always been my prime study, dear to my heart. The linking of relationships between creatures within the scope of their environment, the incredibly complex interplay between organisms, subtle, slowly emerging as one gathers experience, and in no other way. These relationships cannot be predicted in the laboratory nor projected in the library. One must be there. One must observe and record. A falsehood may be written but what one has seen is truth – the conclusions may be wrongly drawn but one cannot argue with the basic premise of objective fact, eh?” I nodded agreement. A certain intensity had come into his voice as he spoke of his work and I felt a new respect for the man. His book, as I recalled it, had been lucid and straightforward and unpretentious; had been an early work which, in its simplicity, had stood the test of time. It was no longer read much, for the theory had advanced beyond its scope, and yet the material had been proved correct and had greatly affected later research along those lines, foreshadowing understanding. I had read it long ago, and yet found myself able to recall certain passages of bright illumination and even simple eloquence in his descriptions of the wild reaches of our northern forests, the perfect balance of nature, the harmony of life and death. Seen in the context of his work, his unusual method of looking at events was no longer surprising. I determined to look up his book and read it again, in the new light of our acquaintance.

Claymore was thoughtful now; seemed to be looking back into the past, looking northward to the forests of former times. I stood up and excused myself. He nodded absently. He was still sitting at the table, staring at far places, as I left.

I did not encounter Claymore for the next few days, and forgot my intention to look up a copy of his book. He may well have been at the museum but my research had taken a sharp turn which kept me in the library through the day and he did not appear there. I did not, in fact, see him again until after the third crime had been committed. This third crime was different. It did not fit the pattern of the preceding murders and, at first, appeared to be an accident. It was far more horrible, in its quantitative effect, than the other crimes and yet did not excite as much public outrage because it was impersonal. It caused anger rather than morbid fascination. The facts were these: the home for incurables on the outskirts of the city caught fire and, in a great inferno, burned to the ground. Twelve men and women died in the flames, including a heroic nurse who had rushed again and again through sheets of fire and saved half a dozen lives; then, making a last desperate attempt, she had been trapped as the walls collapsed and had died in the incandescent ruins. When her charred body was found she still held an old man shielded to her breast, their flesh melted and then annealed together so that the corpses were inseparable. It was some time before the embers had cooled and a proper investigation carried out and then it was discovered that the fire had been deliberately set, a case of arson; some further time before connections were made and the authorities believed it might have been the work of the same madman who had killed twice before. But it was impossible to be sure. The police were keeping an open mind and investigating the background of every patient, both victims and survivors, in an attempt to discover if anyone would have gained by the death of one of them. It was a ghastly thought, but valid in these times when bombs are placed on aeroplanes, killing dozens as a side effect of collecting insurance on a solitary passenger. Nothing came of this line of investigation, however, and I, for one, felt certain it had been the maniac.

When next I saw Claymore, I recalled his calm attitudes concerning the former murders; was interested in what he thought in this instance. I asked him whether he considered this crime natural. I’m not sure what reaction I expected, but he surprised me by screwing up his face in obvious internal conflict, a genuine attempt at decision. I was amazed. I would not have been shocked had he taken an attitude opposed to normal morality, but had not foreseen this struggle within himself. Several times he opened his mouth to speak, and then hesitated. I watched his face, my interest greatly aroused.

Our meeting had taken place in the Hall of Saurians, a great vaulted room of silence with implications of vast and imponderable time. The skeletons of brontosaurus and allosaurus loomed over us. A high skylight sent filtered illumination dropping from the dome, washing the bones and casting Jurassic shadows across the floor, articulated adumbrations of the eons. Presently, without speaking, Claymore moved on, still shrouded in thought. I followed. He moved, as it were, through the path of prehistory; came to the Cretaceous period and sank down upon the edge of a platform with a tyranno-saurus rearing above, the great jaws in the gloom of the arched roof. I sat beside him. It seemed that even the shadows of those bleached bones had a great weight – that they lay upon us with the burden of knowledge, not insight to the mind but some truth known only in our most primitive cells, long forgotten to the magnifying mind but remaining dormant in the glands, the secretions of primordial instinct. I could not understand why this strange mood had come upon me; wondered if, somehow, it could have emanated from my companion by some basic transference, as a dog senses fear in a man.

At last, he spoke.

“The nurse should not have died,” he said, quite simply.

“The nurse? Why only the nurse?”

“The nurse. Her actions were so very human and so very unnatural.”

“But surely noble?”

“Nobility is unnatural. That, like law, has been created outside nature. Created by man. And man stands at some undefined point between nature and logic. Only man, you know, and possibly the elephant who is mighty enough to afford it – or was until man came along – show concern and respect for the aged and infirm, tolerate the useless elements of the pack, the tribe, the species. It was quite natural for the nurse to risk – and give – her life, but only in the framework of human terms. Not natural science but philosophy. The fault lies deeper than behaviour, it is in the system itself – a system that flaunts and reverses nature and creates homes for incurables, protects the helpless, preserves the weakest units to clutter the species.”

He looked sideways at me.

“You can’t believe the nurse’s sacrifice wrong?”

“Not by human judgements.”

“Well then . . .”

“But I am speaking objectively. I am standing outside the system and wish I had a lever long enough to move it. But one man cannot, there is no fulcrum, a man can do his little part and nothing more.”

“You speak objectively. But don’t you feel human sentiments?”

“Of course. With my human mind, I must. ButI can also look through them, penetrate the veil of emotion, and attempt to act accordingly. If man were natural, you see, he would let the useless die, as our ancestors abandoned them to the lion and the hyena. And if man were logical he would, for instance, form his armies from the ranks of the cripples, the defectives, the malformed. War is quite natural – perhaps necessary – to our species. It is a safety valve for the pressures of survival. But it would be a far more effective valve if the casualties came from the weak, allowing the strong to live. But man lies somewhere in the void, groping upwards for elusive logic while his feet are slipping from their purchase on the natural. We are driven by false instincts we term rational – instincts created within ourselves long after nature had finished imprinting her pattern. We weaken ourselves by tolerance and, at the same time, destroy other species by inverse selectivity. Only man – man, the hunter – seeks the finest trophy, the largest antlers, the beast in the prime of life. We kill the best specimens and spurn the weak; we plunder nature as we follow our own descent.”

“You have strong views,” I said.

Claymore nodded. His slight shadow slipped across the floor, within the dinosaur’s vaulted ribcage, as he shifted his position; crossed his leg over the artificial limb.

“Yes, the dichotomy has long troubled me,” he said. “As these conclusions first solidified during long winter nights in the open, I often lay awake in my sleeping bag and saw the cold starry sky as a background to my concepts. How implacable that sky seemed, how pitiless. It was then that I saw natural science cannot be isolated, can never be an enclosed sphere of knowledge, for even the non-objective sciences are inextricably linked to ecology. Man is unique. He stands above nature and imposes his half-considered concepts on the natural scheme – forces them in where they do not fit. It seems that the experiment with the big brain has taken a wrong turning – a turning nature never intended but is powerless to correct – to guide us back to the proper channel. Nature has created a Frankenstein’s monster which threatens to turn upon its creator. And to destroy nature is suicidal. Far better, perhaps, if homo sapiens had been allowed to survive by virtue of thumb and upright spine, and never granted the gift and curse of vocal cord and concept; to survive like the cockroach which, I daresay, will outlast us yet.”

He stretched out a hand towards the tower of bones behind us, the lesson of the extinction of the mighty, the roaring rulers of earth for millions of years reduced to skeletal silence on a platform.

“I planned a book on this subject,” he said. “I never completed it, however. It would never have been published. It would merely have invited outraged attacks.”

“The idea certainly invites attack,” I said.

“You don’t agree with me?”

“I see your logic. But surely man is above the laws of the jungle. We have mastered survival and now it is curiosity which directs us, governs us, brought us through dark ages and may yet take us to the stars.”

“Curiosity? Ah yes. That will take us – somewhere . . .”

For a time we did not speak.

“However,” said Claymore, atlength, “all this is conjecture. I am truly sorry about that nurse . . .”

Following this remarkable conversation in the Hall of Saur-ians, I took the trouble to locate a copy of Claymore’s book. I reread it. It was the book I had remembered and none of his anti-social ideas were expressed there. It dealt with observation and obvious conclusions and no more; implied nothing hidden beneath the level of his writing. I found it difficult to see Claymore, as I knew him, as the author of this book and decided he was not – that something had caused his outlook to alter in the interval so that the man who had written so expressively and objectively in the past was not the same man who had spoken with such intensity in the shadow of dinosaur. I could not imagine what this might have been, what experience could have warped and embittered his mind – perhaps the loss of his leg, I wondered. And yet he’d seemed to have adjusted easily enough to that loss. I was curious and would have been most interested to know about it, but could think of no way to bring the subject up; decided to wait and hope that, in the course of our meetings, the truth would come to light.

As, indeed, it did.

But first the maniac struck again.

In many respects, the next attack was the most perplexing of all. The strangest aspect was that the victim survived – was allowed to survive the ordeal. And certainly the most horrible aspect was that the poor fellow was blind, his affliction adding to the monstrous nature of the unprovoked assault. These facts added a new twist to the emerging pattern, complicating and confusing the issue. But what really struck me was purely subjective.

I was acquainted with the victim.

His name was Bill, a big jovial sort who refused to let his blindness change his cheerful nature. He’d lost his sight in the war, spent some time in hospital, and emerged with complete selfconfidence and a fierce independence. He refused even the assistance of a guide dog and was frequently seen roaming the familiar streets with a firm and steady step, behind dark glasses and a fibre-glass stick; pausing at kerbs to listen for approaching traffic or halting for a moment at a corner, head raised and senses alert as he got his bearings. I was appalled when I read of the vicious attack which had taken place in his own basement flat. It is always so much more shocking when it is someone one knows. Bill had been brutally battered and beaten and then left alive on his floor. And that was the extraordinary thing. He had not been supposed dead, for he was still conscious. The maniac had simply walked off and left him, and that behaviour was so far removed from the other attacks that the police were not ruling out the possibility of a second madman amuck in the city. However the method of attack, until it had ceased, fitted the pattern. It was calculated and efficient.

I phoned the hospital immediately and inquired about his condition; found, to my relief, that he was recovering and asked how soon he would be able to have visitors. Apparently he had already been demanding that visitors be allowed in, which was very much to be expected of Bill, and I went to see him in the morning.

He was sitting up in bed, a white bandage around his head and a cigar in his teeth. His big solid shoulders sloped down beneath the sheets, he greeted me in a loud voice and roared cheerfully at the nurse who told him he must be quiet. She turned her eyes upwards and smiled despite herself. Bill was able to make people smile that way. He was pleased to have a visitor, we chatted for a few minutes and then, without urging or suggestion from me, he told me what had happened. He seemed more angered than frightened by the attack, his self-reliance had survived and he did not, in his dark world, understand how one with sight would project and magnify the terror of his position.

“Well, Johnny boy,” said Bill, “I don’t know if this bastard was waiting inside my flat or if he followed me home. The coppers think he was already inside, on account of one of my neighbours, old widow down the street, got an idea she’s got designs on me, you know? – well, this widow saw me come home and says there was no one following me. But I’m not so sure. Seems I would have sensed his presence if he’d been waiting there. Maybe the old gal don’t see too well. Anyway, don’t matter which way it was. I’d been out for my afternoon walk and I never bother to lock the door so it was a simple matter for him to get in before me or behind me, whichever. I went right into the kitchen as soon as I got home and put a pan on for coffee. I leaned my walking stick against the stove and stood there, waiting for the water to boil. Then I heard him. Just a faint sound, at first, but we blind guys get used to listening for those soft noises. I turned around real sharp and heard his foot scrape as he stepped back in surprise. “Who’s there?” I asked. Ysee, I wasn’t worried at that point, I thought it might have been a friend or maybe even that old widow come to tempt me. Maybe even one of the younger gals on the street. Plenty of gals like to call on a blind guy, Johnny. Gals that don’t like it known they’re passionate – figure they can get me to give ‘em some lovin’ and never even speak, see, so I won’t know who they are. Happens all the time. ‘Course, once they gets to pantin’ and snortin’, why, straight off I can tell who it is, long’s I’ve heard their voice before. Easy to tell by the way they pant, how long their hair is, how wide they are in the hips. But, ‘course, I don’t let on I know, ‘cause then they won’t come back. I just go along with it, askin’ who they are even after I know and then they think they’re on to the perfect set-up and come back again. Yeah, this bein’ a blind guy got some advantages. An’ if their husbands find out, why I got the perfect excuse. Ha ha. Not a bad old game. Got some real fine unfaithful wives on that street, real fine.

“Anyhow, that’s what I thought – thought it was one o’ them passionate wives, so I wasn’t worried. Just asked who it was and sort of smiled. Then when there was no answer, I was sure it must be a gal. I stood there, waitin’ for her to come up and start snugglin’. But nothing happened for quite a while. The water started to boil, still nothin’ happened. I guessed the gal was shy – figured it was her first visit, see? So I said, ‘Want some coffee, whoever you are?’ and then I heard the bastard take a deep breath, real quick, and I thought: Oh ho, Billy boy, that ain’t no gal . . . What I thought was it was an irate husband, come to rant and rave. That was when he jumped on me . . .”

Bill paused. His brow furrowed beneath the bandage and I noticed several scratches on his face and neck, parallel rows that looked like fingernail marks. His big shoulders shifted as he recalled the violence of the attack and his heavy jowled face was set. I stared at him with great respect – saw that he was reliving only the violence, not the horror. Blindness has always seemed so ultimate a handicap and I had already imagined the scene – imagined Bill cringing, asking who and why, his sightless face questing at the strange sounds, unguided hands groping before him protectively, helpless and terrified, all this in the darkness of his affliction . . . This I had imagined; had pictured with my vision. But this was not the way it had been for Bill. He remembered only his anger and rage.

“He grabbed me by the throat,” Bill said. “Well, Johnny boy, that was a mistake. Pretty strong fellow, I could feel his strength in his fingers, but ‘course with both his hands on me I knew just where he was. I didn’t panic. I got my feet set right and then gave him a couple of good belts in the belly. Good short shovel hooks. Bang bang, just like that.” His shoulders rolled, his arms moved under the sheet, the long muscles in his jaw tightened. “He let go real quick then, boy. Real quick. I heard his wind rush out hard as he stepped back. But I hadn’t caught him in the solar plexus like I planned and he didn’t go down. I took an almighty swipe at where I reckoned his jaw oughta be, but I misjudged it. Missed the bastard. But I followed up, pulling my shoulder around and tuckin’ my chin down behind it and coiled into a hitter’s crouch. I still sort of suspected it was one o’ them irate husbands. Wasn’t worried much. I got both fists cocked and my head down and I said, ‘Come on, you bastard! You want a fight, you found the right blind fellow. Just come in here, let’s see what you can do!’

“Well, he didn’t do anything for a while. I could hear him gettin’ his breath back and sort of feel his eyes on me. Weird feelin’, that. I could tell he was sizing me up, plannin’ his attack – could tell he was a pretty cool fellow. He was standin’ just out of reach. I thought about lungin’ for him, but figured it was better to wait – try to time a haymaker as he came to me. So I feinted a couple of times, to get him to make some sounds movin’ but he stayed real calm. I guess we stood like that maybe two minutes. Then I heard him move to the side, very quiet. I thought he was leavin’, that he’d had enough. But then I heard the cupboard door open and straight off I knew what the sonabitch was doin’. He was looking for a weapon. Well, there were bottles and things there he could use to club me and I didn’t like that idea; tried to play on his pride; said, ‘Hey, you need a weapon against a blind fellow? What sort o’ man are you?’ But that didn’t work. He started movin’ towards me again. Then I got a little worried. I reached behind me and got the handle of the pan and held the pan in front of me. The water was boilin’ away real good by then. I could feel the steam. He hesitated and I swung the pan across my chest, waitin’. I figured if I could give ‘im a face full of steam I’d have a chance to get my hands on him. That’s all I wanted. Just to get my hands on the bastard. Should’ve grabbed him straight off when he was chokin’ me, ‘course, but at that point I didn’t know how serious he was and figured a couple o’ belly hooks would be plenty. But he was cautious now. I couldn’t hear him movin’ at all. Then somethin’ hit the pan and tilted it and the hot water ran down my forearm. I threw the pan away and missed him and somethin’ smacked me alongside the head. In the temple. The coppers told me it was a whisky bottle. How about that? Smacks me with my own Scotch, the swine. Anyway, it was a pretty good wallop and I had to cover up and he hit me again, behind the neck that time and the floor slammed against my knees. I kept trying t’ get a hold on him but he stayed out of reach and belted me a few more times in the head and neck and then, for the first time, I realized he wanted to kill me. Not much I could do, just kneel there and dart my hands out in different directions hopin’ to get him. He was a cool one. No hurry at all. Wasn’t even breathin’ hard enough to hear now. Couple o’ times I thought he’d gone, even, and then whop! he clubs me again. Would’ve killed me, I guess, ‘cept I touched the handle of my cane then as I slid to the side and I got the cane and made a great wide sweep in front of me, low down, and felt it whip against his leg. Good snappy cane, fibre glass, gave him a helluva slash. Heard him yelp. So I saw that was my only chance, and I sat there with my back against the stove and swung the stick back and forth in a low arc in front of me, fast enough so he couldn’t get close without gettin’ hit. I was in a bad way by then. Sort of dizzy and sick from the hammerin’ I’d had. But the only thing I could think was: Grab the cane, you dirty bastard! Just waitin’ for him to grab it so I’d know where he was and could lunge at him. Just wanted him in my hands, y’know. I’d have broken every bone in his body.”

Bill shook his head; shrugged. Then he passed a hand along hisjaw. The anger left his countenance and a look of perplexity replaced it.

“Then he left,” Bill said, simply, and he shrugged once again. “Hard to figure out. I was pretty helpless by that time. And there’s no doubt he wanted to kill me. Only thing I can figure is that when I hit him with the cane I hurt him pretty bad. Worse’n I thought. Took the heart out o’ the bastard. I guess maybe that’s what happened, ‘cause he was limpin’ when he left. I heard him go. Thought maybe he was trying to fool me – that he’d wait by the door an’ then come sneakin’ back after I stopped whippin’ the cane about. But he left all right. He wasn’t breathin’ hard and he walked calm enough but he seemed to be favouring one leg. I heard the front door close. I sat there for a long time, holdin’ the cane ready and listenin’ but he was gone all right. Then I crawled out to the street and called for help. And that was that. Hard to figure. The coppers said it might have been the guy who killed a couple of other people, too, so I got to think he bit off more’n he could chew with ol’ Billy, eh?”

“I expect you’re right,” I said.

“Guess so.”

He nodded. His cigar had gone out while he spoke and he lighted it again, holding the match cupped in his hands to guide the flame. The leaf had started to uncurl and there was white ash on the bed. He held the cigar in his teeth. He was very much alive. We chatted for a few more minutes and then I left. As I was going out several other visitors came into the room. They nodded to me the quiet way one nods in a hospital and went over to Bill’s bed. They were all women. Widows and unfaithful wives, no doubt. Bill greeted them cheerfully and I went out and walked to the museum.

I found it impossible to concentrate on my research.

I sat in the library and ran my eyes over the pages, again and again, without comprehension. My thoughts kept drifting back to Bill’s account of the attack. The most remarkable aspect was that he had been left alive. Whether or not Bill actually believed he had driven the attacker away with his cane, it seemed obvious to me that was not the case – that Bill had been helpless at the end. He’d been terribly battered and must have been nearly unconscious. And yet, even in that brutal beating, there was an element of calculation related to the murders. The blows all appeared to have been struck with the solitary purpose of causing unconsciousness and subsequent death – not pain. There seemed no element of sadism in the method of attack. There had been pain, certainly, but not deliberate, not as an end in itself, the agony no more than a side effect of an amateur attempt at striking a mortal blow. And this created a paradox for, when the end was in sight, the maniac had broken off the attack. It had not been panic. He had not fled and, by Bill’s own account, had been cool and calm. And still he had left the job unfinished. Or was it unfinished? Was there some purpose which escaped me? If the goal had been death, why should the man have settled for less? And if the goal had not been death, why had his blows been so obviously intended as lethal?

My mind spun over these disturbing questions again and again, as my eyes moved back and forth across the page and the text failed to register. At last I pushed the book away and looked at my watch. I decided that research was impossible at the time; that I might as well have an early lunch and try again in the afternoon. I replaced the volume on the shelves and left the library. At the main doors, however, a notice caught my eye and I remembered that the new natural history exhibit had been opened the day before. I’d not yet had a chance to visit it and had been eagerly awaiting the pleasure and this seemed an excellent opportunity. I turned back and took the elevator up to the new hall.

It was there I once again encountered Claymore . . .

The new exhibit was the Johnson Memorial Hall of North American Mammals and I knew it had been planned somewhat differently to the other rooms. Johnson had been a wealthy industrialist who had, in later years, found great peace and pleasure in the Canadian wilderness and had left a large sum of money for the express purpose of creating the new hall. He had also stipulated conditions. It was to be as natural as possible. The whole room was to be fashioned into a simulated forest and there were to be no straight corridors, no display cases, no guard rails. There were not even signs to identify the various flora and fauna, on the principle that the animals in the wilds did not wear labels. Johnson’s desire was to create a room where one could wander at random, in simulated solitude, in the mood of the far-reaching forests. It seemed a fine idea to me, and I was anxious to see how well it had been carried out.

I was pleased as soon as I entered the hall.

The plans had been well executed. The entrance was irregularly shaped with roughly plastered walls so that one had the impression of passing through the mouth of a cave. The forest stretched away within, the walls hidden behind backdrops of distant mountains which conveyed a sense of great distance and taped music softly repeated the forest sounds, birds and breezes and vague cracklings. Water dripped rhythmically from an artificial cataract. I stood beside the entrance for a time, letting myself fall into the mood, and then advanced. It was very realistic. Narrow paths wound about between arbours and brush and rock, seemingly at random as I turned my head from side to side. At first I saw no animals. Then abruptly the vegetation opened out and I found myself looking at a colony of beaver beside a plastic pool blocked with fallen timber. The animals were there, but one had to look. I strolled on; glimpsed a lynx stretched along an overhanging limb, tufted ears laid back, snarling; turned as the path angled and stopped short as a Kodiac bear reared up. The taxidermy was excellent, the animals were realistically grouped in lifelike positions, often I caught just a flashing glance as I passed some small mammal peering from the undergrowth. I thought Johnson would have approved.

Then, turning on to a secondary trail, I found myself face to face with Claymore.

“A splendid hall, this,” he said.

I nodded. Somehow, seeing Claymore, my thoughts left the artificial wilderness and returned to reality . . . to the crimes we had discussed before. I mentioned I’d just come from the hospital where Bill was and Claymore appeared interested.

“Ah yes. The blind gentleman. How is he?”

“Recovering.”

“Ah. The newspapers stated his condition as critical. But then, one learns never to have faith in journalism.”

“He’s a tough one,” I said.

“Tough? Yes. Yes, I should imagine so. Obviously he had the will to survive. Admirable and natural. He will undoubtedly live until his time to die.”

“Unlike the others.”

“Others?”

“The other victims.”

“Oh. Oh, no doubt it was their time to die.”

I made no comment. Claymore nodded. “No doubt,” he said again and then turned and strolled on. I followed. The path was too narrow to walk side by side and I trailed behind him. His limp seemed more noticeable and he seemed very interested in the exhibits, very alert, as if this were truly a wilderness and he were keeping an eye out for dangers or prey. From time to time he paused and used his walking stick to part the growth, revealing some secreted animal I hadn’t even noticed, looking up and down. Fox and wolverine and badger lurked on every side. Presently the path opened into a clearing and Claymore halted. He sighed. A deer was bounding tangen-tially from us, white tail bobbed in graceful flight. At first glance I imagined the deer had been positioned as if fleeing from the visitors’ approach down the path, but then I looked sideways and saw differently. Emerging from the opposite side of the clearing charged a pack of timber wolves, frozen in an instant of action, lean and fierce. I was about to point them out to Claymore when he spoke.

“Ah, it makes me long for the wilds,” he said. “Books . . . books can only teach what other men have learned, not what each man must learn for himself . . . the sensations, the moods, the tone of nature. The totality.”

He leaned on his stick.

“Well, I’m just as pleased these brutes are stuffed,” I said, jokingly. “How would you like to face that lot in the flesh?”

Claymore turned, his eyebrows lifting. He saw the wolves. His reaction was startling. He cried out and took a staggering step backwards, raising his walking stick like a club. I stepped forward, afraid he would fall, but he caught his balance: lowered the stick. His face was white and he was sweating.

“Good heavens, man. What is it?” I asked.

Gradually he relaxed. The blood returned to his face and he looked embarrassed.

“Forgive me. A thoughtless reaction.”

“What’s wrong?”

He shook his head; moved towards the wolves and regarded them, then motioned at the pack with his stick, holding it like a fencer.

“You ask if I should like to face them,” he said.

“A silly comment,” I said.

“Ah, but I have,” said Claymore.

I waited, hoping he would continue, sensing the past trauma in his sudden reaction. I noticed he had raised his stick more in a position of attack than defence and that even now his eyes were bright as he looked at the wolves.

He said, “They are fine specimens. Very fine. That big fellow must have weighed well over a hundred pounds, I should think. It saddens me to see a wolf which has been killed in his ferocious prime. I love wolves. I hate them but I love them for they have taught me so much. Everything is there to be learned in canis lupis. Territorial instinct, the pack urge, monogamy. And mystery. People have always thought the wolf as different from other predators. Finer somehow, and yet inspiring fear far greater than its size and strength should warrant. Why, there is even a disease in which one believes himself to be a wolf. Lycorexia. I wonder if there is a philosophy, as well?”

He shrugged.

“You have been attacked by wolves?” I asked, hoping to hear the tale.

“No. Not attacked. But I have faced them. I faced the pack and therefore they did not attack me, you understand? And facing them, I learned to face all – to face the past as well as the future and to see myself with humility, a small part of existence, of little importance in the total scheme of life . . . and of great importance in that I learned to act as nature intended.”

“You stared them down, you mean?”

He gestured vaguely.

“Oh, one might say that. But it was far more than that.”

“You interest me greatly.”

“Ah, it was . . . interesting. You wish to hear the story?”

“Very much. If it won’t disturb you to remember . . .”

“No, not at all. I constantly remember it. You take your knowledge from books – from still lives, as it were – and perhaps you should know how my knowledge came to me.”

“I should like to know.”

He nodded and glanced at the wolves once more. Then he moved away with a sideward step. A fallen tree had been propped against a stump across the clearing and Claymore took a seat on the log. I sat beside him. For some time he collected his thoughts while I waited. A man passed, pausing to look at the wolves and then looking at us. Then a middle-aged woman with three children crossed the clearing. They, too, observed us for a moment. We must have looked as out of place as they did. But our ectopia was of a different nature, and I felt I belonged there, listening to Claymore as a sceptic might have listened to Socrates, knowing one need not agree to learn. The taped sounds played on and the waterfall rustled and presently Claymore spoke.

“Several months after publication of my book I returned to the north,” he said. “The book – I believe you mentioned reading it? – dealt with ecology in general and now I had decided to make a study in depth on a specific relationship. For several reasons I selected that existing between wolves and moose. The most important reason was expediency, for both are territorial animals. The wolf pack sticks within its own boundaries and will tolerate no others there and the moose, in deep snow at least, remains in his own small area or yard. Well, this territorial instinct enables an observer to define the limits of the area and use the square miles within as a field laboratory with checks and controls far more accurately than if the observer had selected his own boundaries at random. I have little patience with those who set aside a tract of land without regard for the animals’ own limits . . . less with the modern practice of observing from aeroplanes. This may be a scientific prejudice on my part, and I’ve considered that sort of work since losing my leg, but cannot see it leading to accurate conclusions. However, I didn’t have that problem. All my research was done on snowshoes with a pack on my back, far from the world of society. It would have been difficult to be farther. It was a world of true desolation and abandoned beauty, and my base camp was a little cabin of rough logs beside a stream which opened out, some miles below, into a river. The river was ringed by fir trees and frozen in winter. I had but one companion – my guide – a man of dubious ancestry called Charles. He had spent his life in the wilderness and was a rough, silent man with vast practical knowledge and experience. He hadn’t the faintest idea what I was studying and did not care at all. He was paid and that was sufficient. That was the way I wanted it, as well, for all men are susceptible and I might well have let my conclusions be affected by a companion who understood the subject. I could ask Charles questions and he would answer from his experience, accurate and precise, not knowing what answer I sought and therefore unable to commit the common error of slanting the answer to give me satisfaction. We carried all our supplies with us and relied on Charles to provide fresh meat. I have always believed in travelling light and Charles was the sort to regard even my meagre equipment as luxury.

“We went into the wilderness in the late autumn and prepared the base camp. I made preliminary investigation and identified the wolf pack I would study – a pack some twenty strong – and the outline of their territory, where they would remain as long as the food supply permitted. Then it was necessary to wait, for wolves seldom hunt the moose until winter. In open water an adult moose can wade out so far that the pack must swim to reach him, and that is not a pleasant prospect for the wolves. But in winter the water is frozen, the beaver keep to their lodges, the snowshoe hares are insignificant meals for pack strength, and then there is the moose.

“Well, winter came.

“Charles and I followed the wolf pack. It was a time of great physical hardship and exhaustion, of dogged perseverance. Often we were away from the cabin for weeks at a time, as the pack ranged over the outer limits of their land, describing a wide and predictable circle which allowed us to anticipate them and often wait for them. This was necessary for they travelled far faster than we could follow. I learned many things but my main goal was to witness the confrontations between the pack and the moose. Seldom did I manage to be present at the actual kill, although often we arrived before the remains were devoured. This was important. It was absolutely essential that I gather data about the victims – to do an autopsy on the remains. This was no simple matter. For one thing, a healthy wolf will eat about fifteen pounds of flesh a day and, if we were far behind the kill, there was little left to examine. On the other hand, when we managed to arrive before their first hunger had been satisfied, the pack was understandably reluctant to surrender their feast to science. These were wolves of the wilds, they had not yet learned fear of man, and to shoot them would have completely ruined the natural balance existing there. The pack regarded us with curiosity and, when they sensed no fear in us, with respect. Undoubtedly they saw us as fellow carnivores, but not as rivals, as they would have another wolf pack or a fox, and territorial defence seldom extends beyond the genus. So my findings were difficult and not extensive, but I persevered and gradually certain aspects of the relationship began to take form.

“Have you ever seen a moose, full grown in the forest? The wolves had a healthy respect for their prey, and it is understandable. Seven feet tall at the shoulders, weighing a ton and a half, unpredictable in mood and often changing from docile grazing to a thundering charge without a period of transition . . . they are formidable indeed. Often a moose in deep snow can outdistance the wolves with that awkward, long-legged stride. More often they choose to stand defiantly against the pack and invariably the wolves move on in these cases, searching easier prey. I witnessed this several times and came to the conclusion that the pack tested at least ten moose for every one against which they pressed the attack. This conclusion led me to predictions which only sufficient autopsy examinations could prove and I pressed on, faithfully inspecting gnawed bones, scraps of hide, uncoiled lengths of intestine. Eventually it was enough to convince me my predictions were correct -that the wolves’ depredations were essential to the moose’s survival as a species; that they systematically culled the old and the infirm and left the finest specimens to benefit from limited winter food supplies. Invariably my examinations of the remains showed the same results. The victims suffered from bone disease, cysts in the lungs, tapeworm. Their teeth were worn with age and an abundance of ticks implied they suffered from a weakened condition due to innumerable other diseases. And every victim I examined, discounting calves, proved to be more than seven years old – beyond their prime. Without the wolves these old moose would have lived for a good many years yet, consuming vast amounts of food and depriving the young members of the species.”

Claymore had begun to talk rapidly, warming to a subject dear to him. Now he paused, glanced sideways at me, and shrugged; smiled thinly.

“But all this is common knowledge now,” he said, apologetically. “I must not bore you with this. Another aspect of vanity, eh? In my day it was just coming into acceptance and I shamelessly feel pride in my own small role in bringing it to light; in bringing it, perhaps a trifle sooner than it would have been. Still too late, of course. Too late against ignorance. I fear we shall both live to see the day when the last wolf is mangy and cowed in a zoo, when these exhibits are labelled extinct, or the museum equips an expedition to seek the last remaining pack. Perhaps. Still, they fight for survival. This is the first necessity. On the day a creature ceases to flee or to snarl, then it must die . . .

“But enough of this rambling theory. Theories hold true for all, but I must tell you my own experience.”

I waited. When again he spoke his tone had changed. He still spoke with intensity, but it was a subjective quality now and there was terror lurking restrained in the timbre of his voice . . .

“There came the day when circumstances forged the links of events – events engraved in the receptive awareness of aroused sensations. There were two separate disasters, insignificant in themselves but combining to form a sum greater than the parts. The first disaster came when Charles broke through the ice. We had travelled far from the base camp, skirting the frozen lake, and night came. We stopped to make our camp. I regretted the delay and was impatient to continue for the pack had not killed in several days and they were lean with hunger. I knew they would press an attack very soon, and hoped to be present. I was standing in the trees, looking in the direction the pack had taken, when I heard Charles cry out. I rushed back. A segment of the bank had collapsed beneath him and he had crashed through the ice. I saw his head bob in the cold water, one hand gripping the jagged splintered edge. I threw myself flat to spread my weight and grasped him; managed to haul him from the icy waters. He was gasping and shaking. The instant the air touched his clothing it began to crackle and harden. Fortunately we had already made the fire and I helped him to strip his clothing off, wrapped him in a blanket and gave him a stiff shot of brandy. For a long time he lay still beside the fire, shivering, his eyes pressed closed. Finally the chill left him and I saw he was all right. But he had a strange look in his eyes. The first words he spoke were, ‘My rifle . . . I’ve lost my rifle.’ Well, I assumed he was worried about the loss alone, and offered to replace the weapon when we returned from the field trip, but that was not what troubled him. He had lost his pack, including the tent, but it was the rifle which distressed him. He said that he would have to return to the cabin – to get his other gun before we continued on. I argued. Fate brought out my stubbornness, an ally of disaster. But Charles couldn’t conceive of going on without a weapon. I felt greatly frustrated. I knew the wolves would kill soon, and could not bring myself to miss the opportunity to witness the kill. I refused to go back. He refused, at first, to continue – did not even want to stop the night, but to go back in the darkness. He had completely changed. It was as if he had lost a vital organ instead of a rifle and all his taciturn confidence had vanished. Objectively, it was more interesting, a strange twist of the personality of a man who has come to rely on something apart from his own body. But subjectively I could not tolerate it. I could not bear to miss the opportunity ahead. I became angry and Charles, completely out of character as I’d known him, hung his head sullenly and accepted my abuse. I even, I fear, spoke of cowardice. Even this did not sting him to reply, other than to mutter, shaking his head, that a man could not stay in the woods without a gun. I carried no weapon, of course. But I saw no danger. I recalled his own assurance that he’d never known wolves to attack a man. ‘Not a man with a rifle,’ he mumbled. ‘But these wolves don’t know what a rifle is, how can that make a difference?’ I asked. He shrugged. ‘Maybe we might smell different without a weapon,’ he said. He kicked at the ground and swung his head from side to side and behaved like a spoiled child. But I was adamant and, after a long while, he reluctantly agreed to go on in the morning. Very reluctantly. And even then he continued to mutter about how impossible it was to go on without rifle and tent. I let him ramble on after he’d agreed; got into my sleeping bag beside the fire. His bag was lost but there were sufficient blankets and my groundsheet and he wrapped up in these. He was still muttering when I drifted into sleep.

“His sullen, fearful mood continued through the next day. The wolves were moving fast and far and, the farther we moved from the extra rifle at the base camp the more frequently he paused to look back over our trail, his eyes longing to retrace our steps. Still, we advanced. In the afternoon we were able to leave the pack’s spoor and cut at an angle across the predictable circle, moving over rolling hills with deep snow between the slopes and stark pines on the crest. Evening was approaching. Charles was lagging and I had to urge him on, often walking well ahead of him; turning to find him gazing backwards; shouting to him, whereupon he would come forward, head down and shoulders hunched. Then sunset struck with golden shafts across the western sky and it was in this violent glow that we came upon the wolves . . .

“I topped a ridge and saw them like a string of dark slugs advancing across a rippled snowfield. I took my binoculars from their case and focused. Charles came up to stand beside me, breathing harder than usual. The wolves moved like a single segmented organism, in a perfect twisting line. Then suddenly the line broke up, the pack formed a semi-circle, sitting back on their lean haunches. Charles grunted and pointed and I turned the glasses along the line indicated, saw a copse of dark trees and, after a few moments, saw the moose.

“He was a huge fellow, completely motionless, facing the pack. He’d not yet shed his antlers and they spread like two giant hands as wide as his great height. His ears were laid back, his mane erect. The wolves rose and advanced a few paces; settled on their haunches again. The moose moved then. The bell beneath his neck swung as he turned his head. He pawed the ground with great platter feet. The wolves showed prudence despite their hunger. Their tongues lolled out and their flanks rose and fell. Finally the leader rose and advanced cautiously, turned sideways to his quarry, testing the moose’s temper and resolve. The moose didn’t wait. He came with a sudden rush, awkward and mighty. The wolf leaped sideways, turning in the air and the pack spun and scattered. The moose halted, snorted and pawed, and then backed into the trees again. The wolves came silently back and drew together, exactly like a conference, heads lowered, muzzles close. From time to time one raised his head to gaze at the moose. The moose pawed spurts of snow and did not look worried or reluctant . . . looked as if he would welcome an attack. I watched, fascinated. This was an important observation. I knew the wolves had not eaten in days and wondered how much hunger was necessary to override caution. A great deal, apparently, for they rose abruptly and trotted off, shoulders rising and falling in a rhythm uncannily like a human shrug in time of resignation. They crossed the snowfield and vanished from sight. The moose began to peacefully strip bark from the trees. Charles snorted and went back down the ridge, wondering what I had seen worth seeing and I stood there for some time, watching the moose in the deepening shadows. The sky had reddened, the tallest trees gathered the last light and darkness fell spreading over the ground. When I could no longer distinguish the moose I turned and started back down the incline, picking my steps carefully. Not, however, carefully enough.

“And then the second disaster struck . . .”

Claymore winced slightly.

“The definitive disaster,” he said. “I had just settled my weight on my leg when something struck me just above the ankle. It didn’t hurt. I thought the limb of a tree had somehow fallen on me and there was what seemed a great interval before I heard the solid clang of metal – seemed a great time lapse, although I was still suspended in the midst of falling when the sound reached my brain and as I dropped into the snow I already knew what had happened – that I had stepped on the pan of a trap. I had fallen on my back, twisting the imprisoned leg. I sat up, brushing snow from my arms in thoughtless habit, and leaned down to inspect the damage. I still felt no pain, no feeling at all, but the moment I saw the trap I knew I was severely damaged.

“It was a huge trap made to hold a bear. The vicious jaws had sunk deeply into my leg – so deeply it seemed the toothed edges must nearly meet between torn calf and shattered shin. I inspected it very calmly; found it was old and rusted and must have lain there for years, forgotten by some long departed trapper. I looked at it from every possible angle, tilting my head this way and that, and then took the jaws in my hands and tried to open it. I could not budge it. I sat back, wondering what to do – I’d completely forgotten Charles and was undoubtedly in some form of shock. But then he called from the shadows below, asking what had happened. I felt a sense of relief as I heard his voice and shouted to him. A moment later, in a spray of snow, he was kneeling beside me.

“He winced as he saw the wound; bent over my leg and inspected the trap. His hands moved slowly at first but gradually his face darkened and he began to jerk and haul violently. His efforts twisted my leg and the first tingling of pain advanced past my knee. I clamped my teeth shut and watched him without protest, with complete confidence in his experience and ability. But then his face changed again, he cursed and squatted back. He looked sick. His forehead was glistening with sweat. He told me in slow, thoughtful tones that the release mechanism had become jammed or broken during the long untended time and that he wasn’t able to open the jaws. He repeated the last several times . . . ‘Can’t open it, won’t open, can’t get it to open . . .’ Then he cursed some more. I still felt no real panic. It seemed impossible that I was hopelessly trapped as long as I had a companion with me. I asked what we should do, quite calmly, I believe. Charles didn’t answer. He wiped the back of his hand across his brow and leaned over the trap again, digging in the snow until he found the chain. He followed the chain, lifting it from the snow foot by foot, like some clanking serpent with a frozen spine; found the end secured to a large tree, encircling the bole and fastened with a stout padlock. I watched as he took the chain in both hands and hauled on it, bracing one boot against the tree and winding the links around his wrists. His shoulders heaved beneath his heavy mackinaw. Sounds came brittle on the cold air. His heel scraped the bark, he grunted and snorted, the chain rattled. At last he gave up the effort and bent to the padlock, inspecting it carefully, turning it over in his hands. His breath hung about his face like a halo. He straightened and rubbed the back of his neck, then came clumping back to where I sat. He moved behind me without a word and began fumbling with my pack; eased it from my shoulders and laid it open, searching for a tool. But there was none. Whatever we had possessed which might have proved effective had been lost through the ice. Presently he returned to the tree. He seemed to have difficulty crossing the deep snow and paused, breathing deeply, before drawing his hand axe. It was a short-handled affair, the blade flat backed, and he struck the padlock several times with it. It clanked dull but distinct and did no good at all. From his posture, the way his shoulders sloped and his head hung, I got the impression he hadn’t expected the blows to be effective – had tried them for mere formality. Once more he returned to me. He knelt, cleared the snow away and struck the spring and release mechanism several sharp ringing blows. The axe rebounded and the lock refused to yield. Flakes of rust splintered from the steel and bright marks scored the metal but it would not break. Charles shook his head. The pain was increasing now. He reversed the axe and attempted to use the handle as a prying bar, but could get no leverage between the tightly clamped teeth. After a moment he chopped the axe into the earth in a gesture of frustration; grasped the jaws in his hands again and pulled. I leaned forward to help. Together we applied all our strength. But that trap was fashioned to hold a bear. We could not budge it.

“‘It’s no use,’ he said.

“I looked searchingly at him.

“His face clouded with anger, he scowled at me. ‘Well? What do you expect? It’s no use, I tell you!’ He gestured at the trap. ‘The big brown bears can’t open these, what can I do? Eh? What can I do? Sometimes when a bear is caught like this they escape. You know how this is, eh? They escape by gnawing their foot off. That’s how. The big bear chews his own paw through, so what do you expect me to do?’ I said nothing. Gradually his anger lessened. He glanced towards the tree. ‘I might chop the tree down,’ he said, but even as he spoke we both knew it was impossible. He had only the hand axe, the tree was large, even if it were possible it would take far too long. ‘Even then, you would still be trapped. I would have to carry you, dragging the trap and chain. Or build a litter and haul you behind me. If one had a rifle, the spring could be shot apart, of course. But one does not have the rifle.’ He looked sharply at me as he said this. Despite the growing pain, I felt indignant at this reproach; said, ‘That’s right. We haven’t the rifle. So what shall we do?’ He didn’t answer for a while. Then he shrugged. ‘I will need tools. The hacksaw, the crowbar. Also the first aid kit. The spare first aid kit . . .’ He nodded to me, to himself. ‘Yes, that will be necessary, your leg must be treated before you can be moved.’

“‘But those things are at the cabin,’ I said.

“Charles looked away.

“Then I felt the first awful weight of panic . . .”

Claymore looked at me almost with challenge. I was staring, open mouthed, completely absorbed in his tale, caught up in the complex mood behind the words.

“He left you?” I asked.

Claymore nodded.

“Yes. He left me. It was the fact of not having his rifle, you see. I feel certain that, had he not lost the weapon, he would have found some other solution; wouldn’t have abandoned me. But he had lost the gun and, with it, his courage, his confidence. All his experience was related to the possession of a firearm, and without it he could not function, he could not relate circumstances to past experience. Standing over me he seemed to have no more substance than his shadow; could no more direct his own behaviour than that shadow could defy the commands of the fading light. And then, of course, there were the wolves . . .

“All our efforts, although they seemed to have lasted a long time, had passed quickly. Time had been suspended by stress. The sky was still violent with gold and fire behind stratocumu-lus formations. I distinctly remember turning to look at this flaming sunset; noticing it without relation to my plight, as my mind turned away from reality in self-defence. I thought quite composedly how beautiful the colours were with the dark pines thrusting up like a palisade. And then, gradually, I became aware of other broken silhouettes above the ridge. It was as if the tournure of the land had shifted subtly, as if during our suspended period of time the world had continued to age and upheavals had altered the contours. I shielded my eyes and stared into the incandescent sunset and gradually the objects took form and became the wolves.

“The pack sat on top of the ridge and regarded us in silent hunger. I spoke – I used my voice, although the syllables were broken and did not take verbal form – and Charles turned to look; jerked up sharply, his face mangled by fear. The wolves followed his motion with their yellow eyes. ‘They never attack humans,’ I said. And Charles knew this as well as I, but he did not have his gun. He whispered, ‘They have no fear of us. You would not let me kill them . . .’ Trying to shift the responsibility on to me, of course; to justify his act even before he committed it. And then I knew, definitely, that he would leave me.

“Charles began making preparations then, without another word. I watched him in silence with the fires of agony spreading through my thigh and hip, eager for fuel. He made a fire. He gathered all the wood in the immediate vicinity and stacked it beside me. He took the blankets and sleeping bag from my pack and wrapped them carefully – tenderly even – around me. His actions were stiff and jerky and he could not look at me; could not bring himself to tell me he was leaving. Strangely enough, I felt I should make it easier for him, since it was an irrevocable decision. I asked, ‘How soon can you be back?’ He looked at me then; seemed relieved that I was not pleading or arguing; that I accepted the necessity. He assured me he could travel very fast alone and unencumbered; that he could be back in two days, maybe less, no more. ‘All right.’ I told him. ‘Obviously you must have tools to free me. “And the other rifle,’ he added, quickly. The axe was still jammed in the ground and he drew it out; looked at it for a moment, reluctant to part with his only weapon. Then he handed it to me. He held it out by the handle, as if still undecided – as if he might snatch it away at the last moment. But when I grasped the blade he let it go. He tied his snowshoes on, fumbling with the laces and glancing sideways at the ridge. Then he stood up and nodded. ‘It is the only way,’ he said. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it is how it must be. “I will hurry. I will return with the rifle.’ The way he said it, I could tell he believed he would be returning not for rescue, but revenge. Then he moved off, swinging the big snowshoes wide and moving fast. I watched him until he had passed into the trees. Then I turned and watched the wolves and they watched me . . .”

“My God,” I said, the exclamation forced from me as Claymore paused. He was looking at the mounted wolves across the clearing. It was lunchtime now and no one else had passed through the hall for some time. We seemed very much alone and, somehow, I got the impression that Claymore was talking more to himself than to me. I had no wish to destroy the mood with which he spoke, and stilled the urge to comment. He lowered his eyes and regarded his legs then looked at the wolves once again. They stared back with glass eyes.

“I took stock of the situation,” he said. “I felt, at first, that I would be able to survive until Charles returned. I kept telling myself that there are few, if any, recorded instances of wolves attacking humans in North America. I had the axe and my sheath knife and the fire. I had a plentiful supply of firewood. I tried to look upon my plight as an experiment, a chance at first hand observation, and actually managed to feel almost cheerful for a short while. But it could not last. I don’t suppose I’d expected it to, really. There was the pain and there were the wolves. The pain had become unbearable and the wolves were hungry. I told myself the wolves would not approach the fire and fashioned a tourniquet for my leg, using one of the groundsheets and turning it tight with the axe handle. I was able to cut off the pain this way, but was afraid of stopping circulation too long and each time I released the pressure the agony flooded back worse than before, increasing with each turn of the axe. Time passed with incredible slowness. The sunset lingered, the wolves waited. Then, at last, it was night. I shifted another length of wood on the fire, raising the flames and increasing the circle of light. I could no longer see the wolves, but I could hear them panting. And then, suddenly, I could see them. They had come down the slope to the very rim of the firelight, formless grey shapes with glowing eyes. I threw small flaming sticks at them and they backed away calmly. I held the axe in one hand and the knife in the other, turned my back to the fire and waited. Panic faded into a stupor. I blacked out.

“I couldn’t have been unconscious long, only minutes perhaps, certainly less than an hour. The fire still burned brightly. But when I awoke it was with a cold and certain resolve, as if my mind had fashioned a formula while my consciousness was gone. The situation was very clear. I knew that if I remained there I would die. The pain, the cold, the wolves – by one or all I would die. And I was determined not to die; thought of the moose driving the pack away with his charge and then thought of the bear for whom this trap had been designed – the bear who would devour his own leg to escape, governed by a natural instinct far deeper than pain could delve. I saw the only possibility of survival quite objectively.

“I had the axe.

“I had to remove my leg.

“It was decided. I considered no other course of action; refused to contemplate the blinding agony and the unspeakable horror of the act. I used only one rationalization – telling myself my leg was hopelessly mangled already and would never be of use to me again; that I would be cutting away a thing already dead. But I didn’t really need to convince myself of this, for I was merely an animal in a trap. Very carefully I began to plan the operation.

“I placed the blade of my knife in the hottest embers of the fire. It was a large triangular blade, very keen, which I used to dissect the remains of the wolf pack’s kills. I tested the blade of the axe with my thumb. It seemed sharp – it had to be sharp enough, for I had no way to hone it. Then I waited for the knife to heat. I was very calm. I took out my pipe and tobacco and lighted it with a burning twig. I smoked slowly and contemplatively, watching the smoke rise against the flames. I timed it just right, so that when the pipe had burned out the knife had begun to glow. I knocked the ash out and put my pipe in my pocket, then tightened the tourniquet just above the knee. I raised the axe with both hands and marked an imaginary line across my shin; lifted my torso, threw my shoulders back, and brought the axe down.

“But my nerve failed.

“At the last instant, involuntarily, I twisted the stroke to the side. The blade bit into the earth beside my leg and the concussion leaped at my elbows and shoulder sockets. I cursed myself for a coward. And, as if the wolves could sense the failure of my courage, they moved nearer. One wolf advanced ahead of the pack – the same, I thought, that had advanced to test the moose. Anger surged up in me. I screamed loudly and the wolf retreated, lowering his muzzle. The anger helped. It purified my perceptions. I took one of the blankets and draped it over my leg, smoothing it around the calf so that the contour could be seen. I was very annoyed with my leg. But, covered with the blanket, it ceased to be a leg, it was a lump beneath a blanket, no more. I drew the axe edge across this lump at the proper spot, wrinkling the blanket to leave a visible line. I raised the axe once more. I looked at a wrinkle in a blanket. Just a wrinkle in a blanket in the wavering light of a fire. And then, very accurately and very hard, I chopped down.

“This time I did not fail.

“The blow did not sever the leg, but it broke through the slender shin bone and cut deeply into the flesh. I stared at it. I tried to raise the axe but it was stuck. I had to heave with all my strength to withdraw it, and the blood spurted behind. There was more blood than I had imagined and it rose with incredible force, towering above me and then splattering in all directions. The blanket turned instantly dark. I was seized by frenzy. My mind rushed from my body and I saw myself from above, a wild madman broken in dancing flames, spewing heavy blood in wide arcs, roaring and jerking and lifting the axe. I had but one thought: I had to finish the task. I fell upon my leg, hacking savagely time and again, no longer capable of accurate strokes but chopping and slashing with insane fury, sawing the blade back and forth across parting tendons and pounding the edge through convulsing muscle.

“I have no recollection of when the leg finally parted. I did not know at the time. But it did and I found myself pounding the earth, digging great furrows in the soaked ground, separated from the trap and from the grisly burden it held.

“A semblance of sanity snapped taut in my brain then. I dropped the axe and grasped the glowing knife; clamped the flat blade against the ghastly stump. The odour of charred tissue and boiling blood sprang up in overpowering waves. I held my breath and held the knife and the bleeding stopped. The pain, too, had stopped. My nerves could not convey this message of horror, this agony beyond sensation’s scope. I sat there, gasping and gaping. I stared at the trap. Blood bubbled and coiled from the shapeless, lifeless lump in the clamped jaws. It was hideous. I did not want this monstrous object near me. I leaned forward and raised the trap, swung it and threw it from me with all my might. It flew, the chain clanking, and the blanket dropped away. The trap bounced twice when it landed.

“Again I blacked out.

“And again awoke.

“I awoke with a sense of relief and with the wolves making sounds very near. I gripped the gory axe and surged upwards. Every trace of fear had left me, severed as surely as my leg, and I rose to fight. But the pack were not attacking me. They were clustered about the trap. They snarled and growled and their powerful jaws snapped. The wolves were devouring that useless scrap I had abandoned, and somehow that fact was more terrible than the amputation. I shifted back, my arm brushed a burning log and the flames leaped higher. A wolf raised his jowls, his muzzle dark with blood, his eye reflecting the flames. His jaws worked slowly, crunching down, and the flesh disappeared. Some part of my mind insisted it was just flesh and some other part knew it had been my leg and I vomited into the fire . . .”

Claymore’s head jerked.

“And so it was,” he said, and spread his hands.

I stared at him. I felt like vomiting myself. He turned and ran that searching glance across my face.

“You do understand?”

“I . . . My God . . . I don’t know what to say . . .”

“Oh, the horror of it, yes. But you do understand why I did not die . . . why I am alive to tell you this macabre little tale?”

I didn’t answer.

“The wolves did not attack, of course. I was too . . . aroused . . . for fear. They tested me and I waited with the axe and they drew back and squatted and then they moved off to seek easier prey. I did not shout at them, did not depend on the fire; I drove them off by the instincts they sensed within me. I daresay they would have found the moose better quarry that night. I was more than a man, because I had become less and it was more than a leg that I cut away. I waited until dawn. I remember little of that time. I believe I ate a bit of food from my pack and systematically loosened the tourniquet. At any rate, I did whatever survival demanded. In the morning I began to crawl. I hardly thought about directions; knew my instincts would guide me. As they did. My mind was free for other thoughts, for concepts. I envisioned revenge upon Charles for a time, but not seriously, for I realized he had acted in accord with nature. The pack does not wait for the injured individual, the species does not risk survival for the organism, the body does not pause for the loss of a cell. Hatred and rage dried up in the basin of my brain, emotion evaporated and laid bare the true fabric of the mind. And in this dry bed all my experience flowed together, all branches met and shared the same natural roots. Some might say I went mad in the long hours of my ordeal, but whatever I lost it was not sanity . . .

“And that was that.

“Charles found me later that day, the next day, whenever. He had his rifle and his confidence and, when the first shock had passed he respected me greatly for what I had done. He did not understand, as a man reasons, but he sensed, as a man should. And do you?”

I could not answer.

I don’t believe Claymore expected an answer, beyond what he saw in my face. That was sufficient. Presently he stood up; leaned on his stick for a moment, then nodded pleasantly and moved away. I remained on the log and he went down the trail between the trees. I wondered where he was going. He had told me that lately he’d been doing a bit of field work. Just a bit, he’d said. An application of former knowledge. But that could mean anything. I watched him as he came to a bend. His limp was more noticeable as he turned. The man who had attacked. Bill had favoured one leg when he left. But Bill might have injured him. And Bill, of course, had survived. He had been tested and he survived. Then Claymore was gone and I sat there for some time. Presently, just as if this had been a real forest, a chill seemed to move through the trees and caused me to shiver, there among the wolves . . .