An Owl Too Many Read Online Free Page A

“May I, Sergeant?”
    “You’re going up there with her? Like that?”
    “It’s how we generally go. I might point out that Miss—er—Professor Binks and I are not only experienced climbers but also trained naturalists. We’d both have recognized unusual damage to the tree and would have been careful not to make it any worse. We couldn’t see too much because our light wasn’t strong enough, but we did find the place where the net crashed down through the branches, for whatever good that might do. If you’d like to go up yourself or send one of your men, we’ll be happy to serve as guides.”
    “Thanks, Professor.” Haverford didn’t grin this time. “I think the best thing for us to do now is leave a guard around the tree and come back with ladders and search dogs in the morning. Can you get your friend down out of there all right?”
    “Certainly.” Peter raised his voice a little. “Come on down, Miss Binks. The sergeant’s decided to wait for daylight.”
    Less than a minute later, Winifred Binks was on the ground. “I daresay you’ve made the right decision, Sergeant Haverford, though I’m sure Professor Shandy and I could have managed well enough with those nice lanterns of yours. I did notice a wisp of transparent fishline tied to a branch.”
    Haverford made a strange gurgling noise, Professor Stott nodded.
    “Then that supports your conjecture, Peter. Professor Shandy,” he explained to the sergeant, “has proffered the hypothesis that what we hoped was a snowy owl may in fact have been merely a bunch of white feathers pulled along on some mechanism analogous to a trolley wire. Do you not find this reasonable, Professor Binks?”
    “Oh yes, certainly. An alternative possibility might have been someone running along parallel to the path with the lure on a pole; but it’s not easy to move silently through the woods at night unless one is on a well-marked path, as we were. And not even then if you’re in a hurry. We were walking briskly, we naturally didn’t want to miss the chance of a definitive spotting. A snowy owl would have been a real coup. Pity, but there it is. You weren’t planning to leave poor Mr. Emmerick here till morning too, I trust?”
    “Oh no,” the inspector reassured her. “We’ll take him with us when we go. Let me just try to get straight about this net. Which of you was nearest to Mr. Emmerick when he got caught in it?”
    Thorkjeld Svenson, who’d been chewing a handful of trail mix, gulped and growled, “I was.”
    “Do the rest of you corroborate that?”
    “Of course we do.” Winifred Binks sounded as though she found Sergeant Haverford a trifle slow in the intellect. “Dr. Svenson is our group leader, his place is always in front. Mr. Emmerick had had that explained to him before we started, but he either forgot the rule or chose to disregard it. If he hadn’t suddenly taken that notion to dart ahead—dear me!”
    Haverford pounced like a hawk owl on a mouse. “Wait a minute, Professor Binks. You’re saying Dr. Svenson should have been in front; do you mean he should have been the one to get caught in the net?”
    Peter stifled a snort. If they’d meant to catch Svenson, they should have dug a tiger pit.
    Winifred Binks must have been thinking much the same thing, she shook her head violently. “I’m not offering any conjectures, Sergeant, I’m merely attempting to sort out the facts. The net was only big enough for one person. The question is whether they—I say ‘they,’ though of course it may have been only a single he or she—intended to snare a particular member of our group, or just the first one who happened along. You’ll note that a fair number of dead leaves are caught up in the net along with Mr. Emmerick’s body. This indicates to me, though of course I may be wrong, that the net had been spread across the path and camouflaged so that it wouldn’t be spotted before somebody stepped into it. How anybody could have mistaken