An Owl Too Many Read Online Free Page B

Mr. Emmerick for Dr. Svenson is a question I’m not prepared to answer.”
    “Maybe they didn’t know Dr. Svenson by sight, but just that he’d be the first in line,” one of the other officers ventured.
    “That would mean we’re dealing with a set of paid assassins,” said Peter. “Can you think offhand who’d want to put out a contract on you, President?”
    “Anybody.”
    Svenson was being overmodest. Fearsome though he might appear, and indeed often was, Thorkjeld Svenson was admired by many, revered by some, and loved by a surprising number, of whom Peter Shandy and Daniel Stott were two, although either would have been hideously embarrassed to say so. Through weal, through woe, through sun and storm and general cussedness, each to each had held the steadfast fraternal devotion of a Damon to a Pythias, a Roland to an Oliver, a Mason to a Mason, an Elk to an Elk: Peter was more shaken than he ever wanted to be again at the thought that it might have been Svenson bundled up inside this depressing tangle of cords. He wished he hadn’t been so flip about the putative contract.
    The hell of it was, that stab in the neck would have made some sense if the trappers had been under the impression that they’d snared the president. Thorkjeld Svenson’s reputation as a warrior in the old berserker tradition was too well known for even a squad of hired retiarii not to have had some inkling of what they’d be running up against. But why then the fireworks? Why the net at all? Why the stabbing? Why not an elephant gun from a safe distance?
    Through an often bizarre concatenation of circumstances, Peter had come to be regarded as Balaclava County’s apology for Renfrew of the Mounted. Sooner or later, a small voice from some other dimension was murmuring, he was going to get stuck with this mess.
    The hitch was, the state police would be perfectly willing to go on with the case, but only to the extent that Chief Ottermole asked them to. Ottermole was not one to let outsiders hog any glory that might be hoggable. As soon as he found out what had happened, he’d insist on taking charge, relying mainly on local talent for whatever help he needed. And when Fred Ottermole thought of local talent, he thought first of P. Shandy.
    That was a bridge to be crossed when they got to it. Right now Haverford was saying, “I know you folks want to get home, but I’d like to get statements from all of you while everything’s fresh in your mind.”
    “That’s quite all right, Sergeant,” replied Winifred Binks, at whom Haverford’s semi-apology had been mainly directed. “We were planning to stay out all night, anyway. President, will you go first?”
    “You, Binks. Emmerick was your man.”
    The outdoor life, while good for the soul, tends to be rough on the complexion. Haverford stared from the youngish, dapperly clad male body, which had by now been extricated from the net and laid out on the stretcher, to the spare, gray-haired woman whose wrinkled face was almost as thoroughly tanned as her ill-made deerskin suit. “You and he were—er—ah—?”
    Winifred Binks took his flounderings calmly. “What President Svenson means, Sergeant, is that I’m the one responsible for having brought Mr. Emmerick to Balaclava. It was my idea to build the television station.”
    “Binks’s money, too,” Svenson barked.
    “Binks’s? You’re—you’re not the missing heiress to the Binks estate?”
    Winifred shook her head. “I was never missing, Sergeant; I was merely too uninteresting to be kept track of until the media discovered that Grandfather was dead and I’d inherited his money. Nor am I all that interesting now, I’m afraid. There’s not much I can tell you that hasn’t already been said, except that when Mr. Emmerick rushed to the head of the line, he tried to take me with him.”
    “How was that?”
    “He’d been walking behind me. As he came up to my side, he took hold of my arm and started urging me