He felt the bandage and found it was stiff with blood. Changing it, he decided, would waste a great deal of valuable time, and might actually make things worse. Brook and I took Jan and the twins into town. Before I woke up this morning, the women killed Brook, outside in the snow. There was a little stand of black-willow saplings down by the creek. He waded through the snow to them, cut six with his hunting knife, and carried them back to the cabin. There he cut four sticks, each three times as long as his foot, and tied their ends in pairs with twine. Shorter sticks, notched at both ends, spread them; he tied the short sticks in place with more twine, then bound the crude snowshoes that he had made to his boots, wrapping each boot tightly with a dozen turns. He was eight or ten yards from the cabin — walking over the snow rather than through it — when his ears caught the faint ringing of his telephone. He returned to the cabin to answer it, leaving the maul he had been carrying on the porch. “Mister Bainbridge? I’m Ralph Merton.” Ralph Merton’s voice was sepulchral. “May I extend my sympathy to you and your loved ones?” Emery sighed and sat down, his snowshoed feet necessarily flat on the floor. “Yes, Mister Merton. It was good of you to return my call. I didn’t think you’d be in today.” “I’m afraid I’m not, Mister Bainbridge. I have an — ah — device that lets me call my office at the parlor and get my messages. May I ask if your son was under a doctor’s care?” “No, Brook was perfectly healthy, as far as I know.” “A doctor hasn’t seen your son?” “No one has, except me.” After a few seconds’ silence, Emery added, “And the woman who killed him. I think there was another woman with her, in which case the second woman would have seen him, too. Not that it matters, I suppose.” Ralph Merton cleared his throat. “A doctor will have to examine your son and issue a death certificate before we can come, Mister Bainbridge.” “Of course. I’d forgotten.” “If you have a family doctor…?” “No,” Emery said.
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The Secret History of Science Fiction