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face the oncoming man.
    Richard Bryant had seen the two men just as the younger one had noticed him. He had no time to step behind some cover. And perhaps it was better that he hadn’t made the try. These men had the instincts of hunters. Both were facing him now, and he could recognise them: August Grell and his son Anton,from Unterwald, where they kept the small inn that stood on the meadow above the village. They both wore loden capes that ended just where their grey knee breeches met their heavy woollen stockings, heavy boots tight-laced over their ankles, and a look of definite speculation.
    Bryant reached them, greeted them nonchalantly, and then looked around him vaguely. “I left my jacket somewhere here,” he explained, and noted the quick glance the two men exchanged. They hadn’t expected that admission. Had they thought he would pretend he had just arrived at the lake and hadn’t hidden any jacket? They don’t catch me as easily as that, he thought, as he found the jacket. It seemed to be folded as he had left it, and in the same place. “I had an idea of getting a photograph with the early sun on the lake, but the clouds closed over just as I reached here. Then I had a brighter idea. The hill to the north of the wood seemed clear, so I went up there for a shot of sun struggling through mist. Very effective, you know, if you can have long enough exposure.”
    “You got quite another kind of exposure,” Anton said, looking at Bryant’s sweater fuzzed with fine beads of rain. Grell was smiling very much at ease, but his glance rested on Bryant’s hands.
    “Got trapped on the hillside, couldn’t even see this wood. I fell, nearly lost my camera. So I sat down and waited for the clouds to lift. That’s what all good mountaineers do, isn’t it?”
    Anton nodded. “Did you hurt your hands badly?”
    “Just a scrape.” Bryant looked down at the rags of handkerchief wound around them and laughed. “This gave me something to pass the time. Pretty messy bandaging, though.” He laid down his camera and tripod, peeled off his soddensweater, slipped his arms quickly into the warmth of his jacket, buttoned it gratefully. He still needed a sweater, but a dry one. He repressed a shiver, and privately cursed the bandages he had left on his hands (he had thought he might need them for handling the steering wheel on his way home), while he talked casually. “My name is Bryant. I stopped off at your inn, last July, when I was taking some pictures around here.” Anton remembered now, yes, indeed he remembered; Herr Bryant had sat out in front of the inn and drunk a tankard of beer. The older Grell kept his silence and that same benevolent grin on his face. “I think I’ll head for my car and start back to Salzburg. It has been a long time since breakfast.” He saw the same quick glance pass between them when he mentioned his car. His frankness puzzled them, perhaps. And they were puzzling him a little. Everything seemed normal, as if they were only a couple of hunters out after marmot and had been cheated by the weather, too. He could see the shape of their rifles under their lodens. What else were they hiding there? Knives? That would be less noisy than firing, but of course the butt of a rifle could be just as silent. And just as lethal.
    He began walking down towards the picnic ground. They came with him. Anton was saying it wasn’t much of a day for anything, and he wouldn’t mind a lift in Bryant’s car as far as the inn. August Grell spoke his first words. “We might all have breakfast there. You’d feel the better for it. And you can dry your pullover at the stove. You’ll need it on your way home.”
    “Thank you,” Bryant said. “That sounds a fine idea. Only—” What else could he do except play along with them? They were huskier than he was. August was a solid mass of a man, red-faced, brimming over with good health. Anton, perhaps thirty yearsold at most, was six feet and strong-muscled.