“No travel talks, please. Anyway, I know all that. They got that for me.”

“It must have been disappointing. Just another big Swensky in a place full of big Swenskys.”

“I’ll find out. I’ll find out. And when I do I won’t have to sit and listen to you. My life is an open book.”

“Dull reading, too,” Thor said, as though to himself. “In spite of all you’ve managed, a monotonous life. Power is all you’ve wanted. It’s like a disease that has crippled you all your life.”

Suddenly Czar, the low-voiced, the self-contained, began to shout. “You leave my grandchild alone, Storm. I’m warning you. Next week I’ve got a man going over to Norway, he’ll track you, fifty years is nothing to him.”

Bridie, the erstwhile nurse, looked at him and saw danger in the face, now flushed, that habitually was so colorless. “Now Czar, you’ll be sick, a man of your age. A stroke, if you’re not careful.”

He glared at her. “Get out of this, Bridie. What are you doing here, anyway! This is between the two of us.”

Thor had been silent, his clear blue eyes fixed on Czar, speculatively. It was a look that Czar translated into defeat as Thor said, “You win, Czar. You can save yourself all that money for detectives and travel. They’ll trace me easily enough, over there.”

“Aha!” Czar gloated, like a villain in an old-time play. But now he seemed again suddenly benign, the beatific mask slipped down, a fine glaze, over his face. “Come to your senses, h’m?”

Bridie was not accustomed to the role of listener. “Thor, don’t say something you’ll be sorry for. Alaska’s full of people who want to let their past life stay in the past. The world everywhere is full of people like that. What of it! It’s what you are now, counts.”

But Thor did not heed her. “I’ll make a bargain with you, Czar. If I tell you the truth about myself—and you can prove it easily—will you credit ten thousand dollars to Christine’s account in the Miners’ National Bank?”

“Take me for a fool!”

“It costs money to send men to Copenhagen and London and Paris and Stockholm and Oslo and New York. Salaries and ships and planes and trains and hotels and all that goes with these. Much cheaper to give it to Christine and let me tell you now. Besides all the trouble.”

“How will I know you’re telling the truth?”

“You will know. From past experience.” He laughed then as at a little private joke. “But I warn you it will sound ridiculous.”

“How do you mean—ridiculous.” He was suspicious at once. This was not a word he had expected. “Look here, I don’t want Bridie around in this.”

But Bridie grasped the arms of her chair, she dug her heels into the heavy carpet, braced for the worst. “Don’t think you can make me go. Never. You’ll have to carry me out, the two of you. I’ll screech murder every inch of the way, they’ll hear me from this to the top of the Ice Palace.”