Ott Decker’s rosy face paled. “You’re crazy. They can’t. Anyway, the lunch. They’ve got to be at the lunch in half an hour. It’s for them.”

“Just a minute,” Wilbur K. Distelhorst said with immense dignity. “I understood, if I’m not mistaken—–”

“And for you, of course—especially for you, naturally.”

Bayard Husack glanced at Dina Drake, he strode over to the car, opened the door, he thrust head and shoulders into the aperture. “Look here, Dad, what kind of kid stuff is this! If I’m going through with this charade you’ll have to play along.”

Dave Husack grinned, sheepishly. “We were just kidding around. Get my stuff up, will you? I hate the damn icehouse. We’re just going over to Czar’s house to talk a minute.”

The one-dimensional parallel lines that were Sid Kleet’s mouth now parted a fraction of an inch. “I’ll deliver him twelve-thirty.”

“Just half an hour’s little talk,” Czar explained, blandly, “where we won’t be interrupted.”

Dave’s reassuring bellow confirmed this. “Sure, sure. Bay, you kids run along, we’ll be there on time. Just about. Oh, God, here comes that errand boy.”

Here, indeed, came Distelhorst, looking forlorn, stricken, like a little brother who, tagging along, is being deserted by the big fellows. “Heh, wait a minute now,” he said. “Where you going?”

Dave Husack was all joviality. “We’ve just got to go over some local real-estate stuff, Disty, it would bore the pants off you.”

Sid Kleet’s head turned toward the disgruntled Washington emissary. Kleet’s dead black eyes rarely moved. When he wished to regard an object he turned his whole head toward it, menacingly, like the barrel of a revolver that encircles the lethal load.

“You’re booked in at the Pole Star,” he said. “Ott Decker will drive you over, the car you came in.”

At the look of outrage on Distelhorst’s face Czar interposed, unctuously. “Now, Sid, Disty’s probably tired, all that way from Washington yesterday, and probably wants to wash up and so forth before the lunch. So we’ll drop you at the Pole Star, Disty, Oscar’s about through. Just call him, will you, Dave?”

Husack poked his head out of the door. “Heh, Oscar!” he bawled. “Drop that stuff, leave them tend to it. Come on! Get going!”

Dina Drake, in the Ice Palace doorway, turned to look at the five men in the car. Four of them were grinning gleefully like mischievous urchins running away from their elders. She took a step or two toward the car. “Mr. Husack, I’ll be waiting, of course, in case you have some last-minute notes.” Then, primly, “Mrs. Ballantyne will go up with us. Please don’t be late.” It was not so much a plea as a command. Dave’s big jowls sagged. Czar Kennedy gazed at the girl through the car window. A long speculative look. The car moved off.

Bridie Ballantyne hitched her hat forward and took over. A natural resilience and a half century of Alaska had conditioned her to circumstances more disconcerting than this.