“Well, now, everything’s lovely so far, and here we are and up we’ll go and you’ll get yourselves comfortable. I know what it is, those hours on the plane, and you can see Mount McKinley even from your bathroom here, and there’s a lovely little kitchen you can have a cup of tea any hour of the day or night, there’s heaven for you.”

“Please don’t bother,” Dina protested in a tone that said, oh, do run along and shut up and stop fussing and leave us alone.

A suffusion of grandeur enveloped Bridie.

“And what bother is that! Don’t I live here, and have since the day it was put up! Me own apartment.”

“Bridie’s Queen of the Ice Palace,” Ott called over his shoulder as, luggage-laden, he bumped his way through the entrance. “Come on, folks.”

Bayard Husack stared after the car that was disappearing around the corner. He picked up two bags, glared down at the two handsome brass-trimmed pigskin pieces that his father had so blithely left on the sidewalk. Then, with force and precision, he kicked their plump sides so that they not only slithered toward the open door, but one of them almost managed to get through before it was nipped by the heavy panel.

“Temper temper!” said Dina. “Here, give me one of the little ones and then you can wrestle these monsters.”

“Put that down, please,” Bay said, between his teeth. “And go on with the others. I’ll come back for those.”

Booted hooded figures in fur parkas clumped along the entrance corridor lined with shops. Here was the inner entrance to Nick’s Caribou Café, to the drugstore, the liquor store, the supermarket, the florist, the barbershop, a dozen units that made up this miniature market place.

Ott deposited his load in front of the closed elevator door, pressed a button, dashed out again to the sidewalk. “I’ve got it!” he yelled, as though this were a game; and was back with the last load of luggage. The Chamber of Commerce smile was slightly awry now, the hearty tones rang, perhaps, somewhat hollow. “Up we go! You coming along, Bridie, or you want to be dropped off at your floor?”

“Coming along of course,” Bridie chirped.

The great metal door facing them slid quietly open. A spate of fur-clad figures spewed out, babies, children, men, women in parkas, almost uniform except for size. Obligingly the vast unattended elevator waited like a benign giant while the new load was crammed into its capacious maw; passengers, luggage, gocarts. It did not hurry you. Then slowly, patiently, the great door slid shut. Ott Decker pressed a button, the thing began to ascend majestically. A surprisingly large assortment of babies stared round-eyed as all the young mothers, in answer to the unasked question of Ott at the wall indicator, said in turn, “Fourth … Fifth please … Seventh … Eighth.”

Now the four were alone in the ponderous vehicle except for three small copper-skinned boys as alike as three new-minted pennies. Muffled in parkas of minor and mangy pelts they had gone unnoticed in the crowd. As the elevator was relieved of its burden, floor by floor, they were discovered in a corner. Their eyes were very black, their teeth very white, they pressed close together like three wary rodents. They did not look at Ott Decker, they ignored Bridie Ballantyne. Their eyes darted from Bayard Husack to Dina; from the rich golden bags stamped with Dave Husack’s gold initials to the chocolate-brown of Dina’s dressing case, to the startlingly chaste surfaces of Bay’s aluminum luggage. Their gaze bored into Dina’s mink coat, flicked down to Bay’s custom-made shoes, darted up again to Dina’s hood and the handbag that was the latest law in Outside accessories.