Desmond Bagley - The Snow Tiger

‘For Christ’s sake!’ exploded Liz. Rawson was shocked and startled. ‘You could be killed at any time and you’re worried about names on bloody bits of paper. Now look here: if you don’t get moving and produce everything on that list I’ll have Arthur Pye confiscate your whole damned stock. He’d do it, too.’

Rawson was affronted. ‘You can’t threaten me with the police!’

‘What do you mean — I can’t? I’ve just done it, haven’t I? Stacey, use that telephone and find Arthur Pye.’

Rawson threw up his hands. ‘Oh, very well — but I insist on delivering any drugs on the dangerous list to Dr Scott personally.’

‘Good!’ said Liz briskly. ‘That means you’ll be helping at last. Where’s the stock room?’

Rawson waved. ‘That door back there.’ As Liz strode towards it he said, ‘But it’s locked. Can’t be too careful about things like that.’ He joined her and took a chain from his pocket on the end of which dangled a bunch of keys. He unlocked the door. ‘All the bandages are on those shelves to the right. I’ll be in the dispensary getting the drugs together.’

The two girls marched past him and he turned, shaking his head at the impetuosity of modern youth. Who would have thought that a nicely brought up girl like Elizabeth Peterson was capable of using language which hitherto he had only associated with bar-rooms?

He went into the dispensary and unlocked the cupboard in which he kept the registered drugs. He took a box and began filling it with ampoules, keeping careful count and making a note every so often in the Poisons Register. This naturally took up time. He was a most meticulous man.

He was not to know it but the combination of his broken promise and his scrupulosity meant that he was a dead man. If he had been on time at the shop he would have been there when the girls arrived and there would have been no waste of time in extracting him from the hotel bar. His meticulousness in putting everything in the Poisons Register meant that he was still in the dispensary when the avalanche hit.

When the front of the shop caved in, the shock transmitted through the foundations caused a half-gallon bottle to leap off a shelf and fall and smash on the table before him. It was full of hydrochloric acid which splashed all over his face and the front of his body.

Liz Peterson was saved by something which had begun five years earlier. In the winter of that year, which had also been cold, a drop of water had frozen in a minute crack in the concrete which formed the footing of the rear wall of the stock room. The water drop, turning into ice, had expanded and widened the crack. The following year the same thing happened, but with a little more water, and year by year the crack had widened until at this time it constituted a serious danger to the stability of the wall.

Had Rawson known of this he would have had it repaired immediately, being the sort of man he was. But he did not know of it because it was underground. Consequently, when the shock of the avalanche struck, the rear wall constituted a weakness and it gave way easily and without resistance.

Liz was hurled forward against stacked boxes of bandages which cushioned the shock, although the edge of a shelf broke two of her ribs. The whole mass, shelving, boxes and the bodies of Liz and Stacey, was forced against the rear wall which gave immediately, and Liz was precipitated through the air in a tangle of streaming and unwinding bandages.

She fell on to snow, and more snow covered her, holding her body and clamping her arms and legs. She was quite conscious and rational and she wondered if she were about to die. She did not know that Stacey Cameron was in much the same position not more than ten feet away. Both girls lost consciousness at about the same time, roughly one-and-a-half minutes after being buried.

Rawson was also buried about twenty yards away and was dying slowly and quite painfully as the acid ate at his flesh. Fortunately, when he opened his mouth to scream it filled with soft snow and he died mercifully and quickly of asphyxia.

The Hotel D’Archiac, that abode of fools, was speedily demolished. Jeff Weston, the king of fools who had been coining it, was parted from more than his money. Business was so brisk that he had gone behind the bar to help the overworked bartender and when the building was hit he was struck on the head by a bottle of scotch whisky which left the shelf behind him like a projectile.

Most of the men who were drinking in the bar were killed by flying bottles. Behind the bottles came the whole wall and, after that, came the snow which covered everything. They died because they were fools, although a cynic might have said they died of acute alcoholism. But there were no cynics left in Hukahoronui after that Sunday morning.

Those in the dining-room died when the roof fell in. Alice Harper, the waitress who had served McGill with colonial goose on the previous evening, was killed by a heavy suitcase which fell from the bedrooms above. The suitcase belonged to the American, Newman, who had his own troubles at the time.

Newman’s room no longer existed as a room and the same applied to the room next door which had been taken by his friend, Miller. Miller was most fortunate to be absent.

Bill Quentin was exceptionally lucky because he had left the hotel with Eric Peterson only moments before the hotel was destroyed. He had gone into the lobby from the bar and found Eric. ‘Look here,’ he said. ‘Does the council know what’s going on?’

‘About what?’

‘About closing the mine.’

‘The mine has been closed. Ballard closed it this morning.’

‘I don’t mean that. I mean closing it permanently.’

Eric shook his head a little wearily. ‘No one has said anything to us — yet.’

‘Well, aren’t you going to do anything about it?’

‘What the hell do you expect us to do when we haven’t been notified officially? I don’t believe it will close.’

Quentin snorted. ‘Ballard said it would. He said it at a meeting yesterday. He said the company couldn’t afford to spend money on avalanche protection. I think this avalanche scare is a lot of balls. I think the company is trying to weasel out.’

‘Weasel out of what? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Eric moved towards the door.

‘You know what these big companies are like.’ Quentin took a couple of steps to keep up with him. ‘I hear that Ballard is related to the big boss back in London. Know anything about that?’

‘I’ve heard it.’ Eric quickened his pace. ‘It’s true.’

‘I’ll bet he’s been sent to do the hatchet job. Hey — where are you going?’

‘To join Johnnie in the old Fisher house.’

‘I think I’ll come with you,’ said Quentin. ‘I think the council ought to know about this. Where’s Matt Houghton?’

‘At home.’

They stepped off the pavement, and Quentin said, ‘That means he’s the only sensible man around here. Everybody else is shutting themselves up in holes.’

Eric glanced at him. ‘Like me?’

‘Don’t tell me you believe in Doomsday?’

Eric stopped on the opposite pavement. His back was to the Fisher house and so he did not see his brother run across the road towards the telephone exchange. ‘Johnnie’s no fool and he believes it,’ he said deliberately. ‘And I’m beginning to.’

He resumed his stride at a quicker pace and Quentin, a much smaller man, was forced to trot to keep up with him. They entered the house and Eric glanced into the empty room off the hall. ‘He’ll be in the cellar.’

The two men were just going down the steps into the basement when the house was hit. Eric tumbled the rest of the way and fell on top of young Mary Rees, breaking her leg. Bill Quentin fell on top of Eric and broke Eric’s arm. He himself was quite unhurt; he was untouched and inviolate and was not even scratched by the falling rubble of the collapsing house.