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I took out my birding binoculars and swept over the scene several times. The long drive into the place and the walks had been shoveled. It struck me that I could just as well have driven over, parked down the drive, and walked in. Still, it looked peaceful, the narrow mullioned windows glinting and winking, the greenhouse shedding its cover of white so that the blue dazzle of pool water showed through a clear pane. I saw no movement as I panned the scene for several minutes. Then I noticed, looking up at me, as though expecting me, a huge German shepherd. It had come out of a kennel near a door toward the back, where a deck off the lower bridge part led to a path that went along the slope.

I ducked back under cover and took off my knapsack. I would drug the beast using the doctored meat. But first I took out the wireless phone. After a few attempts I got through to the switchboard at the SPD. I gave them the three-letter emergency code for Lieutenant Tracy. They put me through to his home. The connection wasn’t good. I explained to him where I was and what I was doing.

“Norman, stay where you are,” he kept saying. “We’ll handle this from here. Don’t go any farther.”

“You don’t know how insane he is,” I said. “The first sign of a police cruiser and he’ll go berserk.”

“Norman, don’t do it.”

“I’m going in, Lieutenant,” I practically shouted into the receiver as the wind, picking up again in that open space, made a racket around me. “It’s her only chance.”

“Norman …”

But I had clicked it off.

I made the bag of doped hamburger handy, hoisted my knapsack back on, took a deep breath, and started, as furtively as I could, down the steep slope toward the back of the house. I stopped every once in a while to check through my binoculars. The dog clearly knew I was there, but it didn’t bark. Nice puppy, I said to it softly, nice puppy.

The going was rough, precarious. The wind had scoured the area of fresh snow. Iced-over ledges showed through the sparse vegetation. I must have been no more than a hundred feet from where the dog waited when I lost my footing and took an awful spill. I managed, almost by instinct, to complete a self-arrest using the ice ax. I bruised my arm and scraped my face. I watched helplessly as the bag of meat in its fragile covering slid down the smoothly crusted snow toward the dog.

For a moment I was utterly disheartened. Surely the animal would bark now and give the alarm. Instead, miraculously, it left the small deck and with clumsy determination, made its way up to where the meat had snagged on a bush poking through the snow. I watched with bated breath as it nosed the pack, pawed at it, and finally freed the hamburger from the plastic bag. It wolfed the meat down in a matter of seconds.

It didn’t take long to have an effect. The dog looked up to where I crouched, turned, and started back toward the house, its footing unsteady. Not far from the deck it stopped, sat down, and then lay down. I reached it not long afterward. I think it was dead. But I had no time for regrets about a dog, whatever its innocence. My blood pounded so fiercely I could scarcely think. As stealthily as I could, I made my way to the deck where the dog had its kennel.

A formidable oaken door, studded and barred like those of a medieval keep, led into the house from the deck. For a handle it had a great wrought-iron ring. As quietly as I could, I twisted the ring, felt it give and click. With an ominous creak, the door swung open. I found myself in a dark passage, the darker for my pupils being contracted against the sunstruck snow. I paused a moment. A kind of pantry, curved with the exterior of the building, led off to the right into what I presumed was the kitchen. A bathroom opened to the left. I could see light coming from under the door ahead of me.

I did not have the presence of mind to take out my revolver. I did not have the presence of mind to skirt around the main part of the house through the kitchen. I simply went ahead and started