“How goes it, buddy?” he asked.
“Pretty damned lousy,” I said.
His forehead wrinkled and he sat up. “Something happen?”
“Yeah, but I don't know what it means.” I sat down on the second of the Naugahyde chairs. “When was the last time you saw Walt Bascomb?”
“Bascomb? Hell, I don't know. Why?”
“You see him today at any time?”
“If I did, I don't remember it.”
“Well, he's not in his cabin now and the way it looks, he hasn't been there since yesterday. But his car hasn't been moved.”
“Maybe he went somewhere with somebody…”
“Sure, maybe. But why hasn't he been back in better than a day? Why are all his belongings still at his cabin? Same questions if he went off by himself on foot.”
Harry ran a hand through his hair. “Listen, how come all this sudden interest in Bascomb? I don't see what you're leading into.”
“This, for one thing,” I said, and fished the torn corner of the sketch out of my pocket and handed it over to him. “Can you tell what it depicts?”
He studied it for a moment and then shook his head. “No, there's not much of it here.”
“It looks vaguely familiar to me.”
“I suppose so, yeah. Where'd you get it?”
“Off Bascomb's sketchpad. Somebody-probably not Bascomb-tore the sketch out, but they overlooked this much of it.”
“Why would anybody do a thing like that?”
“I don't know.”
“How'd you happen across it?”
“That's the thing that happened,” I said.
When I finished telling him about the incident, he looked grimly confused. “It doesn't make any sense,” he said. “You don't have any idea who it was you saw?”
“No. It was too dark, and it all came down pretty fast.”
“You really think he'd have come after you with that limb?”
“I can't be sure of that either. He ran off damned quick when I started after him.”
“It doesn't make any sense,” he said again.
“Remote as it might seem,” I said slowly, “I can think of one possibility. And you're not going to like it any more than I do.”
“What possibility?”
“That Bascomb's disappearance and the missing sketch tie in somehow with Terzian's murder last night.”
He stared at me. “You can't be serious…”
“I'm serious, all right.”
“Are you saying Bascomb killed Terzian?”
“I'm not saying anything, I'm only speculating. But that's a workable theory; it would explain his disappearance, and what happened to the stolen Oriental carpet.”
“How could he have disappeared with the carpet if his car is still here? And where does the sketch come in?”
“Those are the two things I can't figure,” I said. “Unless Bascomb had an accomplice.”
“Accomplice? Christ, now you're trying to tell me someone else here at the camp is involved in a murder.”
“The person I saw tonight doesn't have to be staying here.”
“How the hell could an outsider get in without being seen?”
“It could be done, Harry. There are ways.”
He got up and paced around, agitated; then he stopped and turned back to me.
“I just can't buy it, buddy. Bascomb is a commercial artist, he's not rich, what kind of connection could he have with a man like Terzian and valuable Oriental carpets? Or anybody else here, for that matter? Jerrold is the only one who has any real money, and he's only interested in his ad agency-one hundred percent business, no outside interests at all except for fishing and hunting.”
“What about Knox and Talesco? They own a freight line.”
“And most of their money is tied up in it,” Harry said. “Besides, you've met them, talked to them; they're outdoors types, they wouldn't know from rugs and carpets any more than you or I would.”
“There's Cody, then. You told me his old man is well off.”
“Yeah, he's well off, he owns a string of small businesses and private residences in Vegas; but he spends most of his time running around Europe, and from what Cody's said about him, he's not the type to collect anything but broads.” His mouth quirked. “Like father, like son.”
“But you don't know that much about him, or about Cody either. And Vegas is a rich town.”
“Buddy, you're trying to build mountains out of sand. I tell you, nobody at this camp could be involved in Terzian's death. There has to be some other explanation for Bascomb being gone and what happened up at his cabin tonight.”
I decided not to push it any farther. Harry had enough on his mind with Jerrold, and the strain of that was making him stubborn and irritable; nothing else I said was going to change his mind, because he did not want to have it changed. For that matter, what did I have to back up my feeling except the feeling itself and a few half-formed speculations? Maybe I was trying to build mountains out of sand.