'Thank God!' he said. 'I wondered what had happened to you. I've been trying to look for you, but I'm not very used to these things yet.' He pointed to his skis. Then he saw me. 'Hallo Skipper! So you made it all right.'
'Has Farnell passed you?' I asked as I ran up towards him.
'Dunno,' he answered. 'Two men went by a little time back. One a long way behind the other. The second looked rather like Dahler. Couldn't have been, could it? But neither he nor Jorgensen were at the hotel when I got down to breakfast. And police all over the place. Where have you been?' he asked, turning to Jill.
'Up on Sankt Paal,' she replied.
Down in the valley the train whistled. The siren note was thrown back by the mountains, growing fainter and fainter as it slipped away into the infinity of snow-capped peaks.
'That was Dahler all right,' I said. 'The man ahead of him was Farnell.'
'Good God!' I heard him mutter. But I was already past him, thrusting with my sticks to gain impetus. Jill came up beside me. Now that I was within sight of the quarry, I felt the excitement of the chase bringing the strength back into my legs. If only I could get Farnell alone — away from people like Lovaas and Jorgensen. He was bitter, tired of being pursued. He needed to be handled carefully. If I could talk to him quietly.
We topped another slight rise and there ahead of us, connected to us by the double lines of their ski tracks, two figures showed black against the snow. They were close above the railway now. The whistle of the train at Finse sounded again, the wail of it coming up to us from the valley and being thrown back by the hills. I glanced over my right shoulder. Great puffs of smoke were belching from the engine, condensing white in the thin air. The smoke turned black. I could hear the thick panting of the heavy locomotive. The long line of carriages began to move.
Jill came up alongside me. 'We must stop him getting on to that train,' she panted. Then she raised her stick and pointed to the sharp-cut line of the snow-ploughed railway below us. Little figures were moving along above the cutting. 'Police,' she said.
I nodded and plunged my sticks into the soft snow. All thought of my tiredness had vanished. If Farnell were captured by the Norwegian police, there was little chance of my getting the information I wanted.