He nodded. 'Ought to,' he said. 'There's his sister — she'll want to know. And the Studios will expect a full report. The blood will show us the trail, even if we can't pick out his ski tracks immediately.' He walked over to the desk and looked at the sheet of paper in the typewriter. He nodded his head slowly as he read it. 'Perhaps that's what brought him back.'
'How do you mean?' I asked.
'Wanted to make certain you'd write the full story for a film,' he replied. 'He'd a great flair for knowing what the film-going public wants. He knew they'd like this story, and he didn't want it wasted.' He picked up a rubber and began tearing it methodically to pieces. Though he had not been a friend of Engles', I think his death had affected him more than he would care to admit.
'I never liked him, you know, Neil,' he murmured, looking down at the dead body. 'He wasn't a man you could really like. You could admire him. Or you could dislike him. But it was difficult to like him. He wasn't the sort of man who made friends easily. He lived on excitement. Everything had to be whipped up — conversation, work, action. That's why he drank so much. His nerves needed the sense of exhilaration drink could give him when there was insufficient excitement.'
'What are you trying to say, Joe?' I asked.
He looked at me then and tossed the broken rubber into the waste-paper basket. 'Don't you see — that's why he came out here. It wasn't a sense of responsibility because he had recognised Keramikos as a Nazi agent. It was his craving for excitement. And because he believed there might be the story for a film in it. And that's why, when he came in here, he sat down at the typewriter and wrote down the title and your name underneath. He knew he was finished. But in spite of the pain, his brain still functioned clearly and he saw what a film it would make. Pity he missed the fire scene. He would have liked that.'
He paused for a moment and stared vacantly at the electric fire. 'It wasn't natural for him to sit down at a typewriter, you know,' he went on. 'Normally he'd have talked. Verbal self-dramatisation was his hobby. But he wanted the story told with himself as the central figure. He saw himself as — . He had to make sure you'd see it that way. He knew it was the end. And he planned his exit as he struggled through the snow. He wanted an audience. He always needed an audience. And he wanted roadie, sitting at a typewriter with a cigarette dangling from his lips, typing the title of the film and your name underneath. It was the thought of that scene that kept him going. He couldn't bear a good situation to be wasted. He had to get back, he had to be sure that you would write the script and that the Studios would produce it as the last work of Derek Engles, their famous director.' He drove his fist into his palm. 'If only I'd not been asleep, I could have taken a shot of that scene. He would have liked that.' He stopped then, exhausted by such an unusually long speech. He was massaging his lower lip between his finger and thumb. I think he was near to tears. For though he had no love for Engles as a man, he had great admiration for him as a director.
I went over to the window and looked out. The moon had set now and it was much darker. Clouds were skudding across the stars. 'Better get going,' I said. 'It looks like snow.'
'Can you make it?' he asked. 'You've had a pretty thick two days.'
'I'm all right,' I told him.