Two days before the big quake Einar Bjarnsson returned to the place he called home—a small bachelor cabin on a hilltop, crammed with scientific traps and trophies of his exploring. Webb Fallon drew the assignment of interviewing him.
"I was pretty sore at Madge, then," Fallon confessed, "and I had a ferocious hangover. The interview didn't go so well. But I remember Bjarnsson mentioning something about a volcanic formation quite close to the Pacific coast—something nobody had noticed before. It was apparently extinct, and the only thing that made it notable was its rather unusual conformation."
Joan stared at him. "What's that got to do with anything?"
Fallon shrugged. "Maybe nothing. Only I recall that the epicenter of the recent quake was somewhere in the vicinity of Bjarnsson's volcano. I remember that damned quake quite well, because it cost me my job."
Joan opened her mouth and closed it again, hard. Fallon grinned.
"You were going to tell me it wasn't the quake, but my own bad character," he said mockingly.
There was something grim in the upthrust lines of her jaw. "I can't make you out, Webb," she said quietly. "Sometimes I think there's good stuff in you—and then I think Madge was right!"
Fallon's dark oval face went ugly, and he didn't speak again until Bjarnsson's house came in sight.
CHAPTER THREE