After closing the door, Bahne turned the key twice and tested the handle. He surveyed the room. His locked suitcase, with his tools and fur samples, lay at the exact angle he had placed it before going out. Everything seemed to be in order, unlike yesterday.
Yesterday, an unfamiliar scent had lingered in the room, and his suitcase had been moved. When he confronted Mrs Berger this morning, she denied that anyone had been inside, but there was something shifty to her eyes. Perhaps, he thought, he should leave this place earlier than planned.
At home, in his laboratory, he had an industrial walk-in freezer and the necessary equipment to force the barbegazi to talk. A local builder had replicated the modified rack, based on a sketch from the historic archives in Geneva. His own narrow feet tingled, at the mere thought of stretching those hairy barbegazi pads.
“But how can I keep it alive?” he muttered. Even after years of trawling through ancient texts, their dietary needs remained an unsolved mystery. He emptied the contents of his backpack. Moss, bark, pine cones, pine needles and grass from deep below the snow in Schöngraben scattered onto the plastic sheet on top of his bed. Despite trying to feed it a variety of native plants, the barbegazi in his van was weak from lack of sustenance. So far, it had rejected everything he offered, except a few ice cubes. Whatever the barbegazi needed, he knew it must be available here and now in these mountains. And so, instead of leaving early, he might have to extend his stay.
While he showered and changed clothes, he took deep breaths, and reminded himself that despite his failure to get any human words out of the barbegazi, his trip was an immense success.
All the miserable Christmas holidays he had spent in this B & B, with its chatterbox proprietor, had finally paid off. After years of marking barbegazi tracks on his map, he had known the most likely places to be rescued by one of them.
“Rescued,” he scoffed. As if he needed to be rescued. His new avalanche airbag had worked like a charm. It had kept him afloat on the surface of the sliding snow. Both skis were gone, as expected, but he would rather lose them than risk breaking a leg. And he had, of course, brought snowshoes. Pretending to be unconscious until he could get his iron chain around the barbegazi had been easy.
Preventing it from starving to death was turning out to be difficult.
But even if the services of a taxidermist would be required, the discovery and capture of a barbegazi was a breakthrough for science. A crowning end to his career. The means to restoring his professional reputation and making his colleagues across Europe envious. He sneered, imagining the astounded faces of the old guard, all those who usually sniggered behind his back at zoological conferences, convinced elves were as extinct as the dinosaurs.
He alone had been certain they were still alive. When the institute stopped funding his barbegazi research a decade ago, he continued the hunt. And every year he spent time in locations with barbegazi rumours: skiing in St Anton over Christmas and in Chamonix during Easter, and crossing the Swiss Alps on glacier hiking trails every weekend in summer and autumn.
After sitting down at the desk, he opened the drawer and extracted his black fountain pen. Unfortunately, he had no need of the red pen today. He only wanted to mark a few new crevices without barbegazi traces on the map. The map. Bahne flipped through the stashed papers twice, without finding it.
He struck the desk with a white-knuckled fist, saying aloud, “They are all liars.”
Someone had been in his room and taken his map. Mrs Berger had been lying. Just like old Willy Berger had lied when he denied being rescued by a barbegazi. Even mentioning it in Habits & Habitats had not brought the stubborn mountain man to his senses.
Bahne stood up abruptly. The chair snagged on the carpet and crashed to the floor. He picked up his notebook and strode out of the room, letting the door slam.
Maybe from the armchair in the breakfast room, he might overhear something that could lead him to the map thief.