Play@YSDC

“Hi there!” says Howard loudly, as cheerfully as he can muster, and so that the others can hear him. “Are those our sandwiches? That’s great! We’re famished!”

He walks up to William, holding out his hands. “I can take it from here!”

William looked up with a start. ”Oh! I did not seem you there,” he said. He walked up to Howard and passed him the tray, which had a tea towel over the sandwiches to try to keep the rain off them.

He looked from Howard to the door of his room. ”Let me get the door for you,” he said. William turned the handle and pushed the door open, looking in carefully before he stepped back to allow Howard to enter. He looked back at Howard and smiled pleasantly. ”Your friends must still be in their rooms. Would you like me to call them for you?”

“No need” says Howard quickly, placing the tray on the bed. “We’ll be eating together in here. Let me walk back with you actually” he continues. “I was thinking of taking a fishing trip myself when the weather improves”.

He moves towards the door and gently takes William's arm. “Perhaps you can tell me what I could expect to catch in early Spring?”

”Bass mainly,” replied William. ”Both smallmouth and large. If you pop over to the reception later, I can check our room availability.”

He smiled at Howard and said ”Enjoy your sandwiches. If you need anything, please ask,” and then walked off in the direction of the hotel reception.

Thomas address the rest of the party; "I'm going to start by looking around the outside of the hotel, see if I can find anything suspicious. If not, I'll try the rest of the grounds."
He begins to walk towards the back of the hotel.

Lawrence follows Thomas outside. He then says:
"I hope you don't mind me joining you. This whole situation is suspect. The license plates, the disappearing people, the alleged sounds; the whole thing just doesn't feel right."

"Of course." Thomas says to Lawrence. "If anything is afoot we'll be better off looking around together, less we also meet a strange fate..."

"Perhaps it's just instinct but there's too many coincidences."

"Good thinking, let's stick together," says William, following along. "Underground tunnels are not as crazy as they sound. Bootleggers use them all the time. They don't usually go around kidnapping people, though. There may be secret entrances in the rooms. That would let him snatch people in their sleep and get them out without anyone noticing. We should search our rooms when we're done outside."

Howard waits a moment and steps out too, wanting to make sure that William has returned to the reception.

At the lake side, a wooden jetty jutted out into the water. On the bank nearby were three tarpaulin-covered rowing boats, presumably used for fishing. The lake itself was dark, the surface rippled with the falling rain.

On the other side of the lake stood some decrepit looking buildings and a muddy path leads both north and south around the lake, the southern path entering a small corpse of trees that border the edge of the lake.

William takes a look under the tarps, careful to hold them so that the rain is still kept off of them.

The tarpaulin on two of the boats had clearly leaked as water had pooled in the bottom, but the third was mostly dry. All three boats had oars stowed under the tarpaulin.

William replaces the tarps and inform the others. "Shall we check out those buildings?" he asks.

Lawrence agrees: "Absolutely."

Howard catches up with the others. “William thinks we’re having sandwiches in my room. We’d best not be too long, he might decide to come back soon.”