Bear Island

10

Five minutes later, wrapped to the eyes against the bitter cold, the driving snow and that wind that was now howling, not moaning, across the frozen face of the island, Smithy and I stood in the lee of the cabin, by my window which I'd wedged shut against a wad of paper: there was no handle on the outside to pull it open again but I had with me a multitooled Swiss army knife that could pry open just about anything. We looked at the vaguely seen bulk of the cabin, at the bright light-Coleman lamps have an intensely white flame-streaming from one of the windows in the central section and the pale glimmer of smaller lights from a few of the cubicles.

"No night for an honest citizen to be taking a constitutional," Smithy said in my ear. "But how about bumping into one of the less honest ones "Too soon for him or them to be stirring abroad," I said. "For the moment the flame of suspicion burns too high for anyone even to clear his throat at the wrong moment. Later, perhaps. But not now."

We went directly to the provisions store, closed the door behind us and, since the hut was windowless, switched on both our torches. We searched through all the bags, crates, cartons, and packages of food and found nothing untoward.

"What are we supposed to be looking for?" Smithy asked.

"I've no idea. Anything, shall we say, that shouldn't be here."

"A gun? A big black ribbed bottle marked "Deadly Poison?'

"Something like that." I lifted a bottle of Haig from a crate and stuck it in my parka pocket. "Medicinal use only," I explained.

"Of course." Smithy made a farewell sweep of his torch beam round the walls of the hut: the beam steadied on three small highly varnished

boxes on an upper shelf.

"Must be very high grade food in those," Smithy said. "Caviar for Otto, maybe?"

"Spare medical equipment for me. Mainly instruments. No poisons. Guaranteed." I made for the door. "Come on."

"Not checking?"

"No point. Be a bit difficult to hide a submachine gun in one of those."

The boxes were about ten inches by eight.

"OK to have a look, all the same."

"All right." I was a bit impatient. "Hurry it up, though."

Smithy opened the lids of the first two boxes, glanced cursorily at the contents and closed them again. He opened the third box and said: "Broken into your reserves already, I see."

I have not."

"Then somebody has." He handed over the box and I saw the two vacant moulds in the blue felt.

"Somebody has indeed," I said. "A hypodermic and a tube of needles."

Smithy looked at me in silence, took the box, closed the lid and replaced it. He said: I don't think I like this very much."

"Twenty-two days could be a very long time," I said. "Now, if we could only find the stuff that's going to go inside this syringe."

If. You don't think somebody may have borrowed it for his own private use? Somebody on the hard stuff who's bent his own plunger? One of the Three Apostles, for instance? Right background, after all-pop world, film world, just kids."

"No, I don't think that."

"I don't think so either. I wish I did."

We went from there to the fuel hut. Two minutes was sufficient to discover that the fuel hut had nothing to offer us. Neither had the equipment hut although it afforded me two items I wanted, a screwdriver from the toolbox Eddie had used when he was connecting up the generator and a packet of screws. Smithy said: "What do you want those for?"

"For the screwing up of windows," I said. "A door is not the only way you can enter the cubicle of a sleeping man."

"You don't trust an awful lot of people, do you?"

I weep for my lost innocence."

There was no temptation to linger in the tractor shed, not with Stryker lying there, his face ghastly in the reflected wash from the torches, his glazed eyes staring unseeingly at the ceiling. We rummaged through toolboxes , examined metal panniers, even went to the length of probing fuel tanks, oil tanks, and radiators: we found nothing.

We made our way down to the jetty. From the main cabin it was a distance of just over twenty yards and it took us five minutes to find it. We did not dare use our torches and with that heavy and driving snow reducing visibility to virtually arm's length, we were blind people moving in a blind world. We edged our way very gingerly out to the end of the jetty-the snow had covered up the gaps in the crumbling limestone and, heavily clad as we were, the chances of surviving a tumble into the freezing waters of the Sor-Hamna were not high-located the workboat in the sheltered northwest angle of the jetty and climbed down into it by means of a vertical iron ladder that was so ancient and rusty that the outboard ends of some of the rungs were scarcely more than a quarter of an inch in diameter.

On a dark night the glow from a torch can be seen from a considerable distance even through the most heavily falling snow but now that we were below the level of the jetty wall we switched our torches on again, though still careful to keep them hooded. A quick search of the workboat revealed nothing. We clambered into the fourteen-footer lying alongside and had the same lack of success. From here we transferred ourselves to the mock-up submarine-an iron ladder had been welded both to its side and the conning tower.

The conning tower had a platform welded across its circumference at a distance of about four feel? from the top. A hatch in this led to a semicircular platform about eighteen inches below the flange to which the conning tower was secured: from here a short ladder led to the deck of the submarine. We went down and shone our torches around.

Give me subs any time," Smithy said. "At least they keep the snow out.

That apart, I don't think I'd care to settle down here."

The narrow and cramped interior was indeed a bleak and cheerless place. The deck consisted of transverse spaced wooden planks held in position at either side by large butterfly nuts. Beneath the planks we could see, firmly held in position, rows of long narrow grey-painted bars-the four tons of cast-iron that served as ballast. Four square ballast tanks were arranged along either side of the shell-those could be filled to give negative buoyancy-and at one end of the shell stood a small diesel, its exhaust passing through the deckhead as far as the top of the conning tower, to which it was bolted: this engine was coupled to a compressor unit for emptying the ballast tanks. And that, structurally, was all that there was to it: I had been told that the entire mock-up had cost fifteen thousand pounds and could only conclude that Otto had been engaged in the producers " favourite pastime of cooking the books.

There were several other disparate items of equipment. In a locker in what I took to be the after end of this central mock-up were four small mushroom anchors with chains, together with a small portable windlass: immediately above these was a hatch in the deckhead which gave access to the upper deck: the anchors could only be for mooring the model securely in any desired position. Opposite this locker, securely lashed against a bulkhead, was a lightweight plastic reconstruction of a periscope that appeared to be capable of operating in a sufficiently realistic fashion. Close by were three other plastic models, a dummy three-inch gun presumably for mounting on the deck and two model machine guns which would be fitted, I imagined, somewhere in the conning tower. In the foreword end of the craft were two more lockers: one held a number of cork life jackets, the other six cans of paint and some paint brushes. The cans were marked instant Grey."

"And what does that mean?" Smithy asked.

"Some sort of quick-drying paint, I should imagine."

"Everything shipshape and Bristol fashion," Smithy said. "I wouldn't have given Otto the credit." He shivered. "Maybe it isn't snowing in here but I'd have you know that I'm very cold indeed. This place reminds me of an iron tomb."

It isn't very cosy. Up and away."

"A fruitless search, you might say?"

"You might. I didn't have many hopes anyway."

Is that why you changed your mind about their getting on with the making of the film? One minute indifference, the next advising them to press on? So that you could, perhaps, examine their quarters and their possessions when they're out?"

"Whatever put such a thought in your mind, Smithy?"

"There are a thousand snowdrifts where a person could hide anything."

"That's a thought that's also in my mind."

We made the trip from the jetty to the main cabin with much greater ease than we had the other way for this time we had the faint and diffuse glow of light from the Colemans to guide us. We scrambled back inside our cubicle without too much difficulty, brushed the snow from our boots and upper clothing and hung the latter up: compared to the interior of the submarine shell the warmth inside the cubicle was positively genial.

I took screwdriver and screws and started to secure the window while Smithy, after some references to the low state of his health, retrieved the bottle I'd taken from the provisions shed and took two small beakers from my medical box. He watched me until I had finished.

"Well," he said, "that's us safe for the night. How about the others?"

I don't think most of the others are in any danger because they don't offer any danger to the plans of our friend or friends."

"Most of the others?"

I think I'll screw up Judith Haynes's window too."

"Judith Haynes?"

I have a feeling that she is in danger. Whether it's grave danger or imminent danger I have no idea. Maybe I'm just fey."

I shouldn't wonder," Smithy said ambiguously. He drank some Scotch absently. "I've just been thinking myself, but along rather different lines. When, do you think, is it going to occur to our directorial board to call some law in or some outside help or, at least, to let the world know that the employees of Olympus Productions are dying off like flies and not from natural causes, either?"

"That's the decision you would arrive at?"

If I wasn't a criminal, or, in this case, the criminal, and had very powerful reasons for not wanting the law around, yes, I would."

"I'm not a criminal but I've very powerful reasons for not wanting the law around either. The moment the law officially steps into the picture every criminal thought, intent, and potential action will go into deep freeze and we'll be left with five unresolved deaths on our hands and that'll be the end of it for there's nothing surer than that we haven't got a thing to hang on anyone yet. There's only one way and that's by giving out enough rope for a hanging job."

"What if you give out too much rope and our friend, instead of hanging himself, hangs one of us instead? What if there's murder?"

In that case we'd have to call in the law. I'm here to do a job in the best way I can but that doesn't mean by any means I can: I can't use the innocent as sacrificial pawns."

"Well, that's some relief. But if the thought does occur to them?"

"Then obviously we'll have to try to contact Tunheim-there's a Meteorological Office radio there that should just about reach the moon. Or we'll have to offer to try to contact Tunheim. It's less than ten miles away but in weather conditions like those it might as well be on the far side of Siberia. If the weather cases, it might be possible. The wind's veering round to the west now and if it stayed in that quarter a trip by boat up the coast might be possible-pretty unpleasant, but just possible. If it goes much north of west, it wouldn't-those are only open workboats and would be swamped in any kind of sea. By land-if the snow stopped-well, I just don't know. In the first place, the terrain is so broken and mountainous that you couldn't possibly use the little Sno-Cat-you'd have to make it on foot. You'd have to go well inland, to the west, to avoid the Misery Fell complex for that ends in cliffs on the east coast. There are hundreds of little lakes lying in that region and I've no idea how heavily they may be frozen over, maybe some of them not very much, maybe just enough to support a covering of snow and not a man-and I believe some of those lakes are over a hundred feel? deep. You might be ankle-deep, knee-deep, thigh-deep, waist-deep in snow. And apart from being bogged-down or drowned, we're not equipped for winter travel, we haven't even got a tent for an overnight stop-there isn't a hope of you making it in one day-and if the snow started falling again and kept on falling I bet Olympus Productions haven't even as much as a hand compass to prevent you from walking in circles until you drop dead from cold or hunger or just plain old exhaustion."

"You, you, you'," Smithy said. "You're always talking about me. How about you going instead?" He grinned. "Of course, I could always set off for there, search around till I found some convenient cave or shelter, hole up there for the night, and return the next day announcing mission impossible."

"We'll see how the cards fall." I finished my drink and picked up screwdriver and screws. "Let's go and see how Miss Hayries is."

Miss Hayries seemed to be in reasonable health. No fever, normal pulse, breathing deeply and evenly: how she would feel when she woke was another matter altogether. I screwed up her window until nobody could have entered her room from the outside without smashing their way in and breaking through two sheets of plate glass would cause enough racket to wake up half the occupants of the cabin. Then we went into the living area of the cabin.

It was surprisingly empty. At least ten people I would have expected to be there were absent, but a quick mental count of the missing heads convinced me that there was no likely cause for alarm in this. Otto, the Count, Heissman, and Goin, conspicuously absent, were probably in secret conclave in one of their cubicles discussing weighty matters which they didn't wish their underlings to hear. Lonnie had almost certainly betaken himself again in his quest for fresh air and I hoped that he hadn't managed to lose himself between the cabin and the provisions hut. Allen, almost certainly, had gone to lie down again and I presumed that Mary Darling, who appeared to have overcome a great number of her earlier inhibitions, had returned to her dutiful handholding. I couldn't imagine where the Three Apostles had got to nor was I particularly worried: I was sure that there was nothing to fear from them other than permanent damage to the eardrums.

I crossed to where Conrad was presiding over a three-burner oil cooker mounted on top of a stove. He had two large pans and a large pot all bubbling away at once, stew, beans and coffee, and he seemed to be enjoying his role of chef not least, I guessed, because he had Mary Stuart as his assistant. In another man I would have looked for a less than altruistic motive in this cheerful willingness, the hail-fellow-well-met leading man playing the democrat to an admiring gallery, but I knew enough of Conrad now to realise that this formed no part of his nature at all: he was just a naturally helpful character who never thought to place himself above his fellow actors. Conrad, I thought, must be a very rare avis indeed in the cinema world.

"What's all this, then?" I said. `You qualified for this sort of thing. I thought Otto had appointed the Three Apostles as alternate chefs?"

"The Three Apostles had it in mind to start improving their musical technique in this very spot," Conrad said. I did a self-defence trade with them. They're practising across in the equipment hut-you know, where the generator is."

I tried to imagine the total degree of cacophony produced by their tatonal voices, their amplified instruments and the diesel engine in a confined space of eight by eight, but my imagination wasn't up to it. I said: "You deserve a medal. You too, Mary dear."

"Me?" She smiled. "Why?"

"Remember what I said about the goodies pairing off with the baddies?

Delighted to see you keeping a close eye on our suspect here. Haven't seen his hand hovering suspiciously long over one of the pots, have you?"

She stopped smiling. I don't think that's funny, Dr. Marlowe."

I don't think it is either. A clumsy attempt to lighten the atmosphere."

I looked at Conrad. "Can I have a word with the chef?"

Conrad looked at me briefly, speculatively, nodded and turned away. Mary Stuart said: "That's nice. For me, I mean. Why can't you have a word with him here?"

"I'm going to tell him some funny stories. You don't seem to care much for my humour." I walked away a few paces with Conrad and said: "Had a chance of a word with Lonnie yet?"

"No. I mean, I haven't had an opportunity yet. Is it that urgent?"

"I'm beginning to think it may be. Look, I haven't seen him there but I'm certain as can be that Lonnie is across in the provisions hut."

"Where Otto keeps all those elixirs of life?"

"You wouldn't expect to find Lonnie in the fuel shed. Diesel and petrol aren't his tipples. I wonder if you could go across there, seeking liquid solace from this harsh and weary world, from Bear Island, from Olympus Productions, from whatever you like, and engage him in crafty conversation. Touch upon the theme of how you're missing your family. Anything just get him to tell you about his."

He hesitated. I like Lonnie. I don't like this job."

"I'm past caring now about people's feelings. I'm just concerned with people's lives-that they should keep on living, I mean."

"Right." He nodded and looked at me soberly. "Taking a bit of a chance, aren't you? Enlisting the aid of one of your suspects, I mean."

"You're not on my list of suspects," I said. "You never were."

He looked at me for some moments then said: "Tell that to Mary dear, will you?" He turned and made for the outer door. I returned to the oil cooker. Mary Stuart looked at me with her usual grave and remote lack of expression.

I said: "Conrad tells me to tell you that I've just told him-you're following me?-that he's not on my list of suspects and never was."

"That's nice." She gave me a little smile but there was a touch of winter in it.

"Mary," I said, "you are displeased with me."

"Well."

"Well what?"

"Are you a friend of mine?"

"Of course."

"Of course, of course." She mimicked my tone very creditably. "Dr. Marlowe is a friend of all mankind."

"Dr. Marlowe doesn't hold all mankind in his arms all night long."

Another smile. This time there was a touch of spring in it. She said:

"And Charles Conrad?"

I like him. I don't know what he thinks about me."

"And I like him and I know he likes me and so we're all friends together." I thought better of saying "of course" again and just nodded. "So why don't we all share secrets together?"

"Women are the most curious creatures," I said. "In every sense of the word "curious."

"Please don't be clever with me."

"Do you always share secrets?" She frowned a little, as if perplexed, and I went on: "Let's play kiddies" games, shall we? You tell me a secret and I'll tell you one."

"What on earth do you mean?"

"This secret assignation you had yesterday morning. In the snow and on the upper deck. When you were being so very affectionate with Heissman.

I'd expected some very positive reaction from this and was correspondingly disappointed when there was none. She looked at me, silently thoughtful, then said: "So you were spying on us."

I just happened to chance by."

"I didn't see you chancing by." She bit her lip, but not in any particularly discernible anguish. I wish you hadn't seen that."

"Why?" It had been briefly in my mind to be heavily ironic but I could hear a little warning bell tinkling in the distance.

"Because I don't want people to know."

"That's obvious," I said patiently. "Why?"

"Because I'm not very proud of it. I have to make a living, Dr. Marlowe.

I came to this country only two years ago and I haven't got any qualifications for anything. I haven't even got any qualifications for what I'm doing now. I'm a hopeless actress. I know I am. I've just got no talent at all.

The last two films I was in-well, they were just awful. Are you surprised that people give me the cold shoulder, why they're wondering out loud why I'm making my third film with Olympus Productions? Well, you can guess now: Johann Heissman is the why." She smiled, just a very small smile. "You are surprised, Dr. Marlowe? Shocked, perhaps?"

"No."

The little smile went away. Some of the life went from her face and when she spoke her voice was dull. "It is so easy, then, to believe this of me?"

"Well, no. The point is that I just don't believe you at all!'

She looked at me, her face a little sad and quite uncomprehending.

"You don't believe-you don't believe this of me?"

"Not of Mary Stuart. Not of Mary dear."

Some of the life came back and she said almost wonderingly: "That's the nicest thing anybody's ever said to me." She looked down at her hands, as if hesitating, then said, without looking up: "Johann Heissman is my uncle. My mother's brother."

"Your uncle?" I'd been mentally shuffling all sorts of possibilities through my mind but this one hadn't even begun to occur to me.

"Uncle Johann." Again the little, almost secret smile, this time with what could have been an imagined trace of mischief: I wondered what her smile would be like if she ever smiled in pure delight or happiness.

"You don't have to believe me. just go and ask him yourself. But privately, if you please."

Dinner that night wasn't much of a social success. The atmosphere of cheerful good fellowship which is required to make such communal gettogethers go with a swing was noticeably lacking. This may have been due, partially, to the fact that most people either ate by their solitary selves or, both sitting and standing, in scattered small groups around the cabin, their attention almost exclusively devoted to the unappetising goulash in the bowls held in their hands: but it was mainly due to the fact that everybody was clearly and painfully aware that we were experiencing the secular equivalent of our own last supper. For the interest in the food was not all-absorbing: frequently, but very, very briefly, a pair of eyes would break off their rapt communion with the stew and beans, glance swiftly around the cabin, then return in an oddly guilty defensiveness to the food as if the person had hoped in that one lightning ocular sortie to discover some unmistakable telltale signs that would infallibly identify the traitor in our midst. There were, needless to say, no such overt indications of self-betrayal on display, and the problem of identification was deepened and confused by the fact that most of those present exhibited a measure of abnormality in their behaviour that would ordinarily have given rise to more than a modicum of suspicion anyway. for it is an odd characteristic of human nature that even the most innocent person who knows himself or herself to be under suspicion tends to overreact with an unnatural degree of casual indifference and insouciant unconcern that serves only to heighten the original suspicion.

Otto, clearly, was not one of those thus afflicted. Whether it was because he knew himself to be one of those who was regarded as being completely in the clear or because, as chairman of the company and producer of the film, he regarded himself as being above and apart from the problems that afflicted the common run of mankind, Otto was remarkably composed, and, astonishingly, even forceful and assertive. Unlikely though it had appeared up to that moment, Otto, normally so dithering and indecisive, might well be one of those who only showed of their best in the moments of crisis. There was certainly nothing dithering or indecisive about him when he rose to speak at the end of the meal.

"We are all aware," said Otto briskly, "of the dreadful happenings of the past day or two and I think that we have no alternative to accepting Dr. Marlowe's interpretation of the events. Further, I fear we have to accept as very real the doctor's warnings as to what may happen in the near future.

"Those are inescapable facts and entirely conceivable possibilities so please don't for a moment imagine that I'm trying to minimise the seriousness of the situation. On the contrary, it would be impossible to exaggerate it, impossible to exaggerate an impossible situation. Here we are, marooned in the high Arctic and beyond any reach of help, with the knowledge that there are those of us who have come to a violent end and that this violence may not yet be over." He looked unhurriedly around the company and I did the same: I could see that there were quite a number who were as impressed by Otto's calm assessment of the situation as I was. He went on: "It is precisely because the state of affairs in which we find ourselves is so unbelievable and so abnormal that I suggest we comport ourselves in the most rational and normal fashion possible. A descent into hysteria will achieve no reversal of the awful things that have just occurred and can only harm all of us. "Accordingly, my colleagues and I have decided that, subject, of course, to taking every possible precaution, we should proceed with the business in hand-the reason why we came to this island at all-in as normal a fashion as possible. I am sure you will all agree with me that it is much better to have our time and attention taken up-I will not say gainfully employed-by working steadily at something purposive and constructive rather than sit idly by and have those awful things prey upon our minds. I do not suggest that we can pretend that those things never happened: I do suggest that it will benefit all of us if we act as if they hadn't.

"Weather permitting, we will have three crews in the field tomorrow."

Otto wasn't consulting, he was telling: I'd have done the same in his place. "The main group, under Mr. Divine here, will go north up Lerner's Way-a road built through to the next bay about the turn of the century although I don't suppose there are many traces left of it now. The Count, Allen, and Cecil here will of course accompany him. I intend to go along myself and I'll want you there too, Charles." This to Conrad.

Tou'll require me along, Mr. Gerran?" This from Mary Darling, her hand upraised like a little girl in class.

"Well, it'll be nearly all background-" He broke off, glanced at Allen's battered face, then looked again at Mary with what I took to be a roguish smile. If you wish to, certainly. Mr. Hendriks, with Luke, Mark, and John here, will try to capture for us all the sounds of the island-the wind on the fells, the birds on the cliffs, the waves breaking against the shore.

Mr. Heissman here is taking a hand camera out in the boat to seek out some suitable seaward locations-Mr. Jungbeck and Mr. Heyter, who have nothing on tomorrow, have kindly volunteered to accompany him.

"These, then, are our decisions for tomorrow's programme. But the most important decision of all, which I have left to the last, is in no way connected with our work. We have decided that it is essential that we seek help with all possible speed. By help I mean the law, police or some such recognised authority. It is not only our duty, it may well be essential for our own self-preservation, to have a thorough and expert investigation made as quickly as is humanly possible. To call for help we need a radio and the nearest is at the Norwegian Meteorological Station in Tunbeim."

I carefully refrained from looking at Smithy and was confident that he would reciprocate. "Mr. Smith, your presence here may prove to be a blessing-you are the only professional seaman amongst us. What would be the chances of reaching Tunheim by boat?"

Smithy was silent for a few seconds to lend weight to his observations then said: "In the present conditions so poor that I wouldn't even consider trying it, not even in those desperate circumstances. We've had very heavy weather recently, Mr. Gerran, and the seas won't subside for quite some time. The drawback with those workboats is that if one does encounter rough seas ahead you can't do what you would normally do, that is, turn and run before the sea: those boats are completely open at the back and would almost certainly be pooped-that is, they'd fill up with water and sink. So you'd have to be pretty certain of your weather before you set out."

"I see. Too dangerous for the moment. When the sea moderates, Mr. Smith?"

"Depends upon the wind. It's backing to the west right now and if it were to stay in that quarter-well, it's feasible. If it moves round to the northwest or beyond, no. Not on." Smithy smiled. I wouldn't say that an overland trip would be all that easier, but at least you wouldn't be swamped in heavy seas."

"Ah! So you think that it is at least possible to reach Tunheim on foot?"

"Well, I don't know. I'm no expert on Arctic travel, I'm sure Mr. Heissman here-I'm told he's been giving a lecture about this already-is much more qualified to speak about it than I am."

"No, no." Heissman waved a deprecating hand. "Let's hear what you think, Mr. Smith."

So Smithy let them hear what he thought which was more or less a verbatim repetition of what I'd said to him in our cubicle earlier. When he'd finished, Heissman, who probably knew as much about winter travel in Arctic regions as I did about the back side of the moon, nodded sagely and said: "Succinctly and admirably put. I agree entirely with Mr. Smith."

There was a thoughtful silence eventually broken by Smithy who said diffidently: "I'm the supernumerary here. If the weather eases, I don't mind trying."

"And now I have to disagree with you," Heissman said promptly. "Suicidal, just suicidal, my boy."

"Not to he thought of for an instant," Otto said firmly. "For safety-for mutual safety-nothing short of an expedition would do."

I wouldn't want an expedition," Smithy said mildly. "I don't see that the blind leading the blind would help much."

"Mr. Gerran." It was Jon Heyter speaking. "Perhaps I could be of help here?"

"You?" Otto looked at him in momentary perplexity then his face cleared. "Of course. I'd forgotten about that." He said in explanation: Jon here was my stuntman in The High Sierra. A climbing picture. He doubled for the actors who were too terrified or too valuable for the climbing sequences. A really first-class alpinist, I assure you. How about that, then, eh, Mr. Smith?"

I was about to wonder how Smith would field that one when he answered immediately. "That's about the size of the expedition I'd have in mind. I'd be very glad to have Mr. Heyter along-he'd probably have to carry me most of the way there."

"Well, that's settled, then," Otto said. "Very grateful to you both. But only, of course, if the weather improves. Well, I think that covers everything." He smiled at me. "As co-opted board member, wouldn't you agree?"

"Well, yes," I said. "Except with your assumption that everyone will be here in the morning to play the parts you have assigned to them."

"Ah!" Otto said.

"Precisely," I said. `You weren't seriously contemplating that we should all retire for the night, were you? For certain people with certain purposes in mind there is no time like the still small hours. When I say "people," I'm not going out of the bounds of this cabin: when I say "purposes," I refer to homicidal ones."

"My colleagues and I have, in fact, discussed this," Otto said. "You propose we set watches?"

It might help some of us to live a little longer," I said. I moved two or I three steps until I was in the centre of the cabin. "From here I can see into all Eve corridors. It would be impossible for any person to leave or enter any of the cubicles without being observed by a person standing here."

"Going to call for a rather special type of person, isn't it?" Conrad said.

"Someone with his neck mounted on swivels."

"Not if we have two on watch at the same time," I said. "And as the time's long gone when anybody's hurt feelings are a matter of any importance, two people on watch who are not only watching the corridors but watching each other. A suspect, shall we say, and a nonsuspect.

Among the nonsuspects, I think we might gallantly exclude the two Marys. And I think that Allen, too, could do with a full night's sleep. That would leave Mr. Gerran, Mr. Goin, Mr. Smith, Cecil, and myself. Five of us, which would work out rather well for two-hour watches between, say, ten P.m. and eight A.M."

"An excellent suggestion," Otto said. "Well, then, five volunteers."

There were thirteen potential volunteers and all thirteen immediately offered their services. Eventually it was agreed that Goin and Hendriks should share the ten to midnight watch, Smith and Conrad the midnight to two, myself and Luke the two to four, Otto and Jungbeck the four to six and Cecil and Eddie the six to eight. Some of the others, notably the Count and Heissman, protested, not too strongly, that they were being discriminated against: the reminder that there would be still another twenty-one nights after this one was sufficient to ensure that the protest was no more than a token one. The decision not to linger around in small talk and socialising was reached with a far from surprising unanimity. There was, really, only one thing to talk about and nobody wished to talk about it in case he had picked the wrong person to talk to. In ones and twos, and within a very few minutes, almost everybody had moved off to their cubicles. Apart from Smithy and myself, only Conrad remained and I knew that he wished to talk to me. Smithy glanced briefly at me then left for our cubicle.

"How did you know?" Conrad said. "About Lonnie and his family?"

I didn't. I guessed. He's talked to you?"

"A little. Not much. He had a family."

"Had?"

"Had. Wife and two daughters. Two grown-up girls. A car crash. I don't know if they hit another car, I don't know who was driving. Lonnie just clammed up as if he had already said too much. He wouldn't even say whether he had been in the car himself, whether anyone else had been present, not even when it had taken place."

And that was all that Conrad had learnt. We talked in a desultory fashion for some little time and when Goin and Hendriks appeared to begin the first watch I left for my cubicle. Smithy was not in his camp bed. Fully clothed, he was just removing the last of the screws I'd used to secure the window frame: he'd the flame of the little oil lamp turned so low that the cubicle was in semidarkness.

"Leaving?" I said.

"Somebody out there." Smithy reached for his anorak and I did the same. I thought maybe we shouldn't use the front door."

"Who is it?"

"No idea. He looked in here but his face was just a white blur. He doesn't know I saw him, I'm sure of that, for he went from here and shone a torch through Judith Haynes's window and he wouldn't have done that if he thought anyone was watching." Smithy was already clambering through the window. "He put his torch out but not before I saw where he was heading. Down to the jetty, I'm sure."

I followed Smithy and jammed the window shut as I had done before. The weather was very much as it had been earlier, still that driving snow, the deepening cold, the darkness and that bitter wind which was still boxing the compass and had moved around to the southwest. We moved across to Judith Haynes's window, hooded our torches to give thin pencil beams of light, picked up tracks in the snow that led off in the direction of the jetty and were about to follow them when it occurred to me that it might be instructive to see where they came from. But we couldn't find where they came from: whoever the unknown was he'd walked, keeping very close to the walls, at least twice round the cabin, obviously dragging his feel? as he had gone, so that it was quite impossible to discover which cubicle window he'd used as an exit route from the cabin. That he should have so effectively covered his tracks was annoying: that he should have thought to do it at all was disconcerting for it plainly demonstrated at least the awareness that such late-night sorties might be expected. We made our way quickly but cautiously down to the jetty, giving the unknown's tracks a prudently wide berth. At the head of the jetty I risked a quick Hash with the narrowed beam of my torch: a single line of tracks led outwards.

"Well, now," Smithy said softly. "Our lad's down at the boats or the sub. If we go to investigate we might bump into him. If we go down to the end of the jetty for a quick look-see and don't bump into him he's still bound to see our tracks on his return trip. We want to make our presence known?"

No. No law against a man taking a stroll when he feels like it, even though it is in a blizzard. And if we declare ourselves you can be damn sure he'll never put another foot wrong as long as we remain on Bear Island."

We withdrew to the shelter of some rocks only a few yards distant along the beach, an almost wholly superfluous precaution in that close to zero visibility.

"What do you think he's up to?" Smithy said.

"Specifically, no idea. Generally, anything between the felonious and the villainous. We'll check down there when he's gone."

Whatever purpose he'd had in mind, it hadn't taken him long to achieve it for he was gone within two minutes, The snow was so thick, the darkness so nearly absolute, that he might well have passed by both unseen and unheard had it not been for the erratic movement of the small torch he held in his hand. We waited for some seconds then straightened.

"Was he carrying anything?" I said.

"Same thought here," Smithy said. "He could have been. But I couldn't swear to it."

We followed the double tracks in the snow down to the end of the Jetty where they ended at the head of the iron ladder leading down to the submarine mock-up. No question but this was where he'd gone for apart from the fact that there was nowhere else where he could have been his footprints were all over the hull and, when we'd climbed into it, the platform in the conning tower. We dropped down into the hull of the submarine. Nothing was changed, nothing appeared to be missing from our earlier visit. Smithy said: "I've taken a sudden dislike to this place. Last time we were here I called it an iron tomb. I wouldn't want it to be our tomb."

"You feel it might?"

"Our friend seemingly didn't take anything away. But he must have had some purpose in coming here so I assume he brought something. On the track record to date that purpose wouldn't be anything I'd like and neither would be that something he brought. How would it be if he'd planted something to blow the damn thing up?"

"Why would he want to do a crazy thing like that?" I didn't feel as disbelieving as I sounded.

"Why has he done any of the crazy things he's done? Right now, I don't want a reason. I just want to know whether, as of now, and here and now, he's just done another crazy thing. What I mean is, I'm nervous."

He wasn't the only one. I said: "Assuming you're right, he couldn't blow this thing up with a little itsy-bitsy piece of plastic explosive. It would have to be something big enough to make a big bang. So, a delayed action fuse."

"To give him time to be asleep in his innocent bed when the explosion goes off? I'm more nervous than ever. I wonder how long he figured it would take him to get back to his bed."

"He could do it in a minute."

"God's sake, why are we standing here talking?" Smithy flashed his torch around. "Where the hell would a man put a device like that?"

"Against a bulkhead, I'd say. Or on the bottom."

We examined the deck first but all the bars of cast-iron ballast and their securing wooden battens appeared to be undisturbed and firmly in place.

There was just no room there for even the smallest explosive device. We turned to the rest of the hull, looked behind the mushroom anchors, among the chains, under the compressor unit and the windlass and behind the plastic models of periscope and guns. We found nothing. We even peered at the cleaning plates on the ballast tanks to see if any of those could have been unscrewed but there were no marks on them. And there was certainly no place where such a device could have been attached to the bulkheads themselves without being instantly detectable.

Smithy looked at me. It was difficult to say whether he was perplexed or, like me, increasingly and uncomfortably conscious of the fact that if such a time device did exist time might be swiftly running out. He looked towards the fore end of the hull and said: "Or he might just have dropped it in one of those lockers. Easiest and quickest place to hide anything, after all."

"Most unlikely," I said, but I reached there before he did. I ran the beam of the torch over the paint locker and then the light steadied on a wooden batten close by the floor of the locker. I kept the light where it was and said to Smithy: "You see it, too?"

"A giveaway piece of fresh and unmelted snow. From a boot." He reached for the lid of the locker. "Well, time's a-wasting. Better open the damn thing."

"Better not." I'd caught his arm. "How do you know it's not boobytrapped."

"There's that." He'd snatched back his band like a man seeing a tiger's jaws closing on it. "It would save the cost of a time fuse. How do we open it, then?"

"Gradually. It's unlikely that he had the time to rig up anything so elaborate as an electrical trigger but if he did there'll be contacts in the lid. More likely, if anything, a simple pull cord. In either event nothing can operate in the first two inches of lift for he must have left at least that space to withdraw his hand."

So we gingerly opened the lid those two inches, examined the rim and what we could see of the interior of the locker and found nothing. I pushed the locker lid right back. There was no sign of any explosive. Nothing had been put inside. But something had been removed-two cans of the quick-dry paint and two brushes. Smithy looked at me and shook his head. Neither of us said anything. The reasons for removing a couple of paint cans were so wholly inconceivable that, clearly, there was nothing that could be gainfully said. We closed the locker, climbed up the conning tower and regained the pier. I said: "It's very unlikely that he would have taken them back to the cabin with him. After all, they're large cans and not easy things to hide in a tiny cubicle especially if any of your friends should chance to come calling."

"He doesn't have to hide them there. As I said earlier, there are a thousand snowdrifts where you can hide practically anything."

But if he'd hidden anything he hadn't hidden them in any of the snowdrifts between the jetty and the cabin, for his tracks led straight back to the latter without any deviation to either side. We followed the footprints right back close up to the cabin walls and there they were lost in the smudged line of tracks that led right round the cabin's perimeter. Smithy hooded his torch and examined the tracks for some seconds.

He said: I think that track's wider and deeper than it was before. I think that someone-and it doesn't have to be the same person-has been making another grand tour of the cabin."

I think you're right," I said. I led the way back to the window of our own cubicle and was about to pull it open when some instinct-or perhaps it was because I was now subconsciously looking for the suspicious or untoward in every possible situation-made me shine my torch on the window frame. I turned to Smithy. "Notice something?"

I notice something. The wad of paper we left jammed between the window and frame-well, it's no longer jammed between window and frame." He shone his torch on the ground, stopped and picked something up. "Because it was lying down there. A caller or callers."

"So it would seem." We clambered inside and while Smithy started screwing the window back in place I turned up the oil lamp and started to look around partly for some other evidence to show that an intruder had been there but mainly to try to discover the reason for his being there. Inevitably, my first check was on the medical equipment and my first check was my last and very brief it was too.

"Well, well," I said. "Two birds with one stone. We're a brilliant pair."

"We are?"

"The lad you saw with his face pressed against that window. Probably had it stuck against it for all of five minutes until he'd made sure he'd been seen. Then to make certain you were really interested, he went and shone his torch into Judith Haynes's window. No two actions, he must have calculated, could have been designed to lure us out into the open more quickly."

"He was right at that, wasn't he?" He looked at my opened medical kit and said carefully: "I'm to take it, then, that there's something missing there?"

"You may so take it." I showed him the velvet-lined gap in the tray where the something missing had been. "A lethal dose of morphine."