Bear Island

13

"Mr. Gorran," I said, "I'd be grateful if you, Mr. Heissman, Mr. Goin, and Tadeusz here would step outside with me for a moment."

"Step outside?" Otto looked at his watch, his three fellow directors, his watch again and me in that order. "On a night like this and an hour like this? Whatever for?"

"Please." I looked at the others in the cabin. "I'd also be grateful if the rest of you remained here, in this room, till I return. I hope I won't be too long. You don't have to do as I ask and I'm certainly in no position to enforce my request, but I suggest it would be in your own best interests to do so. I know now, I've known since this morning, who the killer amongst us is. But before I put a name to this man I think it is only fair and right that I should first discuss the matter with Mr. Gerran and his fellow directors."

This brief address was received, not unsurprisingly, in total silence. Otto, predictably, was the one to break the silence: he cleared his throat and said carefully: "You claim to know this man's identity?"

I do."

`You can substantiate this claim!'

"Prove it, you mean?"

"Yes.

"No, I can't."

"Ah!" Otto said significantly. He looked around the company and said: "You're taking rather much upon yourself, are you not?"

In what way?"

"This rather dictatorial attitude you've been increasingly adopting. Good God, man, if you've found, or think you've found our man, for God's sake tell us and don't make this big production out of it. It ill becomes any man to play God. Dr. Marlowe, I would remind you that you're but one of a group, an employee, if you like, of Olympus Productions, just like-"

I am not an employee of Olympus Productions. I am an employee of the British Treasury who has been sent to investigate certain aspects of Olympus Productions Ltd. Those investigations are now completed."

Otto overreacted to the extent that he let his drop. Goin didn't react much but his smooth and habitually bland face took a wary expression that was quite foreign to it. Heissman said incredulously: "A government agent! A secret service-"

"You've got your countries mixed up. Government agents work for the U. S. Treasury, not the British one. I'm just a civil servant and I've never fired a pistol in my life far less carry one. I have as much official power as a postman or a Whitehall clerk. No more. That's why I'm asking for cooperation." I looked at Otto. "That's why I'm offering you what I regard as the courtesy of a prior consultation."

"Investigations" " Clearly, I'd lost Otto at least half a minute previously.

"What kind of investigations? And how does it come that a man hired as doctor Otto broke off., shaking his head in the classic manner of one baffled beyond all hope of illumination.

"How do you think it came that none of the seven other applicants for the post of medical officers turned up for an interview? They don't teach us much about manners in medical school but we're not as rude as that.

Shall we go?"

Goin said calmly: "I think, Otto, that we should hear what he has to say."

I think I'd like to hear what you have to say, too," Conrad said. He was one of the very few in the cabin who wasn't looking at me as if I were some creature from outer space.

"I'm sure you would. However, I'm afraid you'll have to remain. But I would like a private word with You, if I may. I turned without waiting for an answer and made for my cubicle. Otto barred my way.

"There's nothing you can have to say to Charles that you can't say to all of us."

"How do you know?" I brushed roughly by him and closed the door when Conrad entered the cubicle. I said: I don't want you to come for two reasons. If our friends arrive, they may miss me down at the jetty and come straight here-I'd like You in that case to tell them where I am. More importantly, I'd like you to keep an eye on Jungbeck. If he tries to leave, try to reason with him. If he won't listen to reason, let him go-about three feel?. If you can kind of naturally happen to have a full bottle of Scotch or suchlike in your hand at the time then clobber him with all you have. Not on the head-that would kill him. On the shoulder, close in to the neck. You'll probably break the odd bone: in any event it will surely incapacitate him."

Conrad didn't as much as raise an eyebrow. He said: I can see why you don't bother with guns."

"Socially and otherwise," I said, "a bottle of Scotch is a great leveller."

I'd taken a Coleman storm lantern along with me and now hung it on a rung of the vertical iron ladder leading down from the conning tower to the interior of the submarine mock-up: its harsh glare threw that icily dank metallic tomb into a weirdly heterogeneous melange of dazzling white and inkily black geometrical patterns. While the others watched me in a far from friendly silence I unscrewed one of the wooden floor battens , lifted and placed a ballast bar on top of the compressor and scraped at the surface with the blade of my knife,

"You will observe," I said to Otto, "that I am not making a production of this. Prologues dispensed with, we arrive at the point without waste of time." I closed my knife and inspected the handiwork it had wrought.

"All that glitters is not gold. But does this look like toffee to you?"

I looked at them each in turn. Clearly, it didn't look like toffee to any of them.

"A total lack of reaction, a total lack of surprise." I put my knife back in my pocket and smiled at the stiffening attitudes of three out of the four of them. "Scout's honour, we civil servants never carry guns. And why should there be surprise even at the fact of my knowledge-all four of you have been perfectly well aware for some time that I am not what I was engaged to be. And why should any of you express surprise at the sight of this gold-after all, that was the only reason for your coming to Bear Island in the first place."

They said nothing. Curiously enough, they weren't even looking at me, they were all looking at the gold ingot as if it were vastly more important than I was, which, from their point of view, was probably a perfectly understandable priority preference.

"Dear me, dear me," I said. "Where are all the instant denials, the holier than-thou clutching of the hearts, the outraged cries of "What in God's name are you talking about'? I would think, wouldn't you, that the unbiassed observer would find this negative reaction every bit as incriminating as a written confession?" I looked at them with what might have been interpreted as an encouraging expression but again-apart from Heissman's apparently finding it necessary to lubricate his lower lip with the tip of his tongue-I elicited no response, so I went on: "It was, as even your defending counsel will have to admit in court, a clever and well-thoughtout scheme. Would any of you care to tell me what the scheme was?"

It is my opinion, Dr. Marlowe," Otto said magisterially, "that the strain of the past few days has made you mentally unbalanced."

"Not a bad reaction at all," I said approvingly. "Unfortunately, you're about two minutes too late in coming up with it. No volunteers to set the scene, then? Do we suffer from an excess of modesty or just a lack of cooperation? Wouldn't you, for instance, Mr. Goin, care to say a few words?

After all, you are in my debt. Without me, without our dramatic little confrontation, you'd have been dead before the week was out."

I think Mr. Gerran is right," Goin said in that measured voice he knew so well how to use. "Me? About to die?" He shook his head. "The strain for you must have been intolerable. Under such circumstances, as a medical man, you should know that a person's imagination can easily-"

"Imagination? Am I imagining this forty-pound gold ingot?" I pointed to the ballast bars below the battens. "Am I imagining those other fifteen ingots there? Am I imagining the hundred-odd ingots piled in a rock shelf inside the Perleporten? Am I imagining the fact that your total lack of reaction to the word Perleporten demonstrates beyond question that you all know what Perleporten is, where it is, and what its significance is? Am I imagining the scores of other lead-sheathed ingots still under water in the Perleporten? Let's stop playing silly little games for your own game is up. As I say, quite a clever little game while it lasted. What better cover for a bullion-recovery trip to the Arctic than a film unit-after all, film people are widely regarded as being eccentric to the extent of being lunatic so that even their most ludicrous behaviour is accepted as being normal within its own abnormal context? What better time to set out to achieve the recovery of this bullion than when there are only a few hours" daylight so that the recovery operation can be carried out through the long hours of darkness? What better way of bringing the bullion back to Britain than by switching it with this vessel's ballast so that it can be slipped into the country under the eyes of the Customs authorities?" I surveyed the ballast. "Four tons, according to this splendid brochure that Mr. Heissman wrote. I'd put it nearer five. Say ten million dollars, justifies a trip to even an out-of-the-way resort like Bear Island, I'd say. Wouldn't you?"

They wouldn't say anything.

"By and by," I went on, "you'd probably have manufactured some excuse for towing this vessel down to Perleporten so as to make the transshipment of the gold all that easier. And then heigh-ho for Merry England and the just enjoyment of the fruits of your labours. Could I he wrong?"

"No." Otto was very calm. "You're right. But I think you'd find it very hard to make a criminal case out of this. What could we possibly be charged with? Theft? Ridiculous. Finders, keepers."

"Finders, keepers? A few miserable tons of gold? Your ambitions are only paltry, you're only swimming the surface of the available loot. Isn't that so, Heissman?"

They all looked at Heissman. Heissman, in turn, didn't appear particularly anxious to look at anyone.

"Why do you silly people think I'm here?" I said. "Why do you think that, in spite of the elaborate smoke screen you set up, that the British Government not only knew that you were going to Bear Island but also knew that your purpose in going there was not as advertised? Don't you know that, in certain matters, European governments co-operate very closely? Don't you know that most of them share a keen interest in the activities of Johann Heissman? For what you don't know is that most of them know a great deal more about Johann Heissman than you do. Perhaps, Heissman, you'd like to tell them yourself-starting, shall we say, with the thirty-odd years you've been working for the Soviet Government?"

Otto stared at Heissman, his huge jowls seeming to fall apart. Goin's facial muscles tightened until the habitual smooth blandness had vanished from his face. The Count's expression didn't change, he just nodded slowly as if understanding at last the solution of a long-standing problem. Heissman looked acutely unhappy.

"Well, ", I said, "as Heissman doesn't appear to have any intention of telling anyone anything, I suppose that leaves it up to me. Heissman, here, is a remarkably gifted specialist in an extremely specialised field. He is, purely and simply, a treasure-hunter and there's no one in the business who can hold a candle to him. But he doesn't just hunt for the type of treasure that you people think he does: I fear he may have been deceiving you on this point, as, indeed, he has been deceiving you on another. I refer to the fact that a precondition of his cutting you into a share of the loot was that his niece, Mary Stuart, be employed by Olympus Productions. Having the nasty and suspicious minds that you do, you probably and rapidly arrived at the conclusion that she wasn't his niece at all-which she isn't-and was along for some other purposes, which she is. But not for the purposes which your nasty and suspicious minds attributed to her. For Heissman, Miss Stuart was essential for the achievement of an entirely different purpose which he kind of forgot to tell you about.

"Miss Stuart's father, you have to understand, was just as unscrupulous and unprincipled a rogue as any of you. He held very senior positions in both the German Navy and the Nazi Party and, like others similarly placed, used his power to feather his own nest-just as Hermann Goering did-when the war was seen to be lost, although he was smarter than Goering and managed to get out from under before the war criminal roundup. The gold, although this will probably never be proved, almost certainly came from the vaults of Norwegian banks and a man with all the resources of the German Navy behind him would have had no trouble in choosing such a splendidly isolated spot as Perleporten in Bear Island and having the stuff transferred there. Probably by submarine. Not that it matters. "But it wasn't just the gold that was transported to Perleporten, which is why Mary Stuart is here. Feathers weren't enough for Dad's nest, nothing less than swansdown would do. The swansdown almost certainly took the form of either bank bonds or securities, probably obtained-I wouldn't say purchased-in the late "30s- Such securities are perfectly redeemable even today. An attempt was recently made to sell 30,000,000 worth of such securities through foreign exchanges but the West German Federal Bank wouldn't play ball because proper owner identification was lacking. But there wouldn't be any problem about owner identification this time, would there, Heissman?"

Heissman didn't say whether there would or there wouldn't. "And where are they?" I said. "Nicely welded up on a dummy steel in got." As he still wasn't being very forthcoming I went on: "No matter, we'll have them. And then you're never going to have the pleasure of seeing Mary Stuart's father put his signature and fingerprints on those documents and of checking that they match up. You're sure of that?" Heissman said. He bad recovered his normal degree of composure which meant that he was very composed indeed. "In a changing world like ours who can be sure of anything. But with that proviso, yes. I think you've overlooked something."

"I have?"

"Yes. We have Admiral Hanneman."

"That's Miss Stuart's father's true name?"

"You didn't even know that?"

"No. It's of no relevance. And no, I haven't overlooked that fact. I shall attend to that matter shortly. After I have attended to your friends. Maybe that's the wrong word, maybe they're not your friends any more. I mean, they don't look particularly friendly, do they?"

"Monstrous!" Otto shouted. "Absolutely monstrous. Unforgivable! Diabolical! Our own partner!"

He spluttered into an outraged silence. "Despicable," Goin said coldly. "Absolutely contemptible."

"Isn't it?" I said. "Tell me, does this moral indignation stem from this revelation of the depths of Heissman's perfidy or merely because he omitted to cut you in on the proceeds of the cashing of the securities?

Don't bother answering that question, it's purely rhetorical, as villains you're dyed in the same inky black as Heissman. What I mean is, most of you spend a great deal of time and careful thought in concealing from the other members of the board of Olympus Productions just what the true natures of your activities are. Heissman is hardly alone in this respect. "Take the Count here. Compared to the rest of you he was a vestal angel but even he dabbled in some murky waters. For over thirty years now he's been a member of the board and has had a free meal ticket for life because he happened to be in Vienna when the Anschluss came, when Otto headed for the States and Heissman was spirited away. Heissman was spirited away because Otto bad arranged for him to be so that he could take all the film company's capital out of the country: Otto was never a man to hesitate when it came to selling a friend down the river. "What Otto didn't know but what the Count did but carefully refrained from telling him was that Heissman's disappearance had been entirely voluntary. Heissman had been a German secret agent for some time and his adopted country needed him. What his adopted country didn't know was that Russia had adopted him even before they had but this isn't germane to the main point that Otto believed he had betrayed a friend for gold and that the Count knew it. Unfortunately, it's going to be very hard to prove anything against the Count and not being a grasping man by nature never asked for anything more than his salary there's nothing to demonstrate blackmail which is why I've chosen him-and he's accepted as the person to turn Queen's Evidence against his fellow directors on the board."

Heissman now joined Otto and Goin in giving the Count the kind of look they had so lately given him. "Or take Otto," I went on. "For years he'd been embezzling very large sums of money from the company, virtually bleeding it white." It was now the turn of Heissman and the Count to stare at Otto. "Or take Goin. He discovered about the embezzling and for two or three years he's been blackmailing Otto and bleeding him white. In sum, you constitute the most unpleasant, unprincipled and depraved bunch it's ever been my misfortune to encounter. But I haven't even scratched the surface of your infamy, have I? Or the infamy of one of you. We haven't even discussed the person responsible for the violent deaths that have taken place. He is, of course, one of you. He is, of course, quite mad and will end his days in Broadmoor: although I have to admit that there's been a certain far from crazy logic in his thinking and actions. But a prison for the insane-one regrets the abolition of the death penalty-is a certainty: it may well be, Otto, as well as being the best you can hope for, that you won't live long after you get there." Otto said nothing, the expression on his face remained unchanged. I went on: "For your hired killers, of course, Jungbeck and Heyter, there will be life sentences in maximum security goals."

The temperature in that icily cold metallic tomb had fallen to many degrees below freezing point but everyone appeared to be completely unaware of the fact: the classic example of mind over matter, and heaven knew that the minds could rarely have been more exclusively and almost obsessively possessed than those of the men in those weird and alien surroundings. "Otto Gerran is an evil man," I said, "and the enormity of his crimes scarcely within the bounds of comprehension. However, one has to admit that he has had the most singularly wretched luck in his choice of business associates, and those associates must be held partly to blame for the terrible events that happened, for their extraordinary cupidity and selfishness drove Otto into a comer from which he could escape only by resorting to the most desperate measures.

"We have already established that three of you here have been black- mailing Otto steadily over the years. His other two fellow directors, his daughter and Stryker, joined wholeheartedly in what had become by this time a very popular pastime. They, however, used a very different basis for their blackmail. This basis I cannot as yet prove but the facts, I believe, will be established in time. The facts are concerned with a car crash that took place in California over twenty years ago. There were two cars involved. One of those belonged to Lonnie Gilbert and had three women inside-his wife and two daughters, all of whom appeared to be considerably the worse for drink at the time. The other car belonged to the Strykers-but the Strykers were not in their car. The two people who were bad, like Lonnie's family, been at the same party in the Strykers" house and, like Lonnie's family, were in an advanced state of intoxication. They were Otto and Neal Divine. Isn't that so, Otto?"

"There's nothing of this rubbish that can be proved."

"Not yet. Now, Otto was driving the car but when Divine recovered from the effects of the crash he was convinced-no doubt by Otto-that he had been at the wheel. So for years now Divine has been under the impression that he owes his immunity from manslaughter charges purely to Otto's silence. The salary lists show-'

"Where did you get the salary lists from?" Goin asked. "From your cubicle-where I also found this splendid bankbook of yours. The lists show that Divine has been receiving only a pittance in salary for years. How admirable is our Otto. He not only makes a man take the responsibility for deaths which he himself has caused but in the process reduces that man to the level of a serf and a pauper. The blackmailed doing some blackmailing on his own account. Makes for a very pretty picture all round, does it not? "But the Strykers knew who had really caused the crash for Otto had been driving when they left the house. So they sold their silence in return for jobs on the board of Olympus Productions and vastly inflated salaries. You are a lovable, lovable lot, aren't you? Do you know that this fat monster here actually tried to have Lonnie murdered tonight? Why? Because Judith Haynes, very shortly before she died, had told Lonnie the truth of what had happened in the car crash: so, of course, Lonnie would have been a danger to Otto as long as he had lived. "I don't know who suggested this film expedition as a cover for getting the bullion. Heissman, I suppose. Not that it matters. What matters is that Otto saw in this proposed trip a unique and probably never to be repeated opportunity to solve all his troubles at one stroke. The solution was simple -eliminate all his five partners, including his daughter whom he hated as much as she hated him. So he gets himself two guns for hire, Heyter and Jungbeck-no question about the hire aspect, I found two thousand pounds in five-pound notes in Jungbeck's case this afternoon: two alleged actors of whom no one but Otto had ever heard.

"In effect, Otto would clear his board in one fell sweep. He'd get rid of the people he hated and who hated him. He'd buy enough time by their deaths to conceal his embezzlement. He'd collect very considerable insurance money and get back in the black with the help of accommodating accountants who can be as venal as the next lot. He would get all that lovely gold for himself. And, above all, he'd be forever free of the continuous blackmail that had dominated his life and warped his mind until it drove him over the edge of insanity." I looked at Goin. "Do you understand now what I mean by saying that without me you'd have been dead by the end of the week?"

"Yes. Yes, I think so. I have no option other than to believe you are right." He looked at Otto in a kind of wonder. "But if he was only after the board of directors-"

"Why should others die? III luck, ill management, or someone just got in his way. The first intended victim was the Count and this was where the ill luck came in. Not the Count's-Antonio's. Otto, as I think digging into his past will show, is a man of many parts. Among some of the more esoteric skills acquired were some relating to either chemistry or medicine: Otto is at home with poisons. He is also, as so many very fat men are, extremely gifted at palming articles. At the table on the night when Antonio died the food, as usual, was served from the side table at the top of the main table where Otto sat. Otto introduced some aconite-only a pinch was necessary-into the horse-radish on the plate intended for the Count. Unfortunately for poor Antonio, the Count has a profound dislike of horseradish and passed his on to the vegetarian Antonio. And so Antonio died. "He tried to poison Heissman at the same time. But Heissman wasn't feeling in the best of form that evening, were you, Heissman-you will recall that you left the table in a great hurry, your plate untouched. The economical Haggerty, instead of consigning this clearly untouched plate to the gash bucket, put it back in the casserole from which the two stewards, Scott and Moxen, were served later that night-and from which the Duke stole a few surreptitious mouthfuls. Three became very ill, two died -all through ill luck."

"Aren't you overlooking the fact that Otto himself was poisoned?" the Count said. "Sure he was. By his own band. To obviate any suspicion that might fall on him. He didn't use aconite though-all that was required was some relatively harmless emetic and some acting. This, incidentally, was why Otto sent me off. on a tour of the Morning Rose-not to check on seasickness but to see who else he might have poisoned by accident. His reaction when he heard of Antonio's death was unnaturally violent-though I didn't get the significance at the time. "Matters took another tragic turn later that evening. Two people came to check my cabin in my absence-one was either Jungbeck or Heyter and the other was Halliday." I looked at Heissman. "He was your man, wasn't he?" Heissman nodded silently. "Heissman was suspicious of me. He wanted to check on my bona fides and examined my cases-had them examined, rather, by Halliday. Otto was suspicious and one of his hired men discovered that I'd been reading an article about aconite. One death more or less wasn't going to mean much to Otto now, so he planned to eliminate me, using his favourite eliminator poison. In a bottle of Scotch. Unfortunately for Halliday, who had come to see if he could lay hands on the medical case that I'd taken up to the saloon, he drank the nightcap intended for me. "The other deaths are easy to explain. When the party was searching for Smithy, Jungbeck and Heyter clobbered Allen and killed Stryker in this clumsy attempt to frame Allen. And, during the night, Otto arranged for the execution of his own daughter. He was on watch with Jungbeck and the murder could only have occurred during that time." I looked at Otto. "You should have checked on your daughter's window-I'd screwed it shut so that it was impossible for anyone to have entered from the outside. I'd also found that a hypodermic and a phial of morphine had been stolen. You don't have to admit any of this-both Jungbeck and Heyter will sing like canaries."

"I admit everything." Otto spoke with a massive calm. "You are correct in every detail. Not that I see that any Of it is going to do you any good." I'd said that he was an artist in palming things and he proceeded to prove it. The very unpleasant-looking little black automatic that he held in his hand just seemed to have materialised there. "I don't see that that's going to do you any good either," I said. "After all, you've just admitted that you're guilty of everything I claimed you were."

I was standing directly under the conning tower hatchway, where I'd deliberately and advisedly positioned myself as soon as we'd arrived, and I could see things that Otto couldn't. "Where do you think the Morning Rose is now?"

"What was that?" I didn't much like the way his pudgy little hand tightened round the butt of his gun. "She never went farther than Tunbeim where there have been people up there waiting to hear from me. True, they couldn't hear by direct radio contact, because you'd had one of your hard men smash the trawler's transceiver, hadn't you? But before the Morning Rose left here I'd left aboard a radio device that tunes into a radio homer. They bad clear instructions as to what to do the moment that device was actuated by the homer transmitter. It's been transmitting for almost ninety minutes now. There are armed soldiers and police officers of both Norway and Britain aboard that trawler. Rather, they were. They're aboard this vessel now. Please take my word for it. Otherwise we have useless bloodshed."

Otto didn't take my word for it. He stepped forward quickly, raising his gun as he peered up towards the conning tower. Unfortunately for Otto, he was standing in a brightly lit spot while peering up into the darkness. The sound of a shot, hurtful to the ears in that enclosed space, came at the same instant as his scream of pain followed by a metallic clunk as the gun falling from his bloodied hand struck a bar of bullion. "I'm sorry," I said. "You didn't give me time to tell you that they were specially picked soldiers."

Four men descended into the body of the vessel. Two were in civilian clothes, two in Norwegian army uniforms. One of the civilians said to me: "Dr. Marlowe?" I nodded, and he went on: "Inspector Matthewson. This is Inspector Nielsen. It looks as if we were on time?"

"Yes, thank you." They weren't in time to save Antonio and Halliday the two stewards, Judith Haynes and her husband. But that was entirely my fault. "You were very prompt indeed."

"We've been here for some time. We actually saw you go below. We came ashore by rubber dinghy from the outside, north of Makehl. Captain Imrie didn't much fancy coming up the Sor-Hamna at night. I don't think he sees too well."

'But I do." The harsh voice came from above. "Drop that gun! Drop it or I'll kill you." Heyter's voice carried utter conviction. There was only one person carrying a gun, the soldier who had shot Otto, and he dropped it without hesitation at a sharp word from the Norwegian inspector. Heyter climbed down into the hull, his eyes watchful, his gun moving in a slight arc. "Well done, Heyter, well done," Otto moaned from the pain of his shattered hand. "Well done?" I said. "You want to be responsible for another death? You want this to be the last thing Heyter ever does, well or not?"

"Too late for words." Otto's puce face had turned grey, the blood was dripping steadily on to the gold. "Too late."

"Too late? You fool, I knew that Heyter was mobile. You'd forgotten I was a doctor, even if not much of a one. He'd a badly cut ankle inside a thick leather boot. That could only have been caused by a compound fracture. There was no such fracture. A sprained ankle doesn't cut the skin open. A self-inflicted injury. As in killing Stryker, so in killing Smith -a crude and total lack of imagination. You did kill him, didn't you, Heyter?"

"Yes." He turned his gun on me. "I like killing people."

"Put that gun down or you're a dead man."

He swore at me, viciously and in contempt, and was still swearing when the red rose bloomed in the centre of his forehead. The Count lowered his Beretta, dark smoke still wisping from its muzzle and said apologetically: "Well, I was a Polish count. But we do get out of practice, you know."

"I can see that," I said. "A rotten shot but I guess it's worth a royal pardon at that."

On the jetty, the police inspectors insisted on handcuffing Goin, Heissman, and even the wounded Otto. I persuaded them that the Count was not a danger and further persuaded them to let me have a word with Heissman while they made their way up to the cabin. When we were alone I said: "The water in the harbour there is below the normally accepted freezing point. With those heavy clothes and your wrists handcuffed behind your back you'll be dead in thirty seconds. That's the advantage of being a doctor, one can be fairly definite about those things." I took him by the arm and pushed him towards the edge of the jetty.

He said in a big-strained voice: "You had Heyter deliberately killed, didn't you?"

"Of course. Didn't you know-there's no death penalty in England now. Up here, there's no problem. Goodbye, Heissman."

"I swear it! I swear it!" His voice was now close to a scream. "I'll have Mary Stuart's parents released and safely reunited. I swear it! I swear it!"

It's your life, Heissman."

"Yes." He shivered violently and it wasn't because of the bitter wind.

"Yes, I know that."

The atmosphere in the cabin was extraordinarily quiet and subdued. It stemmed, I suppose, from that reaction which is the inevitable concomitant of profound and still as yet unbelieving relief.

Matthewson, clearly, had been explaining things.

Jungbeck was lying on the floor, his right hand clutching his left shoulder and moaning as in great pain. I looked at Conrad who looked at the fallen man and then pointed to the broken shards of glass on the floor. "I did as you asked," he said. "I'm afraid the bottle broke."

"I'm sorry about that," I said. "The Scotch, I mean." I looked at Mary Darling, who was sobbing bitterly and at Mary Stuart who was trying to comfort her and looked only fractionally less unhappy. I said reprovingly: "Tears, idle tears, my two Marys. It's all over now."

"Lonnie's dead." Big blurred eyes staring miserably from behind huge glasses. "Five minutes ago. He just died."

"I'm sorry," I said. "But no tears for Lonnie. His words, not mine. "He hates him much that would upon the rack of this tough world stretch him out longer."

She looked at me uncomprehendingly. "Did he say that?"

"No. Chap called Kent."

"He said something else," Mary Stuart said. "He said we were to tell the kindly healer-I suppose he meant you-to bring his penny to toss for the first round of drinks in some bar. I didn't understand. A four-ale bar."

"It wouldn't have been in purgatory"

"Purgatory? Oh, I don't know. It didn't make any sense to me."

"It makes sense to me," I said. "I won't forget my penny."

A film to be made on location high above the Arctic Circle and a movie company with an international cast which included...

OTTO GERRAN: his ruthless determination had made him a famous but hated director CHARLES CONRAD: ruggedly handsome, the male lead in the film MARY STUART: a quiet, beautiful blonde surrounded by mystery JUDITH HAYNES: a venomous woman devoted only to herself COUNT TADEUSZ LESZCZYNSKI: with the lean and aquiline face, the black pencil moustache ... and evil intentions MICHAEL STRYKER: tall and handsome, cynical and immoral, he was held to his wife only by blackmail DR. MARLOWE: the company's doctor who knew from the outset that something was amiss, but had no idea how to deal with it And terror and death, accompanied them on the journey to ...