Bear Island

7

When the Norwegian compilers of the report on Bear Island had spoken of it as possessing perhaps the most inhospitably bleak coastline in the world, they had been speaking with the measured understatement of true professional geographers. As we approached it in the first light of dawn which in those latitudes, at that time of year, and under grey and lowering skies which were not only full of snow but getting rid of it as fast as they could, was as near midforenoon as made no difference-it presented the most awesome, awe-inspiring and, in the true sense of the word, awful spectacle of nature it had ever been my misfortune to behold. A frightening desolation, it was a weird combination of the wickedly repellent and unwillingly fascinating, an evil and dreadful and sinister place, a place full of the terrifying intimation of mortality, the culmination of all the terrors for our long lost Nordic ancestors for whom hell was the land of eternal cold and for whom this would be the eternally frozen purgatory to be visited only in their dying nightmares.

Bear Island was black. That was the shocking, the almost frightful thing about it. Bear Island was black, black as a widow's weeds. Here's in the regions of year-long snow and ice, where, in winter, even the waters of the Barents Sea ran a milky white, to find this ebony mass towering fifteen hundred vertical feel? up into the grey overcast evoked the same feeling of total disbelief, the same numbing impact, although here magnified a hundred fold, as does the first glimpse of the black cliff of the north face of the Eiger rearing up its appalling grandeur among the snows of the Bernese Oberland: this benumbment of the senses stemmed from a dichotomous struggle to accept the evidence before the eyes for while reason said that it had to be so that primeval part of the mind that existed long before man knew what reason was just flatly refused to accept it.

We were just southwest of the most southerly tip of Bear Island, steaming due cast through the calmest seas that we had encountered since leaving Wick, but even that term was only relative, it was still necessary to hang on to something if one wished to maintain the perpendicular. Overall, the weather hadn't changed any for the better, the comparative moderating of the seas was due entirely to the fact that the wind blew now directly from the north and We were in the lee of whatever little shelter was afforded by those giant cliffs. We were making this particular approach to our destination at Otto's request for he was understandably anxious to build up a library of background shots which, so far, was completely nonexistent, and those bleak precipices would have made a cameraman's or director's dream: but Otto's luck was running true to form, those driving gusts of snow, which would in any event have driven straight into the camera lens and completely obscured it, more often than not obscured the cliffs themselves.

Due north lay the highest cliffs of the island, the dolomite battlements of the Hambergfiell dropping like a stone into the spume-topped waves that lashed its base, with, standing out to sea, an imposing rock needle thrusting up at least 250 feet?: to the northeast, and less than a mile distant, stood the equally magnificent Bird Fell cliffs with, clustered at their foot, an incredible series of high stacks.. pinnacles and arches that could only have been the handiwork of some Herculean sculptor, at once both blind and mad.

All this we-about ten others and myself-could see purely by courtesy of the fact that we were on the bridge which had its foreword screen windows equipped with a high-speed Kent clear-view screen directly in front of the helmsman-which at this particular moment was Smithy--,While on either side were two very large windscreen wipers which coped rather less effectively with the gusting snow.

I was standing with Conrad, Lonnie, and Mary Stuart in front of the port wiper. Conrad, who was by no means as dashing in real life as he was on the screen, appeared to have struck up some kind of diffident friendship with Mary which, I reflected, was as well for her social life as she'd barely spoken to me since the morning of the previous day, which might have been interpreted as being a bit graceless of her considering I'd incurred a large variety of aches and cramps in preventing her from falling to the floor during most of the preceding night. She hadn't exactly avoided me in the past twenty-four hours but neither had she sought me Out, maybe she had certain things on her mind, such as her conscience and her unforgivable treatment of me: nor had I exactly sought her out for I, too, had a couple of things on my mind, the first of which was herself.

I had developed towards her a markedly ambivalent feeling: while I had to be grateful to her for having, however unwittingly, saved my life because her aversion to Scotch had prevented me from having the last nightcap I'd ever have had in this world, at the same time she'd prevented me from moving around and, just possibly, stumbling upon the lad who had been wandering about in the middle watches with ill-intent in his heart and a sledgehammer in his hand. That she, and for whomsoever she worked, knew beyond question that I was a person who might have reason to be abroad at inconvenient hours I no longer doubted. And the second thing in my mind was the "whomsoever": I no longer doubted that it was Heissman and perhaps he didn't even stand in need of an accomplice: doctors, by the nature of their profession, are even more fallible and liable to error than the average run of mankind and I might well have been in error when I'd seen him on his bed in pain and him unfit to move around. Moreover, Goin apart, he was the only man with a cabin to himself and so able to sally out and return undetected by a roommate.

And, of course, there was always this mysterious Siberian background of his. None of which, not even his secret meeting with Mary Stuart, was enough to hang a cat on.

Lonnie touched my arm and I turned. He smelt like a distillery. He said: "Remember what we were talking about? Two nights ago."

"We talked about a lot of things."

"Bars."

"Don't you ever think of anything else, Lonnie? Bars? What bars?"

In the great hereafter," Lonnie said solemnly. "Do you think there are any there? In heaven, I mean. I mean, you couldn't very well call it heaven if there are no bars there, now could you? I mean, I wouldn't call it an act of kindness to send an old man like me to a prohibition heaven, now would you. It wouldn't be kind."

"I don't know, Lonnie. On biblical evidence I should expect there would be some wine around. And lots of milk and honey." Lonnie looked pained. "What leads you to expect that you're ever going to be faced with the problem?"

I was but posing a hypothetical question." The old man spoke with dignity. "It would be positively un-Christian to send me there. God, I'm thirsty. Unkind, is what I mean. I mean, charity is the greatest of Christian virtues." He shook his head sadly. "An act of the greatest uncharity, my dear boy, the very negation of the spirit of kindness." Lonnie gazed out through a side window at the fantastically shaped islets of Keilhous Of, Hesteinen, and Stappen, now directly off our port beam and less than half a mile distant. His face was set in lines of tranquil sacrifice. He was as drunk as an owl.

"You do believe in this kindness, Lonnie?" I said curiously. After a lifetime in the cinema business I didn't see how he possibly could."

"What else is there, my dear boy."

"Even to those who don't deserve it',"

"Ah! Now. There is the point. Those are the ones who deserve it most."

"Even Judith Haynes?"

He looked as if I had struck him and when I saw the expression on his face I felt as if I had struck him, even although I felt his to be a mysteriously exaggerated reaction. I reached out a hand even as I was about to apologise for I knew not what but he turned away, a curious sadness on his face, and left the bridge.

"Now I've seen the impossible," Conrad said. He wasn't smiling but he wasn't being censorious either. "Someone has at last given offence to Lonnie Gilbert."

"One has to work at it," I said. "I've transgressed against Lonnie's creed.

He thinks that I'm unkind."

"Unkind" Mary Stuart laid a hand on the arm I was using to steady myself. The skin under the brown eyes was perceptibly darker than it had been thirty-six hours ago and was even beginning to look puffy and the whites of the eyes themselves were dulled and slightly tinged with red. She hesitated, as if about to say something, then her gaze shifted to a point over my left shoulder. I turned.

Captain Imrie closed the starboard wheelhouse door behind him. Insofar as it was possible to detect the shift and play of expression on that splendidly bewhiskered and bearded face it seemed that the captain was upset, even agitated. He crossed directly to Smithy and spoke to him in a low and urgent voice. Smithy registered surprise then shook his head. Captain Imrie spoke again, briefly. Smithy shrugged his shoulders, then said something in return. Both men looked at me and I knew there was more trouble coming, if not actually arrived, if for no reason other than that so far nothing untoward had happened with which I hadn't been directly or indirectly concerned. Captain Imrie fixed me with his piercing blue eyes, jerked his head with most uncharacteristic peremptoriness towards the chartroom door and headed for it himself. I shrugged my own shoulders in apology to Mary and Conrad and followed. Captain Imrie closed the door behind me.

"More trouble, mister." I didn't much care for the way he called me (mister." "One of the film crew, John Halliday, has disappeared."

"Disappeared where?" It wasn't a very intelligent question but then it wasn't meant to be.

"That's what I'd like to know." I didn't much care for the way he looked at me either.

"He can't just have disappeared. I mean, you've searched for him?"

"We've searched for him, all right." The voice was harsh with strain.

Trom anchor locker to stern post. He's not aboard the Morning Rose."

"My God," I said. "This is awful." I looked at him in what I hoped registered as puzzlement. Tut why tell me all this?"

Because I thought you might be able to help us."

"Help you? I'd like to, but how? I assume that you can only be approaching me in my medical capacity and I can assure you that there's absolutely nothing in what I've seen of him or read in his medical history-"

I wasn't approaching you in your bloody medical capacity!" Captain Imrie had started to breathe very heavily. "I just thought you might help me in other ways. Bloody strange, isn't it, mister, that you've been in the thick of everything that's been happening?" I'd nothing to say to this, I'd just been thinking the same thing myself. "How it was you who just "happened" to find Antonio dead. How it was you who just "happened" to go to the bridge when Smith and Oakley were ill. How it was you who went straight to the stewards" cabin in the crew quarters. Next thing, I suppose, you'd have gone straight to Mr. Gerran's cabin and found him dead also, if Mr. Goin hadn't had the good luck to go there first. And isn't it bloody strange, mister, that a doctor, the one person who could have helped those people and seemingly couldn't, is the one person aboard with enough medical knowledge to make them sick in the first place?"

No question-looking at it from his angle-Captain Imrie was developing quite a reasonable point of view. I was more than vaguely surprised to find that he was capable of developing a point of view in the first place.

Clearly, I'd been underestimating him: just how much I was immediately to realise.

"And just why were you spending so much time in the galley late the night before last-when I was in my bed, damn you? The place where all the poison came from. Haggerty told me. He told me you were poking around-and got him out of the galley for a spell. You didn't find what you wanted. But you came back later, didn't you? Wanted to find out where the food leftovers were, didn't you? Pretended you were surprised when they were gone. That would look good in court."

"Oh, for heaven's sake, you silly old-"

"And you were very, very late abroad that night, weren't you? Oh, making enquiries. Up in the saloon-Mr. Goin told me: up yes, I've been on the bridge-Oakley told me: down in the lounge-Gilbert told me: and' -he paused dramatically-"in Halliday's cabin-his cabin-mate told me.

And, most of all, who was the man who stopped me from going to Hammerfest when I wanted to and persuaded the others to sign this worthless guarantee of yours absolving me from all blame? Tell me that, eh, mister?"

His trump card played, Captain Imrie rested his case. I had to stop the old coot, he was working himself up to having me clapped in irons. I sympathised with him, I was sorry for what I would have to say to him, but clearly this wasn't my morning for making friends anyway. I looked at him coldly and without expression for about ten seconds then said: "My name's "Doctor" not "mister." I'm not your damned mate."

"What? What was that?"

I opened the door to the wheelhouse and invited him to pass through.

`You just mentioned the word "court." just step out there and repeat those slanderous allegations in the presence of witnesses and you'll find yourself standing in a part of a court you never expected to be in. Can you imagine the extent of the damages?"

From his face and the perceptible shrinking of his burly frame it was apparent that Captain Imrie immediately could. I was a long, long way from being proud of myself, he was a worried old man saying honestly what he thought had to be said, but he'd left me with no option. I closed the door and wondered how best to begin.

I wasn't given the time to begin. The knock on the door and the opening of the door came on the same instant. Oakley had an urgent and rather apprehensive look about him.

I think you'd better come down to the saloon right away, sir," he said to Imrie. He looked at me. "You, too, I'm afraid, Dr. Marlowe. There's been a fight down there, a bad one."

"Great God Almighty!" If Captain Imrie still had had any lingering hopes that he was running a happy ship, the last of them was gone. For a man of his years and bulk he made a remarkably rapid exit: I followed more leisurely.

Oakley's description had been reasonably accurate. There had been a fight and a very unpleasant affair it must have been too during the period it had lasted-obviously, the very brief period it had lasted. There were only half-a-dozen people in the saloon altogether-one or two were still suffering sufficiently from the rigours or" the Barents Sea to prefer the solitude of their cabins to the forbidding beauties of Bear Island, while the Three Apostles, as ever, were down in the recreation room, still cacophonously searching for the bottom rung on the ladder to musical immortality.

Three of the six were standing, one sitting, one kneeling and the last stretched out on the deck of the saloon. The three on their feel? were Lonnie and Eddie and Hendriks, all with the air of concerned but hesitant helplessness that afflicts uncommitted bystanders on such occasions.

Michael. Stryker was sitting in a chair at the captain's table, using a very blood-stained handkerchief to dab a deep cut on the right cheekbone: it was noticeable that the knuckles of the hand that held the handkerchief were quite badly skinned. The kneeling figure was Mary Darling. All I could see was her back, the long blond tresses falling to the deck and her big horn-rimmed spectacles lying about two feel? away. She was crying, but crying silently, the thin shoulders shaking convulsively in incipient hysteria. I knelt and raised her, still kneeling, to an upright position. She stared at me, ashen-faced, no tears in her eyes, not recognising me: without her glasses she was as good as blind.

"It's all right, Mary," I said. "Only me. Dr. Marlowe." I looked at the figure on the floor and recognised him, not without some difficulty, as young Allen. "Come on, now, be a good girl. Let me have a look at him."

He's terribly hurt, Dr. Marlowe, terribly hurt!" She had difficulty in getting her words out during long and almost soundless gasps. "Oh, look at him, look at him, it's awful!" Then she started crying in earnest, not quietly this time. Her whole body shook. I looked up.

"Mr. Hendriks, will you please go to the galley and ask Mr. Haggerty for some brandy? Tell him I want it. If he's not there, take it anyway."

Hendriks nodded and hurried away. I said to Captain Imrie: "Sorry, I should have asked permission."

"That's all right, Doctor." We were back on professional terms again, however briefly: perhaps it was because his reply was largely automatic for the bulk of his interest, and all that clearly hostile, was for the moment centred on Michael Stryker. I turned back to Mary.

"Go and sit on the settee, there. And take some of that brandy. You hear?"

"No! No! I-"

"Doctor's orders." I looked at Eddie and Lonnie and without a word from me they took her across to the nearest settee. I didn't wait to see whether she followed doctor's orders or not: a now stirring Allen had more pressing claims on my attention. Stryker had done a hatchet job on him: he had a cut forehead, a bruised cheek, an eye that was going to be closed by night, blood coming from both nostrils, a split lip, one tooth missing and another so loose that it was going to be missing very soon also.

I said to Stryker: "You do this to him?"

"Obvious, isn't it?"

"You have to savage him like this? Christ, man, he's only a kid. Why don't you pick on someone your own size next time?"

Like you, for instance?"

"Oh, my God!" I said wearily. Beneath Stryker's tissue-thin veneer of civilisation lay something very crude indeed. I ignored him, asked Lonnie to get water from the galley and cleaned up Allen as best I could. As was invariable in such cases the removal of surface blood improved his appearance about eighty percent. A plaster on his forehead, two cottonwool plugs for his nose and two stitches in a frozen lip and I'd done all I could for him. I straightened as an indignant Captain Imrie started questioning Stryker.

"What happened, Mr. Stryker?"

"A quarrel."

"A quarrel, was it now?" Captain Imrie was being heavily ironic. "And what started the quarrel?"

"An insult. From him."

"From that-from that child?" The captain's feelings clearly matched my own. "What kind of insult to do that to a boy?"

"A private insult." Stryker dabbed the cut on his cheek and, Hippocrates in temporary abeyance, I felt sorry that it wasn't deeper, even although it looked quite unpleasant enough as it was. "He just got what anyone gets who insults me, that's all."

"I shall endeavour to keep a still tongue in my head," Captain Imrie said drily. "However, as captain of this ship-"

"I'm not a member of your damned crew. If that young fool there doesn't lodge a complaint-and he won't-I’d be obligated if you'd mind your own business." Stryker rose and left the saloon. Captain Imrie made as if to follow, changed his mind, sat down wearily at the head of his own table and reached for his own private bottle. He said to the three men now clustered round Mary: "Any of you see what happened?"

"No, sir." It was Hendriks. "Mr. Stryker was standing alone over by the window there when Allen went up to speak to him, I don't know what, and next moment they were rolling about the floor. It didn't last more than seconds."

Captain Imrie nodded wearily and poured a considerable measure into his glass, he was obviously and rightly depending on Smithy to make the approach to the anchorage. I got Allen, now quite conscious, to his feel?

and led him towards the saloon door. Captain Imrie said: "Taking him below?"

I nodded. "And when I come back I'll tell you all about how I started it." He scowled at me and returned to his Scotch. Mary, I noticed, was sipping at the brandy and shuddering at every sip. Lonnie held her glasses in his hand and I escaped with Allen before he gave them back to her. I got Allen into his bunk and covered him up. He had a little colour in his battered cheeks now but still hadn't spoken.

I said: "What was all that about?"

He hesitated. "I'm sorry. I'd rather not say."

`Why ever not?"

"I'm sorry again. It's a bit private."

"Someone could be hurt?"

"Yes, I-" He stopped.

"It's all right. You must be very fond of her." He looked at me for a few silent moments, then nodded. I went on: Shall I bring her down?"

"No, Doctor, no! I don't want-I mean, with my face like this. No, no, I couldn't!"

`Your face was an awful sight worse just five minutes ago. She was doing a fair job of breaking her heart even then."

"Was she?" He tried to smile and winced. "Well, all right."

I left and went to Stryker's cabin. He answered my knock and his face didn't have welcome written all over it. I looked at the still bleeding cut.

"Want me to have a look at that?" Judith Haynes, clad in a fur parka and trousers and looking rather like a red-haired Eskimo, was sitting on the cabin's only chair, her two cocker spaniels in her lap. Her dazzling smile was in momentary abeyance.

No."

"It might scar." I didn't give a damn whether it scarred or not.

"Oh." The factor of his appearance, it hadn't been too hard to guess, was of importance to Stryker. I entered, closed the door, examined and dabbed the cut, put on astringent and applied a plaster. I said: "Look, I'm not Captain Imrie. Did you have to bang that boy like that? You could have flattened him with a tap."

"You were there when I told Captain Imrie that it was a purely personal matter." I'd have to revise my psychological thinking, clearly neither my freely offered medical assistance nor my reasonableness of approach nor the implied flattery had had the slightest mollifying effect. "Having MD hung round your neck doesn't give you the right to ask impertinent prying questions. Remember what else I said to Imrie?"

"You'd be obligated if I minded my own damned business?"

"Exactly."

"I'll bet young Allen feels that way too."

"That young Allen deserves all he got," Judith Haynes said. Her tone wasn't any more friendly than Stryker's. I found what she said interesting for two reasons. She was widely supposed to loathe her husband but there was no evidence of it here: and here might lie a more fruitful source for enquiry for, clearly, she wasn't as good at keeping her emotions and tongue under wraps as her husband was.

"How do you know, Miss Haynes? You weren't there."

I didn't have to be. I-"

"Darling!" Stryker's voice was abrupt, warning.

"Can't trust your wife to speak for herself, is that it?" I said. His big fists balled but I ignored him and looked again at Judith Haynes. "Do you know there's a little girl up in the saloon crying her eyes out over what your big tough husband did to that kid? Does that mean nothing to you?"

"If you're talking about that little bitch of a continuity girl she deserves all that comes her way too."

"Darling!" Stryker's voice was urgent. I stared at Judith Haynes in disbelief but I could see she meant what she said. Her red slash of a mouth was contorted into a line as straight and as thin as the edge of a ruler, the once beautiful green eyes were venomous and the face ugly in its contorted attempts to conceal some hatred or viciousness or poison in the mind. It was an almost frightening display of what must have been a very, very rare public exhibition of what powerful rumour in the film world to which I now partially apologised for my former mental strictures maintained to be a fairly constant private amalgam of the peasant shrew and the screaming fishwife.

"That-harmless-child?" I spaced the words in slow incredulity. "A bitch?"

"A tramp, a little tramp! A slut! A little gutter-'

"Stop it!" Stryker's voice was a lash, but it had strained overtones. I had the feeling that only desperation would make him talk to his wife in this fashion.

"Yes, stop it," I said. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about, Miss Haynes, and I'm damned sure you don't either. All I know is you're sick."

I turned to go. Stryker barred my way. He'd lost a little colour from his cheeks.

"Nobody talks to my wife that way." His lips hardly moved as he spoke.

I was suddenly sick of the Strykers. I said: "I've insulted your wife?"

"Unforgivably."

"And so I've insulted you?"

`You're getting the point, Marlowe."

"And anyone who insults you gets what's coming to them. That's what you said to Captain Imrie."

"That's what I said."

I see."

"I thought you might." He still barred my way.

"And if I apologise?"

"An apology?" He smiled coldly. "Let's try one out for size, shall we?"

I turned to Judith Haynes. I said: I don't know what the hell you're talking about, Miss Haynes, and I'm damned sure you don't either. All I know is you're sick."

Her face looked as if invisible claws had sunk deep into both cheeks all the way from temple to chin and dragged back the skin until it was stretched drum-tight over the bones. I turned to face Stryker. His facial skin didn't look tight at all. The strikingly handsome face wasn't handsome any more, the contours seemed to have sagged and jellied and the cheeks were bereft of colour. I brushed by him, opened the door and stopped.

"You poor bastard," I said. "Don't worry. Doctors never tell."

I was glad to make my way up to the clean biting cold of the upper deck.

I'd left something sick and unhealthy and more than vaguely unclean down there behind me and I didn't have to be a doctor to know what the sickness was. The snow had eased now and as I looked out over the weather side-the port side-I could see that we were leaving one promontory about a half mile behind on the port quarter while another was coming up about the same distance ahead on the port bow. Kapp Kolthoff and Kapp, Malmgren, I knew from the chart, so we had to be steaming northeast across the Evjebukta. The cliffs here were less high, but we were even more deeply into their lee than twenty minutes previously and the sea had moderated even more. We had less than three miles to go.

I looked up at the bridge. The weather, obviously, was improving considerably or interest and curiosity had been stimulated by the close proximity of our destination, for there was now a small knot of people on either wing of the bridge but with hoods so closely drawn as to make features indistinguishable. I became aware that there was a figure standing close by me huddled up against the fore superstructure of the bridge. It was Mary Darling with the long tangled blond tresses blowing in every direction of the compass. I went towards her, put my arm round her with the ease born of recent intensive practice, and tilted her face. Red eyes, tear-splotched cheeks, a little woebegone face half-hidden behind the enormous spectacles: the slut, the bitch, the little tramp.

"Mary darling," I said. "What are you doing here? It's far too cold. You should be inside or below."

I wanted to be alone." There was still the catch of a dying sob in her voice. "And Mr. Gilbert kept wanting to give me brandy-and, well-?'

She shuddered.

"So you've left Lonnie alone with the restorative. That'll be an eminently satisfactory all-round conclusion as far as Lonnie-?'

"Dr. Marlowe!" She became aware of the arm round her and made a half-hearted attempt to break away. "People will see us!"

"I don't care," I said. I want the whole world to know of our love.'

`You want the whole-" She looked at me in consternation, her normally big eyes huge behind her glasses, then came the first tremulous beginnings of a smile. "Oh, Dr. Marlowe!"

"There's a young man below who wants to see you immediately," I said.

"Oh!" The smile vanished, heaven knows what gravity of import she found in my words. "Is he-I mean, he'll have to go to hospital, won't he?"

"He'll be up and around this afternoon."

"Really? Really and truly?"

If you're calling my professional competence into question-?'

"Oh, Dr. Marlowe Then what-why does he-'

I should imagine he wants you to hold his hand. I'm putting myself in his shoes, of course."

"Oh, Dr. Marlowe! Will it-I mean in his cabin-"

"Do I have to drag you down there?"

"No." She smiled. I don't think that will be necessary." She hesitated.

"Dr. Marlowe?"

"Yes?"

I think you're wonderful. I really do."

"Hoppit."

She smiled, almost happily now, and hopped it. I wished I even fractionally shared her opinion of me, for if I was in a position to do so there would be a good number fewer of dead and sick and injured around.

But I was glad of one thing, I hadn't had to hurt Mary Darling as I'd feared I might, there had been no need to ask her any of the questions that had half-formed in my mind even as I had left the Strykers" cabin. If she were even remotely capable of being any of those things that Judith Haynes had, for God knew what misbegotten reasons, accused her of being, then she had no right to be in the film industry as a continuity girl, she was in more than a fair way to making her fame and fortune as one of the great actresses of our time. Besides, I didn't have to ask any questions now, not where she and Allen and the Strykers were concerned: it was hard to say whether my contempt for Michael Stryker was greater than my pity.

I remained where I was for a few minutes watching some crew members who had just come on to the foredeck begin to remove the no longer necessary lashings from the deck cargo, strip off tarpaulins and set slings in places, while another two set about clearing away the big fore derrick and testing the winch. Clearly, Captain Imrie had no intention of wasting any time whatsoever upon our arrival: he wanted, and understandably, to be gone with all dispatch. I went aft to the saloon.

Lonnie was the sole occupant, alone but not lonely, not as long as he had that bottle of Hince happily clutched in his fist. He lowered his glass as I sat down beside him.

"Ah! You have assuaged the sufferings of the walking wounded? There is a preoccupied air about you, my dear fellow." He tapped the bottle. "For the instant alleviation of workaday cares-"

"That bottle belongs to the pantry, Lonnie."

"The fruits of nature belong to all mankind. A soupgon?"

If only to stop you from drinking it all. I have an apology to make to you, Lonnie. About our delectable leading lady. I don't think there's enough kindness around to waste any in throwing it in her direction."

"Barren ground, you would say? Stony soil?"

I would say."

"Redemption and salvation are not for our fair Judith?"

"I don't know about that. All I know is that I wouldn't like to be the one to try and that looking at her I can only conclude that there's an awful lot of unkindness around."

"Amen to that." Lonnie swallowed some more brandy. "But we must not forget the parables of the lost sheep and the prodigal son. Nothing and nobody is ever entirely lost."

I daresay. Luck to leading her back to the paths of the righteous-you shouldn't have to fight off too much competition for the job. How is it, do you think, that a person like that should be so different from the other two?"

"Mary dear and Mary darling? Dear, dear girls. Even in my dotage I love them dearly. Such sweet children."

"They could do no wrong?"

"Never!"

"Ha! That's easy to say. But what if, perhaps, they were deeply under the influence of alcohol?"

"What?" Lonnie appeared genuinely shocked. "What are you talking about? Inconceivable, my dear boy, inconceivable!"

"Not even, say, if they were to have a double gin?"

"What piffling nonsense is this? We are speaking of the influence of alcohol, not about aperitifs for swaddling babes."

"You would see no harm in either of them asking for, say, just one drink?"

"Of course not." Lonnie looked genuinely puzzled. `You do harp on so, my dear fellow."

"Yes, I do rather. I just wondered why once, after a long day on the set, when Mary Stuart had asked you for just that one drink you flew completely off the handle."

In curiously slow-motion fashion Lonnie put bottle and glass on the table and rose unsteadily to his feel?. He looked old and tired and terribly vulnerable.

"Ever since you came in-now I can see it." He spoke in a kind of sad whisper. Ever since you came in you've been leading up to this one question."

He shook his head and his eyes were not seeing me. I thought you were my friend," he said quietly and walked uncertainly from the saloon.