Bear Island

8

The northwest corner of the Sor-Hamna Bight, where the Morning Rose had finally come to rest, was just under three miles due northeast, as the crow flies, from the most southerly tip of Bear Island. The Sor-Hamna itself, U-shaped and open to the south, was just over a thousand yards in width on its cast-west axis and close on a mile in length from north to south. The eastern arm of the harbour was discontinuous, beginning with a small peninsula perhaps three hundred yards in length, followed by a two-hundred-yard gap of water interspersed with small islands of various sizes then by the much larger island of Makebl, very narrow from east to west, stretching almost half a mile to its most southerly point of Kapp Roalkvarn. The land to the north and cast was low-lying, that to the west, or true island side, rising fairly steeply from a shallow escarpment but nowhere higher than a small hill about four hundred feel? high about halfway down the side of the bight. Here were none of the towering precipices of the Hambergfiell or Bird Fell ranges to the south: but, on the other hand, here the entire land was covered in snow, deep on the northfacing slopes and their valleys where the pale low summer sun and the scouring winds had passed them by.

The Sor-Hamna was not only the best, it was virtually the only reasonable anchorage in Bear Island. When the wind blew from the west it offered perfect protection for vessels sheltering there, and for a northerly wind it was only slightly less good. From an easterly wind, dependent upon its strength and precise direction it afforded a reasonable amount of cover-the gap between Kapp Heer and Makehl was the deciding factor here and, when the wind stood in this quarter and if the worst came to the worst, a vessel could always up anchor and shelter under the lee of Makehl Island: but when the wind blew from the south a vessel was wide open to everything the Barents Sea cared to throw at it.

And this was why the degree of unloading activity aboard the Morning Rose was increasing from the merely hectic to the nearly panic-stricken. Even as we had approached the Sor-Hamna the wind, which had been slowly veering the past thirty-six hours, now began rapidly to increase its speed of movement round the compass at disconcerting speed so that by the time we had made fast it was blowing directly from the east. It was now a few degrees south of east, and strengthening, and the Morning Rose was beginning to feel its effects: it only had to increase another few knots or veer another few degrees and the trawler's position would become untenable.

At anchor, the Morning Rose could comfortably have ridden out the threatened blow but the trouble was that the Morning Rose was not at anchor. She was tied up alongside a crumbling limestone jetty-neither iron nor wooden structures would have lasted for any time in those stormy and bitter waters-that had first been constructed by Lerner and the Deutsche Seefischerei-Verein about the turn of the century and then improved upon-if that were the term-by the International eophysical Year expedition that had summered there. The jetty, which would have been condemned out of hand and forbidden for public use almost anywhere else in the Northern Hemisphere, had originally been T-shaped, but the left arm of the T was now all but gone while the central section leading to the shore was badly eaten away on its southward side. It was against this dangerously dilapidated structure that the Morning Rose was beginning to pound with increasing force as the southeasterly seas caught her under the starboard quarter and the cushioning effect of a solid row of fenders consisting of blocks of softwood and motor truck tires was becoming increasingly nominal. The jarring effect as the trawler struck heavily and repeatedly against the jetty was sufficient to make those working on deck stagger and clutch onto the nearest support. It was difficult to say what effect this was having on the Morning Rose for apart from the scratching and slight indentations of the plates none was visible but trawlers are legendarily tough and it was unlikely that she was coming to any great harm: but what was coming to harm, and very visibly so, was the jetty itself for increasingly large chunks of masonry were beginning to fall into the Sor-Hamna with dismaying frequency, and as most of our fuel, provisions, and equipment still stood there the seemingly imminent collapse of the pier into the sea was not a matter to be viewed with anything like equanimity.

When we'd first come alongside shortly before noon, the unloading had gone ahead very briskly and smoothly indeed-except for the unloading of Miss Haynes's snarling pooches. Even before we'd tied up the after derrick had the sixteen-foot work-boat in the water and three minutes later an only slightly smaller fourteen-footer with an outboard had followed it: those boats were to remain with us. Within ten minutes the specially strengthened foreword derrick had lifted the weirdly shaped-laterally truncated so as to have a flat bottom-mock-up of the central section of a submarine over the side and lowered it gently into the water where it floated with what appeared to be perfect stability, no doubt because of its four tons of iron ballast. It was when the mock-up conning tower was swung into position to be bolted on to the central section of the submarine that the trouble began.

It just wouldn't bolt on. Goin and Heissman and Stryker, the only three who had observed the original tests, said that in practice it had operated perfectly: clearly, it wasn't operating perfectly now. The conning tower section, elliptical in shape, m-as designed to settle precisely over a four-inch vertical flange in the centre of the midsection, but settle it just wouldn't do: it turned out that one of the shallow curves at the foot of the conning tower was at least a quarter-inch out of true, a fact that was almost certainly due to the pounding that we'd taken on the way up from Wick: just one lashing not sufficiently bar-taut would have permitted that microscopic freedom of vertical movement that would have allowed the tiny distortion to develop.

The solution was simple-just to hammer the offending curve back into shape-and in a dockyard with skilled plate layers available this would probably have been no more than a matter of minutes. But we'd neither technical facilities nor skilled labour available and the minutes had now stretched into hours. A score of times now the foreword derrick had offered up the offending conning tower piece to the flange: a score of times it had had to be lifted again and painstakingly assaulted by hammers. Several times a perfect fit had been achieved where it had been previously lacking only to find that the distortion had mysteriously and mischievously transferred itself a few inches farther along the metal. Nor, now, despite the fact that the submarine section was in the considerable lee afforded by both pier and vessel, were matters being made any easier by the little waves that were beginning to creep around the bows of the Morning Rose and rock it, gently at first but with increasing force, to the extent that the ultimate good fit was clearly going to depend as much on the luck of timing as the persuasion of the hammers. Captain Imrie wasn't frantic with worry for the sound enough reason that it wasn't in his nature to become frantic about anything but the depth of his concern was evident enough from the fact that he had not only skipped lunch but hadn't as much as fortified himself with anything stronger than coffee since our arrival in the Sor-Hamna. His main concern apart from the well-being of the Morning Rose-he clearly didn't give a damn about his passengers-was to get the foredeck cleared of its remaining deck cargo because, as I'd heard Otto rather unnecessarily and unpleasantly reminding him, it was part of his contractual obligations to land all passengers and cargo before departure for Hammerfest. And, of course, what was exercising Captain Imrie's mind so powerfully was that, with darkness coming on and the weather blowing up, the foreword deck cargo had not yet been unloaded and would not be until the fore derrick was freed from its present full-time occupation of holding the conning tower suspended over the midsection.

The one plus factor about Captain Imrie's concentration was that it gave him little time to worry about Halliday's disappearance. More precisely, it gave him little time to try to do anything constructive about it, for I knew it was still very much on his mind from the fact that he had taken time off to tell me that upon his arrival in Hammerfest his first intention would be to contact the law. There were two things I could have said at this stage, but didn't. The first was that I failed to see what earthly purpose this could serve-it was just, I suppose, that he felt that he had to do something, anything, however ineffectual that might be: the second was that I felt quite certain that he would never get the length of Hammerfest in the first place although just then hardly seemed the time to tell him why I thought so. He wasn't then, in the properly receptive mood: I had hopes that he would be shortly after he had left Bear Island.

I went down the screeching metal gangway-its rusty iron wheels, apparently permanently locked in position, rubbed to and fro with every lurch of the Morning Rose-and made my way along the ancient jetty. A small tractor and a small Sno-Cat-they had been the third and fourth items to be unloaded from the trawler's afterdeck-were both equipped with towing sledges and everybody from Heissman downwards was helping to load equipment aboard those sledges for haulage up to the huts that lay on the slight escarpment not more than twenty yards from the end of the jetty. Everybody was not only helping, they were helping with a will: when the temperature is fifteen degrees below freezing the temptation to dawdle is not marked. I followed one consignment up to the huts.

Unlike the jetty, the huts were of comparatively recent construction and in good condition, relics from the latest IGY-there could have been no possible economic justification in dismantling them and taking them back to Norway. They were not built of the modern kapok, asbestos, and aluminium construction so favoured by modern expeditions in Arctic regions as base headquarters: they were built-although admittedly presectioned in the low-slung chalet design fairly universally found in the higher Alpine regions of Europe. They had about them that four-square hunch shouldered look, the appearance of lowering their heads against the storm, that made it seem quite likely that they would still be there in a hundred years" time. Provided they are not exposed to prevailing high winds and the constant fluctuation of temperature above and below the freezing point, manmade structures can last almost indefinitely in the deep freeze of the high Arctic.

There were five structures here altogether, all of them set a considerable distance apart-as far as the shoulder of the hill beyond the escarpment would permit. Little as I knew of the Arctic, I knew enough to understand the reason for this spacing: here, where exposure to cold is the permanent and dominating factor of life, it is fire which is the greatest enemy, for unless there are chemical fire-fighting appliances to band, and there nearly always are not, a fire, once it has taken hold, will not stop until everything combustible has been destroyed: blocks of ice are scarcely at a premium when it comes to extinguishing flames. Four small huts were set at the corners of a much larger central block. According to the rather splendid diagram Heissman had drawn up in his manifesto those were to be given over, respectively, to transport, fuels, provisions and equipment: I was not quite sure what he meant by equipment. Those were all square and windowless. The central and very much larger building was of a peculiar starfish shape with a pentagonal centrepiece and five triangular annexes forming an integral whole: the purpose of this design was difficult to guess, I would have thought it one conducive to maximum heat loss. The centrepiece was the living, dining, and cooking area: each arm held two tiny bare rooms for sleeping quarters. Heating was by electric oil-filled black heaters bolted to the walls but until we got our own portable generator going we were dependent on simple oil stoves: lighting was by pressurised Coleman kerosene lamps. Cooking, which was apparently to consist of the endless opening and heating of contents of tins, was to be done on a simple oil stove. Otto, needless to say, hadn't brought a cook along: cooks cost money. With the notable exception of Judith Haynes, everyone, even the still groggy Allen, worked willingly and as quickly as the unfamiliar and freezing conditions would permit: they also worried silently and joylessly, for although no one had been on anything approaching terms of close friendship with Halliday the news of his disappearance had added fresh gloom and apprehension to a company who believed themselves to be evilly jinxed before even the first day of shooting. Stryker and Lonnie, who never spoke to each other except when essential, checked all the stores, fuel, oil, food, clothing, Arcticising equipment-Otto, whatever his faults, insisted on thoroughness: Sandy, considerably recovered now that he was on dry land, checked his props, Hendriks his sound equipment, the Count his camera equipment, Eddie his electrical gear and I myself what little medical kit I had along. By three o'clock, when it was already dusk, we had everything stowed away, cubicles allocated and camp beds and sleeping bags placed in those: the jetty was now quite empty of all the gear that had been unloaded there.

We lit the oil stoves, left a morose and muttering Eddie-with the doleful assistance of the Three Apostles-to get the diesel generator working and made our way back to the Morning Rose, myself because it was essential that I speak to Smithy, the others because the hut was still miserably bleak and freezing whereas even the much-maligned Morning Rose still offered a comparative haven of warmth and comfort. Very shortly after our return a variety of incidents occurred in short and eventually disconcerting succession.

At ten past three, totally unexpectedly and against all indications, the conning tower fitted snugly over the flange of the midship section. Six bolts were immediately fitted to hold it in position-there were twenty-four altogether-and the work-boat at once set about the task of towing the unwieldy structure into the almost total shelter offered by the right angle formed by the main body of the jetty and its north facing arm.

At three-fifteen the unloading of the foredeck cargo began and, with Smithy in charge, this was undertaken with efficiency and despatch. Partly because I didn't want to disturb him in his work, partly because it was at that moment impossible to speak to Smithy privately, I went below to my cabin, removed a small rectangular clothbound package from the base of my medical bag, put it in a small purse-strung duffle bag and went back on top.

This was at three-twenty. The unloading was still less than twenty percent completed but Smithy wasn't there. It was almost as though he had awaited my momentary absence to betake himself elsewhere. And that he had betaken himself elsewhere there was no doubt. I asked the winchman where he had gone, but the winchman, exclusively preoccupied with a job that had to be executed with all despatch, was understandably vague about Smithy's whereabouts. He had either gone below or ashore, he said, which I found a very helpful remark. I looked in his cabin, on the bridge, in the charthouse, the saloon and all the other likely places. No Smithy. I questioned passengers and crew with the same result. No one had seen him, no one had any idea whether he was aboard or had gone ashore which was very understandable because the darkness was now pretty well complete and the harsh light of the arc lamp now rigged up to aid unloading threw the gangway into very heavy shadow so that anyone could be virtually certain of boarding or leaving the Morning Rose unnoticed.

Nor was there any sign of Captain Imrie. True, I wasn't looking for him, but I would have expected him to be making his presence very much known. The wind was almost round to the south-southeast now and still freshening, the Morning Rose was beginning to pound regularly against the jetty wall with a succession of jarring impacts and a sound of screeching metal that would normally have had Imrie very much in evidence indeed in his anxiety to get rid of all his damned passengers and their equipment in order to get his ship out to the safety of the open sea with all speed. But he wasn't around, not any place I could see him. At three-thirty I went ashore and hurried up the jetty to the huts. They were deserted except for the equipment hut where Eddie was blasphemously trying to start up the diesel. He looked up as he saw me.

"Nobody could ever call me one for complaining, Dr. Marlowe, but this bloody-"

"Have you seen Mr. Smith" The mate',"

"Not ten minutes ago. Looked in to see how we were getting on. Why? Is there something-"

"Did he say anything?"

"What kind of thing?"

"About where he was going? What he was doing?"

"No." Eddie looked at the shivering Three Apostles, whose blank expressions were of no help to anyone. "Just stood there for a couple of minutes with his hands in his pockets, looking at what we were doing and asking a few questions., then he strolls off."

"See where he went?"

"No." He looked at the Three Apostles, who shook their heads as one.

"Anything up, then?"

"Nothing urgent. Ship's about to sail and the skipper's looking for him."

If that wasn't quite an accurate assessment of how matters stood at that moment, I'd no doubt it would be in a very few minutes. I didn't waste time looking for Smithy. If he had been hanging around with apparent aimlessness at the camp instead of closely supervising the urgent clearing of the foredeck, which one would have expected of him and would normally have been completely in character, then Smithy had a very good reason for doing so: he just wanted, however temporarily, to become lost.

At three thirty-five I returned to the Morning Rose. This time Captain Imrie was very much in evidence. I had thought him incapable of becoming frantic about anything but as I looked at him as he stood in the wash of light at the door of the saloon I could see that I could have been wrong about that. Perhaps "frantic" was the wrong term, but there was no doubt that he was in a highly excitable condition and was mad clear through. His fists were balled, what could be seen of his face was mottled red and white and his bright blue eyes were snapping. With commendable if lurid brevity he repeated to me what he'd clearly told a number of people in the past few minutes. Worried about the deteriorating weather-that wasn't quite the way he'd put it-he'd had Allison try to contact Tunheim for a forecast. This Allison had been unable to do. Then he and Allison had made the discovery that the transceiver was smashed beyond repair.

And just over an hour or so previously the receiver had been in order-or Smith had said it was, for he had then written down the latest weather forecast. Or what he said was the latest weather forecast. And now there was no sign of Smith. Where the hell was Smith?

"He's gone ashore," I said.

"Ashore? Ashore? How the hell do you know he's gone ashore?" Captain Imrie didn't sound very friendly, but, then, he was hardly in a friendly mood.

"Because I've just been up in the camp talking to Mr. Harbottle, the electrician. Mr. Smith had just been up there."

"Up there? He should have been unloading cargo. What the hell was he doing up there?"

I didn't see Mr. Smith," I explained patiently. "So I couldn't ask him."

"What the hell were you doing up there?"

`You're forgetting yourself, Captain Imrie. I am not responsible to you. I merely wished to have a word with him before he left. We've become quite friendly, you know."

"Yes you have, haven't you?" Imrie said significantly. It didn't mean anything, he was just in a mood for talking significantly. "Allison!"

"Sir?"

"The bosan. Search party ashore. Quickly now, I'll lead you myself."

If there had ever been any doubt as to the depth of Captain Imrie's concern there was none now. He turned back to me but as Otto Gerran and Goin were now standing beside me I wasn't sure whether he was addressing me or not. "And we're leaving within the half hour, with Smith or without him."

"Is that fair, Captain?" Otto asked. "He may just have gone for a walk or got a little lost-you see how dark it is-"

"Don't you think it bloody funny that Mr. Smith should vanish just as I discover that a radio over which he's been claiming to receive messages is smashed beyond repair?"

Otto fell silent but Goin, ever the diplomat, stepped in smoothly.

I think Mr. Gerran is right, Captain. You could be acting a little bit unfairly. I agree that the destruction of your radio is a serious and worrisome affair and one that is more than possibly, in light of all the mysterious things that have happened recently, a very sinister affair. But I think you are wrong immediately to assume that Mr. Smith has any connection with it. For one thing, he strikes me as much too intelligent a man to incriminate himself in so extremely obvious a fashion. In the second place, as your senior officer who knows how vitally important a piece of equipment your radio is, why should he do such a wanton thing? In the third place, if he were trying to escape the consequences of his actions, where on earth could he escape to on Bear Island? I do not suggest anything as simple as an accident or amnesia: I'm merely suggesting that he may have got lost. You could at least wait until the morning."

I could see Captain Imrie's fists unballing, not much, just a slight relaxation , and I knew that if he weren't wavering he was at least on the point of considering, a state of approaching uncertainty that lasted just as long as it took Otto to undo whatever Goin might have been on the point of achieving.

"That's it, of course," he said. "He just went to have a look around."

"What? In the pitch bloody dark?" It was an exaggeration but a pardonable one. "Allison! Oakley! All of you. Come on!" He lowered his voice a few decibels and said to us: "I'm leaving within the half hour, Smith or no Smith. Hammerfest, gentlemen, Hammerfest and the law."

He hurried down the gangway, half a dozen men close behind. Goin sighed. I suppose we'd better lend a hand." He left and Otto, after hesitating for a moment, followed.

I didn't, I'd no intention of lending a hand, if Smithy didn't want to be found then he wouldn't be. Instead I went down to my cabin, wrote a brief note, took the small duffle bag with me and went in search of Haggerty. I had to trust somebody, Smithy's most damned inconvenient disappearing trick had left me with no option, and I thought Haggerty was my best bet. He was stiff-necked and suspicious and, since Imrie's questioning of him that morning, he must have become even more suspicious of me: but he was no fool, he struck me as being incorruptible, he was, I thought, amenable to an authoritative display of discipline and, above all, he'd spent twenty-seven years of his life in taking orders.

It was fifteen minutes" touch and go, but at last he grudgingly agreed to do what I asked him to.

"You wouldn't be making a fool out of me, Dr. Marlowe?" he asked.

"You'd be a fool if you even thought that. What would I have to gain?"

"There's that, there's that." He took the small duffle bag reluctantly.

"As soon as we're safely clear of the island-"

"Yes. That, and the letter. To the captain. Not before."

"Those are deep waters, Dr. Marlowe." He didn't know how deep, I was close to drowning in them. "Can't you tell me what it is all about?"

"If I knew that, Haggerty, do you think I'd be remaining behind on this Godforsaken island?"

For the first time, he smiled. "No, sir, I don't really think you would."

Captain Imrie and his search party returned only a minute or two after I'd gone back up to the upper deck. They returned without Smithy. I was surprised neither by their failure to find him nor the brevity of their search-an elapsed time of only twenty minutes. Bear Island, on the map, may be only the veriest speck in the high Arctic but it does cover an area of seventy-three square miles and it must have occurred to Captain Imrie very early on indeed that to attempt to search even a fraction of one percent of that icily mountainous terrain in darkness was to embark upon a monumental folly. His fervour for the search had diminished to vanishing point: but his failure to find Smithy had, if anything, increased his determination to depart immediately. Having ensured that the last of the foredeck cargo had been unloaded and that all of the film company's equipment and personal effects were ashore, he and Mr. Stokes courteously but swiftly shook hands with us all as we were ushered ashore. The derricks were already stayed in position and the mooring ropes singled up: Captain Imrie was not about to stay upon the order of his going.

Otto, properly enough, was the last to leave. At the head of the gangway, he said: "Twenty-two days it is, then, Captain Imrie? You'll be back in twenty-two days?"

I won't leave you here the winter, Mr. Gerran, never fear." With both the mystery and his much-unloved Bear Island about to be left behind Captain Imrie apparently felt that he could permit himself a slight relaxation of attitude. "Twenty-two days? At the very outset. Why, man, I can be in Hammerfest and back in seventy-two hours. I wish you all well."

With this Captain Imrie ordered the gangway to be raised and went up to the bridge without explaining his cryptic remark about the seventy-two hours. It was more likely than not that what he had in mind at that very moment was, indeed, to be back inside seventy-two hours with, his manner seemed to convey, a small regiment of heavily armed Norwegian police. I wasn't concerned: I was as certain as I could be that, if that were indeed what he had in mind, he would change his mind before the night was out.

The navigation lights came on and the Morning Rose moved off slowly northwards from the jetty, slewed round in a half-circle and headed down the Sor-Hamna, her engine note deepening as she picked up speed.

Opposite the jetty again Captain Imrie sounded his hooter-only the captain could have called it a siren-twice, a high and lonely sound almost immediately swallowed up in the muffling blanket of snow: within seconds, it seemed, both the throb of the engine and the pale glow of the navigation lights were lost in the snow and the darkness.

For what seemed quite some time we all stood there, huddled against the bitter cold and peering into the driving snow, as if by willing it could bring the lights back into view again, the engine throb back into earshot. The atmosphere was not one of voyagers happily arrived at their hoped-for destination but of castaways marooned on an Arctic desert island.

The atmosphere inside the big living cabin was not much of an improvement. The oil heaters were "functioning well enough and Eddie had the diesel generator running so that the black heaters on the walls were just beginning to warm up, but the effects of a decade of deep freeze were not to be overcome in the space of an hour: the inside temperature was still below freezing. Nobody went to their allocated cubicles for the excellent reason that they were considerably colder than the central living space. Nobody appeared to want to talk to anybody else. Heissman embarked upon a pedantic and what promised to be lengthy lecture about Arctic survival, a subject concerning which his long and intimate acquaintance with Siberia presumably made him uniquely qualified to speak, but there were no takers, it was questionable whether he was even listening to himself. Then he, Otto, and Neal Divine began a rather desultory discussion of their plans for-weather permitting-the following day's shooting, but obviously they hadn't their hearts even in that. It was, eventually, Conrad who put his finger on the cause of the general malaise, or, more accurately, expressed the thought that was in the mind of everybody with the possible exception of myself.

He said to Heissman: In the Arctic, in winter, you require torches.

Right?',

"Right.'

"We have them?"

"Plenty, of course. Why?"

"Because I want one. I want to go out. We've been in here now, all of us, how long, I don't know, twenty minutes at least and for all we know there may be a man out there sick or hurt or frost-bitten or maybe fallen and broken a leg."

"Oh, come now, come now, that's pitching it a bit strongly, Charles,"

Otto said. "Mr. Smith has always struck me as a man eminently able to take care of himself." Otto would probably have said the same thing if he'd been watching Smithy being mangled by a polar bear: because of both nature and build Otto was not a man to become unnecessarily involved in anything even remotely physical. If you don't really care, why don't you come out and say so?" This was a new side of Conrad to me and he continued to develop his theme at my expense. "I'd have thought you'd have been the first to suggest this, Dr. Marlowe." I might have been, too, had I not known considerably more about Smithy than he did.

I don't mind being the second," I said agreeably.

In the event, we all went, with the exception of Otto, who complained of feeling unwell and Judith Haynes who roundly maintained that it was all nonsense and that Mr. Smith would conic back ,,,,hen he felt like it, an opinion which I held myself but for reasons entirely different from hers. We were all provided with torches and agreed to keep as closely together as possible or, if separated, to be back inside thirty minutes at the latest.

The party set off in a wide sweep up the escarpment fronting the Sor-Hamna to the north. At least, the others did. I headed straight for the equipment hut where the diesel generator was thudding away reassuringly for it was unlikely that anyone of us would be missed-no one would probably be aware of the presence of any other than his immediate neighbours-and the best place to sit out a wild goose chase was the warmest and most sheltered spot I could find. With my torch switched off. so as not to betray my presence I opened the door of the hut, passed inside, closed the door, took a step forward and swore out loud as I stumbled over something comparatively yielding and almost measured my length on the planked floor. I recovered, turned, and switched on my torch.

A man was lying stretched out on the floor and to my total lack of surprise it proved to be Smithy. He stirred and groaned, half-turned, raised a feeble arm to protect his eyes from the bright glare of the torch, then slumped back again, his arm falling limply by his side, his eyes closed.

There was blood smeared over his left cheek. He stirred uneasily, moving from side to side and moaning in that soft fashion a man does when he is close to the borderline of consciousness.

"Does it hurt much, Smithy?" I asked.

He moaned some more.

"Where you scratched your cheek with a handful of frozen snow," I said.

He stopped moving and he stopped moaning.

"The comedy act we'll keep for later in the programme," I said coldly.

In the meantime, will you kindly get up and explain to me why you've behaved like an irresponsible idiot?"

I placed the torch on the generator casing so that the beam shone upwards. It didn't give much light, just enough to show Smithy's carefully expressionless face as lie got to his feel?

"What do you mean?" he said.

"TQS I82I3I, James R. Huntingdon, Colder Greens and Beirut, currently and wrongly known as Joseph Rank Smith is who I mean."

I guess I'm the irresponsible idiot you mean," Smithy said. "It would be nice to have introductions all round."

"Dr. Marlowe," I said. He kept the same carefully expressionless face.

"Four years and four months ago when we took you from your nice cosy job as Chief Officer in that broken-down Lebanese tanker we thought you had a future with us. A bright one. Even four months ago we thought the same thing. But here, now, I'm very far from sure."

Smithy smiled but his heart wasn't in it. "You can't very well fire me on Bear Island."

I can fire you in Timbuctoo if I want to," I said matter-of-factly. "Well, come on.

"You might have made yourself known to me." Smithy sounded aggrieved and I supposed I would have been also in his position. I was beginning to guess. I didn't know there was anyone else aboard apart from Me.

"You weren't supposed to know. You weren't supposed to guess. You were supposed to do exactly what you were told. Just that and no more. You remember the last line in your written instructions? They were underlined. A quotation from Milton. I underlined it."

"'They also serve who only stand and wait,"" Smithy said. "Corny, I thought it at the time."

"I've had a limited education," I said. "Point is, did you stand and wait?

Did you hell. Your orders were as simple and explicit as orders could ever be. Remain constantly aboard the Morning Rose until contacted. Do not, under any circumstances, leave the vessel even to step ashore. Do not, repeat not, attempt to conduct any investigations upon your own, do not seek to discover anything, at all times behave like a stereotype merchant navy officer. This you failed to do. I wanted you aboard that ship, Smithy.

I needed you aboard-now. And where are you-stuck in a Godforsaken hut on Bear Island. Why in God's name couldn't you follow out simple instructions?"

"OK. My fault. But I thought I was alone. Circumstances alter cases, don't they? With four men mysteriously dead and four others pretty close to death-well, damn it all, am I supposed to stand by and do nothing?

Am I supposed to have no initiative, not to think for myself even once?"

"Not till you're told to. And now look where you've left me-one hand behind my back. The Morning Rose was my other hand and now you've deprived me of it. I wanted it on call and close to hand every hour of the day and night. I might need it at any time-and now I haven't got it. Is there anybody aboard that blasted trawler who could maintain position just offshore in the darkest night or bring her up the Sor-Hamna in a full blizzard? You know damn well there's not. Captain Imrie couldn't bring her up the Clyde on a midsummer's afternoon."

"You have a radio with you then? To communicate with the trawler?"

"Of course. Built into my medical case-no more than a police job, but range enough."

"Be rather difficult to communicate with the Morning Rose's transceiver lying in bits and pieces."

"How very true," I said. "And why is it in bits and pieces? Because on the bridge you started talking freely and at length about shouting for help over that selfsame radio and whistling up the NATO Atlantic forces if need be, while all the time some clever-cuts was taking his case out on the bridge wing drinking in every word you said. I know, there were fresh tracks in the snow-well, my tracks, but re-used, if you follow me. So, of course, our clever-cuts hies himself off. and gets himself a heavy hammer."

I could have been more circumspect at that, I suppose. You can have my apologies if you want them but I don't see them being all that useful at this stage."

"I'm hardly in line myself for a citation for distinguished services, so we'll leave the apologies be. Now that you're here-well, I won't have to watch my back so closely."

"So they're on to you-whoever they are?"

"Whoever they are are unquestionably on to me." I told him briefly all I knew, not all I thought I knew or suspected I knew, for I saw no point in making Smithy as confused as myself. I went on: "Just so we don't act at cross-purposes, let me initiate any action that I-or we-may think may have to be taken. I need hardly say that that doesn't deprive you of initiative if and when you find yourself or think you find yourself physically threatened. In that event, you have my advance permission to flatten anybody."

"That's nice to know." Smithy smiled briefly for the first time. "It would be even nicer to know who it is that I'm likely to have to flatten. It would be even nicer still to know what you who are, I gather, a fairly senior Treasury official, and I, whom I know to be a junior one, are doing on this goddamned island anyway."

"The Treasury's basic concern is money, always money, in one shape or other and that's why we're here. Not our money, not British money, but what we call international dirty money and all the members of the Central Banks co-operate very closely on this issue."

"When you're as poor as I am, " Smithy said, "there's no such thing as dirty money."

"Even an underpaid civil servant like yourself wouldn't touch this lot.

This is all ill-gotten gains, illegal loot from the days of World War II.

This money has all been earned in blood and what has been recovered of it-and that's only a fraction of the total-has almost invariably been recovered in blood. Even as late as the spring of I945 Germany was still a land of priceless treasures: by the summer of that year the cupboard was almost entirely bare. Both the victors and the vanquished laid their sticky fingers on every imaginable object of value they could clap eyes on-gold, precious stones, old masters, securities-German bank securities issued forty years ago are still perfectly valid-and took off. in every conceivable direction. I need hardly say that none of those involved saw fit to declare their latest acquisitions to the proper authorities." I looked at my watch. `Your worried friends are scouring Bear Island for you-or a very small part of it, anyway. A half-hour search. I'll have to bring in your unconscious form in about fifteen minutes."

"It all sounds pretty dull to me," Smith said. "All this loot, I mean. Was there much of it?"

"It all depends what you call much. It's estimated that the Allies-and hen I say "Allies" I mean Britain and America as well as the much maligned Russians-managed to get hold of about two-thirds of the total.

That left the Nazis and their sympathisers with about a paltry one-third and the conservative estimate of that one-third-conservative, Smithy is that it amounts to approximately њ350,000,000. Pounds sterling, you understand."

"A thousand million all told?"

"Give or take a hundred million."

"That childish remark about this being a dull subject. Strike it off. The record."

"Granted. Now this loot has found its way into some very odd places indeed. Some of it, inevitably, lies in secret numbered bank accounts. Some of it-there is no question about this-lies in the form of specie in some of the very deepest Austrian alpine lakes and has so far proved irrecoverable. I know of two Raphaels in the cellar gallery of a Buenos Aires millionaire, a Michelangelo in Rio, several Hals and Rubens in the same illegal collection in New York and a Rembrandt in London. Their owners are either people who have been in, were in or are closely connected to the governments or armed forces of the countries concerned: there's nothing the governments concerned can do about it and there are no signs that they're particularly keen to do anything about it anyway, they themselves might be the ultimate beneficiaries. As lately as the end of I970 an international cartel went on the market with њ30,000,000 worth of perfectly valid German securities issued in the "30s, approaching in turn the London, New York, and Zurich markets but the Federal Bank of Germany refused to cash those until proper owner identification was established: the point is that it's an open secret that those securities were taken from the vaults of the Reichsbank in I945 by a special Red Army unit who were constituted as the only legalised military burglars in history.

"But that's only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak; the vast bulk of this immense fortune is hidden because the war is still too recent and people the illegal owners-still too scared to convert their treasures into currency. There's a special Italian Government Recovery Office that deals exclusively with this matter and its boss, one Professor Siviero, estimates that there are at least seven hundred old masters, many of them virtually priceless, still untraced while another expert, a Simon Wiesenthal of the Austrian Jewish Documentation Service, says virtually the same thing he, incidentally, maintains that there are countless highly wanted characters, such as top ranking officers in the S.S., who are living in great comfort from hundreds of numbered bank accounts scattered throughout Europe.

"Siviero and Wiesenthal are the acknowledged legal experts in this form of recovery. Unfortunately, there are known to be a handful of people-they amount to certainly not more than three or four-who are possessed of an equal or even greater expertise in this matter, but who unfortunately are lacking in the high principles of their colleagues, if that is the word, who operate on the right side of the law. Their names are known but they are untouchable because they have never committed any known crimes, not even fraudulent conversion of stocks, because the stocks are always good, the claimants always proven. They are, nevertheless, criminals operating on an international level. We have the most skilful and successful of the lot with us here on Bear Island. His name is Johann Heissman."

"Heissman!"

"None other. He's a very gifted lad is our Johann."

"But Heissman! How can that be? Heissman? What kind of sense can that make? Why it's only two years-'

I know. It's only two years since Heissman made his spectacular escape from Siberia and arrived in London to the accompaniment of lots of noise and TV cameras and yards of newspaper space and enough red carpet to go from Tilbury to Tomsk, since which time he has occupied himself exclusively with his old love of film-making, so how can it possibly be Heissman?

"Well it can be Heissman and it is Heissman for our Johann is a very downy bird indeed. We have checked, in fact, that he was a movie studio partner of Otto in Vienna just before the war and that they did, in fact, attend the same gymnasium in St. Peiten, which is not all that far away.

We do know that Heissman ran the wrong way while Otto ran the right way at the time of the Anschluss, and we do know that Heissman, because of his then Communist sympathies, was a very welcome guest of theThird Reich. What followed was one of those incredibly involved double and treble-dealing spy switches that occurred so frequently in Central

Europe during the war. Heissman was apparently allowed to escape to Russia, where his sympathies were well known, and then sent back to Germany where he was ordered to transmit all possible misleading but still acceptable military information back to the Russians."

"Why? Why did he do it?"

"Because his wife and two children were captured at the same time as he was. A good enough reason?" Smithy nodded. "Then when the war was over and the Russians overran Berlin and turned up their espionage records, they found out what Heissman had really been doing and shipped him to Siberia."

I would have thought they would have shot him out of hand."

"They would have too but for one small point. I told you that Heissman was a very downy bird and that this was a treble deal. Heissman was, in effect and actually, working throughout the war for the Russians. For four years he faithfully sent back his misleading reports to his masters and even though he had the help of the German Intelligence in the preparation of his coded messages they never once latched onto the fact that Heissman was using his own overlaid code throughout. The Russians simply spirited him away at the end of the war for his own safety and allegedly sent him to Siberia. Our information is that he's never been to Siberia: we believe that his wife and two married daughters are still living very comfortably in Moscow."

"And he has been working for the Russians ever since?" Smithy was looking just faintly baffled and I felt some fellow feeling for him, Heissman's masterful duplicity was not for ready comprehension.

In his present capacity. During his last eight years in his Siberian prison, Heissman, in a variety of disguises, has been traced in North and South America, South Africa, Israel and, believe it or not, in the Savoy Hotel in London. We know but we cannot prove that all those trips were in some way concerned with the recovery of Nazi treasure for his Russian masters-you have to remember that Heissman had built up the highest connections in the Party, the S.S., and the Intelligence: he was almost uniquely qualified for the task. Since his "escape" from Siberia he has made two pictures in Europe, one in Piedmont where an old widow complained that some tattered old paintings had been stolen from the loft of her barn, the other in Provence, where an old country lawyer called in the police about some deed boxes that had been removed from his office.

Whether either pictures or deed boxes were of any value we do not know: still less can we connect either disappearance with Heissman."

"This is an awful lot to take in all at once," Smithy complained. It is, isn't it?"

", OK if I smoke?"

"Five minutes. Then I've got to drag you back by the heels."

"By the shoulders, if it's all the same to you." Smithy lit his cigarette and thought a bit. "So what we've got to find out is what Heissman is doing on Bear Island."

"That's why we're here."

"You've no idea?"

"None. Money, it's got to be money. This would be the last place on earth I'd associate with money and maybe that association would be wrong anyway. Maybe it's only a means to the money. Johann, as I trust you've gathered by this time, is a very devious character indeed."

"Would there be a tie-up with the film company? With his old friend Gerran? Or would he just be making use of them?"

"I've simply no idea."

"And Mary Stuart? The secret rendezvous girl? What could the possible connection be there?"

"Same answer. We know very little of her. We know her real name she's never made any attempt to conceal that-age, birthplace, and that she's a Latvian-or comes from what used to be Latvia before the Russians took it over. We also know-and this information she hasn't volunteered -that it was only her mother who was Latvian. Her father was German." "Ah! In the Army perhaps? Intelligence? S.S.?"

"That's the obvious connection to seek. But we don't know. Her immigration forms say that her parents are dead."

"So the department has been checking on her, too?"

"We've had a rundown on everyone here connected with Olympus Productions. We may as well have saved ourselves the trouble."

"So no facts. Any hunches, feelings?"

"Hunches aren't my stock-in-trade."

"I somehow didn't feel they would be." Smithy ground out his cigarette. "Before we go, I'd like to mention two very uncomfortable thoughts that have just occurred to me. Number one. Johann Heissman is a very big-time, very successful international operative? True'

"He's an international criminal."

"A rose by any other name. The point is that those boys avoid violence wherever possible, isn't that true?"

"Perfectly true. Apart from anything else, it's beneath them."

"And have you ever heard Heissman's name being associated with violence?"

"There's no record of it."

"But there's been a considerable amount of violence, one way or the other, in the past day or two. So if it isn't Heissman, who's behind the strong-arm behaviour?"

I don't say it isn't Heissman. The leopard can change his spots. He may be finding himself, for God knows what reason, in so highly unusual a situation that he has no option other than to have recourse to violence.

He may, for all we know, have violent associates who don't necessarily represent his attitude. Or it may be someone entirely unconnected with him."

"That's what I like," Smithy said. "Simple straightforward answers.

And there's the second point that may have escaped your attention. If our friends are on to you the chances are that they're on to me too. That eavesdropper on the bridge."

"The point had not escaped my attention. And not because of the bridge, although that may have given pause for thought, but because you deliberately skipped ship. It doesn't matter what most of them think, one person or possibly more is going to be convinced that you did it on purpose. You're a marked man, Smithy."

"So that when you drag me back there not everyone is going to feel genuine pangs of sorrow for poor old Smithy? Some may question the bona fides of my injuries?"

"They won't question. They'll damn well know. But we have to act as if."

"Maybe you'll watch my back too? Now and again?"

I have a lot on my mind, but I'll try."

I had Smithy by the armpits, head lolling, heels and bands trailing in the snow, when two flashlights picked us up less than five yards from the door of the main cabin.

"You've found him, then?" It was Goin, Harbottle by his side. "Good man!" Even to my by now hypersensitive car Goin's reaction sounded genuine.

"Yes. About quarter of a mile away." I breathed very quickly and deeply to give them some idea as to what it must have been like to drag a two hundred-pound dead weight over uneven snow-covered terrain for such a distance. "Found him in the bottom of a gully. Give me a hand, will you?"

They gave me a hand. We hauled him inside, fetched a camp cot and stretched him out on this.

"Good God! Good God! Good God!" Otto wrung his hands, the anguished expression on his face testimony to the fresh burden now added to the crippling weight of the cross he was already carrying. "What's happened to the poor fellow?" The only other occupant of the cabin, Judith Haynes, had made no move to leave the oil stove she was monopolising, unconscious men being borne into her presence might have been so routine an affair as not even to merit the raising of an eyebrow.

"I'm not sure," I said between gasps. "Heavy fall, I think, banged his head on a boulder. Looked like."

"Concussion?"

"Maybe." I probed through his hair with my fingertips, found a spot on the scalp that felt no different from anywhere else and said: "Ah!"

They looked at me in anxious expectancy.

"Brandy," I said to Otto. I fetched my stethoscope, went through the necessary charade, and managed to revive the coughing, moaning Smithy with a mouthful or two of brandy. For one not trained to the boards, he put up a remarkable performance high-lighted, at its end, with a muted series of oaths and an expression of mingled shock and chagrin when I gently informed him that the Morning Rose had sailed without him.

During the course of the histrionics most of the other searchers wandered in twos or threes. I watched them all carefully without seeming to, looking for an expression that was other than surprise or relief, but I might have spared myself the trouble: if there was one or more who was neither surprised nor relieved he had his emotions and facial muscles too well schooled to show anything. I would have expected nothing else. After about ten minutes our concern shifted from a now obviously recovering Smithy to the fact that two members of the searching party, Allen and Stryker, were still missing. After the events of that morning I felt that the absence of those two, of all of us, to be rather Coincidental, after fifteen minutes I felt it odd and after twenty minutes I felt it downright ominous, a feeling that was clearly shared by nearly everyone there. Judith Haynes had abandoned her squatter's rights by her oil stove and was walking up and down in short, nervous steps, squeezing her hands together. She stopped in front of me.

I don't like it, I don't like it!" Her voice was strained and anxious, it could have been acting but I didn't think so. "What's keeping him? Why is he so long? He's out there with that Allen fellow. Something's wrong.

I know it is, I know it." When I didn't answer she said: "Well, aren't you going out to look for him?"

"Just as you went out to look for Mr. Smith here," I said. It wasn't very nice but then I didn't always feel so very kind to other people as Lonnie did. "Maybe your husband will come back when he feels like it."

She looked at me without speaking, her lips moving but not speaking, no real hostility in her face, and I realised for the second time that day that her rumoured hatred for her husband was, in fact, only a rumour and that, buried no matter how deep, there did exist some form of concern for him. She turned away and I reached for my torch.

"Once more unto the breach," I said. "Any takers?"

Conrad, Jungbeck, Heyter, and Hendriks accompanied me. Volunteers there were in plenty but I reasoned that not only would increased numbers get in one another's way but the chances of someone else becoming lost would be all that greater. Immediately after leaving the hut the five of us fanned out at intervals of not more than fifteen feel? and moved off to the north. We found Alien inside the first thirty seconds: more accurately, he found us, for he saw our torches-he'd lost his own-and came stumbling towards us out of the snow and the darkness. "Stumbled" was the operative word, he was weaving and swaying like one far gone in alcohol or exhaustion and when he tried to speak his voice was thick and slurred. He was shivering like a man with the ague. it seemed not only pointless but cruel to question him in that condition so we hurried him inside.

I had a look at him as we sat him on a stool by an oil stove and I didn't have to look twice or very closely to see that this hadn't exactly been Alien's day. Alien had been in the wars again and the damage that had been inflicted on him this time at least matched up to the injuries he'd received that morning. He had two nasty cuts above what had been up till then his undamaged eye, a bruised and scratched right cheek and blood came from both his mouth and nose, blood already congealed in the cold: but his worst injury was a very deep gash on the back of the head, the scalp laid open clear to the bone. Someone had given young Alien a very thorough going over indeed.

"And what happened to you this time?" I asked. He winced as I started to clean up his face. "Or should I say, do you know what happened to you?"

I don't know," he said thickly. He shook his head and drew his breath in sharply as some pain struck through either head or neck. I don't know. I don't remember."

"You've been in a fight, laddie," I said. "Again. Someone's cut you up, and quite badly."

I know. I can feel it. I don't remember. Honest to God, I don't remember. I-I just don't know what happened."

Tut you must have seen him," Goin said reasonably. "Whoever it was, you must have been face to face with him, God's sake, boy, your shirt's tom and there's at least a couple of buttons missing from your coat. And he had to be standing in front of you when he did this to you. Surely you must have caught a glimpse of him at least."

"It was dark," Allen mumbled. "I didn't see anything. I didn't feel anything, all I knew was that I woke up kind of groggy like in the snow with the back of my head hurting. I knew I was bleeding and-please, I don't know what happened."

"Yes, you do, yes, you Do" Judith Haynes had pushed her way to the front. The transformation that had taken" place in her face was as astonishing as it was ugly and although her morning performance had partially prepared me for something of this kind and though this expression was different from the one that had disfigure her face that time, it was still an almost frightening thing to watch. The red gash of the mouth had vanished, the lips drawn in and back over hared teeth, the green eyes were no more than slits and, as had happened that morning, the skin was stretched back over her cheekbones until it appeared far too tight for her face. She screamed at him: "You damned liar! Wanted your own back, didn't you? You dirty little bastard, what have you done with my husband? Do you hear me? Do you hear me? What have you done with him, damn you? Where is he? Where did you leave him?"

Allen looked up at her in a half-scared astonishment, then shook his head wearily. "I'm sorry, Miss Haynes, I don't know what-"

She hooked her long-nailed fingers into talons and lunged for him but I'd been waiting for it. So had both Goin and Conrad. She struggled like a trapped wildcat, screaming invective at Allen, then suddenly relaxed, her breath coming in harsh, rasping sobs.

"Now then, now then, Judith," Otto said. "There's no-"

"Don't you "now then" me, you silly old bastard!" she screamed. Filial respect was clearly not Judith Haynes's strong point but Otto, though clearly nervous, accepted his daughter's abuse as if it were a matter of course. "Why don't you find out instead what this young swine's done to my husband? Why don't you? Why don't you!" She struggled to free her arms and as she was trying to move away we let her go. She picked up a torch and ran for the door.

"Stop her," I said.

Heyter and Jungbeck, big men both, blocked her flight.

"Let me go, let me out!" she shouted. Neither Heyter nor Jungbeck moved and she whirled round on me. "Who the hell are you to-I want to go out and find Michael!"

"I'm sorry, Miss Haynes," I said. "You're in no condition to go to look for anyone. You'd just run wild, no trace of where you'd been, and in five minutes" time you'd be lost too and perhaps lost for good. We're leaving in just a moment."

She took three quick steps towards Otto, her fists clenched. her teeth showing again.

"You let him push me around like this?" This with an incinerating glare in my direction. "Spineless, that's you, absolutely spineless! Anybody can walk over you!" Otto blinked nervously at this latest tirade but said nothing. "Aren't I supposed to be your bloody daughter? Aren't you supposed to be the bloody boss? God's sake, who gives the orders about here? You or Marlowe?"

"Your father does," Goin said. "Naturally. But, without any disrespect to Dr. Marlowe, we don't hire a dog just to bark ourselves. He's a medical man and we'd be fools not to defer to him in medical matters."

"Are you suggesting I'm a medical case?" All the colour had drained from her cheeks and she looked uglier than ever. "Are you? Are you, then?

A mental case, perhaps?"

Heaven knows I wouldn't have blamed Goin if he'd said "yes" straight out and left it at that but Goin was far too balanced and diplomatic to say any such thing and, besides, he'd clearly been through this sort of crisis before. He said, quietly but not condescendingly: "I'm suggesting no such thing. Of course you're distressed, of course you're overwrought, after all it is your husband that's missing. But I agree with Dr. Marlowe that you're not the person to go looking for him. We'll have him back here all the quicker if you co-operate with us, Judith."

She hesitated, still halfway between hysteria and rage, then swung away. I taped the gash on Allen's head and said: "That'll do till I come back. Afraid I'll have to shave off. a few locks and stitch it." On the way to the door I stopped and said quietly to Goin: "Keep her away from Allen, will you?"

Goin nodded.

"And for heaven's sake keep her away from Mary darling."

He looked at me in what was as close to astonishment as he was capable of achieving. "That kid?"

"That kid. She's next on the list for Miss Haynes's attentions. When Miss Haynes gets around to thinking about it, that is."

I left with the same four as previously. Conrad, the last out, closed the door behind him and said: "Jesus! My charming leading lady. What a virago she is!"

"She's a little upset," I said mildly.

"A little upset! Heaven send I'm in the next county if she ever gets really mad. What the hell do you think can have happened to Stryker?"

I have no idea," I said, and because it was dark I didn't have to assume an honest expression to go with the words. I moved closer to him so that the others, already fanned out in line of search, couldn't hear me.

"Seeing we're such a bunch of odd-balls anyway, I hope an odd request from another odd-ball won't come amiss."

"You disappoint me, Doctor. I thought you and I were two of the very few halfway normal people around here."

"By the prevailing standards, any moderate odd-ball is normal. You know anything of Lonnie's past?"

He was silent for a moment then said: "I've has a past?"

"We all have a past. If you think I mean a criminal past, no. Lonnie hasn't got one. I just want to find out if he was married or had any family. That's all."

"Why don't you ask him yourself?"

"If I felt free to ask him myself, would I be asking you?"

Another silence. "Your name really Marlowe, Doe?"

"Marlowe, as ever was. Christopher Marlowe. Passport, birth certificate, driving licence-they're all agreed on it."

"Christopher Marlowe? just like the playwright, eh?"

"My parents had literary inclinations."

"Uh-huh." He paused again. "Remember what happened to your namesake-stabbed in the back by a friend before his thirtieth birthday?"

"Rest easy. My thirtieth birthday is lost in the mists of time."

"And you're really a doctor?"

"Yes."

"And you're really something else, too?"

"Yes."

"Lonnie. Marital status. Children or no. You may rely on Conrad's discretion."

"Thanks," I said. We moved apart. We were walking to the north for two reasons-the wind, and hence the snow, were to our backs and so progress was easier in that direction, and Allen had come stumbling from that direction. In spite of Allen's professed total lack of recall of what had happened, it seemed likely to me that we might find Stryker also somewhere in that direction. And so it proved.

"Over here! Over here!" In spite of the muffling effects of the snow Hendriks's shout sounded curiously high-pitched and cracked. "I've found him, I've found him!"

He'd found him, all right. Michael Stryker was lying face down in the snow, arms and legs outspread in an almost perfectly symmetrical fashion. Both fists were clenched tight. On the snow, beside his left shoulder, lay a smooth elliptical stone which from its size-it must have weighed between sixty and seventy pounds-better qualified for the name of boulder. I stooped low over this boulder, bringing the torch close, and at once saw the few dark hairs imbedded in the dark and encrusted stain. Proof if proof were required but I hadn't doubted anyway that this was what had been used to smash in the back of Stryker's skull. Death would have been instantaneous;

"He's dead! Jungbeck said incredulously.

"He's all that," I said.

"And murdered!"

"That, too." I tried to turn him over on his back but Conrad and Jungbeck had to lend their not inconsiderable weights before this was done.

His upper lip was viciously split all the way down from the nostril, a tooth was missing and he had a peculiar red and raw looking mark on his right temple.

"By God, there must have been a fight," Jungbeck said huskily. "I wouldn't have thought that kid Allen had had it in him."

"I wouldn't have thought so either," I said.

"Allen?" Conrad said. "I'd have sworn he was telling the truth. Could he-well, do you think it could have happened when he was suffering from amnesia?"

"All sorts of funny things can happen when you've had a bump on the head," I said. I looked at the ground around the dead man, there were footprints there, not many, already faint and blurred from the driving snow: there was no help to be gained from that quarter. I said: "Let's get him back."

So we carried the dead man back to the camp and it wasn't, in spite of the uneven terrain and the snow in our faces, as difficult a task as it might have been for the same reason that I'd found it so difficult to turn him over-the limbs had already begun to stiffen, not from the onset of rigor mortis, for it was too soon for that yet, but from the effects of the intense cold. We laid him in the snow outside the main cabin. I said to Hendriks: "Go inside and ask Goin for a bottle of brandy-say that I sent you back for it, that we need it to keep us going." It was the last thing I would ever have recommended to keep anyone warm in bitter outdoor cold, but it was all I could think of on the spur of the moment. "Tell Goin -quietly-to come here."

Goin, clearly aware that there was something far amiss, walked out casually and casually shut the door behind him, but there was nothing casual about his reaction when he saw Stryker lying there, his gashed and marble-white face a death's head in the harsh light of several torches. Goin's own face was clear enough in the backwash of light reflected from the snow. The shocked expression on his face he could have arranged for: the draining of blood that left it almost as white as Stryker's he couldn't.

Jesus Christ!" he whispered. "Dead?"

I said nothing, just turned the dead man over with Conrad's and Jung beck's help again. This time it was more difficult. Goin made a strange noise in his throat but otherwise didn't react at all, I suppose he'd nothing left to react with, he just stood there and stared as the driving snow whitened the dead man's anorak and, mercifully, the fearful wound in the occiput. For what seemed quite a long time we stood there in silence, gazing down at the dead man: I was aware, almost subconsciously, that the wind, now veering beyond south, was strengthening, for the thickening snow was driving along now almost parallel to the ground: I do not know what the temperature was but it must have been close on thirty degrees below freezing. I was dimly aware that I was shaking with the cold: looking around, I could see that the others were also. Our breaths froze as they struck the icy Mr. but the wind whipped them away before the vapour had time to form.

"Accident?" Goin said hoarsely. "It could have been an accident?"

"No," I said. I saw the boulder that was used to crush his skull in."

Goin made the same curious noise in his throat again and I went on: "We can't leave him here and we can't take him inside. I suggest we leave him in the tractor shed."

"Yes, yes, the tractor shed," Goin said. He really didn't know what he was saying.

"And who's going to break the news to Miss Haynes?" I went on. God alone knew that I didn't fancy doing it.

'What?" He was still shocked. "What was that?"

"His wife. She'll have to be told." As a doctor, I supposed I was the one to do it but the decision was taken from my hands. The cabin door was jerked abruptly open and Judith Haynes, her two dogs by her ankles, stood there framed against the light from the interior with Otto and the Count just vaguely discernible behind her. She stood there for some little time, a hand on either doorjamb, quite immobile and without any expression that I could see, then walked forward in a curiously dreamlike fashion and stooped over her husband. After a few moments she straightened, looked around as if puzzled, then turned questioning eyes on me, but only for a moment, for the questioning eyes turned up in her head and she crumpled and fell heavily across Stryker's body before I or anyone could get to her. Conrad and I, with Goin following, brought her inside and laid her on the camp cot so lately occupied by Smithy. The cocker spaniels had to be forcibly restrained from joining her. Her face was alabaster white and her breathing very shallow. I lifted up her right eyelid and there was no resistance to my thumb: it was only an automatic reaction on my part, it hadn't even occurred to me that the faint wasn't genuine. I became aware that Otto was standing close by, his eyes wide, his mouth slightly open, his hands clenched together until the ivory knuckles showed. "Is she all right?" he asked hoarsely. "Will she-"

"She'll come to," I said.

"Smelling salts," he said. "Perhaps-"

"No." Smelling salts, to hasten her recovery to the bitter reality she would have to face.

"And Michael? My son-in-law? He's-I mean-"

"You saw him," I said almost irritably. "He's dead, of course he's dead."

"But how-but how-"

"He was murdered."

There were one or two involuntary exclamations, the shocked indrawing of breath, then a silence that became intensified with the passing of seconds by the hissing of the Coleman lamps. I didn't even bother to look up to see what the individual reactions might be for I knew by now that I'd learn nothing that way. I just looked at the unconscious woman and didn't know what to think. Stryker, the tough urbane, cynical Stryker had, in his own way, been terrified of this woman. Had it been because of the power she had wielded as Otto's daughter, his knowledge that his livelihood was entirely dependent on her most wayward whim, and I could imagine few more gifted exponents of the wayward whim than Judith Haynes? Had it been because of her pathological jealousy which I knew beyond all question to exist, because of the instant bitchiness which could allegedly range from the irrational to the insane or had she held over his head the threat of some nameless blackmail which could bring him at once to his knees? Had he, in his own way, even loved his wife and hoped against hopeless hope that she might reciprocate some of this and been prepared to suffer any humiliation, any insult, in the hope that he might achieve this or part of it? I'd never know but the questions were academic anyway, Stryker no longer concerned me, I was only turning them over in my mind wondering in what way they could throw any light on Judith Haynes's totally unexpected reaction to Stryker's death. She had despised him, she must have despised him for his dependence upon her, his weakness, his meek acceptance of insult, the fear he had displayed before me, for the emptiness and nothingness that had lain concealed behind so impressively masculine a facade. But had she loved him at the same time, loved him for what he had been or might have been, or was she just desolated at the loss of her most cherished whipping boy, the one sure person in the world upon whom she knew she could with impunity vent her wayward spleen whenever the fancy took her? Even without her awareness of it he might have become an integral, an indispensable part of her existence, an insidiously woven warp in the weft of her being, always dependable, always there, always ready to hand when she most needed him even when that need was no more than to absorb the grey corrosive poison eating away steadily at the edges of her mind. Even the most tarnished cornerstone can support the most crumbling edifice: take that away and the house comes tumbling down. The traumatic reaction to Stryker's death could, paradoxically, be the clinching manifestation of a complete and irredeemable selfishness: the as yet unrealised realisation that she was the most pitiful of all creatures, a person totally alone.

Judith Haynes stirred and her eyes fluttered open. Memory came back and she shuddered. I eased her to a sitting position and she looked dully around her.

"Where is he?" I had to strain to hear the words.

"It's all right, Miss Haynes," I said, and, just to compound that fatuous statement, added: "We'll look after him."

"Where is he?" she moaned. "He's my husband, my husband. I want to see him."

"Better not, Miss Haynes." Goin could be surprisingly gentle. "As Dr. Marlowe says, we'll take care of things. You've seen him already and no good can come-"

"Bring him in. Bring him in." A voice devoid of life but the will absolute. I must see him again."

I rose and went to the door. The Count barred my way. His aquiline aristocratic features held a mixture of revulsion and horror. `You can't do that. It's too ghastly-it's-it's macabre."

"What do you think that I think it is?" I felt savage but I know I didn't sound that way, I think I only sounded tired. If I don't bring him in, she'll just go outside again. It's not much of a night for being outside."

So we brought him in, the same three of us, Jungbeck and Conrad and myself, and we laid him on his back so that the fearful wound in the occiput didn't show. Judith Haynes rose from her camp cot, moved slowly towards him like a person in a dream and sank to her knees. Without moving, she looked at him for some moments then reached out and gently touched the gashed face. No one spoke, no one moved. Not without effort, she pulled his right arm close in to his side, made to do the same with his left, noticed that the Est was still clenched and carefully prised it open.

A brown circular object lay in the palm of his hand. She took it, placed it in the palm of her own hand, straightened-still on her knees-and swung in a slow semicircle showing us what she held. Then, her hand outstretched towards him, she looked at Allen. We all looked at Allen. The brown leather button in her hand matched the still remaining buttons on Allen's tom coat.