There was an utter silence that was broken only occasionally by the stirring of the dogs on the tethering cable. No one said anything, no one as much as looked at his neighbour. The silence stretched on and on, then, as one man, they all swung round startled at the heavy metallic click from behind them. Jackstraw had just cocked the bolt of his rifle, and I could see the slow stiffening of Zagero's back and arms as he realised that the barrel was lined up on his own head.
"It's no coincidence, Zagero," I said grimly. I had my own automatic in my hand by the time he turned round. "That rifle's pointed just where it's meant to. Bring your bag here."
He stared at me, then called me an unprintable name.
"Bring it here," I repeated. I pointed the Beretta at his head. "Believe me, Zagero, I'd as soon kill you as let you live."
He believed me. He brought the bag, flung it at my feet.
"Open it," I said curtly.
"It's locked."
"Unlock it."
He looked at me without expression, then searched through his pockets. At last he stopped and said, "I can't find the keys."
"I'd expected nothing else. Jackstraw-" I changed my mind, one gun was not enough to cover a killer like Zagero. I glanced round the company, made my choice. "Mr Small wood, perhaps you-"
"No, thank you," Mr Smallwood said hastily. He was still holding a handkerchief to his puffed mouth. He smiled wryly. "I've never realised so clearly before now how essentially a man of peace I am, Dr Mason. Perhaps Mr Corazzini-"
I glanced at Corazzini, and he shrugged indifferently. I understood his lack of eagerness. He must have known that I'd had him high up among my list of suspects until very recently indeed and a certain delicacy of sentiment might well prevent him from being too forthcoming too soon. But this was no time for delicacy. I nodded, and he made for Zagero.
He missed nothing, but he found nothing. After two minutes he stepped back, looked at me and then, thoughtfully, at Solly Levin. Again I nodded, and again he began to search. In ten seconds he brought out a bunch of keys, and held them up.
"It's a frame-up," Levin yelped. "It's a plant! Corazzini tnusta palmed 'em and put 'em there. I never had no keys-"
"Shut up!" I ordered contemptuously. "Yours, Zagero?"
He nodded tightly, said nothing.
"OK, Corazzini," I said. "Let's see what we can find."
The second key opened the soft leather case. Corazzini dug under the clothes on top and brought out the three corned beef tins.
"Thank you," I said. "Our friend's iron rations for his take-off. Miss Ross, our lunch. . . . Tell me, Zagero, can you think of any reason why I shouldn't kill you now?"
"You've made nothin' but mistakes ever since I met you," Zagero said slowly, "but, brother, this is the biggest you ever made. Do you think I would be such a damn fool as to incriminate myself that way? Do you think I would be so everlastingly obvious-"
"I think that's exactly the way you expected me to think," I said wearily. "But I'm learning, I'm learning. One more job, Corazzini, if you would. Tie their feet."
"What are you going to do?" Zagero asked tightly.
"Don't worry. The executioner will collect his fee. From now on you and Levin ride, with your feet tied, in the front of the tractor sled - and with a gun on you all the time. . . . What is it, Miss LeGarde?"
"Are you sure, Peter?" It was the first time she had spoken for hours, and I could see that even that tiny effort tired her. "He doesn't look like a murderer." The tone of her voice accurately reflected the expressions of consternation and shocked disbelief on half a dozen faces: Zagero had spared no effort to make himself popular with everyone.
"Does anybody here?" I demanded. "The best murderers never do." I then explained to her - and the others - all I knew and had suspected about everything. It shook them, especially the facts of the spiking of the petrol and of Hillcrest having been, at one time, only a few hours behind us: and by the time I was finished I could see that there was as little doubt in their minds about Zagero's guilt as there was in mine.
Two hours later, well down the slope from the Vindeby Nunataks, I stopped and set up the radio gear. I reckoned that we were now less than a hundred miles from the coast, and for half an hour tried to raise our base at Uplavnik. We had no success, but I had hardly expected any: the radio shack at the base was manned only by one operator, he couldn't be expected to be on watch all the time, and obviously his call-up bell wasn't set for the frequency I was using.
At four o'clock exactly I got through to Hillcrest. This time I hadn't bothered to move the radio out of hearing range -1 was actually leaning against the tractor cabin as I spoke - and every word said, both by Hillcrest and myself, could be clearly heard. But it didn't matter any more.
The first thing I did, of course, was to tell him that we had got our men. Even as I spoke, my own voice sounded curiously flat and lifeless. I should, I suppose, have been exultant and happy, but the truth was that I had suffered too much, both physically and psychologically, in the past few days, exhaustion lay over me like a smothering blanket, the reaction from the strain of those days was beginning to set in, the awareness was clearly with me that we weren't out of the wood by a long way yet, the lives of Marie LeGarde and Mahler were now the uppermost thoughts in my mind, and, to be perfectly honest, I also felt curiously deflated because I had developed a considerable liking for Zagero and the revelation of his true character had been more of a shock to me than I would have been prepared to admit to anyone.
Hillcrest's reactions, I must admit, were all that could have been wished for, but when I asked him about his progress the enthusiasm vanished from his voice. They were still bogged down, it seemed, and progress had been negligible. There was no word yet of passenger lists or of what the plane had carried that had been so important. The Triton, the aircraft-carrier, had insulin aboard and would fly it up to Uplavnik. A landing barge was moving into Uplavnik through an ice lead and was expected to arrive tomorrow and unload the tractor it was carrying, which would move straight out to meet us. Two ski-planes and two search bombers had been looking for us, but failed to locate us -we'd probably been traversing the Vindeby Nunataks at the time . . . His voice went on and on, but I hadn't heard anything he'd said in the past minute or so. I had just remembered something I should have remembered a long time ago.
"Wait a minute," I called. "I've just thought of something."
I climbed inside the tractor cabin and shook Mahler. Fortunately, he was only asleep - from the look of him an hour or two ago I'd have said the collapse was due any minute.
"Mr Mahler," I said quickly. "You said you worked for an oil company?"
"That's right." He looked at me in surprise. "Socony Mobil Oil Co., in New Jersey."
"As what?" There were a hundred things he could have been that were of no use to me.
"Research chemist. Why?"
I sighed in relief, and explained. When I'd finished telling him of Hillcrest's solution to his troubles - distilling the petrol - I asked him what he thought of it.
"It's as good a way as any of committing suicide," he said grimly. "What does he want to do - send himself into orbit? It only requires one weak spot in the can he's trying to heat.. . . Besides, the evaporation range of petrol is so wide - anything from 30 degrees centigrade to twice the temperature of boiling water -that it may take him all day to get enough to fill a cigarette lighter."
"That seems to be more or less the trouble," I agreed. "Is there nothing he can do?"
"Only one thing he can do - wash it. What size drums does your petrol come in?"
Ten gallon."
"Tell him to pour out a couple of gallons and replace with water. Stir well. Let it stand for ten minutes and then syphon off the top seven gallons. It'll be as near pure petrol as makes no difference."
"As easy as that!" I said incredulously. I thought of Hillcrest's taking half an hour to distil a cupful. "Are you sure, Mr Mahler?"
"It should work," he assured me. Even the strain of a minute's speaking had been too much for him, his voice was already no more than a husky whisper. "Sugar is insoluble in petrol - it just dissolves in the small amounts of water present in petrol, small enough to be held in suspension. But if you've plenty of water it'll sink to the bottom, carrying the sugar with it."
"If I'd the Nobel Science Prize, I'd give it to you right now, Mr Mahler." I rose to my feet. "If you've any more suggestions to make, for heaven's sake let me know."
"I've one to make now," he smiled, but he was almost gasping for breath. "It's going to take your friend a pretty long time to melt the snow to get all the water he needs to wash the petrol." He nodded towards the tractor sled, visible through the gap in the canvas screen. "We're obviously carrying far too much fuel. Why don't you drop some off for Captain Hillcrest-why, in fact, didn't you drop some off last night, when you first heard of this?"
I stared at him for a long long moment, then turned heavily for the door.
Til tell you why, Mr Mahler," I said slowly. "It's because I'm the biggest damned prize idiot in this world, that's why."
And I went out to tell Hillcrest just how idiotic I was.
CHAPTER TEN - Thursday 4 P.M. - Friday 6 P.M.
Jackstraw, Corazzini and I took turns at driving the Citroen all through that evening and the following night. The engine was beginning to run rough, the exhaust was developing a peculiar note and it was becoming increasingly difficult to engage second gear. But I couldn't stop, I daren't stop. Speed was life now.
Mahler had gone into collapse shortly after nine o'clock that evening, and from the collapse had gradually moved into the true diabetic coma. I had done all I could, all anyone could, but heaven only knew it was little enough. He needed bed, heat, fluids, stimulants, sugar by mouth or injection. Both suitable stimulants and the heat were completely lacking, the lurching, narrow, hard wooden bunk was poor substitute for any bed, despite his great thirst he had found it increasingly difficult to keep down the melted snow water, and I had no means of giving an intravenous injection. For the others in the cabin it was distressing to watch him, distressing to listen to the dyspnoea - the harsh laboured breathing of coma. Unless we could get the insulin in time, I knew no power on earth could prevent death from supervening in from one to three days - in these unfavourable conditions, a day would be much more likely.
Marie LeGarde, too, was weakening with dangerous speed. It was with increasing difficulty that she could force down even the smallest mouthfuls of food, and spent most of her time in restless troubled sleep. Having seen her on the stage and marvelled at her magnificent vitality, it now seemed strange to me that she should go under so easily. But her vitality had really been a manifestation of a nervous energy: she had little of the physical resources necessary to cope with a situation like this, and I had frequently to remind myself that she was an elderly woman. Not that any such reminder was needed when one saw her face: it was haggard and lined and old.
But worried though I was about my patients, Jackstraw was even more deeply concerned with the weather. The temperature had been steadily rising for many hours now, the moaning ululation of the ice-cap wind, which had been absent for over two days, was increasing in intensity with every hour that passed, and the skies above were dark and heavy with black drifting clouds of snow. And when, just after midnight, the wind-speed passed fifteen miles an hour, the wind began to pick up the drift off the ice-cap.
I knew what Jackstraw was afraid of, though I myself had never experienced it. I had heard of the katabatic winds of Greenland, the equivalent of the feared Alaskan wllliwaws. When great masses of air in the heart of the plateau were cooled, as they had been in the past forty-eight hours, by extremely low temperatures, they were set in motion by a gradient wind and cascaded - there was no other word for it - downwards from the edge of the plateau through suitable drainage channels. Set in motion through their own sheer weight of cold air, these gravity or drainage winds, slowly wanned by the friction and compression of their descent, could reach a hurricane force of destructive violence in which nothing could live.
And all the signs, all the conditions for a gravity storm were there. The recent extreme cold, the -rising wind, the rising temperature, the outward flowing direction of the wind, the dark star-obscuring clouds scudding by overhead - there could be no mistaking it, Jackstraw declared. I had never known him to be wrong about Greenland weather, I didn't believe him to be wrong now, and when Jackstraw became nervous it was time for even the most optimistic to start worrying. And I was worried all right.