Chapter six—Monday 7 p.M.—Tuesday 7 a.M.

Jackstraw and the others had just completed the assembly of the tractor body when we arrived back at the cabin, and some of the men were already going below. I didn't bother to check the tractor: when Jackstraw made anything, he made a perfect job of it.

I knew he must have missed me in the past hour, but I knew, too, that he wasn't the man to question me while the others were around. I waited till the last of these had gone below, then took him by the arm and walked out into the darkness, far enough to talk in complete privacy, but not so far as to lose sight of the yellow glow from our skylights—twice lost in the one night was twice too many.

He heard me out in silence, and at the end he said: "What are we going to do, Dr Mason?"

"Depends. Spoken to Joss recently?"

"Fifteen minutes ago. In the tunnel."

"How about the radio?"

"I'm afraid not, Dr Mason. He's missing some condensers and spare valves. He's looked for them, everywhere—says they've been stolen."

"Maybe they'll turn up?" I didn't believe it myself.

"Two of the valves already have. Crushed little bits of glass lying in the bottom of the snow tunnel."

"Our little friends think of everything.1'! swore softly. "That settles it, Jackstraw. We can't wait any longer, we'll leave as soon as possible. But first a night's sleep—that we must have."

"Uplavnik?" That was our expedition base, near the mouth of the Stromsund glacier. "Do you think we will ever get there?"

He wasn't thinking, just as I wasn't, about the rigours and dangers of arctic winter travel, daunting enough though these were when they had to be faced with a superannuated tractor like the Citroen, but of the company we would be keeping en route. If any fact was ever so glaringly obvious that it didn't need mention, it was that the killers, whoever they were, could only escape justice, or, at least, the mass arrest and interrogation of all the passengers, by ensuring that they were the only ones to emerge alive from the ice-cap.

"I wouldn't like to bet on it," I said dryly. "But I'd bet even less on our chances if we stay here. Death by starvation is kind of final."

"Yes, indeed." He paused for a moment, then switched to a fresh line of thought. "You say they tried to kill you tonight. Is that not surprising? I would have thought that you and I would have been very safe, for a few days at least."

I knew what he meant. Apart from Jackstraw and myself, there probably wasn't a handful of people in all Greenland who could start that damned Citroen, far less drive it, only Jackstraw could handle the dogs, and it was long odds indeed against any of the passengers knowing anything at all about astral or magnetic compass navigation—the latter very tricky indeed in these high latitudes. These special skills should have been guarantee enough of our immediate survival.

"True enough," I agreed. "But I suspect they haven't given any thought to these things simply because they haven't realised the importance of them. We'll make it our business to point out that importance very plainly. Then we're both insured. Meantime, we'll have one last effort to clear this business up before we get started. It's not going to make us very popular, but we can't help that." I explained what I had in mind, and he nodded thoughtful agreement.

After he had gone below, I waited a couple of minutes and then followed him. All nine of the passengers were sitting in the cabin now—eight, rather, watching Marie LeGarde presiding over a soup pan—and I took a long, long look at all of them. It was the first time I had ever examined a group of my fellow-men with the object of trying to decide which among them were murderers, and found it a strange and unsettling experience.

In the first place, every one of them looked to me like a potential or actual murderer—or murderess—but even with that thought came the realisation that this was purely because I associated murder with abnormality, and in these wildly unlikely surroundings, clad in the layered bulkiness of these wildly unlikely clothes, every one of them seemed far removed from normality. But on a second and closer look, when one ignored the irrelevancies of surroundings and clothes, there remained only a group of shivering, feet-stamping, miserable and very ordinary people indeed.

Or were they so ordinary? Zagero, for instance, was he ordinary? He had the build, the strength and, no doubt, also the speed and temperament for a top-ranking heavyweight, but he was the most unlikely looking boxer I had ever seen. It wasn't just that he was obviously a well-educated and cultured man—there had been such boxers before: it was chiefly because his face was absolutely unmarked, without even that almost invariable thickening of skin above the eyes. Moreover, I had never heard of him, although that, admittedly, didn't go for much: as a doctor, I took a poor view of homo sapiens wreaking gratuitous physical and mental injury on homo sapiens, and took little interest in the sport.

Or take his manager, Solly Levin, or, for that matter, the Rev. Joseph Small wood. Solly wasn't a New York boxing manager, he was a caricature of all I had ever heard or read about these Runyonesque characters, and he was just too good to be true: so, also, was the Rev. Small wood, who was so exactly the meek, mild, slightly nervous, slightly anaemic man of God that preachers are so frequently represented to be—and almost invariably never are -that his movements, reactions, comments and opinions were predictable to the nth degree. But, against that, I had to set the fact that the killers were clever calculating men who would have carefully avoided assuming the guise of any character so patently cut from cardboard: on the other hand, they might have been astute enough to do just that.

There was a question mark, too, about Corazzini. America specialised in producing shrewd, intelligent, tough business leaders and executives, and Corazzini was undoubtedly one such. But the toughness of the average business man was purely mental: Corazzini had physical toughness as well, a ruthlessness I felt he wouldn't hesitate to apply to matters lying far outside the immediate sphere of business. And then I realised, wryly, that I was prepared to suspect Corazzini for reasons diametrically opposed to those for which I was prepared to suspect Levin and the Rev. Smallwood: Corazzini didn't fit into any pattern, any prefabricated mental image of the American business man.

Of the two remaining men, Theodore Mahler, the little Jew, and Senator Brewster, I would have taken the former any time as the more likely suspect. But when I asked myself why, I could adduce no more damaging reasons than that he was thin, dark, rather embittered looking and had told us absolutely nothing about himself: and if that weren't prejudice on my part, I couldn't guess what was. As for Senator Brewster, he was surely above suspicion: and then the startling thought struck me that if one wished to be above suspicion surely there were no better means of achieving that than by assuming the identity of someone who was above suspicion. How did I know he was Senator Brewster? A couple of forged papers, a white moustache and white hair on top of a naturally florid complexion and anyone could have been Senator Brewster. True, it would be an impersonation impossible to sustain indefinitely: but the whole point was that any such impersonation didn't have to be sustained indefinitely.

I was getting nowhere and I knew it: I was more confused, more uncertain, and infinitely more suspicious than ever. I was even suspicious of the women. The young German girl, Helene -Munich was her home town, near enough Central Europe and the skulduggery that went on in the neighbourhood of the iron curtain for anything to be possible: but on the other hand the idea of a seventeen-year-old master criminal—we certainly weren't dealing with apprentices—was ridiculously far-fetched, and the fact that she had fractured her collar-bone, almost sure proof that the crash had been unexpected, was a strong point in her favour. Mrs Dansby-Gregg? She belonged to a world I knew little about, except for what slight information I had gleaned from my psychiatric brethren, who found rich fishing in the troubled waters of what passed for the younger London society: but instability and neuroses—not to mention the more than occasional financial embarrassment—were not criminal in themselves, and, in particular, that world lacked what people like Zagero and Corazzini had in full measure—the physical and mental toughness required for a job like this. But particularising from the general could be every bit as dangerous and misleading as generalising from the particular: of Mrs Dansby-Gregg, as a person, I knew nothing.

That left only Marie LeGarde. She was the touchstone, the one rock I could cling to in this sea of uncertainty, and if I were wrong about her so too had been a million others. There are some things that cannot be because they are unthinkable, and this was one of them. It was as simple as that. Marie LeGarde was above suspicion.

I became gradually aware of the muted clack of the anemometer cups turning sluggishly in the dying wind above and that the hiss of the Colman lamp had become abnormally loud: a total silence had fallen over the cabin and everyone was staring at me with mingled puzzlement and curiosity. So much for my impassive features, my casual negligent ease: so clearly had I betrayed the fact that something was far wrong that not one of the nine had missed it. But to be the centre of attraction at the moment suited me well enough: Jackstraw had just made his, entry unobserved, a Winchester repeater cradled under his arm, his finger ready through the trigger guard.

"Sorry," I apologised. "Rude to stare, I know. However, now it's your turn." I nodded in Jackstraw's direction. "Every expedition carries a gun or two—for coast use against prowling bears and wolves and to get seal meat for the dogs. I never thought that it would come in so handy right in the middle of the ice-cap—and against far more dangerous game than we ever find on the coast. Mr Nielsen is a remarkably accurate shot. Don't try anything -just clasp your hands above your heads. All of you."

As if controlled by a master switch, all the eyes had now swivelled back to me. I'd had time to spare to pull out the automatic—a 9 mm butt-loading Beretta—that I'd taken off Colonel Harrison: and this time I didn't forget to slide off the safety-catch. The click was abnormally loud in the frozen silence of the room. But the silence didn't last long.

"What damnable outrage is this?" Senator Brewster shouted out the words, his face purpling in rage. He leapt to his feet, started to move forwards towards me then stopped as if he had run into a brick wall. The crash of Jackstraw's Winchester was a deafening, eardrum shattering thunderclap of sound in that confined space: and when the last reverberations of the rifle-shot had faded and the smoke cleared away, Senator Brewster was staring down whitely at the splintered hole in the floor boards, almost literally beneath his feet: Jackstraw must have miscalculated the Senator's rate of movement, for the bullet had sliced through the edge of the sole of Brewster's boot. However it was, the effect couldn't have been bettered: the Senator reached back blindly for the support of the bunk behind him and lowered himself shakily to his seat, so terrified that he even forgot to clasp his hands above his head. But I didn't care about that: there would be no more trouble from the Senator.

"OK, so you mean business. Now we're convinced." It was Zagero who drawled out the words, but his hands were tightly enough clasped above his head. "We know you wouldn't do this for nothin', Doc. What gives?"

"This gives," I said tightly. "Two of you people are murderers -or a murderer and murderess. Both have guns. I want those guns."

"Succinctly put, dear boy," Marie LeGarde said slowly. "Very concise. Have you gone crazy?"

"Unclasp your hands, Miss LeGarde, you're not included in this little lot. No, I'm not crazy. I'm as sane as you are, and if you want evidence of my sanity you'll find it out on the plane there -or buried out on the ice-cap: the captain of the plane with a bullet through his spine, the passenger in the rear with a bullet through his heart and the second officer smothered to death. Yes, smothered. Not cerebral haemorrhage, as I said: he was murdered in his sleep. Believe me, Miss LeGarde? Or would it take a personal tour of the plane to convince you?"

She didn't speak at once. Nobody spoke. Everyone was too stunned, too busy fighting incredulity and trying to assimilate the meaning of the shocking news I'd given them—everyone, that is, except two. But though I scanned eight faces with an intensity with which I had never before examined people I saw nothing -not the slightest off-beat gesture, the tiniest guilty reaction. As for what I'd secretly hoped for—a guilty interchange of glances -well, the idea now seemed hopelessly, laughably improbable. Whoever the killers were, they were in perfect control of themselves. I felt despair touch me, a sure knowledge of defeat.

"I must believe you." Marie LeGarde spoke as slowly as before, but her voice was unsteady and her face drained of colour. She looked at Margaret Ross. "You knew of this, my dear?"

"Half an hour ago, Miss LeGarde. Dr Mason thought I had done it."

"Good God! How—how utterly ghastly! How horrible! Two of us murderers." From her position by the stove, Marie LeGarde glanced round the eight seated people, then looked quickly away. "Suppose—suppose you tell us everything, Dr Mason."

I told them everything. On the way back from the plane with Miss Ross I had debated this with myself—the question of secrecy or not. The no secrecy decision had won hands down: keeping quiet wouldn't fool the killers—they knew I knew: no secrecy would mean each and every one of the passengers inn watching the others like hawks, making my task of constant vigilance all that much easier, the killers' chance of making mischief all that more difficult.

"You will stand up one at a time," I said when I'd finished. "Mr London will search you for your guns. And please don't forget -1 know I'm dealing with desperate men. I'm prepared to act accordingly. When your turn comes stand very still indeed and make no suspicious move, not the slightest. I'm not very good with a pistol, and I shall have to aim at the middle of your bodies to make certain."

"I believe you would at that," Corazzini said thoughtfully.

"It doesn't matter what you believe," I said coldly. "Just don't be the one to find out."

Joss started on Zagero. He searched him thoroughly -1 could see the anger on Zagero's face, but his eyes didn't leave my gun -and found nothing. He moved on to Solly Levin.

"Might I ask why I'm being excused?" Marie LeGarde asked suddenly.

"You?" I said shortly. My eyes didn't move from Solly. "Marie LeGarde? Don't be so damned silly!"

"The choice of words and tone of voice leave a lot to be desired." Her voice was soft and warm, though still shaky. "But I've never had a greater compliment. All the same, I insist on being searched: I don't want to be the one under a cloud if the guns don't turn up."

And the guns didn't turn up. Joss finished searching the men, Margaret Ross the women—Mrs Dansby-Gregg under icy protest—and neither found anything. Joss looked at me, his face empty of all expression.

"Get their luggage," I said harshly. "The small cases they're taking with them. We'll try these."

"You're wasting your time, Dr Mason," Nick Corazzini said quietly. To any characters smart enough to guess that you were going to frisk them, the next move would stick out a mile. A child could guess it. You might find those guns you talk about hidden on the tractor or the sledges or buried under a couple of inches of snow, ready to be picked up whenever required, but you won't find them in our grips. A thousand to one, in dollars, that you don't."

"Maybe you're right," I said slowly. "On the other hand, if I were one of the killers and did have a gun in my case—well, that's exactly the way I'd talk too."

"As you said to Miss LeGarde just now, don't be so damned silly!" He jumped to his feet, walked over to a corner of the cabin under the watchful eyes of Jackstraw and myself, picked up a handful of small cases and dumped them on the floor before me, his own nearest me. "Where are you going to start? There's mine, that's the Reverend's robe case, this"—he picked it up and looked at the initials—'this is the Senator's brief-case. I don't know whose the last is."

"Mine," Mrs Dansby-Gregg said coldly.

Corazzini grinned. "Ah, the Balenciaga. Well, Doc, who—" He broke off, straightened slowly, and gazed up through the skylight. "What—what the devil is happening up there?"

"Don't try to pull any fast stuff, Corazzini," I said quickly. "Jackstraw's gun—"

"The hell with Jackstraw's gun!" he snapped impatiently. "Have a look for yourself."