I gave some time to allow this cheering item of information to sink in, then continued.

"Well, that's us. Miss LeGarde—Marie LeGarde—needs no introduction from anyone." A slight murmur of surprise and turning of heads showed that I wasn't altogether right. "But that's all I know, I'm afraid."

"Corazzini," the man with the cut brow offered. The white bandage, just staining with blood, was in striking contrast to the receding dark hair. "Nick Corazzini. Bound for Bonnie Scotland, as the travel posters put it."

"Holiday?"

"No luck." He grinned. "Taking over the new Global Tractor Company outside Glasgow. Know it?"

"I've heard of it. Tractors, eh? Mr Corazzini, you may be worth your weight in gold to us yet. We have a broken-down elderly tractor outside that can usually only be started by repeated oaths and assaults by a four-pound hammer."

"Well." He seemed taken aback. "Of course, I can try—"

"I don't suppose you've actually laid a finger on a tractor for many years," Marie LeGarde interrupted shrewdly. "Isn't that it, Mr Corazzini?"

"Afraid it is," he admitted ruefully. "But in a situation like this I'd gladly lay my hands on another one."

"You'll have your chance," I promised him. I looked at the man beside him.

"Smallwood," the minister announced. He rubbed his thin white hands constantly to drive the cold away. "The Reverend Joseph Smallwood. I'm the Vermont delegate to the international General Assembly of the Unitarian and Free United Churches in London. You may have heard of it—our biggest conference in many years?"

"Sorry." I shook my head. "But don't let that disturb you. Our paper boy misses out occasionally. And you, sir?"

"Solly Levin. Of New York City," the little man in the check jacket added unnecessarily. He reached up and laid a proprietary arm along the broad shoulders of the young man beside him. "And this is my boy, Johnny."

"Your boy? Your son?" I fancied I could see a slight resemblance.

"Perish the thought," the young man drawled. "My name is Johnny Zagero. Solly is my manager. Sorry to introduce a discordant note into company such as this"—his eyes swept over us, dwelt significantly longer on the expensive young lady by his side —"but I'm in the way of being a common or garden pugilist. That means 'boxer', Solly."

"Would you listen to him?" Solly Levin implored. He stretched his clenched fists heavenwards. "Would you just listen to him? 'pologisin'. Johnny Zagero, future heavyweight champion, apologisin' for being a boxer. The white hope for the world, that's all. Rated number three challenger to the champ. A household name in all—"

"Ask Dr Mason if he's ever heard of me," Zagero suggested.

"That means nothing," I smiled. "You don't look like a boxer to me, Mr Zagero. Or sound like one. I didn't know it was included in the curriculum at Yale. Or was it Harvard?"

"Princeton," he grinned. "And what's so funny about that? Look at Tunney and his Shakespeare. Roland La Starza was a college boy when he fought for the world title. Why not me?"

"Exactly." Solly Levin tried to thunder the word, but he hadn't the voice for it. "Why not? And when we've carved up this British champ of yours—a doddery old character rated number two challenger by one of the biggest injustices ever perpetrated in the long and glorious history of boxin"—when we've massacred this ancient has-been, I say—"

"All right, Solly," Zagero interrupted. "Desist. There's not a press man within a thousand miles. Save the golden words for later."

"Just keepin' in practice, boy. Words are ten a penny. I've got thousands to spare—"

Tousands, Solly, t'ousands. You're slippin*. Now shut up."

Solly shut up, and I turned to the girl beside Zagero.

"Well, miss?"

"Mrs. Mrs Dansby-Gregg. You may have heard of me?"

"No." I wrinkled my brow. "I'm afraid I haven't." I'd heard of her all right, and I knew now that I'd seen her name and picture a score of times among those of other wealthy unemployed and unemployable built up by the tongue-in-the-cheek gossip columnists of the great national dailies into an ersatz London society whose frenetic, frequently moronic and utterly unimportant activities were a source of endless interest to millions. Mrs Dansby-Gregg, I seemed to recall, had been particularly active in the field of charitable activities, although perhaps not so in die production of the balance sheets.

She smiled sweetly at me.

"Well, perhaps it's not so surprising after all. You are a bit distant from the centre of things, aren't you?" She looked across to where the youngster with the broken collar-bone was sitting. "And this is Fleming."

"Fleming?" This time the wrinkling of my brow was genuine. "You mean Helene?"

"Fleming. My personal maid."

"Your personal maid," I said slowly. I could feel the incredulous anger stirring inside me. "Your own maid? And you didn't even bother to volunteer to stay while I fixed her shoulder up?"

"Miss LeGarde did it first," she said coolly. "Why should I?"

"Quite right, Mrs Dansby-Gregg, why should you?" Johnny Zagero said approvingly. He looked at her long and consideringly. "You might have got your hands dirty."

For the first time the carefully cultivated facade cracked, the smile stiffened mechanically, and her colour deepened. Mrs Dansby-Gregg made no reply, maybe she had none to make. People like Johnny Zagero never got close enough even to the fringes of her money-sheltered world for her to know how to deal with them.

"Well, that leaves just the two of you," I said hastily. The large Dixie colonel with the florid face and white hair was sitting next to the thin wispy-haired little Jew. They made an incongruous pair.

"Theodore Mahler," the little Jew said quietly. I waited, but he added nothing. A communicative character.

"Brewster," the other announced. He made a significant pause. "Senator Hoffman Brewster. Glad to help in any way I can, Dr Mason."

"Thank you, Senator. At least I know who you are." Indeed, thanks to his magnificent flair for self-publicity, half the Western world knew who this outspoken, bitterly—but fairly—anti-communist, near isolationist senator from the south-west was. "On a European tour?"

"You might say that." He had the politician's gift for investing even the most insignificant words with a statesmanlike consideration. "As Chairman of one of our Appropriation committees, I -well, let's call it a fact-finding tour."

"Wife and secretaries gone ahead by humble passenger steamer, I take it," Zagero said mildly. He shook his head. "That was a fearful stink your Congressional investigation boys raised recently about the expenses of US senators abroad."

"That was quite unnecessary, young man," Brewster said coldly. "And insulting."

"I believe it was," Zagero apologised. "Not really intended as such. Sorry, Senator." He meant it.

What a bunch, I thought despairingly, what a crowd to be stuck with in the middle of the Greenland ice-plateau. A business executive, a musical comedy star, a minister of religion, a boxer with an uninhibited if cultured tongue, his zany manager, a London society playgirl and her young German maid, a Senator, a taciturn Jew and a near-hysterical hostess—or one apparently so. And a gravely injured pilot who might live or die. But willy-nilly I was stuck with them, stuck with the responsibility of doing my damnedest to get these people to safety, and the prospect appalled me. How on earth was I even to start to go about it, go about it with people with no arctic clothing to ward off the razor-edged winds and inhuman cold, people lacking in all knowledge and experience of arctic travel, even lacking, with two or three exceptions, the endurance and sheer muscular strength to cope with the savagery of the Greenland ice-cap? I couldn't even begin to guess.

But whatever else they were lacking in at that moment, it wasn't volubility: the life-giving warmth of the brandy had had the unfortunate side effect of loosening their tongues. Unfortunate, that is, from my point of view: they had a hundred and one questions to ask, and they seemed to think that I should have the answer to all of them.

More accurately, they had only half a dozen questions to ask, with a hundred and one variations of these. How was it possible for a pilot to veer so many hundreds of miles off course? Could the compasses have gone wrong? Could the pilot have had a brain-storm? But then surely both co-pilot and second pilot would have known something was wrong? Could the radio have been damaged? It had been a bitterly cold afternoon even when they had left Gander, was it possible that some of the naps and controls had iced up, forcing them off course? But if this were the case, why hadn't someone come to warn them of the possibility of the crash?