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 hæmorrhage, 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 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 – I 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 – I 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.’
I motioned him out of the way and had a look. Two seconds later I had thrust my automatic into Joss’s hand and was on my way up top.
The airliner was a blazing torch in the darkness of the night. Even at that distance of half a mile and against the light wind, I could clearly hear the fierce roaring and crackling of the flames -not flames, rather, but one great solid column of fire that seemed to spring from the wings and centre of the fuselage and reach up clear and smokeless and sparkless two hundred feet into the night sky, brushing its blood-red stain across the snow for hundreds of yards around, transforming the rest of the still ice-sheathed fuselage into a vast effulgent diamond, a million constantly shifting points of refracted white and red and blue and green that glittered and gleamed with an eye-dazzling scintillating brilliance that no jewels on earth could have matched. It was a fantastically beautiful spectacle, but I’d had time to watch it for barely ten seconds when the dazzling coloured irradiation turned into a blaze of white, the central flame leapt up to twice, almost three times its original height and, two or three seconds later, the roar of the exploding petrol tanks came at me across the frozen stillness of the ice-cap.
Almost at once the flames seemed to collapse in upon themselves and the perimeter of the blood-red circle of snow shrank almost to vanishing point, but I waited to see no more. I dropped down into the cabin, pulling the hatch shut behind me, and looked at Jackstraw.
‘Any chance at all of accounting for the presence of our various friends here during the past half-hour?’
‘I’m afraid not, Dr Mason. Everyone was on the move all the time, finishing off the tractor body or bringing up the stores and petrol drums and lashing them on the sledge.’ He glanced up through the skylight. ‘The plane, wasn’t it?’
‘“Was” is right.’ I glanced at the stewardess. ‘My apologies, Miss Ross. You did hear somebody out there.’
‘You mean – you mean it wasn’t an accident?’ Zagero asked.
There’s a fair chance that you know damned well that it wasn’t, I thought. Aloud, I said: ‘It was no accident.’
‘So there goes your evidence, eh?’ Corazzini asked. ‘The pilot and Colonel Harrison, I mean.’
‘No. The nose and tail of the plane are still intact. I don’t know what the reason could be -but I’m sure there’s a damned good one. And you can put these bags away, Mr Corazzini. We’re not, as you say, playing with children or amateurs.’
There was silence while Corazzini returned the bags, then Joss looked at me quizzically.
‘Well, that explains one thing at least.’
‘The messed-up explosives?’ I remembered with chagrin how I had listened to the abnormally loud hissing out by the plane, but had ignored it. Someone who had known very clearly what he was doing had led a fuse into petrol lines or tanks or carburettors. ‘It certainly does.’
‘What’s all this about explosives and fuses?’ Senator Brewster demanded. It was the first word he had spoken since Jackstraw had scared the wits out of him, and even yet the colour wasn’t all back in his face.
‘Somebody stole the fuses to set fire to the plane. For all I know it may have been you.’ I held up my hand to still his outraged spluttering and went on wearily: ‘It may equally well have been one of the other seven of you. I don’t know. All I know is that the person or persons responsible for the murders were responsible for the theft of the fuses. And for the smashing of the radio valves. And for the theft of the condensers.’
‘And for the theft of the sugar,’ Joss put in. ‘Though heaven only knows why they should want to steal that.’
‘Sugar!’ I exclaimed, and then the question died in my throat. I happened to be looking straight at the little Jew, Theodore Mahler, and the nervous start he gave, the quick flicker of his eyes in Joss’s direction, was unmistakable. I knew I couldn’t have imagined it. But I looked away quickly, before he could see my face.
‘Our last bag,’ Joss explained. ‘Maybe thirty pounds. It’s gone. I found what little was left of it – just a handful lying on the floor of the tunnel – mixed up with the smashed valves.’
I shook my head and said nothing. The reason for this last theft I couldn’t even begin to imagine.
Supper that night was a sketchy affair – soup, coffee and a couple of biscuits each as the only solids. The soup was thin, the biscuits no more than a bite and the coffee, for me at any rate, all but undrinkable without sugar.
And the meal was as silent as it was miserable, conversation being limited to what was absolutely necessary. Time and again I would see someone turn to his neighbour and make to say something, then his lips would clamp tightly shut, the expression drain out of his face as he turned away without a word: with almost everyone thinking that his or her neighbour might be a murderer, or, what was almost as bad, that his or her neighbour might be thinking that he was a murderer, the meal was by all odds the most awkward and uncomfortable that I’d ever had. Or, that is, the first part of it was: but by and by I came to the conclusion that I’d a great deal more to worry about than the niceties of social intercourse.
After the meal I rose, pulled on parka and gloves, picked up the searchlight; told Jackstraw and Joss to come with me and headed for the trap-door. Zagero’s voice stopped me.
‘Where you goin’, Doc?’
‘That’s no concern of yours. Well, Mrs Dansby-Gregg?’
‘Shouldn’t you – shouldn’t you take the rifle with you?’
‘Don’t worry’ I smiled thinly. ‘With everyone watching everyone else like hawks, that rifle’s as safe as houses.’
‘But – but someone could jump for it,’ she said nervously. ‘They could get you when you
’re coming down the hatch—’
‘Mr Nielsen and I are the last two persons they’d ever shoot. Without us, they couldn’t get a mile from here. The most likely candidates for the next bullet are some of yourselves. You’re absolutely inessential and, as far as the killers are concerned, represent nothing more than a waste of priceless rations.’ With this comforting thought I left them, each person trying to watch all the others at one and the same time, while doing his level best to give the appearance of watching no one.
The wind was so slight now that the anemometer cups had stopped turning. The dying embers of the burnt-out plane were a dull smouldering glow to the north-east. The snow had gone completely and the first faint stars were beginning to show through the thinning cloud above. It was typically Greenland, this swift change in the weather, and so, too, was the temperature inversion that would surely follow in the morning, or before morning. Twelve hours from now it was going to be very cold indeed.
With searchlight and torches we examined every inch of the tractor and sledges, above and below, and if there had been a pin there I would have sworn that we couldn’t have missed it, far less anything so large as a couple of guns. We found nothing.
I straightened, and turned to look at the glow that was lightening the sky to the east, and even as I stood there with Joss and Jackstraw by my side the moon, preternaturally large and rather more than half full, heaved itself above the distant horizon and flooded the ice-cap with its pale and ghostly light, laying down between itself and our feet a bar-straight path of glittering silver grey. We watched in silence for a full minute, then Jackstraw stirred. Even before he spoke, I knew what was in his mind.
Night Without End Page 12