The Blue Ice

by Innes, Hammond;

  ‘What is it?’ I asked, taking the sheet of paper.

  ‘They’ve traced the consignment of whale meat Farnell smuggled that message out in,’ he answered. ‘It came from a company called Bovaagen Hval.’

  ‘Bovaagen Hval?’ Jill exclaimed.

  I glanced across at her, mentally cursing Dick for blurting out the contents of the message. ‘What does Bovaagen Hval mean to you?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s a whaling station out on the islands of Nordhordland, north of Bergen,’ she answered quickly.

  ‘Do you know it?’ I asked her.

  ‘No. But—’ She hesitated. She seemed puzzled, and excited at the same time.

  ‘Well?’ I asked.

  ‘That was the whaling station Mr Dahler was interested in.’

  ‘Dahler?’ I glanced down at the message. It began: Whale meat consignment traced Bovaagen Hvalstasjon, Bergen, Norway. Was that why Dahler had come on the trip? Was that why he’d queried Farnell’s death? I suddenly remembered something. I looked across at Jill. ‘Jorgensen bought up Dahler’s shipping interests,’ I said. ‘Did he also acquire the interest in Bovaagen Hval?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she answered.

  I turned to Dick, a sudden suspicion in my mind. ‘Where was Jorgensen when you took this message?’ I asked him.

  His face fell. ‘Good God!’ he said. ‘I never thought about it. He was sitting in the chartroom, right beside me.’

  ‘And heard every word that came over,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I couldn’t throw him out, could I?’ he demanded.

  ‘I suppose not,’ I answered resignedly.

  He pushed the paper towards me again. ‘Have a look at the dates,’ he said. ‘That’s what’s really interesting.’

  I looked down at the sheet of paper. Date of dispatch March 9th. March 9th! And Farnell’s body had been discovered on March 10th. Proceed Bovaagen and find out how Farnell was able to dispatch message from Hvalstasjon on 9th and be killed on Jostedal following day. Report by radio daily on arrival Bovaagen. Mann. ‘Get the map of Norway,’ I told Dick.

  When he had gone I read the message through again. He could, of course, have got someone else to smuggle the parcel into the consignment of meat. That seemed the only explanation. ‘Bill.’ Jill’s voice interrupted my train of thought. ‘What’s the rest of the message say?’

  I hesitated. Then I passed the message across to her. Jorgensen knew it. No harm in her knowing it too. Dick came back with the map and we spread it out on the table. Jill pointed Bovaagen out to us. It was on Nordhordland, one of the large islands about thirty-five miles up the coast from Bergen. Bovaagen Hval. There it was on the end of a long finger of land pointing northwards. And twenty miles away, at the southern end of the island, I saw the name Alverstrummen. ‘Is that where Dahler had a house?’ I asked Jill.

  ‘Yes. Alverstrummen. That’s the place.’ She looked down at the message and then at the map again. ‘Was the message you received from George smuggled out in a consignment of whale meat?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. My eye was following the line of the Sognefjord up to Fjaerland.

  ‘Whale meat for export has to be got away pretty quickly,’ Jill said. ‘If the consignment was dispatched to England on the 9th, it means that it was either packed that day or on the 8th. It couldn’t possibly have been packed earlier.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘That doesn’t leave Farnell much time to get up to the Jostedal.’

  ‘He could do it by boat,’ Dick said.

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘But he’d have to be in an awful hurry to get there.’ I traced the route with my finger. It would be north for twenty miles or so from Bovaagen and then east up the long cleft of Norway’s largest fjord. The better part of a hundred miles to Balestrand and then another twenty up the tributary fjord to Fjaerland. ‘It’s a day’s journey by boat,’ I said. And after that he’d got to climb the 5,000 feet to the top of the Jostedal and then fall on to the Boya Glacier. He’d be running it a bit fine. I turned to Jill. ‘There’s a steamer service, is there?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But from Bergen. He’d have to pick the steamer up at Leirvik and then stay a night at Balestrand. He couldn’t possibly reach Fjaerland till the evening of the 10th – not by the ordinary steamer service.’

  ‘That’s no good,’ I said. ‘He must have had a boat. If so we’ll find out whose when we get to Fjaerland. The only other alternative is that he was never at Bovaagen. In which case we ought to be able to get hold of the man who sent the message for him.’ I turned to Dick. ‘What was the reaction from our friend Jorgensen when this message came through?’ I asked.

  ‘Can’t say I noticed,’ he replied. ‘Afraid I wasn’t thinking about Jorgensen.’

  ‘Then I’ll go up and find out,’ I said.

  Carter was at the wheel as I came out on deck. The wind was dying away and we were gliding over a long, oily swell. The sun had set and against the darkness of the eastern horizon was the darker line of Norway. ‘Dinna think we’ll get much wind the nicht,’ Carter said to me.

  I glanced at the speed of the water slipping past the lee rail. ‘We’re still doing about four knots.’

  ‘Aye,’ he replied. ‘She’s a fine boat in a light wind. Slips along easy as a swan.’

  ‘Where’s Mr Jorgensen?’ I asked.

  He nodded towards the chartroom. ‘Doon there, sir,’ he said.

  I stepped down into the cockpit and entered the chartroom. Curtis was lounging on the chartroom bunk. Jorgensen was seated at the table. He looked up as I entered. ‘Just been checking the distance,’ he said, nodding towards the chart. ‘If the wind holds we should be in by dawn.’

  ‘In where?’ I asked.

  He smiled. ‘I am presuming, Mr Gansert, that you are obeying orders and proceeding to Bovaagen.’

  ‘You heard the message then?’ I asked.

  ‘I could not help it,’ he answered. ‘I was sitting right beside Mr Everard. I was very intrigued to know just how George Farnell had contacted you. As you said, his method was a shade unorthodox. Does that suggest anything to you?’

  I said, ‘Yes. It suggests he was scared to use the more normal postal methods.’

  ‘I find it very hard to believe that a man who had made a vital mineral discovery should communicate his information by this means.’ His voice betrayed his curiosity. ‘Did he give any reason? How was he to know where his message would finish up?’

  ‘I know only this, Mr Jorgensen,’ I said. ‘He was scared to use any normal method. And,’ I added, speaking deliberately, ‘he had a premonition he was going to die.’

  His hand was on the heavy brass chart ruler. He began to roll it slowly back and forth across the table. His face was, as always, expressionless. But his eyes avoided mine and I sensed his agitation. In some way the information he had acquired was worrying him. ‘What do you intend to do now, Mr Gansert?’ he asked suddenly. ‘You will presumably go to Bovaagen Hval. But what then?’

  ‘I shall try and find out how Farnell, who sent off this message from Bovaagen on the 9th of March, managed to be lying dead on the Jostedal on the 10th,’ I replied.

  ‘But why?’ he asked. ‘Why is that important to you? This is something I have been meaning to ask you, Mr Gansert, since we left the Thames: Why is your company so interested in Farnell when, according to you, they have the vital information – the nature of the metals and their location. One would have surely supposed that you would go straight to the location and check the information for yourself. You are an expert in base metals. That would be your natural course. Yet your interest is in Farnell. Your company, too. It is almost as though—’ He paused with a lift of his eyebrows.

  ‘Well?’ I said.

  ‘I was going to say – it is almost as though you had less information than you pretend to have.’ All the time he had been speaking almost casually. But I was conscious of his eyes watching me closely. ‘I have an idea,’ he went on, ‘that an arrangement betw
een our two organisations might yet be of benefit to both sides.’

  ‘I personally am not interested,’ I replied. ‘That is between you and B.M. & I. The object of my visit to Norway is to find out what happened to Farnell.’

  ‘And what he discovered – and where.’ His voice was suddenly harsh. ‘This is Norway, Mr Gansert. And the metals are in Norway. My object is to see that the development of my country’s mineral resources is not dominated by foreign capital. We’re a small country and we cannot develop them without some help. I offered Sir Clinton a 40 per cent participation. That offer is still open.’

  ‘But do you know where the minerals are?’ I said. ‘Or what they are? You’re in no position to make an offer till you have that information.’

  ‘And you have it?’ He laughed. ‘No, Mr Gansert. If you had you wouldn’t be chasing the ghost of dead Farnell. You’d be up in the mountains with metallurgical instruments, and the whole weight of the British Foreign Office would be supporting applications for concessions. But I do not wish to be regarded as discourteous to the representative of a big British industrial organisation. You may count on me to give you every assistance in your search, Mr Gansert. May I use your transmitter at eight this evening?’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘As Dahler may have told you I took over his interests after the war. One of them was Bovaagen Hval. I own a controlling interest in the company. At eight o’clock the catchers report back to the whaling station. I can contact the manager then and arrange for water and fuel for your ship and for him to make a preliminary investigation into who smuggled that message into the consignment of whale meat. That is what you want to know, isn’t it?’

  There was no point in refusing. I’d have Jill in the chartroom at the same time so that I’d know what he was saying. ‘All right,’ I said. And then I remembered the cripple lying in his bunk down below. ‘What about Dahler?’ I asked.

  ‘What about him?’ he inquired.

  ‘You threatened to have him arrested,’ I reminded him.

  He was fiddling with the ruler again. ‘I don’t think there is much point,’ he said slowly. ‘The man is not quite right there, you know.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘Provided he causes no trouble, I shall do nothing. I suggest you try and persuade him to stay on board at Bovaagen Hval. His word was law there before the war. There is no knowing how it will affect him, seeing the place again now when he is – nothing.’

  That queer way of his of emphasising words out of all proportion to their value. Now when he is – nothing. Nothing to Jorgensen was a man who had no power over other men. Power was what he loved more than anything. Power over men, possibly women, too. The sleek smoothness of the man! Even in borrowed clothes he achieved a sort of bourgeois respectability. And yet behind it all was this violent delight in power. It was there in his eyes, in the quick, down-drawn frown of his thick eyebrows. But never exposed, never revealed. The iron claw in the velvet glove. I’d seen it all my life. This man belonged to the ranks of the controllers of the machine of grab.

  I suddenly saw that he was watching me as though he knew what was in my mind. He smiled. ‘You could make a lot of money out of this, Gansert,’ he said, ‘if you played your cards right.’

  He got up and paused at the chartroom door with his hand on my shoulder. ‘You’ve been in this game long enough to know what a scramble for new minerals means. And you’re your own master. Think it over.’

  ‘What’s he mean by that?’ Curtis asked as the Norwegian went for’ard.

  I looked at him then and realised that as a regular army officer he was mentally incapable of thinking of himself in terms of a single unit. He was part of a team and as such never stepped outside the safe confines of the organisation. ‘It means I’ve indirectly been offered a very large amount of money – if I deliver the goods.’

  He looked surprised. ‘Bribery – eh?’

  ‘Well, shall we say, inducement,’ I amended. I suddenly had an impish desire to shake his indifference. ‘Any idea of the money involved in this metal business if it’s big enough, as this may be?’

  ‘None whatever, old boy,’ he answered without interest.

  I said, ‘It could mean a few millions for somebody who handled it right.’

  He laughed. ‘It’s no good talking to me about millions. My pay is about fifteen hundred a year. Oh, I realise that you really meant millions. But I just wouldn’t know what to do with that sort of money if I had it. Nor would you,’ he added. ‘Here you are with a fine boat, the freedom of the seas and a reasonable amount of money. A few millions would just complicate your life.’

  ‘It depends on what you want,’ I said. ‘At the moment this is the life I want – just sailing. But once you’ve known the thrill of opening up a mine – well, it gets you. It isn’t the money. It’s the sheer excitement of handling the thing. I did it once out in Canada, where I struck lucky in nickel. It’s the sense of power, the fun of seeing problems coming at you from every direction and mastering them.’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, I can understand that,’ he said slowly. Then he frowned. ‘What puzzles me,’ he went on, ‘is how Farnell was able to produce samples of ore. I can understand that a good metal diviner can locate a seam. But to produce samples – I should have thought that would have required machinery.’

  It was a good point. ‘That puzzled me at first,’ I said. ‘I can only suggest that the ore itself had been uncovered by ice erosion. His samples may even have been found in the rubble at the foot of a glacier.’

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘But it still seems to me that you and Jorgensen are placing too much reliance on discoveries that are quite unproved.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, I don’t think so. Farnell was in a class by himself. Before dispatching samples he would have taken into account the geological nature of the ground as well as his own divining results. He won’t have slipped up on anything. Jorgensen knows that. If we combined, he and I could clear up a lot of money.’

  He looked at me with a lift of his eyebrows. ‘You don’t mean to say you’re going to accept his offer?’

  ‘No,’ I said, laughing. ‘But the choice is not as clear cut as it would be in your case. I don’t owe allegiance to anyone. I’m my own master.’

  ‘What will you do, then?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll play the hand in my own way – if my cards are good enough.’ I got up and went out on deck. I’d let my thoughts run away with me. I stood by the rail and looked out across the darkening sea towards Norway. Go west, young man. Well, I’d been west and found nickel. Now I was looking east and wondering whether this cold, snow-clad country might not be the land of opportunity. Farnell had had that urge. He’d let nothing stand in his way – he’d stolen and deserted and fought because of the call of the minerals there under the mountains. The same urge was in me – the same thrill of excitement. And I had something more than Farnell – I had the ability to organise and develop the mineral when I found it.

  I was still standing by the rail in this mood of elation when Jorgensen came up from below. ‘It’s eight o’clock,’ he said. ‘I’ll get Bovaagen Hval now. Doubtless you’ll want to have Miss Somers up to check on what I say.’ He smiled and went down into the chartroom.

  He was right. I certainly did want to know what he said. I called Jill up from below and we settled ourselves in the chartroom. Jorgensen had already tuned in and a voice was speaking what I presumed was Norwegian. But suddenly it concluded with – ‘Twa bloody baskets, an’ that’s all, Johnnie.’

  ‘Scotch trawlers,’ Jorgensen said. And then, ‘Here we are.’ A deep voice had suddenly broken in across the fainter voices of the trawlermen: ‘Ullo-ullo-ullo-ullo-ullo. Ul-lo Bovaagen Hval. Ul-lo Bovaagen Hval. Dette er Hval To. Ullo-ullo-ullo – Bovaagen Hval.’ There followed a double whistle and then another voice came in: ‘Ullo-ullo-ullo Hval To. Bovaagen Hval her.’ The double whistle again and the first voice came back with a stream of Norwegian.

  ‘Whale Two – that�
��s one of the catchers – reporting a seventy-foot whale,’ Jill whispered.

  When he had finished another voice came in – Whale Five. ‘He’s seen nothing,’ Jill murmured in my ear. ‘He says the weather’s still bad up there – that’s about two hundred miles farther north, I think.’

  As soon as Whale Five had signed off, Jorgensen switched on to the transmitting set and holding the mike close to his mouth said, ‘Ullo-ullo-ullo-ullo Bovaagen Hval. Det er direktör Jorgensen. Er stasjonmester Kielland der?’ The double whistle and then a voice on the loudspeaker: ‘Ullo-ullo-ullo direktör Jorgensen. Det er Kielland. Hvor er De na?’

  ‘Jeg er embord pa den britiske yachten Diviner,’ Jorgensen answered. ‘Vi ankrer opp utenfor Bovaagen Hval imorgen tidlig. Vaer sa snild a sörge for vann og dieselolje. Og na har jeg –’

  ‘What’s he saying?’ I asked Jill.

  ‘He’s arranging for water and oil for the boat on our arrival,’ she whispered back. ‘Now he’s explaining about the message in the consignment of whale meat. He’s asking the station manager, Kielland, to make inquiries and report on how the message got into the whale meat when we arrive.’

  ‘Javel, herr direktör,’ replied the manager’s voice. ‘Jeg skal ta mea ar saken.’

  ‘Utmerket,’ answered Jorgensen. He gave the signing-off whistle and then turned to us. ‘Tomorrow we will know the answer to this little mystery – I hope,’ he said.

  And then our attention was called back to the radio with a voice calling, ‘Ullo-ullo-ullo. Hval Ti anroper direktör Jorgensen.’

  Jorgensen picked up the microphone again. ‘Ja, Hval Ti. Det er Jorgensen her.’

  ‘Dette er kaptein Lovaas,’ replied the voice.

  Jill gripped my arm. ‘It’s the captain of the catcher, Whale Ten. I think he knows something.’

  The conversation went on in Norwegian for a moment and then Jorgensen turned to me. ‘Lovaas sounds as though he has some information. He wants a description of Farnell.’ He thrust the microphone towards me. ‘He understands English.’