Alistair MacLean - Bear Island

"Kind man," he muttered. "Kind man." He lifted one thin wrist and beckoned. I bent towards him. "Know something?" His voice was a fading murmur.

"Tell me, Lonnie."

"In the end-" His voice trailed away.

"Yes, Lonnie?"

He made a great effort. In the end"-there was a long pause, I had to put my ear to his mouth-"iii the end, there's only kindness." He lowered his waxen eyelids.

I swore and I kept on swearing until I realised that both girls were staring at me with shocked eyes, they must have thought that I was swearing at Lonnie. I said to Mary Stuart: "Go to Conrad-Charles. Tell him to tell the Count to come to my cubicle. Now. Conrad will know how to do it."

She left without a question. Mary Darling said to me: "Will Lonnie live, Dr. Marlowe?"

I don't know, Mary."

"But-but he's quite warm now-?'

It won't be exposure that will kill him, if that's what you mean."

She looked at me, the eyes behind the horn-rims at once earnest and scared. "You mean-you mean he might go from alcoholic poisoning?"

"He might. I don't know."

She said, with a flash of that almost touching asperity that could be so characteristic of her: "You don't really care, do you, Dr. Marlowe?"

"No, I don't." She looked at me, the pinched face shocked, and I put my arm round the thin shoulders. I don't care, Mary, because he doesn't care. Lonnie's been dead a long time now."

I went back to my cubicle, found the Count there and wasted no words. I said: "Are you aware that that was a deliberate attempt on Lonnie's life?"

"No. But I wondered." The Count's customary cloak of badinage had fallen away completely.

"Do you know that Judith Haynes was murdered?"

"Murdered!" The Count was badly shaken and there was no pretence about it either.

"Somebody injected her with a lethal dose of morphine. just for good measure, it was my hypodermic, my morphine." He said nothing. "So your rather illegal bullionlunt has turned out to be something more than fun and games."

Indeed it has."

`You know you have been consorting with murderers?"

I know now."

`You know now. You know what interpretation the law will put on that?"

"I know that too."

`You have your gun?" He nodded. `You can use it?"

I am a Polish count, sir." A touch of the old Tadeusz.

"And very impressive a Polish count should look in a witness box, too."

I said. "You are aware of course that your only hope is to turn Queen's Evidence?"

"Yes," he said. "I know that too."

"Mr. Gorran," I said, "I'd be grateful if you, Mr. Heissman, Mr. Goin, and Tadeusz here would step outside with me for a moment."

"Step outside?" Otto looked at his watch, his three fellow directors, his watch again and me in that order. "On a night like this and an hour like this? Whatever for?"

"Please." I looked at the others in the cabin. "I'd also be grateful if the rest of you remained here, in this room, till I return. I hope I won't be too long. You don't have to do as I ask and I'm certainly in no position to enforce my request, but I suggest it would be in your own best interests to do so. I know now, I've known since this morning, who the killer amongst us is. But before I put a name to this man I think it is only fair and right that I should first discuss the matter with Mr. Gerran and his fellow directors."

This brief address was received, not unsurprisingly, in total silence. Otto, predictably, was the one to break the silence: he cleared his throat and said carefully: "You claim to know this man's identity?"

I do."

`You can substantiate this claim!'

"Prove it, you mean?"

"Yes.

"No, I can't."

"Ah!" Otto said significantly. He looked around the company and said: "You're taking rather much upon yourself, are you not?"

In what way?"

"This rather dictatorial attitude you've been increasingly adopting. Good God, man, if you've found, or think you've found our man, for God's sake tell us and don't make this big production out of it. It ill becomes any man to play God. Dr. Marlowe, I would remind you that you're but one of a group, an employee, if you like, of Olympus Productions, just like-"

I am not an employee of Olympus Productions. I am an employee of the British Treasury who has been sent to investigate certain aspects of Olympus Productions Ltd. Those investigations are now completed."

Otto overreacted to the extent that he let his drop. Goin didn't react much but his smooth and habitually bland face took a wary expression that was quite foreign to it. Heissman said incredulously: "A government agent! A secret service-"

"You've got your countries mixed up. Government agents work for the U. S. Treasury, not the British one. I'm just a civil servant and I've never fired a pistol in my life far less carry one. I have as much official power as a postman or a Whitehall clerk. No more. That's why I'm asking for cooperation." I looked at Otto. "That's why I'm offering you what I regard as the courtesy of a prior consultation."

"Investigations" " Clearly, I'd lost Otto at least half a minute previously.

"What kind of investigations? And how does it come that a man hired as doctor Otto broke off., shaking his head in the classic manner of one baffled beyond all hope of illumination.

"How do you think it came that none of the seven other applicants for the post of medical officers turned up for an interview? They don't teach us much about manners in medical school but we're not as rude as that.

Shall we go?"

Goin said calmly: "I think, Otto, that we should hear what he has to say."

I think I'd like to hear what you have to say, too," Conrad said. He was one of the very few in the cabin who wasn't looking at me as if I were some creature from outer space.

"I'm sure you would. However, I'm afraid you'll have to remain. But I would like a private word with You, if I may. I turned without waiting for an answer and made for my cubicle. Otto barred my way.

"There's nothing you can have to say to Charles that you can't say to all of us."

"How do you know?" I brushed roughly by him and closed the door when Conrad entered the cubicle. I said: I don't want you to come for two reasons. If our friends arrive, they may miss me down at the jetty and come straight here-I'd like You in that case to tell them where I am. More importantly, I'd like you to keep an eye on Jungbeck. If he tries to leave, try to reason with him. If he won't listen to reason, let him go-about three feel?. If you can kind of naturally happen to have a full bottle of Scotch or suchlike in your hand at the time then clobber him with all you have. Not on the head-that would kill him. On the shoulder, close in to the neck. You'll probably break the odd bone: in any event it will surely incapacitate him."

Conrad didn't as much as raise an eyebrow. He said: I can see why you don't bother with guns."

"Socially and otherwise," I said, "a bottle of Scotch is a great leveller."

I'd taken a Coleman storm lantern along with me and now hung it on a rung of the vertical iron ladder leading down from the conning tower to the interior of the submarine mock-up: its harsh glare threw that icily dank metallic tomb into a weirdly heterogeneous melange of dazzling white and inkily black geometrical patterns. While the others watched me in a far from friendly silence I unscrewed one of the wooden floor battens , lifted and placed a ballast bar on top of the compressor and scraped at the surface with the blade of my knife,

"You will observe," I said to Otto, "that I am not making a production of this. Prologues dispensed with, we arrive at the point without waste of time." I closed my knife and inspected the handiwork it had wrought.

"All that glitters is not gold. But does this look like toffee to you?"