Alistair MacLean: Bear Island

"In effect, Otto would clear his board in one fell sweep. He'd get rid of the people he hated and who hated him. He'd buy enough time by their deaths to conceal his embezzlement. He'd collect very considerable insurance money and get back in the black with the help of accommodating accountants who can be as venal as the next lot. He would get all that lovely gold for himself. And, above all, he'd be forever free of the continuous blackmail that had dominated his life and warped his mind until it drove him over the edge of insanity." I looked at Goin. "Do you understand now what I mean by saying that without me you'd have been dead by the end of the week?"

"Yes. Yes, I think so. I have no option other than to believe you are right." He looked at Otto in a kind of wonder. "But if he was only after the board of directors-"

"Why should others die? III luck, ill management, or someone just got in his way. The first intended victim was the Count and this was where the ill luck came in. Not the Count's-Antonio's. Otto, as I think digging into his past will show, is a man of many parts. Among some of the more esoteric skills acquired were some relating to either chemistry or medicine: Otto is at home with poisons. He is also, as so many very fat men are, extremely gifted at palming articles. At the table on the night when Antonio died the food, as usual, was served from the side table at the top of the main table where Otto sat. Otto introduced some aconite-only a pinch was necessary-into the horse-radish on the plate intended for the Count. Unfortunately for poor Antonio, the Count has a profound dislike of horseradish and passed his on to the vegetarian Antonio. And so Antonio died. "He tried to poison Heissman at the same time. But Heissman wasn't feeling in the best of form that evening, were you, Heissman-you will recall that you left the table in a great hurry, your plate untouched. The economical Haggerty, instead of consigning this clearly untouched plate to the gash bucket, put it back in the casserole from which the two stewards, Scott and Moxen, were served later that night-and from which the Duke stole a few surreptitious mouthfuls. Three became very ill, two died -all through ill luck."

"Aren't you overlooking the fact that Otto himself was poisoned?" the Count said. "Sure he was. By his own band. To obviate any suspicion that might fall on him. He didn't use aconite though-all that was required was some relatively harmless emetic and some acting. This, incidentally, was why Otto sent me off. on a tour of the Morning Rose-not to check on seasickness but to see who else he might have poisoned by accident. His reaction when he heard of Antonio's death was unnaturally violent-though I didn't get the significance at the time. "Matters took another tragic turn later that evening. Two people came to check my cabin in my absence-one was either Jungbeck or Heyter and the other was Halliday." I looked at Heissman. "He was your man, wasn't he?" Heissman nodded silently. "Heissman was suspicious of me. He wanted to check on my bona fides and examined my cases-had them examined, rather, by Halliday. Otto was suspicious and one of his hired men discovered that I'd been reading an article about aconite. One death more or less wasn't going to mean much to Otto now, so he planned to eliminate me, using his favourite eliminator poison. In a bottle of Scotch. Unfortunately for Halliday, who had come to see if he could lay hands on the medical case that I'd taken up to the saloon, he drank the nightcap intended for me. "The other deaths are easy to explain. When the party was searching for Smithy, Jungbeck and Heyter clobbered Allen and killed Stryker in this clumsy attempt to frame Allen. And, during the night, Otto arranged for the execution of his own daughter. He was on watch with Jungbeck and the murder could only have occurred during that time." I looked at Otto. "You should have checked on your daughter's window-I'd screwed it shut so that it was impossible for anyone to have entered from the outside. I'd also found that a hypodermic and a phial of morphine had been stolen. You don't have to admit any of this-both Jungbeck and Heyter will sing like canaries."

"I admit everything." Otto spoke with a massive calm. "You are correct in every detail. Not that I see that any Of it is going to do you any good." I'd said that he was an artist in palming things and he proceeded to prove it. The very unpleasant-looking little black automatic that he held in his hand just seemed to have materialised there. "I don't see that that's going to do you any good either," I said. "After all, you've just admitted that you're guilty of everything I claimed you were."

I was standing directly under the conning tower hatchway, where I'd deliberately and advisedly positioned myself as soon as we'd arrived, and I could see things that Otto couldn't. "Where do you think the Morning Rose is now?"

"What was that?" I didn't much like the way his pudgy little hand tightened round the butt of his gun. "She never went farther than Tunbeim where there have been people up there waiting to hear from me. True, they couldn't hear by direct radio contact, because you'd had one of your hard men smash the trawler's transceiver, hadn't you? But before the Morning Rose left here I'd left aboard a radio device that tunes into a radio homer. They bad clear instructions as to what to do the moment that device was actuated by the homer transmitter. It's been transmitting for almost ninety minutes now. There are armed soldiers and police officers of both Norway and Britain aboard that trawler. Rather, they were. They're aboard this vessel now. Please take my word for it. Otherwise we have useless bloodshed."

Otto didn't take my word for it. He stepped forward quickly, raising his gun as he peered up towards the conning tower. Unfortunately for Otto, he was standing in a brightly lit spot while peering up into the darkness. The sound of a shot, hurtful to the ears in that enclosed space, came at the same instant as his scream of pain followed by a metallic clunk as the gun falling from his bloodied hand struck a bar of bullion. "I'm sorry," I said. "You didn't give me time to tell you that they were specially picked soldiers."

Four men descended into the body of the vessel. Two were in civilian clothes, two in Norwegian army uniforms. One of the civilians said to me: "Dr. Marlowe?" I nodded, and he went on: "Inspector Matthewson. This is Inspector Nielsen. It looks as if we were on time?"

"Yes, thank you." They weren't in time to save Antonio and Halliday the two stewards, Judith Haynes and her husband. But that was entirely my fault. "You were very prompt indeed."

"We've been here for some time. We actually saw you go below. We came ashore by rubber dinghy from the outside, north of Makehl. Captain Imrie didn't much fancy coming up the Sor-Hamna at night. I don't think he sees too well."

'But I do." The harsh voice came from above. "Drop that gun! Drop it or I'll kill you." Heyter's voice carried utter conviction. There was only one person carrying a gun, the soldier who had shot Otto, and he dropped it without hesitation at a sharp word from the Norwegian inspector. Heyter climbed down into the hull, his eyes watchful, his gun moving in a slight arc. "Well done, Heyter, well done," Otto moaned from the pain of his shattered hand. "Well done?" I said. "You want to be responsible for another death? You want this to be the last thing Heyter ever does, well or not?"

"Too late for words." Otto's puce face had turned grey, the blood was dripping steadily on to the gold. "Too late."

"Too late? You fool, I knew that Heyter was mobile. You'd forgotten I was a doctor, even if not much of a one. He'd a badly cut ankle inside a thick leather boot. That could only have been caused by a compound fracture. There was no such fracture. A sprained ankle doesn't cut the skin open. A self-inflicted injury. As in killing Stryker, so in killing Smith -a crude and total lack of imagination. You did kill him, didn't you, Heyter?"