Alistair MacLean - Ice Station Zebra

"One moment, Dr. Carpenter," Swanson interrupted in a careful sort of voice. "Are you saying that those films are aboard this ship now?"

"I'll be very much surprised if they aren't, Commander. The other attempt to delay us, of course, was by making a direct attack on the «Dolphin» itself. When it became known that the «Dolphin» was to make an attempt to reach Zebra, orders went through to Scotland to cripple the ship. Red Clydeside is no more Red than any other maritime center in Britain, but you'll find Communists in practically every shipyard in the country — and, more often than not, their mates don't know who they are. There was no intention, of course, of causing any fatal accident — and, as far as whoever was responsible for leaving the tube doors open was concerned, there was no reason why there should be. International espionage in peacetime shuns violence — which is why our friend here is going to be very unpopular with his masters. Like Britain or America, they'll adopt any legitimate or illegitimate tactic to gain their espionage end — but they stop short of murder, just as we do. Murder was no part of the Soviet plan."

"Who is it, Dr. Carpenter?" Jeremy said very quietly. "For God's sake, who is it? There's nine of us here and — do you «know» who it is?"

"I know. And only six, not nine, can be under suspicion. The ones who kept radio watches after the disaster. Captain Folsom and the two Harringtons here were completely unmobilized. We have the word of all of you for that. So that, Jeremy, just leaves yourself, Kinnaird, Dr. Jolly, Hassard, Naseby and Hewson. Murder for gain and high treason. There's only one answer for that. The trial will be over the day it begins: three weeks later it will all be over. You're a very clever man, my friend. You're more than that: you're brilliant. But I'm afraid it's the end of the road for you, Dr. Jolly."

They didn't get it. For long seconds they didn't get it. They were too shocked, too stunned. They'd heard my words, all right, but the meaning hadn't registered immediately. But it was beginning to register now, for, like marionettes under the guidance of a master puppeteer, they all slowly turned their heads and stared at Jolly. Jolly himself rose slowly to his feet and took two paces toward me, his eyes wide, his face shocked, his mouth working.

"Me?" His voice was low and hoarse and unbelieving. "«Me?» Are you — are you mad, Dr. Carpenter? In the name of' God, man — "

I hit him. I don't know why I hit him — a crimson haze seemed to blur my vision — and Jolly was staggering back to crash on the deck, holding both hands to smashed lips and nose, before I could realize what I had done. I think if I had had a knife or a gun in my hand then, I would have killed him. I would have killed him the way I would have killed a fer-de-lance, a black-widow spider or any other such dark and evil and deadly thing, without thought of compunction or mercy. Gradually the haze cleared from my eyes. No one had stirred. No one had stirred an inch. Jolly pushed himself painfully to his knees and then his feet and collapsed heavily in his seat by the table. He was holding a bloodsoaked handkerchief to his face. There was utter silence in the room.

"My brother, Jolly," I said. "My brother and all the dead men on Zebra. Do you know what I hope?" I said. "I hope that something goes wrong with the hangman's rope and that you take a long, long time to die."

He took the handkerchief from his mouth.

"You're a crazy man," he whispered between smashed and already puffing lips. "You don't know what you're saying."

"The jury at the Old Bailey will be the best judge of that. I've been on to you now, Jolly, for almost exactly sixty hours."

"What did you say?" Swanson demanded. "You've known for sixty hours!"

"I knew I'd have to face your wrath sometime or other, Commander," I said. Unaccountably, I was beginning to feel very tired, weary, and heart-sick of the whole business. "But if you had known who he was, you'd have locked him up right away. You said so in so many words. I wanted to see where the trail led to in Britain, who his associates and contacts would be. I had splendid visions of smashing a whole spy ring. But I'm afraid the trail is cold. It ends right here. Please hear me out.

"Tell me, did no one think it strange that when Jolly came staggering out of his hut when it caught fire he should have collapsed and remained that way? Jolly claimed that he had been asphyxiated. Well, he wasn't asphyxiated inside the hut, because he managed to come out under his own steam. Then he collapsed. Curious. Fresh air invariably revives people. But not Jolly. He's a special breed. He wanted to make it clear to everyone that he had nothing to do with the fire. Just to drive home the point, he has repeatedly emphasized that he is not a man of action. If he isn't, then I've never met one."

"You can hardly call that proof of guilt," Swanson interrupted.

"I'm not adducing evidence," I said wearily. "I'm merely introducing pointers. Pointer number 2. You, Naseby, felt pretty bad about your failure to wake up your two friends, Flanders and Bryce. You could have shaken them for an hour and not woken them up. Jolly here used either ether or chloroform to lay them out. This was after he had killed Major Halliwell and the three others, but before he started getting busy with matches. He realized that if he burned the place down, there might be a long, long wait before rescue came, and he was going to make damned certain that he wasn't going to go hungry. If the rest of you had died from starvation, well, that was just your bad luck. But Flanders and Bryce lay between him and the food. Didn't it strike you as very strange, Naseby, that your shouting and shaking had no effect? The only reason could be that they had been drugged — and only one man had access to drugs. Also, you said that both Hewson and yourself felt pretty groggy. No wonder. It was a pretty small hut, and the chloroform or ether fumes had reached and affected you and Hewson. Normally, you'd have smelled it on waking up, but the stink of burning diesel obliterates every other smell. Again, I know this is not proof of any kind.

"Third pointer. I asked Captain Folsom this morning who had given the orders for the dead men to be put in the lab. He said he had. But, he remembered, it was Jolly's suggestion to him. Something learnedly medical about helping the morale of the survivors by putting the charred corpses out of sight.

"Fourth pointer. Jolly said that «how» the fire started was unimportant. A crude attempt to side-track me. Jolly knew as well as I did that it was all-important. I suppose, by the way, Jolly, that you deliberately jammed all the fire extinguishers you could before you started the fire. About that fire, Commander. Remember you were a bit suspicious of Hewson because he said the fuel drums hadn't started exploding until he was on his way to the main bunkhouse? He was telling the truth. There were no fewer than four drums in the fuel stores that didn't explode. The ones Jolly used to pour against the huts to start the fire. How am I doing, Dr. Jolly?"

"It's all a nightmare," he said very quietly. "It's a nightmare. Before God, I know nothing of any of this."

"Pointer number five. For some reason that is unclear to me, Jolly wanted to delay the «Dolphin» on its return trip. He could best do this, he decided, if Bolton and Brownell, the two' very sick men still left out on the station, were judged too sick to be transferred to the «Dolphin». The snag was that there were two other doctors around who might say that they «were» fit to be transferred. So he tried, with a fair measure of success, to eliminate us.

"First Benson. Didn't it strike you as strange, Commander, that the request for the survivors to be allowed to attend the funeral of Grant and Lieutenant Mills should have come from Naseby in the first place, then Kinnaird? Jolly, as the senior man of the party, with Captain Folsom temporarily unfit, was the obvious man to make the approach, but he didn't want to go calling too much attention to himself. Doubtless by dropping hints, he engineered it so that someone else should do it for him. Now, Jolly had noticed how glasssmooth and slippery the ice-banked sides of the sail were and he made a point of seeing that Benson went up the rope immediately ahead of him. You must remember it was almost pitch dark — just light enough for Jolly to make out the vague outline of Benson's head from the wash of light from the bridge as it cleared the top of the sail. A swift outward tug on the rope and Benson overbalanced. It seemed that he had fallen on top of Jolly. But only seemed. The loud, sharp crack I heard a fraction of a second after Benson's body struck was not caused by his head hitting the ice — it was caused by Jolly here trying to kick his head off. Did you hurt your toes much, Jolly?"