Ice Station Zebra (27 page)

      "I'm damned if I know. I listened to every word that was said this morning. I watched the face of each man who spoke--and the faces of the ones who weren't speaking. I haven't stopped thinking about it since and I'm still damned if I have a clue. How about Kinnaird?"
      "He's the obvious suspect, isn't he? But only because he's a skilled radio operator. I could train a man in a couple of days to send and receive in Morse. Slow, clumsy, he wouldn't know a thing about the instrument he was using, but he could still do it. Any of them may easily have been competent enough to operate a radio. The fact that Kinnaird is a skilled operator may even be a point in his favor."
      "Nife cells were removed from the radio cabin and taken to the laboratory," Swanson pointed out. "Kinnaird had the easiest access to them. Apart from Dr. Jolly who had his office and sleeping quarters in the same hut."
      "So that would point a finger at Kinnaird or Jolly?"
      "Well, wouldn't it?"
      "Certainly. Especially if you will agree that the presence of those tinned foods under the lab floor also points a finger at Hewson and Naseby, both of whom slept in the cookhouse, where the food was stored, and that the presence of the radio-sonde balloon and the hydrogen in the lab also points a finger at Jeremy and Hassard, one a met officer and the other a technician who would have had the easiest access to those items."
      "That's right, confuse things," Swanson said irritably. "As if they weren't confused enough already."
      "I'm not confusing things. All I'm saying is that if you admit a certain possibility for a certain reason, then you must admit similar possibilities for similar reasons. Besides, there are points in Kinnaird's favor. He risked his life to go back into the radio room to bring out the portable transmitter. He risked almost certain suicide, when he tried to go in the second time to bring out his assistant, Grant, and probably would have died if Jeremy hadn't clobbered him. Look what happened to that man Foster who went in there immediately afterward with a wet blanket over his head: he never came out.
      "Again, would Kinnaird have mentioned the Nile cells if he had any guilt complex about them? But he did. That, incidentally, might have been why Grant, the assistant radio operator, collapsed in there and later died--Kinnaird had told him to bring out the other Nife cells, and he was overcome because he stayed there too long looking for things that had already been removed from the hut. And there's one final point: we have Naseby's word for it that the door of the radio room was jammed, presumably by ice. Had Kinnaird been playing with matches a few moments previously, that door wouldn't have had time to freeze up."
      "If you rule Kinnaird out," Swanson said slowly, "you more or less have to rule Dr. Jolly out, too." He smiled. "I don't see a member of your profession running around filling people full of holes, Dr. Carpenter. Repairing holes is their line of business, not making them. Hippocrates wouldn't have liked it."
      "I'm not ruling Kinnaird out," I said. "But I'm not going off half cocked and pinning a murder charge on him, either. As for the ethics of my profession, would you like a list of the good healers who have decorated the dock in the Old Bailey? True, we have nothing on Jolly. His part in the proceedings that night seems to have consisted in staggering out from the radio room, falling flat on his face, and staying there till pretty near the end of the fire. That, of course, has no bearing upon whatever part he might have taken in the proceedings prior to the fire. Though against that possibility there's the fact of the jammed door, the fact that Kinnaird or Grant would have been almost bound to notice if he had been up to something. Jolly's bunk was at the back of the radio room, and he would have had to pass Kinnaird and Grant to get out, not forgetting that he would also have to stop to pick up the Nife cells. And there is one more point in his favor--an apparent point, that is. I still don't think that Benson's fall was an accident, and if it was no accident it is difficult to see how Jolly could have arranged it while he was at the foot of the sail and Benson at the top, and it's even more difficult to see why he should have stood at the foot of the sail and let Benson fall on top of him."
      "You're putting up a very good defense case for both Jolly and Kinnaird," Swanson murmured.
      "No. I'm only saying what a defense lawyer would say."
      "Hewson," Swanson said slowly. "Or Naseby, the cook. Or Hewson _and_ Naseby. Don't you think it damned funny that those two, who were sleeping at the back or east side of the cookhouse, which was the first part of the hut to catch fire, should have managed to escape while the other two--Flanders and Bryce, wasn't it?--who slept in the middle should have suffocated in there? Naseby said he shouted at them and shook them violently. Maybe he could have shouted and shaken all night without result. Maybe they were already unconscious--or dead. Maybe they had seen Naseby or Hewson or both removing food supplies and had been silenced. Or maybe they had been silenced _before_ anything had been removed. And don't forget the gun. It was hidden in the gas tank of the tractor, a pretty damned funny place for a man to hide anything. But nothing funny about the idea occurring to Hewson, was there? He was the tractor driver. And he seems to have taken his time about getting around to warning Captain Folsom. He said he had to make a wide circuit to avoid the flames but apparently Naseby didn't find it so bad when he went to the radio room. Another thing--a pretty telling point, I think, he said that when he was on the way to the bunkhouse the oil drums in the fuel store started exploding. If they only started exploding then, how come all the huts--the five that were eventually destroyed, that is--were already uncontrollably on fire? They were uncontrollably on fire because they were saturated by flying oil so the first explosions must have come a long time before then. And, apart from warning Folsom--who had already been warned--Hewson doesn't seem to have done very much after the fire started."
      "You'd make a pretty good prosecuting counsel yourself, Commander. But wouldn't you think there's just too much superficially against Hewson? That a clever man wouldn't have allowed so much superficial evidence to accumulate against him? You would have thought that at least he would have indulged in a little fire-fighting heroics to call attention to himself."
      "No. You're overlooking the fact that he would never have had reason to expect that there would be any investigation into the causes of the fire. That the situation would never arise where he--or anyone else, for that matter-would have to justify his actions and behavior if accusations were to be leveled against him."
      "I've said it before and I say it again. People like that _never_ take a chance. They always act on the assumption that they _may_ be found out."
      "How could they be found out?" Swanson protested. "How could they possibly expect to have suspicion aroused?"
      "You don't think it possible that they suspect we're on to them?"
      "No, I don't."
      "That wasn't what you were saying last night after that hatch fell on me," I pointed out. "You said it was obvious that someone was on to me."
      "Thank God all I have to do is the nice, uncomplicated job of running a nuclear submarine," Swanson said heavily. "The truth is, I don't know what to think any more. How about this cook fellow--Naseby?"
      "You think he was in cahoots with Hewson?"
      "If we accept the premise that the men in the cookhouse who were not in on this business had to be silenced, and Naseby wasn't, then he must have been, mustn't he? But, damn it, how about his attempt to rescue Flanders and Bryce?"
      "May just have been a calculated risk. He saw how Jeremy flattened Kinnaird when he tried to go back into the radio room a second time and perhaps calculated that Jeremy would oblige again if he tried a similar but fake rescue act."
      "Maybe Kinnaird's second attempt was also fake," Swanson said. "After all, Jeremy had already tried to stop him once."
      "Maybe it was," I agreed. "But Naseby. If he's your man, why should he have said that the radio-room door was jammed with ice and that he had to burst it open? That gives Kinnaird and Jolly an out--and a murderer wouldn't do anything to put any other potential suspect in the clear."
      "It's hopeless," Swanson said calmly. "I say let's put the whole damned crowd of them under lock and key."
      "That would be clever," I said. "Yes, let's do just that That way we'll never find out who the murderer is. Anyway, before you start giving up, remember it's even more complicated than that. Remember you're passing up the two most obvious suspects of all--Jeremy and Hassard--two tough, intelligent birds who, if they were the killers, were clever enough to see that _nothing_ pointed the finger against them. Unless, of course, there might have been something about Flanders and Bryce that Jeremy didn't want anyone to see, so he stopped Naseby from going back into the cookhouse. Or not."
      Swanson almost glared at me. Watching his submarine plummeting out of control beyond the 1,000-feet mark was something that rated, maybe the lift of an eyebrow; but this was something else again. He said: "Very well, then, we'll let the killer run loose and wreck the _Dolphin_ at his leisure. I must have very considerable confidence in you, Dr. Carpenter. I feel sure my confidence will not be misplaced. Tell me one last thing. I assume you are a highly skilled investigator. But I was puzzled by one omission in your questioning. A vital question, I should have thought."
      "Who suggested moving the corpses into the lab, knowing that by doing so he would be making his hiding place for the cached material a hundred per cent fool-proof?"
      "I apologize." He smiled faintly. "You had your reasons, of course."
      "Of course. You're not sure whether or not the killer is on to the fact that we are on to him. I'm sure. I know he's not. But had I asked that question, he'd have known immediately that there could be only one reason for my asking it. Then he would have known I was on to him. Anyway, it's my guess that Captain Folsom gave the order, but the original suggestion, carefully camouflaged so that Folsom may no longer be able to pin it down, would have come from another quarter."
      Had it been a few months earlier, with the summer Arctic sun riding in the sky, it would have been a brilliant day. As it was, there was no sun, not in that latitude and so late in the year; but, for all that, the weather was about as perfect as it was possible for it to be. Thirty-six hours--the time that had elapsed since Hansen and I had made that. savage trip back to the _Dolphin_--had brought about a change that seemed pretty close' to miraculous. The knifing east wind had died completely. That flying sea of ice spicules was no more. The temperature had risen at least twenty degrees, and the visibility Was as perfect as visibility on the winter ice pack ever is.
      Swanson, sharing Benson's viewpoint on the crew's oversedentary mode of existence and taking advantage of the fine weather, had advised everyone not engaged in actual watch-keeping to take advantage of the opportunity offered to stretch their legs in the fresh air. It said much for Swanson's powers of persuasion that by eleven that morning the _Dolphin_ was practically deserted; and of course the crew, to whom Drift Ice Station Zebra was only so many words, were understandably curious to see the place, even the shell of the place, that had brought them to the top of the world.
      I took my place at the end of the small line being treated by Dr. Jolly. It was close to noon .before he got around to me. He was making light of his own burns and frostbite and was in tremendous form, bustling happily about the sick bay as if it had been his own private domain for years.
      'Well," I said, "the pill-rolling competition wasn't so fierce after all, was it? I'm damned glad there was a third doctor around. How are things on the medical front?"
      "Coming along not too badly, old boy," he said cheerfully. "Benson's picking up very nicely. Pulse, respiration, blood pressure close to normal, level of unconsciousness very slight now, I should say. Captain Folsom's still in considerable pain, but no actual danger, of course. The rest have improved a hundred per cent, little thanks to the medical fraternity. Excellent food, warm beds, and the knowledge that they're safe have done them more good than anything we could ever do. Anyway, it's done me a lot of good, by Jove!"
      "And them," I agreed. "All your friends except Folsom and the Harrington twins have followed most of the crew on to the ice, and I'll wager that if you had suggested to them forty-eight hours ago that they'd willingly go out there again in so short a time, they'd have called for a straitjacket."
      "The physical and mental recuperative power of homo sapiens," Jolly said jovially. "Beyond belief at times, old lad, beyond belief. Now, let's have a look at that broken wing of, yours."
      So he had a look, and because I was a colleague and therefore inured to human suffering, he didn't spend any too much time in molly-coddling me, but by hanging on to the arm of my chair and the shreds of my professional pride, I kept the roof from falling in on me. When he was finished he said, "Well, that's the. lot, except for Brownell and Bolton, the two lads out on the ice."
      "I'll come with you," I said. "Commander Swanson is waiting pretty anxiously to hear what we have to say. He wants to get away from here as soon as possible."
      "Me too," Jolly said fervently. "But what's the commander so anxious about?"
      "Ice. You never know the hour or minute it starts to close in. Want to spend the next year or two up here?"
      Jolly grinned, thought it over for a moment, then stopped grinning. He said apprehensively, "How long are we going to be under this damned ice? Before we reach the open sea, I mean?"
      "Twenty-four hours, Swanson says. Don't look so worried, Jolly. Believe me, it's far safer under this stuff than among it."
      With a very unconvinced look on his face, Jolly picked up his medical kit and led the way from the sick bay. Swanson was waiting for us in the control room. We climbed up the hatches, dropped down over the side, and walked over to the drift station.
      Most of the crew had already made their way out there. We passed numbers of them on the way back; most of them looked grim or sick or both, and didn't even glance up as we passed. I didn't have to guess why they looked as they did; they'd been opening doors that they should have left closed.