And a very good woman was she.

are you going to do?" Zagero asked tightly. "Don't worry. The executioner will collect his fee. From now on you and Levin ride, with your feet tied, in the front of the tractor sledand with a gun on you all the time. . . . What is it, Miss LeGarde?" "Are you sure, Peter?" It was the first time she had spoken for hours, and I could see that even that tiny effort tired her. "He doesn't look like a murderer." The tone of her voice accurately reflected the expressions of consternation and shocked disbelief on half a dozen faces: Zagero had spared no effort to make himself popular with everyone. "Does anybody here?" I demanded. "The best murderers never do." I then explained to herand the othersall I knew and had suspected about everything. It shook them, especially the facts of the spiking of the petrol and of Hillcrest having been, at one time, only a few hours behind us: and by the time I was finished I could see that there was as little doubt in their minds about Zagero's guilt as there was in mine. Two hours later, well down the slope from the Vindeby Nunataks, I stopped and set up the radio gear. I reckoned that we were now less than a hundred miles from the coast, and for half an hour tried to raise our base at Uplavnik. We had no success, but I had hardly expected any: the radio shack at the base was manned only by one operator, he couldn't be expected to be on watch all the time, and obviously his call-up bell wasn't set for the frequency I was using. At four o'clock exactly I got through to Hillcrest. This time I hadn't bothered to move the radio out of hearing range -1 was actually leaning against the tractor cabin as I spokeand every word said, both by Hillcrest and myself, could be clearly heard. But it didn't matter any more. The first thing I did, of course, was to tell him that we had got our men. Even as I spoke, my own voice sounded curiously flat and lifeless. I should, I suppose, have been exultant and happy, but the truth was that I had suffered too much, both physically and psychologically, in the past few days, exhaustion lay over me like a smothering blanket, the reaction from the strain of those days was beginning to set in, the awareness was clearly with me that we weren't out of the wood by a long way yet, the lives of Marie LeGarde and Mahler were now the uppermost thoughts in my mind, and, to be perfectly honest, I also felt curiously deflated because I had developed a considerable liking for Zagero and the revelation of his true character digital camera canon a540 had been more of a shock to me than I would have been prepared to admit to anyone. Hillcrest's reactions, I must admit, were all that could have been wished for, but when I asked him about his progress the enthusiasm vanished from his voice. They were still bogged down, it seemed, and progress had been negligible. There was no word yet of passenger lists or of what the plane had carried that had been so important. The Triton, the aircraft-carrier, had insulin aboard and would fly it up to Uplavnik. A landing barge was moving into Uplavnik through an ice lead and was expected to arrive tomorrow and unload the tractor it was carrying, which would move straight out to meet us. Two ski-planes and two search bombers had been looking for us, but failed to locate us -we'd probably been traversing the Vindeby Nunataks at the time . . . His voice went on and on, but I hadn't heard anything he'd said in the past minute or so. I had just remembered something I should have remembered a long time ago. "Wait a minute," I called. "I've just thought of something." I climbed inside the tractor cabin and shook Mahler. Fortunately, he was only asleepfrom the look of him an hour or two ago I'd have said the collapse was due any minute. "Mr Mahler," I said quickly. "You said you worked for an oil company?" "That's right." He looked at me in surprise. "Socony Mobil Oil Co., in New Jersey." "As what?" There were a hundred things he could have been that were of no use to me. "Research chemist. Why?" I sighed in relief, and explained. When I'd finished telling him of Hillcrest's solution to his troublesdistilling the petrolI asked him what he thought of it. "It's as good a way as any of committing suicide," he said grimly. "What does he want to dosend himself into orbit? It only requires one weak spot in the can he's trying to heat.. . . Besides, the evaporation range of petrol is so wideanything from 30 degrees centigrade to twice the temperature of boiling water -that it may take him all day to get enough to fill a cigarette lighter." "That seems to be more or less the trouble," I agreed. "Is there nothing he can do?" "Only one thing he can dowash it. What size drums does your petrol come in?" Ten