Came wiffling through the tulgey wood,

curtly. "It's locked." "Unlock it." He looked at me without expression, then searched through his pockets. At last he stopped and said, "I can't find the keys." "I'd expected nothing else. Jackstraw" I changed my mind, one gun was not enough to cover a killer like Zagero. I glanced round the company, made my choice. "Mr Small wood, perhaps you" "No, thank you," Mr Smallwood said hastily. He was still holding a handkerchief to his puffed mouth. He smiled wryly. "I've never realised so clearly before now how essentially a man of peace I am, Dr Mason. Perhaps Mr Corazzini" I glanced at Corazzini, and he shrugged indifferently. I understood his lack of eagerness. He must have known that I'd had him high up among my list of suspects until very recently indeed and a certain delicacy of sentiment might well prevent him from being too forthcoming too soon. But this was no time for delicacy. I nodded, and he made for Zagero. He missed nothing, but he found nothing. After two minutes he stepped back, looked at me and then, thoughtfully, at Solly Levin. Again I nodded, and again he began to search. In ten seconds he brought out a bunch of keys, and held them up. "It's a frame-up," Levin yelped. "It's a plant! Corazzini tnusta palmed 'em and put 'em there. I never had no keys" "Shut up!" I ordered contemptuously. "Yours, Zagero?" He nodded tightly, said nothing. "OK, Corazzini," I said. "Let's see what we can find." The second key opened the soft leather case. Corazzini dug under the clothes on top and brought out the three corned beef tins. "Thank you," I said. "Our friend's iron rations for his take-off. Miss Ross, our lunch. . . . Tell me, Zagero, can you think of any reason why I shouldn't kill you now?" "You've made nothin' but mistakes ever since I met you," Zagero said slowly, "but, brother, this is the biggest you ever made. Do you think I would be such a damn fool as to incriminate myself that way? Do you think I would be so everlastingly obvious" "I think that's exactly the way you expected me to think," I said wearily. "But I'm learning, I'm learning. One more job, Corazzini, if you would. Tie their feet." "What are you going to do?" Zagero asked tightly. "Don't digital cameras online 2 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