"I'm here now. What did you want to see me about?"

"Otard-Dupuy," he said. "How does that sound?"

"It sounds fine!" Smithy slid off his stool and headed for the cupboard where Captain Imrie kept his private store of restoratives. "But you weren't hunting the ship to offer me a brandy."

"No. Tell you the truth, I've been trying to figure out some things. No dice with the figuring, if I was bright enough for that I'd be too bright to be where I am now. Thought you could help me." He handed me a glass.

"We should make a great team," I said.

He smiled briefly. "Three-, dead and four half dead. Food poisoning. What poisoning?"

I told him the story about the sporing anaerobes, the one I'd given Haggerty. But Smithy wasn't Haggerty.

"Mighty selective poison, isn't it? Clobbers A and kills him, passes up B, clobbers C and doesn't kill him, passes up D and so on. And we all had the same food to cat."

"Poisons are notoriously unpredictable. Six people at a picnic can cat the same infected food: three can land in hospital while the others don't feel a twinge."

"So, some people get tummy aches and some don't. But that's a bit different from saying that a poison that is deadly enough to kill, and to kill violently and quickly, is going to leave others entirely unaffected. No doctor but I flat out don't believe it."

"I find it a bit odd myself. You have something in mind?"

"Yes. The poisoning was deliberate."

"Deliberate?" I sipped some more of the Otard-Dupuy while I wondered how far to go with Smithy. Not too far, I thought, not yet. I said: "Of course it was deliberate. And so easily done. Take our poisoner. He has this little bag of poison. Also, he has this little magic wand. He waves it and turns himself invisible and then flits around the dining tables. A pinch for Otto, none for me, a pinch for you, a pinch for Oakley, no pinches for, say, Heissman and Stryker, a double pinch for Antonio, none for the girls, a pinch for the Duke, two each for Moxen and Scott, and so on. A wayward and capricious lad, our invisible friend: Or would you call it being selective?"

I don't know what I'd call it," Smithy said soberly. "But I know what I'd call you-devious, off-putting, side-tracking, and altogether protesting too much Without offence, of course."

"Of course."

I wouldn't rate you as anybody's fool. You can't tell me that you haven't had some thoughts along those lines."

I had. But because I've been thinking about it a lot longer than you, I've dismissed them. Motive, opportunity, means-impossible to find any. Don't you know that the first thing a doctor does when he's called in to a case of accidental poisoning is to suspect that it's not accidental?"

"So you're satisfied."

"As can be."

I see." He paused. "Do you know we have a transmitter in the radio office that can reach just about any place in the Northern Hemisphere?

I've got a feeling we're going to have to use it soon."

"What on earth for?"

"Help."

"Help?"

"Yes. You know. The thing you require when you're in trouble. I think we need help now. Any more funny little accidents and I'll be damn certain we need help."

"I'm sorry," I said. "You're way beyond me. Besides, Britain's a long, long way away from us now."

"The NATO Atlantic forces aren't. They're carrying out fleet exercises somewhere off the North Cape."

"You're well informed," I said.

"It pays to be well informed when I'm talking to someone who claims to be as satisfied as can be over three very mysterious deaths when I'm certain that someone would never rest and could never be satisfied until he knew exactly how those three people had died. I've admitted I'm not very bright but don't completely underestimate what little intelligence I have."

I don't. And don't overestimate mine. Thanks for the Otard-Dupuy."

I went to the starboard screen door. The Morning Rose was still rolling and pitching and shaking and shuddering as she battered her way northwards through the wild seas but it was no longer possible to see the windtorn waters below: we were in a world now that was almost completely opaque, a blind and bitter world of driving white, a world of snowy darkness that began and ended at scarcely an arm's-length distance. I looked down at the wing bridge deck and in the pale light of wash from the wheelhouse I could see footprints in the snow. There was only one set of them, sharp and clearly limned as if they had been made only seconds previously. Somebody had been there, for a moment I was certain that someone had been there, listening to Smith and myself talking. Then I realised there was only one set, the set I had made myself and they hadn't been filled in or even blurred because the blizzard driving horizontally across the wind dodger was clearing the deck at my feel?. Sleep, I thought, and sleep now: for with that lack of sleep, the tiring events of the past few hours, the sheer physical exhaustion induced by the violent weather and Smithy's dark forebodings, I was beginning to imagine things. I realised that Smithy was at my shoulder.

"You levelling with me, Dr. Marlowe?"

"Of course. Or do you think Fin the invisible Borgia who's flitting around, a little pinch here, a little pinch there?"

"No, I don't. I don't think you're levelling with me, either." His voice was sombre. "Maybe someday you are going to wish you were."

Someday I was going to wish I had for then I wouldn't have had to leave Smithy behind in Bear Island.

Back in the saloon, I picked up the booklet Goin had given me, went to the corner settee, found myself a steamer blanket, decided I didn't require it yet and wedged myself into the corner, my feel? comfortably on a swivel chair belonging to the nearest table. I picked up, without much interest, the cardboard file and was debating whether to open it when the lee door opened and Mary Stuart came in. There was snow on the tangled corn-coloured hair and she was wearing a heavy weed coat.

"So this is where you are." She banged the door shut and looked at me almost accusingly.

"This," I acknowledged, "is where I am."

"You weren't in your cabin. And your light's gone. Do you know that?"

I know that. I'd some writing to do. That's why I came here. Is there something wrong?"

She lurched across the saloon and sat heavily on the settee opposite me.

"Nothing more than has been wrong." She and Smithy should meet up, they'd get on famously. "Do you mind if I stay here?"

I could have said that it didn't matter whether I minded or not, that the saloon was as much hers as mine, but as she seemed to be a touchy sort of creature I just smiled and said: I would take it as an insult if you left."

She smiled back at me, just an acknowledging flicker, and settled as best she could in her seat, drawing the tweed coat around her and bracing herself against the violent movements of the Morning Rose. She closed her eyes and with the long dark lashes lying along pale wet cheeks her high cheekbones were more pronounced than ever, her Slavonic ancestry unmistakable,

It was no great hardship to look upon Mary Stuart but I still felt an increasing irritation as I watched her. It wasn't so much her fey imaginings and need for company that made me uneasy, it was the obvious discomfort she was experiencing in trying to keep her seated balance while I was wedged so very comfortably in my own place: there is nothing more uncomfortable than being comfortable one's self and watching another in acute discomfort, not unless, of course, one has a feeling of very powerful antagonism towards the other party, in which case a very comfortable feeling can be induced: but I had no such antagonism towards the girl opposite. To compound my feeling of guilt she began to shiver involuntarily.

"Here," I said. "You'd be more comfortable in my scat. And there's a rug here you can have."