The nearest set of light switches-there was a duplicate set by the stewards " pantry-was by the lee door. I took one step in the remembered direction then stopped. Did the presence in the room know that I was awake and on my feel? Were his eyes more attuned to the darkness than my newly opened ones? Could he dimly discern my figure? Would he guess that my first move would be towards the switches and was he preparing to block my way? If he were, how would he block my way? Would he be carrying a weapon and what kind of weapon-I was acutely aware that all I had were two hands, the left one still a fairly useless lump of tingling pins and needles. I stopped, irresolute.

I heard the metallic click of a door handle and a gust of icy air struck me: the presence was leaving by the lee door. I reached the door in four steps, stepped outside on to the deck, flung up an instinctively protective right forearm as a bright light abruptly struck my eyes and immediately wished I had used my left forearm instead for then it might have offered me some measure of protection against something hard, heavy, and very solid that connected forcibly and painfully with the left side of my neck. I clung to the outside edge of the door to support myself but I didn't seem to have much strength left in my hands: and I seemed to have none at all in my legs for although I remained quite conscious I sank to the deck as if my legs had been filleted: by the time the momentary paralysis had passed and I was able to use the support of the door to drag myself shakily to my feel?, I was alone on the deck. I had no idea where my assailant had gone and the matter was one of only academic interest, my legs could barely cope with supporting my weight in a static go position: even the thought of running or negotiating ladders and companionways at speed was preposterous.

Still clinging to whatever support was at hand I stepped back into the saloon, fumbled the lights on and pulled the lee door closed behind me.

Mary Stuart was propped on an elbow, the heel of one palm rubbing an eye while the lid of the other was half-open in the fashion of a person just rousing from a very deep or drugged sleep. I looked away, stumbled towards Captain Imrie's table and sat down heavily in his chair. I lifted the bottle of Black Label from its stand. It was half-full. For what seemed quite a long time but could have been no more than seconds I stared at this bottle, not seeing it, then looked away to locate the glass that Halliday had been using. It was nowhere to be seen, it could have fallen and rolled out of sight in a dozen different directions. I selected another glass from the table rack, splashed some Scotch into it, drank it and made my way back to my seat. My neck felt awful. One good shake of my head and it would fall off.

"Don't breathe through your nose," I said, "and you'll hardly smell the demon drink at all." I propped her up to a sitting position, rearranged her rugs and forestalled her by, for a change, putting my arms around her. I said: "There now."

"What was it? What happened?" Her voice was low and had a shake to it.

"Just the door. Wind blew it open. Had to close it, that's all."

"But the lights were off."

I put them off. just after you'd gone to sleep."

She wriggled an arm free from the blankets and gently touched the side of my neck.

"It's colouring already," she whispered. "It's going to be a huge ugly bruise. And it's bleeding." I reached up with my handkerchief and she wasn't making any mistake: I stuffed my handkerchief into my collar and left it there. She went on in the same little voice: "flow did it happen?"

"One of those stupid things. I slipped on the snow and struck my neck on the storm sill of the door. Does ache a bit, I must say."

She didn't answer. She freed her other arm, caught me by both lapels, stared at me with a face full of misery and put her forehead on my shoulder. Now it was my collar's turn to become damp. It was the most extraordinary behaviour for a wardress-that her function was to keep tabs on and effectively immobilise me I was increasingly sure-but, then, she was the most extraordinary wardress I'd ever come across. And the nicest. Dr. Marlowe, I said, the lady is in distress and you are but human. I let my suspicions take five and stroked the tangled yellow hair. I'd been led to believe, I forgot by what or by whom, that nothing was as conducive to the calming of upset feminine feelings as that soothing gesture: only seconds later I was wondering where I'd picked up this piece of obviously blatant misinformation for she suddenly pushed herself upright and struck me twice on the shoulder with the base of her clenched left fist. I was more than ever convinced that she wasn't made of swansdown.

"Don't do that," she said. "Don't do that."

"All right," I said agreeably. I won't do that. I'm sorry."

"No, no, please! I'm sorry. I don't know what made me-I really-" She stopped speaking although her lips kept on moving and stared at me with tear-filled eyes, the no longer beautiful face defenceless and defeated and full of despair: it made me feel acutely uncomfortable for I do not like to see proud and self-contained people thus reduced. There was a quick indrawing of breath then, astonishingly, she had her arms wound round my neck and so tightly that it would appear that she was bent upon my instant asphyxiation. She wept in silence, her shoulders shaking.

Splendidly done, I thought approvingly, quite splendidly done. Irrespective of for whose benefit it might be-'and then I despised myself for my cynicism. Quite apart from the fact that her acknowledged limitations as an actress put such a performance out of the question I was convinced, without knowing why I was convinced, that what I was seeing was genuine uninhibited emotion. And what on earth had she to gain by pretending to lower her defences in front of me?

For whom, then, the tears? Not for me, of that I was certain, why in the world for me: I scarcely knew her, she scarcely knew me, I was only a shoulder to cry on, likely enough I was only a doctor's shoulder to cry on, people have the oddest misconceptions about doctors and maybe their shoulders are regarded as being more reliable and comforting than the average. Or more absorbent. Nor were the tears for herself, I was equally certain of that, to survive, intact, the kind of upbringing shed hinted she'd had, one had to be possessed of an unusual degree of self-reliance and mental toughness that almost automatically excluded considerations of self-pity. So for whom, then, the tears?

I didn't know and, at that moment, I hardly cared. In normal circumstances and with no other matter so significantly important as to engage my attention, so lovely a girl in such obvious distress would have had my complete and undivided concern, but the circumstances were abnormal and my thoughts were elsewhere engaged with an intensity that made Mary Stuart's odd behaviour seem relatively unimportant.

I couldn't keep my eyes from the bottle of Scotch by the captain's table.

When Halliday had had, at my insistence as I now bitterly recalled, his first drink, the bottle had been about a third full: after his second drink it had been about a quarter full: and now it was half full. The quiet and violent man who had so recently switched off the lights and moved through the saloon had switched bottles and, for good measure, had removed the glass that Halliday had used. Mary Stuart said something, her voice so muffled and indistinct that I couldn't make it out: what with salt tears and salt blood this night's work was going to cost me a new shirt. I said: "What?"

She moved her head, enough to enable her to speak more clearly, but not enough to let me see her face.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry I was such a fool. Will you forgive me?"

I squeezed her shoulder in what was more or less an automatic gesture, my eyes and my thoughts were still on that bottle, but she seemed to take it as sufficient answer. She said hesitantly: "Are you going to sleep again?" She hadn't stopped being as foolish as she thought: or perhaps she wasn't being foolish at all.