I'd have expected no less from Conrad, he, after all, had been the one to initiate the search for Smithy soon after our landing. I didn't try to argue with him. I could see Mary Stuart with her hand on his arm, looking at him in dismay: if she couldn't dissuade him, I wasn't going to bother to try.

"Charles!" Otto was bringing the full weight of his authority to bear.

"I would remind you that you have a contract-"

the contract," Conrad said.

Otto stared at him in disbelief, clamped his lips quite shut, wheeled and headed for his cubicle. With his departure everybody, it seemed, started to speak at the same time. I crossed to where the Count was moodily drinking the inevitable brandy. He looked up and gave me a cheerless smile.

"If you want a third suicidal volunteer, my dear boy…"

"How long have you known Otto Gerran?"

"What's that?" He seemed momentarily at a loss, then quaffed some more brandy. "Thirty-odd years. It's no secret. I knew him well in prewar Vienna. Why do you-"

"You were in the film business then?"

"Yes and no." He smiled in an oddly quizzical fashion. "Again it's on the record. In the halcyon days, my dear fellow, when Count Tadeusz Leswzynski-that's me-was, if not exactly a name to be conjured with, at least a man of considerable means, I was Otto's angel, his first backer."

Again a smile, this time amused. "Why do you think I'm a member of the board?"

"What do you know of the circumstances of Heissman's sudden disappearance from Vienna in I939"

The Count stopped being amused. I said: "So that's not on the record."

I paused to see if he would say anything and when he didn't I went on: "Watch your back, Count."

"My-my back?"

"That part of the anatomy that's so subject to being pierced by sharp objects or rapidly moving blunt ones. Or has it not occurred that the board of Olympus are falling off. their lofty perches like so many stricken birds? One lying dead outside, another lying dead inside and two more at peril or perhaps even perished on the high seas. What makes you think you should be so lucky? Beware the slings and arrows, Tadeusz. And you might tell Neal Divine and Lonnie to beware of the same things, at least while I'm gone. Especially Lonnie-I’d be glad if you made sure he doesn't step outside this cabin in my absence. Very vulnerable things, backs."

The Count sat in silence for some moments, his face not giving any thing away, then he said: "I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about."

I never for a moment thought you would." I tapped the bulky pocket of his anorak. "That's where it should be, not lying about uselessly in your cabin."

"What for heaven's sake?"

"Your 9-mm. Beretta automatic."

I left the Count on this suitably enigmatic note and moved across to where Lonnie was making hay while the sun shone. The hand that held his glass shook with an almost constant tremor and his eyes were glassy but his speech was as intelligible and lucid as ever.

"And once again our medical Lochinvar or was it Launcelot gallops forth to the rescue," Lonnie intoned. I can't tell you, my dear boy, how my heart fills with pride-"

"Stay inside when I'm gone, Lonnie. Don't go beyond that door. Not once. Please. For me."

"Merciful heavens!" Lonnie hiccoughed on a grand scale. "One would think I am in danger."

"You are. Believe me, you are."

"Me? Me?" He was genuinely baffled. "And who would wish ill to poor old harmless Lonnie?"

"You'd be astonished at the people who would wish ill to poor old harmless Lonnie. Dispensing for the moment with your homilies about the innate kindness of human nature, will you promise me, really promise me, that you won't go out tonight?"

"This is so important to you, then, my boy?"

It is.

"Very well. With this gnarled hand on a vat of the choicest malt-?'

I left him to get on with what promised to be a very lengthy promise indeed and approached Conrad and Mary Stuart who seemed to be engaged in an argument that was as low-pitched as it was intense. They broke off. and Mary Stuart put a beseeching hand on my arm. She said: "Please, Dr. Marlowe. Please tell Charles not to go. He'll listen to you, I know he will." She shivered. I just know that something awful is going to happen tonight."

"You may well be right at that," I said. "Mr. Conrad, you are not expendable."

I could, I immediately realised, have lighted upon a more fortunate turn of phrase. Instead of looking at Conrad she kept looking at me and the implications of what I'd said dawned on me quite some time after they had clearly dawned on her. She put both hands on my arm, looked at me with dull and hopeless eyes then turned and walked towards her cubicle.

"Go after her," I said to Conrad. "Tell her-"

"No point. I'm going. She knows it."

"Go after her and tell her to open her window and put that black box I gave her on the snow outside. Then close her window."

Conrad looked at me closely, made as if to speak, then left. He was nobody's fool, he hadn't even given a nod that could have been interpreted as acknowledgement.

He was back within a minute. We pulled on all the outer clothes we could and furnished ourselves with four of the largest torches. On the way to the door, Mary Darling rose from where she was sitting beside a still badly battered Allen. "Mr. Marlowe."

I put my head to where I figured her ear lay behind the tangled platinum hair and whispered: "I'm wonderful?"

She nodded solemnly, eyes sad behind the huge horn-rimmed glasses, and kissed me. I didn't know what the audience thought of this little vignette and didn't much care: probably a last tender farewell to the good doctor before he moved out forever into the outer darkness. As the door closed behind us, Conrad said complainingly: "She might have kissed me too."

I think you've done pretty well already," I said. He had the grace to keep silent. With our torches off. we moved across to what shelter was offered to the now quite heavily falling snow by the provisions hut and remained there for two or three minutes until we were quite certain that no one had it in mind to follow us. Then we moved round the side of the main cabin and picked up the black box outside Mary Stuart's window. She was standing there and I'm quite sure she saw us but she made no gesture or any attempt to wave goodbye: it seemed as if the two Marys had but one thought in common.

We made our way through the snow and the darkness down to the jetty, stowed the black box securely under the stern sheets, started up the outboard-5-1/2 horsepower only, but enough for a fourteen-footer-and cast off. As we came round the northern arm of the jetty Conrad said: "Christ, it's as black as the earl of hell's waistcoat. How do you propose to set about it?"

"Set about what?"

"Finding Heissman and company, of course."

"I couldn't care if I never saw that lot again," I said candidly. "I've no intention of trying to find them. On the contrary, all our best efforts are going to be brought to bear to avoid the While Conrad was silently mulling over this volte-face, I took the boat, the motor throttled right back for prudence's sake, just over a hundred yards out until we were close into the northern shore of the Sor-Hamna and cut the engine. As the boat drifted to a stop I went foreword and eased anchor and rope over the side.

"According to the chart," I said, "there are three fathoms here. According to the experts, that should mean about fifty feel? of rope to prevent us from drifting. So, fifty feel?. And as we're against the land and so can't be Silhouetted, that should make us practically invisible to anyone approaching from the south. No smoking, of course."

Very funny," Conrad said. Then, after a pause, he went on carefully: "Who are you expecting to approach from the south?"