It happens, my father says: a man like yourself has some dormant killer-instinct left over from the war. He sees a weapon like the Spandau-Hotchkiss: all his wartime agonies come alive again. He isn't really responsible,, yet he is a killer all the same. Walter says it happened on the Russian convoys too."
" And how does Walter account for this?" I said, fingering the blood-stained bandage.
" He says you were hit by an exploding Spandau shell splinter after you had turned the gun into the deck for some unexplained reason. He considers he was lucky to get away with his life."
" And what do you think?" I asked. I stared at her. There was something different about her. I noticed then that she was no longer wearing her leather flying kit, but a warm dress of mulberry as deep as the colour we had seen together in the sea. Her answer suddenly became of great importance to me. Only hours ago, the importance would have lain in my having an ally. Now…
I could have watched the light change through her eyes for hours, had I not known that each darker shadow from outside brought Antarctica one step nearer her end. The pale yellow glow which seemed to heighten the fine line of her cheekbones and illuminate the strange eyes was-death.
" Something of the Southern Ocean has passed into my father, into Walter, into you, into Sailhardy," she said quietly, as if exercising all the control she had built up in the past. " Kill or be killed. Now you give me your reason-Thompson
Island."
" That isn't an answer to my question," I said.
" No," she said. " The answer perhaps is that I am sitting here have been sitting here for hours-waiting for a man everyone considers a cold-blooded murderer, to come round. My father swore I wouldn't be allowed to. But…" she smiled faintly-" here I am. I also know that when I saw you fall off the gun into the sea, something died inside me."
" I might have lived three minutes in the cold," I said.
" I know that," she answered. " I also know that the person who couldn't muster courage to land on an ice-floe died when you sent me up to watch Thorshammer. That could not have brought you up alive out of the sea."
" Do you believe I had some sort of blackout and shot down a defenceless seaplane?" I pressed.
Again, she replied obliquely. " I gave the fleet's position away deliberately to Thorshammer when I saw the Blue Whales."
" What!" I exclaimed. " You… were in effect turning your father over to the Norwegian authorities? Deliberately?" " Yes," she said.
" So you saw, too, without even knowing that it was Thompson Island that was behind all this! Guarana, buccaneer's brandy-these are the accoutrements of a ruthless killer." I underestimated the bond between her father and herself. She was on her feet in an instant.
" How dare you! How dare you! I admire my father and I intend to protect him. I gave the fleet's position away to prevent him coming to further harm. If we're inside Norwegian territorial waters-so what? My father can afford a fine, even a stiff one. He hasn't killed a solitary whale. Thorshammer can arrest us. My father may have gone a bit astray in his enthusiasm to find the breeding-ground of the Blue Whale…"
" So much so that he is prepared to shoot down a seaplane and kill two innocent lads in it?"
" Either Walter or you, or both, shot down the seaplane, not my father," she flashed back. " No wonder Pirow says '
Herr Kapitan '!"
" What do you know about Pirow?" I asked.
She looked surprised. " He's a first-class radio operator. That's all."
I told her about The Man with the Immaculate Hand.
She sat down, her eyes wide. " What are you trying to say, Bruce?"
" I've said it," I replied. " Thompson Island. What do you know about Thompson Island? Why does your father want so desperately to find Thompson Island?"
Her face was drawn in the odd light. " I'd never heard of Thompson Island until you mentioned it."
" Your father is quite prepared to kill off Sailhardy and myself now he has the chart," I said. " I have tried to tell him the chart is useless by itself. You don't know it, but I am the only living man to have seen Thompson Island. I alone know where Thompson Island is. It is not where the chart says."
She got up impulsively and held her hand across my mouth. " Bruce, for God's sake, don't! Some unknown rock sticking out into an icy ocean suddenly becomes a killer and the thing that dominates all our lives! I'm frightened. Something wicked and enormous is building up.
Even the sky is ghastly. Look, it getting quite dark."
" Your father is building up the evil," I said. "He has got to be stopped."
" Perhaps that is why I gave our position away from the helicopter," she replied thoughtfully. " I didn't know any of this you have told me, but intuitively I felt my father…" A flicker of fear passed through her eyes.
"Helen," I said gently, " don't you see? All this means one thing and one thing only-your father must be protected, against himself."
She came and stood above me as I half-lay on the bunk.
She reached out and took my hands in hers. They were cold. " You're saying… you're saying… my father is mad?" I talked round it. " When a leading interest becomes an obsession, as it has with your father, it is only one stage further to a state of monomania. I don't know enough about what has led up to this expedition. Nor do I know what your father's obsessional interest is. But I do know that it centres on Thompson Island. However, no one goes to the lengths he has done just in order to rediscover an island which admittedly is one of the sea's great mysteries. I have tried to find out what your father is after. I failed. I am only seeing effect, without the cause. And…" I grinned wryly" one of the effects was damn nearly my death."
"I feel so alone in this," she said. " I have only you to turn to."
"Try and think back," I said. "How did this expedition come to be fitted out? Did something sudden happen? Did your father say anything?"
" He was crazy about rare metals," Helen replied. " You see what happened to his face. He threw himself into that research with everything he had."
" That was twenty-odd years ago," I said.
" Wait," she said. "There was something now you come to mention it. Both he and I have made trips to the Antarctic for about five years now. He was never like he is now, though. He enjoyed the voyages and he was always full of interest, always asking everyone we met about unusual places and discoveries."
" Thompson Island?" I suggested.
" I never heard him mention it," she said. " I've often heard him speak about Bouvet. I I…"
" What was the something?" I persisted.
" It wasn't here in the Antarctic at all," she said. " It was back in London. Perhaps about eighteen months ago. I remember he came home one evening and I could see he was very excited. He said he had bought out an old sealing firm and he had found some interesting things amongst some old
A thrill of disbelief passed through my mind. Two years previously the firm of Wetherbys had finally passed out of existence. I knew, however, that it had been bought by a small company called Stewart's Whaling Company. Upton had not figured, as far as I knew.
" What was the name of the sealing firm?" I asked. She shook her head. " I don't know. I wasn't really interested. All I remember is that he spent most of the evening examining some things that looked like bull's-eyes."
" Bull's-eyes?"
" You know, those black sweets with the white streaks in them."
" And then?"
" After that everything seemed to go with a rush. He was here, there and everywhere, negotiating for ships, stores, maps and so on. He practically organised this whole expedition himself.