Went tripping over the plain;

the stores and petrol drums and lashing them on the sledge." He glanced up through the skylight. "The plane, wasn't it?" " 'Was' is right." I glanced at the stewardess. "My apologies, Miss Ross. You did hear somebody out there." "You meanyou mean it wasn't an accident?" Zagero asked. There's a fair chance that you know damned well that it wasn't, I thought. Aloud, I said: "It was no accident." "So there goes your evidence, eh?" Corazzini asked. "The pilot and Colonel Harrison, I mean." "No. The nose and tail of the plane are still intact. I don't know what the reason could bebut I'm sure there's a damned good one. And you can put these bags away, Mr Corazzini. We're not, as you say, playing with children or amateurs." There was silence while Corazzini returned the bags, then Joss looked at me quizzically. "Well, that explains one thing at least." "The messed-up explosives?" I remembered with chagrin how I had listened to the abnormally loud hissing out by the plane, but had ignored it. Someone who had known very clearly what he was doing had led a fuse into petrol lines or tanks or carburettors. "It certainly does." "What's all this about explosives and fuses?" Senator Brewster demanded. It was the first word he had spoken since Jackstraw had scared the wits out of him, and even yet the colour wasn't all back in his face. "Somebody stole the fuses to set fire to the plane. For all I know it may have been you." I held up my hand to still his outraged spluttering and went on wearily: "It may equally well have been one of the other seven of you. I don't know. All I know is that the person or persons responsible for the murders were responsible for the theft of the fuses. And for the smashing of the radio valves. And for the theft of the condensers." "And for the theft of the sugar," Joss put in. "Though heaven only knows why they should want to steal that." "Sugar!" I exclaimed, and then the question died in my throat. I happened to be looking straight at the little Jew, Theodore Mahler, and the nervous start he gave, the quick flicker of his eyes in Joss's direction, was unmistakable. I knew I couldn't have imagined it. But I looked away quickly, before he could see my face. "Our last bag," Joss explained. "Maybe thirty pounds. It's gone. I found what little was left of itjust a handful lying on the floor of the tunnelmixed up with the smashed valves." I shook my head and said nothing. The reason for this olympus sp-350 8mp digital camera last theft I couldn't even begin to imagine. Supper that night was a sketchy affairsoup, coffee and a couple of biscuits each as the only solids. The soup was thin, the biscuits no more than a bite and the coffee, for me at any rate, all but undrinkable without sugar. And the meal was as silent as it was miserable, conversation being limited to what was absolutely necessary. Time and again I would see someone turn to his neighbour and make to say something, then his lips would clamp tightly shut, the expression drain out of his face as he turned away without a word: with almost everyone thinking that his or her neighbour might be a murderer, or, what was almost as bad, that his or her neighbour might be thinking that he was a murderer, the meal was by all odds the most awkward and uncomfortable that I'd ever had. Or, that is, the first part of it was: but by and by I came to the conclusion that I'd a great deal more to worry about than the niceties of social intercourse. After the meal I rose, pulled on parka and gloves, picked up the searchlight; told Jackstraw and Joss to come with me and headed for the trap-door. Zagero's voice stopped me. "Where you goin', Doc?" "That's no concern of yours. Well, Mrs Dansby-Gregg?" "Shouldn't youshouldn't you take the rifle with you?" "Don't worry." I smiled thinly. "With everyone watching everyone else like hawks, that rifle's as safe as houses." "Butbut someone could jump for it," she said nervously. "They could get you when you're coming down the hatch" "Mr Nielsen and I are the last two persons they'd ever shoot. Without us, they couldn't get a mile from here. The most likely candidates for the next bullet are some of yourselves. You're absolutely inessential and, as far as the killers are concerned, represent nothing more than a waste of priceless rations." With this comforting thought I left them, each person trying to watch all the others at one and the same time, while doing his level best to give the appearance of watching no one. The wind was so slight now that the anemometer cups had stopped turning. The dying embers of the burnt-out plane were a dull smouldering glow to the north-east. The snow had gone completely and the first faint stars were beginning to show through the thinning cloud above. It was typically Greenland, this