The tane unto the tither did say,

seriously ill and Marie LeGarde frighteningly weak and exhausted, I couldn't remain any longer. Had I been made of tougher stuff, or even had I not been a doctor, I might have brought myself to recognise that both Marie LeGarde and Theodore Mahler were expendable pawns in a game where the stakes, I was now certain, were far greater than just the lives of one or two people. I might have held everybodyor the major suspects, at leastat gunpoint until such time, twenty-four hours if need be, as Hillcrest did come up. But I could not bring myself to regard our sick passengers as expendable pawns. A weakness, no doubt, but one that I was almost proud to share with Jackstraw, who felt exactly as I did. That Hillcrest would come up eventually I felt pretty sure. The dumping of the sugar in the petrolI bit my lips in chagrin whenever I remembered that it had been I who had told them all that Hillcrest was running short of fuelhad been a brilliant move, but nothing more, now, than I had come to expect of men who thought of everything, made every possible provision against future eventualities. Still, even though furiously angry at the delay, Hillcrest had thought he could cope with the situation. The big cabin of the Sno-Cat was equipped with a regular workshop with tools fit to deal with just about every mechanical breakdown, and already his driver-mechanic-1 didn't envy him his murderous task even though he was reportedly working behind heated canvas apronshad stripped down the engine and was cleaning pistons, cylinder walls and valves of the unburnt carbon deposits that had finally ground the big tractor to a halt. A couple of others had rigged up a makeshift distillation unita petrol drum, almost full, with a thin metal tube packed in ice leading from its top to an empty drum. Petrol, Hillcrest had explained, had a lower boiling point than sugar, and when the drum was heated the evaporating gas, which would cool in the ice-packed tube, should emerge as pure petrol. Such, at least, was the theory, although Hillcrest didn't seem absolutely sure of himself. He had asked if we had any suggestion, whether we could help him in any way at all, but I had said we couldn't. I was tragically, unforgivably wrong. I could have helped, for I knew something that no one else did, but, at the moment, I completely forgot it. And because I forgot, nothing could now avert the tragedy that was to come, or save the lives of those who were about to die. My thoughts were black and bitter as the tractor roared and lurched and camera digital direct printing clattered its way south-west by west under the deepening darkness of a sky that was slowly beginning to fill with cloud. A dark depression filled me, and a cold rage, and there was room in my mind for both. I had a strange fey sense of impending disaster, and though I was doctor enough to know that it was almost certainly a psychologically induced reaction to the cold, exhaustion, sleeplessness and hungerand a physical reaction to the blow on the headnevertheless I could not shake it off: and I was angry because I was helpless. I was helpless to do anything to protect any of the innocent people with me, the people who had entrusted themselves to my care, the sick Mahler and Marie LeGarde, the quiet young German girl, the grave-faced Margaret Rossabove all, I had to admit to myself, Margaret Ross: I was helpless because I knew the murderers might strike at any time, for all I knew they might believe that Hillcrest had already told me all I needed to know ana that I was just waiting my chance to catch them completely off guard; on the other hand they, too, were almost certainly just biding their time, not knowing how much I knew, but just taking a calculated gamble, letting things ride as long as the tractor kept moving, kept heading in the right direction, but prepared to strike once and for all when the time came: and, above all, I was helpless because I still had no definite idea as to who the killers were. For the hundredth time I went over everything I could remember, everything that had happened, everything that had been said, trying to dredge up from the depths of memory one single fact, one isolated word that would point the finger in one unmistakable direction. But I found nothing. Of the ten passengers Jackstraw and I had with us, six of them, I felt certain, were almost beyond suspicion. Margaret Ross and Marie LeGarde were completely beyond it. The only things that could be said against Mrs Dansby-Gregg and Helene was that I hadn't absolute proof of their innocence, but I was certain that such proof was quite unnecessary. United States senators, as recent bribery and corruption cases had lamentably shown, had as many human failingsespecially cupidityas the next man: but, even so, the idea of a senator getting mixed up with murder and criminal activities on this massive scale was too preposterous to bear further examination. As for Mahler, I was quite aware that being a diabetic didn't bar a man

For the rights of a monarch their country defending,

indescribable, and Mallory shuddered to think what it would have been like had the tavernaris had at his disposal any illumination more powerful than the two smoking oil lamps placed on the counter before him. As it was, the gloom suited him well. Their dark clothes, braided jackets, tsantas and jackboots looked genuine enough, Mallory knew, and the black-fringed turbans Louki had mysteriously obtained for them looked as they ought to look in a tavern where every islander thereabout eight of themwore nothing else on their heads. Their clothes had been good enough to pass muster with the tavernarisbut then even the keeper of a wine shop could hardly be expected to know every man in a town of five thousand, and a patriotic Greek, as Louki had declared this man to be, wasn't going to lift even a faintly suspicious eyebrow as long as there were German soldiers present. And there were Germans presentfour of them, sitting round a table near the counter. Which was why Mallory had been glad of the semi-darkness. Not, he was certain, that he and Dusty Miller had any reason to be physically afraid of these men. Louki had dismissed them contemptuously as a bunch of old womenheadquarters clerks, Mallory guessedwho came to this tavern every night of the week. But there was no point in sticking out their necks unnecessarily. Miller lit one of the pungent, evil-smelling local cigarettes, wrinkling his nose in distaste. "Damn' funny smell in this joint, boss." "Put your cigarette out," Mallory suggested. "You wouldn't believe it, but the smell I'm smelling is a damn' sight worse than that." "Hashish," Mallory said briefly. "The curse of these island ports." He nodded over towards a dark corner. "The lads of the village over there will be at it every night in life. It's all they live for." "Do they have to make that gawddamned awful racket when they're at it?" Miller asked peevishly. "Toscanini should see this lot!" Mallory looked at the small group in the corner, clustered round the young man playing a bouzoukoa long-necked mandolinand singing the haunting, nostalgic rembetika songs of the hashish smokers of the Piraeus. He supposed the music did have a certain melancholy, lotus-land attraction, but right then it jarred on him. One had to be in a certain twi-lit, untroubled mood to appreciate that sort of thing; and he had never felt less untroubled in his life. "I suppose it is a bit grim," digital camera repair manuals he admitted. "But at least it lets us talk together, which we couldn't do if they all packed up and went home." "I wish to hell they would," Miller said morosely. "I'd gladly keep my mouth shut." He picked distastefully at the mezea mixture of chopped olives, liver, cheese and appleson the plate before him; as a good American and a bourbon drinker of long standing he disapproved strongly of the invariable Greek custom of eating when drinking. Suddenly he looked up and crushed his cigarette against the table top. "For Gawd's sake, boss, how much longer?" Mallory looked at him, then looked away. He knew exactly how Dusty Miller felt, for he felt that way himselftense, keyed-up, every nerve strung to the tautest pitch of efficiency. So much depended on the next few minutes; whether all their labour and their suffering had been necessary, whether the men on Kheros would live or die, whether Andy Stevens had lived and died in vain. Mallory looked at Miller again, saw the nervous hands, the deepened wrinkles round the eyes, the tightly compressed mouth, white at the outer corners, saw all these signs of strain, noted them and discounted them. Excepting Andrea alone, of all the men he had ever known he would have picked the lean, morose American to be his companion that night. Or maybe even including Andrea. "The finest saboteur in southern Europe" Captain Jensen had called him back in Alexandria. Miller had come a long way from Alexandria, and he had come for this alone. To-night was Miller's night. "Curfew in fifteen minutes," he said quietly. "The balloon goes up in twelve minutes. For us, another four minutes to go." Miller nodded, but said nothing. He filled his glass again from the beaker in the middle of the table, lit a cigarette. Mallory could see a nerve twitching high up in his temple and wondered dryly how many twitching nerves Miller could see in his own face. He wondered, too, how the crippled Casey Brown was getting on in the house they had just left. In many ways he had the most responsible job of alland at the critical moment he would have to leave the door unguarded, move back to the balcony. One slip up there. . . . He saw Miller look strangely at him and grinned crookedly. This had to come off, it just had to: he thought of what must surely happen if he failed, then shied away from the thought. It wasn't good to think of these things, not now, not at this time. He wondered if the other two