Night Without End (18 page)

     With Jackstraw established on the sledge, I walked back to the tractor and pushed aside the canvas screen at the back of the wooden body. What with the faces of the passengers, drawn and pinched and weirdly pale in the light of the tiny overhead bulb, the constant shivering, the chattering of teeth and the frozen breath drifting upwards to condense and freeze on the wooden roof, it was a picture of utter and abject misery: but I was in no mood to be moved at that moment. 

     "Sorry for the delay," I said. "Just off again now. But I want one of you for a lookout." 

     Both Zagero and Corazzini volunteered almost in the same breath, but I shook my head. 

     "You two get what sleep or rest you can - I'm liable to need you very much later on. Perhaps you, Mr Mahler?" 

     He looked pale and ill, but he nodded silently, and Zagero said in a quiet voice: "Corazzini and myself too high up on the list of suspects, huh?" 

     "I wouldn't put either of you at the very foot," I said shortly. I waited till Mahler had climbed down then dropped the canvas and walked round to the driver's seat. 

     Theodore Mahler, strangely enough, proved only too anxious to talk - and keep on talking. It was so completely out of keeping with the idea I had formed of his character that I was more than surprised. Loneliness, perhaps, I thought, or trying to forget the situation, or trying to divert my thoughts and suspicions: how wrong I was on all three counts I wasn't to find out until later. 

     "Well, Mr Mahler, it looks as if the itinerary of your European trip is going to be upset a bit." I had almost to shout to make my words heard above the roar of the tractor. 

     "Not Europe, Dr Mason." I could hear the machine-gun-like chatter of his teeth. "Israel." 

     "You live there?" 

     "Never been there in my life.1 There was a pause, and when his voice came again it was all but drowned in the sound of the engine. I thought I caught the words 'My home'. 

     "You - you're going to start a new life there, Mr Mahler?" 

     Tm sixty-nine - tomorrow," he answered obliquely. "A new life? Let's say, rather, that I'm going to end an old one." 

     "And you're going to live there, make your home there - after sixty-nine years in another country?" 

     "Millions of us Jews have done just that, in the past ten years. Not that I've lived in America all my life. . . . " 

     And then he told me his story - a story of refugee oppression that I'd heard a hundred times, with a hundred variations. He was a Russian Jew, he said, one of the millions of the largest Jewry in the world that had been 'frozen' for over a century in the notorious Pale of Settlement, and in 1905 had been forced to flee with his father - leaving mother and two brothers behind - to escape the ruthless massacres carried out by the 'Black Hundreds' at the behest of the last of the Romanoff Tzars who was seeking scapegoats for his crushing defeat by the Japanese. His mother, he learned later, had just disappeared, while his two brothers had survived only to die in agony long years afterwards, one in the rising in the Bialystok ghetto, the other in the Treblinka gas chambers. He himself had found work in the clothing industry in New York, studied in night school, worked for an oil company, married and with the death of his wife that spring had set about fulfilling the agelong ambition of his race, the return to their holy land. 

     It was a touching story, pathetic and deeply moving, and I didn't believe a word of it. 

     Every twenty minutes I changed position with Jackstraw and so the long hours of the night dragged by as the cold deepened and the stars and the moon wheeled across the black vault of the sky. And then came moonset, the blackness of the arctic night rushed across the ice-cap, I slowed the Citroen gratefully to a stop and the silence, breathless and hushed and infinitely sweet, came flooding in to take the place of the nightlong clamour of the deafening roar of the big engine, the metallic clanking of the treads. 

     Over our black sugarless coffee and biscuits I told our passengers that this would be only a brief three-hour halt, that they should try to get what sleep they could: most of them, myself included, were already red-eyed and drooping from exhaustion. Three hours, no more: not often did Greenland offer travel weather like this, and the chance was not to be missed. 

     Beside me, as I drank my coffee, was Theodore Mahler. He was for some reason restless, ill at ease, jerky and nervous, and his eyes and attention both wandered so much that it was easy enough for me to find out what I wanted. 

     When my cup was empty, I whispered in Mahler's ear that there was a little matter that I wished to discuss privately with him. He looked at me in surprise, hesitated, then nodded in agreement, rising to follow me as I moved out into the darkness. 

     A hundred yards away I stopped, switched on my torch so that he blinked in its beam, and slid my Beretta forward until its barrel was clearly visible, sharply outlined in the harsh white glare. I heard the catch of the breath, saw the eyes widening in fear and horror. 

     "Save the act for the judge, Mahler," I said bleakly. "I'm not interested in it. All I want is your gun." 

   CHAPTER SEVEN - Tuesday 7 A.M. - Tuesday Midnight 

     "My gun?" Mahler had slowly lifted his arms until his hands were at shoulder level, and his voice wasn't quite steady. "I - I don't understand, Dr Mason. I have no gun." 

     "Naturally." I jerked the barrel of the Beretta to lend emphasis to my words. Turn round." 

     "What are you going to do? You're making a-" 

     "Turn round!" 

     He turned. I took a couple of steps forward, ground the muzzle of the automatic none too gently into the small of his back, and started to search him with my free hand. 

     He was wearing two overcoats, a jacket, several sweaters and scarves, two-pairs of trousers and layer upon layer of underclothes: searching him was easier said than done. It took me a full minute to convince myself that he wasn't carrying a weapon of any kind. I stepped back, and he came slowly round to face me. 

     "I hope you're quite satisfied now, Dr Mason?" 

     "We'11 see what we find in your case. As for the rest, I'm satisfied enough. I have all the proof I want." I dipped the torch beam to illuminate the handful of sugar I'd taken from the pocket of his inner overcoat - there had been well over a pound in either pocket. "You might care to explain where you got this from, Mr Mahler?" 

     "I don't have to tell you that, do I?" His voice was very low. "I stole it, Dr Mason." 

     "You did indeed. A remarkably small-time activity for a person who operates on the scale you do. It was just your bad luck, Mahler, that I happened to be looking directly at you when the theft of the sugar was mentioned back in the cabin. It was just your bad luck that when we had our coffee just now it was dark enough for me to have a swig from your cup without your knowledge: it was so stiff with sugar that I couldn't even drink the damn' stuff. Curious, isn't it, Mahler, that such a tiny thing as giving way to a momentary impulse of greed should ruin everything? But I believe it's always the way: the big slip-up never brings the big criminal to book, because he never makes any. If you'd left that sugar alone when you were smashing up the valves, I'd never have known. Incidentally, what did you do with the rest of the sugar? In your grip? Or just thrown away?" 

     "You're making a very grave mistake, Dr Mason." Mahler's voice was steady now, and if it held any trace of worry or guilt I couldn't detect it. But I was now far beyond the naive stage of expecting to detect anything of the sort. "I didn't touch those valves. And, apart from the few handfuls I took, the sugar bag was quite intact when I left it." 

     "Of course, of course." I waved the Beretta. "Back to the tractor, my friend, and let's have a look at this case of yours." 

     "No!" 

     "Don't be crazy," I snapped. "I have a gun, Mahler. Believe me, I won't hesitate to use it." 

     "I believe you. I think you would be quite ruthless if the need arose. Oh, I don't doubt you're tough, Doctor, as well as being headstrong, impulsive and not very subtle, but because I rather respect your efficient and selfless handling of an awkward and ugly situation for which you were in no way responsible, I don't want to see you make a complete fool of yourself in public." He lifted his right hand towards the lapel of his coat. "Let me show you something." 

     I jerked the Beretta forward, but the gesture was quite needless. As he pushed his hand under his topcoats, Mahler's gestures were smooth and unhurried, just as smooth and unhurried when he brought his hand out again and passed over to me a leather-covered card. I stepped back a few feet, flipped open the card and glanced down at it. 

     That one glance was enough - or should have been enough. I'd seen these cards scores of times before, but I stared down at this one as if I'd never seen one in my life. This was a completely new factor, it knocked all my preconceived notions on the head, and I needed time, time for reorient a tion, for understanding, for quelling the professional fear that came hard on the heels of that understanding. Then, slowly, I folded the card, pulled down my snow-mask, stepped close to Mahler and pulled his down also. In the harsh glare of the torch, his face was blue and white with the cold, and I could see the jutting of the jaw muscles as he clamped his teeth together to keep them from chattering uncontrollably. 

     "Breathe out," I said. 

     He did as I asked, and there was no mistaking it, none at all: the sweet acetone breath of the advanced and untreated diabetic can't possibly be confused with anything else. Wordlessly, I handed him back the card and thrust the automatic into my parka pocket. 

     At last I said quietly: "How long have you had this, Mr Mahler?" 

     "Thirty years." 

     "A pretty advanced condition?" When it came to discussing a man's illness with him, I had little time for the professional reticence of many of my colleagues: besides, the average elderly diabetic had survived to that age simply because he was intelligent about the dietary and medical treatment of his trouble, and usually knew all about it. 

     "My doctor would agree with you." I caught the smile on his face as he pushed his mask up, and there wasn't much humour in it. "So would I." 

     "Twice daily injections?" 

     "Twice," he nodded. "Before breakfast and in the evening." 

     "But don't you carry a hypo and-" 

     "Normally," he interrupted. "But not this time. The Gander doctor gave me a jab and as I can usually carry on a few hours overdue without Ul effects I thought I'd wait until we got to London." He tapped his breast pocket. "This card's good anywhere." 

     "Except on the Greenland ice-cap," I said bitterly. "But then I don't suppose you anticipated a stop-over here. What diet were you on?" 

     "High protein, high starch." 

     "Hence the sugar?" I looked down at the white crystals still clenched in my left mitten. 

     "No." He shrugged. "But I know sugar used to be used for the treatment of coma. I thought maybe if I stuffed enough into myself.. . . Well, anyway, you know now why I turned criminal." 

     "Yes, I know now. My apologies for the gun-waving act, Mr Mahler, but you must admit I had every justification. Why in the hell didn't you tell me before now? I am supposed to be a doctor, you know." 

     "I would have had to tell you sooner or later, I suppose. But right now you'd plenty of troubles of your own without worrying about mine also. And I didn't think there would be much chance of your carrying insulin among your medical stores." 

     "We don't - we don't have to. Everybody gets a thorough medical before going on an IGY station, and diabetes hardly develops overnight. . . . You take it all very calmly, I must say, Mr Mahler. Come on, let's get back to the tractor." 

     We reached there inside a minute. I pulled back the canvas screen, and a thick white opaque cloud formed almost immediately as the relatively warm air inside met the far sub-zero arctic air outside. I waved my hand to dispel it, and peered inside. They were all still drinking coffee - it was the one thing we had in plenty. It seemed difficult to realise that we'd been gone only a few minutes. 

     "Hurry up and finish off," I said abruptly. "We're on our way within five minutes. Jackstraw, would you start the engine, please, before she chills right down?" 

     "On our way!" The protest, almost inevitably, came from Mrs Dansby-Gregg. "My dear man, we've hardly stopped. And you promised us three hours' sleep only a few minutes ago." 

     "That was a few minutes ago. That was before I found out about Mr Mahler here." Quickly I told them all I thought they needed to know. "It sounds brutal to say it in Mr Mahler's presence," I went on, "but the facts themselves are brutal. Whoever crashed that plane - and, to a lesser extent, stole the sugar - put Mr Mahler's life in the greatest danger. Only two things, normally, could save Mr Mahler- a properly balanced high-calorie diet as a short term measure, insulin as a long term one. We have neither. All we can give Mr Mahler is the chance to get one or other of these things with all speed humanly possible. Between now and the coast that tractor engine is going to stop only if it packs in completely, if we run into an impassable blizzard - or if the last of the drivers collapses over the wheel. Are there any objections?"