By four o’clock that afternoon, members of the crew, working in relays, had managed to clear away from the machinery space all the debris and foam that had accumulated during the long night. After that, Swanson reduced all watches to the barest skeletons required to run the ship, so that as many men as possible might sleep as long as possible. Now that the exultation of victory was over, now that the almost intolerable relief of knowing that they were not, after all, to find their gasping end in a cold iron tomb under the ice cap had begun to fade, the inevitable reaction, when it did come, was correspondingly severe. A long and sleepless night behind them; hours of cruelly back-breaking toil in the metal jungle of the machinery space; that lifetime of tearing tension when they had not known whether they were going to live or die but had believed they were going to die; the poisonous fumes that had laid them all on the rack–all of these combined had taken cruel toll of their reserves of physical and mental energy, and the crew of the _Dolphin_ were now sleep-ridden and exhausted as they had never been. When they lay down to sleep, they slept at once, like dead men.
I didn’t sleep. Not then, not at four o’clock. I couldn’t sleep. I had too much to think about: like how it had been primarily my fault, through mistake, miscalculation, or sheer pig-headedness, that the _Dolphin_ and her crew had been brought to such desperate straits; like what Commander Swanson was going to say when he found out how much I’d kept from him, how little I’d told him. Still, if I had kept him in the dark so long, I couldn’t see that there would be much harm in it if I kept him in the dark just that little time longer. It would be time enough in the morning to tell him all I knew. His reactions would be interesting, to say the least. He might be striking some medals for Rawlings, but I had the feeling that he wouldn’t be striking any for me. Not after I’d told him what I’d have to.
Rawlings. That was the man I wanted now. I went to see him, told him what I had in mind, and asked him if he would mind sacrificing a few hours’ sleep during the night. M always, Rawlings was co-operation itself.
Later that evening I had a look at one or two of the patients. Jolly, exhausted by his Herculean efforts of the previous night, was fathoms deep in slumber, so Swanson had asked if I would deputize for him. So I did, but I didn’t try very hard. With only one exception they were sound asleep, and none of them was in so urgent need of medical attention that there would have been any justification for waking him up. The sole exception was Dr. Benson, who had recovered consciousness late that afternoon. He was obviously on, the mend, but complained that his head felt like a pumpkin with sonieone at work on it with a riveting gun, so I fed him some pills and that was the extent of the treatment. I asked him if he had any idea as to what had been the cause of his fall from the top of the sail, but he was either too woozy to remember or just didn’t know. Not that it mattered now. I already knew the answer. –
I slept for nine hours after that, which was pretty selfish of me, considering that I had asked Rawlings to keep awake half the night; but, then, I hadn’t had much option about that, for Rawlings was in a position to perform for me an essential task that I couldn’t perform for myself.
Sometime during the night we passed out from under the ice cap into the open Arctic Ocean again.
I awoke shortly after seven, washed, shaved, and dressed as carefully as I could with one hand out of commission– for I believe a judge owes it to his public to be decently turned out when he goes to conduct a trial–then breakfasted well in the wardroom. Shortly before nine o’clock I walked into the control room. Hansen had the watch. I went up to him and said quietly, so that I couldn’t be overheard: “Where is Commander Swanson?”
“In his cabin.”
“I’d like to speak to him and you. Privately.”
Hansen looked at me speculatively, nodded, handed over the watch to the navigator, and led the way to Swanson’s cabin. We knocked, went in, and closed the door behmd us. I didn’t waste any time in preamble.
“I know who the killer is,” I said. “I’ve no proof, but I’m going to get it now. I would like you to be on hand–if you can spare the time.”
They had used up all their emotional responses and reactions during the previous thirty hours, so they didn’t throw up their hands or do startled double-takes or make any of the other standard signs of incredulousness. Instead, Swanson just looked thoughtfully at Hansen, rose from his table, folded the chart he’d been studying, and said dryly: “I think we might spare the time, Dr. Carpenter. I have never met a murderer.” His tone was impersonal, even light, but the clear gray eyes had gone very cold indeed. “It will be quite an experience to meet a man with eight deaths on his conscience.”
“You can count yourself lucky that it is only eight,” I said. “He almost brought it up to the hundred mark yesterday morning.”
This time I did get them. Swanson stared at me, then said softly, “What do you mean?”
“Our friend with the gun also carries a box of matches around with him,” I said. “He was busy with them in the engine room in the early hours of yesterday morning.”
“Someone _deliberately_ tried to set the ship on fire?” Hansen looked at me in open disbelief. “I don’t buy that, Doe.”
“I buy it,” Swanson said. “I buy anything Dr. Carpenter says. We’re dealing with a madman. Only a madman would risk losing his life along with the lives of a hundred others.”
“He miscalculated,” I said mildly. “Come along.”
They were waiting for us in the wardroom as I’d arranged, eleven of them in all: Rawlings, Zabrinski, Captain Folsom, Dr. Jolly, the two Harrington twins, who were now just barely well enough to be out of bed, Naseby, Hewson, Hassard, Kinnaird and Jeremy. Most of them were seated around the wardroom table except for Rawlings, who opened the door for us, and Zabrinski, his foot still in the cast, who was sitting in a chair in one corner of the room studying an issue of the _Dolphin Daze_, the submarine’s own mimeographed newspaper. Some of them made to get to their feet as we came in, but Swanson waved them down. They sat silently, all except Dr. Jolly, who boomed out a cheerful “Good morning, Captain. Well, well, this is an intriguing summons. Most intriguing. What is it you want to see us about, Captain?”
I cleared my throat. “You must forgive a small deception. It is I who wants to see you, not the captain.”
“You?” Jolly pursed his lips and looked at me speculatively. “I don’t get it, old boy. Why you?”
“I have been guilty of another small deception. I am not, as I gave you to understand, attached to the Ministry of Supply. I am an agent of the British government. An officer of M.I.6, counter-espionage.”
Well, I got my reaction, all right. They just sat there, mouths wide open like newly landed fish, staring at me. It was Jolly, always a fast adjuster, who recovered first.
“Counter-espionage, by Jove! Counter-espionage! Spies and cloaks and daggers and beautiful blondes tucked away in the wardrobes–or wardroom, should I say. But why–why are you _here?_ What do you–well, what _can_ you want to see us about, Dr. Carpenter?”
“A small matter of murder,” I said.
“Murder!” Captain Folsom spoke for the first time since coming aboard ship, the voice issuing from that savagely burnt face no more than a strangled croak. “Murder?”
“Two of the men lying up there now in the drift station lab were dead _before_ the fire. They had been shot through the head. A third had been knifed. I would call that murder, wouldn’t you?”
Jolly groped for the table and lowered himself shakily into his seat. The rest of them looked as if they were very glad that they were already sitting down.
“It seems too superfluous to add,” I said, adding it all the same, “that the murderer is in this room now.”
You wouldn’t have thought it, not to look at them. You could see at a glance that none of those high-minded citizens could possibly be a killer. They were as innocent as life’s young morning, the whole lot of them, pure and white as the driven snow.