The Blue Ice (2 page)

He sat back in his chair again. ‘That's what I don't know,' he said.

‘But surely,' I said, ‘you know where it came from?'

He nodded. ‘Yes, I know where it came from.' His voice was dry and unemotional. ‘A fishmonger in Hartlepool sent it to me.'

‘A fishmonger in Hartlepool?' I stared at him. I thought he was joking.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘He found it in a case of whale meat.'

‘You mean it came from the stomach of a whale?' I was thinking of untold mineral wealth that was supposed to be hidden under the Antarctic ice.

‘No,' he replied. ‘The whale meat came from Norway. And that lump of ore hadn't been absorbed into the digestive organs of a whale. It had been placed in a fold of the meat when it was packed.' He paused, and then said, ‘We've checked up as far as we can from this end. The meat was part of a consignment dispatched to Newcastle by one of the Norwegian coastal stations.' He leaned forward. ‘Gansert, I want your opinion. Who's the best man for us on Norway?'

‘You mean for metals?' I asked.

He nodded.

I didn't have to stop and think. I knew them all. Most of them were friends of mine. ‘There's Pritchard,' I said. ‘Einar Jacobsen's good, and there's that Swedish fellow, Kults. Oh, and Williamson. But for our purpose, I'd say Pritchard.'

‘That's no good,' he said. ‘We're not the only people who know about this. Det Norske Staalselskab are on to it, too. Jorgensen's over here now, purchasing equipment. He's also angling for a tie-up with either ourselves or Castlet Steel. He says he possesses all the necessary information, but he's asking us to go into it blind. I've told him that's impossible and he threatens to approach the Americans. We've no time to waste sending Pritchard out there. He could search for months and find nothing. What we need is somebody who could advise us out of his own knowledge.'

‘There's only one man who could do that,' I said. ‘And he's probably dead by now. But if he weren't he could give you the answers you want. He knows Norway—' I stopped then and shrugged my shoulders. ‘That was the trouble,' I added. ‘He spent too much time in Norway – his own time and other people's money.'

Sir Clinton's gaze was fixed on me and there was almost a glint of excitement in his eyes. ‘You mean George Farnell, don't you?' he said.

I nodded. ‘But it's ten years since he disappeared.'

‘I know.' Sir Clinton's fingers drummed a tattoo on the leather surface of his brief case. ‘Two weeks ago our representative in Norway cabled from Oslo that there were rumours of new mineral discoveries in the central part of the country. Ever since then I've been trying to trace George Farnell. His mother and father are both dead. He seems to have had no relatives and no friends. Those who knew him before his conviction haven't heard from him since he disappeared. I had a detective agency on the job. No luck. Then I put an advertisement in the personal column of
The Times.
'

‘Any luck there?' I asked as he paused.

‘Yes. I had several replies – including the fishmonger. Apparently fishmongers now read
The Times.
'

‘But what made him connect that lump of ore with your advertisement?'

‘This.' Sir Clinton produced a filthy slip of paper. It was stained and stiffened with the congealed blood of the whale meat and had split along the folds. Through the dark bloodstains spidery writing showed in a vague blur. Two lines of what looked like poetry – and then a signature.

Ten years! It seemed incredible. ‘I suppose it is his signature?' I asked.

‘Yes.' Sir Clinton passed a slip of paper across to me. ‘That's a specimen,' he said.

I compared the two. There was no doubt about it. Blurred and half obliterated by the blood, the signature on the scrap of paper had the same flourishing characteristics as the specimen. I sat back, thinking of George Farnell – how he'd flung himself out of an express train and had then completely vanished. He'd worked with me once on some concessions in Southern Rhodesia. He'd been a small, dark man with tremendous vitality – a bundle of nerves behind horn-rimmed glasses. He was an authority on base metals and he'd been obsessed with the idea of untold mineral wealth in the great mountain mass of Central Norway. ‘This means that he's alive, and in Norway,' I said slowly.

‘I wish you were right,' Sir Clinton answered. He produced a newspaper cutting from his brief case. ‘Farnell's dead. This was published a fortnight ago. I didn't see it at the time. My attention was drawn to it later. There's a picture of the grave. And I've checked with the Norwegian military authorities that he did, in fact, join the Kompani Linge under the name of Bernt Olsen.'

I took the cutting. It was headlined – ESCAPED CONVICT IN HERO'S GRAVE. The letters of the name – Bernt Olsen – stood out black against the plain white cross in the picture. In the background was a small wooden church. The story recalled how Farnell had been convicted of forging the name of his partner Vincent Clegg and swindling him out of nearly £10,000, how he had escaped from the lavatory window of a train while being transferred to Parkhurst and had then completely vanished. That was in August, 1939. Apparently Farnell, trading on his knowledge of Norwegian, had then enlisted in the Norwegian Forces under the name Bernt Olsen. He had joined the Kompani Linge and had gone on the Malöy raid in December, 1941. He was reported missing from this operation. There followed a paragraph marked with blue pencil:

Recently the body of a man, later identified as Bernt Olsen, was discovered on the Boya Brae. He had attempted a lone crossing of the Jostedal, Europe's largest glacier. Presumably he had lost his way in a snowstorm. He must have fallen over a thousand feet on to the Boya Brae, a tributary of the main glacier above Fjaerland. He had with him divining rods and other metallurgical instruments. Papers found on the body proved the connection between Bernt Olsen, the hero, and George Farnell, the convict.

The story finished sententiously:
And so another of Britain's sons has found glory in the hour of his country's greatest need.

I handed the story back to Sir Clinton. ‘That happened a month ago?' I asked.

He nodded. ‘Yes. That's been checked. The body was found on March 10th. The grave is at Fjaerland, which is at the head of the fjord running right up under the Jostedal. Have you read the lines above the signature on that piece of paper?'

I looked at the bloodied scrap again. The lines were too blurred.

‘I've had it deciphered by experts,' Sir Clinton went on. ‘It reads:
If I should die, think only this of me
…'

‘
This
presumably being the sample of thorite?' I said. ‘How does it go?
If I should die, think only this of me
–
That there's some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England.
' An open invitation? But the fool hadn't said which corner. ‘Who was this addressed to?' I asked.

‘That's the trouble,' Sir Clinton replied. ‘The fishmonger destroyed the wrapping. He said it was sodden with blood and quite unreadable ‘anyway.'

‘Pity,' I said. ‘If we'd known that …' I was thinking of all the people who'd like to get their hands on deposits of thorite. B.M. & I. wasn't the only concern that had produced new alloys based on thorite.

‘It's almost as though he had some premonition,' Sir Clinton murmured. ‘Why else should he quote those lines of Rupert Brooke?'

‘Why, indeed?' I said. ‘And why go and die on the Jostedal?' That was what really puzzled me. Most of his life Farnell had spent in the mountains of Norway. He'd gone there as a boy on walking tours. By the time he was twenty he knew the mountains better than most Norwegians. All through that hot summer in Southern Rhodesia he'd talked of little else. Norway was his El Dorado. He lived for nothing else but the discovery of minerals in the ice-capped fastnesses of Scandinavia. It was to finance prospecting expeditions to Norway that he had swindled his partner. That had come out at the trial. I turned to Sir Clinton. ‘Isn't there something strange,' I said, ‘about a man who survives a jump from an express train, goes through the Malöy raid, does resistance work – all things he's never done before – and then gets himself killed in the one place in which he's really at home?'

Sir Clinton smiled and got to his feet. ‘He's dead,' he said. ‘And that's all there is to it. But before he died he discovered something. When he went to the Jostedal he knew his life was in danger – hence the thorite sample and the note. Somewhere in England there's somebody who's expecting that sample.' He folded the newspaper cutting and thrust the wooden box with the thorite sample back into the pocket of his coat. ‘What we need to know is what he had discovered before he died.' He paused. ‘See – today's Monday. I'll have Ulvik – that's our Norwegian representative – up at Fjaerland from Friday onwards. Find out all you can about how Farnell died – why he was on the Jostedal – and above all where that thorite sample came from. Needless to say, you'll find our representative has authority to meet all expenses you may incur in Norway. And we shan't forget that you'll be acting for the company as a freelance in this matter.'

He seemed to take it for granted that I'd switch my plans. That got me angry. ‘Look, Sir Clinton,' I said. ‘I'm not in need of money, and you seem to have forgotten that I'm leaving for the Mediterranean tomorrow.'

He turned in the doorway of the cabin. ‘The Mediterranean or Norway – what's it matter to you, Gansert?' He gripped my arm. ‘We need somebody over there we can trust,' he said. ‘Somebody who knew Farnell and who's an expert in this sort of metal. Above all, we need somebody who understands the urgency of the matter. Farnell is dead. I want to know what he discovered before he died. I'm offering you a purpose for your trip – and the necessary foreign exchange.' He nodded and turned again towards the door. ‘Think it over,' he said.

I hesitated. He was climbing the companion. ‘You've left your paper,' I said.

‘You might like to read it,' he answered.

I followed him up on to the deck. ‘Good luck!' he said. Then he climbed the iron ladder to the wharf. I stood and watched his tall, stooping figure till it disappeared between the warehouses. Damn the man! Why did he have to interfere with my plans? To hell with him – I was going down into the sunshine where there was warmth and colour. And then I thought of Farnell and how he'd discovered that seam of copper when everyone else had thought the mine worked out. Why in the world should he go and get himself killed on a glacier?

‘What did the old boy want?' Dick's voice brought me back to the present.

Briefly I told him what had happened. ‘Well?' he asked when I had finished. ‘What is it to be – the Med or Norway?' There was a bitter note in his voice as though he were resigned to disappointment. Norway was to him a cold, dark country. He wanted the sun and opportunity.

‘The Mediterranean,' I said with sudden decision. ‘I'm through with the scramble for metals.' The wind howled joyfully in the rigging. Then we'd lie out on the deck and swim and laze and drink wine. ‘Go and check that that water tender's coming alongside before the tide leaves us on the mud,' I said, and turned and went back to the saloon. I crossed over to the porthole and stood there idly watching a barge drift down with the outgoing tide. But why had Farnell died on the Jostedal? That's what I couldn't get out of my mind. During the war he'd probably lived up in the mountains. He knew all the glaciers. I glanced down at the table. The paper that Sir Clinton had left was still there. I read the headlines without recording them. I was thinking of Farnell's note:
If I should die
… Why quote that?

A story ringed in blue pencil caught my eye. It was headed – METAL EXPERT TO VISIT CONVICT'S GRAVE. I picked up the paper. The story was quite short. It read:

Recent reports of mineral discoveries in Central Norway have aroused fresh interest in the death of convict hero, George Farnell, whose body was discovered a month ago on the Jostedal Glacier in Norway. Farnell was an expert on Norwegian minerals. Castlet Steel and Base Metals & Industries are the firms chiefly interested. Sir Clinton Mann, chairman of B.M. & I., said yesterday, ‘It is possible that Farnell may have discovered something. We intend to investigate.'

‘Big' Bill Gansert, until recently production chief at B.M. & I.'s metal alloy plant at Birmingham, is the man chosen for the job. He leaves for Norway tomorrow, sailing his own yacht,
Diviner
, and postponing a planned Mediterranean cruise. If anyone has any information that may assist Gansert in his investigations, they are asked to get in touch with him on board his yacht which is moored at the wharf of Messrs. Crouch and Crouch, Herring-Pickle Street, London, close by Tower Bridge.

I threw the paper down angrily. What right had he to put out a story like that? – trying to force my hand? I thought of all I'd read about the ruins of Greece and Italy, the pyramids, the primitive islands of the Aegean, the hill towns of Sicily. I suppose I've been almost everywhere in the world. But I've seen nothing of it. I've always been chasing some damned metal, rushing from place to place, a little cog in the big machine of grab. I've never had a chance to stop off where I like and laze in the sun and look around me. All I knew of the world was cities and mining camps. I picked up the paper and read the story through again. Then I went up on deck. ‘Dick!' I shouted. ‘Any reason why we can't slip out on this tide?'

‘Yes,' he answered, surprised. ‘We've just grounded. Why?'

‘Read that,' I said and handed him the paper.

He read it through. Then he said, ‘It looks like Norway doesn't it?'