Dikon went along the verandah to Mr Questing’s room. The pearl-grey worsted suit was neatly disposed on a chair, ties that had a familiar look hung over the looking-glass, the bed was turned back and a suit of remarkably brilliant pyjamas with a violent puce motif was laid out. The room smelt strongly of the cream Mr Questing had used on his hair and, indefinably, of him. Dikon shut the door and went on to look, with an unhurried precision that surprised himself, through any other rooms where Questing might conceivably be found. He could hear Simon practising Morse in the cabin and through the open door saw that he and Smith were together there. On his return he saw Colly cross the verandah with a suit of Gaunt’s over his arm. Dikon returned to the dining-room and again sat down at the table. Nobody asked him if he had seen Questing.

Colonel Claire said suddenly: ‘Yes, but I don’t understand why it should have happened.’

Mr Falls was very patient. ‘A probable explanation might be that he walked too near the edge and it gave way.’

‘The only explanation, surely,’ said Dr Ackrington sharply.

‘Do you think so?’ asked Mr Falls politely. ‘Yes, perhaps you are right.’

‘Would it be possible,’ asked Dikon suddenly, ‘to branch off from the path and return to the pa by another route?’

‘There you are!’ cried Colonel Claire with childish optimism. ‘Why didn’t somebody think of that?’

‘Utterly impossible, I should say,’ said Dr Ackrington crisply. ‘Where’s that boy? And Smith? They ought to know.’

‘Dikon will find them,’ said Gaunt. ‘God, this can’t be true! It’s monstrous, it’s unthinkable. I—I won’t have it.’

‘You’ll have to lump it,’ thought Dikon as he went off to the cabin.

They were still there. Dikon interrupted Simon in the middle of a heated dissertation on fifth columnists in New Zealand. The sinking of the ship, together with all other crises of the past week, had been forgotten in this new and supreme horror, but now Dikon thought suddenly that if Questing had indeed been an agent, it would have been better for him to have faced discovery and a firing squad than to have met his fate in Taupo-tapu. He told Simon briefly what they believed to have happened, and was inexpressibly shocked by the way he took it.

‘Packed up, is he?’ said Simon angrily. ‘Yeh, and now they’ll never believe me. What a bastard!’

‘Cursing and swearing about the poor bastard when he’s dead,’ said Mr Smith reproachfully. ‘You ought to be bloody well ashamed of yourself.’ He stirred uneasily and disseminated a thick spirituous odour. ‘What a death!’ he added thickly. ‘Give you the willies to think about it, wouldn’t it?’ He shivered and rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘I had one or two over at the pa with the boys,’ he explained needlessly.