I had been watching him closely, wondering how his heart would stand up to the strain.
Then I saw the knife stand out in his neck.
It had a scrimshawed handle.
Jacobsen's voice rattled on the last word. His left hand plucked at his neck. Then he pitched forward with a crash of broken glass and crockery.
Wegger materialized inside the doorway behind me. He was at a half-crouch. His left hand was at full stretch. It held the Luger. His right talon, which had hurled the knife, was gripping a grenade. He was snatching at the firing-pin with his teeth.
Simultaneously, the double door at the far end of the saloon burst open. Two men fanned out, one right, the other left. A Scorpion machine-pistol was half-concealed in the huge hams of one. The moment I spotted him I knew this was Reilly's tunnel man. He was as wide as a hatchway and probably the biggest man I have ever seen. Two grenades dangled at his groin like giant misplaced testicles. The other gunman had a frame which looked as if it had been plaited from steel rope ending in a bristly topknot. It would have taken 30 seconds for the crossfire from their automatic weapons to have wiped out the whole company.
I leapt to my feet, wheeling. 'Wegger, you bastard.!'
A frightening, inhuman sound cut the stunned silence. It came from Mrs Jacobsen.
She threw herself at Wegger, who was only a pace or two away.
He must have been expecting it, because he waited until she got up to him. Then he swept the Luger barrel across her eyes and head. The force of the blow threw her against the panelling. She slid to the floor, scrabbling at the woodwork.
'Keep still!' shouted Wegger. 'Keep still, everyone! Everyone keep to their seats!'
Linn started up to help Mrs Jacobsen. Wegger put the Luger on her.
'Linn! Do as he says!' I rapped out.
'She's hurt…!'
'Get back! He's mad!'
She shrank uncertainly back into her chair.
I heard, rather than saw, Miss Auchinleck's protest to the big man at the other end of the table. A whale might as well have attacked a harpoon gun. He struck her in the face with the back of a great paw. She tottered and lay down like a piece of crumpled spun popcorn a child has discarded in the gutter.
Wegger turned the Luger on me. In a flash I knew now where he'd been when he had been missing from the bridge. He'd been laying the hijacking on the line, mustering his bully-boys, whom he must have smuggled aboard in Cape Town. There had been a near-miss in the hold when I had searched the ship, and when I had planned to turn back after hearing of Captain Prestrud's death. The whole operation had been carefully planned. The reason for his puzzling tensions was now as clear as day.
His pistol barrel was trembling. Now was my moment if I were to achieve anything before he steadied down to business.
I snatched up a table knife, ducked behind McKinley, and launched myself at him. The knife went hard against the steel of the gun. The crash of the shot deafened me. A the same moment the saloon was filled with sound as one of the other hijackers opened up with his Scorpion over the heads of the crowd. Ricochets whined and ripped the panelling.
In the split second when my knife struck the Luger, I knew that I had lost. The thrust had been meant for his heart. He had parried it by reflex.
He acted with great speed. I was still coming up to barrel my head in his solar plexus when the clubbed Luger struck at my head. I snicked my head aside. It caught my shoulder instead. It felt as if I had stopped the Quest's bow at full ahead. I dropped to one knee with the agony of it, cringing for the shot.
But Wegger held his fire. He pulled back, panting.
'Ullmann! Bravold!' he shouted. 'Hold it! Hold it! We've got'em!'
There was a thin high hysterical scream as incongruous as Mrs Jacobsen's animal keening. It came from McKinley's Barbara.
'Shut up!' snarled Wegger at McKinley. 'Shut her up, or I will!'
He rounded on me. 'Up!' he ordered. 'Back — over there against the wall! Away from me! All of you here — move! Keep your hands high!'
Smit, the met. Team leader, started to growl something and drag his feet.
'Forget it!' I told him under my breath. 'It's too late. We've lost. Forget it!'
The top table guests lined up against the panelling. The rest of the passengers sat transfixed in their chairs. McKinley was trying to quieten Barbara, who was still sobbing loudly.
'Ullmann!' called Wegger. The huge man moved cautiously round the port side of the saloon towards us, stepping over the pink bundle which was Miss Auchinleck. He kept open a field of fire for himself and Bravold. His skin was blotchy and his hair pale, almost white. His place was behind a harpoon gun. If the harpoon missed, he could always throw the gun.
Wegger jumped on to my chair, watching every move. I think any of the trio wold have shot a mouse had it moved.
The fiery pain in my shoulder shot up into my neck like a tracer bullet.
. 'Wegger!' I managed to say. 'Stop this damn nonsense! You must be crazy…!'
'Stow that crap!' he retorted. 'You'll take orders from me from now on, all of you, d'ye hear!'
'Wegger,' I said, 'I'll see you tried for murder. Ill make sure the law gets you. There are thirty eyewitnesses here.'
He jumped off the chair and took a step towards me.
'Law!' He made it sound as if it should be a four-letter word, and not three. 'Law! Take a look at the law from now on, will you!'
He gestured at Ullmann and Bravold. They were in a position to cut everyone down with a burst.
'So you killed Holdgate too,' I said. 'With the same knife. You've killed two men.'
'Holdgate got in my way,' he said. 'That's why he had to be killed.'
I glanced round the saloon hoping someone would support me in my threats to bring Wegger to justice, but the rest of the room seemed in shock. The faces were unresponsive. Ullmann and Bravold stood like human pillboxes with the barrels of their automatics jutting out from flesh instead of casemates.
Linn said in a wobbly voice to Wegger, 'Doesn't human life mean anything to you?'
The muscles in Wegger's face twitched and tightened as if they had been manipulated by wires from behind. His voice rose.
'Human life meant nothing to them! Nothing, I tell you! My life! My life, do you hear! The three of them — Jacobsen, Torgersen and Prestrud! It meant nothing to them!'
'My father — Torgersen! Jacobsen! You killed them all!'
Wegger continued to shout. 'Yes! I killed them all! The last of the bastards tonight — on the anniversary. They were celebrating what they did to me, d'ye hear! Don't give me that crap about human life! They took my life! They didn't think I'd come back and take theirs!'
'Talk sense, Wegger,' I cut in. 'Nothing can justify what you've done!'
'My father!' went on Linn in a strangled voice. You pistol-whipped him until he died!'
I put my sound arm round her. She didn't sob; the convulsions I felt were dry spasms of shock.
'Listen, Wegger…'
They took my life!' he mouthed. 'What do you know of how it feels to have your life run out, day by day, week by week, month by month, fighting with the birds and the elephant seals for stinking scraps that would make you puke, living on Kerguelen cabbage and birds' eggs, the skuas coming at your eyes all the time!'
'When and where was all this?' I demanded.
'Where else?' he said wildly. 'Prince Edward Island! They called it Dina's Island after they'd seen her lying there — and they left me with her! They sailed away and left me marooned — alone, alone — Jesus! Alone and knowing no one would ever come and rescue me. I got so that I used to sit and talk to her — she lay there on her back looking up at me and smiling and when I tried to kiss her the ice came between us. I wanted to make love to her, but she was cold, she was ice! They left me on Prince Edward and sailed away!'