'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.'