I found Gordon Meyverik exactly five weeks from the day Madison first visited me in my old office.
"Of course, I planned the whole thing, Dr. Thorn," Gordon said crisply.
I knew what he meant although I hadn't guessed it before. He could tell it to me himself, I decided.
"Doesn't seem much to brag about," I said. "Anybody who can make up a grocery list should be able to figure out how to isolate himself on Seal Island."
He sat forward, a lean Viking with a hot Latin glance, very confident of himself.
"I reckoned on you locating me, on you hustling me back to pilot the Evening Star. That's why I holed in there."
"I can't accept your story," I lied cheerfully. "Nobody is going to maroon himself on an island for three years because of a wild possibility like that."
Meyverik smiled and his sureness swelled out until it almost jabbed me in the stomach.
"I took a broad gamble," he said, "but it hit the wire, didn't it?"
I didn't reply, but he had his answer.