"Impossible, Sprott. That set will hardly get more than twelve thousand miles."
Sprott looked uncomfortable. "Then maybe what I heard wasn't a message at all, sir."
"I think it was. Does McCracken know you overheard him?"
"I don't think so, sir."
"Then don't let him know that we suspect anything wrong. Come to think of it, McCracken never seems to act quite as stupid as he pretends to be. I shouldn't be surprised if, when he shot that Mercurian, he understood very well what he was doing."
"You believe, sir, that he deliberately tried to cause trouble? Why would he do that?"
"I don't know," said Lamoureux slowly.
That wasn't the whole truth. He didn't know, but he certainly could make a shrewd guess. All along, his chief reason for fearing delay on this expedition had been that Kalinoff might die before he could get to him. Now there was another reason for fearing delay. Suppose there were another expedition on the way to rescue Kalinoff. And suppose McCracken was secretly in the pay of the people behind that expedition, and doing everything possible to sabotage this one.
Lamoureux nodded to himself. That was probably it. The first thing, then, was to get the radio set from McCracken.