The Dark Crusader (17 page)

"But-but we could still have drowned," Marie said slowly. "We might have missed the reef or lagoon."

"What-miss a six-mile wide target? You said old Fleck seemed to be changing course pretty often and you were right. He wanted to make good and sure that when we jumped we did so opposite the middle of the reef where we couldn't miss. He even slowed right down so that we couldn't hurt ourselves when we jumped overboard. Probably standing there killing himself laughing when Bentall and Hopeman, two stooges in search of a comedian, pussy-footed it down the stern. And those voices I heard on the reef that night? John and James out in their canoe, seeing that we didn't even put a foot wrong and sprain an ankle. God, how much of a sucker can you be?"

There was a long silence. I lit a couple of cigarettes and gave her one. The moon had gone behind a cloud and her face was only a pale blue in the darkness. Then she said: "Fleck and the professor-they must be working hand in hand."

"Can you see any other possibility?"

"What do they want with us?"

"I'm not sure yet." I was sure, but this was one thing I couldn't tell her.

"But-but why all the fake build-up? Why couldn't Fleck have sailed right in and handed us over to the professor?"

"There's an answer to that, too. Whoever is behind this is a very smart boy indeed. There's a reason for everything he does."

"You-do you think the professor-is he the man behind-"

"I don't know what he is. Don't forget the barbed wire. The Navy is there. They may have come to play skittles, but I don't think so. There's something big, very big, and something very secret going on on the other side of the island. Whoever is in charge there will be taking no chances. They know Witherspoon is there, and that fence doesn't mean a thing, that's just to discourage wandering employees, they'll have investigated him down to the last nail in his shoes. The Services have some very clever investigators indeed and if they're content to have him there that means he's got a clean bill of health. And he knows the Navy is there. Fleck and the professor in cahoots. The professor and the Navy in cahoots. What kind of sense do
you
make out of it?"

"You trust the professor, then? You're saying, in effect, that he is on the level?"

"I'm not saying anything. I'm just thinking out loud."

"No, you're not," she insisted. "If he's accepted by the Navy, he must be on the level. That's what you say. If he is, then why the Chinese crouching in the darkness down by the fence, why the man-killing dog, why the trip-wire?"

"I'm just guessing. He may have warned his employees to keep clear of that place and they know of the dog and the wire. I'm not saying those were his Chinese employees I saw, I only assumed it. If there's something big and secret happening on the other side of the island, don't forget that secrets can be lost by people breaking out as well as by people breaking in. The Navy may well have some top men on
this
side, to see that no one breaks- out. Maybe the professor knows all about it-I think he does. We've lost too many secrets to the communist world during the past decade through sheer bad security. The government may have learned its lesson."

"But where do we come in?" she said helplessly. "It's so-so terribly complicated. And how can you explain away the attempt to cripple you?"

"I can't. But the more I think of it the more convinced I am that I'm only a tiny pawn in this and that nearly always tiny pawns have to be sacrificed to win the chess game."

"But why?" she insisted. "Why? And what reason can a harmless old duffer like Professor Witherspoon have for-"

"If that harmless old duffer is Professor Witherspoon," I interrupted heavily, "then I'm the Queen of the May."

For almost a minute there was only the far-off murmur of the surf, the whisper of the night wind in the trees.

"I can't stand much more of this," she said at last, wearily. "You said yourself you've seen him on television and-"

"And a very reasonable facsimile he is, too," I agreed. "His name may even be Witherspoon but he's certainly no professor of archaeology. He's the only person I've ever met who knows less about archaeology than I do. Believe me, that's a feat."

"But he knows so much about it-"

"He knows nothing about it. He's boned up on a couple of books on archaeology and Polynesia and never got quarter of the way through either. He didn't get far enough to find out that there are neither vipers nor malaria in those parts, both of which he claims to exist. That's why he objected to your having his books. You might find out more than he knows. It wouldn't take long. He talks about recovering pottery and wooden implements from basalt-the lava would have crushed the one and incinerated the other. He talks about dating wooden relics by experience and knowledge and any schoolboy in physics will tell you that it can be done with a high degree of accuracy by measuring the extent of decay of radioactive carbon in those relics. He gave me to understand that those relics were the deepest ever found, at 120 feet, and I don't suppose there are more than ten million people who know that a ten million year old skeleton was dug out from the Tuscany hills about three years ago at a depth of 600 feet-in a coal-mine. As for the idea of using high explosive in archaeology instead of prying away gently with pick and shovel-well, don't mention it around the British Museum. You'll have the old boys keeling over like ninepins."

"But-but all those relics and curios they have around-"

"They may be genuine. Professor Witherspoon may have made a genuine strike, then the idea occurred to the Navy that here would be the perfect set-up for secrecy. They could have all access to the island forbidden for perfectly legitimate reasons and that would give them the ideal cover-up, nothing to excite the suspicions of countries who would be very excited indeed if they knew what the Navy was doing. Whatever that is. The strike may be finished long ago and Witherspoon kept under wraps with someone very like him to put up a front for accidental visitors. Or those relics may be fakes. Maybe there never was an archaeological find here. Maybe it's a brilliant idea dreamed up by the Navy. Again they would require Witherspoon's cooperation, but not necessarily himself, which accounts for the bogus prof. Maybe the story was fed to the newspapers and magazines. Maybe some newspaper and magazine proprietors were approached by the government and persuaded to help out in the fraud. It's been done before."

"But there were also American papers, American magazines."

"Maybe it's an Anglo-American project."

"I still don't understand why they should try to cripple you," she said doubtfully. "But maybe one or either of your suggestions goes some way towards an answer."

"Maybe. I really don't know. But I'll have the answer tonight. I'll find it inside that mine."

"Are you-are you really crazy?" she said quietly. "You're not fit to go anywhere."

"It's only a short walk. I'll manage. There's nothing wrong with my legs."

"I'm coming with you."

"You'll do nothing of the kind."

"Please, Johnny."

"No."

She spread out her hands. "I'm of no use to you at all?"

"Don't be silly. We've got to have someone to hold the fort, to see that no one comes snooping into our house to find two dummies. So long as they can hear even one person breathing and see another form beside him, they'll be happy. I'm going back for a couple of hours' sleep. Why don't you go and whoop it up with the old Professor? He can't keep his eyes off you and you may find out a great deal more in that way than I will in mine."

"I'm not quite sure that I understand what you mean."

"The old Mata-Hari act," I said impatiently. "Whisper sweet nothings in his silver beard. You'll have him ga-ga in no time. Who knows what tender secrets he might not whisper in return?"

"You think so?"

"Sure, why not. He's at the dangerous stage as far as women are concerned. Somewhere between eighteen and eighty."

"He might start getting ideas."

"Well, let him. What does it matter? Just so long as you get some information out of him. Duty before pleasure, you know."

"I see," she said softly. She rose to her feet and stretched out her hand. "Come on. Up."

I got to my feet. A couple of seconds later I was sitting on the sand again. It hadn't been so much the unexpectedness of the openhanded blow across the face as the sheer weight of it. I was still sitting there, feeling for the dislocation and marvelling at the weird antics of the female members of the race, when she scrambled over the high bank at the top of the beach and disappeared.

My jaw seemed all right. It hurt, but it was still a jaw. I got to my feet, swung the crutches under my arms and started for the head of the beach. It was pretty dark now and I could have made it three times as fast without the crutches but I wouldn't have put it past the old boy to have night-glasses on me.

The bank at the top was only three feet high, but it was still too high for me. I finally solved it by sitting on the edge and pushing myself up with my crutches, but when I got to my feet, swung round and made to take off, the crutches broke through the soft soil and I fell backwards over on to the sand.

It knocked the breath out of me but it wasn't much of a fall as falls go, not enough to make me swear out loud, just enough to make me swear softly. I was trying to get enough breath to swear some more When I heard the quick light sound of approaching feet and someone slid over the edge of the bank. A glimpse of white, a whiff of Night of Mystery, she'd come back to finish me off. I braced my jaw again, then unbraced it. She was bent low down, peering at me, in no position at all to haul off at me again.

"I-I saw you fall." Her voice was husky. "Are you badly hurt?"

"I'm in agony. Hey, careful of my sore arm."

But she wasn't being careful. She was kissing me. She gave her kisses like she gave her slaps, without any holding back that I could notice. She .wasn't crying, but her cheek was wet with tears. After a minute, maybe two, she murmured: "I'm so ashamed. I'm so sorry."

"So am I," I said. "I'm sorry, too." I'd no idea what either of us was talking about, but it didn't seem to matter very much at the moment. By and by she rose and helped me over the edge of the bank and I tip-tapped my way back to the house, her arm in mine. We passed by the professor's bungalow on the way, but I didn't make any further suggestions about her going in to see him.

* * *

It was just after ten o'clock when I slid out under a raised corner of the seawardfacing side-screen. I could still feel her kisses, but I could also feel my sore jaw, so I left in a pretty neutral frame of mind. As far as she was concerned, that is. As far as the others were concerned-the others being the professor and his men-I wasn't feeling neutral at all- I carried the torch in one hand and the knife in the other, and this time I didn't have any cloth wrapped round the knife- If there weren't more lethal things than dogs on the island of Vardu, I sadly missed my bet.

The moon was lost behind heavy cloud, but I took no chances. It was almost a quarter of a mile to where the mine shaft was sunk into the side of the mountain but I covered nearly all of it on hands and knees and it didn't do my sore arm any great deal of good. On the other hand, I got there safely.

I didn't know if the professor would have any good reason to have a guard at the entrance to the mine or not. Again it Seemed like a good idea to err on the side of caution, so when I stood up slowly and stiffly in the black shadow of a rock where the moon wouldn't get me when and if it broke through, I just stayed there. I stood there for fifteen minutes and all I could hear was the far-off murmur of the Pacific on the distant reef and the slow thudding of my own heart. Any unsuspecting guard who could keep as still as that for fifteen minutes was asleep. I wasn't scared of men who were asleep. I went on into the mine.

My rubber-soled sandals heel-and-toed it along the limestone rock without the slightest whisper of sound. No one could have heard me coming and, after I was clear of the faint luminescence of the cave-mouth, no one could have seen me coming. My torch was off. If there was anyone inside that mine I'd meet them soon enough without letting them know I was on the way. In the dark all men are equal. With that knife in my hand, I was slightly more than equal.

There was plenty of room between the wall and the railway track in the middle to make it unnecessary for me to walk on the sleepers. I couldn't risk a sudden variation of length between a couple of ties. It was simple enough to guide myself by brushing the back of the fingers of my right hand against the tunnel wall from time to time. I took care that the haft of the knife did not strike solid rock.

Inside a minute, the tunnel wall fell away sharply to the right. I had reached the first hollowed-out cavern. I went straight across it to the tunnel opening directly opposite, guiding myself by touching the side of my left foot against the sleepers. It took me five minutes to cross the 70 yards' width of that cave. Nobody called out, nobody switched on a light, nobody jumped me. I was all alone. Or I was being left alone, which wasn't the same thing at all.

Thirty seconds after leaving the first cavern I'd reached the next one. This was the one where the professor had said the first archaeological discoveries had been made, the cavern with the two shored-up entrances to the left, the railway going straight ahead and, to the right, the tunnel where we'd found Hewell and his crew working. I'd no interest in the tunnel where we'd found Hewell working. The professor had given me to understand that that was the source of the explosions that had wakened me the previous afternoon, but all the amount of loose rock I'd seen lying there could have been brought down by a couple of good-sized fire-crackers. I followed the railway .across the chamber straight into the opposite tunnel.

This led to a third chamber, and then a fourth. Neither of those had any exits to the north, into the side of the mountain, as I found by walking round a complete semi-circle to my right before regaining the railway track again: I completed the circle in both chambers and found two openings to the south in each. But I went straight on. After that there were no more caverns, just the tunnel that went on and on.