The Twenty-Third Man (7 page)

‘Brown?’

‘Not brown, but I think to remember purple.’

Dame Beatrice went to bed thoughtful. Early next morning she set out, with Pilar’s Pepe Casita for guide and guarantee, to look for Clement Drashleigh.

‘
WHERE DO WE
go, Señora?’ asked Pepe Casita.

‘To the cave of dead men. You may sit in front, beside the driver of the taxi-cab.’

‘Very good. And then?’

‘Then I shall wait upon inspiration and rely upon your acquaintance with the bandits.’

‘But, Señora, I know nothing of the bandits except what I have heard.’

Dame Beatrice was not inclined to take notice of this disclaimer. The taxi took them to the village from which Peterhouse had hired the mules on Dame Beatrice’s first visit to the cave. The negotiations were conducted by Pepe, who haggled for twenty minutes and then returned to announce that he had secured two reliable animals at a low fee. They mounted these and soon were being borne along the mountain path to the cave.

‘Look after the mules. I am going inside to count the bodies,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘Alone, Señora?’

‘Certainly. Fear not for me. I have my little gun.’

‘I fear dead men, not living ones, Señora.’

‘To each his own fears and his own precautions. Does Uncle Horse suffer in health from living up here among the mountains?’

‘It is said’, replied Pepe, cautiously, ‘that he suffers from a fall he had two months ago. He has a pain in his back – here.’

‘Well, you had better get in touch with him whilst I am in the cave. Tell him I can put him to rights and that I will do so, provided that he hands over the señorito safe and sound, and at once.’

‘I do not know the bandits,’ reiterated Pepe, with a charming smile and a shrug of his thin shoulders.

‘It will be worth your while to get to know them, then. Whistle them up. They can’t be far away, if they continually lie in wait for those rash persons who choose to visit the caves without a guide.’

With these confident words she gave a slight nod and walked in at the mouth of the cave. She had brought the torch which she always kept on her bedside table in case the electric light in the hotel failed. She switched it on, and counted the seated bodies. There were twenty-three of them. She searched each corner of the cave, lighting up every cranny with the torch, but of Clement’s twenty-fourth man there was no sign. She was about to make closer investigation of the twenty-three who were there, when she heard a shout from the mouth of the cave.

‘
Señora, el señorito!
’

Dame Beatrice emerged into the sunlight. There stood Clement, hatless and grimy. He was leading a mule and wore a slightly defiant smile.

‘No bandits?’ enquired Dame Beatrice, removing her own chip straw hat and placing it on his head. ‘I shall not suffer from the heat of the sun, but you may, dear child. Wear this, on pain of death, until we get to the village. I repeat: no bandits?’

‘They wouldn’t come. They’re shy. They’re awfully decent, though,’ said Clement, banging the hat well down upon his head. ‘Still, the food was pretty lousy, and there wasn’t any ice-cream, and all we had to drink was goats’ milk and the local wine – both completely foul.’

‘What made you visit the cave again? – I suppose that is how you came to be captured?’

‘Well, yes. I simply had to, you know. I expect you can guess why.’

‘I imagine’, said Dame Beatrice, patting her animal’s neck, ‘that you counted the bodies again and discovered that, after all, there were twenty-three and not twenty-four of them.’

‘Well, at any rate, I had to give Chiquito the ten pesetas I’d betted him. I had just given them to him when we
found
ourselves surrounded. Ugly chaps, most of them were. They sent Chiquito home after he’d sworn by various saints and people that he wouldn’t breathe a word about where I was, but they grabbed me and my mule, and took me to their den. How did you guess where I was? – or did Chiquito unfold a tale after all?’

‘As far as I know, he kept his word to the bandits.’

‘If he
had
told, I should have had my revenge on him. Revenge is sweet.’

‘Revenge? An outmoded conception. Experience teaches that it really
is
nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.’

Clement, it was clear, was not prepared to endorse this view. They rode down the narrow and forbidding mountain track in silence until he said:

‘The trouble with these islanders is that they’re not nearly tough enough. I was amazed at my treatment, especially as I told old Caballo right at the beginning, when he grabbed me, that my parents, far from paying money to get me back, would thank him for hanging on to me. Luckily, I can speak a fair amount of island Spanish – I learnt it on our own island, you know – but old Tio Caballo doesn’t know any English except O.K. Everything, according to him, was O.K. The only thing that wasn’t O.K. was the food and drink – in my opinion, at any rate. I shan’t be at all sorry to get back to the hotel and eat a decent meal.’

When they did reach the Hotel Sombrero, his parents attempted to carry out their plan of doing nothing to inhibit him, but for once it broke down. Mrs Drashleigh was obviously affected by the reunion, and proved this by an outburst of nagging. Mr Drashleigh said:

‘Now see what you’ve done to your mother! It has been very inconsiderate of you, Clement. Fancy going again to that cave, foolish boy!’

Clement defended himself with a mixture of fact and fiction.

‘Well, I had to take a dare, didn’t I? You wouldn’t
want
me to look a fool in front of a
native
like Chiquito Daria! And how was I to know that the bandits were on the prowl?
I
didn’t ask to be kidnapped, did I? And I’ve saved you an awful lot of money, let me tell you! How? Well, all night long I howled like a wolf. It always gets on
your
nerves when I do, so I thought maybe it would get on
theirs
, and it did. I thought they’d gag me, but they hate being unkind to children, so they put up with it as long as they could, and then bribed me to leave off. I did, because my throat was getting sore, but I made them promise to let me go. I made them take a Church oath. They’re terribly religious, you know. But Pilar’s Pepe came along before they actually freed me, and talked a lot of Spanish like an automatic weapon and they seemed only too glad to see the last of me. And you’d better give Pepe some money. I think he left them a lot of cigarettes. They were terribly pleased, because it’s difficult for them to shop down here in the town. They get their food and wine from the villages, but they can’t get smokes that way – not American ones, which is what they like. I shall probably go along and see them again, some time, and take them some more cigarettes, if you go on at me much longer. I’ve had a worrying time, let me tell you.’

‘Well, now you had better get some sleep,’ said Mr Drashleigh. ‘And, another time, learn to curb your curiosity. It is morbid in so young a boy to want to see dead people.’

‘You took me to the British Museum, when I was eight, to see the Egyptian mummies,’ argued Clement. ‘But that was educational, I suppose!’

‘You are not be impudent,’ said Mr Drashleigh.

‘Well, if it wasn’t educational, I don’t see why you took me. Mother, when you went to the cave, did you actually
count
the bodies?’

‘No, dear, but I thought they were very impressive.’

‘Was one a lot taller than the rest?’

‘Taller? It might have been. I couldn’t be positively sure.’

‘Ah, well, it’s just as well I
did
go to the cave, then. The first time I went, there were definitely twenty-four bodies, as I told people when I got back, but now there are only twenty-three. I had plenty of time to count them and look round a bit before the bandits caught me. And, I tell you, one of the dead men was quite noticeably taller than the rest. He was there when there were twenty-four, and he was still there when there were twenty-three, yet you say you didn’t notice him. You
must
have noticed him, Mother. I bet Dame Beatrice noticed him.’

‘Yes, I did,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘Not on your first visit, though? Not when you went with Mother and Mr Peterhouse? Are you
sure?
’

‘Go to bed, Clement, and stop pestering people,’ said Mr Drashleigh, with unwonted firmness.

‘I want something to eat; something decent. The bandits’ food was horrible!’

‘Very well. Pilar shall bring you a menu as soon as you are in bed, and you can have your meal on a tray.’

‘And I can really have what I like?’

‘Well, not shell-fish, my boy.’

‘Who wants shell-fish? I tell you I want something to
eat
!’

He was hustled away, intoning, with the relish of a
gourmand
, a recital of all the dishes he would choose if these should be on the menu. The gong was sounded for lunch – very late, as usual – and Dame Beatrice went to the table which she shared with Clun.

After coffee on the terrace, he left her, on the excuse that he was going fishing out in the bay. Dame Beatrice, relaxed and slightly somnolent after her morning’s expedition, lay back in a comfortable chair and speculated idly upon Clement Drashleigh. She wished she knew some way of persuading his foolish foster-parents to send him to an English boarding-school. Her thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of Ruiz, who came up to her and said softly, but in a voice hoarse with fury:

‘If he had not left my hotel, I would have kicked him
out
. I would have strangled him. Even now, if ever I meet him, the villain, the cesspool, the pig, I will tear him in pieces! I will have him deported! I am Ruiz! He has dared to attempt to compromise my daughter, my Luisa! But that she carries always in her stocking a knife which she would not hesitate to use in defence of her modesty, he might even have contrived to take advantage of her. He is a beast, an ape, a baboon!’

‘Dear me!’ Dame Beatrice remarked. ‘You, my good host, appear to have cause for complaint. How much of a German is Mr Emden, I wonder? One cannot go by physiognomy, of course, so it is of no avail to say that he has not the appearance of a true Nordic of unmixed blood. One can sometimes go a little by accent, but his, so far as I have been privileged to hear it, seems to be that of Walthamstow overlaid by the B.B.C. An original mixture, one would be inclined to think, to trip from the tongue of a Prussian. You
do
speak of Emden, I take it?’

‘Speak of him? I spit upon his name!’ declared Ruiz, in the same low, vindictive tone. ‘And he shall go. I, Ruiz, have said it. He shall return to the slum that spawned him!’

‘Was he, by any chance, talking of Emden?’ asked Peterhouse, who had come up before Ruiz had finished speaking, and who now took the cushioned wicker chair next to that of Dame Beatrice.

‘Undoubtedly,’ she replied. ‘It was odd that Emden should vanish before we had time and opportunity to make his acquaintance.’

‘I didn’t like him,’ said Peterhouse, ‘and I consider that his departure from the hotel was opportune. If he really
has
insulted Luisa Ruiz, he will do well to keep away. Spaniards are notably temperamental where their womenfolk are concerned, and, so far as I can discover, this island has no law against murder.’

‘Really? How very interesting.’

‘What, do you suppose, made that extraordinary child pay two visits to the cave of dead men? Anything more than sheer curiosity?’

‘Curiosity would have much to do with it, no doubt. He’s an intelligent little boy.’

‘Too intelligent to tell as much as he knew, I expect.’

‘Now, why should you suppose that?’

‘I have no notion, dear lady. Just a passing thought.’

‘I believe that thoughts should linger. I am inclined to distrust vapours and thin airs.’

‘Yes, and there’s such a thing as thin ice,’ said Peterhouse, half to himself. Dame Beatrice gazed at him and raised her black eyebrows.

‘Thin ice?’ she inquired. ‘You believe we are treading on thin ice?’

Peterhouse shook his head.

‘I believe we have not heard the last of Emden,’ he said. ‘I wish I thought we had. He’s been on the island two months – no longer – and has contrived to set everybody by the ears.’

‘Two months? He came here –?’

‘You can check from the visitors’ book, but, to the best of my recollection, this would be his ninth or tenth week in Reales. Now tell me about the man Clun. Is he really a killer?’

‘I would not put it like that.’

‘But he did kill a man, and was put away for a stretch in prison, I believe?’

‘He killed a man in a fight, I understand, and went to prison for manslaughter.’

‘An uncomfortable fellow-traveller! I shall steer clear of him. Is it true that he and that young fellow Telham had a quarrel?’

‘Mr Telham arrived here in a highly nervous state, but his sojourn on the island seems to have done him good.’

‘It hasn’t done his sister good. I’m told she had a fit of hysterics in the cave of dead kings.’

‘You are
told?
But you were there!’

‘I was there?… Oh,
so
I was! How stupid of me.’

It was a curious lapse of memory, Dame Beatrice thought, and lapses of memory were psychologically interesting.
To
relieve him from embarrassment, she referred to her impending visit to the troglodytes, adding that she supposed such visits were quite common.

‘Certainly. Visitors to the island often go to look at the cave-dwellers. There are just one or two things to remember,’ said Peterhouse, seizing on the chance to impart information.

‘The outer room is clean, neat, unoccupied, and for show,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘The inner room, divided from the outer by a curtain or screen, is the family dwelling-place and has to be smelt to be believed.’

Mr Peterhouse looked disappointed.

‘I thought it would be new to you,’ he said. ‘But there is another thing. The cave-dwellers are quite untutored and are as grasping as savages. They have neither manners nor morals.’