Sepulchre of the Living

Scott O’Hara Sepulchre of the Living

High up, high against the roof of the world, on the shoulder of one of the tall mountains of Ceylon, there is a cave mouth. From the cave mouth can be seen the blue stretched silk of the sea, the jeweled green of the jungle, and the misty line where they merge. It is an ancient cave, and in that cave lived the last of the Veddas, chased into mountain hiding by the sons of Singha.

The man who sits in the cave mouth has the tired, brittle face of a scholar, but the thin gray beard clouds the clean lines of cheek and jaw. He hasn’t a scholar’s eyes, but rather the mild, trusting eyes of a child. The frayed edge of white trousers half conceals the festered bites of insects, and the gray hair is tight curled on his lean chest. His hair is long, and, as he looks down the shattered slope of the hill, he plays with bits of blue glass which catch the sun.

The simple hill people feed him, and he is fast becoming a legend among them. A legend to be treasured, not to be reported to the harsh young British resident who is new in the area.

When he sees the movement in the brush, sees their tight, tan bodies, the bright sarongs as they come out of the edge of the jungle bringing him his food and water, he reaches quickly to one side, slips a flat stone from the side of the cave mouth and shoves the bits of blue glass in against the damp earth before replacing the stone.

The Singhalese come to him with solemn faces. They are feeding a legend, feeding a child of Buddha.

Dr. James K. Carboldt looked down at his lean legs, inspecting the degree of redness. The yacht, Torment, hissed through the greased blue swell of the South Pacific with a muttering hum of diesel power.

He was stretched out on a bright canvas deck chair, lulled by the gentle rise and fall of the trim white yacht. In his own shadow a tall, cool drink rested on the deck beside the chair, and the ice clinked musically with the gentle roll of the ship.

He decided that his legs could stand a bit more tanning. He looked down at Laura, Mrs. Leslie Brade, stretched out face down on a blanket on the deck, appreciating the warm, golden lines of her back, yet feeling oddly uncomfortable in looking at her.

She was creating a difficult situation between him and Leslie Brade, the owner of Torment. James Carboldt had spent a great deal of time lately wondering if she was conscious of the way her manner was building up the strain between Leslie and himself.

Laura Brade was a thinnish girl with dull blonde hair which she wore stretched back so tightly that it seemed to narrow her eyes. She wore harlequin glasses which always seemed to have slipped a bit down her short nose. She was tense and quick. A Wellesley graduate, she called herself a ‘parlor intellectual’ and made quiet fun of the fact that in marrying Leslie Brade she had tied herself up to fifteen million dollars.

Leslie Brade was sitting out on the fan-tail wearing brief, flowered trunks. Beside him was a pile of empty tins, a box of ammunition. He sat up straight, his strong feet planted against the deck, the slim, deadly target rifle aimed out over the stern. The broad leather sling cut into his arm. The end of the barrel moved as he traced the can in the dancing wake.

When the rifle spat, it was a thin, whiplash sound. James Carboldt watched the quick play of small muscles across Brade’s shoulders, and felt that there was something almost coarse about such brutal strength. Brade had crisp black hair that was thick on his body, sprouting even from the tops of his shoulders, unfaded by the sun that had turned his skin a mahogany brown.

Leslie Brade turned around with a grin and said, “Hey, you sleepers! I’ve knocked off the last four without a miss.”

“Give him a merit badge,” Laura said sleepily. She lifted her head and looked at James. “Say, son, you’re on the pinkish side.”

“I’m too lazy to move,” Carboldt said. “Where does that thick-headed husband of yours get his energy?” He reached down, fumbled for the glass, lifted it and finished the drink.

Laura looked at him with the odd intentness that was new with her, and sat up. She took the suntan lotion, handed it up to him and said, in a small girl voice, “Do my back, huh?”

Carboldt grunted as he sat up. She turned her golden back to him as he unscrewed the top and poured some of the pale lotion into the palm of his hand. He was conscious of Leslie Brade’s glance on him. To cover his own slight confusion, Carboldt said, “Why don’t you grease this luscious form? She’s your wife.”

“You’re handier,” Brade said, and there was a small edge in his voice. James glanced at him. Brade had a wide smile on his blunt, swarthy, good-natured face, but the eyes weren’t smiling.

Carboldt spread the lotion quickly, highly conscious of the smoothness of the skin under his fingers, the taut, well-knit feel of her. The rifle cracked again and he knew that Brade was once more looking out at the tin dancing on the waves.

Something stronger than good judgment made him rest his hand against her back, holding it very still. He felt her press back against his hand and he took it away quickly. He capped the lotion, set it on the deck and leaned back in his chair.

Laura said, “Thank you,” in the same small voice. Her face was turned toward him, her eyes almost shut against the sun. He watched her face, saw the tip of her small pink tongue slowly moisten the upper lip. The rifle cracked again, and this time it made him jump, though he had heard it most of the afternoon.

After a time James got up and padded down to his cabin. He took a quick shower, changed to light linen trousers and a white mesh shirt. He sat on the edge of his bunk and lit a cigarette, telling himself that he was going to have to be very careful. This last little tableau had been more direct than anything that had gone before. Much more direct.

He wondered about Leslie Brade. Something about the thoughts of Brade’s thick, muscular body intermingled with the memory of the smoothness of Laura’s back sickened him. He wondered how much he thought of Leslie Brade.

Once there had been no question. As a geologist, Dr. James K. Carboldt had served in S.E.A.C. with OSS, as a civilian. Leslie Brade had been Captain Brade, and outside of the fact that it had been rumored around the headquarters that Brade had a great deal of money, Carboldt knew nothing about him.

Then, suddenly, they were partners in a mission — air-dropped in the Shan Hills along with three Burmese, ordered to contact an armed group of Kachin irregulars. The radio had been lost in the airdrop, along with the medicines. The drop had been observed by Japanese agents.

The mission was a failure. There was only one way out, to travel north, to avoid Jap patrols, to join the Stilwell forces in the Hokaung Valley. In the second night they had become separated from the Burmese. On the fifth afternoon Brade took a sniper slug through his shoulder and between the two of them they had held off a small Jap patrol until dark. Then, half carrying Brade, Carboldt had gotten the two of them away.

Brade was out of his head for days, and then he began to mend. He mended just in time to take care of Carboldt who collapsed with fever. After an untold period of agony, they had been picked up by a patrol of the Chinese 28th Division.

Their beds had been side by side in the Calcutta General Hospital. They were invalided to a rest camp in Ceylon, near Galle. When they were strong they swam and did surf riding.

Dr. James Carboldt found that though he was only two years older than Leslie Brade’s thirty-one, Brade had an outlook on the world that made him, in many ways, a child. Protected by wealth from the cradle on up, he had no realization of what it had cost Dr. James K. Carboldt to become a young geologist with a growing reputation.

But despite the differences in background, in outlook, in intellectual integrity, they got along very well. Each knew that his life was owed to the other.

Near the end of their sick leave, they went to a small hotel in Ratnapura, and one week they followed a small stream up into the mountains. It was just after the monsoon season, and the stream bed was full of school children searching for topaz, sapphire, other semi-precious stones washed out of the hills by the monsoon rains. They went high into the hills, and Carboldt looked at the rock formations with the eye of a geologist.

He found a narrow cut through a rock slope and he said to Brade, “Les, I’d bet everything you’ve got that right down in there you’d find more stuff than they dig out of those mines down near Ratnapura in a year. All the conditions are right.”

James Carboldt thought no more about it. After he went back to the states and severed his connection with OSS, he took a job with a small oil company in the Southwest for a time. After that, since he had certain findings that he wanted to publish, he took a position teaching in a university in New York City.

Two weeks after his findings had been published and three days before the school term was over, he ran into Leslie Brade on the street. They went into a cocktail bar and talked about the war and the future. He found out that Les Brade had been married for six months to a girl named Laura Nettleton, and that Brade was as childlike as ever about what he wanted to do with his life. He told Brade that he was temporarily at loose ends himself.

Two weeks later James Carboldt took his bags aboard the Torment. The agreement was that they would go back to Ceylon to find that cut in the hills. They would share alike in anything that Carboldt was able to find in the way of gems.

There was a crew of eight aboard the Torment, and just the three passengers. Laura looked on the whole project with mild amusement.

During the long trip down the eastern seaboard, through the canal, out across the Pacific, the trip had been a form of perfection. Both Laura and James reveled in it, but to Leslie Brade it was an experience often repeated, too familiar to be remarked on.

They stopped at every port that offered amusement and the three of them were always together.

The present tension had started five days ago. Laura had started it without seeming to do so. She had done it by treating Brade’s ideas with derision, Carboldt’s ideas with respect. She had done it by constantly watching Carboldt with an intensity that was embarrassing.

She handled herself in a way that was completely casual, and yet, merely by her very casualness, she seemed to highlight the intensity of her feeling for Carboldt. Her every action, every word, was a stinging criticism of Brade, revealing the contempt that had grown out of the realization that to a mature individual Brade was a wealthy child — a bore — a creature fashioned cunningly of muscles and money.

James Carboldt finished the cigarette and flipped it out the open port. His future course of action was clear. He would have to avoid Laura during the remainder of the trip to Ceylon. He would work at his trade in Ceylon and see what could be recovered from the deep cut in the rocks. Then making some sort of an excuse, he would leave the two of them and fly home.

He went back up on deck and joined Brade on the fantail, borrowed the rifle and missed a particularly large tin with six until it was far out of range.

Brade laughed. “Jim, you’ve got no coordination. You’re the brain and I’m the brawn. Let me show you.”

He flipped a tin back into the wake, waited until it was a hundred feet off the stern and then fired three shots in rapid succession. Carboldt heard the distant click as the lead hit the tin, watched the tin fill up and sink.

Brade laughed again. An albatross which had been circling the yacht sped low over the water, the thin graceful wings motionless, made a wide turn and began to drift back up wind toward the stern.

Brade said, “Scare him,” and fired a quick shot.

The big bird folded its wings and dropped into the waves. It disappeared astern, looking like a piece of white cloth thrown carelessly into the water. Laura stood behind them, her tanned legs braced against the roll.

“That was a foul thing to do!” she said flatly.

Brade smiled uncertainly. “I didn’t think I’d hit it, Laura.”

“Thinking is an art you’d better leave to others, Leslie.”

His smile was still tight against his lips. He looked as though he had run a long distance. “Like Carboldt, maybe.”

“Maybe,” she said quietly.

He dropped the rifle on the deck, stood up quickly and walked back along the deck. They turned and saw him go down the companionway.

Laura turned and followed Brade. Carboldt sat and looked out across the sea, at the dusk that was touching the eastern horizon...

When the sea had turned from cobalt to gray, he went down to the small dining alcove off the galley and found that only two places were set at the rubbed wood table.

The mess boy said in his soft voice, “Mrs. Brade says for you to eat now, suh.”

He had just begun to eat when Laura came and sat opposite him. She had bluish streaks under her eyes.

After the mess boy brought her dinner, he raised a questioning eyebrow at her. She said, “Oh, the big baby was mad because he got scolded and he did like he always does. He went down to the cabin and sulked, and while he sulked he drank scotch out of the bottle and finally passed out. I guess he thinks that he punishes me that way. He’s in there snoring and he won’t wake up until noon tomorrow, when he’ll be cross as a bear.”

“You’ve been a little rough on him lately, Laura.”

She widened her eyes. “Me? Rough? What on earth do you mean?”

“You talk to him as though he was a little kid and you laugh at his ideas and— Well, it’s hard to explain.”

She nodded gravely. “I see. And you think I ought to hang on his every word and tell him how astoundingly bright he is?”

“Don’t make it hard for me. I shouldn’t have said anything in the first place. It’s just that I don’t think you appreciate him, Laura. He’s kind and he’s decent and he’s good natured and—”

“And he has fifteen million dollars, more or less.”

“Is that important?”

“Laddy, it is to me. It is to me. I got well fed up with being a church mouse. You can think what you want, Jim, but if I had enough money, I’d leave him at once. Maybe that makes me a harsh word. I don’t care.”

He looked down at his plate. “I guess maybe I can understand. I never thought about having a great deal of money. I’ve been contented to work and do a good job. But this trip has been odd. I look at this yacht and the money it represents, and I wonder why I haven’t got all this instead of Les. With his money, I’d visit every part of the world that has any interest from a geological point of view. I’d equip expeditions. What does he do with it? Nothing but enjoy himself.”

She grinned crookedly. “There’s something in that, too, Doc.”

“Well, we’re hexed now, anyway. That albatross’ll get us sooner or later. But, just for the sake of peace and friendship, Laura, make out like you hate me for the rest of the trip.”

“You flatter yourself, Doc. I think I do hate you,” she said quietly.

He was astonished. “Huh?”

“Yes, I hate you because you are someone to talk to. Someone who can talk sense. I hate you because I’m a girl married to a muscular hulk with all the fine intellectual developments of an amoeba. I even hate you because you don’t have any money.”

After dinner they went on deck and stood side by side at the rail while the soft Pacific night breeze touched their faces.

He told her of the mission that he and Brade had gone on, and he worked into the story all of the good points about Leslie Brade that he could think of. It was a eulogy of Brade, and she made no comment.

At last he stopped, and she turned quickly against him, her arms around his neck, her quick lips on his own. After a moment she tilted her head back, looked up into his face and said, in a thick whisper, “Tell me some more pretty things about Les, darling.”

The yacht was left in Colombo harbor, clean and shining among the gray and red lead of the battered freighters. They reported in at the American Consul’s office near the harbor, stated their intention of staying up in the hills for a month or so, but avoided letting him know the real reason.

They bought supplies at Colombo, and rented a car with Singhalese driver to take them up to the Rest House at Ratnapura. They sat on the upper porch of the Rest House and looked off across the towering hills while they drank arrak and honey liqueur, and Leslie kidded Laura about the hardships of the walk up the stream bed and told her that she probably would have to be carried.

Laura had been very good during the latter part of the trip. James guessed that she had sensed the latent danger in Brade, and she had softened her derision of him to something that seemed as flattering as kind words. Brade had blossomed under the treatment. It was only with sudden looks that were like a hint of flame that Laura told Carboldt that, on the inside, nothing had changed. Nothing at all.

Secrecy had made the trip up the stream bed into an adventure. Before they left the Rest House with their heavy packs, Brade had spent an hour with the manager showing him, on detailed government maps, the route which he claimed they would follow. Of course, after they were out of sight of the Rest House, they circled around until they hit the stream they wanted.

They carried food, jungle hammocks, mosquito netting, medicines and tablets to make the stream water drinkable. The going was steep and rocky, and it took them two and a half days to cover nineteen miles to the cut.

In the brush at the edge of the cut, they made a permanent camp. Laura took over the cooking while Brade and Carboldt worked among the rocks of the cut, using the small hand drills to make holes for the plastic explosive that they had smuggled in.

It was difficult and exhausting work, and the billions of insects made it less pleasant than it had been the last time they saw the deep cut across the face of the mountain. The weight melted off Carboldt. Even Brade looked thinner, harder. There were new lines of tiredness bracketing Laura’s mouth, and she was inclined to be sharp with both Brade and James.

They found nothing in two weeks, and Carboldt began to lose his confidence in being able to find the pocket of sapphire which he knew existed in the strata. But he didn’t let the others see his lack of confidence.

One day the skies turned gray. Carboldt realized that the chota monsoon was nearly due, and they’d be much more comfortable if they could find better shelter. They took a day off and climbed the face of the mountain looking for caves. He was certain that it was a type of rock formation that lended itself to natural caves.

Laura was the one who found it. As prearranged, she fired a shot with the pistol Leslie had given her, and when they found her she was busily chopping the thick vegetation away from the mouth of a cave with a. high, wide entrance.

As soon as they found out that it was dry inside, they went down, packed up and struggled up the rocky slope with the hammocks and bed rolls. The first rain began a half hour after they moved in. Brade set up the little gasoline stove and Laura began cooking the evening meal.

James Carboldt dug in his bag and got the flashlights, gave one to Brade, and the two of them explored the cave which stretched far back into the hill. From time to time Carboldt flashed his light on the vaulted roof to make certain that the rock was firm. After fifty feet the cave widened and turned almost a right-angle corner.

Carboldt walked with the flashlight in his left hand, his right hand sweating on the butt of the revolver. The floor of the cave was a jumble of rocks and there was something about the silence that was oppressive. He could hear Brade’s quick breathing.

“Big enough, isn’t it?” Brade said in a low tone, his voice sounding hollow.

“Better whisper. Otherwise you might set up vibrations that’ll knock some of the ceiling down on us.”

Around the corner the cave stopped abruptly. Carboldt shone his light on the wall and then swung it around at almost floor level, looking to see if there was a smaller exit out of the place.

He gasped and Brade’s hand fastened tight to his arm. They walked over and looked down at the jumble of dark bones, at rotted bits of leather and doth. There were two gray skulls. On closer examination, they saw that the skeletons were complete, the jumbled effect resulting from one body having fallen half across the other. The bone of one skull was badly fractured.

Beyond the two skeletons was a small wooden box, about three feet long, two feet wide and a foot high. Corroded metal handles were set into the ends. The box looked firm and solid.

Brade grunted and stepped over the bones, fumbled at what looked like a wide copper hasp. James Carboldt stepped to one side so he could see. Brade got his fingertips under the edge of the lid and strained, the veins standing out on his forehead.

Something cracked and the lid came up slowly. Inside were a number of small leather sacks. Brade grasped one of the sacks and the ancient leather powdered in his hands, the jewels that it had contained spilling out and falling in among the other sacks, winking up at the light with beams of rich amber, green, red and deep blue.

Brade picked up a handful of the stones and stood up suddenly. Carboldt felt weak and dizzy. “What do you figure?” Brade asked.

“I... I don’t know. Let me see one.” He held it in the flashlight’s glare. “I’d say it was an emerald. Probably cut a long time ago. This isn’t Ceylonese stuff. Probably the emeralds came from India, those rubies from Burma, the aquamarines from Kashmir. Maybe the yellow and blue sapphires were from Ceylon. It would take a long, long time for the leather to turn to dust like that. Eight hundred years. A thousand.”

Brade squatted again and tore open some of the other sacks. The piled gems glittered. He reached over and grasped the metal handle at the end of the case and tried to lift it. The side of the box came off with the handle and the gems spilled out onto the rocky floor.

At last they turned and hurried back to the entrance to the cave. The gray daylight shone in on their faces and Laura looked up and said, “What’s the matter with you two? Are there ghosts back in there?”

Brade grinned at her, opened his hand and dropped several of the stones into her lap.

She fingered them with wonder. “Real?”

“I think so,” James said.

It was difficult to eat. After the meal was over, Carboldt said, “Well, the problem now is to get them down onto the yacht without fumbling it.”

“What do you mean?” Brade asked.

“I’ve been trying to figure how we can do it. There’s so darn many of them. We can shove a lot of them into the canteens, melt wax over them, let it cool and then fill the canteens with water. Then we can use the same idea on the gasoline tank on the stove. Maybe bury a few more in Laura’s face cream. But that’ll only take care of a tenth of the stones. No, we’ve got to think of a good way to get them all out.”

He saw Brade’s frown in the darkness. “Have you gone nuts, Jim? I know how these things work. Hell, if they ever found any of these rocks on us, they’d crucify me. I’ve got a reputation to take care of. Besides, do you think we could market them in the states? We’d be jumped in a minute.

“No, we’ve got to tell the authorities and let them take over and see if out of the goodness of their heart, they’ll give us a small share. If I know my foreign countries, they’ll probably give us one flawed ruby apiece and call it square.”

Carboldt was suddenly furious. “That’s fine for you, Brade. Just dandy! You’ve got all the money you can possibly use, so why try to get more? But how about me? The deal was a fifty-fifty split. There must be a million dollars worth of gems there. I won’t permit you to give my half away along with your own.”

“It’s not a question of choice,” Brade said sullenly. “I can’t take the chance, that’s all.”

“You’re going to take it!” Carboldt said shrilly.

Brade looked at him with a slow grin. “Getting a little money hungry, Jim?”

“You’re damn well told I am!”

“Boys! Boys!” Laura said. “Take it easy. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

They argued for over two hours, and at last, weary and defeated, Carboldt slung his hammock near the cave mouth, wedging climbing pitons into the cave wall. Laura and Leslie spread their bed rolls far back in the cave.

Carboldt was awakened suddenly as he was touched and when he opened his mouth to say something, a small warm hand pressed over his lips. He caught the elusive perfume of Laura and knew that she was standing beside his hammock.

She put her lips close to his ear. “Shh, darling. He’s asleep, but I’ll have to hurry back. He’s being unfair about this. Do you love me, Jim?”

He whispered, “Yes.”

“Then it will be fixed. That’s all I wanted to know. That’s all I wanted to know.” Her lips brushed his lightly and she was gone.

He stayed awake for a long time, trying to puzzle out what she had meant. At last he fell asleep.

In the morning, when Brade went down the slope to the creek to wash, the bright sun shone into the cave mouth.

Laura, her face very pale, said, “This has got to be quick, Jim. He’ll have to die here. It’ll look as though a rock fell from the ceiling of the cave. We report the tragedy to the authorities and at the same time we turn over all the jewels we found. In the excitement about the jewels there will be no suspicion. They’ll say that we couldn’t have done such a thing unless we were trying to get away with the jewels. Let them have the jewels. I will have his money and then we can be married.”

He looked at her white lips with complete disbelief. He stammered, “But I can’t — I couldn’t—”

“Remember what you said last night, Jim. You’ll have nothing to do with it. If I were free, would you marry me?”

He thought of the yacht, of the fine cars and clothes and homes. He tried to form his lips over the word, “Yes.”

“Shh!” she said. “He’s coming.”

After breakfast she took the stones that Leslie had given her before dinner the night before and examined them in the sunlight. Her eyes held a soft calmness, a strange content, that amazed Carboldt.

After breakfast he saw the muscles at the base of her jaw knot. She said, “Les, darling. Please take me back and show me that old box again. I’m afraid to go alone.”

“Sure, honey.”

They stood up together. She glanced at Carboldt and her eyes looked opaque. He felt powerless to make a move. His lips were numb and his palms hurt where his fingernails dug into them. Sweat poured off his face.

He watched them go side by side into the darkness of the cave, heard Laura say, “Oh! Les, dear, I just dropped one of those stones you gave me. It rolled over that way. Will you look for it like a dear?”

Leslie Brade grumbled something about clumsiness, snapped his light on and dropped onto his knees, pawing among the jumble of rocks. They were just at the edge of the complete blackness, so that Carboldt saw them as pale silhouettes against a velvet curtain. He saw Laura stoop quickly, saw her come up with a rock- held tightly in both hands, a lethal slab of broken shale.

As she lifted it, held it poised over Leslie’s head, James Carboldt remembered the mission, remembered the bitter hours in the wet stinking jungle where he would have remained and died but for Brade’s help.

In sudden cold fear, Carboldt yelled, “Laura! No!”

Brade spun around, saw the rock poised above him. He fell to one side as the rock came down, missing him narrowly. With his clenched left fist he hit Laura full in the face, knocking her down among the rocks. The forgotten flashlight shone up on Brade’s motionless figure. His right hand stabbed down toward the gun on his hip.

Carboldt snatched his own gun from his holster and said, “Drop the gun, Les. Drop it!”

In answer, he saw Leslie Brade spin and fire at him, saw the gold-orange splat of flame, felt a sledge-hammer blow against the side of his head as he spun down into darkness. Even as he spun down, he felt and heard the full-throated rumble of the moving earth.

High up, high against the roof of the world, on the shoulder of one of the tall mountains of Ceylon, there is a cave mouth. From the cave mouth can be seen the blue stretched silk of the sea, the jeweled green of the jungle and the misty line where they merge. It is an ancient cave, and in that cave once lived the last of the Veddas, chased into mountain hiding by the sons of Singha.

The man who sits in the cave mouth has the tired, brittle face of a scholar, but the thin gray beard clouds the clean lines of cheek and jaw. He hasn’t a scholar’s eyes, but rather the mild trusting eyes of a child. Along the right side of his head, above the ear, is an enormous puckered scar.

His hair is long, and, as he looks down the shattered slope of the hill, he plays with bits of blue glass which catch the sun.

The simple hill people come to feed him and their faces are solemn as they come, for they feel that they are feeding a legend, feeding a pure child of Buddha.

It pains them that he refuses to be taken to a better cave. His cave is no good. It is too shallow. A few feet behind him, as he sits, the fresh broken rock stretches in a sloping pile to the cave roof. Today they will try to move him to a better cave and once again he will refuse, politely but firmly.

The hill people discuss him in whispers. Truly he is a man of great piety. They are prepared to hide him from the other white men who search the hills.