The Dark Crusader

CHAPTER FOUR

There was a war on and I was right in the middle of it. I couldn't see who or what was to the right or the left of me and I wasn't even sure whether it was day or night. But there was a war on, I was sure of that. Heavy artillery, laying down a barrage before an attack. The low ominous nimble of explosions, the very earth shaking. I was no hero. Let me get out of the way. I wasn't going to be cannonfodder for anyone. I moved, seemed to stumble and felt the sharp pain in my right arm. Shrapnel, perhaps, or a bullet. Maybe they'd invalid me out, it would be a change from the front line. Then I opened my eyes and found that I wasn't in the front line: I'd achieved the near impossible feat of falling out of an armchair and had landed on the wooden floor of Professor Witherspoon's verandah. I seemed to have made a neat one point landing. On my right elbow. My elbow hurt.

I'd been dreaming, but I hadn't been dreaming about the rumble of the explosions and the earth-shaking. As I got to my feet, clutching my arm and trying not to hop around too much, I heard another couple of distant muffled thuds and the floor of the verandah shook both times, quite violently. I hadn't even had tune to try to guess at the source of those disturbances when I caught sight of Professor Witherspoon standing in the doorway leading in off the verandah, his face filled with concern. At least, his voice was, so I assumed that what lay behind the foliage would reflect his voice.

"My dear fellow, my dear fellow!" He came hurrying forward, hands outstretched as if he thought I was going to collapse at any moment. "I heard the sound of the fall. By Jove, it was loud! You must have hurt yourself. What happened?"

"I fell out of my chair," I said patiently. "I thought it was the Second Front. It's my nerves."

"Dear me, dear me, dear me!" He fussed and fluttered around without achieving anything. "Have you-have you damaged anything?"

"Only my pride." I felt my elbow with cautious fingers. "Nothing broken. Just numbed. What's making all that damned racket?"

"Ha!" He smiled, relieved. "I thought you'd want to know that. I'm just about to show you-thought you'd like to have a look over the place anyway." He regarded me with quizzical eyes. "Enjoy your two hour snooze?"

"Except for the waking-up bit, yes."

"You've been asleep for six hours, Mr. Bentall."

I looked at my watch and looked at the sun, already far past the meridian, and realised that he was right, but it didn't seem worth making a fuss over so I merely said, politely: "I hope that didn't cause you any trouble? Having to stay behind and look after me when you may have wished to be working."

"Not at all, not at all. No time clock here, young man. I work when I want to. Hungry?"

"Thank you, no."

"Thirsty? Some Hong-Kong beer before we go. Excellent stuff. Chilled. Eh?"

"Sounds fine, Professor."

So we went and drank his beer and it was as good as he had promised. We had it in the living-room where he'd first taken us and I looked at the various exhibits in the glass-fronted cases. To me they were only a mouldy collection of bones and fossils and shells, of stone pestles and mortars, of charred timber and clay utensils and curiously shaped stones. It was no difficulty at all not to show any interest and I didn't show any interest because the Professor had shown signs of being wary of any person interested in archaeology. But it seemed he'd given up being wary for when he caught my roving eye, he said enthusiastically: "Magnificent collection of specimens, eh? Magnificent!"

"I'm afraid it's hardly in my line," I began apologetically. "I don't know-"

"Of course not, of course not! Wouldn't expect you to." He went across to his roll-top desk, pulled out a handful of papers and magazines from the central drawer and gave them to me. "Those may help you understand better."

I leafed quickly through the magazines and papers. Nearly all of them were dated six months previously and of eight papers, five London national dailies and three major U.S. papers, no less than seven had given the professor page one headlines. It must have been a field day for the old boy. Most of the headlines were of the 'Archaeological Discovery of the Century' variety, far outranking in importance Tutenkhamon, Troy or the Dead Sea Scrolls. Every latest archaeological discovery, of course, was usually acclaimed in the same way, but there did appear to be some basis for this latest claim: Oceania, it seemed, had long been the dark continent of archeological research, but now Professor Witherspoon claimed to have discovered on the island of Vardu, south of the Fijis, complete proof of the migration of the Polynesians from the south-east of Asia and of there being some form of primitive civilization in those islands as far back as 5,000 B.C., some 5,000 years before the previous earliest estimate. Three magazines carried coloured spreads of the story, and one had a very fine picture of the professor and Dr. 'Red* Carstairs standing by what looked to me like a cracked paving stone but which the caption said was part of a stepped tomb. Dr. Carstairs was a remarkable looking character, six and a half feet tall if he was an inch, with a flaming red handle-bar moustache of heroic proportions.

"I missed it all, I'm afraid," I said. "I was in the Middle East at the time and pretty cut off from everything. This must have caused a terrific stir."

"It was the crowning moment of my life," he said simply.

"It must have been. Why haven't I read anything about this recently?"

"There's been nothing about it in the papers since and there won't be till I'm through here," he said darkly. "I foolishly granted news agencies, papers and magazines facilities to come here after my first announcement had caused some stir. They hired a special ship from Suva. Descended on me like locusts-like locusts, I tell you, sir. All over the shop, interfering, poking, ruining weeks of intensive work. Helpless, I was completely helpless." The anger deepened. "And there were spies among them."

"Spies? You must forgive me-"

"Rival archaeologists. Trying to steal my thunder." That would be just about the ultimate crime as far as the old boy was concerned. "Trying to steal other things, too, some of the most valuable finds ever made in the Pacific. Never trust a fellow archaeologist, my boy," he said bitterly. "Never trust 'em."

I said I wouldn't and he went on: "One of them actually had the effrontery to arrive here in a yacht a couple of months ago. American millionaire who does archaeology as a hobby. Just wanted credit. Damned impertinence to say he'd lost his way. Never trust an archaeologist. Threw him off. That's why I was suspicious of you. How was I to know you weren't a reporter, eh? At first, that is?"

"I quite understand, professor," I said soothingly.

"Got the government behind me now, though," he went on triumphantly. "British territory this, of course. All access to the island forbidden till I'm through." He drained his glass.

"Well, well, shouldn't be bothering you with my troubles. Shall we go for this look round?"

"Pleasure. Mind if I see my wife first?"

"Certainly, certainly. You know the way."

Marie Hopeman stirred, turned and looked up at me sleepily as I opened the creaking door. The bed was a pretty primitive affair, a wooden frame with criss-cross stringing, but she seemed comfortable enough. I said: "Sorry if I wakened you. How's it going?"

"You didn't waken me. Ten times better now." She looked it, the blueness had gone from beneath her eyes and the harsh red spots from her cheeks. She stretched luxuriously. "I don't intend moving for hours and hours. He's very kind, isn't he?"

"Couldn't have fallen into better hands," I agreed. I didn't bother to keep my voice down. "Best thing would be for you to go to sleep again, my dear."

She blinked a bit at the 'my dear', but let it go. "It won't be too difficult. And you?"

"Professor Witherspoon is going to show me around. Apparently he's made some very important archaeological discoveries here. Should be very interesting." I added a few more banalities, bade her what I hoped old Witherspoon would consider a suitable tender farewell and left.

He was waiting for me on the verandah, pith helmet on head, malacca cane in hand. The British archaeologist abroad, he was perfect.

'This is where Hewell lives." He waved his stick in the direction of the thatched house nearest his own. "My overseer. American. Rough diamond, of course"-the tone of his voice lumped 180,000,000 citizens of the United States into the same category-"but able. Yes indeed. Very able. This next house is my guest house. Unused, but having it done up. Looks a bit airy, I admit"-he wasn't exaggerating, all it consisted of was a roof, floor and four supporting corner-posts-"but very comfortable. Adapted for the climate. Reed curtain divides it in half and all the walls-screens of plaited coconut leaves-can be lowered to the floor. Kitchen and bathroom behind-can't have them inside a house of this type. And that next long house belongs to the workers-the diggers."

"And this eyesore?" I nodded at the corrugated iron building "Quarry hopper or crusher?"

"Not a bad guess at all, my boy. It is ghastly, isn't it? Property-or ex-property-of the British Phosphate Commissioners. You can see the name on the side if you look closely. Their crushing mill. That flat-topped shed behind was the drying plant." He waved his malacca around in a sweeping half-circle. "Almost a year since they left, but still the place is covered in this damnable grey dust. Killed off most of the vegetation on this side of the island. Damnable!"

"It's not very nice," I agreed. "What's a British firm doing out in this forsaken part of the world?"

"Not purely British. International, but run mostly by New Zealand. Digging out the rock, of course. Phosphate of lime. They were taking out a thousand tons a day a year ago. Valuable stuff." He peered at me shrewdly. "Know anything of geology, hey?"

The professor seemed suspicious of anyone who knew anything about anything, so I said I didn't.

"Ah well, who does, these days?" he said cryptically. "But to put you in the picture, my boy. You must understand that this island once probably lay on the bottom of the sea-and as the bottom of the sea is about three miles down here, that was a fair depth. Then one day-geologically speaking you understand, it probably took a million years-the bottom came up to near the top. Upthrust or volcanic activity associated with the continuous outpouring of lava. Who knows?" He coughed deprecatingly. "When one knows a little of those things"-from the tone of his voice I gathered that if he knew only a little anybody who claimed to know a lot Was a liar-"you are unwilling to be dogmatic about it. Anyway, the net result was that after a few aeons you had this massive underwater mountain with the peak not yet above water but less than 120 feet below the surface."

He peered at me, waiting for the obvious remark, so I obliged.

"How can you be so certain about something that happened millions of years ago?"

"Because this is a coral island," he said triumphantly, "and the polyps that build the coral reefs must live in water but die below 120 feet. Well, some time later-"

"Another million years?"

"Give or take a million. This must have been a big low-lying coral reef when it was upthrust below. This upthrust probably coincided with the beginning of the age of birds. This became a sanctuary for untold numbers of birds-there are many such in the Pacific-who stayed here for countless years. Eventually you had a layer of guano, up to perhaps fifty feet thick. Millions of tons of it, millions of tons-and then island, coral and guano subsided and sank to the floor of the sea."

It seemed to me that this island had had a pretty chequered history.

"Some time later," he went on, "up it comes again. By this time the actions of sea deposits and salt water had changed the guano into a very rich phosphate of lime. Then came the slow laborious process of soil forming, of growing grass, shrubs, trees, a veritable tropical paradise. Then, probably in the last ice age, along came the wandering sea-rovers from south-east Asia and settled in this idyllic spot."

'If it was all that idyllic, why did they leave it?"

"But they never left it! They never left it for the same reason that those fabulous deposits of lime phosphate weren't discovered until recently, though most other deposits in the Pacific had been worked out by the end of the last century. This, Mr. Bentall, is a highly volcanic region-there are still active volcanoes on the neighboring Tonga Islands, you know. In the space of a few hours a gigantic volcano erupted out of the sea, drowning half of this coral island and covering the other half-coral, phosphate, vegetation and the unfortunate people who lived here in a tremendous layer of basaltic lava. The 79 A.D. eruption that destroyed Pompeii," Professor Witherspoon finished disparagingly, "was a bagatelle compared to this."

I nodded at the mountain sloping up sharply behind us. "That's the volcano that was formed?"

"Yes, indeed."

"What happened to the other half of it?"

"Must have been some ground fault formed at the same time as the volcano. One night it just broke in half and vanished into the sea. It took the seabed with it and the coral reefs built out to the north: you can see that the lagoon is open there."

He marched on at a brisk pace apparently undisturbed by the thought that he lived in a very dicey spot where cataclysmic upheavals of a very final nature were of the order of the day. He was angling his way slightly uphill, and less than three hundred yards from the crushing mill we came to a sudden cleft in the side of the mountain. It was about seventy feet high and thirty wide, vertical at the sides and back and with a flat floor leading in to a circular hole in the mountainside. There were railway tracks of very narrow gauge coming out from the hole, running along the horizontal floor of the fissure then turning to the south where they dipped from view. There were two or three small sheds just outside the entrance, and from one of these came the humming sound I'd been hearing more and more clearly on the way up.

Petrol-driven generators. It had never occurred to me until then but of course if the professor and his assistants were prospecting about inside the mountain they would have to have electric power for light and probably also for ventilation.

"Well, here we are," the professor announced. "This is the spot where some curious intelligent prospector for the phosphate company noticed this peculiar fault in the mountainside, started digging through the top-soil and struck phosphate before he'd gone three feet. Heaven knows how many million tons of rock they took out-the mountain is a perfect honeycomb. Just as they were finishing up here somebody found a few pieces of pottery and curiously-shaped stones. An archaeologist in Wellington was shown them and immediately sent them to me." The professor coughed modestly. "The rest, of course, is history."

I followed the history-maker through the entrance and along a winding horizontal passage-way until we came to a huge circular excavation in the rock. It was a gigantic cavern, forty feet high, twenty by the encircling walls, supported by concrete columns and about two hundred feet in diameter, Half a dozen tiny electric lights, suspended from some of the pillars at about a height of ten feet, gave the dingy grey rock an eerie and forbidding appearance and were but token illumination at best. Spaced evenly round the perimeter of this cavern were five more tunnels, each with its own railway track.

"Well, what do you think of this, Mr. Bentall?"

"It looks like the catacombs in Rome," I said. "But not so cheery."

"It's a remarkable mining feat," the professor said severely. He didn't care for any flippancy about his nearest and dearest, and his nearest and dearest would always be those dank and gloomy holes in the ground. "Very difficult stuff to work with, this limestone, and when you have to support a thick layer of basaltic lava and half the weight of a volcano above it it becomes very tricky indeed. This mountainside is honeycombed with similar caverns, all joined by tunnels. Hexagonal system. Those domed roofs give the greatest structural strength, but there's a limit to their size. The mining company only managed to get out about a third of the available limestone before the cost of supporting pillars to hold the roof in place became prohibitive."

"Doesn't that make this blasting rather dangerous, then?" I thought an interested question might put me back in his good books.

"Well, yes, it is, rather," he said thoughtfully. "Chance we have to take. Chance we must take. Interests of. science. Come and see where our first discoveries were made."

He led the way straight across the cavern to the tunnel opposite to the one by which we'd entered and went down this, hopping briskly along the sleepers of the railway tracks. After about twenty yards we entered another cavern, in height, width and number of exit tunnels the duplicate of the one we had just left. There was no illumination here other than one single lamp suspended from the electric light cable that traversed the width of the cavern and vanished down the faraway tunnel, but it was enough to let me see that the two tunnels to the left had been blocked off by heavy vertical baulks of timber.

"What happened there, professor? Cave-in?"

"Afraid so." He shook his head. "Two tunnels and parts of the caverns to which they led collapsed at the same time. Had to shore up the tunnel entrances in case the collapse spread to this chamber. Before my time, of course. I believe three men perished in the right-hand cavern in there-they'd just started to excavate it. A bad business, a bad business." He paused for a few moments to let me see how bad he thought it had been, then said brightly: "Well, this is the historic spot."

It was a five-foot niche in the wall just to the right of the tunnel by which we'd entered the cavern. To me it was just a five-foot niche. But to Witherspoon it was a temple and he himself the officiating priest.

"This," he said reverently, "is where the mystery of Polynesia and the Polynesians was solved. It was here that were found the first adze-heads, stone mortars and pestles. It was this that triggered off the biggest archaeological discovery of our generation. Doesn't it make you think, Mr. Bentall?"

"It certainly does." I refrained from specifying the nature of my thoughts. Instead I reached out for a spur of rock, damp and slimy to the touch, and pulled it off with little effort. I said in surprise: "Pretty soft stuff, this. You'd think picks or pneumatic drills would be almost as effective as blasting for removing this stuff."

"And so they are, my boy, and so they are. But how would you like to tackle basalt with a pick and shovel?" he asked jovially. "A different proposition altogether."

"I'd forgotten about that," I confessed. "Of course, when the lava poured down it covered everything. What kind of stuff do you find in the basalt-pottery, stone utensils, axe handles, things like that?"

"To name only a very few," he nodded. He hesitated, then said: 'To speak frankly, unlike the average merchant, I put only my worst goods in the shop window. The things you saw in my room I regard only as trinkets, as the merest trifles. I have one or two hidden caches in here-I wouldn't dream of even hinting to you where they are-that contain a fantastic collection of Neolithic Polynesian relics that will astound the scientific world. Astound them."

He moved off again, but instead of crossing the chamber and following the electric cable and far-spaced lights down the opposite tunnel, he switched on a torch and turned into the first tunnel on his right, pointing out the various places from which those Polynesian relics had been recovered. He stopped in front of a particularly large excavation in the limestone and said: "And here we excavated the joists and timbers of what must be the oldest wooden house in the world. In an almost perfect state of preservation."

"And how old was that?"

"Seven thousand years, near enough," he said promptly. "Van Duprez, of Amsterdam, who was out here with all the newspaper people, says it's only four thousand. But the man's a fool, of course."

"What basis do you use for assessing the age of those things?" I asked curiously.

"Experience and knowledge," he said flatly. "Van Duprez, despite his inflated reputation, hasn't got a great deal of either. Man's a fool." \

"Um," I said noncommittally. I looked apprehensively at the third chamber now opening out before us. "How deep are we here?"

"About a hundred feet, I should say. Perhaps a hundred and twenty. Moving into the side of the mountain, you know. Nervous, Mr. Bentall?"

"Sure, I'm nervous. I never realized you archaeologists went so deep or that you could find any trace of early life so deep. This must be about a record, eh?"

"Close to it, close to it," he said complacently. "Thought they went pretty deep in the Nile valley and Troy, you know." He led the way across the third chamber into a tunnel sparsely illuminated with battery lamps. "We should find Hewell and his crew down here." He glanced at his watch. "They must be about due to pack up shortly. Been at it here all day."

They were still working when we arrived at the spot where the tunnel began to open out into a rudimentary fourth chamber. There were nine men there altogether, some prising out lumps of limestone with pickaxes and crowbars to add to the heap of rubble at their feet, others loading the rubble on to rubber-tyred wheel-barrows while a gigantic man clad only in denim trousers and singlet closely examined each lump with a powerful torch.

Both the workers and the man with the torch were worth looking at. The workers were all Chinese, unusually tall and heavily-built for members of their race, and looked about the toughest and hardest-bitten characters I'd ever seen. But it could have been pure illusion: that feeble light shining on sweat- and dust-coated faces would have made anyone seem unnatural.

But there was no illusion about the foreman who straightened from his examination of the rock and came to meet us. He was the toughest and hardest-bitten character I'd ever seen. He was about six feet three niches tall, but stunted for his breadth, with a couple of massive arms ending in five-fingered shovels that almost brushed his knees. His face looked as if it had been carved from solid rock by a sculptor whose only ambition was to get the job done in a hurry: there wasn't a curve worth calling a curve in his entire face, just a granitic mass of crudely intersecting planes that would have had the old cubist boys jumping for joy. He had a chin like a power-shovel, a gash for a mouth, a huge beak of a nose and black cold eyes set so far back under the beetling overhang of tufted brows that you had the illusion of some wild animal peering out from the dark depths of a cave. The sides of his face-you couldn't have called them cheeks-and forehead were deeply trenched by a criss-cross of sun-weathered lines, like some ancient parchment. He would have had a terrible time making the romantic lead in a musical comedy.

Professor Witherspoon introduced us and Hewell stretched out his hand and said: "Glad to meet you, Bentall." His voice, deep and cavernous, matched both his vast frame and his occupation, and he was glad to see me with the same sort of gladness that you would have found in those same islands a hundred years previously when the cannibal chief hailed the arrival of the latest of a long line of toothsome missionaries. I braced myself as the giant hand closed over mine, but he was surprisingly gentle: it felt as if I was being pulled through a power wringer, but when he gave me back my hand all the fingers were still there, bent and mangled a bit, but still there.

"Heard about you this morning," he boomed. Canada or the American north-west, I couldn't be sure. "Heard your wife wasn't so well, neither. The islands: anything can happen in the islands. Must have had a terrible time."

We talked for a bit about the terrible time I had, then I said curiously: "You've had to go a fair way to recruit labour for this job?"

"Had to, my boy, had to." It was Witherspoon who answered. "Indians no damn good-sullen, uncooperative, suspicious, haven't the physique. Fijians have, but they'd have a heart attack if you suggested they do any work. Same with any white man you could pick up-loafers and wasters to a man. But the Chinese are different."

"Best workers I've ever had," Hewell confirmed. He had a curious trick of speaking without appearing to move his mouth. "When it comes to building railroads and driving tunnels you can't beat 'em. Never have built the western railroads of America without them."

I made some suitable remark and peered around me. Witherspoon said sharply: "What are you looking for, Bentall?"

"Relics, of course." The right note of surprise. "Be interesting to see one being excavated from the rock."

"Won't see none today, I'm afraid," Hewell boomed. "Lucky to find anything once a week. Ain't that so, professor?"

"If we're very lucky," Witherspoon agreed. "Well, well, mustn't hold you back, Hewell, mustn't hold you back. Just brought Bentall along to show him what all the bangs were about. We'll see you at suppertime."

Witherspoon led the way back through the mine, out into the brilliant sunshine and down to his house, chattering away all the time, but I wasn't listening any more, I'd heard and seen all I wanted to hear and see. When we got back he excused himself on the ground that he had some work to catch up on and I went to see Marie. She was sitting up in bed with a book in her hands and there wasn't anything much the matter with her that I could see. I said: "I thought you said you were going to sleep?"

"I said I wasn't going to move. Different thing altogether." She lay back luxuriously on her pillow. "Warm day, cool breeze, sound of the wind in the palms, the sea on the surf and all the blue waters of the lagoon and white sand out there. Wonderful, isn't it?"

"Sure. What's that you're reading there?"

"Book on Fiji. Very interesting." She gestured at the books piled on the table beside her. "Some more on Fiji, some on archaeology. Tommy-the Chinese boy-brought them to me. You should read them."

"Later. How are you feeling?"

"Took your time in getting round to ask me, didn't you?"

I frowned at her, at the same time jerking my head backwards. She caught on fast.

"I'm sorry, dear." The impulsive cry, very well done. "Shouldn't have said that. Much better, I'm feeling much better. Right as rain tomorrow. Had a nice walk round?" The banal touch, like the cry, perfectly done.

I was in the middle of telling her about the nice walk I'd had when there came a diffident tap on the door, a clearing of the throat, and Witherspoon came in. By my reckoning he'd been outside that door for about three minutes. Behind him I could see the brown-skinned forms of John and James, the two Fijian boys.

"Good evening, Mrs. Bentall, good evening. How are you? Better, yes, better? You certainly look better." His eyes fell on the books by the bedside and he checked and frowned. "Where did these come from, Mrs. Bentall?"

"I do hope that I haven't done anything wrong, Professor Witherspoon," she said anxiously. "I asked Tommy for something to read and he brought me these. I'd just started the first one and-"

"Those are rare and valuable editions," he said testily. "Very rare, very rare. Personal library and all that, we archaeologists never lead them out. Tommy had no right- well, never mind. I have an excellent selection of novels, detective fiction, you can have what you like." He smiled, the incident magnanimously forgotten. "I've come to bring you some good news. You and your husband are to have the guest house for yourselves during the remainder of your stay here. I've had John and James here at work most of the day clearing it up."

"Why, Professor!" Marie stretched out her hand and took his. "How very, very nice. It's so kind of you-it's really far too kind of you."

"Nothing at all, my dear, nothing at all!" He patted her hand and held on to it longer than was necessary, about ten times longer than was necessary. "I just thought you might appreciate the privacy. I dare say"-this with a crinkling of half-closed eyes which I took to be a dyspeptic twinge, but it wasn't dyspepsia, it was meant as a roguish twinkle-"that you haven't been married very long. Now, tell me, Mrs. Bentall, will you be fit enough to join us for supper tonight?"

She could be as quick as a cat. She caught the all but imperceptible shake of my head and she wasn't even looking in my direction.

"I'm so sorry, Professor Witherspoon." It takes some doing to combine a dazzling smile with a tone of deep regret but she managed it. "There's nothing I'd like better, but I really do feel so weak yet. If I could be excused until the morning I-"

"Of course. But of course. Mustn't overdo the convalescence, must we?" He seemed to be on the point of grabbing her hand again, but thought better of it. "We'll send a tray along. And we'll also send you along. No need to stir."

At a signal from him the two Fijians caught an end of the bed apiece and lifted, not such a feat, as the bed itself probably didn't weigh even thirty pounds. The Chinese boy came in to carry all the clothes we had, the professor led the way and there was nothing for me to do but to take her hand as we walked between the two houses, bend over her solicitously and murmur: "Ask him for a torch."

I didn't suggest a reason why she should ask for one, for the excellent reason that none occurred to me, but she handled it beautifully. When the professor had dismissed the bearers and was expatiating at length on how the guest house was built entirely from the products of two trees, the pan-danus and coconut palm, she interrupted diffidently to ask: "Is there-is there a bathroom here, Professor Witherspoon?"

"But of course, my dear. How remiss of me. Down the steps, to the left and it's the first small hut you come to. The next is the kitchen. For obvious reasons you can't have fire and water in houses like these."

"Of course not. But-but doesn't it get rather dark at night here? I mean-"

"God bless my soul! What must you think of me? A torch-of course you shall have a torch. You shall have it after our evening meal." He glanced at his watch. "Expect you in about half an hour, Bentall?" A few more platitudes, a smirk at Marie and he bustled briskly away.

The westering sun had already dipped behind the shoulder of the mountain but the heat of the day still lingered in the air. For all that Marie shivered and pulled the coverlet high about her shoulders. She said: "Would you care to let the side-screens down? Those trade winds aren't what they're cracked up to be. Not when the darkness comes."

"Let the screen down? And have a dozen listening ears pressed against them in a couple of minutes?"

"You-you think so?" she said slowly. "You feel there's something wrong here? With Professor Witherspoon?"

"I've long passed the feeling stage. I know damn well there's something wrong. I've known it ever since we arrived here." I pulled a chair up to her bed and took her hand: a hundred to one that we had a keen and interested audience and I didn't want to disappoint them. "What are you going on? Feeling fey again or womanly intuition or hard facts?"

"Don't be unpleasant," she said quietly. "I've already apologised for my foolish behaviour-just the fever, as you said. This is intuition, or a hunch-quite different. This ideal spot, those smiling Fijian boys, the marvellous Chinese servant, that Hollywood dream of what an English archaeologist should look like and behave-it's all too idyllic, too perfect. You get the impression of-of a carefully maintained facade. It's too dreamlike, if you know what I mean."

"You mean you'd feel better if you saw the professor roaring and cursing round the place or saw someone lying under a stoop and drinking from the neck of a whisky bottle?"

"Well, something like that."

"I've heard the South Pacific often affects people like that at first. The sense of unreality, I mean. Don't forget I've seen the professor several times on the screen. He's just as large as life. And if you want perfection marred, just wait until the boyfriend, Hewell, happens by."

"Why, what's he like?"

"Couldn't describe him. You're too young to have seen the King Kong films. You won't mistake him though. And while you're watching out for him I want you to check the number of people who come and go into the workers' hut. That's why I didn't want you to come across for supper."

"That shouldn't be hard."

"Nor so easy. They're all Chinese-the ones I’ve seen so far anyway-and they'll probably all look alike to you. Check what they're doing, how many stay in, whether the ones that come out are carrying anything or not. Don't let anyone guess you're checking. Let down the screens when it's dark enough and if there are no window cut-outs you can peek through-"

"Why don't you write it all down for me?" she said sweetly.

"O.K., so you've been at this longer than I have. Just a cowardly concern for my own neck. I'm going to take a walk around during the middle of the night and I'd like to know what the score is."

She didn't put her hand to her mouth or gasp or try to dissuade me, I couldn't even have sworn to it that the pressure of her hand had increased. She said, matter-of-factly: "Do you want me to come with you?"

"No. I just want to look around and there's nothing wrong with my own eyes. And while I don't expect trouble I can't see you'd be much help, if any did come along. No offence, of course."

"Well," she said doubtfully, "Fleck's got my gun, there wouldn't be much point in calling the cops and I don't suppose I could do very much if someone jumped me. But if someone jumped you, then I-"

"You have the wrong idea entirely," I said patiently. "You're not built for speed. I am. You never saw anyone who could run away from a fight as fast as Bentall." I crossed the coconut floor and pulled over a made-up string bed, placing it close to hers. "Do you mind?"

"Suit yourself," she said agreeably. She looked at me lazily under half-closed eyelids and an amused smile curved across her mouth, but it wasn't at all the same amused smile as she'd given me in Colonel Raine's office in London. "I'll hold your hand. I think you're just a sheep in wolf's clothing."

"Wait till I get off duty," I threatened. "You and me and the lights of London. You'll see."

She looked at me for a long moment and then turned to gaze out over the darkening lagoon. She said: "I don't see it."

"Ah, well. Wrong type. Lucky Fm not the sensitive kind. About this bed: I know this is going to be a big disappointment to you, but it occurred to me that when I took a walk tonight it might be a good thing to shove some sort of dummy in here and it's not likely they'll investigate its genuineness when the bed is so near yours." I heard the sound of voices, looked up and saw Hewell and his Chinese come into sight round a corner of the crushing mill: Hewell was a walking mountain, there was something almost frighteningly simian about the bowed form, the perceptibly rolling gait, the slow swing of the hands that all but brushed his knees as he walked. I said to Marie: "If you want to have the screaming heebie-jeebies during the night, turn round and have an eyeful. The boy-friend's here."

If it hadn't been for the boy-friend's face, the professor's incessant chatter and the bottle of wine he'd produced to mark, he said, the occasion, it would have been quite a pleasant meal: the Chinese boy certainly knew how to cook and there was none of this nonsense of birds' nests and sharks' fins, either. But I couldn't keep my eyes off that gaunt and ravaged face opposite me-the immaculate white drills into which he'd changed only emphasised the Neanderthalic hideousness of it: I could shut my ears to Witherspoon's banalities: the wine, an Australian burgundy, was quite excellent if your tastes ran to sweetened vinegar, but I was thirsty and managed to force some down.

But it was Hewell, curiously enough, who made the meal tolerable. Behind that primitive broken face lay a keen mind- at least he was smart enough to stay away from the burgundy and drink Hong-Kong beer by the quart-and his stories of life as a hard-rock mining engineer in what seemed to have been half the countries in the world made good listening. Or they would have made good listening if he hadn't stared unwinkingly at me all the time he was speaking, the black eyes so far back in their sockets that the illusion of a bear peering out from his cave was stronger than ever. He'd the Ancient Mariner whacked to the wide. I might have been sitting there transfixed all night if Witherspoon hadn't finally pushed back his chair, rubbed his hands together in satisfaction and asked me how I'd enjoyed the meal.

"It was excellent," I told him. "Don't let that cook go. Very many thanks indeed. And now, if you will, I think I'll be getting back to my wife."

"Nonsense, nonsense!" The affronted host to the life. "Coffee and brandy to come yet, my boy. When ever do we archaeologists get an opportunity to celebrate? We're delighted to see a strange face here, aren't we, Hewell?"

Hewell didn't contradict him, but he didn't agree with him either. It didn't matter to Witherspoon. He brought forward a rattan armchair, set it in position for me and fussed around like an old hen until he was certain I was comfortably seated. Then Tommy brought in the coffee and brandy.

From that moment on, the evening went well. After the Chinese boy had brought in drinks for the second time the professor told him to bring the bottle and leave it there. The level in the bottle sank as if there was a hole in the bottom of it. The professor was in tremendous form. The level sank some more. Hewell smiled twice. It was a great night. The calf was being fatted for the kill. They weren't wasting all that excellent brandy for nothing. The bottle was emptied and another brought in. The professor told some mildly risque jokes and convulsed himself with laughter. Hewell smiled again. I wiped away some tears of mirth and caught the quick flicker of interchanged glances. The axe was starting on its back swing. I congratulated the professor on his wit in a slurred and stumbling voice. I never felt more sober in my life.

They'd obviously rehearsed the whole thing meticulously. Witherspoon, the dedicated scientist to the life, started to bring me some of the exhibits from the show-cases lining the walls, but after a few minutes he said: "Come, Hewell, we are insulting our friend here. Let us show him our real treasures."

Hewell hesitated doubtfully and Witherspoon actually stamped his foot on the floor. "I insist. Damn it, man, what harm in it?"

"Very well." Hewell crossed to the big safe on my left hand side and after a minute's fruitless twiddling of the knob, said: "Combination's stuck again, professor."

"Well, open it from the back combination," Witherspoon said testily. He was standing to my right, a piece of broken pottery in his hand. "Now look at this, Mr. Bentall. I want you to pay particular attention to…"

But I wasn't paying any attention, particular or otherwise, to what he was saying. I wasn't even looking at the pottery. I was looking at the window behind him, a window which the kerosene lamp inside and the darkness outside transformed into an almost perfect mirror. I was looking at Hewell and the safe that he was tilting away from the wall. That safe weighed three hundredweights if it weighed an ounce. And the way I was sitting, leaning to the right in the arm-chair and left leg crossed,over the right, my right foot was sticking out directly in its path, if it toppled. And it was going to topple. The safe was now a good foot away from the wall at the top and I could see Hewell actually sighting along its side to see if my foot was in the line of fall. And then he gave it a push.

"My God!" Professor Witherspoon shouted. "Look out!" The cry of horror was as perfectly done as it was calculatedly late, but he needn't have bothered himself, I was already looking out for myself. I was already starting to fall out of my chair as the safe fell on my leg, twisting my foot so that the side lay flush along the floor: the sole was more than half an inch of solid leather, but even so it was a chance. A long chance, but I had to take it.

There was nothing faked about my shout of pain. That stout leather sole felt as if it were being bent in half and so did my foot: but the safe didn't touch any other part of my foot or leg.

I lay there, gasping, trapped by the weight of the safe, until Hewell rushed round to the front to heave it up while Witherspoon dragged me clear. I struggled painfully to my feet, shook off the professor's arm, took one step on my injured foot and collapsed heavily to the floor. What with the safe and myself, the floor was certainly taking a beating that night.

"Are you-are you badly hurt?" The professor was aghast with anxiety.

"Hurt? No, I'm not hurt. I just felt tired and lay down for a rest." I glared up at him savagely, both hands cradling my right foot. "How far do you think you could walk with a broken ankle?"