The Dark Crusader

by Alistair MacLean

  ‘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 that 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 up 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 then turned to gaze out over the darkening lagoon. She said: ‘I don’t see it.’

  ‘Ah, well. Wrong type. Lucky I’m 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 take 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 boyfriend’s here.’

  If it hadn’t been for the boyfriend’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 emphasized the Neanderthalic hideousness of it: I couldn’t shut my ears to Witherspoon’s banalities: the wine, a ‘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 had 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 the 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 risqué 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 meticlously. Witherspoon, the dedicated scientist to the life, started to bring me some of the exhibits from the showcases 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 by 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 picture. 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 armchair 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 at right angles to the toppling safe. It was a heavy sole, 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 was 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?’

  CHAPTER 5

  Wednesday 10 p.m.–Thursday 5 a.m.

  Abject apologies, restoring the patient with what few drops of brandy still remained, splinting and taping my ankle in a surgical dressing took about ten minutes. After that they half-helped, half-carried me back to the guest hut. The sidescreens were down but I could see the chinks of light through them. The professor rapped on the door and waited. The door opened.

  ‘Who – who is there?’ Marie had thrown some kind of wrap over her shoulders and the light of the kerosene lamp behind her made a shining halo round the soft fair hair.

  ‘Nothing to worry about, Mrs Bentall,’ Witherspoon said soothingly. ‘Your husband’s just had a slight accident. Hurt his foot rather, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Slight accident!’ I yelped. ‘Hurt his foot. I’ve broken my bloody ankle.’ I pushed off the restraining hands, tried to lurch through the door, stumbled, cried out and measured my length on the floor of the guest house. I was getting good at measuring my length on floors, it was far quicker than using a tape. Marie, her voice high-pitched in anxiety, said something I couldn’t catch above my own moans and dropped on her knees beside me but the professor lifted her gently to her feet while Hewell picked me up and placed me on my bed. I weigh close on two hundred, but he lifted and set me down with as little effort as a girl her doll, except perhaps not quite so gently. But those string beds were stronger than they looked and I didn’t go through to the floor. I moaned some more and then propped myself up on one elbow, letting them see how a stiff-lipped Englishman suffers in silent agony, wincing and screwing my eyes shut from time to time just in case they didn’t get it.

  Professor Witherspoon explained, rather haltingly what had happened – at least, his version of what had happened, a convincing amalgam of jammed combinations, top-heavy safes and sagging floors which made safes unstable – and Marie listened to him in stormy silence. If she was acting, she’d missed out on her profession: the quick breathing, the compressed lips, the slightly flared nostrils, the tightly clenched fists, those I could understand: but to get your face as pale as she did hers you really have to put your heart into it. When he’d finished I really thought she was going to start in on him, she didn’t seem the slightest scared or awed by Hewell’s towering bulk, but she seemed to control herself and said in an icy voice: ‘Thank you both very much for bringing my husband home. It was most kind of you. I’m sure it was all an accident. Good night.’

  That hardly left the door open for any further conversational gambits and they took themselves off hoping aloud that I would be better the next day. What they were really hoping they kept to themselves and they forgot to say how they expected a broken bone to set overnight. For about ten seconds more Marie stood staring through the door by which they’d left, then she whispered: ‘He’s – he’s terrifying, isn’t he? He’s like something left over from the dark ages.’

  ‘He’s no beauty. Scared?’

  ‘Of course I am.’ She stood still for some seconds longer, sighed, turned round and came and sat on the edge of my bed. For a long moment she looked down at me, like a person hesitating or making up her mind, then she touched me lightly on the forehead with both cool hands, smoothed her fingertips past my hair and looked down at me, propped up by a hand on either side of my head. She was smiling but there was no amusement in the smile and her hazel eyes were dark with worry.

  ‘I’m so sorry for this,’ she murmured. ‘It – It’s pretty bad, isn’t it, Johnny?’ She’d never called me that before.

  Terrible.’ I reached my hands up, put them round her neck and pulled her down till her face was buried in the pillow. She didn’t resist any, recovering from the shock of a first-time close-up of Hewell would always take time or maybe she was just humouring a sick man. She had a cheek like a flower petal and she smelled of the sun and the sea. I put my lips close to her ear and whispered: ‘Go and check if they’ve really gone.’

  She stiffened as if she’d touched a live-wire, then pushed herself upright and rose. She went to the door, peered through some interstices in the side-screens then said in a quiet voice: They’re both back in the professor’s living room. I can see them lifting the safe into position.’

  ‘Put the lights out.’

  She crossed to the table, turned down the wick, cupped her hand over the top of the glass funnel and blew. The room was plunged into darkness. I swung off the bed, unwound the couple of yards of medical plaster they’d wrapped round the splints and ankle, cursing softly as it stuck to the flesh, put the splints to one side, stood up and gave two or three experimental hops on my right foot. I was hopping almost as good as ever, the only pain was on the outside of my big toe which had taken the brunt of the weight of the safe when the sole had bent. I tried it again and it was still O.K. I sat down and began to pull on sock and shoe.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’ Marie asked. The soft concern, I noticed with regret, had gone from her voice.

  ‘Just testing.’ I said softly. ‘I think the old foot will carry me around a bit yet.’

  ‘But the bone – I thought the bone was broken.’

  ‘Just a natural fast healer.’ I tried the foot inside the shoe and hardly felt a thing. Then I told her what had happened. At the end she said: ‘I suppose you thought it was clever to fool me?’

  I’d become used to a lot of the feminine injustice in my life so I let it pass. She was too smart not to see how unfair she was, not, at least, when she’d cooled down. Why she had to cool down I didn’t know, but when her temperature dropped she would realize the immense advantage I’d gained by having created the impression that I was completely incapacitated. I heard her moving across the room back to the bed and as she passed me she said quietly: ‘You told me to count the Chinese going in and out of the long hut ‘Well?’

  ‘There were eighteen.’

  ‘Eighteen!’ All I counted in the mine was eight.

  ‘Eighteen.’

  ‘Notice what any of them was carrying when he came out?’

  ‘I didn’t see any come out. Not before it was dark.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Where’s the torch?’

  ‘Under my pillow. Here.’

  She turned in and shortly I could hear her slow even breathing but I knew she wasn’t asleep. I tore strips of the plaster and stretched them across the face of the torch until there was only a quarter inch diameter hole left in the middle. Then I took up position by a crack in the side-screens where I could watch the professor’s house. Hewell left shortly after eleven o’clock, went to his own house. I saw a light come on then go out after about ten minutes.

  I crossed to the cupboard where the Chinese boy had put our clothes, hunted around with the tiny spotlight of light until I’d found a pair of dark grey flannels and a blue shirt and quickly changed in the darkness. Taking a midnight walk in white shirt and white ducks was something Colonel Raine wouldn’t have approved of at all. Then I went back to Marie’s bed and said softly: ‘You’re not sleeping, are you?’

  ‘What do you want?’ No warmth in the voice, just none at all.

  ‘Look, Marie, don’t be silly. To fool them I had to fool you too when they were there. Don’t you see the advantage of being mobile when they think I’m completely immobilized. What did you expect me to do? Stand there at the door supported by Hewell and the prof and sing out cheerily: “Don’t worry about this, dear. I’m only kidding.”

  ‘I suppose not,’ she said after a minute. ‘What did you want? Just to tell me that?’

  ‘As a matter of fact it wasn’t that, it was your eyebrows.’

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Eyebrows. Your hair so blonde, the eyebrows so black. Are they real? The colour, I mean?’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I want to blacken my face. Mascara. I thought you might have –’

  ‘Why didn’t you say that in the first place instead of tr
ying to be clever?’ Whatever her intelligence said about ‘forgive’ some other part of her mind was against it. ‘No mascara. All I have is black shoe polish. Top drawer, right side.’

  I shuddered at the thought but said thanks and left her. An hour later I left her altogether. I’d made up a rough dummy in my bed, checked every side of the house for interested spectators and left by the back, lifting a corner of the sidescreens just sufficiently to squirm under. There were no cries or shouts or shots, Bentall abroad unobserved and mighty glad of it. Against a dark background you couldn’t have seen me from five yards although you could have smelled me at ten times the distance down wind. Certain makes of boot polish are like that.

  On the first part of my trip, between our house and the professor’s it wouldn’t really have mattered whether my foot had been in commission or not. To anyone looking out from Hewell’s house or the workers’ hut, I would have been silhouetted against the lightness of the sea and the white glimmer of the sands so I made it on my hands, elbows and knees, heading for the rear of the house, out of sight of all the others.

  I passed the corner of the house and rose slowly and soundlessly to my feet, pressing close in against the wall. Three long quiet steps and I was at the back door.

  Defeat had come almost before I’d started. Because there had been a hinged wooden door at front I had assumed that there would be the same at the rear: but it was a plaited bamboo screen and as soon as I’d touched it it rustled and clicked with the sound of a hundred distant castanets. I flattened myself against the door, hand clenched round the base of my torch. Five minutes passed, nothing happened, nobody came, and when finally a passing catspaw of wind brushed my face the reeds rustled again, just as they had done before. It took me two minutes to gather up twenty reeds in one hand without making too much racket about it, two seconds to pass through into the house and another two minutes to let those reeds fall one by one into place. The night wasn’t all that warm, but I could feel the sweat dripping down my forehead and into my eyes. I wiped it away, hooded my hand over the tiny hole in the centre of the torch face, slid on the switch with a cautious thumb and started going over the kitchen.