The Dark Crusader

by Alistair MacLean

  CHAPTER 6

  Thursday noon–Friday 1.30 a.m.

  It was after noon when I awoke. Only one wall screen had been pulled up, the one that gave on the lagoon. I could see the green shimmer of water, the white glare of sand, the washed-out pastels of the coral and, beyond the lagoon, the darker line of the sea with a cloudless sky above. With three side-screens down there was no through draught and it was stiflingly hot under that thatched roof. But at least it made for privacy. My left arm throbbed savagely. But I was still alive. No hydrophobia.

  Marie Hopeman was sitting on a chair by my bed. She was dressed in white shorts and blouse, her eyes were clear and rested, she had colour in her cheeks and altogether just looking at her made me feel terrible. She was smiling down at me and I could see that she had made up her mind not to be sore at me any more. She had a nice face, far nicer than the one she had worn in London. I said: ‘You look fine. How do you feel?’ Original, that was me.

  ‘Right as rain. Fever all gone. Sorry to wake you up like this, but there’ll be lunch going in half an hour. The professor had one of his boys make those so that you could get over there.’ She pointed to where a pair of remarkably well-made crutches lay against a chair. ‘Or you can have it here. You must be hungry, but I didn’t want to wake you up for breakfast.’

  ‘I didn’t turn in till about six o’clock.’

  ‘That explains it.’ I took my hat off to her patience, to her ability to suppress her curiosity. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘I feel awful.’

  ‘You look it,’ she said candidly. ‘Just not tough at all.’

  ‘I’m falling to pieces. What have you been doing all morning?’

  ‘Been squired around by the professor. I went swimming with him this morning – I think the professor likes going swimming with me – then after we’d had breakfast he took me round a bit and into the mine.’ She shivered, mock earnest. ‘I don’t care for the mine very much.’

  ‘Where’s your boyfriend now?’

  ‘Away looking for a dog. They can’t find it anywhere. The professor’s very upset. It seems that this was a particular pet and he was very attached to it.’

  ‘Ha! A pet? I’ve met the pet and he was very attached to me. The clinging type.’ I freed my left arm from the blanket and unwrapped the blood-stained strips of cloth. ‘You can see where he was clinging.’

  ‘My God!’ Her eyes widened and the warm colour ebbed from her cheeks. ‘That – that looks ghastly.’

  I examined my arm with a kind of doleful pride and had to admit that she wasn’t exaggerating any. From shoulder to elbow most of the arm was blue, purple and black and swollen as much as fifty per cent above normal. There were four or five deep triangular tears in the flesh and blood was still oozing slowly from three of them. The parts of my arm that didn’t seem discoloured were probably just as bad as the rest, only they were hidden under a thick crust of dark dried-up blood. I had seen pleasanter sights.

  ‘What happened to the dog?’ she whispered.

  ‘I killed him.’ I reached under the pillow and drew out the blood-stained knife. ‘With this.’

  ‘Where on earth did you get that? Where – I think you’d better tell me everything from the beginning.’

  So I told her, quickly and softly, while she cleaned up my arm and bandaged it again. She didn’t like the job, but she did it well. When I’d finished speaking she said: ‘What lies on the other side of the island?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said truthfully. ‘But I’m beginning to make all sorts of guesses and I don’t like any of them.’

  She said nothing to this, just finished tying up my arm and helping me into a long-sleeved shirt. After that she fixed up the splints and plaster again on my right ankle, went to the cupboard and brought back her handbag. I said sourly: ‘Going to powder your nose for the boyfriend?’

  ‘I’m going to powder yours,’ she said. Before I was properly aware of what she was doing she had some kind of cream on my face, had rubbed it in and was dusting powder over it. After a bit she leaned back and surveyed her handiwork. ‘You look simply sweet’ she murmured and handed me her pocket mirror.

  I looked awful. One horrified glance at me would have had any life assurance salesman in the land jumping on his fountain pen with both feet. The drawn features, the bloodshot eyes with the blue under them were my own contributions: but the ghastly and highly convincing pallor of the rest of my face was entirely due to Marie.

  ‘Wonderful,’ I agreed. ‘And what’s going to happen when the professor gets a good whiff of this face-powder?’

  She drew a miniature scent-spray from her bag. ‘After I’ve sprayed a couple of ounces of “Night of Mystery” on myself he won’t be able to smell anything else within twenty yards.’

  I wrinkled my nose and said: ‘I see your point.’ ‘Night of Mystery’ was pretty powerful stuff, at least in the quantities she was using. ‘What happens if I start sweating? Won’t all this cream and powder stuff start to streak?’

  ‘It’s guaranteed not to.’ She smiled. ‘If it does, we’ll sue the makers.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said heavily. ‘That should be interesting. You know. The shades of the late J. Bentall and M. Hopeman herewith propose to raise an action –’

  ‘Stop it!’ she said sharply. ‘Stop it, will you?’

  I stopped it. She was a very touchy girl on some subjects. Or maybe I was just clumsy and careless. I said: ‘Don’t you think the half-hour is just about up?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. We’d better go.’

  It took me until I had got down the steps and moved six paces into the sunshine to realize that Marie’s careful preparation with the cream and powder was probably just so much wasted effort. The way I felt, nothing could have made me look worse. With only one foot in commission and the other shoeless foot swinging clear of the ground I was forced to throw much of my weight on the crutches and with every thud of the left-hand crutch on the hard-baked earth a violent jolt of pain stabbed clear through my arm, from the finger-tips all the way to the shoulder, then across my back to the very top of my head. I didn’t see why an arm injury should give me a violent headache, but it did. This was something else to take up with the medical profession.

  Old Witherspoon had either been watching or had heard the thud of my crutches for he opened the door and came hopping briskly down the steps to greet us. The broad beam of welcome changed to a look of distress as he caught sight of my face.

  ‘God bless my soul! Bless my soul!’ He came hurrying anxiously forward and took my arm. ‘You look – I mean, this has given you a terrible shake. Good God, my boy, the sweat’s pouring down your face.’

  He wasn’t exaggerating. It was pouring down my face. It had started pouring at the precise instant that he had gripped me by the arm, the left arm, just above the elbow. He was screwing my arm off at the shoulder socket. He thought he was helping me.

  I’ll be all right.’ I gave him my wan smile. ‘Just jarred my foot coming down our steps. Otherwise I hardly feel a thing.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have come out,’ he scolded. ‘Foolish, terribly foolish. We would have sent lunch across. However, now that you’re here … Dear me, dear me, I feel so guilty about all this.’

  It’s not your fault,’ I reassured him. He’d shifted his grip higher to assist me up the steps and I noted with faint surprise that his house was swaying from side to side. ‘You weren’t to know that the floor was unsafe.’

  ‘But I did, I did. That’s what vexes me so much. Unforgivable, unforgivable.’ He ushered me into a chair in his living-room, fussing and clucking around like an old hen. ‘By jove, you do look ill. Brandy, eh, brandy?’

  ‘Nothing I’d like better,’ I said honestly.

  He did his usual testing to destruction act with the handbell, brandy was brought and the patient revived. He waited till I downed half my drink, then said: ‘Don’t you think I should have another look at that ankle?’

  ‘Thank you, but
fortunately no need,’ I said easily. ‘Marie fixed it this morning. I had the good sense to marry a fully qualified nurse. I hear you’ve had a little trouble yourself. Did you find your dog?’

  ‘No trace of him anywhere. Most vexing, most disturbing. A Dobermann, you know – very devoted to him. Yes, very devoted. I can’t think what has happened.’ He shook his head worriedly, poured some sherry for himself and Marie and sat beside her on the rattan couch. ‘I fear some misfortune has overtaken him.’

  ‘Misfortune?’ Marie gazed at him, wide-eyed. ‘On this peaceful little island?’

  ‘Snakes, I’m afraid. Highly poisonous vipers. They infest the southern part of the island and live in the rocks at the foot of the mountain. Carl – my dog – may have been bitten by one of those. Incidentally, I meant to warn you – on no account go near that part of the island. Extremely dangerous, extremely.’

  ‘Vipers!’ Marie shuddered. ‘Do they – do they come near the houses here?’

  ‘Oh, dear me, no.’ The professor patted her hand in absent-minded affection. ‘No need to worry, my dear. They hate this phosphate dust. Just remind yourself to confine your walks to this part of the island.’

  ‘I certainly shall,’ Marie agreed. ‘But tell me, Professor, if the vipers had got him wouldn’t you – or someone – have found his body?’

  ‘Not if he were in among the rocks at the foot of the mountain. Fearful jumble there. Of course, he may come back yet?,

  ‘Or he may have taken a swim.’ I suggested.

  ‘A swim?’ The professor frowned. ‘I don’t follow you, my boy.’

  ‘Was he fond of water?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, he was. By jove, I believe you’ve hit on it. Lagoon’s full of tiger sharks. Monsters, some of them, up to eighteen feet – and I do know they move close in at night. That must have been it, that must have been it. Poor Carl! One of those monsters could have bitten him clear in two. What an end for a dog, what an end.’ Witherspoon shook his head mournfully and cleared his throat. ‘Dear me, I shall miss him. He was more than a dog, he was a friend. A faithful and a gentle friend.’

  We all sat around for a couple of minutes in silent sorrow, paying our last respects to this departed pillar of canine benevolence, and then we got on with the lunch.

  It was still daylight, but the sun had sunk beyond the shoulder of the mountain when I woke up. I felt fresh and rested, and while my arm was still stiff and sore, the throbbing pain of the morning had gone – as long as I didn’t have to move around, the discomfort was hardly worth mentioning.

  Marie had not yet returned. She and the professor had gone out trolling for trevally – whatever trevally might be – with the two Fijian boys after lunch while I had returned to bed. The professor had invited me also, but it had obviously been only as a gesture of politeness, I hadn’t the strength to pull in a sardine that afternoon. So they’d gone without me. Professor Witherspoon had expressed regrets and apologies and hoped I didn’t mind his taking my wife with him. I’d told him not at all and hoped that they would enjoy themselves and he’d given me a funny look that I couldn’t quite figure out, and I’d had the obscure uneasy feeling of having put a foot wrong somewhere. But whatever it was he hadn’t let it puzzle him long. He was too interested in his trevally. Not to mention Marie.

  I’d washed and shaved and managed to make myself look more or less respectable by the time they returned. It appeared that the trevally hadn’t been biting that day. Neither of them seemed very upset about it. The professor was in tremendous form at the table that evening, a genial thoughtful host with a fund of good stories. He really went out of his way to entertain us and it didn’t require any great deductive powers to guess that the effort wasn’t being made on my behalf or on the behalf of Hewell, who say at the opposite end of the table from me, brooding and silent and remote. Marie laughed and smiled and talked almost as much as the professor. She seemed to find his charm and good humour infectious, but it didn’t infect me any, I’d done a good solid hour of constructive thinking before I’d gone to sleep that afternoon and the thinking had led me to inevitable conclusions that I found very frightening indeed. I don’t scare easy but I know when to be scared: and never a better time in my opinion than when you’ve made the discovery that you’re under sentence of death. And I was under sentence of death. I had no doubt at all left in my mind about that.

  Dinner over, I pulled myself to my feet, reached for the crutches, thanked the professor for the meal and said that we couldn’t possibly trespass on his kindness and hospitality any more that night. We knew, I said, that he was a busy man. He protested, but not too violently, and asked if there were any books he could send across to our house. I said we would be pleased, but that I’d like to take a few steps down to the beach first and he clucked his tongue and wondered whether it would not be too much for me, but when I said that he had only to look out of the window and see for himself how little I was exerting myself he supposed doubtfully it would be all right. We said good night and left them.

  I’d some difficulty in negotiating the steep bank overhanging the top of the beach, but after that it was easy. The sand was dry and hard-packed and the crutches scarcely sank in at all. We went about a couple of hundred yards down and along the beach, always keeping in line of sight of the professor’s windows, till we came to the edge of the lagoon. There we sat down. The moon was as it had been the previous night, one moment there, the next vanished behind the drifting cloud. I could hear the distant murmur of the surf breaking on the reef of the lagoon and the faint rustling whisper of the night wind in the nodding palms. There were no exotic tropical scents, I suppose that suffocating grey phosphate dust had crushed the life out of all but the trees and the tougher plants, all I could smell was the sea.

  Marie touched my arm with gentle fingers. ‘How does it feel?’

  ‘Improving. Enjoy your afternoon out?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I didn’t think so. You were too happy by half. Learn anything that might be useful?’

  ‘How could I?’ she asked disgustedly. ‘He did nothing but babble and talk nonsense all afternoon.’

  ‘It’s the “Night of Mystery” and those clothes you wear,’ I pointed out kindly. ‘You’re driving the man out of his mind.’

  ‘I don’t seem to be driving you out of your mind,’ she said tartly.

  ‘No,’ I agreed, then, after a few seconds, added bitterly: ‘You can’t drive me out of what I haven’t got.’

  ‘What strange modesty is this?’

  ‘Look at this beach,’ I said. ‘Has it ever occurred to you that four or five days ago in London, before we even took off, someone knew that we would be sitting here tonight? My God, if ever I get out of this I’m going to devote the rest of my life to tiddlywinks. I’m out of my depth in this line. I knew I was right about Fleck, I knew I was. He was no killer.’

  ‘You’re hopping about too much,’ Marie protested. ‘Sure, he wasn’t going to kill us. Not nice Captain Fleck. He was just going to tap us on the head and push us over the side. The sharks would have done the dirty work for him.’

  ‘Remember when we were sitting on that upper deck? Remember I told you that I felt there was something wrong but that I couldn’t put my finger on it? Remember?’

  ‘Yes, I remember.’

  ‘Good old Bentall,’ I said savagely. ‘Never misses a thing. The ventilator – the ventilator we used as a hearing aid, the one facing the radio room. It shouldn’t have been facing the radio shack, it should have been facing forward. Remember we got no air down there. No bloody wonder.’

  ‘There’s no need to –’

  ‘Sorry. But you see it all now, don’t you? He knew that even a fool like me would discover that voices from the radio room could be heard down that pipe. Ten to one he had a concealed mike down in that hold which let him know whenever Bentall, the Einstein of espionage, made such shattering discoveries. He knew there were cockroaches there, and he knew that they would
discourage us from sleeping on a low bunk, so Henry pushes back some battens which coincidentally happen to be at the very spot where we can start searching for tinned food and drink after we’d passed up that deliberately awful breakfast they gave us. More coincidences: behind the tinned food are battens with loose screws and behind them are lifebelts. Fleck didn’t exactly hang up a sign saying “Lifebelts in this box” – but he came pretty close to it. Then Fleck puts the wind up me good and proper, without in any way appearing to do so, and more or less lets us know that the decision to execute or not will be coming through at seven. So we latch ourselves on to that ventilator and when the word comes through we leave, complete with lifebelts. What do you bet that Fleck had even loosened the screws on the hatch to make things easy – I could probably have forced it with my little finger.’

  ‘But – but we could still have drowned.’ Marie said slowly. ‘We might have missed the reef or lagoon.’

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

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