“No good cutting out. The idea’s too fascinating. And I believe myself, fantastic though it seems, that Hailstone’s right. Of course you know that he’s absolutely first-class” – Dunchue squared himself, suddenly the eternal assistant – “and, in fact, nobody can touch him since old Sempel died. So it seems worth hanging on. But he’s a rum chap – genius often is.” He reached for the decanter and drank again. “I sometimes think it’s not just natural laziness with him, nor yet the climate. Look how he makes these black cattle keep this place. His idleness is an inhibition of some sort – psychologist’s stuff.” He drained his glass. “Like drink; something to do with your mother or your nurse.”
Again there was a silence. Appleby, staring into the jungle, chose between a number of feelers he wished to put out. “Those black cattle,” he said; “you don’t seem to care for them?”
“Hate all blacks – intensely boring. Hate the tropics – intensely boring too.”
“But surely–” Appleby checked himself. “And Hailstone?”
“Same. Hates natives. Odd that he can manage them.”
“Would you say that he hates blacks – of any sort – enough to hit a stray one on the head?”
“Might kick him on the – on the behind.” Dunchue looked puzzled, and Appleby wondered if the Unumunu affair had not yet pierced the alcoholic fog around him. “And I daresay might kill a man, might Hailstone. Has claws, you know, great Tabby that he seems. Absolutely first-class.” Dunchue was becoming discernibly drunker.
“Kill a man over what? Money, women, political passion?”
“Good lord, no.” Dunchue laughed the high, strained laugh of a man with a dry tongue and throat. “You don’t know the old boy at all.” He stopped laughing and his face clouded with a sort of dull suspicion. “What’s all this, anyway? You talk like a damned policeman.”
“As it happens, I am. And a man has been killed on the island. I’m going to find out how, even if it means stretching my warrant to cover a Crown Colony.”
“Crown Colony? I’m not sure the island isn’t American.” Dunchue’s interest was now perfunctory. “There’s a British Governor somewhere about, I believe, but I’m not sure if he asks us to his levees. A man killed? Likely enough. Filthy place all round.”
Diana was leaning over the veranda rail, as if scarcely listening to the talk. But now she turned round and looked full at Dunchue. “Did you know Sir Ponto Unumunu?” she asked gravely. “He was an – an anthropologist too.”
“I’m not an anthropologist. I’m an archaeologist. There’s a difference.” He scrubbed at his eyes, seemed to look at Diana for the first time. “Hullo! I say, will you have a drink? Got one? Don’t think me meaning to be rude. Touch of fever the other day – leaves one a bit vague. Is that the man they’ve killed – Sir–?”
“Ponto Unumunu.”
“No, never heard of him. Anthropologist? Sounds queer.” Dunchue picked up the decanter and then thought better of it. “Hope you’ll stay and lunch.”
Appleby nodded cheerfully. “May we – and ask questions? I would like to know a lot about Heaven and his pub.”
“Nasty chap.” Dunchue stared inattentively at his visitors for some seconds. “But I have heard of him – Unumunu, I mean. Not as any sort of scientist, though, and that put me off. Heaven, of course – we can tell you something about him. Only I have heard of this Unumunu, but I can’t think where.” He set down his glass, and with the action turned instantaneously glum. “Not long ago.” With his hair falling over one eye he stared at them in lethargic misery. “My mind’s going.” He began to cry.
Diana looked uncomfortable; Appleby, whom, of professional habit, the vagaries of human conduct had little power to disconcert, looked placidly into distance. And from somewhere in the interior of the bungalow came an ironical snuffle which was undoubtedly made by George.
“John” – Diana spoke cautiously across the blubbering man – “ought we just to drift off?”
He shook his head and waited. “Unumunu,” he said presently. “An odd name. One would hardly forget it.” He paused again. “And he was an odd chap too.” He continued to talk placidly.
Below them blue sea lapped a beach which shimmered and vibrated in the sun; George had reappeared and sunk, all tongue and pant, beneath a chair; from inside came a slow chink of silver, as of a table being very slowly laid. Dunchue’s eyes, still wet with tears, closed; his mouth fell open with a sudden, helpless, repulsive jerk; his body slumped as he sat. For some moments Appleby talked softly on; then he stood up. “I’m going to have a look round. Just mind the cradle.” He slipped from the veranda into the half-light of the house.
Two native boys were working in a long narrow living room which ran the length of the bungalow; they looked at him incuriously and without interrupting the slow and graceful rhythm with which they were preparing for a meal. The scanty furniture was of laminated and cellulosed wood: pleasing stuff from Finland or Sweden which would unscrew and pack into a small crate; there was a gramophone with a bust of Beethoven; the only other ornament stood on a desk and was a great bronze bowl of evident antiquity, embossed with dragons in a swirl of foliage. Appleby collated this mentally with remembered exhibits in the British Museum and turned to the books which covered one of the end walls. Most were in German but many were in English; there were others in what was discernibly a variety of Scandinavian languages; there was a big collection of scientific papers in Dutch. Everything spoke of cultures thousands of miles away; the room was an enigma public and exposed; all this would have been evident the moment he was invited inside.
The boys, chattering softly, had left the room and Appleby risked a rapid rummage at the desk. One deep drawer held a series of bound notebooks, and every one appeared filled from cover to cover with neat archaeological notes and sketches. These Appleby examined at dangerous length, though a glance was sufficient to show that they answered to the general atmosphere of the room. The story was Nordic all the way. It was the world of the Sagas that had been transported to this lazy, faintly sticky tropical isle.
The other drawers were locked – all save a shallow one at the top. Here he paused over a curiously shaped pipe and a plain hermetically-sealed tin. There was a slither behind him and he slid the drawer back just as one of the boys returned to the room. A banal, too familiar business this of furtive search; he slipped back to the veranda and took a deep breath of hot, still air.
Dunchue was still a comatose mess; Diana was a sort of answering study in healthy sleepiness; only George had revived – his chin a good inch from the floor and his moist nose, while twitching distaste of a fly, steadily directed down the bungalow path with its little bed of flowers. And presently round a corner came Mr Hailstone’s comfortable umbrella, tortoise-like as before and the focus for a swirling coronal of minute, brilliantly plumaged birds. The native boys ran out and took the umbrella exactly as Hailstone passed into the shade. He removed his blue-tinted glasses; caught sight of the visitors and returned them to his nose as if for more careful scrutiny; removed the spotless panama instead. “How do you do?” he said. “I hope George has been doing the honours of this simple place.” He glanced at his assistant. “And, of course, Dunchue too.”
Dunchue stirred uneasily in his chair.
“It seems necessary – or rather unnecessary – to be frank.” Hailstone had turned towards Diana with something of the cautious effort of a liner being manoeuvred against a quay. “Dunchue is a capital fellow. Since Sempel’s young man Oplitz was killed I really don’t think anybody can touch him. Quite first-class and thoroughly abreast – always the difficult thing for us older men. But sometimes I think the island doesn’t quite suit him. And I wholly sympathise. I am, as it happens, an energetic man myself – George and I share a virtual immunity to climatic conditions – but I know how it is. One just can’t keep on one’s toes. When we begin to dig
I am sure it will be better. But at present, as you see, he drinks.” Hailstone moved slowly to a table. “Which reminds me, will you have a spot?”
They declined spots, indicating the glasses they had conscientiously drained. Hailstone poured himself out a trickle of the concoction from the decanter and eased himself into a chair. “The question is: who is going to begin to dig? One says one digs, but of course one doesn’t. One employs diggers and all one has to do for the most part is to keep on imploring them to dig gently. Well, now, I collected some natives–” He broke off. “But I am afraid all this will bore you. Are you comfortable at the hotel? It is a great pity we cannot accommodate you here. I can’t think that all those frivolous people–” He broke off again and this time his eyes momentarily closed, as if polite solicitude were a soporific as powerful as his assistant’s drink.
“We are comfortable enough,” said Appleby, “and have really been uncommonly lucky. And we are not at all bored. Your dig is the interesting thing on the island, it seems to me.”
Hailstone’s eyes opened again, almost abruptly. “I collected some natives at the last trading post and thought that the problem was solved. It would not even be necessary to urge them to go gently, as they were guaranteed to be quite without energy. Unfortunately I ought to have brought them from much farther off. The site is taboo, or the next thing to it. And when the hotel came and stole some of them away of course it became more difficult still. However” – he nodded vaguely – “I have no doubt we shall manage something soon.”
“Mr Hailstone” – Diana turned upon the archaeologist eyes which almost equalled in roundness his own blue spectacles – “couldn’t we dig? It would be great fun. Ourselves, I mean, and some of the people from the hotel.”
“Ah.” Hailstone’s voice was wistful. “Some of the hotel people did offer once. But it wasn’t a success. They expected quick results. There was friction and the thing broke down. But now that we have fresh blood something might be possible.”
“Talking of fresh blood,” said Appleby, “I have news about Unumunu’s death. Perhaps it wasn’t savages.”
“He’s been saying perhaps it was you.” Dunchue had abruptly awakened and sat up. He was grinning at Hailstone, seemingly perfectly alert.
“That I killed the mysterious negro? Dear me, perhaps it is time that we all had luncheon.” Hailstone clapped his hands lightly. “And Mr Appleby can inspect our boys. For something like savages were certainly involved in that curious spear-throwing business. Perhaps they were bribed.” He rose. “George, with luck there will be a terrapin steak. Come in, Mrs Kittery, I beg. My dear Appleby, come in.” He moved towards the door, chuckling. “I can quite see what you call a ‘case’. I can even see that Dunchue has seen it. Did Sir Pongo–”
“Ponto,” said Diana severely.
“Did Sir Ponto and I come to blows over Miss – Miss Curricle? No. Did he covet my umbrella and was I after his gold watch? Again no. But was I jealous lest the rival scientist should beat me to the secrets of our savage neighbours’ ancestors? Yes – and again abundantly yes. Dunchue, I was defending the dig against another authority on Pacific anthropology.” They had entered the living room and Hailstone was waving an unwontedly animated hand round a scene not so unfamiliar to Appleby as he imagined. “You see?” he said. He chuckled happily, recollected himself to find Diana a chair, gave himself over to chuckling in earnest. “Mr Appleby, you are a detective. And I challenge you… Do you see?”
13
Appleby, it seemed, did not see; he peered round the living room with the conscientiously suspicious eye of a rural constable at the beginning of a yarn of crime. And Hailstone was delighted.
“We have always been a little nervous” – he clapped his hands as a summons for the first course – “of letting people in. The hotel people, for instance, we have entertained only on the veranda, and perhaps it was resented during the period they were helping us to dig. Dunchue, who has a subtle mind, once suggested a little camouflage, but I felt that to be carrying secrecy too far. He wanted to buy up some junk from visiting natives: shields, smoked scalps, totem-poles – that sort of thing. And to plaster the place with it.”
“It was a nasty idea.” Dunchue was still very gloomy. “I detest lower races. All lower races.” He stared morosely at his chief, much as if he suspected him of being a Hottentot. “But it would have been the efficient thing. As it is, we can’t be sure the secret hasn’t leaked out. Why we’re letting you in on it I don’t quite know.”
“Do I understand,” asked Appleby, “that you are not archaeologists at all? That you are something quite different? Blackbirders, for instance?”
“Blackbirders?” Diana set down her tomato juice and looked perplexed. “I haven’t seen anything but parrots and hummingbirds and gulls.”
Hailstone laughed quite merrily. “Mr Appleby’s mind still runs on my stalking black men. Blackbirders in this part of the world are a sort of slave-traders. We should be bad at it; we have let the objectionable Heaven have several black boys for just nothing at all. No, I think we may fairly claim to be true archaeologists.”
“We deal,” said Dunchue, “with a world of the past. Deal with it.”
“Come, come” – Hailstone spoke rapidly – “we are not really going to fall down on this job. Mrs Kittery is going to help us dig; we shall deal with it yet.” He set down his glass and looked round the table, summoning their attention as if some climax had come. “Vikings!” he said.
Diana, who had perhaps failed to take out the appropriate classes for dealing with this piece of information, looked blank; Appleby – quite deceitfully – registered a slow semi-comprehension. “There can’t have been any Vikings here,” he said.
Hailstone began to eat rapidly, as if the meal had suddenly become a bore. “We are going to show you. The barrow. The dig.”
“Wouldn’t you need,” asked Diana, “more than one barrow?”
From beneath the table George snored; Hailstone, in whom an almost active habit was visibly rising, laughed with great good humour. “My dear lady, the barrow is the dig.”
“Where they buried people?” asked Appleby.
“Things,” said Dunchue. “Have you ever seen Traprain? It is – or was – quite a sizeable hill near the coast in the Scottish lowlands. Actually, it proved to be a solid cache of treasure: they left it there to be called for. Only it wasn’t called for until a thousand years or so later.”
“Treasure!” Diana’s eyes were like saucers. “You are treasure hunting? Who will it belong to?”
“We have to find it first. And its value to science will be far greater than any intrinsic value in gold and gems.” Hailstone turned to Appleby and talked absorbedly, rapidly. “They loved green water. They were the first and greatest navigators in history. It’s impossible to say where they didn’t get to. And these fellows may have come round the Horn. Think of that: a long plundering contact with South America centuries and centuries before Pizarro! And then everything dumped here. You see why we want to keep it quiet? A sensation, a rush of expeditions – and quite probably a mess. Dunchue, get the maps. For years I had a wild theory. Then, in the Marquesas, I picked up a real trace…” And Hailstone talked on and on. Behind him the boys slid noiselessly. George slumbered on the floor.
Appleby listened with conscientious attention. “I’m afraid I’m no scientist,” he said. “My mind runs on all the wrong lines. Presumably if what you suppose is true, the hidden stuff will really be immensely valuable? Are you sure your plans haven’t indeed leaked out? This odd hotel which has so mysteriously followed you and established itself: are you sure it isn’t cover for some sort of gang on your tracks? What if Unumunu had contacted it and recognised somebody – some sort of disreputable pirate in the archaeological way – who then found it necessary to kill him? It’s a wild suspicion – but then that’s my line.”
Hailstone let drop a spoon with a clatter. “What an extraordinary idea!” He looked anxiously at Dunchue. “The hotel was a bit queer from the first, wasn’t it? Heaven just turned up with a boat and builders, and then the guests came. A close lot they are, too. A ship comes in once in six months from lord knows where.”
“By the way,” Appleby interrupted, “what about your own communications?”
“We can’t afford much. A trader is putting in to have a look at us early next year. Always supposing it’s not torpedoed. Your idea about the hotel disturbs me; I’ve always distrusted Heaven.”
“Heaven collects stamps. Or – better – is in possession of something like a collection.”
“Indeed?” Hailstone looked puzzled. “Not an endearing trait. But scarcely–”
“The connection with torpedoes is obvious.”
Diana, enrapt before a passion-fruit sundae, smiled happily. “When he talks like that,” she said in a proprietary way, “his mind is working.” She spooned deep into the ice cream.
“We are at war. For all practical purposes the whole world is at war. And lots of people will go a long way to get clear of it. The difficulty is money. No government is very willing to finance its more pacifically minded subjects, for instance, in a comfortable tropic isle existence. One can’t walk into a bank and draw money or arrange credit for such a purpose. But various categories of people are let slip away if they take no wealth with them. Their services are not reckoned valuable and if they can represent that they are going to live on their aunts at Timbuctoo they can clear out. Hence a war-time boom in rare stamps; they are a sort of negotiable security that can be smuggled with the greatest ease. And hence, it is quite clear, Heaven.” Appleby paused. “Or so I should have supposed. But the value of your possible find makes me feel there may be something more in it than that. He may have other sources of gain in mind.”
Appleby on Ararat Page 10
