The Dark Crusader Read online

  That was handy. Three weeks. Not long, he said, but they probably had a different time scale on those islands and looking over that shimmering lagoon with coral reefs beyond I found it easy to understand why. But I didn’t think Colonel Raine would be so happy if I just sat back and admired the lagoon for three weeks so I said: ‘Any planes ever pass this way?’

  ‘No ships, no planes, nothing.’ He shook his head and kept on shaking it as he examined the thermometer. ‘Bless my soul. A hundred and three and a pulse of a hundred and twenty. Dear, dear! You’re a sick young lady, Mrs Bentall, probably taken it from London with you, Bath, bed and breakfast in that order!’ he held up his hand as Marie murmured a token protest. ‘I insist. I insist. You can have Carstairs’ room. Red Carstairs, my assistant,’ he explained. ‘In Suva at present, recuperating from malaria. Rife in those parts. Expect him back on the next ship. And you, Mr Bentall – 1 expect you’d like a sleep, too?’ He gave a deprecating little laugh. ‘I dare say you didn’t sleep too soundly out on that reef last night.’

  ‘A clean-up, shave and a couple of hours on one of those very inviting chairs on your veranda will do me,’ I said. ‘No planes either, eh? Any boats on the island I could hire?’

  ‘The only boat on the island is the one belonging to James and John. Not their right names, those natives from Kandavu have unpronounceable names. They’re here on contract to supply fresh fish and whatever food and fruit they can gather. They wouldn’t take you anyway – even if they would, I’d absolutely forbid it. Absolutely’

  ‘Too dangerous?’ If it was I was right with him. ‘Of course. And illegal. The Fijian Government forbids inter-island proa travel in the cyclone season. Heavy penalties. Very heavy penalties. For breaking the law.’

  ‘No radio we could use to send a message?’

  ‘No radio. Not even a radio receiver.’ The professor smiled. ‘When I’m investigating something that happened many thousands of years ago I find contact with the outside world disturbing in the extreme. All I have is an old-fashioned hand-wound gramophone.’

  He seemed a harmless old duffer, so I didn’t tell him what he could do with his gramophone. Instead, while Marie bathed, I had another drink then, after a shave, change and first-class breakfast, stretched out on a low rattan armchair in the shade of the veranda.

  I meant to do some heavy thinking for it seemed to me that the situation was such that it was long past time that I showed some rudimentary signs of intelligence but I’d reckoned without my weariness, the warmth of the sun, the effects of a couple of double Scotches on an empty stomach and the soporific sound of the trade-wind whispering its sibilant clicking way through the nodding palms. I thought of the island and how anxious I’d been to leave it and what Professor Witherspoon would say if he knew that the only way to get me off now would be by sheer force. I thought of Captain Fleck and I thought of the professor, and I thought of them both with admiration, Fleck for the fact that he was twice as smart as I’d thought – which made him at least twice as smart as me – and the professor for the fact that he was as polished and accomplished a liar as I’d ever met. And then I fell asleep.

  CHAPTER 4

  Wednesday 3 p.m.–10 p.m.

  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. I was no hero. Let me get out of the way. I wasn’t going to be cannon-fodder 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 landing on the wooden floor of Professor Witherspoon’s veranda. 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 earthshaking. 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 veranda shook both times, quite violently. I hadn’t even had time 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 veranda, 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 realized 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 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 Tutankhamen, 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 archaeological 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 on those islands as far back as 5,000 B.C., some 5,000 years before the previous earliest estimate. Three magazines carried spreads of the story, and one had a very fine picture of the pro
fessor and Dr ‘Red’ Carstairs standing on 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 handlebar 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 the 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, 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 suitably tender farewell and left.

  He was waiting for me on the veranda, 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 overseers. 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 – ‘one is 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 from 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 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 from 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 sunk 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 neighbouring 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 P
ompeii,’ 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 thoughts that he lived in a very dicey spot where cataclysmic upheavals of a very final nature were 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 side and back and with a flat floor leading 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 and 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 got 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.’