The Dark Crusader

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 gets 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 rats there, and he knew that the rats 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 hadn't even loosened the screw 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 couldn'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 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 blue in the darkness. Then she said: 'Fleck and the professor-they must be working hand in hand.'

'Can you see any other possibility?'

'What do they want with us?'

'I'm not sure yet.' I was sure, but this was one thing I couldn't tell her.

'But-but why all the fake build-up? Why couldn't Fleck have sailed right in and handed us over to the professor?'

'There's an answer to that, too. Whoever is behind this is a very smart boy indeed. There's a reason for everything he does.'

'You-do you think the professor-is he the man behind-'

'I don't know what he is. Don't forget the barbed wire. The Navy is there. They may have come to play skittles, but I don't think so. There's something big, very big, and something very secret going on on the other side of the island. Whoever is in charge there will be taking no chances. They know Witherspoon is there, and that fence doesn't mean a thing, that's just to discourage wandering employees, they'll have investigated him down to the last nail in his shoes. The Services have some very clever investigators indeed and if they're content to have him there that means he's got a clean bill of health. And he knows the Navy is there. Fleck and the professor in cahoots. The professor and the Navy in cahoots. What kind of sense do you make out of it?'

'You trust the professor, then? You're saying, in effect, that he is on the level?'

'I'm not saying anything. I'm just thinking out loud.'

'No, you're not,' she insisted. 'If he's accepted by the Navy, he must be on the level. That's what you say. If he is, then why the Chinese crouching in the darkness down by the fence, why the man-killing dog, why the trip- wire?'

'I'm just guessing. He may have warned his employees to keep clear of that place and they know of the dog and the wire. I'm not saying those were his Chinese employees I saw, I only assumed it. If there's something big and secret happening on the other side of the island, don't forget that secrets can be lost by people breaking out as well as by people breaking in. The Navy may well have some top men on this side, to see that no one breaks- out. Maybe the professor knows all about it-I think he does. We've lost too many secrets to the communist world during the past decade through sheer bad security. The government may have learned its lesson.'

'But where do we come in?' she said helplessly. 'It's so-so terribly complicated. And how can you explain away the attempt to cripple you?'

'I can't. But the more I think of it the more convinced I am that I'm only a tiny pawn in this and that nearly always tiny pawns have to be sacrificed to win the chess game.'

'But why?' she insisted. 'Why? And what reason can a harmless old duffer like Professor Witherspoon have for-'

'If that harmless old duffer is Professor Witherspoon,' I interrupted heavily, 'then I'm the Queen of the May.'

For almost a minute there was only the far-off murmur of the surf, the whisper of the night wind in the trees.

'I can't stand much more of this,' she said at last, wearily. 'You said yourself you've seen him on television and-'

'And a very reasonable facsimile he is, too,' I agreed. 'His name may even be Witherspoon but he's certainly no professor of archaeology. He's the only person I've ever met who knows less about archaeology than I do. Believe me, that's a feat.'

'But he knows so much about it-'

'He knows nothing about it. He's boned up on a couple of books on archaeology and Polynesia and never got quarter of the way through either. He didn't get far enough to find out that there are neither vipers nor malaria in those parts, both of which he claims to exist. That's why he objected to your having his books. You might find out more than he knows. It wouldn't take long. He talks about recovering pottery and wooden implements from basalt- the lava would have crushed the one and incinerated the other. He talks about dating wooden relics by experience and knowledge and any schoolboy in physics will tell you that it can be done with a high degree of accuracy by measuring the extent of decay of radioactive carbon in those relics. He gave me to understand that those relics were the deepest ever found, at 120 feet, and I don't suppose there are more than ten million people who know that a ten million year old skeleton was dug out from the Tuscany hills about three years ago at a depth of 600 feet-in a coal-mine. As for the idea of using high explosive in archaeology instead of prying away gently with pick and shovel-well, don't mention it around the British Museum. You'll have the old boys keeling over like ninepins.'

'But-but all those relics and curios they have around-'

'They may be genuine. Professor Witherspoon may have made a genuine strike, then the idea occurred to the Navy that here would be the perfect set-up for secrecy. They could have all access to the island forbidden for perfectly legitimate reasons and that would give them the ideal cover-up, nothing to excite the suspicions of countries who would be very excited indeed if they knew what the Navy was doing. Whatever that is. The strike may be finished long ago and Witherspoon kept under wraps with someone very like him to put up a front for accidental visitors. Or those relics may be fakes. Maybe there never was an archaeological find here. Maybe it's a brilliant idea dreamed up by the Navy. Again they would require Witherspoon's cooperation, but not necessarily himself, which accounts for the bogus prof. Maybe the story was fed to the newspapers and magazines. Maybe some newspaper and magazine proprietors were approached by the government and persuaded to help out in the fraud. It's been done before.'

'But there were also American papers, American magazines.'

'Maybe it's an Anglo-American project.'

'I still don't understand why they should try to cripple you,' she said doubtfully. 'But maybe one or either of your suggestions goes some way towards an answer.'

'Maybe. I really don't know. But I'll have the answer tonight. I'll find it inside that mine.'