'Are you-are you really crazy?' she said quietly. 'You're not fit to go anywhere.'
'It's only a short walk. I'll manage. There's nothing wrong with my legs.'
'I'm coming with you.'
'You'll do nothing of the kind.'
'Please, Johnny.'
'No.'
She spread out her hands. 'I'm of no use to you at all?'
'Don't be silly. We've got to have someone to hold the fort, to see that no one comes snooping into our house to find two dummies. So long as they can hear even one person breathing and see another form beside him, they'll be happy. I'm going back for a couple of hours' sleep. Why don't you go and whoop it up with the old Professor? He can't keep his eyes off you and you may find out a great deal more in that way than I will in mine.'
'I'm not quite sure that I understand what you mean.'
'The old Mata-Hari act,' I said impatiently. 'Whisper sweet nothings in his silver beard. You'll have him ga-ga in no time. Who knows what tender secrets he might not whisper in return?'
'You think so?'
'Sure, why not. He's at the dangerous stage as far as women are concerned. Somewhere between eighteen and eighty.'
'He might start getting ideas.'
'Well, let him. What does it matter? Just so long as you get some information out of him. Duty before pleasure, you know.'
'I see,' she said softly. She rose to her feet and stretched out her hand. 'Come on. Up.'
I got to my feet. A couple of seconds later I was sitting on the sand again. It hadn't been so much the unexpectedness of the openhanded blow across the face as the sheer weight of it. I was still sitting there, feeling for the dislocation and marvelling at the weird antics of the female members of the race, when she scrambled over the high bank at the top of the beach and disappeared.
My jaw seemed all right. It hurt, but it was still a jaw. I got to my feet, swung the crutches under my arms and started for the head of the beach. It was pretty dark now and I could have made it three times as fast without the crutches but I wouldn't have put it past the old boy to have night-glasses on me.
The bank at the top was only three feet high, but it was still too high for me. I finally solved it by sitting on the edge and pushing myself up with my crutches, but when I got to my feet, swung round and made to take off, the crutches broke through the soft soil and I fell backwards over on to the sand.
It knocked the breath out of me but it wasn't much of a fall as falls go, not enough to make me swear out loud, just enough to make me swear softly. I was trying to get enough breath to swear some more When I heard the quick light sound of approaching feet and someone slid over the edge of the bank. A glimpse of white, a whiff of Night of Mystery, she'd come back to finish me off. I braced my jaw again, then unbraced it. She was bent low down, peering at me, in no position at all to haul off at me again.
'I–I saw you fall.' Her voice was husky. 'Are you badly hurt?'
'I'm in agony. Hey, careful of my sore arm.'
But she wasn't being careful. She was kissing me. She gave her kisses like she gave her slaps, without any holding back that I could notice. She.wasn't crying, but her cheek was wet with tears. After a minute, maybe two, she murmured: 'I'm so ashamed. I'm so sorry.'
'So am I,' I said. 'I'm sorry, too.' I'd no idea what either of us was talking about, but it didn't seem to matter very much at the moment. By and by she rose and helped me over the edge of the bank and I tip-tapped my way back to the house, her arm in mine. We passed by the professor's bungalow on the way, but I didn't make any further suggestions about her going in to see him.
It was just after ten o'clock when I slid out under a raised corner of the seawardfacing side-screen. I could still feel her kisses, but I could also feel my sore jaw, so I left in a pretty neutral frame of mind. As far as she was concerned, that is. As far as the others were concerned-the others being the professor and his men-I wasn't feeling neutral at all- I carried the torch in one hand and the knife in the other, and this time I didn't have any cloth wrapped round the knife- If there weren't more lethal things than dogs on the island of Vardu, I sadly missed my bet.
The moon was lost behind heavy cloud, but I took no chances. It was almost a quarter of a mile to where the mine shaft was sunk into the side of the mountain but I covered nearly all of it on hands and knees and it didn't do my sore arm any great deal of good. On the other hand, I got there safely.
I didn't know if the professor would have any good reason to have a guard at the entrance to the mine or not. Again it Seemed like a good idea to err on the side of caution, so when I stood up slowly and stiffly in the black shadow of a rock where the moon wouldn't get me when and if it broke through, I just stayed there. I stood there for fifteen minutes and all I could hear was the far-off murmur of the Pacific on the distant reef and the slow thudding of my own heart. Any unsuspecting guard who could keep as still as that for fifteen minutes was asleep. I wasn't scared of men who were asleep. I went on into the mine.
My rubber-soled sandals heel-and-toed it along the limestone rock without the slightest whisper of sound. No one could have heard me coming and, after I was clear of the faint luminescence of the cave-mouth, no one could have seen me coming. My torch was off. If there was anyone inside that mine I'd meet them soon enough without letting them know I was on the way. In the dark all men are equal. With that knife in my hand, I was slightly more than equal.
There was plenty of room between the wall and the railway track in the middle to make it unnecessary for me to walk on the sleepers. I couldn't risk a sudden variation of length between a couple of ties. It was simple enough to guide myself by brushing the back of the fingers of my right hand against the tunnel wall from time to time. I took care that the haft of the knife did not strike solid rock.
Inside a minute, the tunnel wall fell away sharply to the right. I had reached the first hollowed-out cavern. I went straight across it to the tunnel opening directly opposite, guiding myself by touching the side of my left foot against the sleepers. It took me five minutes to cross the 70 yards' width of that cave. Nobody called out, nobody switched on a light, nobody jumped me. I was all alone. Or I was being left alone, which wasn't the same thing at all.
Thirty seconds after leaving the first cavern I'd reached the next one. This was the one where the professor had said the first archaeological discoveries had been made, the cavern with the two shored-up entrances to the left, the railway going straight ahead and, to the right, the tunnel where we'd found Hewell and his crew working. I'd no interest in the tunnel where we'd found Hewell working. The professor had given me to understand that that was the source of the explosions that had wakened me the previous afternoon, but all the amount of loose rock I'd seen lying there could have been brought down by a couple of good-sized fire-crackers. I followed the railway.across the chamber straight into the opposite tunnel.
This led to a third chamber, and then a fourth. Neither of those had any exits to the north, into the side of the mountain, as I found by walking round a complete semi-circle to my right before regaining the railway track again: I completed the circle in both chambers and found two openings to the south in each. But I went straight on. After that there were no more caverns, just the tunnel that went on and on.
And on. I thought I would never come to the end of it. There had been no archaeological excavations made here, it was just a plain and straightforward tunnel quite unconcerned with what lay on either side of it. It was a tunnel that was going someplace. I was having to walk on the ties now, the diameter had narrowed to half of what it had been at first, and I noticed that the gradient was slightly upward all the time. I noticed, too, that the air in the tunnel, and this at least a mile and a half after I'd left the mine entrance, was still fresh, and I guess that that explained the upward slant of the tunnel-it was being kept deliberately near the rising slope of the mountain-side to facilitate the driving of vertical ventilation shafts. I must have been at least halfway across to the western side of the island by then and it wasn't very hard to guess that it wouldn't be long before the tunnel floor levelled out and started to descend.
It wasn't. The stretch of level floor, when I came to it, didn't extend more than a hundred yards, and then it began to dip. Just as the descent began my right hand failed to find the tunnel wall. I risked a quick snap of the torch and saw a thirty-foot deep cavern to my right, half full of rock and debris. For one moment I thought this must
