going so that the local law is short-circuited. But they're personal connections and he has to do it himself. I don't swing enough weight myself -- I can't reach up that high.'
'Would it do any good if I talked to him?' I asked. Pat shrugged. 'Maybe.' He shook his head dejectedly. 'I don't know what's got into him. His judgement is usually better man this.'
So I talked to Fallon and got a fast brush-off. He was talking to Rudetsky at the time, planning the move to Camp Three, and all his attention was on that. 'If you find anything in the preliminary clean-up, don't touch it,' he warned Rudetsky. 'Just leave it and clear round it.'
'I won't mess around with any stones,' said Rudetsky reassuringly.
Fallon looked tired and thinner than ever, as though the flesh was being burned from his bones by the fire glowing within him. Every thought he had at that time was directed solely to one end -- the excavation of the city of Uaxuanoc -- and nothing else was of the slightest importance. He listened to me impatiently and then cut me off halfway through a sentence. 'All this is Harris's job,' he said curtly. 'Leave it to him,'
'But Harris says he can't do anything about it.'
Then he's not worth the money I'm paying him,' growled . Fallon, and walked away, ignoring me, and plunged again into the welter of preparations for the move to Camp Three.
I said nothing of this to the Halsteads; there was no point in scaring anyone else to death. But I did have another conversation with Pat Harris before he left to find out what Gatt was doing. I told him of my failure to move Fallon and he smiled grimly at Fallen's comment on his worth, but let it go.
There's one thing that puzzles me,' he said. 'How in hell did Gatt know when to pitch up here? It's funny that he arrived just as soon as you'd discovered the city.'
'Coincidence,' I suggested, But Pat was not convinced of that. He made me tell him of everything that had been said and was as puzzled as I had been about Gait's apparent disinterest in the very thing we knew he was after. 'Did Gatt have the chance to talk to anyone alone?' he asked.
I thought about it and shook my head. 'He was with all of us all the time. We didn't let him wander around by himself, if that's what you mean.'
'He wasn't alone with anyone not even for a minute?' Pat persisted.
I hesitated. 'Well, before he went to his plane he shook hands all round.' I frowned. 'Halstead had lagged behind and Gatt went back to shake hands. But it wasn't for long -- not even fifteen seconds.'
'Halstead, by God!' exclaimed Pat. 'Let me tell you something. You can pass along a hell of a lot of information in a simple handshake. Bear that in mind, Jemmy.'
With that cryptic remark he left, and I began to go over all the things I knew about Halstead. But it was ridiculous to' suppose he had anything to do with Gatt. Ridiculous!
III
Harry Rider was a very busy man during the next few days He flew Rudetsky and a couple of his men to Camp Three at Uaxuanoc, dropped them and came back for equipment Rudetsky and his team hewed a bigger landing area out of the forest, and then the big cargo-carrying helicopter could go in and things really got moving. It was like a well-planned military operation exploiting a beach-head.
It would have been a big disappointment all round if this wasn't the site of Uaxuanoc, but Fallon showed no worry. He urged Rudetsky on to greater efforts and complacent!} watched the helicopters fly to and fro. The cost of keeping a big helicopter in the air is something fantastic and, although I knew Fallon could afford it, I couldn't help but point it out Fallon drew his pipe from his mouth and laughed. 'Damn it, you're an accountant,' he said. 'Use your brains. It would cost a lot more if I didn't use those choppers. I have to pay a lot of highly skilled men a lot of money to clear that site for preliminary investigation, and I'm damned if I'm going to pay them for hacking their way through the forest to get to the site. It's cheaper this way.'
And so it was from a. cost-effectiveness point of view, as I found out when I did a brief analysis. Fallon wasn't wasting his money on that score, although some people might think that the excavation of a long-dead city was a waste of money in the first place.
Four more archeologists arrived -- young men chock-full' of enthusiasm. For three of them this was their first experience of a big dig and they fairly worshipped at the feet of Fallon although I noticed they all tended to walk stiff-legged around Halstead. If his notoriety had spread down to the lower ranks of the profession then he was indeed in a bad way. I'm surprised Katherine didn't see it. although she probably put it down to the general effect of his prickly character on other people. But what a hell of a thing to have to live with!
Ten days after Fallon had made the big decision we went up to Camp Three and, circling over the cenote, I looked down upon a transformed scene quite different from what I had seen when dangling on the end of that cable. There was. a little village down there -- the huts were laid out in neat lines and there was a landing area to one side with hangars for the aircraft. All this had been chopped out of dense forest, in just over a week; Rudetsky was evidently something of a slave driver.
We landed and, as the rotor flapped into silence, I heard the howl of power saws from near by as the assault on the forest went on. And it was hot -- hotter even than Camp Two; the sun, unshielded by the cover of trees, hammered the clearing with a brazen glare. Perspiration sprang out all over my body and by the time we had reached the shelter of a hut I was dripping.
Fallon wasted no time. This is not a very comfortable place,' he said. 'So we might as well get on with the job as quickly as we can. Our immediate aim is to find out what we have here in broad detail. The finer points will have to wait for the years to come. I don't intend to excavate any particular buildings at this time. Our work now is to delimit the area, to identify structures and to clear the ground for our successors.'
Halstead stirred and I could see he wasn't happy about that, but he said nothing.
'.Joe Rudetsky has been here for nearly two weeks,' said Fallon. 'What have you found, Joe?'
'I found eight more of those pillars with carvings,' said Rudetsky. 'I did like you said -- I just cleared around them and didn't go monkeying about.' He stood up and went to the map on the wall. Most of it was blank but an area around the cenote had been inked in. 'Here they are,' he said. 'I marked them all.'
'I'll have a look at them,' said Fallon. 'Gentlemen, Mr. Rudetsky is not an archeologist, but he is a skilled surveyor and he will be our cartographer.' He waved his hand. 'As the work goes on I hope this map will become filled in and cease to be terra incognita. Now, let's get on with it.'
