I followed the history-maker through the entrance and along the winding horizontal passageway until we came to a huge circular excavation in the rock. It was a gigantic cavern, forty feet high, twenty by the encircling walls, supported by concrete columns and about two hundred feet in diameter. Half a dozen tiny electric lights, suspended from some of the pillars at about a height of ten feet, gave the dingy grey rock an eerie and forbidding appearance and were but token illumination at best. Spaced evenly round the perimeter of this cavern were five more tunnels, each with its own railway track.
‘Well, what do you think of this, Mr Bentall?’
‘It looks like the catacombs in Rome,’ I said. ‘But not so cheery.’
‘It’s a remarkable mining feat,’ the professor said severely. He didn’t care for any flippancy about his nearest and dearest, and his nearest and dearest would always be those dank and gloomy holes in the ground. ‘Very difficult stuff to work with, this limestone, and when you have to support a thick layer of basaltic lava and half the weight of a volcano above it it becomes very tricky indeed. This mountainside is honeycombed with similar caverns, all joined by tunnels. Hexagonal system. Those domed roofs give the greatest structural strength, but there’s a limit to their size. The mining company only managed to get about a third of the available limestone before the cost of supporting pillars to hold the roof in place became prohibitive.’
‘Doesn’t that make the blasting rather dangerous, then?’ I thought an interested question might put me back in his good books.
‘Well, yes, it is, rather,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Chance we have to take. Chance we must take. Interests of science. Come and see where our first discoveries were made.’
He led the way straight across the cavern to the tunnel opposite to the one by which we’d entered and went down this, hopping briskly along the sleepers of the railway tracks. After about twenty yards we entered another cavern, in height, width and number of exit tunnels the duplicate of the one we had just left. There was no illumination here other than one single lamp suspended from the electric light cable that traversed the width of the cavern and vanished down the faraway tunnel, but it was enough to let me see that the two tunnels to the left had been blocked off by heavy vertical baulks of timber.
‘What happened there, Professor? Cave in?’
‘Afraid so.’ He shook his head. ‘Two tunnels and parts of the caverns to which they led collapsed at the same time. Had to shore up the tunnel entrances in case the collapse spread to this chamber. Before my time, of course. I believe three men perished in the right-hand cavern in there – they’d just started to excavate it. A bad business, a bad business.’ He paused for a few moments to let me see how bad he thought it had been then said brightly: ‘Well, this is the historic spot.’
It was a five-foot niche in the wall just to the right of the tunnel by which we’d entered the cavern. To me it was just a five-foot niche. But to Witherspoon it was a temple and he himself the officiating priest.
‘This,’ he said reverently, ‘is where the mystery of Polynesia and the Polynesians was solved. It was here that were found the first adze-heads, stone mortars and pestles. It was this that triggered off the biggest archaeological discovery of our generation. Doesn’t it make you think, Mr Bentall?’
‘It certainly does.’ I refrained from specifying the nature of my thoughts. Instead I reached out for a spur of rock, damp and slimy to the touch, and pulled it off with little effort. I said in surprise: ‘Pretty soft stuff, this. You’d think picks or pneumatic drills would be almost as effective as blasting for removing this stuff.’
‘And so they are, my boy, and so they are. But how would you like to tackle basalt with a pick and shovel?’ he asked jovially. ‘A different proposition altogether.’
‘I’d forgotten about that,’ I confessed. ‘Of course, when the lava poured down it covered everything. What kind of stuff do you find in the basalt – pottery, stone utensils, axe handles, things like that?’
‘To name only a very few,’ he nodded. He hesitated, then said: ‘To speak frankly, unlike the average merchant, I put only my worst goods in the shop window. The things you saw in my room I regard only as trinkets, as the merest trifles. I have one or two hidden caches in here – I wouldn’t dream of even hinting to you where they are – that contain a fantastic collection of neolithic Polynesian relics that will astound the scientific world. Astound them.’
He moved off again, but instead of crossing the chamber and following the electric cable and farspaced lights down the opposite tunnel, he switched on a torch and turned into the first tunnel on his right, pointing out the various places from which these Polynesian relics had been recovered. He stopped in front of a particularly large excavation in the limestone and said: ‘And here we excavated the joists and timbers of what must be the oldest wooden house in the world. In an almost perfect state of preservation.’
‘And how old was that?’
‘Seven thousand years, near enough,’ he said promptly. ‘Van Duprez, of Amsterdam, who was out here with all the newspaper people, says it’s only four thousand. But the man’s a fool, of course.’
‘What basis do you use for assessing the age of those things?’ I asked curiously.
‘Experience and knowledge,’ he said flatly. ‘Van Duprez, despite his inflated reputation, hasn’t got a great deal of either. Man’s a fool.’
‘Um,’ I said non-committally. I looked apprehensively at the third chamber now opening out before us. ‘How deep are we here?’
‘About a hundred feet, I should say. Perhaps a hundred and twenty. Moving into the side of the mountain, you know. Nervous, Mr Bentall?’
‘Sure I’m nervous. I never realized you archaeologists went so deep or that you could find any trace of early life so deep. This must be about a record, eh?’
‘Close to it, close to it,’ he said complacently. Though they went pretty deep in the Nile Valley and Troy, you know.’ He led the way across the third chamber into a tunnel sparsely illuminated with battery lamps. ‘We should find Hewell and his crew down here.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘They must be due to pack up shortly. Been at it here all day.’
They were still working when we arrived at the spot where the tunnel began to open out into a rudimentary fourth chamber. There were nine men there altogether, some prising out lumps of limestone with pick-axes and crowbars to add to the heap of rubble at their feet, others loading the rubble on to rubber-tyred wheelbarrows while a gigantic man clad only in denim trousers and singlet closely examined each lump with a powerful torch.
Both the workers and the man with the torch were worth looking at. The workers were all Chinese, unusually tall and heavily-built for members of their race, and looked about the toughest and hardest-bitten characters I’d ever seen. But it could have been pure illusion, that feeble light shining on sweating and dust-coated faces would have made anyone seem unnatural.
But there was no illusion about the foreman who straightened from his examination of the rock and came to meet us. He was the toughest and hardest-bitten character I’d ever seen. He was about six feet three inches tall, but stunted for his breadth, with a couple of massive arms ending in five-fingered shovels that almost brushed his knees. His face looked as if it had been carved from solid rock by a sculptor whose only ambition was to get the job done in a hurry: there wasn’t a curve worth calling a curve in his entire face, just a granitic mass of crudely interesting planes that would have had the old cubist boys jumping for joy. He had a chin like a power-shovel, a gash for a mouth, a huge beak of a nose and black cold eyes set so far back under the beetling overhang of tufted brows that you had the illusion of some wild animal peering out from the dark depths of a cave. The sides of his face – you couldn’t have called them cheeks – and forehead were deeply trenched by a criss-cross of sun-weathered lines, like some ancient parchment. He could have had a terrible time making the romantic lead in a musical comedy.
Professor
Witherspoon introduced us and Hewell stretched out his hand and said: ‘Glad to meet you, Bentall.’ His voice, deep and cavernous, matched both his vast frame and his occupation, and he was glad to see me with the same sort of gladness that you would have found in those same islands a hundred years previously when the cannibal chief hailed the arrival of the latest of a long line of toothsome missionaries. I braced myself as the giant hand closed over mine, but he was surprisingly gentle; it felt as if I was being pulled through a power wringer but when he gave me back my hand all the fingers were still there, bent and mangled a bit, but still there.
‘Heard about you this morning,’ he boomed. Canada or the American north-west, I couldn’t be sure. ‘Heard your wife wasn’t so well, neither. The islands: anything can happen in the islands. Must have had a terrible time.’
We talked a bit about the terrible time I’d had, then I said curiously: ‘You’ve had to go a fair way to recruit labour for this job?’
‘Had to, my boy, had to.’ It was Witherspoon who answered. ‘Indians no damn good – sullen, uncooperative, suspicious, haven’t the physique. Fijians have, but they’d have a heart attack if you suggested they do any work. Same with any white man you could pick up – loafers and wasters to a man. But the Chinese are different.’
‘Best workers I’ve ever had,’ Hewell confirmed. He had a curious trick of speaking without appearing to move his mouth. ‘When it comes to building railroads and driving tunnels you can’t beat ’em. Never have built the western railroads of America without them.’
I made some suitable remark and peered around me. Witherspoon said sharply: ‘What are you looking for, Bentall?’
‘Relics, of course.’ The right note of surprise. ‘Be interesting to see one being excavated from the rock.’
‘Won’t see none today, I’m afraid,’ Hewell boomed. ‘Lucky to find anything once a week. Ain’t that so, Professor?’
‘If we’re very lucky.’ Witherspoon agreed. ‘Well, well, mustn’t hold you back, Hewell, mustn’t hold you back. Just brought Bentall along to show him what all the bangs were about. We’ll see you at supper time.’
Witherspoon led the way back through the mine, out into the brilliant sunshine and down to his house, chattering away all the time, but I wasn’t listening any more, I’d heard and seen all I wanted to hear and see. When we got back he excused himself on the ground that he had some work to catch up on and I went to see Marie. She was sitting up in bed with a book in her hands and there wasn’t anything much the matter with her that I could see. I said: ‘I thought you said you were going to sleep?’
‘I said I wasn’t going to move. Different thing altogether.’ She lay back luxuriously on her pillow. ‘Warm day, cool breeze, sound of the wind in the palms, the sea on the surf and all the blue waters of the lagoon and white sand out there. Wonderful, isn’t it?’
‘Sure. What’s that you’re reading there?’
‘Book on Fiji. Very interesting.’ She gestured at the books piled on the table beside her. ‘Some more on Fiji, some on archaeology. Tommy – the Chinese boy – brought them to me. You should read them.’
‘Later. How are you feeling?’
‘Took your time in getting round to ask me, didn’t you?’
I frowned at her, at the same time jerking my head backwards. She caught on fast.
‘I’m sorry, dear.’ The impulsive cry, very well done. ‘Shouldn’t have said that. Much better, I’m feeling much better. Right as rain tomorrow. Had a nice walk round?’ The banal touch, like the cry, perfectly done.
I was in the middle of telling her about the nice walk I’d had when there came a diffident tap on the door, a clearing of the throat, and Witherspoon came in. By my reckoning he’d been outside the door for about three minutes. Behind him I could see the brown-skinned forms of John and James, the two Fijian boys.
‘Good evening, Mrs Bentall, good evening. How are you? Better, yes, better? You certainly look better.’ His eyes fell on the books by the bedside and he checked and frowned. ‘Where did these come from, Mrs Bentall?’
‘I hope that I haven’t done anything wrong, Professor Witherspoon,’ she said anxiously. ‘I asked Tommy for something to read and he brought me these. I’d just started the first one and –’
‘Those are rare and valuable editions,’ he said testily. ‘Very rare, very rare. Personal library and all that, we archaeologists never lend them out. Tommy had no right – well, never mind. I have an excellent selection of novels, detective fiction, you can have what you like.’ He smiled, the incident magnanimously forgotten. ‘I’ve come to bring you some good news. You and your husband are to have the guest house for yourselves during the remainder of your stay here. I’ve had John and James here at work most of the day clearing it up.’
‘Why, Professor!’ Marie stretched out her hand and took his. ‘How very, very nice. It’s so kind of you – it’s really far too kind of you.’
‘Nothing at all, my dear, nothing at all!’ He patted her hand and held on to it longer than was necessary, about ten times longer than was necessary. ‘I just thought you might appreciate the privacy. I dare say’ – this with a crinkling of half-closed eyes which I took to be a dyspeptic twinge, but it wasn’t dyspepsia, it was meant as a roguish twinkle –’ that you haven’t been married very long. Now, tell me, Mrs Bentall, will you be fit enough to join us for supper tonight?’
She could be as quick as a cat. She caught the all but imperceptible shake of my head and she wasn’t even looking in my direction.
‘I’m so sorry, Professor Witherspoon.’ It takes some doing to combine a dazzling smile with a tone of deep regret but she managed to do it. There’s nothing I’d like better, but I really do feel so weak still. If I could be excused until the morning, I –’
‘Of course. But of course. Mustn’t overdo the convalescence, must we?’ He seemed to be on the point of grabbing her hand again, but thought better of it. ‘We’ll send a tray along. And we’ll also send you along. No need to stir.’
At a signal from him the two Fijians caught an end of the bed apiece and lifted, not such a feat, as the bed itself probably didn’t weigh even thirty pounds. The Chinese boy came in to carry all the clothes we had, the professor led the way and there was nothing for me to do but to take her hand as we walked between the two houses, bend over her solicitously and murmur: ‘Ask him for a torch.’
I didn’t suggest a reason why she should ask for one, for the excellent reason that none occurred to me, but she handled it beautifully. When the professor had dismissed the bearers and was expatiating at length on how the guest house was built entirely from the products of two trees, the pandanus and coconut palm, she interrupted diffidently to ask: ‘Is there – is there a bathroom here, Professor Witherspoon?’
‘But of course, my dear. How remiss of me. Down the steps, to the left and it’s the first small hut you come to. The next to the kitchen. For obvious reasons you can’t have fire and water in houses like these.’
‘Of course not. But – but doesn’t it get rather dark at night here? I mean –’
‘God bless my soul! What must you think of me? A torch – of course you shall have a torch. You shall have it after our evening meal.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Expect you in about half an hour, Bentall?’ A few more platitudes, a smirk at Marie and he bustled briskly away.
The westering sun had already dipped behind the shoulder of the mountain but the heat of the day still lingered in the air. For all that Marie shivered and pulled the coverlet high about her shoulders. She said: ‘Would you care to let the side-screens down? Those trade winds aren’t what they’re cracked up to be. Not when the darkness comes.’
‘Let the screen down? And have a dozen listening ears pressed against them in a couple of minutes?’
‘You – you think so?’ she said slowly. ‘You feel there’s something wrong here? With Professor Witherspoon?’
‘I’ve long passed the feeling stage. I know damn well ther
e’s something wrong. I’ve known it ever since we arrived here.’ I pulled a chair up to her bed and took her hand: a hundred to one that we had a keen and interested audience and I didn’t want to disappoint them. ‘What are you going on? Feeling fey again or womanly intuition or hard facts?’
‘Don’t be unpleasant,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ve already apologized for my foolish behaviour – just the fever, as you said. This is intuition, or a hunch – quite different. This ideal spot, those smiling Fijian boys, the marvellous Chinese servant, that Hollywood dream of what an English archaeologist should look like and behave – it’s all too idyllic, too perfect. You get the impression of – of a carefully maintained façade. It’s too dream-like, if you know what I mean.’
‘You mean you’d feel better if you saw the professor roaring and cursing round the place or saw someone lying under a stoep and drinking from the neck of a whisky bottle ?’
‘Well, something like that.’
‘I’ve heard that the South Pacific often affects people like that at first. The sense of unreality, I mean. Don’t forget I’ve seen the professor several times on the screen. He’s just as large as life. And if you want perfection marred, just wait until the boyfriend, Hewell, happens by.’
Why, what’s he like?’
‘Couldn’t describe him. You’re too young to have seen the King Kong films. You won’t mistake him, though. And while you’re watching out for him I want you to check the number of people who come and go into the workers’ hut. That’s why I didn’t want you to come across for supper.’
That shouldn’t be hard.’
‘Nor so easy. They’re all Chinese – the ones I’ve seen so far anyway – and they’ll all probably look alike to you. Check what they’re doing, how many stay in, whether the ones that come out are carrying anything or not. Don’t let anyone guess you’re checking. Let down the screens when it’s dark enough and if there are no window cut-outs you can peek through –’