Appleby on Ararat (13 page)

Dunchue stirred uneasily in his chair.

“It seems necessary – or rather unnecessary – to be frank.” Hailstone had turned towards Diana with something of the cautious effort of a liner being manoeuvred against a quay. “Dunchue is a capital fellow. Since Sempel’s young man Oplitz was killed I really don’t think anybody can touch him. Quite first-class and thoroughly abreast – always the difficult thing for us older men. But sometimes I think the island doesn’t quite suit him. And I wholly sympathise. I am, as it happens, an energetic man myself – George and I share a virtual immunity to climatic conditions – but I know how it is. One just can’t keep on one’s toes. When we begin to dig I am sure it will be better. But at present, as you see, he drinks.” Hailstone moved slowly to a table. “Which reminds me, will you have a spot?”

They declined spots, indicating the glasses they had conscientiously drained. Hailstone poured himself out a trickle of the concoction from the decanter and eased himself into a chair. “The question is: who is going to begin to dig? One says one digs, but of course one doesn’t. One employs diggers and all one has to do for the most part is to keep on imploring them to dig gently. Well, now, I collected some natives–” He broke off. “But I am afraid all this will bore you. Are you comfortable at the hotel? It is a great pity we cannot accommodate you here. I can’t think that all those frivolous people–” He broke off again and this time his eyes momentarily closed, as if polite solicitude were a soporific as powerful as his assistant’s drink.

“We are comfortable enough,” said Appleby, “and have really been uncommonly lucky. And we are not at all bored. Your dig is the interesting thing on the island, it seems to me.”

Hailstone’s eyes opened again, almost abruptly. “I collected some natives at the last trading post and thought that the problem was solved. It would not even be necessary to urge them to go gently, as they were guaranteed to be quite without energy. Unfortunately I ought to have brought them from much farther off. The site is taboo, or the next thing to it. And when the hotel came and stole some of them away of course it became more difficult still. However” – he nodded vaguely – “I have no doubt we shall manage something soon.”

“Mr Hailstone” – Diana turned upon the archaeologist eyes which almost equalled in roundness his own blue spectacles – “couldn’t
we
dig? It would be great fun. Ourselves, I mean, and some of the people from the hotel.”

“Ah.” Hailstone’s voice was wistful. “Some of the hotel people did offer once. But it wasn’t a success. They expected quick results. There was friction and the thing broke down. But now that we have fresh blood something might be possible.”

“Talking of fresh blood,” said Appleby, “I have news about Unumunu’s death. Perhaps it wasn’t savages.”

“He’s been saying perhaps it was you.” Dunchue had abruptly awakened and sat up. He was grinning at Hailstone, seemingly perfectly alert.

“That I killed the mysterious negro? Dear me, perhaps it is time that we all had luncheon.” Hailstone clapped his hands lightly. “And Mr Appleby can inspect our boys. For something like savages were certainly involved in that curious spear-throwing business. Perhaps they were bribed.” He rose. “George, with luck there will be a terrapin steak. Come in, Mrs Kittery, I beg. My dear Appleby, come in.” He moved towards the door, chuckling. “I can quite see what you call a ‘case’. I can even see that Dunchue has seen it. Did Sir Pongo–”

“Ponto,” said Diana severely.

“Did Sir Ponto and I come to blows over Miss – Miss Curricle? No. Did he covet my umbrella and was I after his gold watch? Again no. But was I jealous lest the rival scientist should beat me to the secrets of our savage neighbours’ ancestors? Yes – and again abundantly yes. Dunchue, I was defending the dig against another authority on Pacific anthropology.” They had entered the living room and Hailstone was waving an unwontedly animated hand round a scene not so unfamiliar to Appleby as he imagined. “You see?” he said. He chuckled happily, recollected himself to find Diana a chair, gave himself over to chuckling in earnest. “Mr Appleby, you are a detective. And I challenge you… Do you see?”

Appleby, it seemed, did not see; he peered round the living room with the conscientiously suspicious eye of a rural constable at the beginning of a yarn of crime. And Hailstone was delighted.

“We have always been a little nervous” – he clapped his hands as a summons for the first course – “of letting people in. The hotel people, for instance, we have entertained only on the veranda, and perhaps it was resented during the period they were helping us to dig. Dunchue, who has a subtle mind, once suggested a little camouflage, but I felt that to be carrying secrecy too far. He wanted to buy up some junk from visiting natives: shields, smoked scalps, totem-poles – that sort of thing. And to plaster the place with it.”

“It was a nasty idea.” Dunchue was still very gloomy. “I detest lower races.
All
lower races.” He stared morosely at his chief, much as if he suspected him of being a Hottentot. “But it would have been the efficient thing. As it is, we can’t be sure the secret hasn’t leaked out. Why we’re letting
you
in on it I don’t quite know.”

“Do I understand,” asked Appleby, “that you are not archaeologists at all? That you are something quite different? Blackbirders, for instance?”

“Blackbirders?” Diana set down her tomato juice and looked perplexed. “I haven’t seen anything but parrots and hummingbirds and gulls.”

Hailstone laughed quite merrily. “Mr Appleby’s mind still runs on my stalking black men. Blackbirders in this part of the world are a sort of slave-traders. We should be bad at it; we have let the objectionable Heaven have several black boys for just nothing at all. No, I think we may fairly claim to be true archaeologists.”

“We deal,” said Dunchue, “with a world of the past. Deal with it.”

“Come, come” – Hailstone spoke rapidly – “we are not really going to fall down on this job. Mrs Kittery is going to help us dig; we shall deal with it yet.” He set down his glass and looked round the table, summoning their attention as if some climax had come. “
Vikings
!” he said.

Diana, who had perhaps failed to take out the appropriate classes for dealing with this piece of information, looked blank; Appleby – quite deceitfully – registered a slow semi-comprehension. “There can’t have been any Vikings here,” he said.

Hailstone began to eat rapidly, as if the meal had suddenly become a bore. “We are going to show you. The barrow. The dig.”

“Wouldn’t you need,” asked Diana, “more than one barrow?”

From beneath the table George snored; Hailstone, in whom an almost active habit was visibly rising, laughed with great good humour. “My dear lady, the barrow is the dig.”

“Where they buried people?” asked Appleby.

“Things,” said Dunchue. “Have you ever seen Traprain? It is – or was – quite a sizeable hill near the coast in the Scottish lowlands. Actually, it proved to be a solid cache of treasure: they left it there to be called for. Only it wasn’t called for until a thousand years or so later.”

“Treasure!” Diana’s eyes were like saucers. “You are treasure hunting? Who will it belong to?”

“We have to find it first. And its value to science will be far greater than any intrinsic value in gold and gems.” Hailstone turned to Appleby and talked absorbedly, rapidly. “They loved green water. They were the first and greatest navigators in history. It’s impossible to say where they didn’t get to. And these fellows may have come round the Horn. Think of that: a long plundering contact with South America centuries and centuries before Pizarro! And then everything dumped here. You see why we want to keep it quiet? A sensation, a rush of expeditions – and quite probably a mess. Dunchue, get the maps. For years I had a wild theory. Then, in the Marquesas, I picked up a real trace…” And Hailstone talked on and on. Behind him the boys slid noiselessly. George slumbered on the floor.

Appleby listened with conscientious attention. “I’m afraid I’m no scientist,” he said. “My mind runs on all the wrong lines. Presumably if what you suppose is true, the hidden stuff will really be immensely valuable? Are you sure your plans haven’t indeed leaked out? This odd hotel which has so mysteriously followed you and established itself: are you sure it isn’t cover for some sort of gang on your tracks? What if Unumunu had contacted it and recognised somebody – some sort of disreputable pirate in the archaeological way – who then found it necessary to kill him? It’s a wild suspicion – but then that’s my line.”

Hailstone let drop a spoon with a clatter. “What an extraordinary idea!” He looked anxiously at Dunchue. “The hotel was a bit queer from the first, wasn’t it? Heaven just turned up with a boat and builders, and then the guests came. A close lot they are, too. A ship comes in once in six months from lord knows where.”

“By the way,” Appleby interrupted, “what about your own communications?”

“We can’t afford much. A trader is putting in to have a look at us early next year. Always supposing it’s not torpedoed. Your idea about the hotel disturbs me; I’ve always distrusted Heaven.”

“Heaven collects stamps. Or – better – is in possession of something like a collection.”

“Indeed?” Hailstone looked puzzled. “Not an endearing trait. But scarcely–”

“The connection with torpedoes is obvious.”

Diana, enrapt before a passion-fruit sundae, smiled happily. “When he talks like that,” she said in a proprietary way, “his mind is working.” She spooned deep into the ice cream.

“We are at war. For all practical purposes the whole world is at war. And lots of people will go a long way to get clear of it. The difficulty is money. No government is very willing to finance its more pacifically minded subjects, for instance, in a comfortable tropic isle existence. One can’t walk into a bank and draw money or arrange credit for such a purpose. But various categories of people are let slip away if they take no wealth with them. Their services are not reckoned valuable and if they can represent that they are going to live on their aunts at Timbuctoo they can clear out. Hence a war-time boom in rare stamps; they are a sort of negotiable security that can be smuggled with the greatest ease. And hence, it is quite clear, Heaven.” Appleby paused. “Or so I should have supposed. But the value of your possible find makes me feel there may be something more in it than that. He may have other sources of gain in mind.”

Hailstone sighed. “Everything is becoming so complicated. It’s all this war – do you realise what ruination it is for workers like us? Harvard, Tokio, Cambridge, Moscow, Berlin: can you imagine” – he hesitated, searching for an image – “can you imagine something as swift and complicated and exact as first-class tennis happening between all these? In every one of them men waiting for the flashing ball that represents the progress of their subject – waiting to return it with a new spin, an unexpected twist, back over the net? And now this imbecility, with people like Heaven stuffing their pockets with rubbishing stamps and” – his features beneath their blue glasses lit up with sudden humour – “and then disturbing policemen torpedoed on one’s doorstep! But I am sure we ought to be grateful for Appleby. He has put us wise to a possible danger of which we had no suspicion at all. George, we must be on guard – and Dunchue too, of course.” And Hailstone exerted himself to sign for Benedictine.

The coffee was excellent and worth lingering over, nor was there any disposition to do otherwise. The active mood to which explanations of the dig had moved Hailstone was apparently dissipated; George was sound asleep; Dunchue considerably sobered by the meal, was applying himself to captivating Diana. Appleby watched this latter process with a deplorably absent eye; he sat back, let the Benedictine cap an excellent hock and listened to the sluggish lap of waves which had broken their force on distant reefs. The sound was like the impotent murmuring of hours and days which had lost their power to beckon and compel. And this image in turn worked obscurely on his mind, turned and checked in his mind like a key that feels for its wards. Often such a key turns once only and the intricate thought has to follow it through or be baffled for good… Appleby looked through the fly-wire of a long low window at the wicker chairs and spotless chromium table and abandoned glasses where they had drunk the abominable aperitif favoured by Dunchue; he returned gratefully to Hailstone’s liqueur and stared into a new world in its colourless and tiny deeps. There it was, he said to himself; there it all was – or nearly all. His eye went back to Diana and to Dunchue leaning towards her over a bowl of fruit. They were as spectral, as unconvincing as a half-told film upon which one has suddenly come from the light of day. In five minutes Dunchue would reform; his hair would be brushed and a crease would creep magically into his trousers. But in ten there would be a misunderstanding; he would be drunker than ever and grow a three-days stubble overnight; it would take a tornado and much opportunity for heroism to set things right again. And even in the final close-up he would look engagingly dissipated still; he would have a horrid line of finically trimmed moustache. And Diana, after being soaked to the skin and obliged to undress behind a screen which proved amply decorous in the end – Appleby blinked. He had almost solved a mystery – almost solved a mystery which as yet had scarcely declared itself – but the island was ready to enfold him in its languor still. He drained his glass and as he did so the
Swiss Family Robinson
, long grown tenuous and remote, dissipated itself finally in air. He took a cigarette and lit it and saw a greater classic form itself in the blue and slowly curling smoke. “Tusitala,” he said suddenly.

Hailstone looked up, startled. “I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing. I was just remembering a name the natives in these parts gave to Robert Louis Stevenson. Because he was a great teller of tales.”

The undig dig, thought Appleby. The digger undone… He roused himself to join in the leisurely bustle of going out to inspect. A second umbrella was found for Dunchue and Diana; there was a little picnic basket and a thermos; it was all like a mild amusement planned to fill a children’s afternoon. Hailstone roused George with a sequence of progressively urgent whistles – rather as Montaigne’s father roused the infant essayist with a cautious music – and the party made its way into the beating sun and the louder lap of the sea. Far out the intense blue showed a single line of foam, as if on the impassive face of ocean the odd procession raised a tiny smile. A wandering wind brought a waft, a sob, a sickly and dying fall of music through the groves; an echo uncertainly murmured it ahead. Hailstone, under the stress of his pedestrianism, was silent and appeared to meditate his breathing. Appleby took advantage of his abstraction to study the topography of the place.