The Island Where Time Stands Still (5 page)

Turning away, Gregory crawled to the back of the roof, then stood up beneath the overhanging tree that gave it partial shade from the midday sun. Its lowest branch was about four feet above his head, so well out of his reach.
Holding his home-made rope near its weighted end, he whirled the weight round and round then threw it up into the foliage. The cotton-wrapped stone failed to find a lodgement but he deftly caught it as it fell back, and tried again. Like the spider watched by Robert the Bruce, success required patience. Sometimes the stone caught but came away at a sharp tug, more often it just fell back at once; but at last it twisted twice round a medium-sized branch and Gregory was able to pull the branch down until with his left hand he could clutch its nearest twigs. Letting go the rope, he seized another handful, then risked a little jump and grabbed the branch itself. Praying that it would not snap, he jumped again and clung on higher up. As the bough gave under the strain his toes scraped the roof but the branch did not snap and it was now taking most of his weight. With a final heave he got a grip on the main bough, then hand over hand swung himself along it until he passed over the electrified fence; but he gave it only a glance as he sought for further good holds, and cautiously lowered himself to the cleft in the rocks from which the tree was growing.

That afternoon he had spent some time memorising the face of the fifty-foot cliff at the back of his prison. It was fairly steep but frequently broken by cracks and ledges on which grew scrub, and in some cases smaller trees of the same kind as the one down which he had just clambered. After a brief rest he set out up the route he had planned to take, and found it comparatively easy going. Ten minutes later he was standing on the top of the cliff, a free man again.

Sadly he realised that his freedom did not really mean much to him. Perhaps that was partly because his escape had been so easy, and partly because, unlike his escapes in the past, there had been no threat of death to spur him to it. In fact he had every intention of returning to his prison before dawn by the way he had left it. He would not even have bothered to outwit Ho-Ping, but for his resentment at being arbitrarily confined, and a vague temptation
to derive cynical amusement from the doctor's face next day, when he learned that during a midnight prowl his prisoner had discovered the secret of the island.

That he would discover it, Gregory felt confident; as, if a cage was necessary to prevent ordinary castaways stumbling upon it during the course of a casual walk, it must obviously be something very easy to find out. But at that moment he might well have turned back, had he had any idea of the chain of strange and murderous events in which the knowledge of that secret was going to lead him.

The top of the cliff formed a small plateau which sloped gently away on its landward side. In that direction Gregory could see a sprinkling of light down in a valley bottom that appeared to be about a mile off, but he knew that lights seen at night could make the judgment of distances very deceptive. The ground was uneven and the starlight only just sufficient for him to make out the pot-holes and scattered rocks ahead; so he went forward cautiously. When he had covered a few hundred yards the rocks gave place to large tussocks of coarse, sharp grass and stunted undergrowth; then the occasional trees became more frequent until their tops merged into a screen that hid the valley.

Now he would have given a great deal for a torch and knee-high boots, as he knew that this tropical semi-jungle might well harbour snakes or other poisonous reptiles. A light would have driven them from his path, but in the dark he might step on one at any moment and his legs were highly vulnerable. Ho-Ping had lent him a Chinese robe for sitting about in, but apart from that the only clothes he had were the evening things in which he had been washed ashore. His dinner jacket suit had been mended and pressed with such skill by Chung that it looked almost as good as new, and over it to conceal his white shirt he was wearing the robe; but patent shoes and silk socks were the last things he would have chosen for a midnight walk across the island.

As he advanced, parakeets that he disturbed screeched in the tree-tops, and occasionally there came an ominous rustle in the undergrowth; after ten minutes' nerve-racking progress, greatly to his relief he emerged from the trees on
to a strip of cultivated land. From it he could see again the lights down in the valley, and that he was now separated from them only by a series of terraces on which sugar-cane and other crops were growing. Soon he came upon a path and followed it down from terrace to terrace until the land flattened out and he found himself in a vegetable garden behind one of the houses from which the lights were shining.

Against the background of the starry sky he could see that the village consisted of a hundred or more scattered buildings, most of which were bungalows. With two exceptions the roofs of all of them gracefully turned up at the corners in the Chinese style. The exceptions were much larger than the rest and had the appearance of modern factories. They stood some way from the nearest houses and, Gregory guessed, on a road which led round the hill he had descended to the port.

To minimise the risk of running into anybody, he made his way through a series of vegetable plots unil he had passed the back of the last bungalow, then headed for the open space between it and the factories. As he expected, he struck a road, and looking along it could see the entrance to the village. For some time past the lights in the houses had been going out and the street was now lit only by a faint glow. On the still air he could catch the strains of thin Chinese music, but he could see no movement and it was evident that the village was settling down for the night.

Turning away, he walked along the road to the nearest factory; and approached it cautiously. It was in complete darkness and there was no one about. Reason had already told him that there could be nothing worth concealing about the life of a Chinese village; so it was much more likely that the factories held the key to the secret that Dr. Ping was so anxious to protect.

The approach to the building told Gregory nothing. There were the usual heaps of refuse, bits of rusted obsolete machinery, and stacks of wood for making cases lying about, but no indication at all of the type of goods the factory turned out. Going up to the windows he peered through
them, but the darkness made it impossible for him to get even an idea of what the place was like inside. For a moment he considered breaking in, but quickly abandoned the idea, as to have found a light switch and turned it on might have brought a night watchman on the scene; and having no torch, it would be pointless to grope about in the darkness.

As he worked his way round the back he stumbled into a rubbish heap which, from the sharp crackling sound beneath his feet, seemed to consist mainly of potsherds. Then, on the far side of the factory, facing the road, he came upon a row of large concrete bunkers. Some were empty but others held several tons of slightly slimy whitish stuff. It weighed heavy in the hand as he took some up to examine it, but he had no idea what it could be.

Hoping for better luck at the other factory he crossed the road. It was somewhat smaller but its surroundings were much the same and it also had a row of storage bunkers. In them, instead of the whitish substance Gregory found neatly piled slabs and blocks of stone. In the starlight it was impossible to tell their colours but he could see that they ranged from light to dark and the feel of them showed them to be of different textures. Most of these pieces of stone were much too small to have been used for monumental masons' work; so still puzzled, he began to ferret about for some clue to what was made out of them.

Presently, near the back of the building, he discovered a big pile of fine stone chippings, from which it seemed reasonable to infer that the blocks were cut into small statues, or something of that kind. As he let a handful of the chips run through his fingers an idea came to him. Hurrying back across the road he went to the refuse heap behind the other factory and picked up some of the potsherds. Seen closer to, all of them showed a glaze, and the curves of some implied that they had formed part of graceful bowls or vases.

With rising excitement, Gregory rummaged among the pile until he found other, more solid, irregular pieces.
Picking up one of the largest he looked at it with a faintly cynical smile. Its paleness suggested that its colour was yellow, and it was a rider on a headless horse from which the lower parts of the legs had also been smashed off. In shape it was unmistakably the greater part of a Tang horseman. Such figures, he knew, had been made to be placed in the graves of the Chinese upper classes between the seventh and tenth centuries A.D. Now according to their quality, they fetched in London, Paris or New York anything from thirty to three hundred pounds a pair.

Carelessly he threw the broken figure back on the heap. It had let him into Dr. Ping's secret. The whitish substance in one set of bunkers was china clay, the others held pieces of uncut onyx, jade, soap-stone and malachite. The two factories were employed solely on turning out fake Chinese antiques, and the pile of debris by which he was standing was formed from rejects which had been cracked or broken during the process of firing.

The reason for secrecy was clear enough now. Obviously the two factories were capable of turning out many thousands of pounds' worth of fakes a year; and, no doubt, whoever ran the place had an under-cover organisation that distributed them to unscrupulous antique dealers in the principal cities of Europe and America at an enormous profit. But if it once leaked out that such fakes were being made in large numbers, every genuine piece would at once become suspect, and the bottom drop out of the market.

Having accomplished his self-imposed mission, he decided that there was no point in wandering aimlessly about the island in the dark, so he might as well return to his room and go to bed; but he was most averse to risking a second walk through the jungle on the hill-side. In consequence, he set out along the road away from the village, with the idea that on reaching the harbour he would be able to take the track leading up to the cage, and work his way round outside it to the tree by means of which he meant to get in again.

The road curved round the base of the hill, and after about a mile entered the avenue of palms down which, some days previously, he had seen the bearers come trotting with the palanquin containing the two boys. During his walk the moon had risen, so that now looking down the avenue, he could see the port quite clearly and the great barrier of cliff that concealed it from the sea. In the opposite direction the avenue rose fairly steeply until it breasted a ridge of high ground half a mile away. It was the moon having come up that decided Gregory to change his mind about returning to the cage at once. Now that he could see something of the country he thought he might as well walk up the avenue and find out what it was like on the far side of the slope.

At the crest a new surprise awaited him. He had thought that beyond it he might see the roofs of a single large mansion, for it was reasonable to suppose that the richly-clad children came from a big home, which was probably also that of the owner of the factories. But this scene that lay before him was infinitely more intriguing than anything he had expected.

The avenue ran steeply down again into a broad shallow valley. In it were several small lakes and patches of woodland, while scattered amongst them were a score or more of beautiful Chinese buildings and a tall, many-storied pagoda. With the moonlight glinting on the still waters and the tiled roofs, and an occasional light twinkling here and there, it was like a scene from fairyland. As Gregory gazed down upon it he caught his breath in wonder and delight.

The only thing he had ever seen to compare with it was the Forbidden City of Pekin; for that, although termed a city, had really been a vast garden the high walls of which enclosed many artificial lakes, temples, pagodas, and innumerable courtyards and pavilions. This had no walls, and its buildings were fewer and much smaller, but that in no way detracted from its beauty. And its existence was surely another, even more jealously-guarded, secret; for no rumours had ever penetrated the outer world that on an
island in mid-Pacific, charted only as Leper Settlement Number Six, the patient, gifted Chinese had erected in miniature another Forbidden City.

Slowly he walked forward down the avenue until he came abreast of the nearest building. It looked like a large private house and was in darkness. So was the next he passed, a quarter of a mile further on, and now that it was after midnight he felt that there was little risk of his running into any of the inhabitants of this lovely valley.

The assumption was premature. Before he had covered another hundred yards he caught the swift patter of running feet. Just in time to escape being seen he managed to dodge behind a clump of bamboos at the roadside. Out from a side turning, barely twenty feet off, dashed a coolie pulling a hooded rickshaw. Swerving round the corner he raced on down the hill towards a cluster of the largest buildings, which stood in the centre of the valley.

This narrow shave made Gregory realise that he was being careless, and that if he continued along the main avenue he was much more likely to meet people who were still about; so he turned off down the lane from which the rickshaw had emerged. Soon he came upon another house, set well back in its own grounds; then the lane continued on for some distance at a gentle incline through a grove of palms, to emerge half a mile lower down the valley on the shore of one of the lakes. At that point the lake narrowed in a wasp-waist and was spanned by a graceful bridge which rose above it almost in a semi-circle. It was as Gregory paused for a moment on the summit of the arch that he first saw through the trees on the opposite shore a house with a light shining from it.

As he descended the curve of the bridge he was suddenly tempted by the sight of the light, to get a glimpse of the room from which it came. No walls or fences enclosed the grounds in which any of the houses stood, so he had only to turn off the track and walk through the garden. Taking advantage of the groups of shrubs for cover he moved silently forward until he could get a full view of the building.
It had an upper gallery and a double-tiered pagoda roof, the lower projecting over a veranda which was approached by a flight of shallow steps flanked by two stone dragons. The light came from a pair of french windows covered with delicate lattice-work, and a wire gauze screen against insects.