The Rings of Poseidon (23 page)

Alan stared at her in awe. "Well I'm damned,"
he muttered.

"No you aren't, but I hope he is," said Gill,
swallowing hard as she stood up. She drew herself to her full
height in the shadows. She fingered the talisman and hoped she and
Alan were right about its powers.

"You may have controlled your lives and you
may have power over the other two but you can't stop me," said
Gill, stepping out of the shadows and standing in the moonlight
inside the circle. "You will have to pay the full price of your
actions in this and every other life, and you can start in your
next incarnation."

"Like ... Benderman," and he spat the word
out, "you likewise cannot stop me," snarled the little man raising
his hand as before. "And as for paying the price of my actions, I
have overcome that weakness."

"When we found the ring we also found the
talisman to control it, and I'm wearing it. You have no power over
me. What's more," she went on, "you haven't 'overcome' the price of
your actions - your obsession has merely postponed payment of your
'karmic' debt - and it's about to become seriously overdue!"

She stepped across the soft, wiry moorland
grass up to the altar stone in the centre of the circle, faced the
professor across the stone and stood, impressive with her hair
blowing in the slight wind.

The little man raised his arm and held up his
hand, fingers splayed to display the ring. "Another witness," he
sneered.

Gill held up both arms in a 'v' shape and
acted with the authority of lifetimes as a priestess. She was also
speaking and acting for some one or some thing beyond her
comprehension: she was speaking words and thinking thoughts she did
not entirely understand.

"To the ends of time and the ends of the
Universe I say, you damn yourself, and again I say 'you damn
yourself'. You will pay for your actions."

To Steve and Alicia she said in a clear
ringing tone, "I free you from the power of the ring."

Steve and Alicia blinked and the latter sat
up on the altar stone. Alan and Manjy ran into the circle. Alan
made a grab at the bird watcher while the woman Juliana retreated
into the shadows with the thurible. Steve rushed towards the
professor, but he was collapsing, his face twisted into paroxysms
of rage. By the time Steve reached him, he had fallen onto the
grassy floor of the ring.

"Probably a heart attack." he said, feeling
for his pulse "And I can't find a pulse. I think he's dead."

Steve jumped to his feet and ran to help
Alan. The latter had been thrown clear by Ian, who was now running
with the woman to reach the station wagon.

"They've got too big a start on us," Steve
said as the car doors slammed.

"Leave them," said Alan, getting up "They
can't go far. This is an island."

He picked up the thurible, which Juliana had
dropped in her haste, and brought it back to the altar stone,
swinging it slightly so that the smoke rose. He put it in the stone
with the little jar of incense.

"What's in the briefcase?" asked Gill.

By the light of the moon and helped by the
flashlight Alicia held, Steve tipped the contents of the briefcase
onto the altar stone and they all crowded round.

"A pack of Tarot cards," he remarked, opening
the pack and rippling through them.

"The Waite-Rider version," Alan observed.
"Traditional but classy."

"Another dagger," Steve continued.

"Plainer and much more modern." said Alan

"More charcoal. Several containers of what
looks like incense." He took the cap off one and sniffed at it.
"Incense?"

Alan took it from him and sniffed too.
"Rather heady." he said, "I'd say there was a lot of musk or
benzoin in that one." Manjy looked at him, seeing another side to
him entirely and Gill was surprised as well.

Steve continued rummaging. "A couple of
books. Direct the light down here Alicia. 'The Book of Thoth' by
Alistaire Crowley," he read, "'The Golden Dawn' by Israel
Regardie.' Light reading for an adept of many incarnations. I
should think they couldn't teach him much, but they aren't what I'd
expect a professor of archeology to carry around with him.

There'd be a lot about in The Golden Dawn' to
indirectly help in the organisation of a modern occult group,"
remarked Alan.

"What shall we do with the Professor?" Steve
asked.

"Leave him here," said Gill, "If we take
everything but him, he'll be found here and it will look like
natural causes."

"Can we get away with not reporting all
this?" asked Alan.

"They'd never believe the truth," said Steve.
"With my record especially, they'd think we were hiding something
and send in the heavies. I'm for keeping out of it."

"What about the bird watcher and the woman,"
said Alicia. Now that she was starting to recover she was beginning
to apply her mind more logically to problems. "And we'd have to
tell Frank," she added.

"Tell him," said Steve, "but don't tell the
police. Let them come to us. They can question us all they like but
there's nothing to connect us with the professor and the other two
are not going to come forward: they've more to hide than us.
Besides," he added, "The bloke died of natural causes."

"Supernatural causes," said Gill, "but I
think I agree with Steve. Now let's get away from here before we're
noticed. Leave the incense and the burner and the plain knife after
you've cleaned off any finger prints, but take the other things,
especially the ring and the knife from Atl-Andes. Let's be quick
about it. It'll be daylight soon."

Indeed the summer sky was already beginning
to lighten a little.

Alicia nodded. Steve picked up the dagger and
recovered the ring first and put them both in the briefcase,
stuffed back the things he had emptied onto the rock, and picked up
the case. Gill wiped the items left behind, except for the incense
spoon, which they hadn't touched, using the edge of her
T-Shirt.

Steve used a paper hanky to hold the knife
and put it carefully in the professor's hand. "I don't think
they'll bother to fingerprint these things because death was from
natural causes and there won't be anybody else around. All the
same, it would look odd if they did and everything was clean," he
said.

Then, leaving the jar of incense, the burner
and the spoon on the altar rock, he led the way back to the
Landrover.

"I suppose you didn't recognise the other
two, and what do we do about the car?" asked Alicia.

"The bloke was our bird watcher," said Alan,
"but I've never seen the woman before. I wonder who she was? We
can't do anything about the car."

The five of them crowded into the Landrover.
Steve started it up, turned on the light, turned it round and they
started back.

"It'll make a nice change to see where I'm
driving," said Steve, and added "That was an impressive
performance, Gill."

"I was impressed with it too," said Gill, "I
suddenly knew that the same man was Professor, Victorian
archaeologist, Renaissance gentleman, Celtic soldier in your story,
traveller in mine, prehistoric priest, thief, high priest in both
Alicia's and Alan's stories and goodness knows how many other
unpleasant people. I knew he must be stopped and must pay for his
actions. I don't know how or why I knew though."

Manjy had been silent since they left the
dig. Now she spoke. "The nameless ones who see the rules obeyed
must have gathered together a group of those they thought were
suitable to curb the professor and force on him the rules of
karma."

That was the sort of remark one can't comment
on easily. Alicia, though, was not so sure the man was beaten.

"How do we know what his soul will do next?"
she said. "We need to find the other rings and render them
harmless."

"She's right," said Gill.

"Sleep on it," said Steve, and drove into the
field by the camp.

* * *

Steve was yawning and looked a bit
bleary-eyed as Alicia came in for breakfast next morning, rubbing
her eyes. Of Gill and Manjy there was no sign yet and both Alan and
Carol looked decidedly short on sleep too. Only Frank was his
well-rested, lively self.

"Morning, boss," said Steve, yawning
again.

"Morning," Alicia answered, also yawning.

"Hey, you two look as if you haven't slept,"
observed a rather sprightly Frank. "Surely the prospect of another
visit from the Prof's not that bad?"

"We had a visit last night, that's why we
look tired," said Alicia in a low voice, "I don't expect him today,
but don't mention that to the others. I'll explain it all to you
after breakfast."

"In fact we'll need a full council of war,"
said Steve.

"Okay. If you say so," Frank told Alicia.
"Want me to go on with excavating the passageway?"

"Yes. We'll start with two teams at first
while we chat and add a third team later. There's no particular
rush and we're making steady progress."

Alicia tried to sound businesslike and
actually felt a bit less tired once she had eaten.

Gill and Manjy came in twenty minutes late
for breakfast but didn't look nearly as bad as might have been
expected. The local men arrived and, with the volunteer labour, got
down to work straight away. The University group plus Frank
gathered in the Portacabin.

"Okay," said Frank, "Now will somebody fill
me in - please." Alicia told him the story of events the previous
night. "Thanks for waking me," he remarked.

"There wasn't time," responded Gill, "It all
happened so quickly. The question is, what happens next?"

Frank thought it over for a moment and then
said, "If I was those two I'd drop the professor's car off back on
the Rackwick road. There were two of them. All they had to do was
wait until they saw the coast was clear, then drive back with two
vehicles. They could dump the car and be home long before anyone
else was up and around."

"Good thinking," said Steve. "I bet that's
what they did."

"I wonder who they were," murmured Alicia,
thinking out loud rather than asking a question.

Again Frank thought about it before
answering. "The bird watcher's been around the dig a fair bit. I
bet one of the locals knows the guy. Everyone seems to know
everyone else on Hoy."

"I could ask at the Post Office when I go to
meet the ferry." said Steve. "They'd probably know."

"Right," said Alicia. "Now, about the
professor. We don't know anything. If the police don't show up by
11.30 when Steve gets back from the ferry, he can drive to
Linksness and go to the hotel. When they find he's missing and the
car's gone, the police will start looking. Okay.?"

"Sure," said Frank, and the others nodded in
agreement.

"Now we come to the sixty thousand whatever
question. Questions. Firstly what do we do about this ring and the
talisman? Secondly, where would the professor be likely to have
hidden the other five or six rings and whatever else he
salvaged?"

"He said he'd hidden them all 'a few seconds
in the future'," answered Gill. "The question is how did he do
it?"

"No. That's the third question," said Alicia.
"We still have to answer the question 'Where?'."

Steve got up. "While you're discussing that
particular needle in a potentially worldwide haystack, I've got
work to do. I'll talk to Jamie or one of the others before I meet
the ferry," he said, and went out, closing the door behind him.
Glancing at the blue sky he thought that it looked like being
another very pleasant day. He strolled over the field towards the
dig. As he walked it occurred to him that nobody had answered
question one either.

"Where's the briefcase?" asked Frank.

"I've got it in my room," answered Gill,
"I'll go and get it." She got up and left the cabin.

"That's a thought," remarked Alicia. "We
looked at it last night, but only by a combination of moonlight and
torchlight."

"There may well not be any sort of clue at
all. Then again there may be," said Frank. Gill re-entered the
cabin carrying the briefcase.

"Here you are." She dumped it down on the
table. Frank upended it and then checked the side pockets.

"Here are most of the things you mentioned,
including the ring," he said, placing the knife from Alan's story
and the ring to one side. "Two books, like you said. There're some
papers here you didn't mention. We'll have to look through these
later. Some plastic jars - incense you said. Tarot card. A Torch.
An airline ticket from Aberdeen to Kirkwall ..... Hello. The stub
of an airline to Jerez wherever that is. Some photographs ... Roman
remains somewhere. An archaeological magazine. I suppose we'd best
go through it later but it's probably just reading matter for the
plane trip. That's about it. You knew him better than anyone here,
Alicia. Anything here strike you as a clue?"

Alicia said gravely, "I thought I knew him
reasonably well. It turns out I didn't know him at all. Clues. He
wasn't married and seemed wrapped up in his work. He holidayed in
Spain quite a bit. He may even have had a house or something there.
Not on the Costas though. I remember he made some pretty derogatory
remarks about the big resorts more than once. I don't that's a clue
though. Probably not."

"Jerez?" asked Frank, "Isn't that Spain? It's
a ticket for an airline called Aviaco for a flight from Madrid to
Jerez and a BA flight from Gatwick to Madrid."

"Hereth," said Allan, giving it the Spanish
pronunciation, "It's southern Spain where the sherry comes from.
It's inland, away from the big resorts, I think. It's probably only
leftover from a holiday though."

Frank thought they ought to get to work.
"We'd better give some thought to what to do with the ring and
amulet while we're working and see if Steve comes up with anything
about those other two."