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.
2
The Secret of the Island
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 ba
rrier 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.
From where Gregory was standing he could make out little of the interior of the room, but he hesitated to go nearer, as the moon was now well up and its light so strong that had he advanced into the open anyone looking out would have been certain to see him. While pondering the matter he noticed a little way off an ornamental tree with low twisted branches, and it struck him that by climbing up into them he would get a better view. In one swift dart he covered the few yards to it, then scaled the gnarled trunk and perched himself in its fork.
Now, although the lattice-work still make it impossible to get a clear view of the room, he could form a fair impression of it, and its furnishings seemed a queer mixture of East and West. To one side there was a large lacquer cabinet on which sat a gilded Buddha, the far wall was almost hidden by shelves of books, in a corner stood a large radiogram, and in the foreground a woman lay reading on a Chinese day-bed under a hideous but efficient chromium electric light standard. He could not tell if the woman was old or young; only that she had thick black hair and was wearing a pale-coloured wrap which left exposed her small bare feet.
He had been looking at the woman for some moments when he suddenly became aware that he was not the only person watching her. Up on the veranda there had been a movement in the deep shadow cast by the overhanging roof. Straining his eyes, Gregory made out a crouching figure about ten feet from the french windows. Stealthily the figure moved again, halving the distance and now becoming clearly revealed in the soft glow radiating through the lattice-work. It was that of a man, and he was obviously up to no good.
Gregory wondered what he ought to do. To intervene would mean disclosing his own presence, and, while he had committed no crime, he did not want to have to admit that he had been snooping. It occurred to him that he could give a loud shout which would probably scare the man into running away—and would anyhow put the woman on her guard—then bolt for it himself. But such a course was all against his instincts. Besides, there was always the possibility that the man was the woman’s lover. Perhaps she had been waiting up for him, and he was approaching her room so stealthily only to preserve their secret. Should that be so Gregory was the last person to wish to spoil their fun, and perhaps bring tragedy upon them.
He was still debating the matter with himself, when the man acted. Springing up, he tore open the gauze-covered doorway and rushed into the room. The woman’s startled cry was strangled almost instantly by his throwing a cloth over her head. Next moment he had picked her up in his arms and come running out of the house. The violence with which he handled the woman placed it beyond doubt that this was no abduction, to play a passive part in which the lady had secretly consented in advance; and as he reached the top of the steps Gregory got his first proper view of him. He was a big, heavy-limbed man and, judging by his clothes, an ordinary coolie. In the bright moonlight his bared teeth, flashing eyes, and coarse features contorted with excitement, looked like a mask of evil.
Gregory dropped from his perch in the tree. As he did so he used a peculiarly blasphemous Italian oath. Few prospects could have annoyed him more than that of becoming involved in a fight with a hulking coolie over a woman totally unknown to him. In his youth he had more than once slapped other men’s faces for making rude remarks about girls whom he knew perfectly well were no better than they should be; but that sort of thing had long gone out of fashion and he had since learned to adopt a less quixotic attitude where questions of chivalry were concerned. Now, willy-nilly, he felt he had no option. It was just one of those things which however dangerous and unpleasant could not be shirked. Having instantly made up his mind to that, had he been St. George in person he could not have gone more swiftly to the rescue of this, possibly hideous, damsel in distress.
His unexpected appearance had the effect of temporarily depriving the coolie of his wits. Halting dead in his tracks, he stood for a moment boggling at the figure racing towards him. His expression was one of mingled hate and fear. Suddenly recovering himself, he swung round to the left, threw the woman over his shoulder, and dashed for the nearest cover.
The man’s reaction came too late. Burdened with the woman’s weight he now had no chance of gainin
g a sufficient lead to throw off his pursuer among the dark undergrowth ahead. Gregory swerved and ran all out to intercept him, failed to do so only by a bare three paces, and was hard on his heels as he crashed through a screen of tall pampas grass.
On its far side there was an ornamental stream. Unaware of its presence the coolie proved unequal to the hazard. His belated leap landed him with one foot in the water. The woman was flung from his grasp as he pitched face down across the farther bank. Gregory, coming after, was warned of the trap by the other’s fall. With, the spring of a panther he landed on the coolie’s back.
Few people would have had much chance against Gregory after that. At one time or another he had been mixed up in a score of rough-houses, and when it came to serious fighting he regarded the Queensberry rules as of only academic interest. In his view, whether attacking or attacked, the object of the operation was to render one’s opponent helpless as speedily as possible, thus minimising the risk of severe injury to oneself. His favourite weapon was a champagne bottle, and failing that a heavy marlin-spike; but even unarmed he was a formidable antagonist, as he had no scruples about holds or using his knees and feet.
Now that he had secured the initial advantage he seized the coolie’s ear with his left hand and clenching his right fist aimed a terrific blow at the small of the man’s back. Had it landed as intended on his kidneys that would have been the end of the matter, but he was exceptionally strong and agile. At that instant he hunched his great shoulders in a violent effort to throw Gregory off. The movement only partially succeeded but saved him from the worst effects of the blow. It thudded on solid flesh just above his right buttock.
Before Gregory could strike again, the man had staggered to his feet, dragging his attacker up behind him. Clenching his teeth he wrenched free his ear, gave a gasp of pain and swung round. As he did so Gregory slogged him hard below the ribs; then, as he half doubled up, dealt him a left upper cut under the chin. Reeling away the coolie tripped and fell but rolling over came up on his knees half turned away. In a second attempt to finish him, Gregory rushed in and aimed a swift kick at the side of his head. By throwing himself backwards the man dodged the kick, managed to grab Gregory’s ankle, bringing him down.
The Island Where Time Stands Still Page 4