A Cleft Of Stars

It was a large dark blue hexagonal bead.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The yellow flame of the lantern was an oasis of normality in the cave's grim interior and we clung to its slight cheer under the shock impact of Rankin's death. We knew we ran a risk in burning a light but this was masked by its position in the longer leg of the L-section. At the moment we simply couldn't bear the dark. We stood close together near the lantern for comfort, our backs turned on Rankin's body sprawled upon the floor.

I've never seen anything like this.' Nadine's voice was wobbly. 'What did he mean, King's Messenger?' 'I haven't a clue. It's as mysterious as hyena's blanket.' It cost me an effort not to turn towards the body, as though I was still hoping to extract the mystery from Rankin. Nadine said in a small voice, 'I wish we hadn't been here for. . for his end. What he said means that hyena's blanket isn't just a phrase von Praeger cooked up. It's real, something terrible. I would rather not have heard.'

'Rankin knew he was finished by the time we found him. I believe he was trying to make amends for what he'd done to me. If only he'd gone a stage farther! What he did manage only serves to compound the mystery.'

'King's Messenger-my mind's a blank.'

The great bead was about two inches long and three quarters of an inch across, with a large hole through the centre. The hexagonal facets were beautifully worked. Even the poor light seemed to penetrate to its heart, which glowed with a kind of lustrous, regal hue somewhere between dark blue and indigo. We turned it this way and that.

'I simply can't think straight with Rankin lying there,' she said.

'I'm not too bright myself. Let's go into the kitchen cave.' 'I'd rather be outside.'

'The moonlight makes it too dangerous. It's anyway not strong enough if we want to examine this thing more closely.'

Rankin's last words churned in my brain and a score of might-have-beens crowded in at the sight of the twisted face as we stepped past the body on our way farther in. From the trail of bandages and bloodstains it was possible to reconstruct his last movements: they led from the stretcher into the inner cave and back.

I pointed this out to Nadine. It looks as though Praeger didn't get anything out of him. When he'd finished his hellishness he left, and Rankin somehow or other managed to make his way into the inner cave. I'd guess that he then collected the " King's Messenger" from some hiding place and was struggling with it again when we arrived.

It was a relief to reach the kitchen and be away from the body but I was still very uneasy.

'This place is a trap now, Nadine. If Praeger and Koen walk in we're sunk.'

'But you barred the door, Guy.'

'If I could climb over the gateway, so can Koen. We mustn't stay long. We'll throw everything away if we do.'

Nadine said quietly. 'There's only one place where we can go now, isn't there, after what Rankin said?'

'The Hill.'

'It holds the key to your innocence, somehow. Rankin made that plain.'

I echoed his words. 'They were cut diamonds — from The Hill.'

'Hyena's blanket — King's Messenger?'

'There can't be any diamonds at The Hill, Nadine! Dammit, it's sandstone: crumbly rotten sandstone, not diamond-bearing gravel!'

· 'If you're sure of that, then that leaves only the possibility of a cache there. That would tie in with Rankin's remark about the "King's Messenger" being the way in. But "hyena's blanket". .!'

'Let's keep our cool,' I interrupted. 'Let's also play this step by step and keep realities firmly in mind. That applies especially to the geography of The Hill. We must rule out linking the hyena's blanket with the sort of wild improbabilities von Praeger fell for-the Dika business, for example.'

'Let's accept it as a fact that your grandfather used the words as a code. He didn't know anything about hyenas or The Hill, as far as we know. He'd never been here: had your father?'

I gestured in the direction of Rankin's body. 'We'll never know, now.'

She tossed the 'King's Messenger' up and down and the blue fire burned in its heart.

'Why call a bead the King's Messenger? At least we can thank our stars that he came clean and revealed that it was linked with the way in.'

'To what? We know no more about that than about anything else in this infuriating business.'

'Cast your mind over The Hill's layout and it's pretty apparent that the way in to whatever Rankin intended must lie on the summit.'

My mind jumped ahead of our reasoning and I saw the answer in a flash.

Isifuba! The isifuba board! One of the pieces was missing!' I took the bead from her with excited fingers.

'It could be, Nadine! This could be it!'

'They were mosaic stones, Guy, not beads. They were decorative pieces in a pavement.'

'How do we know? We didn't explore. All we saw was a strange collection of coloured stones. We don't know what they really are.'

'Then the sooner we get back there and find out, the better!' '

Rankin wouldn't have cached anything where he couldn't get at it fairly easily.'

However, as I speculated further the balloon burst.

'No, Nadine, it can't be! It all presupposes that there was an excavation trench there previously, leading to the underground chamber. That only came to light with the archaeological expedition. It must be somewhere else on the tabletop.'

'No, I think you're wrong! Dr Drummond got on to the underground chamber in the first place because he spotted what he called a sinkhole. The present trench is only a development of it. The hole where we entered has been there all along, long before the expedition arrived on the scene.' '

'We were there!' I exclaimed bitterly. 'My God, we were right there: we had the solution in our hands!'

Tut we didn't have this.' She indicated the bead. 'We're guessing still, but our line of thinking sounds good to me.'

And if we're correct, Koen and Praeger are now in possession. Maybe they're working on the isifuba board at this very moment. Perhaps that's why we haven't seen anything of them,' I added.

'That's assuming Rankin blew the gaff. There's an additional reason against that. Didn't you see the mess as we came in? Von Praeger had ransacked every single item from the workshop.'

'I'd overlooked that. It looked like a hurricane's trail' I drew her close and drew her face up to mine.

'You see where all this is leading, Nadine? We've plumped for Praeger's own line of thinking.'

'The other half of the Cullinan.'

'It could be-and yet it needn't be. We know from Praeger himself how he arrived at his deduction about another huge diamond. The actual secret may in fact be something entirely different.'

'But it has to do with diamonds, Guy. Rankin said so.'

'My innocence has to do with diamonds,' I replied grimly. '

We're at the cross-roads again, Nadine. All we have is a lot of damnably tantalizing loose ends.'

'Could you walk away from it now, Guy? — I couldn't.' '

Then that's settled. The Hill it is.'

She ran the smooth surface of the 'King's Messenger' over my face, as if she were sketching me with an artist's chalk.

'I don't fear The Hill, my darling. It has given me everything I want. I continued to be restless and edgy at the thought of our being trapped in the cave.

'Don't let's rush our fences after we leave here,' I said. '

Breaking through Praeger's lines at The Hill will be tough, make no mistake. Nor must we let any emotional spin-off from Rankin's death interfere with clear thinking.'