Two putty-coloured beetles didn't seem worth all that.
He slapped me on the shoulder.
"Congratulations to you, too, Captain Peace! The navigator of my hopes! Congratulations to Johann, the watchman! You have all played your part nobly! You shall be rewarded as is your due! And now," he turned to me and I was again struck by the ray-like gash of the mouth and jaw, "you must go and congratulate Miss Nielsen. She is waiting up the path for you. She asks if you will go and join her — soon!"
There was a curious inflexion about his last words. But if Anne wanted me to join her alone, there it was.
I set off up the steep track, which narrowed to a spine across the back of a huge, eroded peak; it ran clean across the summit. It was well defined. There was no other way, for the ground fell away on both sides to a colossal drop. On the left it must have been every bit of fifteen hundred feet, and slightly less on the right. The wind tugged at me as I strode forwards. Thank God there was less sand, although I could still feel the rasp of it on the wind's breath.
The path struck across the peak and converged at two great boulders. There was no sign of Anne. She must have remained pretty far up, I thought. I strode between the two boulders and in passing my eye caught something on. my right.
Anne was sitting with her back against one of them.
"Anne…" I started. Fear ran like ice down my spine.
She was dead.
The eyes were half shut and her face had a curious look of resentment — resentment as if she had been taken away from something which meant more than the loss of her life.
I could scarcely distinguish the bullet hole from the bright scarlet of her sweater.
I wrenched up the sweater and saw the neat surgical incision of the Luger bullet. There was scarcely any blood. It had crushed in the left nipple. A few strands of ragged nylon from her brassiere fringed the hole. It might have been passion, not death, which stared at me. She was sitting neatly. Stein must have shot her as she sat.
There was almost no violence about the whole scene. Only the expression of resentment. Only the puckering of the right eyelid. I knelt down and kissed the rumpled lid. I pulled the sweater down and straightened the unseemly dent on the outside. Only then, a great, blind rage overwhelmed me. I have killed men with weapons — with torpedoes, with fire, with machine-guns — but now I longed for the feel of killing with my fingers, the gurgle of life being choked out, of hot blood reeling under pressure to make it eternally cold. It was so overpowering that it made me icy-cool in caution. I saw it all — she had found his precious beetle, and, her work done, he had killed her with as little compassion as he had had for the Kroo boy. Why murder for a blasted beetle? It kept going through and through my mind. He had sent me up here to be killed. He wouldn't do that himself, not only because I think he was frightened, but because of Johann. Johann would kill me and Stein would kill Johann. Then he would beat it for Curva dos Dunas with enough food and water and a plausible story. There couldn't be any search — not in this forbidden country. John Garland's hands would be tied. He might be as suspicious as hell, but he'd never be able to prove anything.
I edged forward on my knees and peered round the rock. As sure as clockwork, there came Johann. He was coming quickly, the Remington under his arm. His head was swaying like a hound's on the scent.
I drew back farther, sheltering half behind a huge boulder. I had no plan. I was as kill-crazy as he.
Johann rounded the rock and stopped short when he saw Anne's body. He wasn't fifteen feet from me. Now or never.
I sprang forward. In a flash Johann covered me with the rifle.
"She died very easy," he said. "I died very hard all those years with the little black men; I died. I died over and over. You will die slowly, Captain Peace." He swung the Remington back without taking his burning eyes off me and threw it sideways over the cliff. I felt a brief feeling for him; I, too, wanted to kill with my hands. He pulled a sailor's knife from his belt and we faced each other like wrestlers. He wasn't afraid. He was fearful only lest he would do it too quickly.
I moved so that the rock was on my left and slightly behind me. He saw I was unarmed and grinned, a fiendish, satisfied grin. He was going to enjoy the fight, like a sailor fights a harlot in bed. As he reached forward with the knife, I whipped my right hand out of my pocket and extended the palm. It was my faintest hope. As he saw Trout's little mascot hand he blenched and I whipped forward and grabbed his knife hand with my left and slipped my right under his armpit. It was the same grip which had torn Hendrik's arm out of its socket. Johann struck punily at my kidneys with his left, but there was no force in the blows — there never can be, with that fearful hold.
I twisted his arm. He held on with the strength of a maniac, but he said nothing. I felt one tendon start to tear. The knife moved back from three inches from my right eye to six. ' I threw myself against his weight. I felt his muscles tear. But he wasn't going to get away with it as Hendriks did. I forced the arm still farther back. His eyes were frantic with terror. I marched him remorselessly back past the dead woman towards the precipice at his back. The knife now hung back over his right shoulder in a grotesque parody of a strike. I knew exactly what I was going to do. Like a released spring, I ducked back, freeing my arm and shoulder, in one movement and kicked him in the stomach. I give him credit. Any other man, with the bite of that heavy seaboot in his vital parts, would have fallen over backwards. Johann stood swaying, his face grey-green with terror and pain. For a second we stood panting in great gasps facing one another. Then I stepped forward and administered the coup de grace. I hit him twice with my right forearm across the side of the neck. He pitched and rolled dustily backwards. I never heard the final crump of the body far below. The dead woman gazed at me sightlessly.
I picked up the knife from the path and sagged down on a rock, my breath coming in frantic inhalations. I felt no remorse, no sorrow, no triumph even. My mind kept saying: Stein! Stein!
What had she said? "I would like to be buried there."
It came to me like fire amid the icy clarity of my lust to kill. I looked down at the quiet face and eyes whose pupils I would never see again. I'll carry you there, I vowed. You'll lie forever beside those other lovers. And then, like a scream of taut nerves: but I'll kill Stein first! Give him time, and he would come looking for either Johann or myself. He came, hours later. I withdrew up the narrow path, flanked with boulders. There was simply no way of deviating from it. I caught the glimpse of sun on metal before I actually saw Stein himself. He was making sure. He had the Luger out. I crouched down as low as I could and withdrew from boulder to boulder until eventually on my right I found a slight cleft, wide enough to take a man's body. I balanced the heavy knife. At least I had something on my side. I stood sweating between the hot rocks. I reckoned he'd take another half an hour to reach Anne's body. I'd lost my cap in the struggle and the sweat poured off me, as much reaction and anticipation as heat.
I'd never thrown a knife before, and it's a tricky business at the best of times. He'd see me yards before he reached the cleft, and there was no hope of an ambush from above. I forgot all about that. I clutched the knife until my fingers ached.
I flicked a glance down the path and then jerked my head back. Stein was coming on like a cat, holding the Luger, There was a jagged boulder which I had judged would be my best marker for a throw before he saw me.
I whipped out of the cleft and cast the heavy knife. The shot followed simultaneously. I reeled back streaming blood as the bullet tore through my right shoulder.
I bit down the searing pain.
Then Stein's voice came. It was strained.