Somewhat shaken by his own boldness, Dikon watched Barbara run into the house. She had given him one bewildered and astonished glance before she turned tail and fled. “So I’ve done it,” he thought, “and how badly! No more pleasant talks with Barbara. No more arguments and confidences. After this she’ll fly before me like the wind. Or will she think it her duty to hand me a lemon on a silver salver and tell me nicely that she hopes we’ll still be friends?” The more he thought about it the more deeply convinced did he become that he had behaved like a fool. “But it’s all one,” he thought. “She’s never even looked at me. All I’ve done is to make her rather more miserable about Gaunt than she need have been.”
Webley and the Colonel were still huddled together on the verandah. They moved and Dikon saw that between them they held a curious-looking object. Seen from a distance, it resembled a gigantic wishbone adorned with a hairy crest. It was by this crest that they held it, standing well away from the two shafts, one of which was wooden while the other glinted dully in the sunlight. It was a Maori adze.
Webley looked up and saw Dikon, who instantly felt as though he had been caught spying on them. To dispel this uncomfortable illusion, he walked over and joined them.
“Hullo, Bell,” said the Colonel. “Here’s a rum go.” He looked at Webley. “Shall we tell him?” he asked.
“Just a minute, Colonel,” said Webley, “just a minute. I’d like to ask Mr. Bell if he’s ever seen this object before.”
“Never,” said Dikon. “To my knowledge, never.”
“You were in Questing’s room last night, weren’t you, Mr. Bell?”
“I glanced in to see if he was there. Yes.”
“You didn’t look in any of his boxes?”
“Why should I?” cried Dikon. “This isn’t a corpse-in-a-trunk mystery. Why on earth should I? Anyway,” he added lamely after a glance at Webley’s impassive face, “I didn’t.”
Webley, still holding the adze by its hairy crest, laid it carefully on the verandah table. The haft, intricately carved, was crowned by a grimacing manikin. The stone blade, which had been worked down to a double edge with a rounded point, projected, almost at right angles to the haft, from beneath the rump of the manikin.
“They used to dong one another with those things,” said Dikon. “Did you find it in Questing’s room?”
The Colonel glanced uncomfortably at Webley, who merely said: “I think we’ll let old Rua take a look at this, Colonel. Could you get a message over to him? My chaps are busy out there. I’d rather nobody touched this axe affair and anyway it’d be as well to get Rua away from the rest of his gang.”
“I’ll go,” Dikon offered.
Webley looked him over thoughtfully. “Well now, that’s very kind of you, Mr. Bell,” he said.
“Trophies of the chase, Sergeant?” asked Mr. Falls, suddenly thrusting his head out of his bedroom window which was above the verandah table. “Do forgive me. I couldn’t help overhearing you. You’ve found a magnificent expression of a savage art, haven’t you? And you wish for an expert opinion? May I suggest that Bell and I go hand-in-hand to the native village? We can, as it were, keep an eye on each other. A variant of the adage that one should set a thief to catch a thief. Do you follow me?”
“Well, sir,” said Webley, watching him carefully, “there’s no call to put it like that. At the same time, if you two gentlemen care to stroll over to the pa, I’m sure I’d be much obliged.”
“Splendid!” cried Mr. Falls gaily. “May we go by the short route? It will be much quicker and since, as I imagine, the cauldron is all set about with your myrmidons, neither of us will have an opportunity to add articles of evening dress to the seething mud. You could give us a chit to your men, no doubt.”
Greatly to Dikon’s astonishment, and somewhat to his dismay, Webley raised no objection to this project. Dikon and Mr. Falls set out, by the all too familiar path, for the native reserve. Mr. Falls led the way, limping a little it is true, but not, it seemed, greatly inconvenienced this morning by his lumbago.
“I must congratulate you,” he said pleasantly, “on the attitude you adopted at our rather abortive conference. You felt that our anatomist’s flights into the realms of conjecture were becoming fantastic. So, I must confess, did I.”
“You did!” Dikon ejaculated. “Then, I must say…” He stopped short.
“You were about to say that I didn’t contradict him. My dear sir, you saved me the trouble. You propounded my views to a nicety.”
“I’m afraid I find that difficult to believe,” said Dikon dryly.
“You do? Ah, yes, of course. You regard me as the prime suspect. Very naturally. Do you realize, Mr. Bell, that if I’m tried for murder, you will be the chief witness for the prosecution? Why, bless my soul, you almost caught me red-handed. Always presuming that my hands were red.”
Mr. Falls’s face was habitually inscrutable and naturally the back of his head was entirely so. Dikon was walking behind him and felt himself to be at a loss. He tried to keep his voice as colourless as Mr. Falls’s own. “Quite so,” he said. “But I tell myself that as guilty person you might have shown more enthusiasm for Dr. Ackrington’s theory. No murder, no murderer.”
“Unbounded enthusiasm would hint at a lack of artistry, don’t you feel?”
“The others exhibited it,” said Dikon. Mr. Falls gave a little chuckle. “Yes,” he agreed, “their relief was almost tangible, wasn’t it? Now you, as the only one of the men with a really formidable alibi, were also the only man to exhibit scepticism.”
“Mr. Falls,” said Dikon loudly, “what’s your idea? Do you think he’s dead?”
“Yes.”
“Murdered?”
“Oh, yes. Rather. Don’t you?”
By this time they had reached the borders of the thermal region. Remembering the lunar landscape of last night Dikon thought that by day it looked only less strange. There, in the distance, the geyser’s jet was, for a flash of time, erected like a plume in the air. Here, the path threaded its way between quaking ulcers; there, the white flags drooped from their iron standards. There, too, on the crest of the mound above Taupo-tapu, were Mr. Webley’s men, black figures against a sombre background, figures that stooped, thrust downwards, and then laboriously lifted.
“One can’t believe in things like this,” said Dikon under his breath.
Mr. Falls had very sharp ears. “Horrible, isn’t it?” he said. And again it was impossible to find in his voice the colour of his thoughts. He waved his stick. “The whole place,” he said, “is impossibly Doré-esque, don’t you feel?”
“I find it so difficult to believe that it’s entirely impersonal.”
“The Maori people make no attempt to do so, I understand.”
Now they had drawn close to the mound. Dikon said to himself: “It is nothing. Falls will hand over Webley’s authority and we shall walk quickly over the mound. I shall look at the path between Falls’s feet and my feet and in a moment it will begin to lead downhill. And then I shall know that my back is turned to Taupo-tapu. It is nothing.”
But as they climbed the mound the distance between them widened and Dikon didn’t hear what Falls said to the men. Why were they waiting? Why this long mumbled colloquy? He looked up. The path was steep on that side of the mound and his eyes were on a level with the men’s knees.
“Can’t we get on with it?” he heard himself say angrily.
One of the men pushed past him and stumbled down the path.
Falls said: “Wait a moment, Bell.” The man who had blundered down the path began to make retching noises.