"Just what were you digging for? Doc said.
"Some years ago, when we were here on vacation, we heard about a shepherd who had discovered a stone with some strange markings on it. We investigated and found a rock with inscribed runic signs, made by some Germanic speaker by the name of, by a curious coincidence, Iwaldi. Probably the runes were incised between 600 A.D. and 800 A.D. We sniffed around that area and found a site of a small village. So, every now and then, we dig around here during our vacation. We're on sabbatical leave just now."
Doc made a mental note to check on their stories.
He could understand their fear. But what they had seen in the labyrinthal tunnels would establish them among the world's greatest archeologists if they were to reveal their discovery. All they had to do was to get the police up there, and Iwaldi would have to run for cover.
On the other hand, they may have reasoned, quite correctly, that Iwaldi had enormous influence and could abort any attempt by the police to get into his castle.
Doc asked a few more questions. Cobbs said that the helicopters which had landed the invaders had left by the time they reached the castle's front door. But he was convinced that some of the invaders had gotten out alive. Apparently, the invaders must have split up, and the second party had survived. He thought so because he had seen the glow of cigarettes far below them on the mountainside path. It was true that the smokers could have been extremely early hikers or maybe forest rangers, but he doubted it.
"I'm asking you to stay here for a while. For today, anyway," Doc said. "If any of those invaders are now in the village, you could identify them for me."
"And what would you do to them?" Cobbs asked.
Doc did not answer. He looked at the young Englishman with all the intensity of his peculiar brass-shot gray-green eyes. Cobbs returned his stare with one just as unabashed though not as intense. Doc had been a practitioner of hypnosis for years and had been able to disturb many a man to the point of hysteria just by looking at him. But Cobbs was a tough and cool character.
Barbara Villiers, who looked devastatingly beautiful despite staying up all night, said, "I'll stay if you think it'll help you any."
"Babs! " Cobbs said reproachfully. "You might at least consider my feelings in this matter. After all, we are engaged! And we agreed that I am the head of the family!"
"There isn't any family yet!'
"Fabulous!" Pauncho said, grinning like a hungry monkey at her.
Cobbs sneered at Pauncho and said, "Discretion directs me to get out of here now! But I don't want you to think I'm a coward, and if my fiancee insists on behaving foolishly, then I'll stay too. But only long enough to look over the guests here and ascertain if we can identify any as the men we saw in the castle."
Barney had opened his mouth to say something, then he thought better of it. He looked as if he would explode if he did not get to ask Doc Caliban something at once.
Doc, guessing what he wanted to say, turned away from the couple and winked at Barney. Barney went into the bathroom. Doc said, "If you'll feel safer, you can sleep here in our beds. We'll make do on the sofa or the floor."
"I would prefer we do that," Cobbs said. "To return to our own rooms now would be stupid. Of course, we have to go there to pack, but we can do that later."
Doc suddenly spoke to the two in a somewhat musical speech, low-pitched and with many glottal stops and fricatives.
The two only looked startled. Doc spoke in
English. "Your profession hasn't taken you into the Central American jungles, then?"
"No," Cobbs said. "What was that for?"
Doc spoke to Pauncho, who listened intently and asked him to repeat several words. He and Barney had only recently learned the speech of the People of the Blue, a dialect of the "red- skinned Athenians of Central America," and they were a long way from being as fluent in it as their fathers had been. Pauncho nodded and left the room for the lobby downstairs.
Cobbs said, "Look here! I don't like this mysterious conversation. If you have anything to say, speak English, man! We're not under suspicion, you know!"
"You're not innocent until proved guilty," Doc said. "Not in this affair. Everybody is suspect. You are not being detained by force, however. I must insist that you understand that. You may leave at any time you wish."
Doc removed his jacket and his vest. Barbara Villiers stared and then said, "I thought you looked awfully fat in the body, yet your face wasn't fat at all. And your friends looked incongruously bulky, too. Good heavens! You must be caring enough weight in those vests to sink a battleship!"
Doc did not reply.
Cobbs and Villiers went into the large bedroom where he sprawled out on Doc's bed and she on Barney's. Barney came out of the bathroom and spoke softly in the speech of the People of the Blue.
"I sent out a message to Grandrith. His wife answered. She said he'd taken off for Africa a few hours before. She also said she might have to leave her rooms and go hide out in another place. She noticed a couple of suspicious characters hanging around in the street below. She said they might not be interested in her, but she's taking no chances."
"You told her about the events of the past few hours?"
"Everything. She said she'd pass it on to Grandrith when she got a chance. He's supposed to send her another message as soon as he's ready to leave the plane on the coast of Gabon." There, near the place where he had been born, Grandrith would proceed on foot through the belt of rain forest stretching over a good part of central Africa. He would live off the plants and the animals native to the land, killing them with arrows or his knife. He would avoid all human habitations; he would go like a shadow, like the demon of the forest as so many natives called him.
Some used the name that an American writer had given him after accidentally finding out about him. On foot and almost naked, he would go faster than any human should through the silent closed-canopied, twilit rain forest where the only humans are the pygmies and where the pathetically few hairy and. long-canined hominids, those beastmen of native legend, not long ago roamed.
Grandrith's wife, Clio, was staying in a slums district of London where she was operating a shortwave radio.
Caliban's cousin, Patricia Wilde, was also in London. She was on the trail of old Anana, the woman who headed the Nine. She believed that Anana lived at least part of the year in a town house in a wealthy residential district, and she was investigating a number of houses there. Caliban did not think she would have any luck, but at least it would keep her busy, and she did have a sharp nose for clues; she would have made an excellent private eye.
The phone rang. Doc was across the room like a bronze shark and had picked up the receiver before the second ring. Pauncho, speaking mainly in the language of the Blue People, said, "I checked out their registration here, Doc, after greasing the desk clerk's palm. Cobbs and the redhead have been registered here for a week. But the clerk says they aren't around much. I just saw two guys that looked pretty mean to me, like they could take care of themselves and others, too, if they were paid enough. They've been registered here for a week. They're Germans, Heinrich Zelner and Wilhelm Gafustimm. Zelner moves slow and careful, as if he's hurting. They're in room 215. You want—?"
Caliban asked for a detailed description. Zelner could have been one of the men he saw when he had looked into the room where the invaders were. He may have been wounded during the fighting.