'I've a powerful thirst,' said Bowman.
I put my hand in my pocket, and there was the orange I'd bought outside King's Cross. It had been through a lot. I took off the gloves, and peeled it with numb fingers, and it seemed to give a little warmth as well as the promise of food and drink. As I peeled it, two drops of its juice landed on the palm of my hand and, when licked, they weren't there, which seemed a disaster.
'I have an orange here,' I said into the darkness. 'There are ten segments - five apiece.'
I reached out once again, meeting Bowman's hand.
'That's kind of you, Jim,' he said.
'I'll tell you what - it's a good job there weren't eleven,' I said.
The orange gave the most beautiful drink ever supplied to anyone; but it was a small drink.
'I've given up with the door for now,' I said presently. 'Let's have another listening go.'
'Just as you like,' said Bowman.
I could half-see him moving about four feet away - his body made a deeper darkness. There came no sounds. After what might have been half an hour, might have been three hours, I divided up the orange peel and gave half to Bowman.
After another unknown time, Bowman said, 'It was pretty foolish of you to follow me up from London, you know.'
'I was bored in my work.'
Silence.
'You acted your part well,' I said. 'I kept thinking you might be a bit - fly, but I remembered that at Stone Farm you'd volunteered a good deal of information - told me that Peters had had his camera stolen, and so on.'
'I told you only what I thought you'd eventually discover for yourself.'
'Yes, I thought that later,' I said.
'I wouldn't say you'd been quite as stupid as me over the whole business,' said Bowman.
'Thanks for saying so, mate,' I said.
Silence again.
'I flattered the stationmaster at Stone Farm - the man Crystal. I thought: if I keep in with him, he'll tell me how the investigation proceeds . . . How's your wife?' Bowman added, suddenly. 'How do you get along with her, I mean?'
'Well, she's my lifeblood, mate.'
'A notch above you socially?'
'Aspires to be,' I said.'. .. and is in fact.'
'That supper on the train,' he said after a while, 'it was good; cheap, too.'
Another long silence, and he said through chattering teeth, 'Marriott thought he was a cut above. It's all nonsense about the sudden loss of temper if you ask me. Marriott felt he had the right to crown the man.'
'But they were both toffs really,' I said.
'Well, it's all relative,' said Bowman, who after a space added, 'It's all r-r-r-relatives,' but he could hardly get the words out for shivering.
Silence again. My hands and feet hurt with an almost burning pain. I tried to tell myself that it was only cold; that we were indoors after all, but it bothered me that I could not stop my arms from shaking. A man ought to be able to command his own arms. I thought again of little Harry, in the middle of the dusty road on a day of heat. I loved the boy, and I nodded to myself at the thought.
I found, a few minutes later, that I was still nodding. The cold was making an imbecile of me. This was the worst way of killing: to lock a man in a room without food or water. It was the method a weak man would choose. I might have dreamt, then. At any rate, I saw in my mind's eye a dark herd of deer coming down a dark hillside. The antlers made them like a moving forest, and the notion slowly struck me that they were coming towards me.
'We would like our property back,' said the leader, and he spoke to me as the governor of the house with the antlers on the walls.
'But you already have them,' I said, and I pulled up sharp at the knowledge that I had spoken the words out loud. My legs were quaking now, along with my arms. My whole body was going away from me. I wanted to stand, to test my limbs in that position, but I couldn't be bothered to stand, couldn't be bothered to live.
'Hello there,' I said, while flat on my back.
No reply.
I tried 'Steve.'
No answer. I rolled upright, and all my body was saying, 'No, no, time has stopped, don't try and start it again.'
I could not hear Bowman. He had disappeared into the darkness. I dragged myself about the stone hut like a man on a wild sea. Twice I slammed into the walls, gashing my head each time. I rolled back towards the middle. I wanted to vomit, but my headache wouldn't allow it. I was slowly upended by the constant lurching, as it appeared, of the floor, and I found that I had fallen on a soft mass.
My hands were on Bowman's face, but it was far away. It ought, from memory, to have been red and hot, but it was as cold as the stone under my boots.
Chapter Thirty
I slapped the face twice, hard. I was trying to make it red again: the face red and the nose brighter red still - that was the correct order of things with Bowman.
There was a rattle at the door, which rose and fell.
The cold had become an illness with me: it was dragging me to the place where Bowman was - some great white land further north than anywhere.
And I needed water.
The rattle at the door again. Was I making that rattle or was there another person in all this? That I could not credit; I was finished with people. The door was coming towards me, and the light lifting with it. The door was opening, but caught on the stone I'd lifted.
'Who's there?' I called, in a weird voice.
'Ah've come tae dae ye.'
The light had brought Small David with it.
'Where's Marriott?' I called.
He was shaking the door, trying to get it past the upraised flag.
'Hum? Deed.'
It was his favourite word.
'Dead?'
'Aye, kulled.'
'Who killed him?'
'Husself.'
Small David was now revealed in the open doorway - the full width of the man. Small particles of snow flew about behind him, as though playing a game, and beyond them lay all the white, beautiful Highlands. The revolver was in his hand. He stepped forwards and fired, and I thought: that sound was pretty loud, and then it struck me that I was enjoying the luxury of hearing the sound die away. I was still alive, and the bullet had given life, not taken it away, for the soft mass underneath my hands was rolling again. Bowman raised himself up quickly and without a word. But Small David, over by the doorway - the snowlight was flowing in over the top of him, for he was down on the ground. The small hole I'd dug had been enough to trip him, and now it was his turn to scrabble on that stone floor as he searched for the gun he'd dropped.
I stood, still shaking, and thinking: what do you do with a man when he's down? Why, you kick him, and I knew I could give a kick for all the queer feeling in me. His big brown head was football-like, and I got him squarely on the temple. He went down further and I was across the floor, spider-like, searching for the revolver.
Bowman lurched towards the doorway.
He turned there, and said, in a dazed sort of voice, 'That's the second time today I've come within an ace of dying.'
I couldn't find the gun; I gave it up. Small David was breathing heavily on the stone floor like a man sleeping off drink.