At last he stopped, and she turned quickly against him, her arms around his neck, her quick lips on his own. After a moment she tilted her head back, looked up into his face and said, in a thick whisper, “Tell me some more pretty things about Les, darling.”
The yacht was left in Colombo harbor, clean and shining among the gray and red lead of the battered freighters. They reported in at the American Consul’s office near the harbor, stated their intention of staying up in the hills for a month or so, but avoided letting him know the real reason.
They bought supplies at Colombo, and rented a car with Singhalese driver to take them up to the Rest House at Ratnapura. They sat on the upper porch of the Rest House and looked off across the towering hills while they drank arrak and honey liqueur, and Leslie kidded Laura about the hardships of the walk up the stream bed and told her that she probably would have to be carried.
Laura had been very good during the latter part of the trip. James guessed that she had sensed the latent danger in Brade, and she had softened her derision of him to something that seemed as flattering as kind words. Brade had blossomed under the treatment. It was only with sudden looks that were like a hint of flame that Laura told Carboldt that, on the inside, nothing had changed. Nothing at all.
Secrecy had made the trip up the stream bed into an adventure. Before they left the Rest House with their heavy packs, Brade had spent an hour with the manager showing him, on detailed government maps, the route which he claimed they would follow. Of course, after they were out of sight of the Rest House, they circled around until they hit the stream they wanted.
They carried food, jungle hammocks, mosquito netting, medicines and tablets to make the stream water drinkable. The going was steep and rocky, and it took them two and a half days to cover nineteen miles to the cut.
In the brush at the edge of the cut, they made a permanent camp. Laura took over the cooking while Brade and Carboldt worked among the rocks of the cut, using the small hand drills to make holes for the plastic explosive that they had smuggled in.
It was difficult and exhausting work, and the billions of insects made it less pleasant than it had been the last time they saw the deep cut across the face of the mountain. The weight melted off Carboldt. Even Brade looked thinner, harder. There were new lines of tiredness bracketing Laura’s mouth, and she was inclined to be sharp with both Brade and James.
They found nothing in two weeks, and Carboldt began to lose his confidence in being able to find the pocket of sapphire which he knew existed in the strata. But he didn’t let the others see his lack of confidence.
One day the skies turned gray. Carboldt realized that the chota monsoon was nearly due, and they’d be much more comfortable if they could find better shelter. They took a day off and climbed the face of the mountain looking for caves. He was certain that it was a type of rock formation that lended itself to natural caves.
Laura was the one who found it. As prearranged, she fired a shot with the pistol Leslie had given her, and when they found her she was busily chopping the thick vegetation away from the mouth of a cave with a. high, wide entrance.
As soon as they found out that it was dry inside, they went down, packed up and struggled up the rocky slope with the hammocks and bed rolls. The first rain began a half hour after they moved in. Brade set up the little gasoline stove and Laura began cooking the evening meal.
James Carboldt dug in his bag and got the flashlights, gave one to Brade, and the two of them explored the cave which stretched far back into the hill. From time to time Carboldt flashed his light on the vaulted roof to make certain that the rock was firm. After fifty feet the cave widened and turned almost a right-angle corner.
Carboldt walked with the flashlight in his left hand, his right hand sweating on the butt of the revolver. The floor of the cave was a jumble of rocks and there was something about the silence that was oppressive. He could hear Brade’s quick breathing.
“Big enough, isn’t it?” Brade said in a low tone, his voice sounding hollow.
“Better whisper. Otherwise you might set up vibrations that’ll knock some of the ceiling down on us.”
Around the corner the cave stopped abruptly. Carboldt shone his light on the wall and then swung it around at almost floor level, looking to see if there was a smaller exit out of the place.
He gasped and Brade’s hand fastened tight to his arm. They walked over and looked down at the jumble of dark bones, at rotted bits of leather and doth. There were two gray skulls. On closer examination, they saw that the skeletons were complete, the jumbled effect resulting from one body having fallen half across the other. The bone of one skull was badly fractured.
Beyond the two skeletons was a small wooden box, about three feet long, two feet wide and a foot high. Corroded metal handles were set into the ends. The box looked firm and solid.
Brade grunted and stepped over the bones, fumbled at what looked like a wide copper hasp. James Carboldt stepped to one side so he could see. Brade got his fingertips under the edge of the lid and strained, the veins standing out on his forehead.
Something cracked and the lid came up slowly. Inside were a number of small leather sacks. Brade grasped one of the sacks and the ancient leather powdered in his hands, the jewels that it had contained spilling out and falling in among the other sacks, winking up at the light with beams of rich amber, green, red and deep blue.
Brade picked up a handful of the stones and stood up suddenly. Carboldt felt weak and dizzy. “What do you figure?” Brade asked.
“I... I don’t know. Let me see one.” He held it in the flashlight’s glare. “I’d say it was an emerald. Probably cut a long time ago. This isn’t Ceylonese stuff. Probably the emeralds came from India, those rubies from Burma, the aquamarines from Kashmir. Maybe the yellow and blue sapphires were from Ceylon. It would take a long, long time for the leather to turn to dust like that. Eight hundred years. A thousand.”
Brade squatted again and tore open some of the other sacks. The piled gems glittered. He reached over and grasped the metal handle at the end of the case and tried to lift it. The side of the box came off with the handle and the gems spilled out onto the rocky floor.
At last they turned and hurried back to the entrance to the cave. The gray daylight shone in on their faces and Laura looked up and said, “What’s the matter with you two? Are there ghosts back in there?”
Brade grinned at her, opened his hand and dropped several of the stones into her lap.
She fingered them with wonder. “Real?”
“I think so,” James said.
It was difficult to eat. After the meal was over, Carboldt said, “Well, the problem now is to get them down onto the yacht without fumbling it.”
“What do you mean?” Brade asked.
“I’ve been trying to figure how we can do it. There’s so darn many of them. We can shove a lot of them into the canteens, melt wax over them, let it cool and then fill the canteens with water. Then we can use the same idea on the gasoline tank on the stove. Maybe bury a few more in Laura’s face cream. But that’ll only take care of a tenth of the stones. No, we’ve got to think of a good way to get them all out.”
He saw Brade’s frown in the darkness. “Have you gone nuts, Jim? I know how these things work. Hell, if they ever found any of these rocks on us, they’d crucify me. I’ve got a reputation to take care of. Besides, do you think we could market them in the states? We’d be jumped in a minute.
“No, we’ve got to tell the authorities and let them take over and see if out of the goodness of their heart, they’ll give us a small share. If I know my foreign countries, they’ll probably give us one flawed ruby apiece and call it square.”