Carboldt was suddenly furious. “That’s fine for you, Brade. Just dandy! You’ve got all the money you can possibly use, so why try to get more? But how about me? The deal was a fifty-fifty split. There must be a million dollars worth of gems there. I won’t permit you to give my half away along with your own.”
“It’s not a question of choice,” Brade said sullenly. “I can’t take the chance, that’s all.”
“You’re going to take it!” Carboldt said shrilly.
Brade looked at him with a slow grin. “Getting a little money hungry, Jim?”
“You’re damn well told I am!”
“Boys! Boys!” Laura said. “Take it easy. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
They argued for over two hours, and at last, weary and defeated, Carboldt slung his hammock near the cave mouth, wedging climbing pitons into the cave wall. Laura and Leslie spread their bed rolls far back in the cave.
Carboldt was awakened suddenly as he was touched and when he opened his mouth to say something, a small warm hand pressed over his lips. He caught the elusive perfume of Laura and knew that she was standing beside his hammock.
She put her lips close to his ear. “Shh, darling. He’s asleep, but I’ll have to hurry back. He’s being unfair about this. Do you love me, Jim?”
He whispered, “Yes.”
“Then it will be fixed. That’s all I wanted to know. That’s all I wanted to know.” Her lips brushed his lightly and she was gone.
He stayed awake for a long time, trying to puzzle out what she had meant. At last he fell asleep.
In the morning, when Brade went down the slope to the creek to wash, the bright sun shone into the cave mouth.
Laura, her face very pale, said, “This has got to be quick, Jim. He’ll have to die here. It’ll look as though a rock fell from the ceiling of the cave. We report the tragedy to the authorities and at the same time we turn over all the jewels we found. In the excitement about the jewels there will be no suspicion. They’ll say that we couldn’t have done such a thing unless we were trying to get away with the jewels. Let them have the jewels. I will have his money and then we can be married.”
He looked at her white lips with complete disbelief. He stammered, “But I can’t — I couldn’t—”
“Remember what you said last night, Jim. You’ll have nothing to do with it. If I were free, would you marry me?”
He thought of the yacht, of the fine cars and clothes and homes. He tried to form his lips over the word, “Yes.”
“Shh!” she said. “He’s coming.”
After breakfast she took the stones that Leslie had given her before dinner the night before and examined them in the sunlight. Her eyes held a soft calmness, a strange content, that amazed Carboldt.
After breakfast he saw the muscles at the base of her jaw knot. She said, “Les, darling. Please take me back and show me that old box again. I’m afraid to go alone.”
“Sure, honey.”
They stood up together. She glanced at Carboldt and her eyes looked opaque. He felt powerless to make a move. His lips were numb and his palms hurt where his fingernails dug into them. Sweat poured off his face.
He watched them go side by side into the darkness of the cave, heard Laura say, “Oh! Les, dear, I just dropped one of those stones you gave me. It rolled over that way. Will you look for it like a dear?”
Leslie Brade grumbled something about clumsiness, snapped his light on and dropped onto his knees, pawing among the jumble of rocks. They were just at the edge of the complete blackness, so that Carboldt saw them as pale silhouettes against a velvet curtain. He saw Laura stoop quickly, saw her come up with a rock- held tightly in both hands, a lethal slab of broken shale.
As she lifted it, held it poised over Leslie’s head, James Carboldt remembered the mission, remembered the bitter hours in the wet stinking jungle where he would have remained and died but for Brade’s help.
In sudden cold fear, Carboldt yelled, “Laura! No!”
Brade spun around, saw the rock poised above him. He fell to one side as the rock came down, missing him narrowly. With his clenched left fist he hit Laura full in the face, knocking her down among the rocks. The forgotten flashlight shone up on Brade’s motionless figure. His right hand stabbed down toward the gun on his hip.
Carboldt snatched his own gun from his holster and said, “Drop the gun, Les. Drop it!”
In answer, he saw Leslie Brade spin and fire at him, saw the gold-orange splat of flame, felt a sledge-hammer blow against the side of his head as he spun down into darkness. Even as he spun down, he felt and heard the full-throated rumble of the moving earth.
High up, high against the roof of the world, on the shoulder of one of the tall mountains of Ceylon, there is a cave mouth. From the cave mouth can be seen the blue stretched silk of the sea, the jeweled green of the jungle and the misty line where they merge. It is an ancient cave, and in that cave once lived the last of the Veddas, chased into mountain hiding by the sons of Singha.
The man who sits in the cave mouth has the tired, brittle face of a scholar, but the thin gray beard clouds the clean lines of cheek and jaw. He hasn’t a scholar’s eyes, but rather the mild trusting eyes of a child. Along the right side of his head, above the ear, is an enormous puckered scar.
His hair is long, and, as he looks down the shattered slope of the hill, he plays with bits of blue glass which catch the sun.
The simple hill people come to feed him and their faces are solemn as they come, for they feel that they are feeding a legend, feeding a pure child of Buddha.
It pains them that he refuses to be taken to a better cave. His cave is no good. It is too shallow. A few feet behind him, as he sits, the fresh broken rock stretches in a sloping pile to the cave roof. Today they will try to move him to a better cave and once again he will refuse, politely but firmly.
The hill people discuss him in whispers. Truly he is a man of great piety. They are prepared to hide him from the other white men who search the hills.
