Hammond Innes - The Lonely Skier

When I opened them again, the room was steady. Engles had stopped pounding at the concrete with his hammer. He was leaning on the haft and wiping the sweat from his forehead. He caught my eye. ‘Feeling better?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ll be all right in a minute.’

But he saw I was shivering with cold and he said to Mayne, ‘Why don’t you lock him in his room? He’s wet through. He’ll get pneumonia.’

That’s his lookout,’ was Mayne’s reply. He did not trouble to conceal the fact that it would make no difference to me whether I caught pneumonia or not. But just at that moment I think I was past caring about death.

Engles looked across at me and then at Mayne. ‘I don’t often feel like killing people,’ he said. ‘But by God I do at the moment.’

‘Better not try,’ was all Mayne said.

Engles turned back and swung his hammer viciously against the concrete floor. The thud of it shook the whole room. They had moved the big cast-iron stove and where it had stood they were breaking up the concrete preparatory to digging. I glanced round the room. It was grey and dirty. The dust rose in a cloud round Engles and Keramikos — a fine, choking dust. Above me was the wall against which the German soldiers had been shot down. Examining it closely, I noticed that the concrete here was newer than the concrete of the floor.

I began to feel better. But my wet clothes chilled me and I was shivering uncontrollably. I got to my feet. I felt a bit dizzy, but otherwise not too bad. I said, ‘Mind if I give you two a hand?’ Engles turned. ‘I’d be warmer doing some work,’ I explained.

‘No, come along,’ he said.

Mayne made no objection and I climbed over the clutter of machinery. Already they had made a great gap in the concrete flooring. Keramikos was beginning to pick at the earth underneath. There was a hard frozen crust at the top, despite the concrete covering. But six inches down it was soft. Engles put his hammer down and I took up a pick. ‘Take it easy,’ Engles whispered to me. ‘There’s no hurry. Sorry you didn’t make it. Good try — but quite hopeless.’

I nodded. ‘It was foolish of me to try,’ I said.

We worked in silence. Keramikos and Engles took up shovels and left me to pick the earth loose for them. Mayne gave us no rest. We worked steadily and methodically and all too quickly the hole deepened. ‘We’ll soon be on to the gold if this is where it is,’ I whispered to Engles when our heads were bent close together. The hole was over two feet deep already. ‘He’ll start shooting as soon as we get down to it, won’t he?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But he’ll have us get it all up first. That is, as you say, if it’s here. How are you feeling now?’

‘Cold,’ I whispered back. ‘But all right as long as I keep on the move.’

‘Well, don’t start anything until I tell you.’ He bent close to Keramikos and began whispering to him. The Greek nodded and his thick hairy hands seemed to fasten more firmly round the haft of his shovel.

‘Stop talking and get on with it,’ Mayne ordered. His voice was cold, but he could not keep a tremor of excitement out of it.

‘He begins to get excited now,’ Keramikos said, his little eyes bright behind their lenses. ‘Soon he will lose control. He will become obsessed by the gold. Then he may get careless. That will be our chance. Do not work too fast.’ I wondered whether he had his gun on him.

‘Stop talking!’ Mayne’s voice trembled. ‘Work in silence or I’ll shoot one of you.’

We worked in silence after that. But though we worked slowly, the hole steadily deepened. It began to get dark about four and Mayne switched on the light. It was a single naked bulb set in a wall socket beyond the switchboard. It was the same light that Holtz had smashed with his fist. Engles glanced at me. I think the same thought was in his mind, too. If I pretended to feel faint, could I get near enough to hit it with my pick, I wondered. ‘Don’t do anything foolish, Neil,’ he whispered warningly.

I looked at Mayne. His eyes were bright. He was thinking of the gold. But they were watchful, too. The little black muzzle of the gun pointed straight at my stomach as our eyes met. ‘If you move a step towards that light, Blair, I’ll blow your guts out for you,’ he said.

We went on digging steadily. The three of us were taking turns at working actually in the hole now.

When it was some four feet deep Engles’ shovel brought up a mouldy piece of cloth. Keramikos picked it off the pile of earth we had thrown up. ‘This may interest you,’ he said to Mayne. ‘It is a piece of a German field uniform.’

‘Get on digging,’ was all Mayne said, but his eyes gleamed.

It was pretty unpleasant work after that. The bodies were half decayed. Only the bones were substantial. We pulled them out with our hands. It sickened me to see the remains of those men. Soon we should be no better off than they. We were digging our own grave.

There were rusty bayonets, guns with the butts and stocks rotten and the metal-work eaten away, webbing that fell to pieces as we pulled it out, and the bodies. Some of them had so little flesh left that they were scarcely more than skeletons draped in a mouldy covering that was part flesh, part clothing and part earth. We counted five in all, confirming Korporal Holtz’s statement. Then our shovels uncovered the corner of a wooden box.

Keramikos, who was in the pit at the time, looked up at us. ‘Pass it up,’ Engles said. Keramikos bent down and scraped the earth away with his hands. I glanced at Mayne. He was very excited now. It showed in his eyes and in the tenseness of his body. But he did not move.

At last the box was completely exposed. It was about two feet long by a foot wide by six inches deep. The wood was dark and rotten and caked with earth. Keramikos got his hands under it and passed it up to Engles. It was heavy. He set it down beside the bodies and looked at Mayne.

‘Get the rest up,’ Mayne ordered.

‘Wouldn’t it be better to open it up?’ Engles suggested.

Mayne hesitated. The lust to actually see the gold shone in his eyes. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Prise it open with that pick and let’s have a look at it.’

Engles pushed the box along the concrete floor towards him. ‘You’d better do it,’ he said. ‘It’s your gold.’

Mayne laughed. ‘I’m not a fool, Engles,’ he said. ‘Break it open!’

Engles shrugged his shoulders. He took up one of the picks and, setting his foot on the box to steady it, drove the point of the pick into it. It went in quite easily and when he put pressure on it, the rotten box fell apart.

It was full of earth.

Mayne uttered a cry and peered forward. Then he jumped back, the gun quivering in his hand. ‘What sort of trick is this?’ he screamed. ‘What have you done with the gold, Engles? That’s not gold. It’s earth. What have you done with it?’ He had lost control of himself completely. His face was twisted with rage. ‘What have you done with it?’ he repeated. ‘Tell me what you’ve done with it, or — or—’ He had become almost incoherent. For a moment I thought he was going to shoot Engles down.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ Engles said. His voice was abrupt and had a ring of authority in it. ‘Those boxes have lain there in the earth since they were put there. Your friends Muller and Mann probably know where the gold is. But you’ve killed them.’

‘Why did you suggest opening the box?’ Mayne demanded. He had got a grip on himself now. ‘Why did you want me to see what was inside? You knew the gold wasn’t there.’

‘I only suspected that your friends had double-crossed you,’ Engles replied.

‘They wouldn’t have done that. They told me everything as the price of their release from the Regina Coeli. They dug the hole for Stelben and stacked the boxes and the bodies round it. He locked himself in here after that and draped the window so that they couldn’t see in. Later, when they were able to look in, the hole had been filled in, the floor cemented over and the stove put back in its place. They weren’t able to get inside because the door was locked.’