Hammond Innes - Levkas man

It worried me, too, and Sonia's face was a white mask in the darkness. But at least she hadn't heard Bert's rambling reference to a body.

We arranged that the baulks of timber to shore up the roof would be ferried out to Coromandel first thing in the morning, and then Zavelas went off to his house. Sonia went with him, leaving me to pull back to Coromandel on my own. It wasn't at all what I had planned.

I made the dinghy fast to the cleat aft and then relieved myself by the light of the stars. The night was soft and very still, the water brilliantly phosphorescent. It was the first time I had had the ship to myself, and when I went below the saloon seemed strangely empty. Complete and utter silence enveloped me. I poured myself a brandy and sat for a moment thinking about the cave with its unstable roof, Holroyd and the Greek marooned in the dark by the new fall.

A faint buzzing invaded the silence. Leaning my head back I could hear it vibrating in the hull, gradually getting louder. An outboard.

I went up on deck. The sound came from the entrance to the inlet. And soon I could make out the dim, dark shape of the boat. It passed quite close, Vassilios bringing Kotiadis back. But though I hailed them, they held on for the quay, my voice drowned in the ugly band-saw noise of the engine. I went down into the workshop then and looked over Bert's diving equipment, noting that there were still two cylinders full, mentally checking over the routine.

It was almost one o'clock before I got to bed. It had been a long, exhausting day, and I was tired, too tired perhaps, for in spite of the brandy, my mind kept going over all the details, particularly the details of Bert's dive.

I was woken shortly after six-thirty by the bump of a boat alongside and the sound of Greek voices. The first baulk of timber had been dumped on deck by the time I had my shorts on and had reached the wheel house. It was a glorious day, the sun already warm and a slight haze shimmering on the water. The timber was rough, the Greeks none too gentle, and by the time I had seen to the stowing of it, Zavelas was alongside with Dr. Gilmore.

He didn't look tired at all. Bright as a button, I thought, as I helped him aboard, whilst Sonia held the boat steady. "I haven't kept you waiting, I hope." He shook my hand, formal and dapper in his grey suit and panama hat. "A beautiful morning." He stood smiling and gazing round him. "It's so nice to be on the water again. London was very hot-a heat wave. But I had a day at Wimbledon-some very good tennis, a superb men's four." Sonia passed me his suitcase and a hand-grip. "Book presents," he said. "That's why it's so heavy. I managed to get an excellent treatise on submarine archaeology for Mr. Barrett. Do you think he'll like that?"

"I'm sure he will," I murmured.

"Good, good. And there's a book by Holroyd. I thought it would interest you. Also a typescript of the paper he read. Most revealing." And then, almost without pausing for breath, "And I'm sorry to hear about Mr. Barrett. Poor fellow. I was so looking forward to seeing him again. Is he in much pain?"

"He'll be all right," I said.

Sonia swung her leg over the bulwark. "Dr. Gilmore. I think we should leave now."

"Yes, yes, of course, my dear." He smiled at me, that same quick, bird-like glance. "I talk too much and you're in a hurry, naturally. But it is so nice seeing you again."

She took him below and I started the engine, whilst the two Greeks, who had been stowing the timber, dealt with the anchor. Zavelas took them off, and as I headed up the inlet, Sonia poked her head up the saloon companionway. "Paul. Have you had any breakfast?"

"It'll wait," I told her. I wasn't all that hungry.

"No it won't. Not if you have to make that dive." She was tense, excited, and it showed in her eyes. "Coffee and eggs? I know there are eggs on board. I got them for Florrie myself-fresh laid and about the size of ping pong balls."

Soon the smell of coffee began to drift up from below. And then Gilmore came up into the wheelhouse, looking a little incongruous in pale seersucker trousers and a blue shirt decorated with crimson sea horses. "I hope my rather strange apparel doesn't put you off your course."

"Very suitable," I said.

He smiled, a little self-consciously. "One of my students- a very distinguished professor now-insisted on taking my wardrobe in hand. It was really quite fun-I think he enjoyed it." He was silent for a moment, gazing at the bulk of Levkas straight ahead, his eyes crinkled at the glare. "Now, I want to talk to you about your father and this man Holroyd. There may not be time after we get to the cave, so I'd better tell you briefly now." He perched himself on the flap-seat at the side of the wheelhouse.

Quickly he ran over the situation as he had found it on his return to Cambridge. Holroyd had been entirely cooperative, submitting his specimens to the test called for by the committee, with only one proviso, that he was present throughout and that the bones and artefacts were never out of his sight. This the committee had regarded as reasonable since he was not only being accused of pilfering another man's work, but also of faking the basis of his paper.

Gilmore had reached Cambridge on June 1, only two days before the decisive meeting of the committee. By then all the tests had been completed, and the results known. Without exception they had proved satisfactory. He gave me a short summary of the results, covering chronometric and relative dating, with reference to the geological structure in which they had been found, and finally the carbon-14 method. "This last gave a date for all three skull fragments of around twenty-seven thousand years ago, and the teeth and bones were of the same period. They'd even passed the fluorine test, so that when I arrived fellow members of the committee greeted me with a certain coolness, in some cases outright hostility. They were all, of course, considerably younger than I was, a fact that Holroyd had used to advantage, the implication being that my ideas were antediluvian and the doubts I had expressed about his discovery and theory due to senility."

Sonia appeared with a tray, wafted into the wheelhouse by the smell of coffee. "You might have waited. I want to hear it too." She poured the coffee, while he repeated what he had just told me. "Well, if Professor Holroyd regards you as senile, he'll get a shock when he sees you in that shirt."

"It wasn't just Holroyd. It was most of the committee." He was smiling, his arms folded, and so pleased he seemed to be hugging himself. "Even Stefan thought I had gone too far. And Grauers made it clear that he doubted whether I had any evidence whatsoever to support my attack on such a distinguished member of the academic world."

We were off Spiglia then and Sonia took the wheel, while I sat on the starboard flap-seat eating my breakfast and listening, fascinated, to Gilmore's account of the scene as the Investigating Committee gathered in the lecture-room at Trinity College. Including Holroyd and himself, there were eight men and one woman present. The proceedings were not expected to tak^ long, a mere formality to clear Holroyd's name. The specimens were laid out on the table before him.

"I must tell you," Gilmore said, "that his statement that the skull fragments had been found by himself and the two other members of the expedition, and that their discovery was not in any way connected with Pieter Van der Voort had been accepted, and for reasons that will become self-evident I did not challenge this.

"The proceedings were opened by Professor Grauers, a short statement of the reasons for forming an investigating committee. He then called upon me to reiterate the charges. 'Or you may wish to withdraw them, in view of the rigorous tests which have been made?' I said I did not wish to withdraw anything, except the first charge of taking credit for another man's work. I then put the question to Holroyd again, asking him point-blank-had the discovery of the skull fragments been connected in any way with Dr. Van der Voort? 'The answer to that is No,' he said, directing his reply, not to me, but to the Committee-Grauers, in particular. I suppose any man as politically astute as Holroyd learns to be a consummate liar. He said it categorically, and then, still facing the Committee and speaking in that bluff, honest, North Country voice of his, he said, 'Van der Voort had been working in the area the previous year. This I have never tried to conceal from you, gentlemen. Owing to the circumstances, which you already know about, I had no opportunity of discussing it with him. As I have said before, the information which led me to the site was from a Greek source. He may have visited the site. In fact, I believe now that he did. But he failed entirely to recognize it for what it was. Instead- and this I learned subsequently-he concentrated on quite another site, not on the island of Meganisi, but in a bay known as Dessimo on Levkas.' "