The Courtesy of Death (13 page)

One obvious gun—unreachable—was leaning against what was left of the companion; a dark line, which could be another, was on the ground. I wriggled towards it and closed my hand on
the smooth wood of a stock. Even if someone had looked up, I should have been invisible to his eyes.

As I broke the gun open to see that it was loaded, one of them heard me. I dare say he also heard the click of the safety catch. Two beams of light were concentrated on me.

I told them to come out from under the companion and stand with faces to the rock wall, hands raised. Having collected one of the dropped torches glimmering on the floor and stamped on the rest,
I made them a very formal Apology, trusting that when they were dissolved they would realise that this was necessary and that I bore no malice. One of them fainted. The other two pressed themselves
into the limestone as if they hoped to go through it, farther away from me.

This was sheer, satisfying cruelty, for I knew I could not kill in cold blood and never intended to. While they waited for death, I collected the second gun and swarmed up the outer edge and
rail of the companion. I wasn’t out of the wood yet and I knew it. The fellow who had been ordered back to his post must surely have stopped to listen to what was going on. I arrived at the
foot of the aluminium ladder just in time to see it disappear through the open hatch.

He did not put his head over the edge of the shaft. An unnecessary precaution. The man in control of that ladder was the last person on earth I would have shot.

‘I will not let you out before the rest of them,’ he said.

I tried hard to appear reasonable and told him that it was hardly likely that I would wait to be last.

‘In any case they can’t move,’ I added, ‘because they haven’t any light.’

If I really believed that, I was quite wrong. Even in pitch darkness it was not difficult to climb the companion and crawl along the gallery.

I heard my cracked, unfamiliar voice warning him that if he did not drop the ladder I would go back and execute his friends one by one. He was not impressed.

‘Then I should close up the hatch and you would die with them,’ he said primly.

I recognised his style. He was that wretched Bank Manager. He was terrified, but it was still second nature to bargain with a client.

‘If you don’t let me out, Jedder will bleed to death.’

That didn’t seem to me much of an argument, but it made him hesitate.

‘What are your minimum requirements?’ he asked, as if not prepared to go far on such dubious security.

‘You will drop the ladder and come down it.’

‘I will not! I will not!’ he bleated. Naturally enough, he was not going to risk being shut up for ever with his friends. ‘I shall go and fetch the police.’

‘Like hell you will! And stand trial for murder? But if you let me out I shall allow you to telephone for an ambulance.’

‘I cannot explain.’

‘If you all tell the same lie, you can,’ I answered, without any serious thought that this might indeed be true and very dangerous for my future. ‘You will have time to shut up
the cave.’

A voice boomed along the gallery:

‘Don’t let him out! Don’t let him out!’

My beam of light showed nothing but the yellow walls of the tunnel and its unsteady shoring. The speaker must have put his head up and bobbed down again.

‘Then listen to what I am going to do!’ I said. ‘They have no light down there. I have smashed their torches. I shall drive them far into the cave and leave them there. Only
you can get them out.’

The hatch slammed shut for an answer, cutting off the very dim circle of light in which I stood.

Their moves seemed to me panic-stricken, leading nowhere. I felt for the second gun, which was on the ground, unloaded it and pocketed the two cartridges. Then I stood on the barrel and bent it.
If I could not get out, nobody else was going to.

I was not very intelligent. It could hardly be expected of a man who was insane with longing for light and human society. A contradictory set of responses. I would have torn that Bank Manager to
pieces if it was likely to do any good. Yet at the same time, because he talked to me, I could have embraced him with tears. Not a mood in which to deal with the unexpected. They may have
calculated on it. They had had time to think.

I went back along the gallery to the top of the companion and shone my torch down into the changing-room. It was empty. The three men, carrying Jedder, seemed already to have retired into the
darkness where I proposed to drive them. I did not see what they were going to gain by that and started down the companion. A crowbar slung with an underhand action whirled past my face and clanged
against the rock.

Snapping off my light, I jumped back to safety in the gallery. So that was it. They were prepared to fight it out, three against one in the darkness—and such complete darkness that my
trained night-sight did not count. I had no heart for anything of the sort. All my little store of nervous energy had been exhausted by the explosion and its sequel. I simply wanted to get out of
that awful place and I nearly scurried like a rabbit back to the end of my burrow below the hatch.

But it was no good retreating to a pointless safety. Unless the ladder came down, I was trapped, and it was impossible to guess when or for what cause it would come down. The Bank Manager would
presumably have to open the hatch from time to time to hear what was going on and to receive orders, if any. Or he might close it up and replace the hay bales when day returned outside.

Were they prepared to stick it out for twenty-four hours if necessary? Looking back on it, I don’t see how they could. Five persons missing from their farms or businesses would surely have
been reported to the police. As it was, however, I could only think they were prepared to stay down, and was consumed by impotent fury and impatience. On that, too, they may have counted. They were
far from fools except in the matter of their blasted metaphysical animism.

All of this was felt rather than reasoned out. I remember two things only were clear: that the rabbit might be a rabbit but had no more patience; and that they had everything to gain, all
problems solved, by sending my body to join Fosworthy’s whereas I was no better off if I killed them.

So I scrambled down the companion without showing a light. They had another shot at the noise with a hammer and hit the rail. With such deadly accurate throwing one of them could have played
cricket for Somerset. Obviously he was in the passage outside the changing-room, popping in and out of the entrance. My gun was not much use, though I had a cartridge for each of the three and one
over for Jedder if he asked for it. I placed the flashlight under the barrels so that I could hold the lot in my left hand with thumb on the switch. A clumsy arrangement. I saw a head once, but it
wasn’t there by the time the gun was up to my shoulder.

Feeling my way silently into the passage, I tip-toed along the wall of the cave, hoping that I was driving them all in front of me and that the gun barrels would soon touch something soft. It
was soon clear that I was wrong. After sending a quick beam ahead of me, another lump of iron came at me from behind. I jumped round and fired. The flash showed my attacker only a few yards away. I
missed him by miles but got a gasping yelp out of him. Probably shot had ricocheted off the rock face and stung him up.

I had one in front of me and one behind. The third had to be in the changing-room or the tool-store. They had worked it out well. Whichever I hunted, there was always another ready to dash in on
the quick flash of the torch. It seems to me now that I should have had it all my own way since I was armed and they were not; but in fact one of them had only to creep or dodge within reach, and
then whatever weapon he had found among Jedder’s store was more efficient than four feet of gun pointing the wrong way. Admittedly if it happened to be pointing the right way one of them was
going to experience the unity of life in the happy hunting grounds.

I still liked the plan with which I had impulsively threatened the Bank Manager—of shepherding all of them in front of me into convolutions of darkness from which they could never escape
without a light. Thinking about it—if it can be called thinking—I saw that I was being far too cautious. Since by now I knew the wired passage as a blind man knows his living-room, I
could always move a little faster than they could. So I concentrated on the man ahead of me, cracking on the pace and no longer bothering about the noise I made.

I could not catch him, but he had to stumble away into nothingness a lot more recklessly than he liked. He passed the alcove with the still glowing ashes of my last fire and began to run,
realising that I might be able to see him. I did just distinguish a hurrying shadow, but it was not worth wasting a shot. The job was done. I heard him tripping and panting. I heard him fall, pick
himself up and patter on again. I kept up the pressure until I was fairly sure that he had taken a wrong turning. If he hadn’t, he was going to in the very near future.

I turned round and made for the changing-room, moving more cautiously. The man who had threatened my back and was now ahead of me had been outdistanced. It was some minutes before I heard his
retreating footsteps. I stopped to listen but all was silent. He had arrived wherever he wanted to be.

There were three possible places: the changing-room, the tool-store or the dead end between them. First I made certain that the dead end was clear. I had to pass both entrances, which I did by
approaching silently and then rushing them. Even with my perfect knowledge of every twist and obstacle I still managed to slam my shoulder against rock. Once at the end I had command of the
situation and could return to the attack with torch and gun barrels pointing in the right direction, sure that no one was behind me.

I crawled into the changing-room, convinced that I must be heard and had better keep low. But there was no loose stone or patch of mud to give me away. Everything was silent. Everybody was
listening. I got my back against the wall where I was safe from any of the cricketer’s missiles, stood up and swept the little cave with gun barrels and light.

No. 2 was there, defenceless except for a hammer. Without saying a word, I beckoned him towards me, then jumped behind him and stuck the gun in his back. There was no need for any light. I
prodded him on ahead of me into the passage and into the tool-store, where I knew No. 3 must be. He was. He hurled himself at the entrance, thinking that the approaching steps were mine, and
doubled up No. 2 with a knee which landed in the groin and a flying fist which hit limestone. I took a kick at the mess in passing and stood back. They cannot have seen much of me, but the lighted
barrels were unmistakable.

That was the end. I stripped them of matches and lighters and made them march ahead of me up the passage and into the great cavern where Undine had innocently pulled her Delilah on Fosworthy.
Just before we got there, No. 1 came running to the light shouting ‘Thank God!’ His thanks were cut short and he joined the procession.

When I had them in the middle of the cavern, I suddenly turned off the light and started to hit out in all directions with the butt of the gun. That effectively scattered them. In fact they ran
farther than was necessary. I suspect that they were taking the opportunity to dive into cover. I doubt if they foresaw at all what was going to happen to them.

Since entering the great cave I had been carefully counting my steps, for I knew well that I could not take liberties with the place as soon as my torch was switched off. I about-turned very
exactly, risked one flash to be sure that my feet were pointing in the right direction and tip-toed off. Even so I did not expect to hit the entrance. Experience in the dark had taught me that I
always bore a little left. So, when the counted steps led me nowhere, I turned sharp right and—still with some anxiety—came to an angle of the rock wall. Once round the corner I could
safely give myself light, and was soon back in the tool-store.

Jedder was lying in a corner, well out of the way of any trouble, with a sheepskin coat under him. When I was rounding up his two friends, my eye had been caught by the white bandage which had
been twisted round his leg below the knee, but I had no time to investigate.

His eyes were open. He stared without saying anything while I lit a lantern. I think my filthy and savage appearance haunted him more than the fear of what I might do. I was a living corpse. I
had no right to be alive.

‘You have—you have been down with Fosworthy?’ he asked.

‘No. Not poor Fosworthy. Doberman.’

He gave a sigh of relief, or perhaps merely of regret that he had never remembered the dog.

‘You and I are alone,’ I said. ‘Your friends are lost.’

‘Nonsense!’ he replied. ‘It’s not all that bad.’

An unimaginative man. Evidently he had never explored without a light in his hand and a line behind him.

‘You are going to shout to that Bank Manager to lower the ladder.’

‘Why should I?’

‘Because if you don’t, you will be begging for death before I’ve done with you.’

‘I will not let you out.’

I regret what I did. It would not have been necessary to anyone who was less obtuse.

He had very little feeling in his leg below the tourniquet but plenty above. For a moment I could not think of any tortures. One needs to know the technique of these things, and one needs fire.
Then I remembered that some Jedder-like character in history used to flay his political enemies alive with red-hot pincers. There may be some point in the heat. I found even a thin strip very
difficult with cold pincers.

He agreed to shout for help, moaning in self-pity that he could not believe one human being would do that to another. Curious. I should have thought that shutting a man up in the dark to die of
starvation was more vile—though less spectacular a crime—than ribboning his skin. But I didn’t argue. We had to get on. He might be right in assuming that his three companions
could return.