The Three Sirens (85 page)

Courtney’s features revealed no emotion. “Thanks, Harriet.” He looked around. “I suppose someone had better notify Paoti. I want to wait here—”

“Let me do it,” Harriet volunteered. “It will not be the first time. I want to go inside again, to straighten out, and after that, I’ll go to Paoti.”

With Moreturi still absent, and Harriet back inside the hut doing whatever nurses did with the dead, those who remained outdoors were drawn more intimately together. There was smoking, and there was continued silence. Sam Karpowicz was completely bewildered. What had begun with a theft of his precious photographs and film had led to this, by what route he could not understand, and he was too sensitive to inquire for an explanation. Maud’s dumbness was less grief for the dead girl than for her son, who, it had been made clear, had had some connection with her. Still, she clung to a hidden hope that it was not so. Claire’s silence, like Courtney’s, was a mourning for Tehura, a flame so bright, so suddenly snuffed out. Yet, overshadowing all their private thoughts, was the wonderment. What had happened? What was behind the mystery?

Ten minutes passed, and then fifteen, and then Moreturi materialized, now less sad than angry, out of the darkness.

There were no questions, no interruptions, to delay the urgency of Moreturi’s words.

“At first Poma, after she was awake, would say nothing about today. Then I told her that our Tehura was dead. She wept and she told the truth of it. I will make it brief, for there is much to do this night. Tehura came to Poma, to use her brother and his sailing vessel to leave this island. It was to be tonight and in the morning, at the far beach. Tehura pretended that she was going alone and Poma pretended to believe her. Last night, when Poma was with Tehura here, someone called on Tehura. They stayed outside. Poma was an evil spirit. She could not bear the secrecy. Through the back window, she peeked and listened. The caller was—was Mrs. Hayden’s husband—Dr. Marc Hayden.” Moreturi paused, then went on. “Dr. Hayden planned to come here tonight, and at midnight he and Tehura were to go to the far beach. There was mention also of one name foreign to Poma, one with the name ‘Garrity,’ who would be waiting for them in Tahiti.”

Maud’s voice was hushed. “Marc took your pictures, Sam. He was going to Rex Garrity.”

Courtney addressed his native friend. “Did Poma say more, Moreturi?”

“Only that Marc was to be with Tehura tonight, and they were leaving after the midnight hour, to reach the beach when it was light. No more.”

They had all forgotten Harriet Bleaska, but now she was with them, holding up an empty Scotch bottle. “I found this.”

Courtney accepted it, and looked at Claire. She nodded her head in recognition. “Marc’s brand,” she said. “He was here.”

Courtney turned to Moreturi. “From all the evidence, what has happened is fairly clear. Marc was here tonight with Tehura and he was drinking. He was taking Tehura with him, for whatever reasons he may have had. He was also taking what photographic evidences he could of the Sirens, and he and Garrity were going to sell out the island, exploit it, make a carnival of it. But something happened between Tehura and Marc tonight. Evidently, Marc struck her, and she fell against her stone idol, and died of the injuries. And it is a million to one Marc cleared out with his booty for his partner, Garrity, and is on his way to the beach right now.” He stared at Claire and Maud, but there was no softness in him. “I’m sorry. That’s the look of it.”

“Tom, we must stop him.” It was Moreturi speaking.

“Of course, we must. If he gets away, these islands are doomed.”

“If he gets away,” said Moreturi, with no hint of apology for the fineness of his correction, “Tehura will not sleep.”

The two men agreed that they must go in pursuit of Marc Hayden immediately. They ignored the others, as they quickly made their plan. Marc had several hours’ start on them. Yet he was familiar with only one path to the far beach, the long but safe way, made slower for him by the night. There was the steeper, more difficult short route, along the sea, the one the natives often used. Courtney and Moreturi decided to use it now. They were not certain that they could overtake Marc. They could only try.

Without another word, they were gone.

The others went down into the compound. Harriet left the party to bear the sad news to Chief Paoti. Sam Karpowicz separated from Maud and Claire, somewhat awkwardly, to go to his wife and daughter. Of the party, only Maud and Claire, the two Haydens, stood in the compound, before Maud’s hut, absently watching the torches along the stream.

After a while, Claire said, “What if they don’t catch him?”

Maud said, “All will be lost.”

Claire said, “And if they do catch him?”

Maud said, “All will be lost.”

She was pale and old and sorry, as she turned and waddled toward her hut, forgetting to say good night. After Maud had closed the door behind her, Claire walked slowly to her own rooms to wait for morning.

* * *

The morning came to The Three Sirens gradually.

The first of the new day appeared as if through a crack in the horizon. The last of the darkness challenged the expanding light, but halfheartedly, and retreated before the advancing gray shafts of dawn and fled entirely from the incandescent glow of the sun’s rim.

The new day would be windless, and the heat would be scalding. In this elevated area, where the two paths to the far beach converged on a spacious boulder ridge, the coconut palms stood straight and calm. Far, far below the eroded cliff, the cobalt sea washed gently against the weathered crags.

The two of them came up out of the sunken gorge, through the dense greenery, to the meeting of the paths, at the point where the paths merged into one crooked footway that led down to the beach. Moreturi’s skin was beaded with perspiration mixed with gray dust. Courtney’s soiled shirt was glued to his chest and spine, and his trousers flapped where thorns and bush had slashed them.

They rested on the broad, barren boulder, panting like animals who had run all through the night, trying now to regulate their breathing and to regain their physical vigor.

Finally, Moreturi turned, then strode backwards along the wider trail that rose from the plateau. Several times, he knelt to study the oft-trodden path. Courtney watched him with confidence. The villagers were uncanny at tracking, despite the fact that they were not a nomadic, game-hunting people. Their skill at tracking had been developed because it was one of their traditional sports. They had taught Courtney that the tracker’s art was in being able to observe something recently out of place. An overturned stone, a pebble even, its moist side turned up and not yet dried by the sun, would indicate feet had displaced it minutes or hours before.

Courtney waited. At last, Moreturi, satisfied, joined his friend. “I think no one has walked here today,” Moreturi said.

“You’re probably right, but we’d better make sure,” Courtney replied. “It’s only a half-hour down to the beach. Either the boat is still there, or it’s gone off with him.”

They had begun to move as one, in the direction of the beach, when suddenly Moreturi’s fingers closed tightly on Courtney’s shoulder and held him still. Moreturi lifted his flat hand, a gesture requesting silence, and he whispered, “Wait.” Quickly, he crouched, listening intently to the earth, and then, after interminable seconds, he straightened. “Something or someone comes,” he announced.

“You think so?”

“Yes. Very near.”

Automatically, they parted company, Moreturi fading into the inner brush, Courtney finding a station beside a coconut palm, each a sentinel on one side of the trail, waiting and hoping for the one who would come around the bend from the grasslands and ascend the boulder.

A minute passed, and then another, and suddenly, he came into full view.

Courtney’s eyes narrowed. The approaching figure grew larger. There was the hump of a knapsack on his back, and a shabby bundle carried low, and it was evident that he was at the borderline of fatigue. Gone were the personable visage, now drawn, the trim physique, now cramped, the sartorial neatness, now disheveled.

He did not see them at first, but followed the beaten trail from the plateau to the height of the boulder. Pausing once, to shift the agony of the knapsack’s load, he resumed his heavy tread across the high cliff, eyes to the turf, until he reached the meeting of the paths. For an instant, he hesitated, then started doggedly along the single path.

Abruptly, he halted, and astonishment hit his slack mouth and jaw like a giant’s blow.

He looked from left to right, first incredulously, then panic-stricken.

He stood swaying in disbelief, as Courtney and Moreturi slowly came together several yards before him.

He licked his lips, hypnotized by the apparition of them. “What are you doing here?” Marc Hayden’s voice croaked out of a dry throat, the voice of a man who had spoken to no one all the night and expected to speak to no one all the day.

Courtney took a step toward him. “We came to get you, Marc,” he said. “We were waiting for you. The whole sordid mess is out. Tehura is dead.”

The pupils of Marc’s eyes dilated, and then the eyelids quivered uncomprehendingly. He dropped his ragged bundle, and absently, he slipped the knapsack off his back and lowered it to the ground. “She can’t be dead.”

“She’ll never be deader,” said Courtney evenly. “You don’t have to say a damn thing. Her friend, Poma, told us practically all there is to know. We’re taking you back, Marc. You’ll have to stand trial before the Chief.”

Marc’s shoulders flinched, but his face was defiant. “The hell I will!” he burst forth. “It was an accident. She tried to kill me, and—it was self-defense—I had to knock her down. She tripped, fell backwards against that hunk of stone, but she was all right when I left. She was all right. It was an accident, I’m telling you. Maybe somebody else killed her.” He gasped, his venomous eyes darting from Courtney to Moreturi. “You’ve got no right to stop me! I can go where I please!”

“Not now, Marc,” said Courtney. “There has to be a hearing. You can have your say there.”

“No—”

“You’re living in The Three Sirens. You’ve got to abide by their laws.”

“Fat chance I’d have,” Marc jeered. “A snowball in hell, that’s the chance I’d have. That colored kangaroo court, naked savages, crying and wailing over their little whore, and me, alone—no, never!” His tone took on an edge of cowardly solicitation. “Tom, for Chrissakes, you’re one of us, you know better than this. If there’s been an accident, and someone wants my version, wants the truth, then see that I get a fair chance—in Tahiti, California, anywhere civilized, among people like us, but not on this Godforsaken pisspot of an island. You know they’ll mumble some crap and string me up.”

“Nobody strings anybody up here, Marc. If you’re not to blame, you won’t be found guilty. You’ll be freed. If you are guilty—”

“You’re crazy, you’re one of them,” Marc interrupted bitterly. “You want me to stand up there in some shack, alone, against their witnesses, that Poma, her cretin brother, all the other brown bastards, and listen to what they dream up? You want me, a scholar, a scientist, an American, to be judged by them? And what about old Matty and Claire, you want me to stand up in front of them, both of them gloating and hating me as much as the tribesmen? Are you kidding? There’d be the death sentence on me before I opened my mouth. I’m telling you—”

“Marc, control yourself. I repeat, there is no death sentence. Sure, the evidence points strongly against you. But there’s still your side of it. Only if that doesn’t hold up, if you are judged in any way responsible for Tehura’s death, will you be declared guilty and sentenced. But, you’ll be allowed to live, except you’ll have to remain here, make up Tehura’s time to her kin, the time she would have had on earth except for you.”

Marc’s eyes blazed. “You’re asking me to spend fifty years in slavery on this goddam place, you lousy bastard?” he yelled. “The hell with you, both of you, I’m not doing it! Get out of my way!”

Neither Courtney nor Moreturi moved. “Marc,” Courtney said, “you can’t get past us. You haven’t got a chance. There’s no place for you to go but back to the village, so listen to reason—”

Even as Courtney spoke, he and Moreturi began to close in on Marc Hayden. It was Courtney’s arm reaching for him that galvanized Marc into action. Instinctively, with all his waning power, he slammed out. His fist caught Courtney on the jaw, sending him off balance into Moreturi’s arms.

At once, Marc, choking, saliva dribbling down his chin, swerved toward the cliffside, preparing to outflank them and make a dash to the beach. But they had left the path, too, and they were both there, impenetrable, both waiting for him. Marc halted, measuring them, glanced to either side of them, and then the trapped expression in his face showed that he knew: Courtney had been right, there was nowhere to go, nowhere at all.

They were advancing steadily toward him once more, and Moreturi was saying with repressed fury, “I will take him, I will take him back.”

Then it was that Marc broke. The sight of the malevolent aborigine drawing near shattered his resistance. Defeat was in his horrified eyes: the civilized wall had come down; the barbarous hordes were engulfing him. His discomposed features seemed to beseech someone not there. “Adley,” he choked out. He reeled in retreat, but Moreturi was almost upon him. “No!” Marc shrieked. “No! I’ll go to hell first!”

He turned and ran, stumbling across the width of the boulder to the very brink of the towering cliff. His back to the horizon, he faced them, teetering dangerously, shaking his fist, but not at them—how strange, Courtney thought—but at the sky. “Damn you!” he screamed. “For all eternity, damn you!”

Courtney’s hand had stayed Moreturi, and Courtney shouted, “Marc, no—don’t—!”

Balancing on the cliff’s edge, Marc laughed without control, and then he howled, a convulsed lunacy in his twitching face. Suddenly, he whirled about, toward the long deep sea, ignoring them, alone with his demons, and for a hanging second he stood poised as a high diver is poised. He did not dive. He took a single grotesque step forward into nothingness, suspended momentarily between heaven and hell, then plummeted downward out of sight, the ribbon of a ghastly, drawn-out, receding groan his last link to the society of men.