“And a very useful superstition it’s been to us, too.” Mallory reached under the bunk with his torch, straightened his back. “Two or three candles here.”
“I want a light, boss. No windows–I checked. O.K.?”
“Light one and I’ll go outside to see if there’s anything showing.” Mallory was completely in the dark about the American’s intentions. He felt Miller didn’t want him to say anything, and there was a calm surety about him that precluded questioning. Mallory was back in less than a minute. “Not a chink to be seen from the outside,” he reported.
“Fair enough. Thanks, boss.” Miller lit a second candle, then slipped the rucksack straps from his shoulders, laid the pack on the bunk and stood in silence for a moment.
Mallory looked at his watch, looked back at Miller.
“You were going to show me something,” he prompted. “Yeah, that’s right. Three things, I said.” He dug into the pack, brought out a little black box hardly bigger than a match-box. “Exhibit A, boss.”
Mallory looked at it curiously. “What’s that?”
“Clockwork fuse.” Miller began to unscrew the back panel. “Hate the damned things. Always make me feel like one of those bolshevik characters with a dark cloak, a moustache like Louki’s and carryin’ one of those black cannon-ball things with a sputterin’ fuse stickin’ outa it. But it works.” He had the back off the box now, examining the mechanism in the light of his torch. “But this one doesn’t, not any more,” he added softly. “Clock’s O.K., but the contact arm’s been bent right back. This thing could tick till Kingdom Come and it couldn’t even set off a firework.”
“But how on earth–?”
“Exhibit B.” Miller didn’t seem to hear him. He opened the detonator box, gingerly lifted a fuse from its felt and cotton-wool bed and examined it closely under his torch. Then he looked at Mallory again. “Fulminate of mercury, boss. Only seventy-seven grains, but enough to blow your fingers off. Unstable as hell, too–the little tap will set it off.” He let it fall to the ground, and Mallory winced and drew back involuntarily as the American smashed a heavy heel down on top of it. But there was no explosion, nothing at all.
“Ain’t workin’ so good either, is it, boss? A hundred to one the rest are all empty, too.” He fished out a pack of cigarettes, lit one, and watched the smoke eddy and swirl above the heat of the candles. He slid the cigarettes into his pocket.
“There was a third thing you were going to show me,” Mallory said quietly.
“Yeah, I was goin’ to show you somethin’ else.” The voice was very gentle, and Mallory felt suddenly cold. “I was goin’ to show you a spy, a traitor, the most vicious, twistin’, murderin’, doublecrossin’ bastard I’ve ever known.” The American had his hand out of his pocket now, the silenced automatic sitting snugly against his palm, the muzzle trained over Panayis’s heart. He went on, more gently than ever. “Judas Iscariot had nothin’ on the boy-friend, here, boss. . . . Take your coat off, Panayis.”
“What the devil are you doing! Are you crazy?” Mallory started forward, half-angry, half-amazed, but brought up sharply against Miller’s extended arm, rigid as a bar of iron. “What bloody nonsense is this? He doesn’t understand English!”
“Don’t he, though? Then why was he out of the cave like a flash when Casey reported hearin’ sounds outside . . . and why was he the first to leave the carob grove this afternoon if he didn’t understand your order? Take your coat off, Judas, or I’ll shoot you through the arm. I’ll give you two seconds.”
Mallory made to throw his arms round Miller and bring him to the ground, but halted in mid-step as he caught the look on Panayis’s face–teeth bared, murder glaring out from the coal-black eyes. Never before had Mallory seen such malignity in a human face, a malignity that yielded abruptly to shocked pain and disbelief as the .32 bullet smashed into his upper arm, just below the shoulder.
“Two seconds and then the other arm,” Miller said woodenly. But Panayis was already tearing off his jacket, the dark, bestial eyes never leaving Miller’s face. Mallory looked at him, shivered involuntarily, looked at Miller. Indifference, he thought, that was the only word to describe the look on the American’s face. Indifference. Unaccountably, Mallory felt colder than ever.
“Turn round!” The automatic never wavered.
Slowly Panayis turned round. Miller stepped forward, caught the black shirt by the collar, ripped it off his back with one convulsive jerk.
“Waal, waal, now, whoever woulda thought it?” Miller drawled. “Surprise, surprise, surprise! Remember, boss, this was the character that was publicly flogged by the Germans in Crete, flogged until the white of his ribs showed through. His back’s in a heliuva state, isn’t it?”
Mallory looked but said nothing. Completely off balance, his mind was in a kaleidoscopic whirl, his thoughts struggling to adjust themselves to a new set of circumstances, a complete reversal of all his previous thinking. Not a scar, not a single blemish, marked the dark smoothness of that skin.
“Just a natural quick healer,” Miller murmured. “Only a nasty, twisted mind like mine would think that he had been a German agent in Crete, became known to the Allies as a fifth columnist, lost his usefulness to the Germans and was shipped back to Navarone by fast motor-launch under cover of night. Floggin’! Islandhoppin’ his. way back here in a rowboat! Just a lot of bloody eyewash!” Miller paused, and his mouth twisted. “I wonder how many pieces of silver he made in Crete before they got wise to him?”
“But heavens above, man, you’re not going to condemn someone just for shooting a line!” Mallory protested. Strangely, he didn’t feel nearly as vehement as he sounded. “How many survivors would there be among the Allies if–”
“Not convinced yet, huh?” Miller waved his automatic negligently at Panayis. “Roll up the left trouser leg, Iscariot. Two seconds again.”
Panayis did as he was told. The black, venomous eyes never looked away from Miller’s. He rolled the dark cloth up to the knee.
“Farther yet? That’s my little boy,” Miller, encouraged him. “And now take that bandage off–right off.” A few seconds passed, then Miller shook his head sadly. “A ghastly wound, boss, a ghastly wound!”
“I’m beginning to see your point,” Mallory said thoughtfully. The dark sinewy leg wasn’t even scratched. “But why on earth–”
“Simple. Four reasons at least. Junior here is a treacherous, slimy bastard–no self -respectin’ rattlesnake would come within a mile of him–but he’s a clever bastard. He faked his leg so he could stay in the cave in the Devil’s Playground when the four of us went back to stop the Alpenkorps from comin’ up the slope below the carob grove.”
“Why? Frightened he’d stop something?”
Miller shook his head impatiently.
“Junior here’s scared o’ nothin’. He stayed behind to write a note. Later on he used his leg to drop behind us some place, and leave the note where it could be seen. Early on, this must have been. Note probably said that we would come out at such and such a place, and would they kindly send a welcomin’ committee to meet us there. They sent it, remember: it was their car we swiped to get to town.. . . That was the first time I got real suspicious of the boy-friend: after he’d dropped behind he made up on us again real quick–too damn’ quick for a man with a game leg. But it wasn’t till I opened the rucksack in the square this evenin’ that I really knew.”
“You only mentioned two reasons,” Mallory prompted.
“Comin’ to the others. Number three–he could fall behind when the welcomin’ committee opened up in front–Iscariot here wasn’t goin’ to get himself knocked off before he collected his salary. And number four–remember that real touchin’ scene when he begged you to let him stay at the far end of the cave that led into the valley we came out? Goin’ to do his Horatio-on-thebridge act?”
“Going to show them the right cave to pick, you mean.”
“Check. After that he was gettin’ pretty desperate. I still wasn’t sure, but I was awful suspicious, boss. Didn’t know what he might try next. So I clouted him good and hard when that last patrol came up the valley.”
“I see,” Mallory said quietly. “I see indeed.” He looked sharply at Miller. “You should have told me. You had no right–”
“I was goin’ to, boss. But I hadn’t a chance–Junior here was around all the time. I was just startin’ to tell you half an hour back, when the guns started up.”
Mallory nodded in understanding. “How did you happen on all this in the first place, Dusty?”
“Juniper,” Miller said succinctly. “Remember that’s how Turzig said he came to find us? He smelt the juniper.”