Read Online Medusa by Hammond Innes - Free Book Online

between us. Then he went on, ‘When I arrived here this morning – yesterday morning now – there was a man here, a short man in overalls and sweater. He was coming out of the door there.’
    â€˜Carp,’ I said. ‘His name’s Carpenter.’
    â€˜An employee of yours? English, isn’t he?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Where from?’
    â€˜A little place on the East Coast. Felixstowe Ferry.’
    He nodded. ‘Thought I recognised him.’ He was standing quite still, staring at me. ‘So you know the whole stupid story?’
    â€˜About your being found clinging to a buoy off the Deben entrance? Yes.’ And I asked him why he had ducked his head inside his car to avoid speaking to Carp. ‘He was one of the men who rescued you, wasn’t he? In fact, he says it was he who cut you down.’
    â€˜Yes.’ There was a long pause, and then he said, ‘it sounds silly, you know, but it’s not something I’m very proud of – Navy officer found half frozen to death and roped to a buoy off a North Sea estuary. The media had a lot of fun at my expense, and seeing the man coming out of your door – it was a hell of a shock. I just didn’t want to be reminded of the episode.’
    Soo’s voice called to ask if we were ready. ‘Well, take Benjie out for a pee, will you, and Petra says to remind you about torches.’
    I slipped a sweater over my head, ‘I see your point,’ I told him, ‘but it’s no excuse for not even saying hullo. He was very hurt.’
    He shrugged, ‘I’m sorry.’
    The little dog had been shut in the store where he had a box to sleep in when we were out, and after I had taken him down the road to do his stuff, I went into the store with him and searched out the spare torches I kept with our boat gear. By the time I had found them, and some spare batteries, Soo and the other two were waiting for me out on the road. ‘You take Petra,’ she said as I locked the door. ‘I’ll show Gareth the way. We’ll meet you on the track down into the cove. Okay?’ And she took hold of Lloyd Jones’s arm, steering him across to his Fiat, as though afraid I might object.
    â€˜Well, she seems quite happy about it, now we’re all going,’ Petra said as we got into the car. ‘But you’d better tell Gareth to stay with her while we’re in the cave. It’s one of those entrances that are halfway up the side of the ravine and the last part is a bit of a climb.’
    It was just past twelve-thirty by the dashboard clock as I took the old Jag through San Clemente and out on the four-kilometre straight to the Binicalaf turn-off, the moon so bright we could see the talayot to the left of the road very clearly, a huge cairn of interlocking stone blocks. Shortly after that I turned left, past the Biniadris development and another talayot, Petra talking all the time about the cave drawings she had seen when studying in France. The one we were going to see now reminded her of Font-de-Gaume in the Dordogne, the entrance to it similarly placed, halfway up a cliff.
    â€˜When they’d opened up Font-de-Gaume they found a series of chambers with pictures of animals on the walls, chiefly reindeer and mammoth. And there was another cave, Rouffignac, much longer, and older I think. The drawings there were of rhinoceros and bison as well as mammoths, and the floor was pock-marked with the pits of hibernating bears, like small craters.’ She laughed at the recollection, and then, suddenly urgent again: ‘Most of those drawings were from way back in time, Mike, at least 17,000 years ago, and if the little bit of a drawing Fm going to show you is really that of a woolly rhinoceros, then it’ll be at least as old as those Dordogne paintings.’
    I remember the way she said that, the intensity, the excitement in her voice. She really did believe she had found