Comes the Dark Stranger - Jack Higgins [14]
They stood there for a moment, and Shane said, ‘You’ve helped me a lot. I’m grateful for that.’
Graham shook his head, and said sadly, ‘What good will it do? Who can it possibly help?’
Shane shrugged, and pulled up the collar of his trench coat. His face was savage and bitter. ‘I don’t know. They say nobody can help the dead, but then I’m a walking dead man, so perhaps I’m an exception. All I do know is that this thing is eating into my guts so that I can’t think of anything else. I’ve got to know which one it was.’
‘Even if it should turn out to be yourself?’ Graham said.
Shane nodded, the skin stretched tightly across his cheek bones. ‘Even if it should turn out to be myself.’
‘And when you know, what then?’ Charles Graham said softly.
For a moment they stood looking into each other’s eyes, and then Shane turned without replying and, descending the steps, walked along the drive towards the gates.
5
WHEN he alighted from a bus in front of the university the rain had almost stopped, but fog crouched at the ends of the streets and the outlines of the houses seemed to blur and become indistinct.
He crossed the road to the porter’s lodge at the main entrance and inquired for Adam Crowther. A small, red-faced man in a blue uniform with gold facings, directed him to the Archaeology Department in a side street across the road.
The area behind the university had obviously been a high-class residential quarter some forty or fifty years before. Many of the houses had circular carriage drives and stood in spacious gardens. Most of them seemed to be occupied by one university department or another.
Shane found the Archaeology Department with no trouble and mounted the steps to the entrance. It was dark and gloomy inside with walls painted green and beige. There was no carpet in the hall and as he moved forward, the polished floorboards creaked ominously.
He passed a large notice board and came to the office. He noticed another door a little further along the corridor and saw that Crowther’s name was neatly painted in white on a small wooden plaque. He knocked softly and went in.
Crowther was sitting at a desk by the long window, his back half turned to the door as he held a piece of flint up to the light. ‘Yes, what is it?’ he said and there was impatience in his voice. ‘I told you I didn’t want to be disturbed this afternoon.’
Shane walked forward slowly until he was standing on the opposite side of the desk. ‘Hallo, Crowther,’ he said. ‘It’s been a long time.’
Crowther swivelled sharply in his chair and a look of incredulity appeared on his face. ‘By all that’s wonderful - Martin Shane. But this is impossible. You’re dead, man. You died seven years ago.’
Shane shook his head. ‘That’s what everybody keeps telling me. I’m beginning to wonder if I’m really here.’
Crowther sat gaping at him, the piece of flint still held between finger and thumb. ‘What have you got there?’ Shane asked.
‘An arrowhead one of my students found on a site we’re excavating, Neolithic, I think,’ Crowther replied automatically and then he laughed. ‘But what am I burbling about? Sit down, man! Sit down and tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself since the worst years of our lives? The last I saw of you, you were lying on a stretcher with your head split open. They told me you were dying.’
Shane pulled a chair forward and unbuttoned his coat and grinned. ‘They told you wrong. It was pretty bad, but I managed to pull through. It took years in hospital though.’ He reached for a cigarette. ‘What happened to you? I thought you were dead until I checked at the War Office a few days ago.’
Crowther took out a pipe and started to fill it from a leather pouch. ‘When they dug me out after the bombing I was pretty well unharmed. Wilby and Steele were both injured and the Chinese took them away in a field ambulance. I never saw them again.’
‘And what did they do with you?’ Shane asked.
Crowther shrugged. ‘Oh, the usual thing. I joined a column of prisoners and they sent us north. It was rather