The Twenty-Third Man Read Online Free PDF

said.
    ‘Good day, Clement,’ Dame Beatrice responded. ‘Where did you get the towel?’
    ‘Why do you want to know?’ The question was not insolently put. He really meant what he said.
    ‘You did not have it when you broke your promise and skipped for the beach.’
    ‘Oh, it belongs to somebody, I suppose. I needed one, so I took it.’
    ‘I sincerely hope that you will not contract any of the more scabrous forms of dermatitis, then.’
    ‘What’s that?’ A fleeting look of alarm changed his normal expression of boredom to one of interest.
    ‘There are several rather loathsome forms of skin disease which can be caught from using somebody else’s towel. Didn’t you know?’
    ‘Oh, slosh! I don’t believe that sort of rot! Who told you?’ But his voice was more high-pitched than usual.
    ‘I am a doctor. It is my business to warn people about such things. Of course, if they choose not to listen, there is nothing more I can do.’
    ‘Oh, slosh!’ said Clement uneasily. He got up, kicked at the towel, and then asked, ‘If you’re a doctor, can’t you disinfect me? I used the beastly thing coming up. If it belongs to one of the islanders I might get leprosy!’
    ‘Pick up the towel with this, then, and put it back where it came from’ – Dame Beatrice produced a piece of paper – ‘and hurry up. Time is of the essence in these skin diseases. The open pores, you know.’
    He came back later to discover that she had a small bottle in her hand.
    ‘This should obviate any possible ill-effects,’ she said cheerfully. ‘It smells good, too. Tip it into the bath when you have about six inches of water, preferably tepid. Use no soap. Conclude the ablutions with a cold shower.’
    Ten minutes later Mrs Drashleigh appeared.
    ‘I can’t understand it.’ she said. ‘ Did you tell Clement to have a bath?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Well, he’s having one! Without any fuss! I can’t understand it! He’s never obeyed anyone before.’
    ‘He thought it a case of necessity,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Obedience should depend upon that, don’t you think?’ The party which set out next morning consisted only of Peterhouse, Dame Beatrice, Caroline, Telham, a local guide, and Mrs Drashleigh. They went in two cars to the hill village from which the mules were to be hired. A donkey for Dame Beatrice was not available, the reason, she suspected, being that for donkeys it was customary to charge a lower hiring-fee than for their unfertile offspring.
    The village was dirty and charming. The wooden houses, stinking and insanitary, had balconies, courtyards, and galleries. The hillside beyond the village was terraced for crops. The cavalcade passed by the flank of a vineyard so widespread that the owners, as the guide, a short, swart, cut-throat man, explained, were obliged to move house frequently in order to keep it under complete cultivation.
    The road the company were following degenerated into a narrow, precipitous path which zigzagged, black and dangerous, up the mountain-side until, at a thousand feet, it entered some beautiful woods of chestnut and laurel. In the clearings there was heather and where the belt of trees ended there was no other form of vegetation until the pinewoods began. At just on two thousand feet the party reached their goal and could see, beyond the cave, the dark-grey lava streams, immobile now, which had flowed in the sixteenth century from the huge volcanic crater up above.
    The cave itself was rather disappointing. It was big enough – there was no doubt about that – but it penetrated only a comparatively short distance into the mountain-side. There was a sudden relief from the brilliance of the sun, an interlude of slightly alarming gloom, and then, as the eyes became accustomed to this, there were the embalmed dead men, all twenty-three of them, seated around their stone table in a dignified silence which seemed to rebuke the onlooker. Each was wearing a mask and his robes of