His eyes narrowed. The small dark features were immobile, the cigarette dangling from his bloodless lips. His stony silence chilled me. Suddenly I had to know. Ever since we had left the house in Harbour Terrace my energies had been concentrated on leaving Penzance behind us. But now as I knelt naked by the blazing fire that scorched my buttocks, I had time to think. Racketeer he undoubtedly was. The skipper of a fishing boat doesn't have gold cigarette cases and diamonds. I didn't mind that. But a killer was different.
'Dave,' I said, 'for God's sake tell me — did you shoot back? Was anybody else — hurt?'
His eyes didn't leave my face. They were cold and hard. They were like the eyes of a panther I had once seen looking down at me from a branch of a tree as it lay crouched to spring. I suddenly caught hold of him and shook him, 'What happened?' I cried, and my voice sounded strange.
The thin line of his lips curled. The expression of his eyes changed so that he was looking through me. He was seeing a scene that was indelibly planted in his mind. And he was enjoying it. He began to hum a tune, crooning it to himself in an ecstasy of reminiscence. 'They insisted on taking the hatches off. I warned them not to. But they insisted.' He suddenly looked at me. He was still smiling secretly. 'What could I do, man? It was their own fault, wasn't it? I jumped for the other boat. That's when I got this bullet through the arm. And then they opened the hatches. It was a lot of noise she made and then she sank, just as though she'd hit a mine. Just lovely, it was. But it's sorry I am about the old boat. Fond I was of her — fonder than I've ever been of a boat.'
'How many were killed?' I asked.
His eyes went dead and the muscles of his face hardened. 'It's nothing to do with you, man. Their own fault, wasn't it now?' He put his hand on my arm. 'Don't be asking any more questions, Jim,' he said. 'It's shooting my mouth off, I've been. Forget what I've said. I'm feverish, that's all.' He stared into the fire. His face relaxed so that he looked little more than a kid.
I squatted back on my haunches. I felt cold and wretched in the blaze of the fire that burned my neck. I thought of the stories I'd heard of the wreckers that had operated along these rugged coasts before the lighthouses were built, and how the fiends had knifed the survivors that struggled in through the break of the waves. Here was something just as horrible. And I was mixed up in it. A few hours ago I had been a deserter — nothing more. Now I was mixed up in murder. I shivered. 'What about this job?' I asked huskily. 'Is it anything to do — to do with your activities?'
His lips remained set and his eyes hard. Yet somehow I knew he was smiling to himself.' 'It's scared you are,' he said.
'Of course I'm scared,' I said, suddenly finding my voice. 'There's men been killed tonight and I'm involved. I've only done one thing wrong in my life. I ran when I should've gone on and got killed like any decent fellow. I ran because my nerves were shot in ribbons with three consecutive nights' patrolling through mines and booby traps in that hell of Cassino. I couldn't take it. But that's all I've done. And now here I am hiding on a desolate stretch of moors with — with a murderer.'
His eyes leapt to mine. They were like hard, glittering coals. His right hand slid across towards his clothes. I watched him — not afraid, but fascinated. He felt in the pocket of his jacket.