He gestured with the gun.
‘Climb out of the trench, Adam. But do so with the utmost care. If you make any movements that suggest you are planning to dispossess me of my weapon, I shall shoot you.’
Adam looked to his left to where Quint had cut primitive footholds into the side of the trench. He used them to haul himself out of the grave-like excavation. He pulled himself over the lip of the ditch and struggled to his feet. Fields still had the gun directed at him. Adam looked beyond the professor’s shoulder. The older man noticed the movement of his eyes.
‘There is little point lifting your eyes to the hills, Adam, for no help will come from that direction. Rallis is not on his way.’
‘Where is he?’ Adam was still confused, still uncertain of what was happening. ‘Where is Quint?’
‘The lawyer is out there lying under the Greek sun.’ Without moving his revolver, which was still trained on Adam’s midriff, Fields jerked his head in the direction the men had ridden no more than a few hours ago. ‘It was necessary to shoot him. And his gargantuan servant.’ The professor gave a short and mirthless laugh.
‘The fools obliged me by travelling in the vanguard. It was easy enough to make use of the weapon I had hidden.’ Fields shifted his weight from one foot to another. ‘As for Quintus, I passed him an hour or more ago. Riding one of the mules and looking very sorry for himself. Luckily for him, he did not see me. If he had, he would have been even sorrier for I might have been forced to kill him as well. Which I would have regretted. I have always been fond of Quintus, rogue though he is.’
‘I hope you are not planning to kill me, Professor?’
‘Of course not, my boy. Whatever gave you that idea?’ Fields laughed again, more amiably than before. He seemed to find Adam’s question genuinely funny. ‘Not unless you do something very foolish and I do not believe that you will.’
‘I will do nothing foolish,’ Adam promised. He had recovered from the surprise of the professor’s arrival and was now struggling to make sense of the sudden revelations about Rallis’s murder. Fields, it seemed, had lost his mind. What other explanation could there possibly be for the terrible deeds to which he was cheerfully admitting? ‘But what is to happen next? We cannot stand here for ever like figures from Madame Tussauds.’
‘It will be two hours, maybe even three, before Garland arrives.’ The professor appeared curiously calm and rational. He might have been sitting down in his study in Cambridge to conduct a tutorial on pre-Socratic philosophy rather than standing by a half-dug trench in Thessaly, waving a gun at his favourite pupil. ‘Before Rallis and I parted company with the village headman, he told us exactly where Garland and his companions were. However swiftly they travel, they cannot be here sooner. And they may well stumble across the bodies of Rallis and Andros, which will delay them further. There is time for us to talk.’
‘Perhaps we should wait for Garland to arrive,’ Adam said cautiously. ‘We can travel back to Salonika with him.’
‘Oh, I think not, my boy,’ Fields replied amiably. ‘You are assuming, of course, that I have gone mad. You are humouring me in the hope that rescue will arrive sooner than I expect.’
The professor shook his head from side to side. Adam had seen him do the same a hundred times in the past when confronted by the stupidity of the average undergraduate.
‘I can assure you I am not mad. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw, as the gloomy Prince of Denmark said.’
‘I have no doubts about your sanity, sir,’ Adam lied, ‘but you have, by your own admission, killed two men. That cannot just be ignored or forgotten. We should wait for Garland. We will convince him that you shot Rallis and Andros in self-defence. That they attacked us when we discovered gold. Which Quint and I did only a short time after you left. We will tell Garland that—’
Fields did not wait to hear what they would tell Garland. With a sudden twist of his arm, he pointed the revolver upwards and shot into the air. The explosion of the gun sent birds squawking in terror from the nearby trees. Adam, silenced and half-deafened, watched the professor swing his gun back into a position where it was directed once more at him.
‘That is enough,’ Fields shouted. The sounds of the birds slowly died away and a strange quiet descended.
‘Now, I shall tell you what will happen,’ the professor said. ‘You will submit to being tied and bundled into the trench. I will return to Volos. From there, I will be obliged to travel into exile. I do not think Cambridge will now welcome me back with open arms but I have always had a great fondness for Tuscany. I do not think that many questions will be asked of an Englishman who takes a villa in the hills outside Florence. Most probably I shall enjoy my exile. I have an income from my long-departed father’s estate. I have the fruits of my association with Creech, of which I assume you know. I shall not be like poor Ovid in his banishment by the Black Sea.’
The professor paused as if to relish the prospect of an enforced sojourn in Florence. Adam could scarcely believe what he was hearing. Did Fields really believe that it was feasible for him not only to ecape from European Turkey but to make his way to Italy and settle in a Tuscan villa? Did he think that no consequences would follow his actions in shooting Rallis? If any further proof were needed that the ageing scholar had taken leave of his senses, here it was. Aware of the revolver pointing towards him, the young man was in no position to argue but he risked throwing a tentative remark into the silence.
‘What of our excavations here?’ he asked. ‘The treasure may nearly be ours.’
Still holding the gun level in one hand, the professor swatted away the words like troublesome flies with the other.
‘Thanks to the foolish interference of others, I must abandon our diggings,’ he said. ‘But I can return. Perhaps in a year, perhaps in two years. In five years, if necessary. I can wait. I have the Euphorion manuscript and the rest of the world does not.’
‘Garland will know where to dig. He will see where we have been digging.’
Fields shook his head as if dismissing the idea but otherwise he ignored Adam’s words. The young man wondered whether the professor was capable any longer of thinking clearly on such subjects. He seemed to have reached a point where he almost believed that his wishes alone could transform reality. The Macedonian gold was destined to be his so there could be no chance that Garland or anyone else would dig it up. It would sit here beneath the earth until Fields could return for it.
‘Before I take horse for Volos,’ he went on, ‘I must explain myself. I wish you to know the precise reasons why I have acted as I have.’
Adam risked a glance to his left: perhaps Quint had turned back to the camp soon after Fields had seen him and was even now approaching. But he could discern nothing but one of the mules, tethered to a post and grazing on the grass at its feet.
‘I wish you to understand what has been behind all this, my boy,’ the professor said, speaking with sudden feeling. ‘You must appreciate that I have been driven to these terrible but necessary deeds by the idiocy and avarice of others.’
Fields’s head dropped. For a moment he looked like a man who had reached the end of his road. I can disarm him now, thought Adam, readying himself to rush towards the gun, but it was as if the professor overheard his inner voice. His head jerked up again and he waved the revolver at the young man.