Near the end of their sick leave, they went to a small hotel in Ratnapura, and one week they followed a small stream up into the mountains. It was just after the monsoon season, and the stream bed was full of school children searching for topaz, sapphire, other semi-precious stones washed out of the hills by the monsoon rains. They went high into the hills, and Carboldt looked at the rock formations with the eye of a geologist.
He found a narrow cut through a rock slope and he said to Brade, “Les, I’d bet everything you’ve got that right down in there you’d find more stuff than they dig out of those mines down near Ratnapura in a year. All the conditions are right.”
James Carboldt thought no more about it. After he went back to the states and severed his connection with OSS, he took a job with a small oil company in the Southwest for a time. After that, since he had certain findings that he wanted to publish, he took a position teaching in a university in New York City.
Two weeks after his findings had been published and three days before the school term was over, he ran into Leslie Brade on the street. They went into a cocktail bar and talked about the war and the future. He found out that Les Brade had been married for six months to a girl named Laura Nettleton, and that Brade was as childlike as ever about what he wanted to do with his life. He told Brade that he was temporarily at loose ends himself.
Two weeks later James Carboldt took his bags aboard the Torment. The agreement was that they would go back to Ceylon to find that cut in the hills. They would share alike in anything that Carboldt was able to find in the way of gems.
There was a crew of eight aboard the Torment, and just the three passengers. Laura looked on the whole project with mild amusement.
During the long trip down the eastern seaboard, through the canal, out across the Pacific, the trip had been a form of perfection. Both Laura and James reveled in it, but to Leslie Brade it was an experience often repeated, too familiar to be remarked on.
They stopped at every port that offered amusement and the three of them were always together.
The present tension had started five days ago. Laura had started it without seeming to do so. She had done it by treating Brade’s ideas with derision, Carboldt’s ideas with respect. She had done it by constantly watching Carboldt with an intensity that was embarrassing.
She handled herself in a way that was completely casual, and yet, merely by her very casualness, she seemed to highlight the intensity of her feeling for Carboldt. Her every action, every word, was a stinging criticism of Brade, revealing the contempt that had grown out of the realization that to a mature individual Brade was a wealthy child — a bore — a creature fashioned cunningly of muscles and money.
James Carboldt finished the cigarette and flipped it out the open port. His future course of action was clear. He would have to avoid Laura during the remainder of the trip to Ceylon. He would work at his trade in Ceylon and see what could be recovered from the deep cut in the rocks. Then making some sort of an excuse, he would leave the two of them and fly home.
He went back up on deck and joined Brade on the fantail, borrowed the rifle and missed a particularly large tin with six until it was far out of range.
Brade laughed. “Jim, you’ve got no coordination. You’re the brain and I’m the brawn. Let me show you.”
He flipped a tin back into the wake, waited until it was a hundred feet off the stern and then fired three shots in rapid succession. Carboldt heard the distant click as the lead hit the tin, watched the tin fill up and sink.
Brade laughed again. An albatross which had been circling the yacht sped low over the water, the thin graceful wings motionless, made a wide turn and began to drift back up wind toward the stern.
Brade said, “Scare him,” and fired a quick shot.
The big bird folded its wings and dropped into the waves. It disappeared astern, looking like a piece of white cloth thrown carelessly into the water. Laura stood behind them, her tanned legs braced against the roll.
“That was a foul thing to do!” she said flatly.
Brade smiled uncertainly. “I didn’t think I’d hit it, Laura.”
“Thinking is an art you’d better leave to others, Leslie.”
His smile was still tight against his lips. He looked as though he had run a long distance. “Like Carboldt, maybe.”
“Maybe,” she said quietly.
He dropped the rifle on the deck, stood up quickly and walked back along the deck. They turned and saw him go down the companionway.
Laura turned and followed Brade. Carboldt sat and looked out across the sea, at the dusk that was touching the eastern horizon...
When the sea had turned from cobalt to gray, he went down to the small dining alcove off the galley and found that only two places were set at the rubbed wood table.
The mess boy said in his soft voice, “Mrs. Brade says for you to eat now, suh.”
He had just begun to eat when Laura came and sat opposite him. She had bluish streaks under her eyes.
After the mess boy brought her dinner, he raised a questioning eyebrow at her. She said, “Oh, the big baby was mad because he got scolded and he did like he always does. He went down to the cabin and sulked, and while he sulked he drank scotch out of the bottle and finally passed out. I guess he thinks that he punishes me that way. He’s in there snoring and he won’t wake up until noon tomorrow, when he’ll be cross as a bear.”
“You’ve been a little rough on him lately, Laura.”
She widened her eyes. “Me? Rough? What on earth do you mean?”
“You talk to him as though he was a little kid and you laugh at his ideas and— Well, it’s hard to explain.”
She nodded gravely. “I see. And you think I ought to hang on his every word and tell him how astoundingly bright he is?”
“Don’t make it hard for me. I shouldn’t have said anything in the first place. It’s just that I don’t think you appreciate him, Laura. He’s kind and he’s decent and he’s good natured and—”
“And he has fifteen million dollars, more or less.”
“Is that important?”
“Laddy, it is to me. It is to me. I got well fed up with being a church mouse. You can think what you want, Jim, but if I had enough money, I’d leave him at once. Maybe that makes me a harsh word. I don’t care.”
He looked down at his plate. “I guess maybe I can understand. I never thought about having a great deal of money. I’ve been contented to work and do a good job. But this trip has been odd. I look at this yacht and the money it represents, and I wonder why I haven’t got all this instead of Les. With his money, I’d visit every part of the world that has any interest from a geological point of view. I’d equip expeditions. What does he do with it? Nothing but enjoy himself.”
She grinned crookedly. “There’s something in that, too, Doc.”
“Well, we’re hexed now, anyway. That albatross’ll get us sooner or later. But, just for the sake of peace and friendship, Laura, make out like you hate me for the rest of the trip.”
“You flatter yourself, Doc. I think I do hate you,” she said quietly.
He was astonished. “Huh?”
“Yes, I hate you because you are someone to talk to. Someone who can talk sense. I hate you because I’m a girl married to a muscular hulk with all the fine intellectual developments of an amoeba. I even hate you because you don’t have any money.”
After dinner they went on deck and stood side by side at the rail while the soft Pacific night breeze touched their faces.
He told her of the mission that he and Brade had gone on, and he worked into the story all of the good points about Leslie Brade that he could think of. It was a eulogy of Brade, and she made no comment.