Flames Coming out of the Top (19 page)

“Señor Muras has gone,” he said. “I know that,” Dunnett replied.

“Moreover he has dismissed me,” the youth continued, “Señor Olivares gave me my notice yesterday.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” Dunnett told him.

“I am therefore without employment at the moment.” The youth paused.

“If you've come to me for a job, I can't help you,” Dunnetl answered. “I haven't got any jobs to offer anyone.”

The youth seemed offended. “I came to offer you information,” he said.

“What sort of information?”

“Very important information—about Señor Muras.”

“All right then. Let's hear it.”

The youth's embarrassment returned. “But you do not understand,” he said. “I wish to sell my information.”

Dunnett sat back and regarded him. His lavender-coloured suit flared out to high padded points on his shoulders, curved gracefully over his dancer's waist, and enclosed his firm young hips like a mould.

“I don't buy information,” Dunnett told him.

The youth appeared perplexed. The padded shoulders rose and fell. “It is highly confidential,” he said. “It affects you very closely. It is about the money Señor Muras owes you.”

“How do you know that Señor Muras owes me money?”

“Señor Muras owes everyone money.”

“Well, what of it?”

“I know where Señor Muras is.”

Dunnett leant forward. “You do?”

The youth did not reply immediately. He appeared to be debating inwardly within himself. At last he summoned up courage and put his proposal forward. “Mr. Dunnett,” he said, “we are both gentlemen. Between gentlemen there can be a bond of honour. If I give you my information, will you reward me when you get your money?”

Dunnett considered the point. “How did you get your information?” he asked.

“I was Señor Olivares's confidential clerk,” the youth answered simply. “He trusted me.”

Dunnett paused; this was something he couldn't consult Mr. Govern about. “It's not my money to give away,” he replied. “But if I get the money through your assistance I'll see that the firm rewards you. I give you my word for it.”

The youth bowed his head in assent. Then he came forward until his face almost touched Dunnett's ear. “He has gone to the Canagua on business,” he said.

“Canagua—where's that?”

“Up in the Gran Chaco. In the heart of it past Sandar.”

“When is he coming back?”

“He will not come back,” the youth replied decisively.
“When the deal is through, he will have a great fortune. He will be too rich for anyone to stop him.”

“Are you sure he'll put the deal through?” Dunnett asked.

The youth shrugged his shoulders. “He is a very good business man and there is a great shortage of arms,” he replied. “The Government cannot afford to do without him. Canagua is an arsenal by now. Every week his lorries have gone away loaded: he has had men moving stuff all the time. During the last twelvemonth he has thought of nothing else. He has not settled any debts. He has just bought and bought and bought.”

Dunnett paused. “How long does it take to get to Canagua?” he asked.

“About seven days: two in the train and five in a boat.” The youth allowed the point to sink in. “But the depot is not at Canagua,” he added. “It is at Subrico, up country about fifty miles.”

“How do you get there then?”

“By horse. There is no other way. All the cars have been commandeered.”

“Is it a difficult journey?”

“Not to anyone who knows the country.”

“You mean I should want a guide?”

“Certainly. If you travel alone you will not be seen again.”

“But I haven't said I'm going yet,” Dunnett reminded him.

“It is the only way,” the youth replied. “After the deal is over, Señor Muras will disappear.”

“I'll think about it,” Dunnett promised.

The youth rose. “There is no time,” he said. “The train leaves at midnight. It departs only on Tuesdays.”

Dunnett paused. “I'll let you know in an hour.”

“Then I may send the guide?”

“I've told you I don't know whether I'm going.”

The youth ignored him. “He will be here by eight,” he promised.

At the door, Dunnett stopped him. “Why are you so eager to see me catch Señor Muras?” he asked.

“He dismissed me,” the youth replied serenely. “Now that I am no longer working for him I naturally wish to make things difficult.”

After the youth had left him Dunnett for a time stared hard out of the window. “The train leaves at midnight “; “After the deal is over he will disappear.” The words kept drumming inside his brain. He had no doubt in his own mind what a man of action would do, how Mr. Verking, for example, would have handled the situation. And he had no doubts about himself either. He had at last got his teeth into Señor Muras again, and this time he did not intend to let go. It was with a feeling of firm resolve that he set off to inform Mr. Govern what risks he was proposing to take for the House.

The Post Office, he found, had survived the tremor almost unharmed. Two of its six plateglass windows were boarded up and the tessellated pavement had developed a curve like a gigantic bosom. But everything else seemed to be as usual. Dunnett removed a cable form and began to write, “HAVE LOCATED MISSING AGENT STOP DELAY FATAL STOP PROPOSE CATCHING TRAIN TO-NIGHT STOP UNWISE STATE DESTINATION STOP WILL KEEP EXPENSES STRICT MINIMUM STOP PLEASE AUTHORISE.”

The cable clerk bowed politely. “Unfortunately there are no cables to-day.”

“Why not?”

“It is because of the earthquake. The wire has snapped.”

“Is it being repaired?”

“That is out of my hands. It has been reported. Soon, no doubt, they will do something.”

“How long will it take?”

“Until they find where it is broken. Last time it took six weeks.”

“Can I sent a wireless message?”

“There is no wireless station.”

“Not even at Moliendo?”

“Moliendo is cut off too until the wire is repaired.”

“Isn't there a ship in harbour with wireless?”

“There are only small ships in the harbour. The big ones, the liners, keep away when the Fiery Mountain comes into action.”

Dunnett drummed with his fingers on the counter. Then he crossed out the last two words and pushed the form back through the grille towards the clerk. “Send this as soon as the line is repaired,” he said.

The clerk bowed again. “It shall receive our prompt attention,” he promised.

Dunnett walked back to the hotel, past the now desiccated blooms in the Botanical Society's flowerbeds, conscious of how much he had taken upon himself. At the very moment when he wanted Mr. Govern's guidance it was no longer there. But Mr. Govern, he knew, would understand, would appreciate that the man whom he had chosen was not afraid of doing things unprompted. It was the measure of his difference that he was not afraid to go.

When he reached the Avenida he went across to the desk where Señorita Alvarez was sitting. “Have you got a map of Bolivia?” he asked.

“What part of it?”

“The whole thing; where it joins Paraguay. I want to find the name of a town out there in the Chaco somewhere.”

“There aren't any towns in the Chaco.”

“Perhaps it's only a village.”

She went into the little office and came back bringing a tourist map of the country. It showed the magnificent coast roads in red: they ran—a thick stretch of scarlet ribbon, right down from Panama to Santiago—3,000 miles of them. Evidently the cartographer had been a man of some imagination. But, inland, even he was defeated: the red roads soon stopped. They resolved themselves into second-class thoroughfares which in their turn became tracks which eventually were lost sight of altogether. The whole interior vastness of the country was simply left blank. It was rivers that took the
place of roads: the map showed hundreds of them, an intricate tangle of meandering waterways.

“What's it like, in this part?” He spread his finger in an arc across five hundred miles of vaguely charted land.

“It's very wild,” she told him. “People don't go there.”

“All the same,” he said, “I want to find Canagua.”

“Canagua,” she repeated. “I have never heard of it. It must be very small.”

She moved a lamp towards them, and together they bent over the map. The map was old, folded and obstinate. She spread out her fingers to flatten it. There was something in the action that distracted him, and he found that he was looking at her hand instead of at the map. It was a good hand, finely moulded and capable. The last hand that he had touched had been Carmel Muras's: that was plump and full like a baby's, with little pointed fingers. He remembered Kay's hands; very white they were, with the veins showing as though she had been ill. The hand before him was stronger than either of those.

He bent forward to study the map, and the outlandish names danced up at him—chuquisca, cochambamba, inambari, abuna, itonana. Those names were people; each collection of letters meant living human beings, little scattered dots of inhabitation. Not just a few, but millions of them; millions of savage Indians whose lives were going on at this moment. But it wasn't a map of anything in this century. It was a collection of relics of some faded, derelict civilisation: Canagua was a part of it, a fragment broken off and tossed aside somewhere amid this litter of forgotten history. And as he looked at the map he felt a sudden terror: the whole mystery seemed waiting to engulf him. One man more or less, what was it? That disordered wilderness wasn't going suddenly to sort itself out for the sake of a travelling representative wild-goose chasing after a vanished agent.

And then Canagua itself caught his eye. There it lay, at the intersection of two rivers that he had never heard of. If a white man had chosen to sink himself somewhere where no
other white man could ever find him he might have chosen Canagua. It had, even on a map, the hopeless look of being at the forgotten back of a lost beyond.

“There it is,” he showed her. “That's Canagua.”

She regarded it sceptically. “You are not going there?” she asked.

“I am,” Dunnett replied. “I go to-night.”

“No.” She shook her head. “That would be foolish.”

“Why would it?”

“You might not come back.”

“That's all right,” he said. “I'll take care of myself.”

“No one can take care of himself in the Chaco,” she replied. “At any time it is dangerous, and now with the war on anything might happen. It is better not to attempt it.”

“Don't worry,” he said. “I'll see you when I get back.”

He held out his hand for the keys of his room and went upstairs. There was plenty to be done before midnight.

The thought of Kay waiting patiently for him at home had come like a memory from another life. It cast a shadow over the whole departure. She wouldn't approve of what he was doing, would say that he was risking his head unnecessarily— he knew that. Women could never understand what loyalty to a firm really meant; it was outside their kind of reckoning. And here he was staking everything, perhaps even his life, on it. He wanted to explain to her that what he was doing was in an odd way for her sake too, because he didn't want to come back as a man who had failed. But it was all so difficult and she was so far away.

The letter he finally wrote her was a long one; it told everything. When he had finished he felt calmer within himself. It was almost as though he had spoken to her. The fact that it would be a month before she could read it seemed comparatively unimportant. By then, in any case, he would be back from Canagua: when she came to read of the adventure, it would all be over, something done and marked up to his credit in the annals of the trade.

When he had finished the letter he started packing. It was a rushed, emergency affair, this packing for the jungle. But he performed it systematically and efficiently. In twenty minutes his case was filled and locked. And then he remembered Mr. Verking's antiquated firearm: it lay where he had left it in the dressing-table drawer. There was no one in Amricante with whom he could leave it: you need to know a man well before you can confidently ask him to accommodate an illegal weapon. There was nothing for it therefore but to take it. He unlocked the case and with some misgiving thrust the gun inside. Out there in Canagua he could lose it all right. Or he could drop it overboard going down the river on the last part of the journey. It was only on the train that it was likely to be in the way. He had read yesterday morning in the last issue of the local paper, before the news of the eruption had chased everything else off the front page, that a new counter-espionage drive was in progress, and that the police were combing everyone for arms.

He looked at his watch. It showed 10 o'clock. The guide had not arrived and he began to wonder whether Señor Olivares's confidential clerk was going to let him down: he was certainly cutting things pretty fine. At 10.15 he was convinced that something had gone wrong and at 10.30 he began turning over in his mind the possibility of going without him. Half-an-hour later he was still sitting there gloomily pondering whether he should unpack again or not. Then he heard the faltering step of the landlord, and it was announced that there were two gentlemen waiting to see him. He pushed his way past the landlord and went down the stairs at the double.

The little clerk was back, as spruce and girlish as ever, apparently not even conscious that he was late. And standing beside him was a figure in an old reefer coat and regulation trousers. He was wearing a pair of new shiny boots and a peaked cap pulled down so low over his ears that the top had come out into a crown almost like a bowler. The little clerk bowed politely and his companion gave Dunnett what was
intended for a formal salute. It was not an entire success, however, for the man swayed a little as he raised his arm. And it was then that Dunnett noticed that most of his fingers of his right hand were missing and knew where he had seen the man before. He was the broken-down sailor who had borrowed the price of a meal. Dunnett stopped dead.