Murder on Safari (27 page)

yet. And it’s important. I don’t know where Lady Baradale’s jewels are hidden. And I don’t know where to look.”

He paused, and shifted his eyes from one face to the next around the table. They were curiously wooden, as though all wore masks. No on spoke.

“I’m laying my cards on the table, you see,” he went on. “It’s mighty important to us, to the 273

police, to get those jewels.” He spoke in low tones, but every word was clear. “That robbery made the headlines, and we have to get back into the headlines with the recovery of the jewels, or the Chania Police gets a black eye and some of its personnel gets fired.”

Again Vachell’s eyes flickered from face to face, seeing concentration, bewilderment and surprise.

“Go on,” Lord Baradale said, an ominous note in his voice.

“I want those jewels back. And I’m not such a dope as to think that an arrested murder is going to tell me where to look. They’re hidden well, and the murderer intends them to stay hidden. But I reckon it’s possible that a murderer who hasn’t been arrested, but knows he will be inside a day, might come across — if sufficient inducement were offered.”

Again there was a pause, whilst the speaker

drained his coffee and drew on his cigarette.

“I think you’ve gone bats,” Cara Baradale said.

“What inducement can you offer a murderer? You can’t let him off, can you? And a reward isn’t much use if you’re dead.”

“Not to you,” Vachell agreed, “but it is to your family. The murderer’s family, I mean. People have been known to talk, or not to talk, for that.”

“Murderers aren’t usually very considerate

people, even to their families,” de Mare remarked.

“I think, if I were the man, I’d want a better inducement than that.”

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“You might get it,” Vachell replied. “I’m

speaking off the record now. I can’t make promises on behalf of the Chania Police, but I’m

prepared to bargain for them. Now a guy who

wants to bargain has to have something to give.

Here’s what I’ve got. Tomorrow, the Commissioner of Police arrives. He’s my boss, and I shall

report to him in full — lay it all on the line, so he can draw his own conclusions. And he’ll see the case as I saw it, up to a few hours ago. He won’t see the discrepancy in the evidence, the little slip the murder made — unless I tell him… . Well, there you have it. There’s my collateral. I’m open to a reasonable offer, if it’s made right now, tonight.”

There was a moment of utter silence when

Vachell finished his speech. Blank astonishment showed on every face. Lord Baradale recovered first.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” he exclaimed. “Never, in all my born days, have I heard anything to touch that! Do you mean to sit there, an officer in the police force of a British colony, and seriously make an offer to the murderer of my wife to help him to cheat the gallows and evade the law? Of all the cast-iron, brazen, colossal cheek! Mr. Peto, I appeal to you, as a Government official — are you going to let this insolent young puppy get away with the most outrageous attempt to pervert the law that I have encountered? I demand that you take action, sir — place him under arrest!”

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“Can’t do that, I’m afraid, Lord Baradale,” Peto replied. He had assumed an air of aloof detachment towards the whole affair. “The police must

run their own show according to their own ideas — if they have any. I’ve never noticed that they have, I must say; fat heads go with flat feet, if you ask me. I shouldn’t take them too seriously.”

Vachell grinned, and got to his feet. “Sorry you don’t care for my offer, Lord Baradale,” he said, “but it still stands. I want those jewels, and I’m willing to play ball with the guy who owns them.

I’m going to take a walk down the river for maybe half an hour. It’s secluded down there. If anyone wants to have a chat, they’ll know where to find me.”

He pushed back his chair in a dead silence, and left the table. When he had gone a few paces a voice said: “Stop.” Vachell turned and saw that de Mare had risen too.

I don’t think you’d better do that,” the hunter said.

“Why not?”

“Damn it, two people have been killed already,”

de Mare answered sharply. “I’ve issued orders that no one is to leave camp alone, even for a fiveminute stroll. I suppose I can’t force you to obey

them, but for God’s sake be reasonable and don’t go.”

“Thanks for the advice,” Vachell said. “But

there won’t be any trouble. I can take care of myself, I guess. And I carry a gun.”

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He patted the pocket of his dark tweed jacket, turned on his heel, and strolled off with long strides into the starlit night. From the circle of light under the acacia, seven pairs of eyes watched him go.

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It was a clear and cloudless night. Myriads of stars swam in the endless deep seas of the sky, and the Milky Way was an arch of glittering light

supporting the immensities of space beyond. So bright were the stars that they threw faint, misty shadows on the earth, and Vachell could distinguish tufts of grass, dark gleaming stones, and

gnarled tree roots beneath his feet. A thread of new moon hung over the crest of the hills behind him. Vachell nodded his head seven times, turned a shilling in his pocket, and wished more ardently than he had ever wished before. It was a simple wish: to be alive next morning when the sun rose.

The rain had cleared off for the time being and the wind had changed, causing the temperature to drop by fifteen or twenty degrees. The night air was sharp and cold in his throat. The river had subsided, but not completely; it still ran swiftly and with an urgency of purpose between its

shadowy banks.

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Vachell sauntered downstream until he reached the place where the river widened and the banks grew shallow and a pool was formed. On the right bank of the stream the bush was thick and pressed down almost to the water’s edge. There were a few game paths leading through it. On the left bank a belt of bush, where Lord Baradale had made his hide, thinned out until, by the pool’s lower

reaches, the open veldt reached to the water’s edge. The bare ground here was scarred with

paths made by buffalo and lesser game as they came down to drink.

It was here that Vachell took his stand, in the open where he could be plainly seen from the

thick bush twenty yards across the pool, and from the thinner bush on the same side of the river. He strolled down to the edge of the water and lit a cigarette. The barrel of his revolver was cold against his hand as he slipped the matchbox back into his pocket. It was a night of expectant stillness.

The water at his feet lay motionless, a flat

gun-metal sheet gleaming dully in the starlight.

Across the stream the bush seemed squat and

brooding, lying in dense mysterious shadow. He could see no sign of life, although he knew that under the banks the eyes of crocodiles and hippos must be following each movement that he made.

The silence grew so oppressive that his heart jumped and his throat contracted when a plop

from the shadows to his right betrayed the sudden movement of a frog or water-rat. A little later a 279

rustling in the bush across the river made him start again. He wondered whether an animal was coming cautiously down to drink, or whether one of the concealed askaris had shifted his position.

He could see no sign of them; they were well

hidden. His half-smoked cigarette painted a red arc across the darkness and ended in a faint hiss in the water at his feet.

Time crept silently, slowly forward. Despite his resolutions, Vachell felt nervousness grow. His throat and mouth were dry, and an insistent pulse throbbed somewhere in his head. He began to

sweat slightly, and his ears strained so closely for the slightest sound that they felt like bursting. He knew that terror, stark, unreasoning terror, was somewhere at the bottom of his soul, fighting feverishly with his selfcontrol to burst through and possess his body. He knew now what the

tethered goat would feel, if a goat had human feelings, when the hungry leopard crouched by the gateway of the trap.

He summoned reinforcements from his reason

to hold the terror down. Probably the murderer wouldn’t come. He didn’t expect any one to be so dumb as to swallow the bait of a bargain; the knowledge that Vachell was alone, in the dark, and a mile from camp, was the lure. Vachell’s life was the stake, and the chance to catch the

murderer red-handed — the only chance to secure any evidence — the prize. But it was a crude trap, and it might never be sprung. Anyway, if some 280

J one came, he’d get sufficient warning from a movement in the bush. The chances were twenty to one against a shot finding its mark in a light like this. The askaris would prevent a second shot. It was as safe as an evening stroll in Hyde Park.

Safer, in fact.

But all the time a second voice was saying: the killer’s tried to get you twice already. This is the last chance: it’s now or never. The third attempt can’t fail, too. Third time lucky, third time lucky, third time lucky Ч but not for you. The phrase drummed in his ears with the rhythm of the beat of his heart.

He slipped his hand into his pocket, gripped the cold butt of the revolver, and walked a few paces towards the bush to the right. He tried to pierce the darkness with his eyes, but the bush was a formless belt of shadow packed with menace.

It took the utmost exercise of selfcontrol to turn his back on the threatening bush and retrace his footsteps along the water’s edge. Still he heard no alien sound. Across the river the bush seemed to be crouching like a huge black beast. He turned his head to the left, where the open veldt lay pale beneath the starlight. Then he stopped dead in his tracks, and his heart jumped into his throat. He stood rigid and erect as a tree, his head swivelled round. Ahead he saw a vast black mass, twenty paces away, rearing its bulk between him and the sky. As he watched it, something moved like a pendulum across the stars. He was staring directly 281

into the face of an elephant.

He was so taken aback at this development that he forgot his nervousness in surprise. He had expected almost anything, but not an elephant.

But you could count on Africa to bring out the one thing you hadn’t thought of.

The elephant stood like a rock, its huge ears outspread, nothing stirring but its trunk. It was on its way to water. Vachell wondered what he ought to do. He couldn’t walk backwards, for the pool lay there. If he moved forward the elephant might decide to investigate. He wished passionately that he had brought a rifle.

As he stood staring at its dark bulk and debating on his next move, his ears caught a rustle from the bush behind him. A prickly sensation ran down his spine like a mouse. There was a sharp crack of a snapping twig, then silence. After a short

interval the rustling started again. Some one was moving, cautiously as a stalker, through the bush on his side of the river, twenty paces from where he stood.

Vachell’s hands closed on the butt of his

revolver. His scalp was prickling, and he hardly dared to breath. No time now to think of

elephants. He swung round, his back to the giant animal, and fixed his eyes on the dark shapeless mass of bush in front.

He could see nothing. Another twig snapped,

faintly, and then silence fell again. That sound had been nearer, and close to the water’s edge. Again 282

there was silence, and then from across the river came the hollow grunt of a lion. It was quite close and it made Vachell’s nerves quiver as though they were a tight-stretched string plucked by a musician’s finger. It was answered by two distant

grunts, away to the left. Two lions, hunting

together towards the camp. Silence closed in

behind their signals, like a fog. A sudden feeling of fellowship for the animals that were being hunted flooded Vachell’s mind. He knew the

primitive stab of terror that must pierce their primitive minds.

He pulled out his revolver and waited, his heart bumping, his shoulders hunched. The silence

seemed like taut membrane wrapped around the

night. It became something evil, personal, malignant, that stretched itself across his ears.

Then, without warning, the membrane snapped,

shattered by a roar of a rifle that crashed

through the air and left it lying in a million fragements.

Vachell’s muscles contracted with a jerk

like a dreaming dog’s, and in an instant he was sprinting across the open veldt and plunging into the bush towards the sound. Now the air was full of noises. He heard a shout from the bush just ahead and then the noise of a heavy body crashing through. There was another shout from across the river, and the sound of violent cursing down to the left.

Vachell zigzagged through the bush like a

running hare, and when it got too thick he crashed 283

through with head and shoulders, one arm over his face for protection. He hadn’t far to go. He burst through the last thorny barrier and emerged on to a rock above the pool in time to see two figures, locked in struggle, topple over into the water. It wasn’t deep, and when they came up he could see that the big black askari had a smaller, spluttering figure helpless in his grip. They waded to the edge of the pool and the askari, panting loudly and emitting little screeches of protest as the booted white man kicked his feet, lifted his captive and himself simultaneously out of the water.

Before they had clambered out Vachell realized that something had gone wrong with his calculations.

He pulled a flashlight from his pocket and

shon the beam on to the face of the askari’s prisoner.

The ray illuminated the angry, hook-nosed

face of Lord Baradale.

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It was the dripping peer who spoke first.

“What the flaming blazes is the meaning of this outrage?” he shouted. “Who the hell are you,

behind that light? Call off this murderous gorilla, tell him to let me go! It’s assault, that’s what it is, assault! I shall take this up to the Governor, I shall… . “