Bluebolt One (20 page)

The little man said, “Sir, I am the stationmaster of Manalati. Name of Mister Tonks. I understand the train was held up—"

“That’s right.” Shaw told him the story as quickly as he could.

Tonks said, “You’ll be Commander Shaw, sir?”

Shaw nodded, rubbing at his eyes. “Why—how do you know?”

“Ah, I guessed, because I know all the other gentlemen, you see, and there is a message, sir, just this minute come from the Navy communications base—from Commander Geisler.” Tonks blinked rapidly. “His assistant, Mr Hartog, was to have met you, but he has had an accident with his car. Miss Anne, that’s Mr Hartog’s daughter, sir, she will be meeting you and will be here almost immediately. If you would care to have a wash-and-brush-up, sir, my house is at your service.”

Shaw nodded briefly. “Thanks, Mr Tonks. I’ll take advantage of that, and glad to.”

“Good. Kindly follow me, sir.”

“Just a moment. . . .” Shaw turned to Major Kennet. “What about reporting the hold-up?”

The Australian clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about a thing, Commander. Reckon I can call the train my responsibility and I’ll see to everything. Including the sad demise of that bloke who went for you in the coach! Right?”

Shaw had just finished a quick wash and had drunk a welcome cup of steaming coffee when Anne Hartog turned up, coming in fast in a mud-spattered station-wagon and pulling up with a jerk and a flourish at the Tonks bungalow.

Shaw pulled on a clean shirt and looked out of the window when he heard the vehicle. He guessed who it was when he saw a slim, sun-tanned girl of around nineteen or twenty scramble out and dash through the rain for the verandah, dressed in an open-necked khaki shirt and slacks.

Tonks let the girl in, and when Shaw appeared he introduced them. They shook hands and Anne Hartog said in a light, attractive voice, “Daddy sends his apologies.” She smiled at him, rather defensively, he thought, and pushed some stray blonde hairs, all wet and curly with the rain, back off her forehead. She said, “You’ll do all right with me, though, Commander Shaw. Bet I’ll get you out to the base quicker than Daddy would—rains permitting, that is!”

Shaw glanced through the window at the station-wagon and grinned back at her understandingly. He said, “I hear your father’s had an accident. Hope it’s nothing serious?”

A shadow seemed to cross the girl’s face and she brushed the question aside. “No, it’s nothing much. He’d been down at one of the copper-mines last night—Kamumba, out west of here—and his car ran off the road. That’s all. He’d only just got back before I left.”

“I suppose the roads are pretty bad around here?”

She grimaced. “Perfectly frightful. Most of them are nothing but tracks, really, and in the rains—well, they’re just too awful for anything. You just can’t help the odd spot of bother.” The girl looked away as she spoke, and she flushed a little. Then she went on quickly, “Well, if you’re ready, we’ll go, shall we? Commander Geisler’s very anxious to meet you, I believe.”

“Right. I’m all ready now.”

Shaw thanked the stationmaster for his hospitality, picked up his grip, and followed Anne Hartog out to the wagon. He noticed a rifle lying on the back seat and asked, “Is that because of the general situation, Miss Hartog?”

“Anne,” she said. “Do call me Anne. The rifle. . . well, yes, it is really. My father won’t let Mummy or me take any chances. He thinks we may really have to defend ourselves before long.”

“Let’s hope it won’t come to that,” he said as he settled himself comfortably. “Know how to use it?” His eyes twinkled at her. “I suppose most people out here have some kind of acquaintance with guns, though.”

She said, “Yes, they’ve got to. I can use it all right if I ever have to, but like you, I hope it won’t come to that. It’s a hobby of mine, actually—range-firing, you know, and hunting, but shooting at people . . . well, I wouldn’t want to have to do that.” She put the vehicle in gear neatly and competently, and accelerated. The wheels spun in thick mud before taking a grip and then the wagon went forward with a jerk. They shot ahead, turned out of the station approach, and went off fast, a little too fast, along the muddy road. Looking aside at Shaw, Anne Hartog said suddenly, “Mr Tonks said there was some shooting last night when your train was held up.”

He nodded. “That’s right. Some one was—after the military stores, we think.”

“Where did it happen?”

“I couldn’t say just where. About sixty miles west of here, roughly.”

The girl’s head jerked a little and she gave him an odd look and went a little pale, but she didn’t say any more. Soon they’d left the little shanty-town of Manalati behind them and were heading west, almost back in the direction from which he’d come. They returned to the beginnings of jungle country under the teeming, soaking rain, which lashed down vertically, penetrating the green canopy of the trees which stretched over the rutted road. Ann, peering ahead through the windscreen where the wipers coped as best they could, was soon forced to ease down as they met the hint of coming flood.

She said crossly, “Damn. It’s pretty hopeless, isn’t it? We’ll be down in the valley soon, the Naka Valley, and it’ll get worse.”

“The base is right in the valley, isn’t it?”

She nodded.

“Not so good from the flooding point of view, surely?”

“Oh,” she said, “there’s no bother about that as far as the base itself is concerned. It’s on rising ground. It’s the roads I was thinking of. Actually the whole country’s terribly swampy for six months of the year.” Farther on she said, “You know, I don’t think we’ll make it before lunch at this rate. The rain’s got a lot worse since I started out, and it’s still some way to the base. If you don’t mind, I think we’d better turn off to our bungalow. It’s only a little farther on from here. I’ll take you home, and we can ring Commander Geisler and ask him to send the helicopter. It’ll be quicker in the end.”

“Well, if it’s no bother having me around?”

“Oh,
no
! Mummy’d love to see you. We never see a new face.”

“I dare say you all find it a bit isolated and lonely, don’t you, living out in the wilds?”

She answered rather dismally, “Oh, you get used to it. Or perhaps you don’t really. . . I mean, it’s got a lot worse lately. There’s no social life at all now since things got bad. When we get back to normal it’ll be all right, if we ever do.”

“Have you had much trouble around here?”

“No . . . not a lot just in this part. But there’s the go-slow in the mines, of course, and the whole atmosphere’s pretty nasty. What with that and the rains—” She broke off with a brittle laugh. “I shouldn’t say that, really. We’ve all been praying for the rains, and now I grumble because they’ve come! Matter of fact, we only just escaped the ants, so I hear—or I hope we have. Some of the houseboys say they are still around, though I don’t really believe it myself now the rains have started at last.”

Shaw asked, “Ants?”

“Yes, the driver ants—army ants, some people call them.”

“Now I come to think of it, I’ve read about them.”

“Have you? Hope you never see them, then! They’re brutes . . . they’re not very big, but they go through the country like locusts, only a thousand times worse. You can avoid them on rising ground—they give the higher places a miss, you see, and in fact you’re all right in any European-style building really. But they’ve got such beastly stings—agony if you get many bites, I believe, and they can be killers. They just strip everything. Not that I’ve seen them myself,” she added. “I think they only come when the rains are late like this time, and when there’s a lot of humidity... well, here we are.”

She shifted down, and they turned sharply off the road and headed up a private drive cut through high banks covered with thick, luxuriant green. At the end, in a clearing hemmed in by trees, was the Hartog bungalow. The drive turned in a broad sweep before the verandah, on to which a woman walked as they drove up.

Anne stopped the station-wagon with a jerk, said unnecessarily and almost as though she was talking merely to cover a sudden embarrassment, “Well—here we are. There’s Mummy.” She waved, called through the window, “Mummy, I’ve brought Commander Shaw along—we can’t make it by road. I thought we could phone through for the helicopter. All right?”

Mrs Hartog, a tall, graceful woman with fading fair hair, smiled and called back, “Yes, of course.” An African ‘boy’ came down the steps with a big, coloured umbrella, and the two got out of the vehicle and splashed across the short stretch to shelter. Shaw shook hands with Mrs Hartog.

He said, “It’s very good of you to put up with me. I hope I’m not a bother.”

“Good gracious, of course you aren’t!” She laughed, but rather forcedly; she had a nice face, Shaw thought, but there was more than a suspicion of strain behind it. She looked as though she was just about at the end of her resources, in fact. Shaw found that natural enough in the present circumstances of Nogolia, but all the same he fancied it went a little deeper than that. She went on, “It’s so nice to have some one new to talk to, you’ve simply no idea. Julian’ll be so pleased, too.”

As she mentioned her husband’s name a curious look came into her eyes and then she turned her head away. A little awkwardly Shaw asked, “How is your husband, Mrs Hartog?”

“You mean the accident?” It was almost as if she feared something else. “It wasn’t anything much.” As with Anne, there was the suggestion of a brush-off. “He’ll be down in a moment—he hasn’t been in long and I made him rest.”

She glanced across at Anne then and Shaw couldn’t interpret the odd look that passed between them. Then Mrs Hartog said quietly, “Anne, go in and call your father, will you? Tell him—Commander Shaw is here. . . but say I’m sure the Commander will excuse him if—if he doesn’t feel like coming down to breakfast.”

Quickly Shaw said, “Why, of course—but please don’t worry about breakfast for me—”

“You’ve not had any, have you?”

“No, but—”

“Then you’ll have some now. It’s late, but we always wait for my husband, so you mustn’t think you’re putting us out at all.”

There was a suspicion of a snort from the doorway through which Anne was just disappearing. A few seconds later Shaw heard the girl calling for her father from somewhere inside, and a hectoring voice answering her.

Shaw was halfway through a plate of fried eggs and bacon when Julian Hartog came into the dining-room.

The meal hadn’t been exactly festive so far, but it dropped into positive strain when the head of the house appeared, tall, lanky and moody and with a long, dark face. He had a somewhat bloodied bandage on his left arm, which was held in a sling. As Shaw got to his feet, Hartog said abruptly, “Good heavens, don’t trouble to get up for me. I gather you’re Shaw—that right? Geisler seemed anxious to see you.” Rather belatedly for good manners he added, “Glad to have you here, of course. Dare say my dear wife has already rung for the air transport.” There was a trace of a sneer in his manner as he looked at his wife.

Mrs Hartog said, ‘Yes, dear.”

Shaw gave a polite murmur, feeling extremely uncomfortable. Mrs Hartog was watching her husband anxiously. She murmured to Shaw, “Do sit down.” As Shaw sat, Hartog dropped into a chair heavily, winced, his long face glowering. No one offered him anything to eat, and in a moment Shaw realized why. An African houseboy appeared with a glass half full of whisky and a siphon. In utter silence he set the glass before his master and held the siphon poised over it.

Hartog nodded.

The man pressed the lever and the soda, a very little of it, fizzed into the glass. That was the only sound, except that Anne seemed to choke a little and then went very red. Hartog took no notice, but once again he nodded and the African serant withdrew as quietly as he had come in.

Hartog lifted his glass. “Breakfast,” he announced sardonically. His dark eyes glittered at the three of them round the table. “And your very good health.” He lifted the glass, drained it, and set it. down with a bang. His hand was shaking. He wiped his lips on a dinner-napkin. “That, I may say, is a damn sight better. I can now think, and feel, and see.” Bloodshot eyes in which there was an almost unbalanced look lit on his wife, and his rubbery mouth twisted. “For one thing, I can see you, Lena.”

“Yes, Julian.”

He said pettishly, “You look like a blasted dying duck in a thunderstorm. What’s the matter with you, for God’s sake?”

Shaw flushed, kept his eyes averted, felt rather than saw the misery and shame in Lena Hartog’s face. She muttered some excuse and got up and left the room. Things began to fall into place. Was the strain of things getting the man down—or what? There was that unbalanced look, the tinge of some kind of phobia, in the staring eyes, and Shaw felt that there was more than work and worry behind that look.

There must be some other explanation.

Shaw soon found out, and found out in a totally unexpected way.

After his ‘breakfast,’ which he completed with a piece of dry toast and in silence, Hartog gruffly excused himself, and Shaw was left alone with Anne. There was a constraint between them now, a natural embarrassment, and Shaw felt very sorry for the girl. After a while she looked straight at him and said, “I’m awfully sorry, Commander Shaw. I—I’d like you to know he hasn’t always been like that.” She hesitated, twisting a handkerchief round and round in her fingers. “I’m so worried about him. Mummy is too.”

Uncomfortably, Shaw waited. He guessed that Anne wanted badly to talk to him, and it would be a gross unkindness not to listen; but she didn’t say any more for a while. She got up and wandered over to the window, looking miserable and dejected, staring out into that relentless rain. Then, slowly, she turned and came back towards Shaw again, her slim young body held stiff and straight.

She said, “I don’t want to bore you. I know it’s awful cheek of me . . .. but you couldn’t help seeing and I wanted to explain.”

“You needn’t do that,” he told her gently. “I understood. I’ve knocked about a bit, you know. Everybody—and we ought to thank God for it—isn’t the same. You father’s got a better brain than most people. I don’t suppose you’ll believe this, but that often has a lot to do with this sort of thing.”