"Kitchen through there," he said. "Shower-room next to it. There's a precipitation tank on the roof so we don't lack for a generous supply of decent water, it rains so damn much."
"All the comforts of home," I said.
"I would think that something of an overstatement." He jerked his thumb at a door to the left "That's my room. You can share with Mannie over here."
He opened the door, stood to one side and motioned me through. It was surprisingly large and airy, bamboo shutters open to the veranda. There were three single beds, another of those Indian rugs on the floor and there were actually some books on a shelf beside the only bed which was made up.
I picked one up and Hannah laughed shortly. "As you can see, Mannie likes a good read. Turned Manaus upside down for that little lot"
The book was Kant'sCritique of Pure Reason. Isaid, "This must have been like putting his pan in the river for water and coming up with a diamond."
"Don't tell me you go for that kind of stuff, too?" he looked genuinely put out. "God help me, now I do need a drink."
He went back into the living-room. I chose one of the unoccupied beds, made it up with blankets from a cupboard in the corner, then unpacked my grip. When I returned to the other room he was standing on the veranda, a glass in one hand, a bottle of Gordon's gin in the other.
The rain curtain was almost impenetrable, the first few wooden huts on their stilts at the edge of town, the only other sign of life.
"Sometimes when it gets like this, I could go crazy," he said. "It's as if this is all there is. As if I'm never going to get out."
He tried to re-fill his glass, discovered the bottle was empty and threw it out into the rain with a curse. "I need a drink. Come on - if you're not too tired I'll take you up town and show you the sights. An unforgettable experience."
I put on my oilskin coat again and an old straw sombrero I found hanging behind the bedroom door. When I returned to the veranda he asked me if I was still carrying my revolver. As it happened, it was in one of my flying-jacket pockets.
He nodded in satisfaction. "You'll find everybody goes armed here. It's that kind of place."
We plunged out into the rain and moved towards the town. I think it was one of the most depressing sights I have ever seen in my life. A scabrous rash of decaying wooden huts on stilts, streets which had quickly turned into thick, glutinous mud. Filthy, ragged little children, many of them with open sores on their faces, played listlessly under the huts and on the verandas above, people stared into the rain, gaunt, hope-less, most of them trapped in that living hell for what remained of their wretched lives, no hope on earth of getting out.
The church was more substantial and included a brick and adobe tower. I commented on that and Hannah laughed shortly. "They don't even have a regular priest Old guy called Father Conte who works with the nuns up at Santa Helena drops in every so often to say a Mass or two, baptise the babies and so on. He'll be coming back with us tomorrow, by the way."
"You want me to go with you?"
"I don't see why not." He shrugged. "Its only a hundred-mile trip. Give you a chance to fly the Hayley. We'll have a passenger. Colonel Alberto from Forte Franco. He'll arrive about ten in the morning by boat"
"What's he do? Some kind of regular inspection?"
"You could say that." Hannah smiled cynically. "The nuns up there are American. Little Sisters of Pity and very holy ladies indeed. The kind who have a mission. Know what I mean? The government's been trying to get them to move for a year or so now because of the way the Huna have been acting up, only they won't go. Alberto keeps trying, though, I'll say that for him."
In the centre of the town, we came to the only two-storeyed building in the place. The board above the wide veranda saidHotel and two or three locals sat at a table with-out talking, staring lifelessly into space, rain blowing in on them.
"The guy who runs this place is important enough to be polite to," Hannah observed. "Eugenic Figueiredo. He's the government agent here so you'll be seeing a lot of him. All mail and freight has to be channelled through him for the entire upper Mortes region."
"Are they still keen on the diamond laws as they used to be?" I asked.
"And then some. Diamond prospectors aren't allowed to work on their own up here. They have to belong to an organised group called agarimpa and the bossman holds a licence for all of them. Just to make sure the government gets its cut, every-thing they find has to be handed over to the local agent who issues a receipt and sends the loot down-river in a sealed bag. The pay-off comes later."
"A hell of a temptation to hang on to a few."
"And that draws you a minimum of five years in the penal colony at Machados which could fairly be described as an open grave in a swamp about three hundred miles up the Negro."
He opened the door of the hotel and led the way in. I didn't care for the place from the start. A long, dark room with a bar down one side and a considerable number of tables and chairs. It was the smell that put me off more than anything else, com-pounded of stale liquor, human sweat and urine in about equal proportions and there were too many flies about for my liking.
There were only two customers. One with his back against the wall by the door, glass in hand, the same vacant look on his face as I had noticed with the men on the veranda. His com-panion was sprawled across the table, his straw hat on the floor, a jug overturned, its contents dribbling through the bam-boo into a sizeable pool.
"Cachaca" Hannah said. "They say it rots the brain, as well as the liver, but it's all these poor bastards can afford." He raised his voice, "Heh, Figueiredo, what about some service."
He unbuttoned his coat and dropped into a basket chair by one of the open shutters. A moment later, I heard a step and a man moved through the bead curtain at the back of the bar.
Eugemo Figueiredo wasn't by any means a large man, but he was fat enough for life to be far from comfortable for him in a climate such as that one. The first time I saw him, he was shining with sweat in spite of the palm fan in his right hand which he used vigorously. His shirt clung to his body, the moisture soaking through and the stink of him was the strongest I have known in a human being.
He was somewhere in his middle years, a minor public official in spite of his responsibilities, too old for change and without the slightest hope of preferment. As much a victim of fate as anyone else in Landro. His amiability was surprising in the circumstances.
"Ah, Captain Hannah."
An Indian woman came through the curtain behind him. He said something to her then advanced to join us.
Hannah made the introduction casually as he lit a cigarette. Figueiredo extended a moist hand. "At your orders, senhor."
"At yours," I murmured.
The smell was really overpowering although Hannah didn't appear in any way put out I sat on the sill by the open shutter which helped and Figueiredo sank into a basket chair at the table.
"You are an old Brazilian hand, I think, Senhor Mallory," he observed. "Your Portuguese is too excellent for it to be otherwise."
"Lately I've been in Pern," I said. "But before that, I did a year on the Xingu."
"If you could survive that, you could survive anything."
He crossed himself piously. The Indian woman arrived with a tray which she set down on the table. There was Bourbon, a bottle of some kind of spa water and three glasses.
"You will join me senhors?"
Hannah half-filled a sizeable tumbler and didn't bother with water. I took very little, in fact only drank at all as a matter of courtesy which, I think, Figueiredo was well aware of.
Hannah swallow it down and helped himself to more, star-ing morosely into the rain. "Look at it," he said. "What a bloody place."
It was one of those statements that didn't require any com-ment. The facts spoke for themselves. A group of men turned out from between two houses and trailed towards the hotel, heads down, in a kind of uniform of rubberponcho and straw sombrero. "Who have we got here?" Hannah demanded.
Figueiredo leaned forward, the fan in his hand ceasing for a moment. It commenced to flutter again. "Garimpeiros," he said. "Avila's bunch. Came in last night Lost two men in a brush with the Hum."
Hannah poured another enormous whisky. "From what I hear of that bastard, he probably shot them himself."
There were five of them, as unsavoury-looking a bunch as I had ever seen. Little to choose between any of them really. The same gaunt, fleshless faces, the same touch of fever in all the eyes.
Avila was the odd man out. A big man. Almost as large as Hannah, with a small, cruel mouth that was effeminate in its way although that was perhaps suggested more by the pencil-thin moustache which must have taken him considerable pains to cultivate.
He nodded to Figueiredo and Hannah, the eyes pausing fractionally on me, then continued to a table at the far end of the bar, his men trailing after him. When they took off their ponchos it became immediately obvious that they were all armed to the teeth and most of them carried amachete in a leather sheath as well as a bolstered revolver.
The Indian woman went to serve them. One of them put a hand up her skirt. She didn't try to resist, simply stood there like some dumb animal while another reached up to fondle her breasts.
"Nice people," Hannah said, although Figueiredo seemed completely unperturbed which was surprising in view of the fact that the woman, as I learned later, washis wife.
She was finally allowed to go for the drinks when Avila intervened. He lit a cigarette, produced a pack of cards and looked across at us. 'You would care to join us, gentlemen?' He spoke in quiet reasonable English. "A few hands of poker perhaps?"
They all turned to look at us and there was a short pause. It was as if everyone waited for something to happen and there was a kind of menace in the air.
Hannah emptied his glass and stood up. "Wny not? Any-thing's better than nothing in this hole."
I said, "Not for me. I've got things to do. Another time, perhaps."
Hannah shrugged. "Suit yourself."
He picked up the bottle of Bourbon and started towards the other end of the bar. Figueiredo tried to stand up, swaying so alarmingly that I moved forward quickly and took his arm.
He said softly, lips hardly moving. "Give him an hour then come back for him on some pretence or other. He is not liked here. There could be trouble."
The smile hooked firmly into place, he turned and went towards the others and I moved to the door. As I opened it, Avila called, "Our company is not good enough for you, senhor?"
But I would not be drawn - not then at least, for I think that out of some strange foreknowledge, I knew that enough would come later.
When I ran out of the rain into the shelter of that primitive hangar, I found Mannie Sterne standing on a wooden plat-form which he had positioned at the front of the Bristol. The engine cowling had been removed and the engine was com-letely exposed in the light of a couple of pressure lamps he had hung overhead.
He glanced over his shoulder and smiled. "Back so soon?"
"Hannah took me to the local pub," I said. "I didn't like the atmosphere."
He turned and crouched down, a frown on his face. "What happened?"
I gave him the whole story including Figueiredo's parting words. When I was finished, he sat there for a while, staring out into the rain. There was a sort of sadness on his face. No, more than that - worry. And there was a scar running from hisright eye to the corner of his mouth. I'd failed to notice that earlier.
"Poor Sam." He sighed. "So, we do what Figueiredo says. We go and get him in a little while." With an abrupt change in direction, he stood up and tapped the Bristol. "A superb engine, Rolls-Royce. Only the best. The Bristol was one of the greatest all-purpose planes on the Western Front."
"You were there?"
"Oh, not what you are thinking. I wasn't a Richthofen or a Udet in a skin-tight grey uniform with the blue Max at my throat, but I did visit the front-line Jagdstaffels fairly often. When I first started as an engineer, I worked for Fokker."
"And Hannah was on the other side of the line?"
"I suppose so."
He had returned to the engine, examining it carefully with a hand-lamp. "Thisis really in excellent condition."
I said, "What's wrong with him? Do you know?"
"Sam?" He shrugged. "It's simple enough. He was too good too soon. Ace-of-aces at twenty-three. All the medals in the world - all the adulation." He leaned down for another spanner. "But for such a man, what happens when it is all over?"
I considered the point for a while. "I suppose in a way, the rest of his life would tend to be something of an anti-climax."
