Neither of the hunters moved in close until Sir Gardnor arrived. He was holding his rifle in front of him, ready to fire again if necessary.
The sight seemed to reassure the two Kiburru. They surged forward, keeping carefully out of the dead animal’s vision, and stood there jabbering. They were admiring its weight, the firmness of its coat, the neat hole that the bullet had made, the size of its testicles. Undoubtedly a man-eater, they agreed; on the fingers of both hands they began to add up its victims.
Sir Gardnor stood over the dead leopard. It was safe now to lower his rifle, and he was relaxed. His expression was one almost of pity.
‘It is sad, don’t you think?’ he asked, ‘that one should have to kill anything so superbly beautiful? Whatever its habits, you’d agree, wouldn’t you, that it stands as one of God’s supreme achievements? Man is puny by comparison.’
He paused.
‘Mounted,’ he added, ‘it will look magnificent.’
He had been prodding the body with his foot while he was speaking. The carcase was limp and unresisting. Then, as he took his foot away, the leopard slid over towards him. One of the forelegs unfolded itself and flailed downwards. The pad was the size of a large breakfast cup and, under it, the toe-cap of Sir Gardnor’s boot lay imprisoned. When he pulled his foot away there were scratch marks right across the leather.
The significance of the incident did not escape the Kiburru hunters. They withdrew trembling. The one with the tooth bracelet began waving his arm frantically up and down again. And his friend panicked. Dropping his voice still lower, he betrayed Sir Gardnor and told the dead leopard everything.
Dawn was already breaking as they approached the camp. In the half light the sentry challenged them, only to come abruptly to attention and present arms as the figure of Sir Gardnor suddenly loomed up before him.
But only half his attention was on Sir Gardnor. Out of the corner of his eye he was observing the two Kiburru. They had not forgotten the carrying-pole. It was now resting on their shoulders, and, slung beneath it, was the dead leopard. They had made the best job that they could of their porterage, carefully leaving the head hanging downwards so that the beast could not see where it was being taken, and tucking the long tail in neatly round the loins to avoid treading on it.
Sir Gardnor told them to put the leopard down in front of his tent where he could see it, and announced loudly that he was hungry. Bacon-and-eggs washed down by champagne if the A.D.C. had remembered it was, he declared, the only food that could be eaten at four o’clock in the morning; and, tired and happy as he was, he became reminiscent of past soirées and dances long ago.
His mouth still full of fried bread, he addressed his A.D.C.
‘I take it there’s someone who knows how to skin it,’ he said. ‘Properly, I mean. I don’t want it carved up and butchered.’
He paused for a moment, and yawned out of sheer weariness, not bothering even to cover his mouth up with his hand.
‘You might just see if any messages have reached me,’ he told him. ‘And then I think I shall turn in. You can tell them to take the leopard away now. Better get Major Mills to put it in the shade somewhere, don’t you think? And tell him to place a guard over it. We don’t want to find it gone in the morning, do we?’
Chapter 24
Because of the broken nature of the night it was at luncheon rather than at breakfast when everybody said good morning to each other.
The table—a long one—had been set out under its own striped awning; and, as at the Residency, the meal was served punctually at 1.30. The party seemed complete when, a few minutes later, Lady Anne and Sybil Prosser came to join them. Everything, in fact, would have passed off smoothly, even happily, if it had not been for Sybil Prosser.
Not that the blame was entirely hers. She was in considerable discomfort, if not actual pain. She had been bitten on the fore-arm by an insect of some kind, and already the swelling had extended down as far as her wrist. In consequence, she was terse and irritable. Her long neck rising endlessly from the low collar of her cotton dress, she sat there, mute and scowling; and scratching.
Out of sheer goodness of heart, Sir Gardnor tried to draw her into the conversation and make her one of them. He smiled across at her.
‘And what,’ he asked, leaning across Lady Anne as he was speaking, ‘do you think of my leopard?’
‘I haven’t seen it,’ Sybil Prosser told him.
Sir Gardnor raised his eyebrows.
‘Not seen it?’ he said. ‘But how’s that?’
‘I don’t like dead animals,’ she replied.
The smile flickered temporarily and was then re-lit.
‘But we all like them, don’t we, when they’re on the floor in the form of rugs?’ he asked.
Sybil Prosser’s answer was prompt and disconcerting.
‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘They still remind me of dead animals.’
Sir Gardnor paused. Only the corners of his mouth were smiling now.
‘I can understand,’ he said, ‘people not liking mounted heads. It’s something to do with the eyes, wouldn’t you say? Too lifelike, I suppose.’
‘Heads are worse,’ Sybil Prosser agreed with him.
Sir Gardnor leant forward. His smile entirely absent, he addressed her directly.
‘Is it the killing that worries you?’ he asked.
‘Not particularly,’ she told him. ‘I just don’t like animals.’
It was the arrival of a Corporal from Signals which interrupted the conversation. Rather self-consciously because there were ladies present and he was aware that he was unpleasantly soaked through with sweat from the heat of the radio van, he sidled up, saturated, thrust his envelope towards the A.D.C., and then hurriedly withdrew. Sir Gardnor, Harold noticed, almost snatched the note when it was handed to him.
They sat back, in silence, watching Sir Gardnor while he read. It was a lengthy message running to nearly four pages, all laboriously typed out in capital letters as though it might have been a very young child that was required to read it. Sir Gardnor did not attempt to hurry. Conscious that he was being observed, he deliberately took his time, even turning back once or twice to compare the contents of the pages. Then with a little sigh, he folded up the sheets and tucked them neatly under the corner of his salad plate.
‘All the names are entirely mis-spelt, of course,’ he said. ‘Some of them are scarcely recognisable.’
Enjoying himself because he knew that he was keeping them in suspense, Sir Gardnor sat back and folded his arms.
‘All the same, it’s really quite remarkable, isn’t it?’ he asked. ‘I mean the way it’s got here. From Delhi to London, from London to Amimbo, and now to that little wireless aerial over there. It’s been at least halfway round the world already.’
Because it was obvious that Sir Gardnor was building up to the moment of his disclosure, no one cared to interrupt him. Sybil Prosser was the first to speak. She stopped scratching her wrist, which by now had come up red and puffy, and began fingering the collar of her dress.
‘Was it worth cabling about?’ she asked, and then went on scratching again.
The A.D.C. kept his eyes down to his plate. But Sir Gardnor did not appear to have been offended. He gave the impression rather of being amused to think that, of all impossible women this should have been the one whom his wife had selected to bring out all the way to Africa.
‘Shall we say that someone else thought it was?’ he replied. ‘The Delhi papers are full of it. This summary shows that they are talking of nothing else.’
While Sir Gardnor was speaking, Lady Anne had placed the palms of her hands on the table. She was pressing down on it, as if to steady herself.
Sir Gardnor detected it immediately: the sight seemed somehow to amuse him.
‘Of course,’ he added, with a little shrug almost of apology, ‘the reports are based purely on speculation. As yet, there’s been no actual announcement, has there? It’s simply that the rumours
are all one way.’
‘Which way?’
Again, it was Sybil Prosser who had spoken. She had, for the time being, given up tugging at her collar and was now pushing down her watch-strap which had become tight and sticky in the heat. What annoyed Sir Gardnor was that she had not even looked up as she had put the question.
He bent forward, and tried to catch her eye. But it was useless. The clasp had stuck. Head down, Sybil Prosser was still fiddling with it.
‘Not Lord Eldred’s, I’m afraid,’ he told her. ‘He is, in fact, simply not mentioned.’
He had risen while he was speaking and was now stuffing the typed pages into his side-pocket. It gave him an advantage standing at his full height while the others were still seated, and he availed himself of it.
‘It will be amusing, will it not,’ he remarked, ‘to see if they’re right? I set no store on bazaar-gossip myself. Most Indian journalists succeed in getting even quite straightforward things confused. They are notorious for it.’
He waited for a moment for someone to put matters in a better light; and then, disappointed, he excused himself. He had work to do, he told them. The A.D.C. thrust back his lock of hair, and followed.
Lady Anne sat watching them as they went towards the marquee together. As soon as Sir Gardnor had turned in under the canopy, she beckoned Harold over to her.
‘Just sit here and behave as though we’re talking about nothing in particular,’ she told him. ‘Gardie’s probably watching us. He only read out that telegram to see how I’d take it. He knew it would upset me.’
‘Why should it? It didn’t say anything.’
‘But it’s getting near. It must be. If he does hear something—something definite, I mean—you’ll tell me at once, won’t you?’
Harold began spooning up the sugar from the bottom of his coffee cup.
‘He isn’t always exactly forthcoming, you know.’
‘That’s why you should have asked Signals.’
‘He wouldn’t have told me.’ He paused. ‘Why not try Tony?’
Lady Anne frowned, and shook her head.
‘You can’t trust him. He’s on the other side.’
Harold put the spoon back in the saucer.
‘Why’s it so desperately important…?’ he began.
But he got no further. It was Sybil Prosser who interrupted him.
‘Damn,’ she said. ‘And I haven’t brought another one.’
She threw her watch-strap down on the table in front of them: in dragging at the clasp she had broken it.
Then she turned to Lady Anne.
‘And it’s your siesta time,’ she told her. ‘You know what you’re like if you miss it. Harold’s all right: he was asleep all the morning. I’m half dead. My arm’s hurting.’
Chapter 25
Sir Gardnor did not attempt to conceal his impatience. He was anxious to begin forthwith the long homeward journey to Amimbo.
Indeed, with the leopard nicely skinned, and with the pelt packed like a Swiss Roll round layers of salt that Old Moses had provided, there seemed nothing further to detain them. Nothing, that is, apart from Sybil Prosser.
But, in her state, the return trip was unthinkable. The insect that had bitten her must have been packed full of venom. There was now a swelling under her left armpit, and her temperature had gone soaring.
Captain Webber spoke confidently of a new drug that he had brought with him, but said that he could promise nothing for at least seventy-two hours. A full three days, with the formidable pink tablets being taken at intervals right round the clock, was what the directions said; and, with a human life at stake, Captain Webber felt in no mood to defy the manufacturers.
The effect on Lady Anne surprised everyone. Her anxieties seemed to vanish. She put Sir Gardnor, Harold, even the radio messages, out of her mind entirely. The rest of the camp saw nothing of her. She had her bed moved in alongside Sybil Prosser’s and, day and night, she was on sick nurse duty.
On the second day, Captain Webber admitted that he was beginning to get anxious about Lady Anne, too. She flatly refused, he said, to take so much as a cat-nap in case Sybil Prosser needed anything; and, even though the meal trays were regularly carried across, he found Lady Anne’s left untouched whenever he went over.
As for Sir Gardnor, he could not hide his restlessness. He cross-examined Captain Webber before and after every visit, and kept the A.D.C. going back and forth between the marquee and the radio van to see if anything fresh had been received from Amimbo.
Finally, in the absence of all news, either medical or political, he brooded. For as much as an hour at a stretch he would sit in front of the trestle table with the silver inkwell and the long paper-knife on it, staring down at the empty blotter before him.
Once, from the canvas chair outside his own tent, Harold saw Sir Gardnor take his pen, dip it, hold it for a moment over a sheet of Government House notepaper with the Royal Arms on it, and then wearily put the pen down again—as though he had only just realised the sheer futility of being both his own scribe and postman.
When Harold looked again, he saw that Sir Gardnor had picked up the paper-knife, and was playing with it. This time it was as a miniature billiard cue that he was using it.
Harold was already turning in for the night when the A.D.C. came over to his tent.
‘Not asleep yet, are you?’ he asked. ‘Not disturbing you, I mean?’
He was at his most charming as he stood there in the doorway, one hand in his pocket and the other up by his forehead.
‘It’s H.E.,’ he explained. ‘He’s gone all spiky. Wants to go out after leopard again.’
‘Isn’t one enough?’ Harold asked, remembering that final plaintive bleat that had, so suddenly, been cut so short.
The A.D.C. became defensive.
‘You can’t really expect H.E. just to sit around doing nothing,’ he said. ‘He isn’t made that way. Besides, there’s a good chance of a double. Those two Kiburru have been round again. They say that the leopardess is on the prowl this time. Looking for her mate, I suppose.’
Harold paused.
‘Does this mean another night up that tree?’ he asked. The A.D.C. shook his head, and the lock of hair flopped forward again.
‘This is the real stuff,’ he said. ‘On foot. We go after her. We don’t wait for her to come to us. It’s got the Major all worried.’
Harold reached out for his jacket, and began buttoning it up again. Anything would be better than simply lying there with a service pillow under his head, staring up at the canvas of the ceiling, and wondering when Lady Anne was going to show herself again.
‘When do we start?’ he asked.
Lifting his cuff, the A.D.C. looked down for a moment at his watch. It was still his drawing-room watch that he was wearing, Harold noticed. It looked thin and expensive and out-of-place worn with rather dirty khaki.
‘Oh, you’ve still got about six hours,’ he told him. ‘Or say a good five-and-a-half. H.E. wants to be on the move by first light. And remember about the shoes, this time. It’s bound to be rough going. She lives some distance from here. They’re charging us extra for the journey.’
It was still dark, with the moon by now hidden somewhere behind the Marabwe range, when Harold went across to Sir Gardnor’s tent. Sir Gardnor was fully-dressed and waiting. He gave the impression of someone who had already been waiting for a long time; of someone, even, who had been sitting up all night.
He pointed across at the coffee pot as Harold entered.
‘Pour yourself out a cup,’ he said. ‘There’ll be some sausages very shortly. Better make a good breakfast. We don’t know when we shall be sitting down to food again, do we?’
As he drank, Harold was aware that Sir Gardnor was watching him. It was a quizzical, half-amused sort of expression that he was wearing.
‘I rather gathered,’ Sir Gardnor told him, ‘that you didn’t quite approve of the way I got my last leopard. You probably felt that it was un
sporting. And so it was. But I couldn’t afford to come back empty-handed, could I? Leopard outwits Governor—that would never have done, now would it?’
He sat back, and patted the toe-cap where the claws had scratched it.
‘This time,’ he said, ‘you’ll find that the chances are about equal. It could be the leopardess. Or, again, it could be one of us.’
Harold had finished his coffee; and, across the night air, the delicious smell of frying sausages had just reached him.
‘I’ll take my chance, sir,’ he said.
Sir Gardnor was still smiling.
‘I thought that would be what you’d say,’ he replied. ‘But it was clearly my duty to warn you.’ His smile widened. ‘After that first time it’s not surprising that we’re all a bit anxious.’
The A.D.C. when he arrived looked sleepy and rather jaded. Harold wondered whether he had been visiting his friend, the bronze kitchen-boy again. But he was as polite and attentive as ever, concerned only with Sir Gardnor’s well-being.
‘Do you want the telescopic sight clipped on, sir?’ he asked. ‘It’s in its little case at the moment.’
Sir Gardnor brightened.
‘Ah, the telescopic sight,’ he said. ‘I may have an opportunity of using it. The gunsmiths tell me it’s in perfect working-order. I shall be able to find out for myself, shan’t I?’ He drew his breath in sharply. ‘That is, if we see anything.’
He looked across at the travelling clock on his work table.
‘The sausages are a little late, are they not?’ he remarked. ‘We have exactly nine minutes in which to finish our breakfast, and get going.’
The Kiburru had been right to bargain for extra payment. Apart altogether from the element of danger-money, the trek that they were leading was long, difficult and, in the last part, stony.
Less than a mile from the camp, they left the green shade of the forest, and came face to face with the sun on the open grasslands. It was a low sun, only just risen; not yet at full heat, but still blinding. They shaded their eyes with their hands as they walked. Then the grasses grew shorter and more meagre. Soon the little tufts and patches died out altogether, and it was loose red sand that they were crossing. In places, under the fury of the sun by day, the sand had formed itself into flat sheets like mica. With the morning glare coming back off them, they looked like pools of water, but they cracked like ice as soon as a foot in shoe-leather touched them. The bare feet of the Kiburru, Harold noticed, passed over as though skating.
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