Blue Fire

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  Susan pushed the ash tray toward John. “Are these what I think they are?”

  He picked up a green stone and rolled it about on his palm, then dropped it back in the tray.

  “Better put them out of sight before anyone sees them.”

  “Then I’m right?” She wrapped the stones in the tissue. “They’re industrial diamonds, aren’t they?”

  “Bort,” he said softly. “Diamond residue that won’t make gem stones but is used for industrials and diamond dust. How on earth did you get the stuff?”

  She told him about the cigars which had come to Protea Hill for her father, of her own carelessness in dropping the box, and of the way she had nervously picked up the broken cigar and put it into her pocket.

  He heard her through, his expression grave. “Where do you think this leads to?” he asked, more as if he were curious about her conclusions than that he had any doubt about his own.

  “Isn’t it possible,” she said, “that whoever snatched my purse yesterday was trying to retrieve the cigar with the stones hidden in it? If that’s true, then someone in my father’s house …” She paused, not willing to mention names.

  John Cornish nodded a bit grimly. “It’s not only possible. It is, I’m afraid, quite likely.”

  A waitress brought the steaming hot tureen of fondue and a green salad served at the table from a big wooden bowl. The students at the next table were lively and their voices filled the little room.

  Susan speared a cube of bread on a fork and dipped it into the fragrant mixture of cheese, eggs and wine. Her attention, however, was scarcely on the food she was eating.

  “I still don’t understand. Why would anyone smuggle this—this residue from diamonds? If it is smuggling. How could it be worth-while?”

  “Illicit Diamond Buying—I.D.B., as they call it here—doesn’t restrict itself to gem stones,” John said. “The market for industrial diamonds is enormous. The demand is always greater than the supply allowed upon the market. In the past decade or so hundreds of new uses have been found for industrials and the United States, as well as Russia, has been stockpiling them. They’re harder than gem stones and suited for the pressures of high-precision tools. Their value in the making of armaments is especially important. The West hasn’t been willing to sell industrials to Russia, so she gets them on the black market and pays a good price.”

  “Then these are valuable?”

  “Not when compared to gem stones. It takes a lot of carats of this stuff to add up to real money. But there are grades of value even here. What they call bort is really poor-grade stones. But up from that there are degrees of hardness, of quality, that raise the value. If I remember my figures—and I’ve done some research on this—industrials account for eighty per cent of the diamond business in bulk and perhaps twenty-five per cent in profit. Not to be sneezed at. Especially if a gem stone is smuggled into the lot occasionally, as is likely to be the case.”

  He was silent, dipping thoughtfully into the fondue. Frightening possibilities rose in Susan’s mind. No wonder someone who knew she had picked up the cigar might be desperate to regain possession of it. Desperate enough, indeed, to make an attack upon her in order to search her purse. Who? Which one in Niklaas van Pelt’s house?

  She spoke the thought aloud. “John, who could it be?”

  “I don’t know,” John said evenly. “There’s not much use in speculating, is there? We can go in circles that way. Besides, there’s something else that troubles me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The cigars. Why would anyone try to smuggle diamonds by hiding them in a box of cigars?”

  “Why not?” she asked. “I should think that would be a very good way to conceal them.”

  He quirked an eyebrow at her. “Exactly. And one of the oldest tricks there is. Cigars are always suspect when sent or carried across boundaries where inspection takes place. How did this package come to the house?”

  “I think it was by special messenger,” Susan said. “It must have been sent inside the country.”

  “Then a fairly obvious means of concealment wouldn’t matter. Though I wonder why it should be used in the first place.”

  “They would have to go out of the country sometime,” Susan said. “Perhaps they were intended to go from Protea Hill by means of another step.”

  “But why cigars? Why the most obvious means possible? There’s something here I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t understand any of it,” Susan said. And added forlornly, “Perhaps I’m afraid to understand.”

  The charm of the little restaurant and the excellent food were wasted that evening, and briefly Susan regretted the fact. Perhaps John Cornish would bring her back another time, on a happier occasion. Though that was unlikely. She would not be out with John again. As it was, this was one more thing she could never tell Dirk.

  When they had finished the meal with fruit and coffee, Susan sat on at the table, reluctant to leave, feeling that the puzzle had deepened instead of being dispelled.

  John sensed her concern. “We’ve a bit more talking to do, and since we have the car, why not go for a drive and discuss these matters further?”

  She was relieved not to go home in her present unsettled state of mind. When they were in the car he turned toward the Kloof Nek Road and followed its winding length up the hill. She wondered if he was going out along Table Mountain, but when he reached the place where the roads branched he made a sharp turn right onto the road that ran the length of the Lion.

  A cool wind blew past the car and Susan turned up her coat collar, though she liked the feel of its freshness on her face through the open window. The road climbed in a straight line toward Signal Hill, and Cape Town lay below them, a bright carpet of light. When they had made a final circle around the hill and come out on top, the entire coast was visible, with the lights of sea towns beading the edge of the dark Atlantic.

  They sat in the car for a few moments, held by the tremendous view. Then, pausing now and then, stumbling a little, Susan began to tell him of the way she had remembered having once held the Kimberley Royal in her hands as a child. And of her mother’s taking it from her and hiding it in a silver-topped powder bowl. It no longer mattered that she had once regarded John Cornish with distrust or that his purpose had been to expose her mother to an accusation she could not defend.

  “She had the diamond in her possession,” Susan concluded. “Yet I still find it hard to believe that she actually meant to steal it. She was more like a little girl that day, playing a trick to amuse herself and fool someone. When she thought she had lost the stone she was frightened, but as soon as she had it again she seemed to be enjoying herself.”

  “What if I use what you’ve told me in my book?” John asked, studying her curiously in the dashboard light.

  She returned his look, meeting his eyes without hesitation, liking what she saw. At the moment he reminded her of that badly lighted picture she had seen of him on a book jacket. His eyes were steady and deep-set, his mouth surprisingly sensitive in so strong a face. He no longer seemed a cold person to her, though he hid his feelings behind a reserve that broke down only when he was angry.

  “If it’s necessary to you, then you’ll have to use it,” she said. “Whatever you use will be the truth. I know that now.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you, Susan,” he said, “but sometimes the truth can be a shattering thing.”

  “I know,” she agreed.

  He looked away from her. “I’m sure now that there’s something hidden going on in your father’s house. My room’s over the terrace and once or twice visitors have come at odd hours. I don’t quite like it, but I don’t know what to think.”

  Susan took the little wad of green and yellow stones from her purse. “To do with this, do you suppose?”

  “What else am I to believe, now that I’ve seen these?” He took the tissue from her and opened it so that the dull stones were spread out upon the paper. “
Some of these may be of good quality as industrials. And here’s one that might even be a small gem stone. Some diamonds have a sort of greenish skin over them, you know, and there’s no telling their worth till the skin is removed and the expert can look into the heart of the stone.”

  “Where do you think they come from?” Susan asked.

  He shrugged. “There are many places. It’s not too hard to smuggle diamonds in small quantity out of Sierra Leone these days. Or they might come from South-West Africa, or the Congo.”

  “But then they would have to be smuggled into South Africa, as well as out. Why would anyone go to that trouble?”

  “Smuggling them in isn’t nearly as big a problem as getting them out. Of course the more direct way would be through Beirut. In these days of planes Cape Town is a back door, yet it’s still a good port for diamond smuggling. Ships stop here from every country. And there are deep-water coves along the coastline that can’t be watched all the time. Of course it’s even possible that this stuff is coming out of the Kimberley area or from around Pretoria.”

  “But aren’t the big mines guarded?”

  “No absolute way has ever been found to guard them. Trained dogs are used and high electric fences. Africans are let off the premises only at intervals and they are carefully searched. X ray has done away with some of the former indignities. But there are always white men who have to be trusted and who come and go without much interference. You can’t X ray a man every time he leaves the mine—you’d kill him. So there are still leaks. This may be one of them.” He folded the tissue carefully around the small stones. “Will you let me keep these for the time being?”

  “I want you to keep them,” she said. “I don’t want them in my possession, now that I know what they are. Will you—” she hesitated—“will you go to the police about this?”

  “I’d rather wait awhile,” he said. “Once before I acted too hastily. I want to be sure this time. Have you told Dirk about these stones?”

  “No!” she cried, and was astonished at the strength of her own denial.

  John gave her a quick, sidelong glance as if her tone surprised him too. But he said nothing, and she was relieved when he switched on the engine and turned the car back along the road by which they had come. There were questions she had not asked, suspicions she had not put into words, a fear that she had not expressed. Now she did not want to. Any direction her thoughts might take seemed frightening and she could not choose their course safely.

  John drove her downtown where the Cape Town streets were growing quiet, unlike Johannesburg after dark. At her request he put her into a taxi and she went home alone.

  In the bedroom upstairs at the Aerie a lamp burned against her return and her night things were laid out upon the bed, her slippers on the floor. She had forgotten that of course Willi would be doing these things for her. So her little traps were foolish and no test at all. In the wardrobe her clothes had been slid a little way along the rod, her shoes moved on the floor when the slippers were taken out. The drawer that had been left a fraction of an inch open was neatly closed. And it all proved nothing.

  Except—there was still one thing. There would be no reason why her small jewel box should be touched in any way, yet when she looked closely she saw that the little impala no longer sat upon the gold tooling where she had left it.

  The discovery galvanized her into action. She ran downstairs and out the back door. The yard was hushed and still, with the nearness of the mountain somehow adding to the quiet. Light shone along the sill of Willi’s door and Susan tapped upon the panel.

  19

  Willi came at once to open the door, a book in her hands. She stepped aside to admit her visitor and Susan saw other books on a table and scattered on the bed. They were schoolbooks, so Willi was apparently studying by herself.

  Susan went directly to the point. “Willi, did anyone come to the house while I was out this evening?”

  For an instant the girl’s eyes wavered. “I’ve been out here reading, Mrs. Hohenfield,” she said.

  “Did you go upstairs and search the bedroom?” Susan asked.

  “Oh, no!” Willi cried, and her distress was evident. “I put your things out for the night, Mrs. Hohenfield, and then I came straight out here to study.”

  “And after that? Who came to the house tonight, Willi?”

  The girl clasped her hands tightly about the book she held and then released her grip with a helpless gesture and dropped it on a table. “Miss Bellman came,” she said. “I let her in and waited downstairs while she went up to your room.”

  “Was she there very long?”

  Willi sighed. “I didn’t look at a clock. It seemed a long while. Perhaps half an hour.”

  Enough time for a rather careful search of a single room.

  “What excuse did she give you?” Susan asked.

  “She didn’t give any.” Willi threw further caution aside and spoke frankly. “When I came here, she warned me that it might be necessary to protect Mr. van Pelt in certain ways. She told me that because you were the daughter of the wife who left him, we could not wholly trust you, even if Mr. Hohenfield chose to shut his eyes to the danger. She said there might be times when we must watch what you did.”

  A nice little plot on Mara’s part. With more reasons behind it than Willi knew. Mara, hating Dirk’s wife, would be anxious to know all she could about her.

  “Yet you’re telling me all this now,” Susan said.

  Willi spoke without hesitation. “Because I don’t believe you would ever try to harm your father, Mrs. Hohenfield. Because—” suddenly she discarded the maid’s guise she wore in this house and became what she was, a young woman of courage and intelligence—“because I like you. And because I trust you more than I do Miss Bellman.”

  Impulsively Susan held out her hand. “I want to trust you, Willi. Thank you for telling me.”

  Willi took her hand in a firm clasp, but her dark eyes were troubled and Susan sensed torn loyalties in the girl. Not so much to Mara Bellman, but to Thomas, perhaps, and to Niklaas van Pelt.

  “You can count on one thing,” Susan assured her. “I would never willingly injure my father. We all know he has suffered enough.”

  “Thomas’s parents worked on the farm the van Pelts used to have in the veld,” Willi said. “So Thomas has known him all his life. He knew him at the time of his trouble, though he wasn’t working for him then. Thomas would do anything for your father, Mrs. Hohenfield. I think there’s no other white man he wholly trusts.”

  Her emphasis on the word “anything” was almost a warning, though Susan did not know what she was being warned against. She turned toward the door, then paused.

  “I understand Thomas is to receive a teaching post,” she said. “Will this make matters easier for you?”

  “I’m not sure,” Willi said. “I just don’t know.”

  Susan then said good night and returned to the house. Twice now Willi had failed her, yet Susan’s instinctive trust of the girl and liking for her remained. If Willi would only realize it, she and Susan were on the same side in their desire to protect Niklaas van Pelt from further harm. Might this be, in the long run, a difficult thing to do? An impossible thing—since John Cornish now held that little cache of stones?

  Lately something of her old feeling for her father had risen in her again, and added to it were new respect and admiration for his courage in these trouble-inflicted years. She found it difficult to believe any wrong of him and she did not want to see him needlessly injured. There had been diamonds in the cigars sent to him, but that did not necessarily make him an accessory.

  The emptiness, the quiet of the house was oppressive tonight. She could not endure the living room with that whip making an ugly black slash across the wall. The bedroom at least was brighter, but the loneliness here seemed even greater. It was almost a palpable thing that hung upon the air, something she drew in with every breath. She was shut away from everyone tonight—not only i
n her physical presence in this house but in her mind and spirit as well, through her own dread of looming calamity. Yet in her longing to stave off disaster she could turn to no one. Not to her father or Dirk, not even now to John Cornish, whom she trusted yet who might himself spell danger. Nor to Willi, who was coming to be her friend, but who had a prior loyalty.

  She lay restless upon her bed, trying to think, trying to find an answer. Someone in her father’s house was engaged in smuggling industrial diamonds. This much at least was clear. Mara Bellman had handled the cigars and knew that Susan must have picked up the missing cigar with its hidden stones. Mara had come to this house tonight and searched through Susan’s things in this very bedroom. She had counted on Willi not to betray her.

  But Mara might be no more than an instrument, just as Willi had been an instrument and perhaps Thomas as well. Whose was the brain and will behind all this? There were only two people from whom to choose. Her father and her husband. Perhaps both together?

  She remembered the words John Cornish had spoken that time in the Public Gardens when he had made her so angry. Wasn’t it better, he had said, to hurt the dead than the living? Her mother had held the Kimberley Royal in her hands. She had hidden it—whether playfully or cunningly, her daughter had no idea. The truth might reveal that Niklaas had been bitterly betrayed by a woman who had sought only to save herself. Painful though the choice between them might be, Susan no longer wanted to protect Claire’s reputation blindly. Her father mattered more.

  Yet now something else had come into the picture. There was a present-day connection with diamonds with which her mother had nothing to do. Had the gossip at the tea party been true? Could it be possible that her father, having the name, had decided that he would have the game as well? What was the meaning of those nighttime visits to the house John Cornish had mentioned? Who was coming to see him and why?