When Sarie went in to collect her things and settle her bill, Sandy persuaded her to let him go with her in order to carry back her bag. and they were just having a cocktail together before their departure when the Bennetts plodded wearily up the steps.
The first person they set eyes on was Sandy. He was just inside the front room, leaning against a small bar, his wayward lock of dark hair tumbled forward across his forehead. Sarie, seated nearby on a stool, looked, in her khaki breeches, the image of a film star all ready to walk on the set in a jungle picture.
‘Well, well!’ George exclaimed. ‘You’re a sly one and no mistake, trying to kid us that night at Simpson’s that you never meant to have a cut at you-know-what, and then turning up here after all.’
Sandy realised that he was caught but put the best face on the matter that was possible. ‘I’m not here for what you think,’ he said amiably. ‘It’s a copper proposition which has brought me north, but I’m glad to see you all the same. May I introduce my wife?—Darling, these are my cousins, George and Ernest Bennett and Michael Kane-Swift.’
Sarie’s blush would have done credit to a peony. There was nothing to be done but accept the situation; so in her new role as Mrs. McDiamid she greeted Sandy’s row of cousins.
Sandy, chortling inwardly at the sight of Sarie’s flushed face and the furious glance she shot at him, was in high good humour. ‘What are you going to have?’ he cried, with a sweep of his arm towards the modest array of bottles in the small bar.
‘Double Scotch for me, thanks,’ Ernest replied promptly. ‘But I didn’t know you had a better half. This is a surprise.’
‘Didn’t you?’ Sandy grinned genially. ‘Well, we saw so little of each other in London it’s quite possible that I never mentioned it. But, as a matter of fact, we’ve been married some time—I’ve got three children as well as a wife, you know.’
George’s semi-circular eyebrows went up towards his bald forehead as he looked at the sylph-like Sarie. ‘My! you do look young to be the mother of three.’
‘Oh, two of them are twins!’ said Sandy airily. Upon which Sarie gave him a hefty kick on the shin under cover of the table. A sudden spasm crossed his tanned face but he suppressed a yowl of pain and went on quickly: ‘Seen anything of the Longs? They were up here five days ago.’
‘Yes,’ Michael nodded. ‘We met them in Upington. They pitched us some absurd story about having met Mrs. Orkney’s daughter here and that they intended going down to King George’s Falls, but, of course, that was only to put us off the track.’
‘Why do you think that?’ Sandy asked, pushing back the dark lock with a quick sweep of his hand.
‘Because we know there is no such person. We met Mrs. Orkney in Johannesburg, and she has no daughter.’
‘What do you intend to do now then?’ Sandy inquired.
‘Hunt every kraal for miles round until we can run a certain witch doctor to earth,’ said Michael promptly.
Sarie’s face broke into a smile. ‘If it is Kieviet you are looking for,’ she said, ‘we can tell you where to find his family but the old man himself is dead.’
‘May I ask how you know that, Mrs. McDiamid?’ George asked quickly.
She flushed again at the manner of his address and, lowering her eyes, began to flick the dust off her field-boots with a riding switch: ‘Because Sandy met the Longs when they were here and his cousin Patricia told him so. The landlord here will direct you to the kraal where old Kieviet used to live. It is only about two miles up the river.’
‘Come on now! Drink up, all of you,’ Ernest interjected. ‘The next round’s on me. Then, how about a bit of a wash and a spot of dinner?’
‘Sorry,’ Sandy shook his head. ‘But my wife and I are staying with the man whom we’ve come up to see about this new copper mine. We can’t dine, but I’d love another drink. If you like I’ll take you along to Kieviet’s kraal myself tomorrow morning.’
‘That’s decent of you. We’d be much obliged,’ George agreed.
The words were hardly out of his mouth when Sarie, seeirg an excellent opportunity for a come-back, smiled sweetly up at Sandy:
‘I know that you can’t dine, darling, because you’ve got your business to attend to but I’m sick of hearing you talk copper so if I may I should love to accept your cousins’ invitation.’
Sandy groaned inwardly. His jest had cost him the evening with Sarie. As an additional pin-prick she looked swiftly at her wrist-watch and exclaimed: ‘You must run, my sweet, it is half-past eight already.’
With as good a grace as possible Sandy said good-bye, promising to call for them in the morning. Just as he was about to go, Sarie delivered a parting shot.
‘Don’t wait up for me, dearest, will you? I’m almost certain to be late, it’s so seldom that I have anybody new and nice and interesting to talk to!’
He paused beside her, a little smile hovering over his full mouth, then he stooped and, catching her unawares, gave her a smacking kiss on the side of the mouth. With a cheerful flourish of his broad-brimmed hat as he strode out of the door he called over his shoulder: ‘Be as late as you like, my dear. I’ll tell the servants not to call us in the morning.’
Sarie was not late, despite her threat. The Bennetts were tired after their long day and went early to their room, while Michael, whom she did her best to intrigue purely for the fun of annoying Sandy, proved moody and unresponsive. Believing her to be Sandy’s wife, it would never have occurred to him to flirt with her even if he had been in a mood for flirtation. Yet he liked her, and in some strange way she reminded him of Patricia. She was taller, of course, and fair with blue eyes, whereas Patricia was dark; Patricia’s nose was distinctly Roman too, while Sarie’s was straight, but there was something about the sweep of her eyebrows and the tilt of her chin that made Michael see the other girl in his mind more distinctly. In fact he felt that but for their colouring they might have been sisters.
He had revolved the problem of Patricia’s treachery in his mind unceasingly. One side of him refused to believe that it was anything more than a misunderstanding—the other, prodded by the Bennetts, advanced arguments which seemed fatally convincing. He only realised how much he loved her when he found himself constantly inventing fresh excuses in palliation of her fault.
Sarie was determined to make her self-elected husband pay for his trick. If Michael had fallen in with her plan she could have hit back by making Sandy jealous. This gambit having failed, she pretended when she got back to camp that, far from thinking the matter funny, she was deeply offended. This was not easy, for Sandy had told her brother of the episode and Cornelius greeted her return with loud laughter and earnest inquiry as to the well-being of her twins; but with a little air of dignity which she could so well assume at times, she succeeded in sending Sandy to bed quite miserable in the belief that his jest had cost him her friendship.
In the morning she refused to accompany him into Zwart Modder, so he set off, more dejected than ever, to pick up the Bennetts and take them to the Hottentot kraal. They found no difficulty in seeing the medicine man whom Sarie and the Longs had spoken to a few days before. Michael unpacked his leopard skin kaross and placed it in front of the man while Sandy asked the bushman in Afrikaans if he knew to whom it had once belonged.
The yellow, wrinkled Hottentot shook his head but said that if they were prepared to wait for an hour or two he might be able to ascertain. Then, sitting in the space before his mud hut, they witnessed a curious ceremony.
The women in the crowd brought him certain dried herbs in a pot and a long pipe. The pipe was filled with the herbs and he began to smoke while a dozen younger men gathered round him and squatted down on their haunches in a circle. While the medicine-man smoked placidly in their midst, holding the leopard skin kaross between his hands, the others began a low chant in response to one who acted as their leader. Each time they droned out a few sentences of this weird litany, in reply to a queer staccato question which the leader flung a
t them, they swayed a little in a bowing motion which gradually increased in rapidity until their heads almost touched the ground. The witch doctor swayed in union with them until suddenly, with a little grunt, he pitched forward senseless upon his face and lay motionless on the ground. The others ceased their chanting, his pipe and his herbs were collected, and they left him there—sprawled in the dust before his hut. The four Englishmen sat silently at a little distance waiting to see the result of this strange performance.
After a time the sun became so hot that they were forced to move into the shadow of the reed and wattle palisade. Then when the man had lain motionless for nearly an hour his feet and neck began to jerk. A woman went up to him and, placing his head upon her knees, poured some liquid from a small kalabash into his mouth; he sat up and looked about him.
Sandy strolled over and asked him if he would now be able to help them further. He nodded slowly, handing back the kaross to Michael, who had joined them.
‘This,’ he said, ‘belonged to a white man of great height and fine presence…. One who was as a lion for courage, but he is no more, and died in a country far from here beyond the great waters.’
‘Before that?’ Sandy prompted.
‘Before … it belonged to one of my people…. One who is still in the prime of life.… He lives in the kraal beyond the hill-top and his name is Ombulike.’
When Sandy translated this to the others and told them that they must make the old man a handsome present for his trouble, George exclaimed: ‘I bet he knew all the time that the thing belonged to one of his neighbours. He went through all that palaver just to get a bit more out of us.’ But Ernest was obviously impressed by the Hottentot’s powers of divination and answered in a hushed voice:
‘Don’t you believe it. How could he have known that part about Uncle John being dead and having died in a far country? I think it’s a miracle, but there you are. I always do say truth is stranger than fiction.’
‘Anyhow, he may have told us what we want to know,’ said Michael, paying the witch doctor lavishly. ‘Shall we walk across the hill to the other kraal now?’
Sandy agreed to accompany them and the distance was soon covered, but not before all four were streaming with sweat for the sun was well up in the heavens by this time. The second Hottentot kraal was very similar to the first. Primitive mud huts and a crowd of small, yellow, shrivelled, monkey-like people. Sandy once again acted as interpreter and they soon found the man whom they had come to see.
He was a sinewy little creature with high cheekbones and a triangular face of the pure Hottentot type, with no trace of negro about him. His small quick eyes held a humorous, friendly glint and he could speak both Afrikaans and a few words of English. He listened patiently to all that Sandy had to say and then replied, without hesitation, that he was willing to undertake the journey again if it was at the request of the brothers of his Great Master.
Asked how soon he would be prepared to start, he picked up the leopard skin kaross which they had shown him when they arrived and twisted it round his shoulders. Taking an assegai and a little skin pouch which held his knife, pipes, tobacco, charms and drugs, from just inside the doorway of his hut, he stood before them, announcing abruptly: ‘One day is as another.’
The three half-brothers were overjoyed that the first half of their mission had now really been accomplished. They had actually succeeded in securing one of the men who had been with their uncle when he obtained his marvellous fortune. Now it was only a matter of reasonable luck, coupled with considerable endurance, before they felt that they too would be leaving South Africa as rich men. Sandy was equally delighted but hid his own satisfaction under congratulations to the others as they made their way back to the village, the Hottentot following.
At the inn a surprise was in store for them. The Longs’ party had arrived in their absence. When Patricia had reported Michael’s statement that there was no such person as Miss Aileen Orkney they were convinced that they had been tricked and sent upon a fool’s errand. They had decided to follow the Bennetts back to Zwart Modder—keep an eye upon their doings in case they secured a trustworthy guide—and, in the meantime, scour the native kraals in the hope of obtaining one themselves.
As Michael caught sight of Patricia and her father seated on the stoep he stopped dead in his tracks and the Bennetts automatically stopped with him. Their faces went an angry red at the sight of their detested uncle. Sandy, who had not seen the Longs since he left London, was greatly amused at the encounter and, turning to Michael, remarked gaily:
‘So your rivals have turned up again? But I don’t see the chief crook. What can have happened to Philbeach?’
‘Philbeach!’ Michael echoed. ‘What the devil are you talking about?’ While Ernest put his hand to his Adam’s apple and croaked an astonished ‘Eh?’
‘Didn’t you realise?’ Sandy said quickly. It was on the tip of his tongue to add: ‘I haven’t seen him, of course, and if I had I’d have knocked him down,’ but it flashed into his mind that he could not give away the fact that he had guessed Wisdon to be Philbeach from Cornelius’s description of him in Pretoria. The Bennetts were not supposed to know that he had ever been in communication with the Van Niekerks at all, much less that they were both in the immediate neighbourhood, so he went on casually: ‘I know, because I saw the great brute when the Longs were here before. I understand that they have taken him on as their guide, philosopherr and friend.’
‘By Jove!’ Michael’s hands clenched as he realised the position. ‘Things are even worse than I thought. I met him in Johannesburg and he called himself Wisdon then. If it’s the same fellow who knocked you out with the knobkerrie in London, I was right about his being a crook. The Longs can’t possibly know that it’s Philbeach whom they’ve taken on, and I’m going to warn them at once.’
At that moment Sarie came gaily round the corner and, ignoring Sandy entirely, intercepted Michael as he moved towards the stoep. ‘Hello!’ she cried, ‘what sort of luck have you had?’
Michael was forced, in common politeness, to stop for a moment and tell her of their good fortune in having found Ombulike and in having persuaded him to go with them. Then, getting free of her as quickly as he could, he strode towards the stoep.
Patricia had noticed the four men almost as soon as they halted and began to talk together in the street. To see Michael and the Bennetts again was no surprise—but Sandy! So he too had arrived here on the edge of the Kalahari. Then the girl who called herself Aileen Orkney but who Michael said was a fake joined them—yet there he was talking and laughing with her as though they had been friends for years.
Oh! how Patricia suddenly envied her that divine supple slimness, the air with which she carried herself, the chic with which she wore her well-cut riding kit. Her heart began to pound in her chest and her breath came with difficulty as she saw this bronzed Athene openly flirting with Michael beyond the fence which railed off the dusty garden. Then, her eyes made doubly acute by jealousy, she suddenly noticed that Sarie was hatless even beneath that blazing sun. The girl must be a South African, not a doubt of it, and Patricia had seen her face somewhere before, but where? The fine straight features, the golden hair, the look of lazy, aristocratic selfassurance.… As Michael turned away it came in a flash, the bright cheerful room in Pretoria—Cornelius Van Niekerk—this was his sister—the resemblance was too striking for her to be anyone else.
Instantly a jumble of confused conclusions seethed in Patricia’s mind. Sandy had the Van Niekerks in his pocket—they had refused information on receiving his cable and had gone into this thing with him the moment he arrived. Michael had got all that he knew from them—Sandy had shown a soft spot for him even in London—the two parties were acting in concert—Michael must have wired them from Johannesburg to put her own party off the scent—that was why the Van Niekerk girl had posed to them as Aileen Orkney—but why then had Michael gone to Postmasberg?
Patricia could not answer that—but th
ere was no time to think. Michael was already at the garden gate. The thought of a scene in front of her father appalled her so she ran down the steps and along the path to meet him.
‘Patricia,’ Michael said urgently, as they came face to face, ‘I’ve just heard something …’
‘I don’t know what you’ve heard and I don’t care,’ she cut him short in a low, angry voice. ‘I don’t want to have a row with you in front of Father—that’s the only reason I came out here when I saw you meant to speak to me. Only to tell you that I never, never want to see you again.’
‘But listen!’ Michael protested. ‘I’ve only just learned that the man whom you call Wisdon is actually Philbeach—you know, the crook who knocked Sandy McDiamid out in London.’
Her hazel eyes half-closed in a sneer of unbelief. ‘You fool,’ she said softly. ‘Do you think that you can take me in with that sort of tale? I suppose you imagine that if we were idiots enough to believe you it would prevent our going on with our journey and leave you a free hand to start off on your own.’
‘No, no.’ He shook his head with a worried frown. ‘If anybody’s tried to do that sort of thing it was you, sidetracking us like that at Postmasburg, but I mean this honestly.’
She laughed then, but it was not her usual pleasant, friendly laugh, it was full of bitter anger and dillusion. ‘It is likely that I should believe in your “honesty” after the way you managed to have us sent back to Upington? If we hadn’t met you there we should be at King George’s Falls in two days’ time, and look, there’s your little friend whom you put up to do the business talking to those precious Bennetts now.’
With a furious gesture in Sarie’s direction Patricia swung on her heel and, leaving him, stamped back up the steps into the inn.
The Fabulous Valley Page 14
