It was while I was at the Ministry of Economic Warfare that I met him. He was about thirty then; a tall, broad-shouldered man with rather a pleasant face but eyes that were hard as agates; and as soon as one got to know him well, one realised that those hard, unsmiling eyes were the key to his personality. He was the most cynical and ruthless man I have ever met.
No doubt it was those qualities which made him so successful at his job, for he was a saboteur. Not the ordinary kind, who starts fires in ships and leaves sticks of gelignite in factories, but on a much higher level. He was a scholar of considerable attainments, and spoke several Near-Eastern languages fluently. His job was the bringing to grief, by fair means or foul, of politicians and big industrialists in the Mohammedan world who were helping the Nazis.
My memories of him were so vivid that, by the time I was approaching Berkeley Square, I could almost feel his presence. It was a horribly unnerving sensation and I tried to rid myself of it; but my brain rejected every train of thought except that which had led up to my impulse to kill him.
He had returned to London only to report, but a series of minor operations on his nose kept him here for nearly four months. Quite early in his stay I invited him home and introduced him to my family circle. I little thought then of the price we should have to pay for his amusing conversation; and until it was too late I had not even an idea that there was anything between him and Mary.
She was a cousin of mine, a lovely young thing of eighteen who had just gone into the W.R.N.S., and was doing her initial training at Golden Square. Her boyfriends up till then had been jolly youngsters little older than herself and I suppose it was Eric’s polished man-of-the-world manner that carried her off her feet. Any-how, he was fit again and shortly about to return to Palestine when she came to see me one evening and confided in a flood of tears that she was going to have a baby by him.
At first I was more surprised than angry, because having known Mary from her childhood I still thought of her as too young even to think of going to bed with a man. But as the full realisation of what had happened came home to me, that very fact made Eric’s seduction of her more unforgivable.
The next night I went to see him, told him what I thought of him and asked what he meant to do about it
‘Nothing,’ he replied cynically. ‘She should have taken the trouble to look after herself. Any girl old enough to go into one of the Services is perfectly fair game; and if it hadn’t been me, it would soon have been someone else.’
I lost my temper then, but he only laughed and began to poke fun at me. He said that had it been any other girl I wouldn’t have given it a second thought; that my indignation was due simply to jealousy and my belated realisation that I had been too slow-witted or hidebound by convention to seduce her myself. That was untrue, but it shook me, because he was right about my being in love with her. Positively choking with fury, I slammed the door and rushed out of the house.
Next morning the two of us had to interview an Arab potentate who was staying at the Dorchester. It was a foggy November morning, and after we left the office we followed the same route out of Berkeley Square as that which I was taking now. As we walked up Hill Street I tackled him again. But he was adamant and quoted some Arab proverb to the effect that God had made women for the recreation of man.
It must have been the fog that caused us to turn along South Audley Street instead of crossing it, and take the slightly longer way up Stanhope Street to Park Lane. As we reached the corner it was so thick that we could barely make out the kerb of the pavement, let alone see across the road. For a moment we paused there, still wrangling. Perhaps it was old-fashioned of me, but I insisted that if he would not make any attempt to help her get out of her trouble, it was up to him to save her from disgrace by marrying her.
Stepping off the pavement we began to cross the open space towards the Dorchester. The murk was faintly broken by the dull yellow headlights of a bus as it rumbled towards us from the direction of Oxford Street. Suddenly, Eric exclaimed:
‘Oh, go to hell! If you’re so anxious to protect her good name, marry her yourself.’
In that unnatural night we seemed as utterly cut off from the world as if we had been at the bottom of a coal mine. At his words something seemed to snap inside my brain.
‘All right!’ I cried. ‘If she’ll have me, I will. But it’s you who are going to hell!’ Then I gave him a violent push and sent him reeling under the oncoming bus.
Swerving away, I bolted into the fog. Some minutes later, I managed to get my bearings and found that I was in Grosvenor Square. With pounding heart I realised that unless I kept my head I stood a good chance of being hanged for murder; so I made my way back to the Dorchester, interviewed the Arab, then returned to the Ministry and reported that soon after leaving it with me, Eric had said that he felt ill, and decided to go home.
Next morning, I scanned the papers frantically. There was nothing about Eric. But the following day there was a short paragraph reporting that the body of a man who had died from fatal injuries had been picked up in Park Lane and later identified as his. I could breathe again without fear of arrest, but it did nothing to lessen my horror at the awful thing I had done.
For months I was oppressed by a terrible sense of guilt; then for quite long periods I began to forget my crime. But the sight of fog always brings it back to me and how, as I turned up Hill Street, I was filled with a grim foreboding that I should yet be called on to pay for it in some way.
Perhaps that was caused by the unnerving knowledge that I was being followed. Fog deadens all sound and gives even passing traffic a ghostly appearance. The busy streets seemed to have become almost empty and strangely silent; but I could distinctly hear footsteps behind me and the awful thing was that I thought I knew whose they were.
I attempted to increase my pace, but found I couldn’t. When I reached the corner of Queen Street, the footsteps were right on my heels. To get to the Club where I was lunching I ought to have turned left there and gone through Shepherds Market, but some influence that it was beyond my power to combat forced me to go straight on—just as I had done with Eric.
A moment later, a tall figure loomed up beside me. I knew for certain then that there was good reason for my terror. It was Eric. Yet it could not be Eric in the flesh. It was his ghost that had returned to claim me.
Falling into step with me, it said—or I thought it said: ‘Hello, Reeves. I could have identified you fifty yards away by that old smoker’s cough of yours. How’s the world using you?’
I was sweating with fear, yet felt impelled to reply: ‘All right, thanks. Since the war, I’ve done very well for myself.’
‘So I gather,’ said my sinister companion. ‘I hear, too, that you married Mary. How has that turned out?’
I knew that it could only be my guilty conscience causing me to imagine things, so I closed my eyes for a moment and made a desperate attempt to force my mind back into normal channels. But when I opened them again, he was still there and I heard myself mutter:
‘We’ve been very happy. She has two sons now.’
The cynical voice came again. ‘You’re a lucky fellow, Reeves, to have made money, married the girl you loved and got away with murder.’
The way he said it sent cold shivers down my spine. It was so obvious that he had waited all this time, till I had little left to wish for, before returning to destroy me.
With the fog swirling about us, we had turned along South Audley Street and up Stanhope Street. I was half fainting with terror at the awful thought of what was about to happen. I felt certain that the sands of my life were running out. When we reached Park Lane he meant to force me—just as he had forced me to walk past Queen Street—to throw myself under a bus.
I made an effort to turn and run, but could not. I tried to shout for help, but no sound came from my throat. We arrived side by side on the fatal corner. The yellow headlamps of an approaching bus were visible only twenty feet away. It was bear
ing down on us inexorably. As though thrust by invisible hands, I lurched forward.
Suddenly my arm was grasped and I was jerked back. In a daze I heard Eric say: ‘What the hell are you playing at? D’you want to kill yourself? You might not have the luck that I had of falling flat between the wheels. And I don’t bear you any malice for that push, you know. It gave me the idea of having myself reported dead by our Ministry. As several people were after my blood, a change of identity suited me very well, just then. I’ve been in Turkistan most of the time since. Come to the Club for a drink and I’ll tell you what I’ve been up to all these years.’
STORY IX
In the following story the ‘City of Gold’ is Johannesburg, that splendid metropolis of steel, glass, and concrete; poverty, riches, and greed. The city is surrounded by miles of lovely country houses, gardens, and swimming-pools. It is backed by pyramids of yellow soil, refuse of the gold-mines. It has arisen during a bare half-century from the desolate veldt below which lay the yellow metal which causes man to scheme, slave, and kill.
When we visited South Africa in the winter of 1934, our friends there, and many others made during our stay, spared neither time nor trouble to show us the most interesting sights and magnificent scenery from Table Mountain to the Crocodile River, and from the vineyards of Constantia to the Valley of a Thousand Hills. One of them, however, took me on an expedition which was very different from all the rest. It was into the slum districts of Johannesburg, to show me the places where the most desperate fighting had occurred when the Communists tried to seize control of the city in 1922. In doing so he told me the whole story of this formidable and bloody revolt.
When we got back to England I sat down to write a thriller with a South African background. It was published some six months later as The Fabulous Valley. Parts of it were, I think, quite exciting, but I never thought it was up to the standard of most of my other books. Generally speaking, it was better received than it deserved, but one reviewer put in his criticism a line which I felt was profoundly true. He said: ‘Mr. Wheatley should have made up his mind if he meant to write a thriller or a guide-book.’
He had hit the nail on the head and taught me a most valuable lesson. I had been too near my local colour, and, in consequence, given way to the temptation to drag in everything of interest or beauty I had seen on my trip irrespective of the fact that dissertations on diamond mining or native war dances were hanging up the story and had little bearing on the smooth development of the plot.
I did, however, refrain from dragging in an account of Johannesburg’s week of terror. Instead I used it for the background of a separate short story; but here again I fear that a critic would be fully justified in saying: ‘Mr. Wheatley should have made up his mind if he meant to write a magazine story or a short history of the ‘22 insurrection.’
I can only hope that most of my readers do not suffer from a positive dislike for history.
When the Reds Seized the City of Gold
‘But how did you get through, John? I thought there were pickets round the mines?’
John Campbell looked down on Sari Vermeer’s sleek head resting against the top button of his waistcoat. ‘Not only round the mines, but round the whole of Johannesburg, too,‘ he said laconically, shifting his arm to a closer position round her shoulders.
For a moment Sari was quiet, then she pulled herself away abruptly. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said, and through the gathering dusk John could see a little crease between the curving wings of her dark eyebrows. ‘How can you get through two rings of pickets?’
John turned her face towards his own and bent his head. ‘Just luck, darling,’ he said lightly, ‘and a very strong incentive.’
Sari pulled him down on to a log under the bluegum trees which spread dancing shadows on the lawn at the back of her father’s house when the hot African sun shone in the daytime. Now, when dusk was falling, their long thin leaves hung as sadly as mourning flags.
‘You know,’ she said gravely, ‘if Father caught you here he would blow up with rage. He’s naturally in sympathy with the strikers because they’ve been clever enough to make it appear that it is the down-trodden Boer who is oppressed by the grasping British. He looks on you as an enemy of his race while this lasts, and you can’t blame him, really, for he’s only heard one side of the story. If he knew—or would believe the truth—he’d be all for the Chamber of Mines.’
‘Can’t you make him realise that this strike has been largely engineered by Moscow and that miners who got such fabulous wages during the war naturally resent the mine-owners getting in cheaper labour now? What those blokes don’t seem to understand is that if they continued to get such high wages the mines would have to close down.’
Sari shook his arm impatiently. ‘It’s no good going all over that again, John,’ she said. ‘I’ve talked to him until I’m sick Of it. He still thinks I’m a little girl in short frocks. Can’t we do something, John? Can’t we get hold of the President—he’d be here now if he knew the true situation?’
‘I’m afraid a letter from me would not have much effect on Jan Smuts,’ John smiled ruefully at Sari, ‘though the only hope of saving the situation is for him to call out the commandos. The British miners and engineers can’t hold the dumps much longer, and once they go the machinery will be wrecked and the lower levels flooded.’
Sari Vermeer’s pretty mouth tightened. She came from an English family on her mother’s side whose men had been soldiers for generations. Her father was of old Dutch stock; those wonderful pioneers of the Great Trek, when the Boer farmers left their lands in Cape Province before the incoming tide of British settlers who brought progress in their train, and trekked over that thirsty desert, the Great Karroo; over swollen rivers and precipitous mountains to the territory north of the Vaal River, driving the Zulus in front of them, those earlier conquerors of the country.
That they were still bitter against the British is to be understood, for no sooner had they settled down with their flocks and herds around them and started to cultivate the soil than gold was discovered and the Witwatersrand … the Ridge of the White Waters … the Reef of Gold … beckoned to fortune-hunters all the world over.
Now, in 1922, after the war was over, the mine-owners were protesting against continuing the exorbitant wages demanded by white labour during the lean years and wanted to help out their pay-roll with native workers. For many weeks the strike had threatened; now it had come and in a malignant form, for Red Rebellion was in the air.
Sari rubbed her cheek thoughtfully against the rough tweed of her lover’s sleeve. ‘There must be some means,’ she muttered. ‘I wonder if I…’
‘Sari!’ John swung round on her and in the half-light she could see that his eyes were stern. ‘Promise me that you won’t go out of this place—it’s not safe for you to roam about on your own.’
Sari laughed. ‘What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,’ she answered pertly, but the words had hardly left her lips when there was the sound of a soft thud and she saw the big felt hat on John’s head lift itself off; the next moment the report of a rifle cracked across the lawn.
For a minute they were as still as wild animals startled in the forest. Sari noticed mechanically that she could dimly see a puff of smoke rising over the bushes. John stared at the hat which lay at his feet. That minute was like a sudden movement in slow motion in the middle of a quickly moving film. Before she could turn her head Sari felt herself picked up in John’s long arms and being carried over towards the house. He was swearing softly under his breath, and once again Sari felt that there were things about this tall Scot that she did not understand. Who could want to shoot at John? Why should he have enemies … out here?
‘Go in and bolt all the shutters,’ he told her as he put her down by the door. ‘I must go at once. I’ll send you news if I can, but if you don’t hear anything for several days you’re not to worry; I’ll be all right. Only don’t try and find me—promise?�
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Sari stood on tiptoe and lifted her face. ‘I never make rash promises, John,’ she said, ‘but I will try and be brave.’
For a brief second she felt his lips on hers before he vanished as quietly as a cat round the side of the stoep.
All the next day she wandered restlessly round the house and garden, wondering if he had got back to the mine safely, longing for news and racking her brains for the hidden meaning in his last remark. ‘Don’t try and find me,’ he had said. Was it to prevent her leaving the farm, or—was it because he was not going back to the mine? What had been in his mind? Sari drew down her dark brows in a thoughtful frown. Many little things had puzzled her in the last few weeks. John had been more silent than usual during those stolen meetings when her father was away on business. Had he feared some lurking danger more than the threatened strike at the mine?
That night her father came back. Piet Vermeer looked worried and depressed as they sat drinking tea on the stoep after dinner. His long moustaches drooped and the little tuft of white hair under his lower lip seemed to stick out less arrogantly than before.
‘It’s hard to know what to do,’ he told his wife and Sari. ‘There’s fighting round the mines and it’s a bad look-out for the British if the rebels get them, but they’ve no right to take the bread out of honest Dutchmen’s mouths.’
Sari was silent. She knew that it was useless to argue with her father in this mood. He was fair enough as a rule, but the old hatred had flared up between British and Boer and the flame had been skilfully fanned.
She broke the silence that had fallen between them. ‘You still write to the President, don’t you, Father?’ she asked quietly.
Gunmen, Gallants and Ghosts Page 13