Blue Fire

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “You leave me very little choice,” Dirk said, and the mockery of affection was gone from his voice. “I can get out of the country by ship tomorrow if necessary. The signals are ready to be given. I mean to take the diamond with me. You don’t want to spend the night alone on the mountain, do you?”

  Before she could speak, a sound pierced the air across the mountaintop. That was the hooter, the signal for everyone to go down. Susan stumbled to her feet, wrenching the strap of her handbag from Dirk’s grasp. But before she had managed to get two boulders away, he was after her, whirling her about to face him, his hand across her mouth.

  “Don’t make a sound,” he said. “If you scream, the edge is very close. They’ll think you slipped and fell, and screamed in falling. I’ll have tried hard to catch you—and only saved your handbag. A great tragedy, my dear. And especially sad for your father.”

  She saw his eyes, bright in the fading light from the west. The shining brightness she had loved was upon him—the brightness of a diamond and, like a diamond, hard. He would do as he said. Against his desire for the diamond her life was nothing.

  When he saw that she would not move or scream, his grip relaxed a little.

  “Don’t be frightened,” he said more gently, and she trusted gentleness in him less than she did cold force. “It will take a while for everyone to get in. There’s plenty of time to join the last car. Or, if we have to stay, I know a fairly easy way down. There’s even a hut we can take shelter in on the far side of the mountain if that should be necessary. But we can leave at once if you’ll open your bag and give me the diamond. That’s the sensible way to manage it, Susan. I’m fond of you, my dear. I’d never want to hurt you.”

  She looked at him with unconcealed loathing. With her eyes she told him the truth—that she despised him now as much as she had once loved him. That there would never be any life for them together anywhere. That she would betray him at the first opportunity and stop him, defeat him, if she could.

  He read her look and reached grimly into his pocket. “My first plan won’t do, after all. I can see I couldn’t trust you, even with the diamond in my possession. So now we will have to arrange something else. It’s your own fault, my dear. You leave me no choice.”

  He drew his hand from his pocket and she half expected to see a gun in it. But what he held was a looping of metal that looked vaguely familiar as he began to slap it back and forth across his hand in a speculative manner. A finger of fear traced itself up the back of her neck.

  “Do you know what this is?” Dirk asked, once more at ease and even faintly amused.

  He held the metal strand out for her to see and she recognized it as a looped bicycle chain.

  “A favorite weapon of the Cape Town skollies,” he said.

  Skollies, she knew, were the young toughs who hung around District Six in gangs. Hypnotized, she stared at the links of chain being stroked across Dirk’s palm.

  “Do you see how cleverly this has been fitted for use?” he said and showed her how an end of the chain had been folded back and forth to make a handle, then bound with workman’s tape so that it would not slip in the fingers. The remaining loop made a flexible lash.

  “It can even be adjusted to the reach of an arm,” Dirk said pleasantly, as if he were rather enjoying himself now. “A man with a long arm doesn’t need as great a reach of chain. A shorter man can extend his reach by letting out the loop. It’s pretty lethal as a weapon, and far quieter than a gun.”

  He took a step toward her and she saw death in his eyes.

  “Open your bag,” he said.

  It was strange now that her hands did not tremble. She opened the clasp easily and reached into the copious depths for the stone. When she felt it in her fingers she drew it out and would have tossed it wide over the edge of the precipice, but he was too quick for her. His left hand closed about her wrist and he swung her about toward the rocky edge of the mountain. The hand with the chain in it was behind her now and she closed her eyes against the blow that was sure to come. She felt her fingers opening beneath pressure and the stone dropped into his grasp.

  The moment her hand was free she whirled away from him, and saw in a terrified flash that she was on the brink of the mountain. The lights of Cape Town moved in a blur across her vision and she flung herself wildly back from the edge, flung her arms about Dirk, more terrified now of the precipice than she was of him. She was in his arms, closed in a deadly embrace, and she could not tell whether he was urging her toward the cliff or drawing her back from it. She felt her feet slipping over nothingness—and suddenly they were falling together, scraping against stone, rolling over the edge, sliding, falling, locked in each other’s arms.

  23

  The blackness and the cold crushed down upon her. Behind her closed lids the world was made up of darkness, and there was pain everywhere. She seemed to hurt all over and it was hard to breathe. Someone was leaning over her, murmuring her name over and over, calling her back, though she did not want to come. She was being held in someone’s arms, cradled there, rocked and grieved over—yet there was no comfort for her in the fact.

  Painfully she opened her eyes and looked into Dirk’s face bent close above her own in the last faint light before darkness came down. With the sight of him, memory swept back in frightening intensity and she tried to struggle away from him.

  He held her still and there was a tenderness in his voice that startled her.

  “Lie quiet, darling,” he said.

  But she pulled herself out of his arms and sat up. She was sore and scraped raw along one thigh, though her coat and slacks must have saved her to some extent. Her arms and legs seemed to move normally when she tried them, though she knew she would be black and blue tomorrow. If there was to be a tomorrow.

  She saw now where they were. They had rolled together over the edge, it was true, but only to be caught several feet down on an earthen ledge cupped in rock extending below the upper table. A sloping buttress of rock down which they had slid had broken the full impact of the fall. The ledge which held them was fairly wide, but it sloped unevenly to the real drop-off of the farther pitch. Susan edged back against the rock buttress and stared at the spreading lights of Cape Town so very far below, yet so dreadfully close.

  “You would have thrown me over!” Her voice was choked with horror. “You would have struck me with that chain. You tried to kill me!”

  She had drawn as far from Dirk as she could on the ledge and he made no further move to touch her.

  “No,” he said, “I never meant to kill you. I knew there were ledges all along the edge of the mountain. I’ve climbed down to this very place before. I knew you wouldn’t fall far.” He watched her strangely. “At the last minute I couldn’t let you go. I was afraid you might roll or hurt yourself seriously on the rock. I tried to pull you back—and we fell together.”

  There was no mockery in him now, but only a stark despair, and she knew he spoke the truth. But she no longer wished for his affection.

  “What are we to do?” she asked dully.

  “I can get back up,” he said. “It would be harder for you alone. Impossible, perhaps.”

  “Then,” she said, “if you still have the diamond, why don’t you go?”

  He had been kneeling on the ledge; now he stood up, and looked down at her.

  “I have the diamond.” He showed it to her in his hand and then put it away in a pocket of his jacket. “Susan, I want you to come with me.”

  She shook her head violently and pain throbbed at the back of her skull. “You know that’s impossible. I can stay here. I have my coat. Tomorrow they’ll find me and get me up. If you want to get away, go.”

  She could sense hesitation in him, an uncertainty that was unlike him. It was not part of his plans to be thinking first of someone else. And he was not able to do it for long.

  “It’s perfectly true that you’ll be all right,” he said. “I can get down alone, even in the dark, and tomorrow I�
��ll be out of the country.”

  She expected him to turn and start up the sloping buttress of rock, but instead he knelt beside her again and suddenly his hands covered his face and his head was bent. A memory of the boy she had known so long ago seared through her and something in her twisted in pain. She reached out to touch his fair hair lightly, though she could not see its brightness now, and felt the ring on her finger. With a quick gesture she pulled it off and held it out to him, nudged him with it.

  “I’m giving you back your luck, Dirk. The pink stone belongs to you. I’ll never wear it again.”

  The finality of her tone must have reached him. He raised his head and took the ring from her, dropped it into the pocket of his jacket with the other. As he moved his foot struck something on the ledge and he picked up the bicycle chain.

  “I may need this,” he said dryly and looped it into a neat and compact form before he thrust it into a pocket.

  A steady repetition of sound had begun to penetrate Susan’s daze and confusion. She recognized it for cars being started, driving away somewhere down the mountain. Unsteadily she stood up and looked directly over the edge. On the highway near the cable house far below and half the length of the mountain to her left, people who had ridden up were still getting into their cars, still leaving. If she screamed they might hear her, come to her help. Those in the cable house might hear her cries.

  Dirk sensed what she intended. “Don’t,” he said wearily. “What good would it do you? It might take hours of hunting to find you. I couldn’t let you scream more than once. Isn’t it better for everyone if I get away from Cape Town? Better for your father. Better for you, Susan.”

  She felt too weak to struggle against him any further. And what he said was true. Whatever the cost to herself, this was the best way. He sensed her agreement and turned toward the rocky wall, began to pull himself up.

  She waited fearfully, not sure whether she wanted most to see him go or to have him stay so that she would not be doomed to spend the dark hours alone in this dreadful place. Once she thought of pleading with him to help her get up from the ledge, to at least leave her on the mountain-top. But she knew without trying that such a plea would do her no good. Here she could make little trouble for him. On top he could not trust her.

  He was good at rock climbing, he had done it all his life, and he found the toeholds, the crevices for his fingers. There was a man’s strength in his arms and he went up and over the top.

  She closed her eyes and sat very still and quiet against the buttress, listening for his departure. His voice came down to her.

  “Good-by, my darling. I won’t forget you.”

  He was whistling softly as he turned away, but the sound was melancholy and without cheer. Remembered words ran through her mind: “I’ll ride all night … when the moon is bright …” and tears stung her eyelids. She heard his steps high above, heard a small stone roll as his foot struck it. Then all the mountain was quiet and she was alone. Even the sound of cars on the highway below had come to an end. Tears squeezed between her closed lids and a small sob shook her. Not for fear of her predicament or because of the long ordeal ahead of her, but for sorrow at the ending of love. So empty she was, so lost and lonely. Yet the man she had loved was someone who had never truly existed.

  Her tears were brief, they dried quickly. She stood up with her back against the wall. Once more she stretched her legs and arms gingerly to try them out, and felt the sore place along her thigh. She was lucky, lucky. She might be dead by now. Her back could have been broken. She could have rolled on over the edge. She was safe and she was unhurt and she must remember only these things and hold to her courage for the night ahead. How cold and bright and deceptively close the lights of Cape Town seemed. So very close, so very far away. And how dark the bay beyond. It was strange to think of people down there, dining happily in hotels and restaurants and homes, never knowing that a girl crouched up here on a mountain ledge, cold and frightened and helpless in this darkly evil place. Out there on the Cape Flats were the pondokkies and a longer-lived misery than her own. Those people too had no thought for her shivering here, and perhaps would not have cared had they known.

  All these years the mountain had waited for her. Even as a child she had sensed its malignant purpose, had known that it bided its time. Awesome and tremendous and enormously cruel it could be—cruel as the old dark gods who had ruled it long ago and who would be satisfied only when blood was spilled upon the black stones.

  She crossed her arms about her body and held herself in a tight embrace, rocking back and forth. This was no place for such vivid imaginings to possess her. If she stayed quietly where she was no harm would come to her. Only her own mind could betray and injure her now. She had been shocked and shaken and held under a frightening strain. It was only natural that her thoughts should run wild in reaction, very nearly out of control. But not entirely. There was still something left in command. She laid her hands upon the reins of her galloping thoughts and pulled them in.

  She must think only of physical things and her own immediate comfort and safety. She must be thankful that the full blast of sharp wind, sweeping away the warmer air of the day, blew over her head and did not strike her fully on this ledge. With the wind upon her, she would have been much worse off. She wished now that she had drunk all her tea, finished her toast. Wished for the remains of the lunch she had discarded today at Cape Point. Food would have helped to fortify her against this long night. Better not think of it.

  Feeling for her watch, she found the crystal broken and one of the hands missing. It did not matter; she could not see the dial clearly anyway, and to watch the time would only make the night seem longer.

  What was her father doing now? And John Cornish? The thought of John was steadying. He would surely come for her when he knew she had not returned and must be up here. This was a thought to hold to with all her might. In the morning he would come up the mountain—and he would find her. She had only to wait until then.

  Her body was sore and achingly tired. Rest was the answer. If only she could sleep, dull her senses to discomfort, and sleep until it was morning and something could be done about her predicament. Carefully she began to feel about on the slanting ledge, groping with her hands for small stones that would hurt her body. At first she tossed them over the edge, but they made a sickening sound as they crashed on the stony slopes far below, and she took to piling them out of the way instead. At least there was a space of earth here, so her bed would not be wholly rock. Setting her big leather bag down for a pillow, she wrapped her coat about her, turning up her collar, and curled herself on the ledge. She was glad now for her two sweaters underneath. The night had turned very cold, and it would probably grow even colder.

  For a time she lay quiet, her eyes open, watching the darkness, listening to the wind. The doves of Cape Town had quieted for the night and city traffic noises had lessened and were far away. Once she heard the sound of a car and raised her head to see headlights moving up the long slant of highway toward Signal Hill, where she and John had traveled together—so very long ago! The Lion’s Head was a black knob against the sky. She stared at it until she began to feel drowsy.

  She slept in rough snatches, waking, drowsing, dropping off into some wild dream, fighting out of it to a waking state, only to find that it was still night and nothing had changed.

  Not much time had passed, she suspected, when she sensed a difference in the sky overhead. Below her the lights of Cape Town were still bright. They had not winked out into midnight thinness. But overhead there were no stars, no moon had risen. There was a damp smell on the air and as she stared upward something soft and white drifted like smoke along the lip of the rocky cliff. Clouds had come down upon the mountain and the knowledge shocked her fully awake.

  The sight of that misty softness was terrifying. Darkness was one thing, but the cloth of cloud that could blanket the mountain was another. In mist there was no hope of escape, no hope o
f being found. Mist might cover the mountain for days and then no one could find her.

  Frightened now, she stood up and began to call, remembering how sound had traveled earlier on the mountaintop. Dirk had said the people who ran the teahouse lived up here all the time. Perhaps they might hear her in their distant hollow at the end of the mountain. But the fog soaked up her voice like blotting paper, changed the sound of it in her own ears.

  Yet now she knew she must not stay here. Perhaps the clouds had not thickened fully on top as yet. Here on her ledge the mist that crept down the mountain was still thin as a gossamer veil. There was no way down over this sheer precipice, so she must go up as Dirk had gone up. If he could do it, so could she, granted the will and the urgent need.

  Her first assault on the buttress of rock was foolish and wild. She flung herself upon it and tried to claw her way up, succeeding only in scraping her sore hands further, yet finding nothing to cling to, no tiniest ledge for her fingers. It could not be managed that way, she realized, and drew back for a more careful examination of her position. Dirk had been given the advantage of at least a dim light. She had no light at all. Whatever was to be found she must discover by means of her hands, her fingers, her toes.

  She leaned forward against the slanting buttress and reached upward as far as she could stretch, but she could not touch the edge of the mountain above her head. Yet if she could pull herself up even a little way, the edge could not be far out of reach. Its heavy rocks might give her a handhold and a leverage. Carefully, trying to be patient, she patted her hands over all the surface she could reach, and then moved around the buttress a little and repeated the process. Now, at the very height of her reach, she could feel a rough projection, a jutting of rock, and here, somewhat below, but too high for her foot was a tiny ledge that would surely give her a toehold if she could get to it. But she could not grasp the projection—it remained just out of reach and there was no way to use the promise it offered.