On Thursday they, too, began to feel anxious about the non-appearance of the other party, and in the afternoon, George sent telegrams to the managers of the three hotels which Upington boasted. After dinner he received a reply from the Gordonia and with a scowl of disgust threw it across to Michael.
‘There you are!’ he cried angrily. ‘Long party left here Monday for Zwart Modder. From this hole we won’t even be able to get to Upington before the week-end, and by letting them pull the wool over our eyes they’ve got ahead of us again by a clear six days.’
‘But I don’t understand!’ Michael frowned at the paper.
‘Don’t you!’ George stared at him contemptuously. ‘Who was it that you gave away this place Zwart Modder to—and the names of the native guides—without getting a darn thing in return. Who suggested their going on ahead? Who sent the telegram which side-tracked us here? Why, that little chit with the goo-goo eyes—and she has fooled you properly!’
14
The Necklace of Kieviet the Witch Doctor
On the previous Saturday morning while Patricia was nearing De Aar, and Michael wandering from department to department in Anstey’s big store in Johannesburg—hesitating between a dozen presents that he wanted to buy her, Sandy and the Van Niekerks were making final prepartions for their departure in Cornelius’s plane from Pretoria Aerodrome.
All three had spent the last two days in making separate lists of such stores as they would require and procuring in the town such items of the final list as the Van Niekerks were unable to supply.
For food they must principally rely upon game which, by all accounts, was plentiful in the Kalahari; so they took a good supply of ammunition and armed themselves in case of emergency with modern automatics in addition to their rifles, as Cornelius’s plane could well carry a good weight, in addition to the three of them and their black boy Willem, Sarie bought a carefully selected assortment of tinned goods from her grocer, that she might be able to vary their meals as much as possible. Of fruit, rice, and fresh vegetables she intended to lay in a store on their arrival at Zwart Modder. Sandy was given the job of securing the most up-to-date maps of the southern Kalahari from the Government Department at the Union Buildings, and Cornelius spent the best part of Friday with a couple of first-class mechanics thoroughly overhauling his plane.
The journey from Pretoria to Zwart Modder, as the crow flies, was a little over four hundred and fifty miles, but there were certain portions of it where hills and air-pockets would make the going difficult if they took the direct route, so it was decided to make a slight detour and break their journey at the town of Rutland, just over the border of the Orange Free State.
They reached it well before luncheon and, having ample time on their hands, dawdled over the meal for a couple of hours, then they set out again and came to the neighbourhood of Upington early in the evening.
Below them were spread the fertile farm-lands bordering the tributaries of the Orange River but immediately Cornelius sighted the town he veered north-west and, after a further half-hour’s cruising, there came into view a few rows of straggling houses which they knew must be Zwart Modder. He banked immediately, for the unusual sight of a private plane landing and being housed, perhaps for a number of days, on the outskirts of the place was certain to excite interest and gossip; so it had been planned that they should select a spot a couple of miles or more outside the dorp where they could form a camp.
A narrow stream of water in the broad bed of the Molopo River lay shimmering in the sunset as Cornelius found a suitable stretch of grassland near it where no house was visible. It was guarded from prying eyes by low ranges of hills, between which he brought the plane at a sweeping curve and, taxi-ing for some distance, came to a halt near a plantation of blue-gum trees.
Of the Longs’ movements they knew nothing and there was no possibility of Michael’s party arriving at Zwart Modder until the following night at the earliest so, with the material they had brought, they made their bivouac and Sarie, with old black Willem fetching and carrying for her, cooked a meal.
By the time they sat down to it night had fallen and they fed by the light of a fine camp fire which Sandy and Cornelius had made while the food was being prepared. Afterwards the myriad stars which nightly make the African veldt a paradise for those who, living in the cities, appreciate occasional solitude the more, came out above them. With the sentimentality that comes upon habitual town dwellers at such times, they sat cross-legged beside their fire singing those songs in chorus that have always been a subtle link between the old country and the new.
In the morning a fresh conference was held and it was decided that, in the afternoon while the two men remained at the camp, Sarie should go in to the dorp and put up at the inn. As the Bennetts and Michael had never seen her she could watch for their arrival without any fear of betraying the presence of the rival expedition. With luck she might be able to get in touch with them, learn what further plans they had made, and duly report their intentions. At four o’clock she set off, Sandy carrying her grip for her as far as the first houses of the village. As he handed it to her she said cheerily:
‘Well, expect me when you see me. They may come in this evening but if they decide to buy their stores on their way through Upington they may not be here for a day or two yet.’
‘That’s no reason why you shouldn’t come out to us again to-night,’ he told her. ‘Won’t you do that anyhow?’ His glance betrayed an open admiration as he stood looking at her—brown armed, brown legged—in her practical khaki shorts and open-necked blue shirt. A little of white skin showed above the sunburn at the roots of her hair as it was ruffled by the evening breeze.
‘Not on your life,’ she replied gaily. ‘Do you think I’m going to walk out to the camp again for the fun of seeing you when I can spend the night in a comfortable bed; besides, in any case, I’ve got to play my part, it’s no good taking a room at the inn if I don’t sleep in it.’
‘I don’t mind a walk,’ he assured her quickly. ‘What about meeting you here again, say at nine o’clock? Then we could have a stroll round the outskirts of this place together without any fear of the Bennetts or young Michael seeing us.’
She laughed then, tickled a little by his obvious eagerness, but quickly shook her head: ‘If I’m strolling with anyone to-night it will be with your handsome cousin Michael that you’ve told me so much about, and not with you.’
‘Oh, he’s only a boy,’ Sandy shrugged disdainfully. ‘It’s no good trying to make me jealous about him.’
‘Thank you,’ she gave a little mocking bow while her blue eyes danced with humour: ‘It’s interesting to know that you like me enough to be jealous of me, but if Michael is half as nice as you’ve made out I shall certainly take him on a little expedition to see our African moonlight, so you can think that over while you are singing songs with Cornelius at the camp.’
‘Damn you!’ said Sandy with a sudden grin.
‘Damn me if you like,’ she replied lightly. Then on a more serious note: ‘But honestly it is my job to get in with these people and Michael is the obvious line of least resistance—don’t you think?’
‘Yes, the Bennetts are the most awful bores so if you’re going to vamp anyone it had better be Michael. Poor boy! There won’t be any resistance once you set to work.’
‘He may think I’m perfectly hideous and not fall for me at all,’ she said quite solemnly. Then as she turned to leave Sandy she swung round with a sudden laugh and called to him over her shoulder: ‘Anyhow I promise you that I won’t let him kiss me unless I think he’s awfully nice myself!’
Sarie entered the inn and, since she had thought the whole situation out carefully beforehand, registered as Miss Aileen Orkney; then she made friends with the fat old wife of the Dutchman who owned it, explaining her presence by saying that she had come up from Johannesburg for a few days’ rest cure and settled down to wait for the Bennetts.
Visitors were so few and far betwee
n at this tiny township on the fringe of the desert that, after the description Sandy had given her, it would be quite impossible to miss them, but the evening passed without their arriving and so she was compelled to kick her heels alone in the single reception-room and round the precincts of the small tin-roofed hostelry.
On the first night after Sarie left them Sandy had an opportunity of inquiring the reason for Cornelius’s limp and learned that as a boy of sixteen the young Dutchman had volunteered for the special police during the miners’ strike, which had developed into a red revolution, in Johannesburg in 1922.
A sniper, lurking in the church tower in Lilian Road, had shot him down just as the loyalists were making their attack on the last stronghold of the Reds in Fordsburg Square. The bullet had severed a sinew and left him permanently lame, but the disability did not interfere with his irrepressible gaiety, and Sandy found him a most delightful and amusing companion.
That night they had to be content with old black Willem’s cooking. He scorned the camp fire and having discovered a large conical ant-heap nearby, set to work on the hard, cement-like structure with a chisel, hollowed out the top, dug a hole in the side and made a chimney connecting the two. By the time he had a fire going, which he fed through the hole, and his saucepan on top it made a first-class oven, but Willem was not the Van Niekerks’ cook—only their garden boy—taken for his general usefulness and trustworthiness, so the stew that he produced was distinctly on the tough side.
In the days that followed, however, Sarie returned to the camp and, getting out her flat, round Dutch baking-pot fulfilled the boast that she had made in Pretoria by providing them with a dozen different succulent dishes.
She got out her ukulele too and while they lazed in the sunshine kept them merry with her singing, but for all their laughter, as Sandy listened to her clear contralto he knew “that he was falling desperately in love with her.
Of all her songs he loved best the one after which she had been named ‘Sarie Marais’. That lilting melody so dear to the hearts of all South Africans.
‘O bring my trug na die ou Transvaal,
Daar waar my Sarie woon.
Daar onder in die mielies by die groen doringboom,
Daar woon my Sarie Marais.’
Again and again he begged her to sing it for him and with smiling eyes she complied, but about the evenings she was adamant. Each night she returned to the inn to keep up her part of a girl who had come to Zwart Modder for a rest cure, and she flatly refused to allow him to accompany her.
Sunday had been the earliest conceivable day upon which the Bennetts might arrive, but it was not till Wednesday that Sarie’s patience was rewarded. After dinner that night an oxspan drew up before the inn.
No one remotely resembling Michael or the Bennetts were among the new arrivals, but an elderly grey-haired man of middle height, in London clothes, stiffly descended from beside the driver and a pretty dark-haired girl dismounted from a roan horse, while of the three mounted men who accompanied the wagon the largest tallied exactly with Sandy’s description of Roger Philbeach. Sarie decided at once that the old man and the girl must be the Longs.
After they had entered the inn, she moved to a betterlighted portion of the stoep, and when the newcomers had washed and fed she was not at all surprised at seeing the girl whom she assumed to be Patricia come out and, after a second’s hesitation, pause before her chair with a low greeting.
‘I do hope you’ll forgive me, but are you Miss Orkney?’
Sarie smiled to herself; obviously one of the party had been examining the visitors’ book. Then she said gravely: ‘Yes, that is my name.’
Patricia sat down beside her and having introduced herself went on at once: ‘This is terribly interesting, I wonder if you are any relation to a Mrs. Aileen Orkney who used to live at the Cape and is now living in Johannesburg.’
‘But, of course. I am her daughter,’ declared Sarie, her blue eyes round with well-feigned astonishment.
After that Sarie’s task was easy. Patricia introduced her father, Mr. Roger Philbeach, under the name of Philip Wisdon which was the only one she knew him by, and his two unprepossessing companions. All five gathered about Sarie and pressed her for any information which she could give regarding her mother’s deceased friend, John Thomas Long.
On hearing the name she immediately exclaimed at Patricia’s relative having left her mother £20,000, and then developed the part she had decided to play of a charming young girl, who was vague to the point of imbecility, doing a rest cure in this lonely spot after having danced herself almost into an asylum. But on going to bed she was able to congratulate herself on having established an acquaintance with the Longs which would enable her to watch their every movement.
In the morning she took Patricia for a walk up the only street of the dorp and along the few byways that led off it. Then Patricia took her round to the stable to feed her roan mare with carrots which gave Sarie a fine opportunity to develop her role by displaying a lively fear of the neat little animal’s hoofs.
Meanwhile Philbeach, Darkie and Ginger busied themselves with inquiring at the native stores for the witch doctor Kieviet, and at lunch-time Darkie reported that he had traced the man. He was living in a small native settlement about a mile outside the town upon the river’s bank.
Sarie, making her eyes larger and rounder than ever, played to perfection the part of the stupid innocent, so that when she asked to accompany them in the afternoon even Philbeach was convinced that she was only a girl greedy for sensations who wished to witness the mumbo-jumbo of a witch doctor, and, if possible, have her fortune told.
In consequence they allowed her to go with them when they set off down the river bank at an easy pace made necessary by the semi-tropical weather. Their way lay principally through fields of lucerne which were broken, here and there, by large patches of wheat and occasionally the regularly planted trees of an orange grove. Bright butterflies of every size and hue fluttered in their path, and once a snake that Philbeach declared was a highly poisonous boomslang wriggled across the sandy track a few yards in front of them.
The heat of the early afternoon was such that although they took half an hour over their walk, they were all perspiring freely by the time they reached the circular palisade of rushes and wattle which surrounded the Hottentot village, except Sarie and, curiously enough, the bulky Philbeach.
‘It’s good to be in Africa again after all these years,’ he declared loudly as they entered the enclosure. ‘Can’t think why I ever left it.’
No one replied to the observation but Ginger winked at Darkie behind the others’ backs.
Both had known Philbeach, alias Wisdon, under yet another name when he had been compelled to fly the country eleven years before. They were well aware that only the long interval during which he had been cloaked in the respectable guise of a wine merchant’s traveller, had enabled him to obtain a fresh passport and consider himself secure from recognition now he had returned to his old happy hunting ground.
One of the many children playing in the sand at the entrance was questioned by Philbeach but the little, yellow, potbellied caricature of humanity only grinned broadly, for he understood neither Basuto nor Afrikaans. A woman joined them, to whom at last they succeeded in making their meaning clear, and she led them into a circular, open space in the centre of the village. From one of the mud huts which gave upon it a wizened, mongolian-faced native, at whose belt a mixture of ostrich feathers, strings of beads, cowrie shells and leopards’ teeth dangled, was produced. He had just been aroused from his midday sleep and was none too pleased to see them, but upon Philbeach producing the customary offering of whisky, which it is illegal for the natives to purchase in the ordinary way, he became almost embarrassingly anxious to serve them in any manner possible.
Sarie stood in the background, but she listened with strained ears while Philbeach questioned the man in a mixture of dialect and Afrikaans. He produced the necklace of monkeys’ sk
ulls, and told him that he was anxious to talk with one Kieviet, to whom he understood the thing belonged, and who was reported to be living there.
The Hottentot cast covetous eyes upon the strange ornament that Philbeach dangled before him and hesitantly touched the largest skull with his for wingers; then he gave a rueful sigh.
‘It is the necklace of Kieviet the Witch doctor, but he talks no more with any man. Three moons ago we buried him by the river’s bank.’
15
Sarie Plays a Part and Two Lovers Quarrel
It was a crestfallen party that sat down to dinner that night at the inn. They had been lucky in tracing two out of three of the owners of the strange clues that John Thomas Long had left behind him, but one of these had emphatically refused to set out into the Great Thirst again and the other was dead. They had no hope of getting the kaross which was the only other clue left.
Although Patricia had come so far her journeys by train and car had given her little appreciation of the size of Africa. She was all for setting off into the desert and trying to find the place on the slender information that N’hluzili had given them, but Philbeach roared with laughter at the very idea of starting upon such a hopeless quest.
‘Might roam that wilderness like Moses for forty years and then not find the place we’re after if we hadn’t got a guide,’ he said, and Darkie tittered rudely.
‘Guide or no guide, I guess the young lady don’t know what she’ll be letting herself in for, if we go up country on trek.’
‘That’s none of your business,’ Philbeach took him up sharply; ‘you’re paid to make things easy for us, not to shoot off personal remarks.’
The Fabulous Valley Page 12