Ernest’s distress was quite pitiful. For days he had given them both up as lost in that terrible underground cavern, yet he had delayed his departure from its entrance twenty-four hours longer than had been arranged in the hope of their return. He had never really admitted to himself that they must be dead. Now, from Michael’s murmured words, the conviction went home that he would never see George again. It had been upon his brains that their prosperous little business was founded but Ernest looked up to him for many other reasons besides that and the two brothers had been inseparable friends all their lives.
They led him back to the camp and, while Sarie and Michael tried to comfort him as best they could, Sandy and Cornelius saw to the out-spanning of his oxen within the semicircle of their own camp fires. Then they went into conference regarding their next move. Ernest seemed to be too broken up at the loss of his brother to be of much use for anything and each second Michael was manifesting more impatience to be off in search of Patricia now that the plane had been repaired. In addition, neither Sandy nor Cornelius were prepared to leave Sarie behind alone with the native servants.
In consequence it was decided that while Sandy, Cornelius, Michael and Sarie should start at once by plane, Ernest should be left at the camp to load such stores as they still had on to his wagon and, if they failed to return, proceed in the ordinary way next morning with old Willem as an addition to his party.
By the light of their flares the others set off again to the plane which, when they had started it up, purred so evenly that they could hardly think anything had ever been wrong with it. They climbed to a height of a thousand feet and almost immediately picked up the camp fires of Philbeach’s party. The journey that had taken three hours for his slow-moving oxen was covered by the aeroplane in as many minutes.
Cornelius’s anxiety now was to land the plane safely, since in the darkness they might easily have a nasty spill if they came down on broken ground. In any case, they could not hope to conceal their presence, for the roar of the engine would give warning of their approach, so he thought the best thing to do was to land as near the lighted patch as possible and taxi right up to it. As the plane bumped and bounded Michael and Sandy leaned from it with rifles at the ready and, as it ran lightly past the camp, they saw the others spring up from their fire in sudden alarm.
Philbeach and his friends had caught the sound of the plane a moment earlier but had never anticipated that it would come down practically upon them. Much less that their first warning of attack would be a rifle bullet whizzing over their heads as the plane came to rest twenty yards from the wagon.
The hands of all three instinctively moved to their belts, but before they could draw their guns the engine of the plane was shut off and Michael shouted:
‘We’ve got the lot of you covered and we’ll shoot if you move a hand.’
After that the whole thing was easy. Philbeach, Darkie and Ginger, realising that they were properly caught, were far too wise to risk a gun fight. The invading party climbed out of the plane and, while Sandy and Sarie kept them covered, Cornelius relieved them of their weapons.
Michael, heedless of the others, dashed straight to the wagon and a moment later he was fiercely pressing his blistered lips upon Patricia’s.
By the time the two of them joined their friends, Cornelius had searched the robbers and recovered Michael’s store of diamonds. As he ran his hands over Darkie again to make certain that he was concealing nothing else, Cornelius peered into his face and said slowly:
‘I’ve seen you somewhere before? Yes, I remember, it was when my father, Judge Van Niekerk, sent you up for five years for a little job of arson—wasn’t it?’
Darkie grinned, his gold teeth flashing in the firelight.
‘That’s right, Mister, but anyhow, the old Judge has gone on a longer stretch than that now, ain’t he?’
‘Perhaps,’ Cornelius replied evenly, ‘but there’s just one difference. Wherever he is nobody can send him there again, whereas if you give me the least chance I’ll see to it that you have another opportunity of sampling the air on the Breakwater.’
When they had dealt with Philbeach and his friends and Michael had counted over the uncut diamonds to assure himself that they had secured the whole of his hoard, they held a short consultation beside the aeroplane.
‘What’s the next move?’ Sarie asked.
‘We have the choice of three,’ Cornelius said quietly. ‘We can rejoin Ernest Bennett, which doesn’t seem very sensible since we’ll only have to leave him again to-morrow morning now the plane’s all right. We can push on to Zwart Modder, which must be about seventy miles to the south, but after all the excitement of these two expeditions leaving there we’ve got to remember that the police are on the look-out for our return and they’ll ask all sorts of unpleasant questions, or we can fly south-west to Postmasburg, where nobody is expecting us. It can’t be more than a hundred and fifty miles and in my opinion that’s the thing to do.’
They had set off in such a hurry that no definite plans about what they were to do if they were successful had been arranged. Sarie thought that they should rejoin Ernest, otherwise he would have half a dozen anxious days wondering what had become of them. She also pointed out that if he overtook Philbeach’s party they might hold him up.
‘What with?’ protested Sandy. ‘We’ve drawn their fangs already and he is armed so they wouldn’t risk interfering with him. Besides, he’s got a first-class guide in Ombulike, three other native servants and our supplies as well as his own; he’s on an easy wicket. Cornelius is right, but the question is, will the plane carry five?’
‘As far as weight is concerned, it’s easy,’ Cornelius replied, ‘because we’ve unloaded all our stores, but it means someone taking a hard seat and crouching in the back.’
Patricia gave a strained, uncertain laugh. ‘I’ll crouch anywhere, in an aeroplane or on an ass’s back—to get out of this.’
‘I still think we ought to return to Ernest Bennett, at least for the night,’ Sarie maintained, but the question was decided against her because at that moment Michael, who had been leaning silently against the side of the plane, suddenly collapsed.
Only the imperative urgency of reaching Patricia had kept him going so long, and now the strain that he had undergone in the last days had proved too much for him.
‘Got to get him to a doctor quick,’ said Sandy as Patricia, with a low cry, knelt and lifted his head on to her knees.
‘Postmasburg then,’ Sarie agreed at once. ‘It’s much bigger than Zwart Modder and worth the extra half hour or so in the plane.’
‘All right—but we’d best land somewhere outside it,’ said Cornelius, as he hoisted himself into his machine. ‘We’ve got to be devilish careful now we’re running illicit diamonds, but if he is really bad when we get there we’ll carry him up to the hotel somehow or to the doctor’s place.’
The others lifted Michael up and then climbed into the plane, while Philbeach, Darkie and Ginger watched their departure with sullen interest.
The going was easy in the clear, starlit African night as they passed over those desolate miles of plain and bush. After an hour and a half’s flying, Cornelius began to climb in order to pick up Postmasburg—another twenty minutes and they saw the lights of the little dorp gleaming to the left below them. The moon had risen now and enabled him to make a landing without mishap on a level stretch of ground some two miles south of the village.
Michael had slept during their flight but now he roused and declared that apart from over-tiredness he felt all right, so they decided to camp outside the dorp for the night and, after half an hour, during which the rest of the party collected dead branches to make protective fires, they settled down beneath the sheltering wings of the plane.
Michael was no longer sleepy now, and it seemed that new life had been given to him by their successful rescue of Patricia. His eyes were bright and feverish but he flatly rejected their suggestion of taking him into the
town and insisted that he would be quite all right in the morning. Then he begged Patricia so urgently to leave the others and talk with him that she could not find it in her heart to refuse.
For an hour or more they sat together in the moonlight exchanging their stories, while every few moments he would interrupt their conversation to grab her hands with a new expression of his love. His fingers were hot with fever but his brain was lucid and a great contentment filled their hearts, but for one thing of which they were both thinking.
‘Are you religious?’ he asked suddenly.
‘Not particularly. Why?’ she questioned.
‘You’re not a Roman Catholic or anything of that sort, are you?’ he went on.
‘No, just an ordinary Christian, but why do you ask?’
‘I only wondered,’ he said slowly. ‘I was thinking of all that business in the Prayer Book.’
A shadow clouded Patricia’s face. ‘I think I can guess the bit that you are thinking of.’
‘Can you? I wonder.’
‘Has it got anything to do with relationship?’
‘Yes—blast it. You’ve hit on just what I mean.’
‘The old religious prohibition doesn’t trouble me much,’ she murmured, as she leaned her head against his shoulder; ‘but if we married we ought not to have any children, and you’ve got to have a son, Michael dear.’
He nodded. ‘Yes, it would be ghastly if we produced an idiot child, wouldn’t it?’
A short silence fell, then Michael suddenly burst out: ‘Oh, isn’t it hellish that, now we’ve got the diamonds, there is still this ghastly barrier between us!’
24
Robbery under Arms
It was only with the greatest difficulty that Patricia managed at last to induce Michael to try and get some sleep. She was almost in a state of collapse herself by the time they settled down beside the others under the outspread wings of the plane, for it was eighteen hours since she had woken the previous morning on the fringe of the great mountain range. So much had taken place—the ambush, her wild attempt to warn the oncoming party, her father’s death, the terrible hours which she had spent in the wagon after her talk with Philbeach, her rescue and the harrowing discussion with Michael, when she had been faced afresh with the fact that their double first cousinship made it impossible to marry—it seemed as though she had been living with her emotions strained to breaking point for weeks. The second her head touched the aeroplane cushion that had been put no the ground for her, she fell into the dreamless sleep of utter exhaustion.
Michael, however, could not sleep. His head was throbbing, a shooting pain kept stabbing him behind the eyes and his body was burning with fever. The strain through which he had passed had been too much for him and his temporary recovery after the short sleep in the plane proved only a prelude to complete delirium. Four hours later Cornelius, rousing as the sun came over the hills, discovered him wildeyed and dishevelled, muttering incoherent nonsense to himself.
With as little delay as possible they got him to the small inn at Postmasburg, where he and the Bennetts had been marooned a fortnight earlier. Sandy and Cornelius put him to bed while Mr. Versfeld, the landlord, ran round to get the local doctor.
The latter, when he arrived, proved to be a tall, good-looking young Dutchman who had just completed his studies after passing through Cape University. He was of the new school, competent and practical, who believed in telling his patient’s friends the truth in simple language, instead of hiding his views under a cloak of professional mystery. Moreover, when he learned that Sandy was a graduate of his own University he devoted himself to the case with particular enthusiasm.
The two girls took it in turns to nurse Michael and after Patricia had settled down in his room to take the first spell and the doctor had left, the other three, with welcome cooling drinks before them, held a conference on the deserted stoep of the small hotel.
Sandy had removed the diamonds from Michael’s clothes, but none of the three felt they would be justified in taking any steps to get them out of the country before he was in a fit state to be consulted as to their disposal.
In his open-handed, generous way he had made a vague statement the previous night that they must all split up the proceeds once they could get them marketed; but Cornelius said that he hardly thought that this was enough for them to act on, and in any case Michael’s share should be at least half the plunder since it was he who had actually secured them, while they had done nothing but assist him in retrieving them from Philbeach.
Sandy was now anxious and worried about the police. The goings and comings of the two ox-spans between Upington and Zwart Modder had, he felt sure, aroused all the curiosity which they dreaded and he considered it highly probable that, when the two wagons returned, the Union police would be on the spot to make inquiries about their doings.
Philbeach and Co. could probably be counted on to say as little as possible, but Ernest, on the other hand, might say too much. Immediately he got into Zwart Modder and found that they had not arrived he would assume that their plane had broken down again and start organising a search party to go out and hunt for them. In order to do that it was most likely that he would go at once to the local authorities and, with the thought of their safety overwhelming all other considerations, give a frank and complete history of the three expeditions.
If he did so, the fact of Michael having secured the diamonds would come out; Philbeach and Co. would be searched and the police, failing to find the stones, would immediately start casting their net all round the borders of the Kalahari to pick up the other party. Once that happened, their hope of evading the authorities for any length of time would be extremely slender and their chances of getting the diamonds out of the Union practically nil. In consequence, it was decided that Sandy should return to Zwart Modder in time to be on the spot when Ernest arrived, and prevent him mentioning the diamonds to the police.
If Michael was well enough the best hope for the others lay in disappearing completely from Postmasburg, leaving no trace behind them, before Ernest or Philbeach could come in from the desert.
They thought of taking him back to the Van Niekerks’ house in Pretoria, but Sarie pointed out that if anything did go wrong at Zwart Modder that was the first place at which the police would inquire for them. Any hotel, big or small, would be equally dangerous since the police would circularise their descriptions.
All sorts of suggestions as to a possible hiding-place were made but turned down as unsatisfactory for one reason or another, until Cornelius suddenly thought of a property which he possessed at Orchards on the outskirts of Johannesburg.
It was a furnished house which had been left to his father by an aunt who had died some four years earlier; instead of disposing of the property they had let it at a good rental to the representative of one of the big British Insurance companies in Johannesburg. Quite recently their tenant had been transferred to Shanghai, so the place was now furnished but empty, and there was nothing to prevent them from breaking in and lying low there for a week or two until Michael was quite recovered and any interest aroused by the returning ox-spans had died down.
At first the young doctor feared that Michael was in for brain fever, but his effective treatment and the careful nursing of the two girls saved the invalid from that danger; and, although he was still weak the doctor declared on the sixth day that he was fit to be moved. Having taken tickets for Pretoria and publicly announced their intention of proceeding there, Patricia, Sarie, Cornelius and Michael left Postmasburg, while Sandy took a train a few hours later in the opposite direction back to Upington.
There he hired a horse and rode up to Zwart Modder once more, securing a room at the inn where Sarie and the others had stayed.
He soon found that his fears regarding the police were only too well founded, for he had not been there half an hour before Captain Moorries called to see him. The Inspector of Police was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a long, thin nose, crisp hai
r and a frank, disarming manner.
He asked Sandy to have a drink with him at once and apologised for bothering him but no sooner had the drinks been served than he began a long series of shrewd questions.
Sandy had been in Zwart Modder for some days, three weeks before. He had been seen in conversation with various other rather unusual visitors to such an out-of-the-way spot. A tall, fair girl, for instance, who had been staying at the inn under the name of Aileen Orkney and who, if the landlord was right, Sandy had introduced to some other people one night in the bar as his wife. The other people, again according to the landlord who had been serving the drinks, were Sandy’s cousins. Two middle-aged fellows and a youngster. All three had set off the following day in an out-span for Noro Kei and had not been heard of since. Then there had been another party who had made two visits to the place; an old man, a girl, a big, bluff fellow and two tough-looking characters. The lady reported as Sandy’s wife, or Miss Orkney if he preferred, had been seen in conversation several times with this other lot until they too had set off into the blue. There was nothing illegal, of course, in all this, but Captain Moorries felt that the whole business was a little queer and he would be very much obliged if Sandy could let him know—just as man to man—what all the excitement was about.
Sandy endeavoured to satisfy the inquisitive officer while actually saying as little as possible, knowing that any lies he told might be held against him later. He said that, in the first place Miss Orkney was not his wife, that had been only a jest on his part; the three men to whom he introduced her were certainly his cousins but he had been most surprised to meet them in Zwart Modder. He had only seen them for a little while and had gathered that they were about to set off up-country on a hunting trip. He added that he knew nothing of the other party.
‘Quite sure it was only hunting?’ The Captain’s close-set blue eyes smiled into Sandy’s over the rim of his glass.
The Fabulous Valley Page 21