“ And a microscope.”
So this was how a mad scientist appeared during his formative years.
“I say, Mungo?” The sleep-slurred voice came from behind a door on the bedroom side of the house. “What in heaven’s name are you doing? Not trying to frighten poor Jafini, are you?”
“No, Daddy, it’s a man.”
“What man?”
Mungo appraised Kramer, sizing him up thoroughly the way children do when they can see how tidy a fellow keeps his nostrils. Then he paused to wrinkle his brow and select a category.
“It’s an uncleish sort of man with very short hair and big front teeth like a rodent.”
Kramer snorted.
“Aren’t you an uncle?” inquired Mungo politely.
“No, I’m a policeman.”
“Oh, good! Then show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”
“Hey?”
“ Your gun, of course!”
He damn nearly did.
“Get your father!”
“Will you?”
“Scoot!”
Mungo retired with dignity and there were whisperings. Kramer stepped back onto the doorstep. Things had got out of hand. Nor did they add up. Still, there was undoubtedly blood on that jacket and some family men had been known to live extremely private lives.
From the bedroom emerged a shock-haired, bearded weirdo in a tartan dressing gown and Wellington boots. He was about thirty-five, slightly built except for the hands, and like a tick bird in his movements-jerky yet enormously precise.
“Yes?” he said, bringing to his face a half-smile which never left it again. Kramer was immediately reminded of the anxious expression worn by travelers being addressed in a foreign tongue.
“CID. I’m Lieutenant Kramer.”
“Yes?”
“Phillip Sven Nielsen?”
“Correct.”
“You are the owner of a long-wheelbase Land-Rover registered as NTK 1708?”
Nielsen nodded.
“And you were driving this vehicle in the vicinity of the Trekkersburg Country Club at 12:30 a.m. this morning?”
“But-”
“Were you?”
“Oh, yes. I was out collecting.”
“What exactly?”
“Excreta.”
“Pardon?”
Nielsen looked to one side as if sneaking a peep at a phrasebook.
“Shrew shit,” he said.
Now there was something to conjure with.
Danny Govender did the job because his father, mother, three sisters, two brothers, widowed uncle, half- cousin, and half-witted grandfather needed the money. It was as simple as that, they told him, and would hear none of his protests.
Such was the price of success, limited though that might be for a twelve-year-old Indian.
In the beginning, Danny had been fired with ambition. Something all too obvious to the dispatch foreman at the Trekkersburg Gazette who gave him his first newspaper round. A bleak, slothful man himself, he had hoped to break the persistent little bastard’s spirit by awarding him the Marriott Drive area. This toy-block scattering of multistory apartment houses, with very few auxiliary lifts marked for non-whites, was generally too much for a full- grown coolie, let alone a bandy-legged runt.
But somehow the foreman’s plan had gone wrong-or right, depending on which way you looked at it. All of a sudden there were no more calls from irate subscribers down Marriott Drive way. Danny was getting up and down those stairs like a rock rabbit.
And more. He was rolling his papers neatly, being careful not to upset milk bottles, whistling silently, and winning the affection of every housewife up early enough to return one of his betel-nut smiles through her kitchen window. Someone even wrote a Letter to the Editor, saying what a joy it was to encounter a child who so loved his work.
That inadvertently chucked a handful in the fan, all right; the foreman was summoned to the dispatch manager’s office and there upbraided for squandering such an asset on mere flat dwellers. After all, he was forcefully reminded, it was the manager who dealt with the irate Greenside subscribers who invariably began their calls with: “I would have you know that the managing director of your paper is a personal friend of mine…”
Danny shot to the top overnight-the Boxing Day hand-outs in Greenside were enough to keep you in Cokes for the year. But, curiously, the boy he deposed seemed only mildly aggrieved. Perhaps there was a snag.
There was.
Danny discovered it the hard way: the bigger the property, the longer the drive leading up to the house, and the meaner the dogs-creatures so incredibly stupid they could not distinguish between an aquiline profile and a flat one. If it was two-legged, dark-skinned, and not employed on the premises, they attempted a disembowelment.
The big house coming up now on his right retained one of the most serious threats to his survival; an enormous, long-fanged, tatty-eared hellion called Regina by the family.
He called her “nice doggy” and ran like hell.
That was on the first day, and he got all of fifteen paces before going down screaming. Luckily the head garden boy was out early, dampening the lawns before the sun got going, and he had called the bitch off with a casual, almost regretful, word of command.
On the second day and thereafter, Danny never arrived at the high wooden gate without a bone cadged from the butcher’s near the market that opened at five. Regina still pursued him, all right, but, being so incredibly stupid, kept the offering clenched in her jaws and this took care of her bite.
Danny leaned his bicycle against the gatepost. He unwrapped the bone and tossed it over.
There was an indignant yell. Then the head garden boy came charging out, rubbing his shoulder.
“What you do that for, you damn fool?” he demanded.
“Me?” said Danny, quick as a flash.
So the Zulu hurled the bone at him and missed. It hit the bicycle lamp instead and broke the glass. Now came Danny’s turn for indignant histrionics.
“You damn fool!” he shouted. “That bike he belonging newspaper Europeans. Big trouble for you now.”
A lie, but all the lovelier for it-vendors were required to provide their own transport.
“ Hau, sorry, I buy new one-you not say,” the Zulu urged, very shocked.
“Maybe, we see. But you better having it tomorrow, my boss he is a terrible man. Worse than the dog by this place.”
“The dog is dead.”
That took a few seconds to register.
“A car hitting it?”
“No.”
“God’s truth?”
The Zulu nodded.
“Why are you waiting by the gate, big chief? Did they send you to bite me?”
This bared the big bully’s teeth but he knew what was good for him.
