from him, vicious filth, the ugly meaningless words repeated over and over again, while his naked eyes glittered with helpless hatred.
Mark stood up and cranked the handset of the telephone on Sean's desk. Exchange, he said into the mouthpiece. Please connect me with the residence of Mister Dirk Courtney. No! choked Hobday. Don't do that! and now terror had replaced hatred, and his face seemed to collapse around the ruined nose and mouth.
Mark made no effort to obey, and clearly everybody in the room heard the click of a connection being made, and then the squawk of a voice distorted by the wires and distance. This is the residence of the Honourable Deputy Minister for Lands, Mr Dirk Courtney -Hobday lumbered off the couch, and staggered to the desk, he snatched the earpiece from Mark's hand and slammed it back on to its bracket of the telephone. No, he panted, with pain and fear. Please don't do that. He hung on to the corner of the desk, hunched up with the pain, clutching his broken arm to his chest, his mashed features working convulsively. They waited quietly, Mark and Ruth and Sean, waiting for him to reach his decision.
Hobday turned and staggered heavily back to the sofa. He collapsed upon it with his head hanging forward, almost touching his knees, and his breathing hissed and sobbed in the silence. All right, he whispered hoarsely. What do you want to know?
General Sean Courtney shook himself as though awaking from a nightmare, but his voice was decisive and brisk. Mark, take the Rolls. Co down into town and get me a lawyer. I want this statement drawn up in proper form I'm still a justice of the Peace and Commissioner of Oaths.
I will witness the document. Mark parked the Rolls in Peter Botes gravel driveway of the big new house on the outskirts of town.
The house was dark and silent, but to Mark's heavy knocking on the carved teak front door, a dog began to bark in the house somewhere, and at last a light bloomed in an upstairs window and the sash slid up with a squeal.
Who is it? What do you want? Peter's voice was querulous and fuddled with sleep. It's Mark, he shouted up at the window. You've got to come with me, now! My God, Mark, it's after eleven o'clock. Can't it wait until morning? General Courtney wants you, now. The name had its effect. There was a mumble of voices within the bedroom, Marion's sister protesting sleepily, and then Peter called down again. All right, give me a minute to dress, Mark. As he waited in the driver's seat of the Rolls with the rain slashing down on the roof, and rippling in wavering lines down across the windshield, Mark pondered briefly why he had chosen Peter Botes. It was not only that he knew exactly where to find him so late at night. He realized that he wanted Peter to be there when they tore down his idol, he wanted to rub his nose in it when they proved Dirk Courtney a thief and a murderer. He wanted that satisfaction, and he smiled bleakly without humour in the darkened Rolls. I deserve at least that, he whispered to himself, and the front door of the house opened. Peter hurried out, ducking his head against the slanting rain. What is it? he demanded, through the window of the Rolls. It had better be important, getting me out at this time of night. It's important enough, Mark told him, and started the engine. Get in! I'll follow you in my Packard, Peter told him and ran to the garage.
Peter Botes sat at General Courtney's big desk. Hurriedly dressed, he was without a necktie and his small prosperous paunch bulged the white shirt, pulling it free of his trousers waistband. His sandy hair was thinning and ruffled, so that pink scalp showed through as he bowed over the foolscap sheet of paper.
He wrote swiftly, a neat regular script, his features betraying each new shock at the words he was transcribing, his cheeks pale and his mouth set and thin.
Every few minutes he would pause incredulously and stare at Hobday across the room, breathing heavily at some new and terrible admission. Have you got that? the General demanded, and Peter nodded jerkily and began to write again.
The others listened intently. The General slumped in his chair by the fire. His eyes were closed, as though he slept, but the questions he rapped out every few minutes were bright and penetrating as a rapier blade.
Mark stood behind his chair, quiet and intent, his face expressionless, although his anger and his hatred cramped in his guts.
Hobday sat forward on the sofa and his voice was a muffled drone in his thick north-country accent, muted in contrast to the terrible words he spoke.
It was not only the killing of John Anders. There was more, much more. Forgery of State documents, bribery of high officials, direct abuse of public office, and Mark started and leaned forward with shock as Hobday recounted how he had tried on two occasions, following Dirk Courtney's orders, to kill him.
Mark had not realized nor recognized him, but now Hobday's stocky shape tied in his memory with the shadowy faceless hunter in the night on the escarpment, and with the other figure seen through the rain and the fever mists. Hobday did not look up as he told it, and Mark had no questions to ask. It was as though once Hobday had started, he must purge himself of all this filth, as though he were now deriving some perverse satisfaction from the horror his words struck into his audience.
They listened, appalled by the magnitude of it all. Every few minutes, Ruth exclaimed involuntarily, and Sean would open his eyes briefly to stare at her, before closing them again and covering them with one hand.
At last Hobday came to the murder of John Anders, and each detail was exactly as Pungushe had described it. Mark felt sickened and wretched as he listened, but he asked only one question. Why did you let him die so slowly, why didn't you finish him? It had to look like an accident. Hobday did not look up. One bullet only. A man does not shoot himself twice by accident. I had to let him die in his own time. There was no breadth nor horizon to Mark's anger, and this time Ruth Courtney caught her breath with a sound like a sob. Again Sean Courtney opened his eyes. Are you all right, my dear?
She nodded silently, and Sean turned back to Hobday.
Go on, he said.
At the end, Peter Botes read the statement back, his voice quivering and fading at the more horrendous passages, so that Sean had to gruff at him fiercely. Speak up, man. He had made two fair copies, and Hobday signed each page with an illiterate scrawl, and then each of them signed below him, and Sean pressed his wax seal of office on to the final page of each copy. All right, he said, as he carried the top document to the iron safe built into the wall behind his desk. I want you to keep and file the other copy, he said to Peter, Thank you for your help, Mr Botes. He locked the safe and turned back into the room. Mark, will you telephone Doctor Acheson now, please? We've got to take care of our witness, I suppose.
Though, for my money, I'd just as soon see him suffer. When Doctor Acheson arrived at Lion Kop, it was almost two in the morning, and Ruth Courtney took him up to the guest room where Hobday lay.
Neither Sean Courtney nor Mark went up; they stayed in the study, sitting quietly together across the fire which
