Courtney was insane.
Almost immediately, Dirk's manner changed and his hands lost the gentle touch, becoming once again businesslike andprecise. He rolled the body, unbuttoned the camelhair overcoat and searched swiftly through Sean's clothing.
Then he drew out a gold watch chain with the keys and gold hunter attached.
He examined the keys briefly and then pushed them into his pocket. He stood and went to the rear door of the Rolls and struggled with the handle. The door burst open at last, and Ruth Courtney's body spilled out sideways and lay at his feet. He took a handful of her thick dark hair and drew her head back. Again he swung the short thick club against her temple, and again he felt the skull like a doctor making
his diagnosis, prodding to feel the soft spot of crushed bone.
Satisfied, he lifted Ruth Courtney's limp, childlike body in his arms and carried her to the edge of the water. He dropped her over the side, and she was gone instantly, dashed away on the dark current, down to where the plunging waterfalls would tumble her body into the Ladyburg valley, and the cruel rocks would leave no doubt in a coroner's mind as to how she had died.
Helpless with his injuries and exhaustion, his body battered and strained beyond its natural limits, Mark could not move, could hardly breathe as he watched Dirk Courtney stoop and grasp his father's ankles. He dragged the General's heavy body to the edge of the torrent, strai ing backwards, against the dead weight.
Mark dropped his face into his hands and found that he was weeping, great racking dry sobs that probed the injuries deep in his chest.
When he looked up again, Sean Courtney's body was gone, and Dirk Courtney was coming towards where he lay, cautiously following the narrow ]edge, searching the darkness with the lantern beam, sweeping the dark tumbling waters, examining each foot of the ledge, looking for him, looking for Mark, knowing he had been in the Rolls.
The headlights of the truck had struck full into Mark's face in that fatal instant of collision. Dirk Courtney knew he was here, somewhere.
Mark rolled on to his side and tried to unfasten the buttons of his coat but in his haste he had tried with the right hand, and he whimpered with the pain. With his left hand now, he ripped the buttons away and struggled. out of the garment, its wet folds resisting each movement so that when he at last was free of it, Dirk Courtney was only fifty feet away, coming steadily, carefully along the ledge, the lantern in one hand, the short heavy club dangling in the other.
Lying on the edge of the river, Mark flipped the jacket sideways, trying to make it fall on to the rocks in the torrent below, but he had no time to see if he had succeeded. Dirk Courtney was too close.
Mark rolled in towards the foot of the cliff, stifling the cry of pain as his damaged ribs and broken wrist came in rude contact with the rock.
In the lee of the cliff there was a dark shallow chimney, screened from the light of the headlights and lantern. Mark came to his feet. Dirk Courtney was out of sight beyond the angle of the cliff, but the beam of his lantern jumped and swept and swung, bobbing with each pace as he came on.
Mark turned his face to the cliff, gathered himself, and found that some of his dissipated strength was returning, and his anger was still alive, like a small warm flame in his chest. He did not know if it was enough strength, or anger, to carry him through, but he began to climb, slowly, clumsily, like a maimed insect he clung to the cold wet rock and dragged himself upwards.
He was twenty feet up when Dirk Courtney stopped on the ledge directly below him. Mark froze into stillness, the last defence of the helpless animal, but he knew that the instant Dirk lifted the beam, he was discovered. He waited for it, with the numbed resignation of the beast waiting in the abattoir chute.
Dirk made another careful search, swinging the lantern in a full slow traverse of both sides of the river, and he was on the point of lifting the beam to play it on to the cliff where Mark hung, when something caught his attention.
He took two hurried paces to the edge of the rocky ledge and shone the lantern downwards.
Mark's jacket was caught on one of the boulders, and Dirk went down on one knee to try and reach it with one outstretched arm.
It was the respite that Mark needed. Dirk's full attention was on the stranded jacket and the rush and roar of water covered the noise of Mark's scrabbling feet and hands on the cliff.
He did not look down again until he had dragged himself fifty feet higher, and then he saw that the jacket had succeeded as a decoy. Dirk Courtney was a hundred feet downstream, standing on the lip of the first steep waterfall, on the very edge of the escarpment. He had the sodden jacket in his hands and he was peering over the fearsome drop. In the lantern light, the water was black and smooth as oil, as it streamed into the abyss, turning slowly to thick white spume as it fell.
Dirk Courtney threw the jacket out into black space and stood back from the drop. He settled down comfortably on his haunches, sheltered by the cliff from rain and wind, and quite calmly he selected a cigar, like a workman taking a break after performing satisfactorily a difficult task.
That casual little act, the flare of a sulphur match, and the contented puff of blue tobacco smoke in the lantern light, probably saved Mark's life. It stoked his anger to the point when it could overcome his agony and bodily exhaustion. It provided him with the will to go on, and he began to climb again.
Sometimes during the climb, reality faded away from Mark. Once a sense of warmth and well-being began to suffuse his whole body, a wonderful feeling, floating as though on the very frontiers of sleep, but he caught himself before he fell, and deliberately punched his right hand against the rock face. He screamed with the pain of it, but with the pain came new resolve.
But resolve faded slowly in the cold and the pain, and fantasy grew again. He believed that he was one of King Chaka's chosen, following the old king up that terrible cliff to the summit of Chaka's Gate, and he found himself talking gibberish in broken Zulu, and in his head he heard the deep resonant voice of the old king calling him on, giving him encouragement, and he knew if he climbed faster he might catch a glimpse of the king's face. He lost his grip in his impatience, and slid away, gathering momentum down the incline, until he crashed into one of the stunted dwarf trees that grew from the cliff face. It broke his fall, but he screamed again at the pain of broken ribs.
