Steyner studied him for a moment without expression before remarking, 'I would be obliged for a few minutes of your time after this meeting, Mr. Ironsides.'
'Of course, Doctor Steyner.'
'Good.' Manfred nodded. 'Now that Mr. Ironsides has graced the table with his presence, the meeting can come to order.' It was the closest any of them had ever heard Doctor Steyner come to making a joke.
it was dark outside when the meeting ended. The participants shrugged on their coats, made their farewells and left Manfred and Rod sitting at the table with its overflowing ashtrays and littered pencils and note pads.
Manfred Steyner waited for fully three minutes after the door had closed on the last person to leave. Rod was accustomed to these long intent silences, yet he was uneasy.
He sensed a new hostility in the man's attitude. He covered his awkwardness by lighting another cigarette and blowing a series of smoke rings at the portrait of Norman Hradsky, the original chairman of the Company. Flanking Hradsky's portrait were two others. One of a slim blond man, with J ravaged good looks and laughing blue eyes. The caption read: 'Dufford Charleywood. Director of CRC from 1867-1872.'
The other portrait in its heavy gilt frame depicted an impressively built man with mutton-chop whiskers and black Irish features. 'Sean Courtney' said the caption, and the dates were the same as Charleywood's.
These three had founded the Company, and Rod knew a little of their story. They had been as pretty a bunch of rogues as would be found in any convict settlement.
Hradsky had ruined the other two in an ingenious bear raid on the stock exchange, and had virtually stolen their shares in the Company.* We have become a lot more sophisticated since then, thought Rod. He looked instinctively towards the head of the long table and met Doctor Steyner's level, unblinking stare.
Or have we? he wondered. Just what devilment has our friend in mind?
Manfred Steyner was examining Rod with detached curiosity. So remote from any emotional rancour was Manfred, that he intended using the relationship that had developed between this man and his wife to further the instructions he had received that morning.
'How far is the end of the drive from the dyke?' he asked suddenly.
'Less than a thousand feet.'
'How much longer before you reach it?'
'Ten days. No more, possibly less.'
'As soon as the dyke is reached, all work on it must cease immediately.
The timing of this is important, do you understand?'
'I have already instructed my miners not to hole through without my specific orders.'
'Good.' Manfred lapsed into silence for another full minute. Andrew had called him that morning with instructions from the man. Ironsides was to be well away from the Sander Ditch when they pierced the dyke.
It was left to Manfred to engineer his absence.
'I must inform you, Mr. Ironsides, that it will be at least three weeks before I give the order to drill through. When you reach the dyke, it will be necessary for me to proceed to Europe to make certain arrangements there. I will be away for at least ten days during which time no work of any type must be allowed in the drive to the Big Dipper.'
'You will be away over Christmas?' Rod asked with surprise.
'Yes,' Manfred nodded, and could read Rod's mind.
Terry will be alone, Rod thought quickly, she will be alone over Christmas. The Sander Ditch goes onto essential services only for a full seven days over Christmas. Just a skeleton crew to keep her going. I could get away for a week, a whole week away together.
Manfred waited until he knew that Rod had reached the decision to which he had been steered, then he asked: 'You understand? You will await my order to hole through. You need not expect that order until the middle of January.'
'I understand.'
'You may go.' Manfred dismissed him.
'Thanks,' Rod acknowledged drily.
There was a coffee bar in the ground-floor shopping centre of Reef Building. Rod beat a bearded hippie to the telephone booth, and dialled the Sandown number. It was safe enough, he had just left Manfred upstairs.
'Theresa Steyner,' she answered his call.
'We've got a week to ourselves,' he told her. 'One whole glorious week.' 'When?'she demanded joyously.
And he told her.
'Where shall we go?' she asked.
'We'll think of somewhere.' At 11:26 a.m. on December 16th, Johnny Delange blasted the face of the drive, and went forward in the fumes and dust.
In the beam of his lantern, the new rock blown from the face was completely different from the blueish Ventersdorp quartzite. It was a glassy, blackish green, veined with tiny white lines, more like marble than country rock.
'We are on the dyke.' He spoke to Big King, and stooped to Pie. up a lump of the serpentine rock. He weighed it in his hand.
'We've done it, we've beaten the bastard!' Big King stood silently beside him. He did not share Johnny's elation.
'Right!' Johnny tossed the lump of rock back onto the pile. 'Bar down, and make safe. Then pull them out of the drive. We are finished here until further orders.'
'Well done, Johnny,' applauded Rod. 'Clean her up and pull out of the drive. I don't know how much longer it will be till we get the order to hole through the dyke. But take a holiday in the meantime. I'll pay you four fathoms of bonus a day while you are waiting.' He broke the connection with his finger keeping the receiver to his ear.
He dialled and spoke to the switch-board girl at Head Office. 'Get me Doctor Steyner, please. This is Rodney Ironsides.' He waited a few seconds and then Manfred came on the line.
'We've hit the Big Dipper,' Rod told him.
'I will leave for Europe on tomorrow morning's Boeing,' said Manfred.
'You are to do nothing until I return.' Manfred cradled the receiver and depressed the button on his intercom.
'Cancel all my appointments,' he told his secretary. 'I am unavailable.'
'Very well, Doctor Steyner.' Manfred picked up the receiver of his unlisted, direct line telephone. He dialled.
'Hello, Andrew. Will you tell him that I am ready to discharge my obligations. We have intersected the Big Dipper.' He listened for a few seconds, then spoke again.
'Very well, I will wait for your reply.' Andrew replaced the telephone and went out through the sliding glass doors onto the terrace. It was a lazy summer's day, hushed with heat, and the sun sparkled on the crystal clear waters of the swimming-pool. Insects murmured languidly in the massed banks of blooms that surrounded the terrace. The fat man stood before an artist's easel. He wore a blue beret and a white smock that hung like a maternity dress over his jutting stomach.
His model lay face down on an air mattress by the edge of the pool. She was a dainty, dark-haired girl with a pixy face and a doll-like body.
Her discarded bikini lay in a damp bundle on the flags of the terrace.
Drops of water caught the sun and bejewelled her creamy buttocks, giving her a paradoxical air of innocence and oriental eroticism.
'That was Steyner,' said Andrew. 'He reports that they have hit the Big Dipper.' The fat man did not look up. He went on laying paint upon the canvas with complete concentration.
'Please lift your right shoulder, my dear, you are covering that utterly delightful bosom of yours,' he instructed, and the girl obeyed him immediately.
Finally he stepped back and regarded his own work critically.
'You may have a break now.' He wiped his brushes while the naked girl stood up, stretched like a cat and then dived into the pool. She surfaced with the water sticking her short dark hair against her head like the pelt of an otter, and swam slowly to the far end of the pool.
'Cable New York, Paris, London, Tokyo and Berlin, the code word 'Gothic',' he instructed Andrew. This was the word which would unleash the bear offensive on the financial markets of the world. On receipt of those cables, agents in the major cities would begin to sell the shares of the companies mining the Kitchenerville field, sell them by the millions.
'Then instruct Steyner to get Ironsides out of the way, and hole through the dyke.' Manfred answered Andrew's return call on the unlisted line. He listened to, and acknowledged, his instructions.
Afterwards he sat still as a lizard, running over his preparations.
Reviewing them minutely, examining them for flaws. There were none.
It was time to begin the purchase of Sander Ditch shares.
He called his secretary on the intercom and instructed her to place calls to numbers in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg itself. He wanted the purchase orders to come through a number of different brokers, so that it would not be obvious that there was only one buyer in the market.
There was also the question of credit; he was
