I was not so trusting as to believe that Inspector Daly had made his last attempt at interrogating me. just as soon as he recovered from the kick in his multiplication machinery which I had given him, he was going to make another attempt to connect me up to the lighting system. I wondered if Daly was acting on his own, or if he had partners and I guessed he was alone, taking opportunity as it presented itself.
I parked the pick-up in the yard and went through on to the veranda of my shack. Missus Chubby had been out to sweep and tidy while I was away. There were fresh flowers in a jam-jar on the dining-room table - but more important there were eggs and bacon, bread and butter in the icebox.
I stripped off my blood-stained shirt and dressing. There were thick raised welts around my chest that the cane had left, and the wounds were a mess.
I showered and strapped on a fresh dressing, then, standing naked over the stove, I scrambled a pan full of eggs with bacon and while it cooked, I poured a very dark whisky and took it like medicine.
I was too tired to climb between the sheets, and as I fell across the bed I wondered if I would be fit enough to work the night run on schedule. It was my last thought before sun-up.
And after I had showered again and swallowed two Doloxene painkillers with a glass of cold pineapple juice and eaten another panful of eggs for breakfast I thought the answer was yes. I was stiff and sore, but I could work. At noon I drove into town, stopped off at Missus Eddy’s store for supplies and then went on down to Admiralty.
Chubby and Angelo were on board already, and Dancer lay against the wharf.
“I filled the auxiliary tariks, Harry,” Chubby told me. “She’s good for a thousand miles.”
“Did you break out the cargo nets?” I asked, and he nodded.
“They are stowed in the main sail locker.” We would use the nets to deck load the bulky ivory cargo.
“Don’t forget to bring a coat - it will be cold out on the stream with this wind blowing-“
“Don’t worry, Harry. You the one should watch it. Man, you look bad as you were ten days ago. You look real sick.”
“I feel beautiful, Chubby.”
“Yeah,” he grunted, “like my motherin-law,” then he changed the subject. “What happened to your carbine, man?”
“The police are holding it.”
“You mean we going out there without a piece on board?”
“We never needed it yet.”
“There is always a first time,” he grunted. “I’m going to feel mighty naked without it.”
Chubby’s obsession with armaments always amused me. Despite all the evidence that I presented to the contrary, Chubby could never quite shake, off the belief that the velocity and range of a bullet depended upon how hard one pulled the trigger - and Chubby intended that his bullets go very fast and very far indeed.
The savage strength with which he sent them on their way would have buckled a less robust weapon than the FN. He also suffered from a complete inability to keep his eyes open at the moment of firing.
I have seen him miss a fifteen-foot tiger shark at a range of ten feet with a full magazine of twenty rounds. Chubby Andrews was never going to make it to Bisley, but he just naturally loved firearms and things that went bang.
“It will be a milk run, a ruddy pleasure cruise, Chubby, you’ll see,” and he crossed his fingers to avert the hex, and shuffled off to work on Dancer’s already brilliant brasswork, while I went ashore.
The front office of Fred Coker’s travel agency was deserted and I rang the bell on the desk. He stuck his head through from the back room.
“Welcome, Mister Harry.” He had removed his coat and tie and had rolled up his shirt sleeves, about his waist he wore a red rubber apron. “Lock the front door, please, and come through.”
The back room was in contrast to the front office with its gaudy wallpaper and bright travel posters. It was a long, gloomy barn. Along one wall were piled cheap pine coffins. The hearse was parked inside the double doors at the far end. Behind a grimy canvas screen in one corner was a marble slab table with guttering around the edges and a spout to direct fluid from the guttering into a bucket on the floor.
“Come in, sit down. There is a chair. Excuse me if I carry on working while we talk. I have to have this ready for four o’clock this afternoon.”
I took one look at the frail naked corpse on the slab. It was a little girl of about six years of age with long dark hair. One look was enough and I moved the chair behind the screen so I could see only Fred Coker’s bald head, and I lit a cheroot. There was a heavy smell of embalming fluid in the room, and it caught in my throat.
“You get used to it, Mister Harry.” Fred Coker had noticed my distaste.
“Did you set it up?” I didn’t want to discuss his gruesome trade.
“It’s fixed,” he assured me.
“Did you square our friend at the fort?”
“It’s all fixed.”
“when did you see him!” I persisted, I wanted to know about Daly.
I was very interested in how Daly felt.
“I saw him this morning, Mister Harry.”
“How was he?”
“He seemed all right.” Coker paused in his grisly task and looked at me questioningly.
“Was he standing up, walking around, dancing a jig, singing, tying the dog loose?”
“No. He was sitting down, and he was not in a very good mood “It figures.” I laughed and my own injuries felt better. “But he took the pay off?”
“Yes, he took it.”
“Good, then we have still got a deal.” “Like I told you, it’s all fixed.”
“Lay it on me, Mr. Coker.”
“The pick up is at the mouth of the Salsa stream where it enters the south channel of the main Duza estuary.” I nodded, that was acceptable. There was a good channel and the holding ground off the Salsa was satisfactory.
“The recognition signal will be two lanterns - one over the other, placed on the bank nearest the mouth. You will flash twice, repeated at thirty-second intervals and when the lower lantern is extinguished you can anchor. Got that?”
“Good.” It was all satisfactory.
“They will provide labour to load from the lighters.” I nodded, then asked. “They know that slack water is three o’clock - and I must be out of the channel before that?” “Yes, Mister Harry. I told them they must finish loading before two hundred hours.”
“All right then - what about the drop off?”
“Your drop off will be twenty-five miles due east of Rastafa Point.”
“Fine.” I could check my bearings off the lighthouse at Rastafa.
It was good and simple.
“You will drop off to a dhow-rigged schooner, a big one. Your recognition signal will be the same. Two lanterns on the mast, you will flash twice at thirty seconds, and the lower lamp will extinguish. You can then off load. They will provide labour and will put down an oil slick for you to ride in. I think that is all.”
“Except for the money.”
“Except for the money, of course.” He produced an envelope from the front pocket of his apron. I took it gingerly between thumb and forefinger and glanced at his calculations scribbled in ballpoint on the envelope.
“Half up front, as usual, the rest on delivery,” he pointed out.
That was thirty-five hundred, less twenty-one hundred for Coker’s commission and Daly’s pay-off. It left fourteen hundred, out of which I had to find the bonus for Chubby and Angelo - a thousand dollars - not much over.
I grimaced. “I’ll be waiting outside your office at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, Mr. Coker.”
“I’ll have a cup of coffee ready for you, Mister Harry.” “That had better not be all,” I told him, and he laughed and stooped once more over the marble slab.
We cleared Grand Harbour in the late afternoon, and I made a fake run down the channel towards Mutton Point for the benefit of a possible watcher with binoculars on Coolie Peak. As darkness fell, I -came around on to my
