Gareth glanced sideways at her and saw all too clearly why this should be. The first adjective which sprang to mind was "horsey", but it was not the correct one, Gareth decided.
"Comely"or"camel-like" would convey a much more accurate description. A besotted camel, he thought, as he intercepted the adoring gaze which she fixed upon him as she sat sideways upon the luxurious leather seats.
"Jolly good of you to let me take your Pater"s bus for a spin, old girl. And she simpered at the endearment, exposing the huge yellowish teeth under the large nose.
A V A "Definitely thinking of buying one myself, when I get home.
Can"t beat the old Benters, what?" Gareth swung the long black limousine off the metal led road and it plunged forward smoothly over the dusty rutted track that led northwards along the coast through the palm trees.
An ask ari policeman recognized the fluttering pennant on the front wing, red and blue and gold with rampant lion and unicorn, and he pulled himself to foot-stamping attention and flung a flamboyant salute. Gareth touched the brim of his hat to the manner born, then turned to his companion who had not taken her eyes from his tanned and n.o.ble face since they had left the grounds of Government House.
"There is a good view place up ahead, looks out across actually.
Thought we"d park the channel, very beautiful there for a while." She nodded vehemently, unable to trust herself to speak.
Gareth was glad of that she had a squeaky little treble and he smiled his grat.i.tude. That brilliant, completely irresistible smile, and the girl blushed a mottled purple.
She had good eyes, Gareth tried to convince himself, that is if you like camels" eyes. Huge sorrowful pools with long matted lashes.
He would concentrate on the eyes and try and avoid the teeth. He felt a sudden small twinge of concern. "I hope she doesn"t bite in the critical moments.
With those choppers, she could inflict a mortal wound." For a moment he considered abandoning the project. Then he made himself imagine a pile of one thousand sovereigns, and his courage returned.
Gareth braked the Bentley and searched for the turnoffs It was well concealed by underbrush and he missed it and had to back up.
Gently he eased the gleaming limousine down into a small clearing, walled in by fern and scrub and roofed over by the cathedral arches of the palms.
"Well, here we are, what?" Gareth pulled on the hand brake and turned to his companion. "Actually you can see the channel if you twist your neck a bit." He leaned forward to demonstrate, and with a convulsive leap the Governor"s daughter sprang upon him. Gareth"s last controlled thought was that he must avoid the teeth.
Jake Barton waited until the huge glistening Bentley began to heave and toss on its suspension like a lifeboat in a gale, before he rose from the cover of the ferns and, carpet-bag in hand, crept around to the bonnet with its gleaming winged initial V and the stiffly embroidered household pennant.
The noise he made in opening and lifting the engine cowling was effectively smothered by the whinnying cries of pa.s.sion that issued out -of the car, and Jake glanced through the windscreen and caught one horrifying glimpse of the Governor"s daughter"s white limbs, long and shapeless and k.n.o.bbly kneed as a camel"s kicking ecstatically at the roof of the cab before he ducked his head into the engine.
He worked swiftly, his lips pursed but the tune stealthily muted, and his brow creased with concentration as the carburettor jumped and heaved unpredictably under his hands and the whinnies of pa.s.sion and the high-pitched exhortations to greater effort and speed rang louder.
The resentment he had felt at Gareth Swales"s refusal to a.s.sist in painting the iron ladies faded swiftly. He was pushing and pulling his full weight now, and his efforts made even the most gruelling manual labour seem insignificant.
As Jake lifted the entire carburettor a.s.sembly off the engine block and stowed it into the carpet-bag, there was one last piercing shriek and the Bentley came to an abrupt rest while a ringing silence fell over the palm grove.
Jake Barton crept silently away through the undergrowth leaving his partner stunned and entangled in a mesh of lanky limbs and expensive French underwear.
"I want you to believe that in my weakened condition it was a long walk home. At the same time, I had to try and convince the lady that we were not betrothed."
"We"ll get you a citation," Jake promised him, and emerged from the engine housing of the armoured car.
"With disregard for his own personal safety Major Gareth Swales held the pa.s.s, stan ned the breach, battered down the gates-"
"Terribly amusing," growled Gareth. "But, just like you, I have a reputation to maintain. It would embarra.s.s me in certain circles if this got out, old son. Mum"s the word, what?"
"You have my word of honour," Jake told him seriously, and stooped over the crank handle. She fired at the first turn and settled to a steady rhythm to which Jake listened for a few moments before he grinned.
"Listen to her, the b.l.o.o.d.y little beauty," and he turned to Gareth. "Wasn"t it worth it just to hear that sweet burbling song?"
Gareth rolled his eyes in agonized memory and Jake went on. "Four of them. Four lovely, well-behaved ladies. What more could you ask out of life?"
"Five,"said Gareth promptly, and Jake scowled.
"We"d put my name on the fifth one," he wheedled. "I"d sign a statement to protect your reputation." But the expression on Jake"s face was sufficient answer.
"No?" Gareth sighed. "I predict that your sentimental, oldfashioned outlook is going to get us both into a lot of trouble."
"We can split up now."
"Wouldn"t dream of it, old son. Actually, it would have been dicey peddling a dead one to those Ethiops. They"ve got these dirty great swords, and it"s not only your head that they lop off or so I hear. No, we"ll settle for just the four, then." May 22nd the Dunnottar Castle anch.o.r.ed in the Dares Salaam roads and was immediately surrounded by a swarm of barges and lighters. She was the flagship of the Union Castle Line, outward bound from Southampton to Cape Town, Durban, Lourenco Marques, Dares Salaam and Jibuti.
Two suites and ten double cabins of the first cla.s.s accommodation were taken up by Lij Mikhael Wasan Sagud and his entourage. The Lij was a scion of the royal house of Ethiopia that traced its line back to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. He was a trusted member of the Emperor"s inner circle and, under his father, the deputy governor of a piece of mountain and desert country in the northern provinces the size of Scotland and Wales combined.
The Ras was returning to his homeland after six months of pet.i.tioning the foreign ministers of Great Britain and France, and lobbying in the halls of the League of Nations in Geneva, trying to gather pledges of support for his country in the face of the gathering storm clouds of Fascist Italian aspirations towards an African Empire.
The Lij was a disillusioned man when he disembarked with four of his senior advisers and made the short journey by lighter to where two hired open tourers awaited his arrival on the wharf. Hire of the motor vehicles had been arranged by Major Gareth Swales and the drivers had been given their instructions.
"Now, you leave the talking to me, old chap," Gareth advised Jake, as they waited anxiously in the cavernous and gloomy depths of No. 4 Warehouse. "This really is my part of the show, you know. You just look stern and do the demonstrating. That will impress the old Ethiop no end." Gareth was resplendent in a pale blue tropical suit with a fresh white carnation in the b.u.t.tonhole, and silk shirt. He wore the diagonally striped old school tie, his hair was brilliantined and carefully brushed, and the sleek lines of the mustache had been trimmed that morning. He ran a judicious eye over his partner and was mildly satisfied. Jake"s suit had not been cut in Savile Row, of course, but it was adequate for the occasion, clean and freshly pressed. His shoes had been newly polished and the usually unruly profusion of curls had been wetted and slicked down neatly.
He had scrubbed all traces of grease from his large bony hands and from under his fingernails.
"They probably don"t even speak English," Gareth gave his opinion.
"Have to use the old sign language, you know.
Wish you"d let me have that dead one. We could have palmed it off on them. They are bound to be a gullible lot, throw in a handful of beads and a bag of salt-" He was interrupted by the sound of approaching engines.
"This will be them, now. Don"t forget what I told you." The two open tourers pulled up in the bright sunlight beyond the doors and disgorged their pa.s.sengers. Four of them wore the long flowing white shammas, full-length robes like Roman togas draped across the shoulder.
Under the robes they wore black gabardine riding breeches and open sandals. They were all of them elderly men, the dense bushes of their hair shot through with strands of grey and the dark faces wrinkled and lined. In dignified silence they gathered about the taller, younger figure clad in a dark western-style suit and they moved forward into the cool gloom of the warehouse.
Lij Mikhael was well over six feet in height, with a slight scholarly stoop to his shoulders. His skin was the colour of dark honey and his hair and beard were a thick. curly halo about the finely boned face, with dark thoughtful eyes and the narrow nose with its Semitic beak. Despite the stoop, he walked with the grace of a swordsman and his teeth when he smiled were glisteningly white against the dark skin.
"By Jove," said the Lij, in the drawling accent that echoed Gareth"s with surprising accuracy. "It is Forty swales isn"t it?"
Major Gareth Swales"s composure seemed to fall away, leaving him tottering mentally at the use of a nickname he had last heard twenty years before. He had been so branded when his unexpected attack of flatus had clapped and echoed from the vaulted ceiling and stone walls of College Chapel. He had hoped never to hear it spoken again, and now its use took him back to that moment when he had stood in the cold stone chapel and the waves of suppressed laughter had broken over his head like physical blows.
The Prince laughed now, and touched the knot of his necktie. For the first time Jake realized that the diagonal stripes were identical to those that Gareth Swales wore at his own throat.
"Eton 1915 Waynflete"s. I was Captain of the House. I gave you six for smoking in the bogs don"t you remember?"
"My G.o.d," gasped Gareth. "Toffee Sagud. My G.o.d. I just don"t know what to say."
"Try him with the old sign language, then," murmured Jake helpfully.
"Shut up, d.a.m.n you," hissed Gareth, and then with a conscious effort he resurrected the smile that lit the gloomy warehouse like the rising of the sun.
"Your Excellency Toffee my dear fellow." He hurried forward with hand outstretched. "What a great and unexpected pleasure." They shook hands laughing, and the solemn dark faces of the elderly advisers lightened with sympathetic merriment.
"Let me introduce my partner, Mr. Jake Barton of Texas.
Mr. Barton is a brilliant engineer and financier Jake, this is His Excellency Lij Mikhael Wasan Sagud, Deputy Governor of Shoo and an old and dear friend of mine." The Prince"s hand was narrow-boned, cool and firm. His gaze was quick and penetrating before he turned back to Gareth.
"When were you expelled? Summer of 1915 wasn"t it?
Caught boffing one of the maids, as I recall."
"Good Lord, no!"
Gareth was horrified. "Never the hired help. Actually, it was the house master"s daughter."
"That"s right. I remember now. You were famous went out in a blaze of glory. Talk about your feat lasted for months. They said you went to France with the Duke"s, and did jolly well for yourself." Gareth made a deprecating gesture, and Lij Mikhael asked, "Since then what have you been doing, old chap?" Which was a thoroughly embarra.s.sing question for Gareth. He made a few airy gestures with his cheroot.
This and that, you know. One thing and another.
Business, you understand. Importing, exporting, buying and selling."
"Which brings us to the present business, does it not?" the Prince asked gently.
"Indeed, it does," agreed Gareth and took the Prince"s arm. "Now that I realize who is buying, it only increases my pleasure in managing to a.s.semble a package of such high quality." The wooden crates were stacked neatly along one wall of the warehouse.
"A .
"Fourteen Vickers machine guns, most of them straight from the factory hardly a shot through the barrels-" They pa.s.sed slowly down the array of merchandise to where one of the machine guns had been uncrated and set up on its tripod.
"As YOU can see, all first-cla.s.s stuff." The five Ethiopians were all warriors, from a long warlike line, and they had the true warrior"s love of and delight in the weapons of war. They crowded eagerly around the gun.
Gareth winked at Jake, and went on, "One hundred and forty-four Lee-Enfield service rifles, still in the grease-" Half a dozen of the rifles had been cleaned and laid out on display.
No. 4 Warehouse was an Aladdin"s Cave for them. The elderly courtiers forgot their dignity, and fell upon the weapons like a flock of crows, cackling in Amharic as they fondled the cold oiled steel.
They hoisted up the skirts of their shammas to crouch behind the demonstration machine gun and traversed it happily, making the staccato schoolboy imitations of automatic fire as they mowed down imaginary hordes of their enemies.
Even Lij Mikhael forsook his Etonian manners and joined in the delighted examination of the h.o.a.rd, pushing aside an old greybeard of seventy to take his place at the Vickers gun and triggering off a noisy squabble amongst the others in which Gareth diplomatically intervened.
"I say, Toffee, old chap. This isn"t all I have for you. Not by a long chalk. I"ve kept the plums for the last." And Jake helped him to gather up the robed and bearded group of excited old men and herd them gently away from the display of weapons and down the warehouse to the open tourers.
The motorcade, headed by Gareth, Jake and the Prince in the leading tourer, came b.u.mping down the dusty track through the mahogany forest and parked in the clearing in front of the candy-striped marquee that had taken the place of Jake"s weather-beaten bell tent.
The Royal Hotel had undertaken to cater for the occasion, despite Jake"s protests at the cost.
"Give them a bottle of Tusker each and open a tin of beans," he insisted, but Gareth had shaken his head sadly.
"Just because they are savages doesn"t mean that we have to behave like barbarians, old chap. Style. One has to have style that"s what life is all about. Style and timing. Fill them up with Charlie and then take them for a stroll down the garden path, what?" Now there were white-robed waiters with red sashes and little red pillbox fezes upon their heads. Under the marquee, long trestle-tables were laden with displays of choice food decorated sucking pig, heaped salvers of boiled scarlet reef lobster, a smoked salmon, imported apples and peaches from the Cape of Good Hope and case upon case, bucket upon bucket of champagne. Although Gareth had been swayed t by Jake"s pleas for economy sufficiently to order a Veuve Clicquot not of a selected vintage.
The Prince and his entourage disembarked to a salvo of champagne corks and the elderly courtiers crowed with delight. Quite by chance, Gareth had struck upon the Ethiopians" love of feasting and strong sense of hospitality.
Little that he could have done would have endeared him more to his guests.
"I say, this is very decent of you, my dear Swales" said the Prince. With his innate sense of courtesy, he had not used Gareth"s nickname since the first greeting. Gareth was grateful and when the gla.s.ses were filled he called for the first toast.
"His Majesty, Negusa Nagast, King of Kings, Emperor Baile Sela.s.sie, Lion of Judah." And they drained their gla.s.ses, which seemed to be the correct form, so Gareth and Jake imitated them, and then they fell upon the food, giving Gareth a chance to whisper to Jake, "Think up some more toasts we"ve got to get them filled up." But he needn"t have worried for the Prince came in with: "His Britannic Majesty, George V, King of England and Emperor of India." And no sooner were the gla.s.ses filled again than he bowed to Jake and lifted his gla.s.s.
"The President of the United States of America, Mr. Franklin D. Roosevelt." Not to be outdone, each of the courtiers shouted an unintelligible toast in Amharic, presumably to the Prince and his father and mother and aunts, uncles and nieces, and the gla.s.ses were upended. The waiters rushed back and forth to the steady report of champagne corks.
"The Governor of the British Colony of Tanganyika." Gareth lifted his gla.s.s, slurring slightly.
"And the Governor"s daughter," Jake murmured sardonically.
This provoked another round of toasts from the robed guests, and then it dawned on Jake and Gareth simultaneously that it was folly to try drinking level with men who had been bred and reared on the fiery tej of Ethiopia.
"How are you feeling?" muttered Gareth anxiously, squinting slightly to focus.
Beautiful, "Jake grinned at him beatifically.
"By G.o.d, these fellows know how to pack it away."
"Keep pounding them, Forty. You"ve got them on the run." With his empty gla.s.s he indicated the smiling but sober group of courtiers.
"I"d be grateful if you could refrain from using that name, old chap. Distasteful, what? Not in the best of style." Gareth slapped his shoulder with bonhomie and almost missed. A look of concern crossed his face. "How do I sound?"
"You sound like I feel. We"d better get out of here before they drink us flat on our backs."
"Oh G.o.d, there he goes again," Gareth muttered with alarm as the Prince raised his br.i.m.m.i.n.g gla.s.s and looked about him expectantly. "Wine with you, my dear Swales," he called as he caught Gareth"s eyes.
"Enchanted, I"m sure." Gareth had no choice but to acknowledge and toss off the contents of his gla.s.s before hurrying forward to intercept the waiter who darted in to recharge the Prince"s empty gla.s.s.
"Toffee, old sport, I do want you to see this little surprise I have for you." He grabbed the Prince"s drinking arm and prised the gla.s.s from his grip. "Come along, everybody. This way, chaps." Among the grey-bearded courtiers there was a decided reluctance to leave the marquee, and Jake had to a.s.sist Gareth. Both-of them spreading their arms and making shooing noises, they finally got them moving down the track through the forest which emerged a hundred yards farther on into an open glade the size of a polo field.
A stunned silence fell upon the party as they saw the row of four iron ladies, gleaming in their new coats of grey, with the heavily jacketed water-cooled barrels of the Vickers machine guns protruding from the ports and the rakish turrets emblazoned with the tricolour horizontal bars of the Ethiopian national colours green, yellow and red.
Like sleep-walkers, they allowed themselves to be led to the row of chairs under the umbrellas, and without removing their gaze from the war machines they sank into their seats.
Gareth stood in front of them like a schoolmaster, but swaying slightly.
"Gentlemen, we have here one of the most versatile armoured vehicles ever brought into service by any major military power And while he paused for the Prince to translate, he grinned triumphantly at Jake.
"Start them up, old son." As the first engine burst into life, the elderly courtiers came to their feet and applauded like the crowd at a prize fight.
"Fifteen hundred quid each," whispered Gareth, his eyes sparkling, "they"ll go fifteen hundred!" ij Mikhael had invited them to dine in his suite aboard the Dunnottar Castle, and over Jake"s Protests a short-order tailor had run up a pa.s.sable dinner jacket to fit Jake"s tall rangy frame.
"I look like I"m in fancy dress, "he objected.
"You look like a duke," Gareth contradicted. "It gives you a bit of style. Style, Jake me lad, always remember. Style! If you look like a tramp, people will treat you as one." Lij Mikhael Sagud wore a magnificently embroidered cloak in gold and scarlet and black, clasped at the throat with a dark red ruby the size of a ripe acorn, tieht-fitting velvet breeches and slippers embroidered with twenty-four carat gold wire. The dinner had been excellent and the Prince seemed in a mellow mood.