Shout at the Devil - Smith Wilbur - Страница 2

Abandoning the mental exercise that was already giving him a slight headache, Sebastian stood up from the bed and, with the skirt of his nightshirt flapping around his calves, began his third minute search of the hotel room.

Although the purse had been under his mattress when he went to sleep the preceding evening, this time Sebastian emptied the water jug and peered into it hopefully. He unpacked his valise and shook out each shirt. He crawled under the bed, lifted the coconut matting and probed every hole in the rotten flooring before giving way to despair.

Shaved, the bed-bug bites on his person anointed with saliva, and dressed in the grey three-piece suit which was showing signs of travel fatigue, he brushed his derby hat and placed it carefully over his curls, picked up his cane in one hand, and lugging his valise in the other, he went down the stairs into the hot noisy lobby of the Hotel Royal.

"I say," he greeted the little Arab at the desk with the most cheerful smile he could muster. (I say, I seem to have lost my money."

A silence fell upon the room. The waiters carrying trays out to the hotel veranda slowed and stopped, heads turned towards Sebastian with the same hostile curiosity as if he had announced that he was suffering from a mild attack of leprosy.

"Stolen, I should imagine," Sebastian went on, grinning.

"Nasty bit of luck, really."

The silence exploded as the bead curtains from the office were thrown open and the Hindu proprietor erupted into the room with a loud cry of, "Mr. Oldsmith, what about your bill?"

"Oh, the bill. Yes, well, let's not get excited. I mean, it won't help, now, will it?"

And the proprietor proceeded to become very excited indeed. His cries of anguish and indignation carried to the veranda where a dozen persons were already beginning the daily fight against heat and thirst. They crowded into the lobby to watch with interest.

Ten days you owe. Nearly one hundred rupees."

"Yes, it's jolly unfortunate, I know." Sebastian was grinning desperately, when a new voice added itself to the uproar.

"Now just hold on a shake." Together Sebastian and the Hindu turned to the big red-faced, middle-aged man with the pleasantly mixed American and Irish accent. "Did I hear you called Mr. Oldsmith?"

"That is correct, sir. Sebastian knew instinctively that here was an ally.

"An unusual name. You wouldn't be related to Mister Francis Oldsmith, wool merchant of Liverpool, England?"

Flynn O'Flynn enquired politely. He had perused Sebastian's letters of introduction passed on to him by Rachid El Keb.

"Good Lord!" Sebastian cried with joy. "Do you know my Pater?"

"Do I know Francis Oldsmith?" Flynn laughed easily, and then checked himself His acquaintance was limited to the letterheads. "Well, I don't exactly know him person to person, you understand, but I think I can say I know of him.

Used to be in the wool business myself once. "Flynn turned genially to the hotel proprietor and breathed on him a mixture of gin fumes and good-fellowship. "One hundred rupees was the sum you mentioned."

"That's the sum, Mr. O'Flynn." The proprietor was easily soothed.

"Mr. Oldsmith and I will be having a drink on the veranda. You can bring the receipt to us there." Flynn placed two sovereigns on the counter; sovereigns that had so recently reposed beneath Sebastian's mattress.

With his boots propped on the low veranda wall, Sebastian regarded the harbour over the rim of his glass. Sebastian was not a drinking man but in view of Flynn O'Flynn's guardianship he could not be churlish and refuse hospitality.

The number of craft in the bay suddenly multiplied miraculously before his eyes. Where a moment before one stubby little dhow had been tacking in through the entrance, there were now three identical boats sailing in formation. Sebastian closed one eye and by focusing determinedly, he reduced the three back to one. Mildly elated with his success, he turned his attention to his new friend and business partner who had pressed such large quantities of gin upon him.

"Mr. O'Flynn," he said with deliberation, slurring the words slightly.

"Forget that mister, Bassie, call me Flynn. just plain Flynn, the same as in gin."

"Flynn," said Sebastian. "There isn't anything well, there isn't anything funny about this?"

"How do you mean funny, boy?"

"I mean" and Sebastian blushed slightly. "There isn't anything illegal, is there?"

"Bassie." Flynn shook his head sorrowfully. "What do you take me for, Bassie? You think I'm a crook or something, boy?"

oh, no, of course not, Flynn," and Sebastian blushed a shade deeper. "I just thought well, all these elephants we're going to shoot. They must belong to somebody. Aren't they German elephants?"

"Bassie, I want to show you something." Flynn set down his glass and groping in the inside pocket of his wilted tropical suit, he produced an envelope. "Read that, boy!"

The address at the head of the sheet of cheap notepaper was "The Kaiserh of Berlin. Dated June 10, 191"-, and the body of the letter read:

Dear Mr. Flynn O'Flynn, I am worried about all those elephants down in the Rufiji basin eating up all the grass and smashing up all the trees and things, so if you've got time, would you go down there and shoot some of them as they're eating up all the grass and smashing up all the trees and things.