Leopard Hunts in Darkness - Smith Wilbur - Страница 75

Beside him Sally-Anne stood upright, gripping her own hands at waist level to prevent them trembling. Her face had a sick greenish hue, under a light sheen of sweat, and she kept turning her eyes towards the fireplace where the puppy's crushed carcass lay likea discarded toy.

At last Peter Fungabera pushed the papers aside and rocked back in his chair, tapping lightly on the table-top with his swagger, stick

"A hanging matter," he said, 4a capital offence for both you and Miss Jay---2

"it has nothing to do with her." Craig put a protective arm around her shoulders.

"Women's lower organs are less able to withstand the downward shock of the hangman's drop," Peter Fungabera remarked. "The effect can be quite bizarre or at least, so I am told." It conjured up an image that sickened Craig, saliva of nausea flooded his mouth. He swallowed it down and could not speak.

"Fortunately, it need not come to that. The choice will be yours." Peter rolled the swagger-stick lightly between his fingers. Craig found himself staring fixedly at Peter's hands.

The palms and insides of his long powerful fingers were a soft delicate pink.

J believe that you are the dupes of your imperialistic masters." Peter smiled again. "I'm going to let you go." Both their heads jerked up, and they watched his face.

"Yes, you look disbelieving, but I mean it. Personally I have grown quite fond of both of you. To have you hanged would give me no special pleasure. Both of you possess artistic talents which it would be wasteful to terminate, and from now on you will be unable to do any further harm." Still they were silent, beginning to hope, and yet fearful, sensing that it was all part of a cruel cat's game.

"I am prepared to make you an offer. If you make a clean breast of it, a full and unreserved confession, I will have YOU escorted to the border, with your travel documents and any readily portable possessions and items of value you choose. I will have you set free, to go and trouble me and my people no more." He waited, smiling, and the swagger, stick went tap tap tap on the table-top, likea dripping faucet. It distracted Craig. He found himself unable to think clearly. It had all Ell happened too swiftly. Peter Fungabera had kept him off balance, shifting and changing his attack. He had to have time to pull himself together, and to begin thinking clearly and logically again.

"A confession?" he blurted. What kind of confession?

One of your exhibitions before a people's court? A public humiliation?"

"No, I don't think we need go that far," Peter Fungabera assured him. "I will need only a written statement from you, an account of your crimes and the machinations of your masters. The confession will be properly witnessed, and then you will be escorted to the border and set at liberty. All very straightforward, simple and, if I may be allowed to say so, very civilized and humane."

"You will, of course, prepare my confession for me to sign?" Craig asked bitterly, and Peter Fungabera chuckled.

"How very perceptive of you." He selected one of the documents from the pile in front of him. "Here it is. You need only fill in the date and sign it." Even Craig was surprised at that.

J "You've had it typed already?" Nobody replied, and Captain Nbebi brought the document to him.

"Please read it, Mr. Mellow,"he invited.

There were three typewritten foolscap sheets, much of them filled with denunciations of his "imperialistic masters" and the hysterical cant of the extreme left. But in this mishmash, like plums in a stodgy pudding, were the hard facts of which Craig stood accused.

He read through it slowly, trying to force his numbed brain to function clearly, but it was all somehow dreamlike and unreal, seeming not really to affect him personally until he read the words that jerked him fully conscious again.

The words were so familiar, so well remembered, and they burned like concentrated acid into the core of his being.

J fully admit that by my actions I have proved myself to be an enemy of the state and the people of Zhnbabwe." It was the exact wording used in another document he had signed, and suddenly he was able to see the design behind it all.

"King's Lynn," he whispered, and he looked up from the typewritten confession at Peter Fungabera. "That's what it's all about. You are after King's Lynn!" There was silence, except for the tap of the swagger stick on the table-top. Peter Fungabera did not miss a beat with it, and he was still smiling.

"You had it all worke4ut from the very beginning. The surety for my loan you wrote in that clause." The numbness ahJ lethargy sloughed away, and Craig felt his anger rising again within him. He threw the confession on the floor. Captain Nbebi retrieved it, and stood with it held awkwardly in both hands. Craig found himself shaking with rage. He took a step forward towards the elegant figure seated before him, his hands reaching out involuntarily, but the tall Shana sergeant barred his way with the barrel of his rifle held across Craig's chest.

rill

"You bloody swine!" Craig hissed at Peter, and there was a little white froth of saliva on his lower lip. "I want the police, I want the protection of the law."

"Mr. Mellow," Peter Fungabera replied evenly, 'in Matabeleland, I am the law. It is my protection that you are being offered."

"I won't do it. I won't sign that piece of dung. I will go to hell first."

"That might be arranged," Peter Fungabera mused softly, and then persuasively, "I really do urge you to put aside these histrionics and bow to the inevitable. Sign the paper and we can dispense with any further nastiness." Crude words crowded to Craig's lips, and with an effort he resisted using them, not wanting to degrade himself in front of them.