Operation Nassau (8 page)

‘I am employed in voiceless approbation,’ I said.

It is not that I object to singing in public. The carbon dioxide output of a resting adult is however 200 ml. a minute and I preferred not to add to my intake.

Silence fell. The patting fingers began the last childish tune. From behind me, quite clearly, a sexless whisper came to my ears. ‘Don’t do it again,’ said the murmur, into the silence. ‘Do you hear, Doctor? Just don’t do it again.’

Before the first phrase was half spoken, Johnson had swung round in his seat, and I was not far behind him. I will not pretend that my cardiac cycle remained an unaltered eight-tenths of a second but I remained outwardly calm even while I scanned the dim ranks of intent faces, all watching the drummer. No one looked at us. No one moved. Stare as one might into the darkness from which the whisper was coming, it was impossible to distinguish the speaker. And so close were the tables that to rise and struggle towards it would do nothing but make us conspicuous. Johnson said in a murmur, ‘It’s no good. Was that the same voice?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. Our companions had broken into fresh song, and I could see the trumpets lifting again. No one else seemed to have heard. ‘You can’t identify whispers.’

‘Why are they trying to frighten you?’ They had switched on all the lights, but with his back to the stage, Johnson’s glasses were black. ‘

I didn’t answer, but I thought about it as the solo finished in a spasm of activity and the band, wildly applauded, gave way to the limbo dancer, a handsome Indian in tight floral trousers, who retired face upwards under a low cotton-wool bar, a flaming Coke bottle upright on his brow, and one in each hand. Since he had been trained to it from childhood, he cleared the bar easily with a flick of the pelvis, the flame from the bottle setting fire to the bar as he did so, with spectacular results. Denise, who had clearly viewed it all too often, had allowed her attention to wander, but I saw that Krishtof Bey was quite rapt, and Sergeant Trotter was in a state of near-hypnotic trauma. Wallace Brady grinned, and I looked away quickly.

They were all there, my suspects, and had been there since it started. Who then, had whispered?

‘Look at that,’ said Sergeant Trotter, in a reverent whisper.

They had lowered the bar to lie across the necks of two bottles. The spiked flames ran like bunting along the lumpy cotton-wool swathing, glazed and sodden like coconut fondant. To get under this time, the performer had to fold his knees under him, the sides of his feet wide apart, his hands off the ground. I began to work out the areas of grossest muscular strain. He lit a cigarette from the bar as his head went under.

The fire dancer came on. ‘Perhaps they don’t realize,’ said Johnson, topping up the champagne in Trotter’s half-empty glass, ‘what an excellent automatic nervous system you possess.’

The fire dancer was a young Negress in a sequinned brassiere and a minimal triangle to which an ostrich feather tail had been sewn. In this exposed condition she danced over and around two shallow bowls filled with flaming cotton wool, one of which she later placed on her head. Presently, at the climax of her dance round the other, she jumped forward and tramped out the flame with bare feet.

I have treated blisters on these performers often enough to know that the risks they run for applause and financial reward are quite genuine. A skilled fire dancer, however, knows to the thousandth part of a second when it is vital to demit. I had no apprehension for the girl, although some for her audience, as the flames from the bowl on her head swept the low rafters. Then she laid this down, and, lighting from it two bud-headed spools, she proceeded to dance to Leviticus’s drumming, a stick of flame in each hand.

The lights had gone out again. Beside me, amid the prevalent wheezings of alcoholic excitement, I was aware of Johnson’s still glasses, and of the fact that for the last few minutes he had been watching not the stage, but the audience. The splanchnic components of my extolled nervous system made a brief attempt to escape my control. The girl came down the steps from the stage and leaning forward, thrust her torch into the face of the nearest man. He recoiled, his womenfolk shrieking with scorn and excitement, and a bearded young fellow opposite, catching the girl’s eye, turned towards her and opened his mouth. He allowed her to place the flame inside his lips, his mouth straining open, and kept it open until she removed it. I could see some blackened crumbs of cotton wool, still glowing red, lying behind the base of his teeth. He grinned, his jaws rigid, in the ensuing laughter and applause, but hesitated for some time, I noticed, to close his mouth in the customary way, or even to swallow. The dancer moved on.

It is, I suppose, a test of crude valour which the Bahamian in his new freedom finds some amusement in applying to his white fellow mortals. At any rate, it was instructive to see which guests flinched and turned aside, which pressed forward eagerly to display their courage and which, with resignation, opened their mouths and allowed the girl, swaying to the rattle and play of the drums, to thrust the flaming mass into their throats.

Sergeant Trotter was one of the fervent adherents. As the girl approached closer and closer he half rose from his seat, his eyeballs red in the flame, his whole attention fixed on attracting her. Hence he had his back to the red-waistcoated waiter bringing, at last, the jug of water for Krishtof Bey’s whisky.

The girl moved, the waiter leaned forward and Sergeant Trotter jumped to his feet at one and the same moment. And the jug of water, tilting, missed its target completely and emptied itself with a gush over Johnson’s jacket and shirt.

The waiter exclaimed. Krishtof Bey got up quickly and Lady Edgecombe, pushing her chair back, anxiously patted the damp crochet work of her dress. Johnson himself, his expression rueful, had just gripped the cloth of his jacket to shake off the water when the fire dancer swerved round his shoulders and stood rotating her pelvis, holding high the two torches.

Wallace Brady grinned at her, and nodded at Johnson. ‘Try him: he’s wet enough,’ he remarked.

The girl looked at Johnson. Krishtof Bey smiled. Trotter, still standing, lifted his hand, and then, swallowing his disappointment, sat down. The girl smiled. She swayed forward and whirled the flame of the torch closer and closer, the red and blue light flashing in Johnson’s bifocals. The waiter picked up the jug and moved off. Krishtof Bey and the others sat down.

I was looking at the splashes on the red tablecloth. As I looked, they vanished.

I think Johnson saw it, too. As the fire dancer, undulating, brought the torch lower, close to his face, he suddenly moved. There was a cackle of laughter. The dancer, her expression derisive, made the movement again. This time he not only dodged, he collided with Lady Edgecombe, and sent her chair flying. She gasped. Krishtof Bey grinned. The laughter became widespread and raucous. The girl, smiling, bent and he shrank back: the torch, teasing, darted after him.

The tip of the flame, held like a pencil, toyed with one soaked edge of his jacket.

With a tearing hiss the sodden cloth burst into fire.

My jug of fruit squash hit him in a tenth of a second, and with my other hand I already had a grip of the ice bucket. It stopped the fire reaching his hair, although it was still licking the skirts of the jacket when the first squeals started up. Johnson himself had it half peeled off by then, beating out the lower flames with a napkin: but the tablecloth flared and I could see the roof catching next.

At any rate, I have seen too many first-degree thigh burns to hesitate. I got up, jerked Johnson’s chair back and said, ‘Tip it!’ just as I did the same for Lady Edgecombe. Someone obliged, and the whole table with its contents fell towards us with a crash, putting out the fire like a lid.

Johnson’s jacket was off, and he had the blazing cloth almost smothered already. It was not before time. His shirt was netted with odd blackened holes, and there was a strong smell of singed flesh and material.

The band, unprovided with Victorian fortitude, had allowed the instruments to sag from their faces: Johnson paused for the first time in an extremely rapid series of movements and called, tentatively, ‘Nearer My God, to Thee?’ The surging movement up from chairs slackened, shamefacedly, and Lady Edgecombe showed signs of projecting a hysterical outburst. The Turkish dancer went to her side just as Wallace Brady, crunching round the ruins of glassware to Johnson, said, ‘My God! Are you all right?’

Johnson was already edging out of the limelight, his bifocals glinting emptily over the room. ‘Thanks to Dr MacRannoch,’ he said.

‘The jug,’ someone said. Sergeant Trotter, I saw.

‘Yes,’ said Johnson, looking at him.

‘The waiter,’ said Trotter.

‘I wondered.’ said Johnson.

‘I’m sure.’ said Trotter. ‘He went that way.’ And with a wriggle, he began to back out through the crowd.

Lady Edgecombe gave a sob. I gave a quick look at her and deduced that there was nothing there that a sharp slap from a layman wouldn’t cure. I let Johnson thrust past me and followed.

The door to one side of the bar led straight into the street. It took us several minutes to reach it through an assault-course of chairs, tables, fellow Englishmen, claustrophobics and drunks. The waiter, fortunately, had also been slowed. At least, when Trotter, Johnson and I emerged into the neon-lit darkness we could still hear, quite plainly, the sharp distant crack of feet running quickly. They were running, I was interested to discover, along past Government House, and in the general direction of the hospital.

‘That’s him,’ said Trotter, breathing lightly. He was wearing, I saw in the lurid gloom, a smartly-cut grey suit with a bright orange cummerbund. ‘I saw him make for the exit . . Mr Johnson, the lady oughtn’t to be here.’

The glasses flashed briefly at me. ‘What do you say? You know Nassau.’

I set off running without wasting time or breath on an answer. I knew Nassau. The waiter had to be caught. The liquid in that water-jug had been high proof alcohol. It is men who turn a simple exercise in the science of reasoning into an Offenbach operetta.

We ran well, as it appeared. Sergeant Trotter on the balls of his feet like the P.T. instructor he most likely was. Johnson with the unexpected bounds of a gun dog. Since golf keeps me in good muscular trim I found little hardship in following. In this way we had gained a little before long on the fugitive: he did not appear to have the sense to find a hiding-place and simply keep quiet. Or perhaps he had one particular refuge in mind. The distant footsteps, labouring, turned a corner and began to run up the steep hill which passes the Outpatients’ and Casualty Entrance to the United Commonwealth Hospital.

We ran past it. We ran past the pension offices and up the incline, our breathing no longer so silent; and then Trotter suddenly said, ‘There he is!’

The steep road we were climbing runs into a cutting of grey pitted rock, rising higher and higher to right and to left of the path, which at night is perfectly dark.

It was not, however, dark over our heads. Between the lips of the gorge a blaze of stars could be seen, and another light: a large unseen beam, like that of a lighthouse, which swept the sky at ten-second intervals. It came from the Fort Fincastle water-tower which was up there, perched out of sight beyond the right-hand-side cliff. To reach the water-tower and the old fort which lay beside it, one travelled between the high walls to the end of the gorge, which was blocked by a steep range of steps known as the Queen’s Staircase. Anciently built, it is said, by slave labour, these sixty-six steps provide a formidable climb and are a popular subject for amateur Kodaks in daytime. In further pursuit of the picturesque, the margin between the staircase and the left-hand canyon wall has been filled with a many-staged waterfall which accompanies the steps from bottom to top in a series of platforms and jets. A wall divides the steps from the cascade.

We were looking at that, when the reflected beam from the water-tower, sweeping round, caught a movement inside that dark gorge. And as we saw it and hurried to follow, the figure vanished, and in a moment even the sound of his footsteps had stopped.

We ran into the shadows and halted. Ahead, black against the dark blue sky, reared the staircase, with the water slope silent beside it: one cannot photograph waterfalls in the dark. On either side, the cliffs rose, soft and scratched: broken by roots and cacti and feathery plants, with here and there a shelf of debris, I remembered, left by some fall. Not a hard task for an agile man to scramble up; although no one was attempting it now: the smallest sound would have been audible, there where we stood.

He was waiting, therefore. For what? For us to begin noisily searching, there in the dark? For us to tire and walk off, leaving him to climb those steps unhindered? For the steps must be what he was making for. And he had had no time to climb them: of that I was quite sure.

‘Oh, well,’ said Johnson, and put his hand in his pocket. ‘Here’s to my rust-proof drip-dry titanium vest, and all who sail in her.’ And the beam of a pocket torch sprang out and swept the cliffside.

There was a bang, rocketing about between the cliff walls, and a tinkle of glass. The light went out, smashed by a bullet. ‘It’s all right,’ said Johnson’s voice peacefully from another direction. ‘I wasn’t holding it. But now we know where our fellow is . . .’

‘On the waterfall slope,’ Trotter said. Johnson who was running already towards the place of the gunflash, didn’t answer, and we both took to our heels in his wake. The gun fired again, and we could hear the howl of the shot, and the clatter of chippings from the rock face. Johnson said curtly, ‘Get behind those bushes, and down.”

I saw him walk slowly forward. Ahead, the rising slopes of the dry waterfall gave nothing away. Even the sweeping light from the tower barely touched its dark corners and ledges, masked with ferns and boulders. Nothing moved. Johnson said, raising his voice, ‘We know you are here, and we have guns too. There is nothing at all to prevent one of us going back for the police while the others stay and keep you cornered till they come. Throw your gun down and climb out with your hands up. You know what you’re in for if you damage us with that thing.’