The Comedians (30 page)

‘Come on board for a last drink.'

‘No. If I did I might want to stay. What would you do then?'

‘The captain would ask to see your exit-visa.'

‘That fellow would ask first,' I said, looking at the policeman who stood at the foot of the gangplank.

‘Oh, he is a good friend of mine.'

The purser mimicked the action of a man drinking and pointed towards me. The policeman grinned back. ‘You see – he has no objection.'

‘All the same,' I said, ‘I won't come up. I've mixed too many drinks tonight.' But yet I lingered at the plank.

‘And Mr Jones,' the purser asked, ‘what has become of Mr Jones?'

‘He's doing well.'

‘I liked him,' the purser said. For a man of such ambiguity, whom we all trusted so little, Jones had a knack of winning friendship.

‘He told me he was Libra – a birthday in October, so I looked him up.'

‘In Old Moore? What did you find?'

‘An artistic temperament. Ambitious. Successful in literary enterprises. But as for the future – I could find only an important Press conference by General de Gaulle and electrical storms in South Wales.'

‘He tells me he's about to make a fortune of a quarter of a million dollars.'

‘A literary enterprise?'

‘Hardly that. He invited me to be his partner.'

‘So you will be rich too?'

‘No. I refused. I used to have my dreams of making a fortune. Perhaps I'll be able to tell you one day about the travelling art-gallery, it was the most successful dream I ever had, but I had to get out quick, and so I came here and found my hotel. Do you think I'd give up that security?'

‘You think the hotel security?'

‘It's the nearest I've ever come to it.'

‘When Mr Jones is a rich man you will be sorry you did not give up that kind of security.'

‘Perhaps he'll lend me enough to carry on with my hotel until the tourists return.'

‘Yes. I think he is a generous man in his way. He gave me a very large tip, but it was in Congo currency and the bank wouldn't change it. We shall be here till tomorrow night at least. Bring Mr Jones to see us.'

The lightning began to play over the slopes of Pétionville: sometimes a blade quivered in the ground long enough to carve out of the dark the shape of a palm or the corner of a roof. The air was full of coming rain, and the low sound reminded me of voices chanting the responses at school. We said good night.

PART THREE

CHAPTER
1

I

I
FOUND
it hard to sleep. The lightning flashed on and off as regular as Papa Doc's publicity in the park, and only when the rain ceased for a while did some air filter through the mosquito-screens. I thought quite a lot about Jones's promised fortune. If I could really share it, would Martha leave her husband? But it was not money which held her, it was Angel. He would be happy enough, I imagined myself persuading her, if I pensioned him off with a weekly issue of puzzles and bourbon biscuits. I fell asleep and dreamt I was a boy kneeling at the communion-rail in the college chapel in Monte Carlo. The priest came down the row and placed in each mouth a bourbon biscuit, but when he came to me he passed me by. The communicants on either side came and went away, but I knelt obstinately on. Again the priest distributed the biscuits and left me out. I stood up then and walked sullenly away down the aisle which had become an immense aviary where parrots stood in ranks chained to their crosses. Someone called out sharply behind me, ‘Brown, Brown,' but I was not certain whether that was my name or not, for I didn't turn. ‘Brown.' This time I awoke and a voice came up to me from the veranda below my room.

I got out of bed and went to the window, but I could see nothing through the mosquito-screen. Footsteps shuffled below and a voice further off called urgently, ‘Brown,' under another window. I could hardly hear it through the holy mutter of the rain. I found my torch and went downstairs. In my office I picked up the only weapon handy, the brass coffin marked
R
.
I
.
P
. Then I unlocked the side-door and shone my torch to show that I was there. The light fell on the path leading to the bathing-pool. Presently round the corner of the house and into the circle of the light came Jones.

He was drenched with rain and his face was smeared with dirt. He carried a parcel under his coat to guard it from the rain. He said, ‘Turn out the light. Let me in quick.' He followed me into the office and took the parcel from under his wet jacket. It was the travelling cocktail-case. He laid it gently on my desk like a pet animal and stroked it down. He said, ‘Everything has gone. Finished.
Capot
in three columns.'

I put out a hand to turn on the light. ‘Don't do that,' he said, ‘they might see the light from the road.'

‘They can't,' I said and pressed the switch.

‘Old man, I'd rather if you don't mind . . . I feel better in the dark.' He turned out the light again. ‘What's that in your hand, old man?'

‘A coffin.'

He was breathing heavily – I could smell the gin. He said, ‘I've got to get out quick. Somehow.'

‘What happened?'

‘They've begun investigating. At midnight I had a call from Concasseur – I didn't even know the bloody telephone worked. It gave me a shock ringing like that suddenly by my ear. It had never rung before.'

‘I suppose they fixed up the telephone when they put the Poles in. You're living in a government rest-house for V.I.P.s.'

‘Very important pooves we called them in Imphal,' Jones said with the ghost of a laugh.

‘I could give you a drink if you let me put on the light.'

‘There isn't time, old man. I've got to get out. Concasseur was speaking from Miami. They've sent him to check up. He wasn't suspicious yet, only puzzled. But in the morning when they find I've skipped . . .'

‘Skipped where?'

‘Yes, that's the question, old man, that's the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.'

‘The
Medea
's in port.'

‘The very place . . .'

‘I'll have to put on some clothes.'

He followed me like a dog, leaving wet patches in his wake. I missed Mrs Smith's help and advice, for she had a high opinion of Jones. While I dressed – he had to allow me a little light for that – he ambled nervously from wall to wall, well away from the window.

‘I don't know what your game was,' I said, ‘but surely with a quarter of a million dollars at stake you could be certain that one day they'd investigate.'

‘Oh, I'd thought that one out. I'd have gone over to Miami with the investigator.'

‘But they'd have kept you here.'

‘Not if I'd left a partner behind. I hadn't realized time was so short – I thought I had a week or more at least – or I'd have tried to persuade you earlier.'

I stopped with one leg in my trousers and asked him with astonishment, ‘You're telling me just like that, that I was to be the fall guy?'

‘No, no, old man, you exaggerate. You can be dead sure I'd have tipped you off in time for you to get into the British Embassy. If it was ever necessary. But it wouldn't have been. The investigator would have cabled O.K. and taken his cut, and you would have joined us afterwards.'

‘How big a cut had you planned for
him
? I know it's only of academic interest now.'

‘I'd allowed for all that. What I offered you, old man, was net not gross. All yours.'

‘If I survived.'

‘One always survives, old man.' As he dried, his confidence returned. ‘I've had my setbacks before. I was just as near the
grand coup
– and the end – in Stanleyville.'

‘If your plan had anything to do with arms,' I said, ‘you've made a bad mistake. They've been stung before . . .'

‘How do you mean, stung?'

‘There was a man here last year who arranged half a million dollars' worth of arms for them, fully paid up in Miami. But the American authorities were tipped off, the arms were seized. The dollars, of course, stayed in the agent's pocket. Nobody knew how many real arms there had ever been. They wouldn't be taken for the same ride twice. You should have done more homework before you came here.'

‘My scheme was not exactly that. In fact there were no arms at all. I don't look like a man with that much capital, do I?'

‘Where did that introduction of yours come from?'

‘From a typewriter. Like most introductions. But you are right about the homework. I put the wrong name on the letter. I talked myself out of that one though.'

‘I'm ready to go.' I looked at him where he fidgeted in a corner with a light flex: the brown eyes, the not quite trim officer's moustache: the grey indifferent skin. ‘I don't know why I'm running this risk for you. A fall guy again . . .'

I took the car out on the road with the lights off, and we cruised slowly down towards the city. Jones crouched low and whistled to keep his courage up. I think the tune dated from 1940 – ‘The Wednesday after the war'. Just before the roadblock I switched the lights on. There was a chance the militiaman was asleep, but he wasn't.

‘Did you pass here tonight?' I asked.

‘No. I made a detour through a couple of gardens.'

‘Well, there's no avoiding him now.'

But he was too sleepy to be troublesome: he limped across the road and raised the barrier. His big toe was bound up in a dirty bandage and his backside showed through a hole in his grey-flannel trousers. He didn't bother to search us for arms. We drove on down, past the turning to Martha's, past the British Embassy. I slowed down there: all seemed quiet enough – the Tontons Macoute would surely have put guards at the gate if they had known of Jones's escape. I said, ‘What about going in there? You'll be safe enough.'

‘I'd rather not, old man. I've been a bother to them before, and they won't exactly welcome me.'

‘You'd have a worse welcome from Papa Doc. This is your great chance.'

‘There are reasons, old man . . .' He paused, and I thought he was going at last to confide in me, but, ‘Oh God,' he said, ‘I've forgotten my cocktail-case. I left it in your office. On the desk.'

‘Is it so important?'

‘I love that case, old man. It's been with me everywhere. It's my luck.'

‘I'll bring it to you tomorrow if it's so important to you. You want to try the
Medea
then?'

‘If there's a snag we can always come back here as a last resort.' He tried out another tune – I think it was ‘A nightingale sang' – but stuck. ‘To think after all we've been through together that I'd leave it . . .'

‘Is it the only bet you ever won?'

‘Bet? What do you mean, bet?'

‘You told me you won it in a bet.'

‘Did I?' He brooded awhile. ‘Old man, you're running a big risk for me, and I'll be straight with you. That wasn't exactly the truth. I pinched it.'

‘And Burma – was that not the truth either.'

‘Oh, I was in Burma all right. I promise that.'

‘You pinched it from Asprey's?'

‘Not with my hands, of course.'

‘With your wits again?'

‘I was working at the time. Something in the city. I used one of the company's cheques, but I signed my own name. I wasn't going to be sent down for forgery. It was just a temporary loan. You know it was love at first sight when I saw that case and I remembered the brigadier's.'

‘It wasn't with you in Burma then?'

‘I was romancing a bit there. But I did have it with me in the Congo.'

I left the car by the Columbus statue – the police must have been accustomed to seeing my car there at night, though not alone, and I went ahead of Jones to reconnoitre. It was easier than I thought. For some reason the policeman was no longer by the gangplank, which had been kept down for latecomers from Mère Catherine's: perhaps he had a beat, perhaps he'd gone behind the wall to urinate. One of the crew was on guard at the top, but seeing our white faces he let us go by.

We went up to the top deck and Jones's spirits rose – he had hardly uttered a sound since his confession. As he passed the saloon door he said, ‘Remember the concert? That was a night, wasn't it? Remember Baxter and his whistle? “St Paul's will stand, London will stand.” He was too good to be true, old man.'

‘He isn't true any more. He's dead.'

‘Poor bugger. That makes him sort of respectable, doesn't it?' he added with a kind of yearning.

We climbed the ladder to the captain's cabin. I did not relish the interview, for I remembered his attitude to Jones after he had received the wireless inquiry from Philadelphia. Everything had gone easily up till now, but I had small hope that our luck would last. I rapped on the door and with hardly an interval the captain's voice came, hoarse and authoritative, bidding me enter.

At least I had not woken him from sleep. He was propped up in his berth wearing a white cotton nightshirt, and he had put on very thick reading-glasses which made his eyes look like broken chips of quartz. He held a book tilted below the reading-lamp, and I saw it was one of Simenon's novels, and this encouraged me a little – it seemed to be a sign that he had human interests.

‘Mr Brown,' he exclaimed in surprise, like an old lady disturbed in her hotel room, and like an old lady his left hand went instinctively to the neckline of his nightshirt.