you there, only—well, this is my territory. I don’t belong on the high-class outskirts of Durnford where you and the lady live.”
“I wish to heaven we didn’t.” Rita commented, sighing, and she looked away to avoid her husband’s coldly reproving glance. Moon’s gaze strayed to her. He liked her youthful figure in the white costume and blouse. He liked her aloof expression, blonde hair, and independent chin. He rarely saw a white woman in the course of his erratic career, and when one as good as this turned up—
“At least tell me where you got the map,” Perrivale suggested. “I’m not financing anything so big as a safari right across the interior without knowing all the details.”
Moon considered this, fingering his underlip gently, his sloe-black eyes on Rita. Then as she caught him out in gazing he said slowly:
“How I got the map is my business, Mr. Perrivale. All I will tell you is that I got it from a Bushongo who had been in a recent safari. He found it amidst a lot of other things in a wallet lying in the clean-picked bones of a skeleton. According to the other things in the wallet, the map was made twenty years ago. In that wallet, what bit could be read of various things like insurance certificates, letters, airport passes, and so on, everything was dated 1932. So, time passes on.”
“And this Bushongo came straight to you?”
“All those who matter do so.” Moon aimed a level glance. “I’m a trader, Mr. Perrivale. It pays me to keep in with the black boys. I get lots of tips that way.”
“And how do you know this map of yours is genuine?”
“Because Mark Hardnell was not the kind of man to go into the bush without good reason. He was looking for Akada, maybe for the same reason that I am now hoping to look for it.”
“Hardnell?” Perrivale scratched his receding chin. “Mmmm—yes, heard of him, though I was I was only a boy at that time. He was a rather crazy, drunken roamer well known in Zanzibar, wasn’t he? Had a wife, I think, who went everywhere with him.”
“Dunno,” Moon said. “But I do know any map found on him must have a genuine purpose. He seemed to have got partly on the way to his objective, too, judging from where that Bushongo found the skeleton. Don’t know what happened. Savage tribe, maybe.”
Silence again, Perrivale weighing matters up. Moon poured out some more whiskey and swallowed it quickly. Rita regarded him with that distant look in her grey eyes.
“Right across the interior, eh?” Perrivale mused.
“That’s it. Across Kenya Colony into the Uganda Country, then into the Belgium Congo region. After that—” Moon checked himself with a grin. “Nearly forgot,” he apologised. “That information has to be paid for, of course.”
“There are more ways of getting a map, Moon, than paying for it,” Perrivale reminded him, with an unpleasant smile.
The sloe-black eyes pinned him. Moon’s voice was dead level: “Don’t get any notions like that, Mr. Perrivale. I know men—and women too—get wiped out like flies around here for various reasons, and there’s rarely an explanation, but that’s because they’re careless. I’m not careless. I know how to look after myself.”
Perrivale nodded. “I can believe it,” he said dryly. “And this safari you’re talking about won’t be any ordinary little thing, not to cover that distance. It’s over fifteen hundred miles to the Belgian Congo from here.”
“I know,” Moon responded calmly. “That’s why I can’t afford it. It’s also a good distance to where Akada stands—but surely it’s worth it?” He leaned on the table, intent and earnest. “In Akada, according to what I know from the map and other details, there must be ivory and gold worth several millions sterling, if it can only be moved. That’s the point. Moving it even when we get there. I can’t afford that kind of help. You can.”
“It’ll need a partially mechanised safari,” Perrivale said, and Moon nodded.
“It will, until we get so deep in the forest we can’t use such things. After that we’ll want the biggest army of tough natives we can find to do the carrying—Damnit man, it’s surely worth fifty-fifty?”
“It’s worth it—if I come with you.”
Moon rubbed his mouth and mused; then Perrivale added: “I want to be sure after financing such an expedition that I get a good return. Your reputation, Moon, isn’t exactly highlighted for honesty!”
“Nope—I wrangle where I can,” Moon grinned. “But in this case I’ve no objection if you want to come.”
His eyes strayed to Rita again. “Better bring your wife, too,” he added. “Unless you trust leaving her behind.”
“Meaning what?” Perrivale demanded, his eyes sharp.
“Meaning a pretty woman with her kind of shape is in danger from every damned louse once her husband isn’t around.”
“The men aren’t like that in our section of Port Durnford!”
“They’re like that anywhere, Mr. Perrivale. There’s more scum in Durnford than you’d think—and as you’d find out if you left your wife behind.” Moon shrugged. “Just a suggestion. I’m looking out for your interests.”
“Kind of you,” Perrivale sneered. “She comes anyway. She always does wherever I go. I agree with you that a pretty woman isn’t safe alone.”
Moon grinned comfortably, and thought of the thousand miles of journey ahead when necessity would throw him in constant contact with Rita Perrivale. It would make the journey really pleasurable.
“It’s settled then,” Perrivale said, getting to his feet. “I’ll make arrangements for the safari. It will start only when you produce your map. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Moon responded, rising. “I’ll be around this dump for some days yet, waiting for news from you. I’m ready whenever you are.”
Perrivale shook hands and then jerked his head in a completely unmannerly fashion to Rita. She withdrew her hand from Moon’s and felt she wanted to smear her palm down the side of her white skirt. She had a sense of feeling defiled.
Moon watched the two disappear beyond the bead curtains, then he sat down again and dragged out a cheroot, He lighted it, grinned to himself, then ordered more whiskey.
“Such a lot of things can happen in the interior,” he told the native waiter, thinking out loud.
“Yes, bwana,” the waiter agreed and wondered vaguely what the hell the trader was talking about.
* * * *
A safari, sadly depleted from its original strength, made its way slowly along the jungle trail, through the midst of the ugly baobab trees, past mushrooms as large as umbrellas, close by flowers issuing an intoxicating perfume and as viciously active as a steel lash if one came too near, And in all directions were the screams of parrots, the chattering of monkeys, the distant roaring of a challenged lion, and the eternal tsetse-flies hovering in clouds, particularly in the cooler spots and above the eedoo glades.
It was the African afternoon—blazing
