past the few Africans watching from the shore, Sanders climbed on to the pier and ran towards Ventress. Hurt by the explosion, the white-suited man had not seen the pale outline of a large motor cruiser waiting out on the river some twenty yards from the end of the pier. Standing at the helm on the bridge, from where he had watched the pursuit across the catwalks, was a tall broad-shouldered man in a dark suit, his long face partly hidden behind the white shaft of the radio mast. On the deck below him was what appeared to be a yacht club starting cannon, its squat barrel gleaming in the light. As the burning motor-boat drifted past the end of the pier the flames subsided, and the cruiser and its owner sank into the darkness.
Half-way along the pier Sanders saw the crop-headed mulatto swing down from the catwalk in front of him. He had thrown away the truncheon, and a thin silver blade flickered in his huge hand. He crept up behind Ventress, who sat on the edge of the pier, watching the burning motor-boat move into the shallows.
‘Ventress!’ Running hard, Sanders caught up with the mulatto, and in his rush knocked the man off balance. Recovering with the speed of a snake, the mulatto lunged round and drove his shaved head at Sanders, hitting him in the chest. He bent down to retrieve his knife, white eyes swinging from Ventress to the doctor and back again.
A hundred yards along the shore a signal flare rose into the air over the harbour. Its muffled light burned with a dull glow. A siren began to wail, its noise mounting over the warehouses. A police truck stopped at the foot of the next pier, and its headlights illuminated the last of the crystalline jewels now being hidden away beneath the awnings. The burning motor-boat had drifted against one of the catwalk supports, and the tar-streaked wood had caught fire, the flames flaring along the dry timbers.
Sanders lunged with one foot at the mulatto, then wrenched at a half-loose timber sticking from the pier. The mulatto peered at the police truck. He seized the knife, then ran straight past Sanders along the pier and dived down among the boats on the far side.
‘Ventress …?’ Sanders knelt beside him, and brushed at the cinders that had burned themselves into the fabric of the man’s suit. ‘Can you walk? The police are here.’
Ventress stood up, his eyes clearing. Behind the beard, his small face seemed completely closed. He appeared to have no idea what had happened, and held on to Sanders’s arm like an old man.
Behind them, out on the river, there was a muted roar, and white water broke behind the stern of the waiting cruiser. As it moved away Ventress came to life. Still holding Sanders’s arm, but this time guiding him, he began to run along the pier.
‘Head down, Doctor! We can’t wait here!’
His head swivelled from left to right as he watched the burning catwalk, now dividing itself as it collapsed into the water. When they reached the bank and moved behind the small crowd standing on the slope he turned to Sanders: ‘My thanks, Doctor. I was almost out of time myself there.’
Before Sanders could reply, Ventress darted off among the stacks of gasoline drums in the entrance to one of the warehouses. Sanders followed him, and saw Ventress disappear behind the abandoned motor-car.
In the harbour the fires had burned themselves out. The charred sections of the catwalk steamed and spat in the dark air. The police moved along the other catwalks with their machetes, cutting them one by one into the water, the stallholders below shouting as they paddled their boats out of the way.
Sanders walked back to his hotel, avoiding the arcades. Disturbed from their sleep, the mendicants sat up in their cardboard wrappings and wheedled at him as he went past, their eyes shining from the dark columns.
Louise had returned to her room. Switching off the light, Sanders sat down in the chair by the window. The last traces of Louise’s scent dissolved in the air as he watched the dawn lift over the distant hills of Mont Royal, illuminating the serpentine course of the river as if revealing a secret pathway.
THE next morning the body of a drowned man was taken from the river at Port Matarre. Shortly after ten o’clock Dr. Sanders and Louise Peret walked down to the harbour by the native market in the hope of hiring one of the boatmen to take them up-river to Mont Royal. The harbour was almost empty, and most of the boats had moved across the river to the settlements on the far bank. The wrecked catwalks lay in the water like the skeletons of half-drowned lizards, one or two of the fishermen poking among them.
The market was quiet, either as a result of the incident the previous night or because Father Balthus’s scene with the jewelled cross had dissuaded the owners of the curio stalls from putting in an appearance.
Despite the compacted glitter of the forest during the night, by day the jungle had become dark and sombre again, as if the foliage were recharging itself from the sun. This pervading sense of unease convinced Sanders of the need to leave for Mont Royal with Louise as soon as possible. As they walked along he watched for any signs of the mulatto and his two assistants. However, from the scale of the attack upon Ventress – without doubt the armed motor-cruiser and its watching helmsman had played some part in the attempted murder – Sanders assumed that the would-be assassins were by now a safe distance from the police.
During the short walk from the hotel Sanders had half-expected to hear Ventress whisper to him from the shadows within the arcade, but there had been no signs of him in the town. However improbable, the unrelieved heaviness of the light over Port Matarre convinced Sanders that the white-suited figure had already left.
To Louise he pointed out the jumble of wrecked catwalks and the charred hulk of the motor-boat lying in the shallows, and described the attack by the mulatto and his men.
‘Perhaps he was trying to steal some jewellery from the boats,’ Louise suggested. ‘They may have been defending themselves.’
‘No, more than that – this mulatto was really after Ventress. If the police hadn’t arrived we’d both have ended face down in the river.’
Grimacing to herself, Louise took his arm, as if barely convinced of Sanders’s physical identity in the nexus of uncertainty at Port Matarre. ‘But why should anyone attack him?’
‘I’ve no idea – you didn’t find anything out about Ventress?’
‘No, I was following you most of the time. I haven’t even seen this small man with a beard. You make him sound very sinister.’
Sanders laughed at this. Holding her shoulders for a few steps, he said: ‘My dear Louise, you have a Bluebeard complex – like all women. As a matter of fact, Ventress isn’t in the least sinister. On the contrary, he’s rather naive and vulnerable …’
‘Like Bluebeard, I suppose?’
‘Well, not quite. But the way he talks in riddles all the time – it’s as if he’s frightened of revealing himself. I’d say he knew something about this crystallizing process.’
‘But why shouldn’t he tell you directly? How could it have any bearing on his own situation?’
Sanders paused, glancing down at the sun-glasses which Louise still
