All right?’
‘Will I be able to go to Mont Royal?’ Sanders asked. ‘The army hasn’t closed off the area?’
‘No …’ the captain insisted. ‘You are quite free.’ He gestured with his hands, enclosing little parcels of air. ‘Just small areas, you see. It’s not dangerous, your friends are all right. We don’t want people rushing there, trying to make trouble.’
At the door, Sanders asked: ‘How long has this been going on?’ He pointed to the window. ‘The forest is very dark here.’
The captain scratched his forehead. For a moment he looked tired and withdrawn. ‘About one year. Longer, perhaps. At first no one bothered …’
ON the steps outside, Dr. Sanders saw the young Frenchwoman who had taken lunch at the hotel. She carried a business-like handbag, and wore a pair of dark glasses that failed to disguise the inquisitive look in her intelligent face. She watched Sanders as he walked past her.
‘Any news?’
Sanders stopped. ‘What about?’
‘The emergency?’
‘Is that what they call it? You’re luckier than me. I haven’t heard that term.’
The young woman brushed this aside. She eyed Sanders up and down, as if unsure who he might be. ‘You can call it what you like,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘If it isn’t an emergency now it soon will be.’ She came over to Sanders, lowering her voice. ‘Do you want to go to Mont Royal, Doctor?’
Sanders began to walk off, the young woman following him. ‘Are you a police spy?’ he asked. ‘Or running an underground bus service? Or both, perhaps?’
‘Neither. Listen.’ She stopped him when they had crossed the road to the first of the curio shops that ran down to the jetties between the warehouses. She took off her sun-glasses and gave him a frank smile. ‘I’m sorry to pry – the clerk at the hotel told me who you were – but I’m stuck here myself and I thought you might know something. I’ve been in Port Matarre since the last boat.’
‘I can believe it.’ Dr. Sanders strolled on, eyeing the stands with their cheap ivory ornaments, small statuettes in an imitation Oceanic style the native carvers had somehow picked up at many removes from European magazines. ‘Port Matarre has more than a passing resemblance to purgatory.’
‘Tell me, are you on official business?’ The young woman touched his arm. She had replaced her sun-glasses, as if this gave her some sort of advantage in her interrogation. ‘You gave your address as the University at Libreville. In the hotel register.’
‘The medical school,’ Dr. Sanders said. ‘To put your curiosity at rest, if that’s possible, I’m simply here on holiday. What about you?’
In a quieter voice, after a confirmatory glance at Sanders, she said: ‘I’m a journalist. I work freelance for a bureau that sells material to the French illustrated weeklies.’
‘A journalist?’ Sanders looked at her with more interest. During their brief conversation he had avoided looking at her, put off partly by her sun-glasses, which seemed to emphasize the strange contrasts of light and dark in Port Matarre, and partly by her echoes of Suzanne Clair. ‘I didn’t realize … I’m sorry I was off-hand, but I’ve been getting nowhere today. Can you tell me about this emergency – I’ll accept your term for it.’
The young woman pointed to a bar at the next corner. ‘We’ll go there, it’s quieter – I’ve been making a nuisance of myself all week with the police.’
As they settled themselves in a booth by the window she introduced herself as Louise Peret. Although prepared to accept Dr. Sanders as a fellow-conspirator, she still wore her sun-glasses, screening off some inner sanctum of herself. Her masked face and cool manner seemed to Sanders as typical in their way of Port Matarre as Ventress’s strange garb, but already he sensed from the slight movement of her hands across the table towards him that she was searching for some point of contact.
‘They’re expecting a physicist from the University,’ she said. ‘A Dr. Tatlin, I think, though it’s difficult to check from here. To begin with I thought you might be Tatlin.’
‘A physicist …? That doesn’t make sense. According to the police captain these affected areas of the forest are suffering from a new virus disease. Have you been trying to get to Mont Royal all week?’
‘Not exactly. I came here with a man from the bureau, an American called Anderson. When we left the boat he went off to Mont Royal in a hire car to take photographs. I was to wait here so I could get a story out quickly.’
‘Did he see anything?’
‘Well, four days ago I spoke to him on the telephone, but the line was bad, I could hardly hear a thing. All he said was something about the forest being full of jewels, but it was meant as a joke you know …’ She gestured in the air.
‘A figure of speech?’
‘Exactly. If he had seen a new diamond field he would have said so definitely. Anyway, the next day the telephone line was broken, and they’re still trying to repair it – even the police can’t get through.’
Sanders ordered two brandies. Accepting a cigarette from Louise, he looked out through the window at the jetties along the river. The last of the cargo was being loaded aboard the steamer, and the passengers stood at the rail or sat passively on their luggage, looking down at the deck.
‘It’s difficult to know how seriously to take this,’ Sanders said. ‘Obviously something is going on, but it could be anything under the sun.’
‘Then what about the police and the army convoys? And the customs men out there this morning?’
Dr. Sanders shrugged. ‘Officialdom – if the telephone lines are down they probably know as little as we do. What I can’t understand is why you and this American came here in the first place. By all accounts Mont Royal is even more dead than Port Matarre.’
‘Anderson had a tip that there was some kind of trouble near the mines – he wouldn’t tell me what, it was really his story, you see – but we knew the army had sent in reserves. Tell me, Doctor, are you still going to Mont Royal? To your friends?’
‘If I can. There must be some way. After all, it’s only fifty miles, at a pinch one could walk it.’
Louise laughed. ‘Not me.’ Just then a black-garbed figure strode past the window, heading off towards the market. ‘Father Balthus,’ Louise said. ‘His mission is near Mont Royal. I checked up on him too. There’s a travelling companion for you.’
‘I doubt it.’ Dr. Sanders watched the priest walk briskly away from them, his thin face lifted as he crossed the road. His head and shoulders were held stiffly, but behind him his hands moved and twisted with
