Cry Wolf - Smith Wilbur. Страница 5

"They bring me out in a rash. If it's all the same to you,

I'll just take the seven fifty in cash money."

Ok Gareth pursed his lips. Very well, so it wasn't going to be that

easy either.

"Dear me," he said. "It will take a little while to clear."

"No hurry, "Jake grinned at him. "Any time before noon tomorrow.

That's the delivery date I have for my original buyer. You be here

with the money before that, and they are all yours." He rose abruptly

from the bath, cascading soapy water, and his black servant handed him

a towel.

"What plans have you for dinner?" Gareth asked.

"I think Abou here has cooked up a pot of his lion-killing stew."

"Won't you be my guest at the Royal?"

"I drank your beer for free why shouldn't I eat your food?" asked Jake

reasonably.

The dining room of the Royal Hotel had high ceilings and tall

insect-screened sash windows. The mechanical fans set in the roof

stirred the warm humid air sluggishly "into a substitute for

coolness,

and Gareth Swales was a splendid host.

His engaging charm was irresistible, and his choice of food and wine

induced in Jake a sense of such well-being that they laughed together

like old friends, and were delighted to find that they had mutual

acquaintances mostly harm en and brothel-keepers in various parts of

the world and that they had parallel experience.

Gareth had been doing business with a revolutionary leader in

Venezuela while Jake was helping build the railroad in that same

country. Jake had been chief engineer on a Blake Line coaster on the

China run when Gareth had been making contact with the Chinese

Communists on Yellow River.

They had been in France at the same time, and on that terrible day at

Amiens, when the German machine guns had accelerated Gareth Swales's

promotion from subaltern to major in the space of six hours, Jake had

been four miles down the line, a sergeant driver in the Royal Tank

Corps seconded from the American Third Army.

They discovered that they were almost of an age, neither of them yet

forty, but that both of them had packed a world of experience and

wandering into that short span, They recognized in each other that same

restlessness that was always driving them on to new adventure, never

staying long enough in one place or at one job to grow roots,

unfettered by offspring or possessions, by spouse or

responsibilities,

taking up each new adventure eagerly and discarding it again without

qualms or regrets, Always moving onwards never looking backwards.

Understanding each other a little, they began to respect one another.

Halfway through the meal, they were no longer scornful of the other's

differences. Neither of them thought of the other as Limey or

Yank any longer but this didn't mean that Jake was about to accept any

cheques or that Gareth had given up his plans to acquire the five

armoured cars. At last Gareth swilled the last few drops around his

brandy balloon and glanced at his pocket watch.

"Nine o'clock. It's too early for bed. What shall we do now?"

Jake suggested, "There are two new girls down at Madame Cecile's. They

came in on the mail boat." Gareth quickly turned the suggestion

aside.

"Later perhaps but too soon after dinner, it gives me heartburn.

You don't, by any chance, feel like a few hands at cards? There is

usually a decent game down at the club."

"We can't go in there. We aren't members."

"I have reciprocity with my London club, old boy.

Sign you in, what?" They had played for an hour and a half. Jake was

enjoying the game. He liked the style of the establishment, for he

usually played in less salubrious surroundings the back room behind the

bar, an upturned fruit-crate behind the main boiler in an engine room,

or a scratch game in a dockside warehouse.

This was a hushed room with draped velvet curtains, expanses of dark

wood panelling, dark-toned oil paintings and hunting trophies

shaggy-maned lions, buffalo with huge bossed horns drooping

mournfully,

all of them staring down with glassy eyes from the walls.

From the three billiard tables came the discreet click of the ivory

balls, as half a dozen players in dress shirts and braces, black ties

and black trousers, evening jackets discarded for the game, leaned

across the heavy green-topped tables to play their shots.

There were three tables of contract bridge from which came the murmur

of bid and counter bid in the cultivated tones of the British upper

class, all the players in the dress that Jake thought of as penguin

suits black and white, with black bows.

Between the tables, the waiters moved on silent bare feet, in

ankle-length white robes and pillbox fez, like priests of some ancient

religion bearing trays of sparkling crystal glass.

There was only one table of draw poker, a huge teak structure with

brass ashtrays set into the woodwork, and niches and trays to hold the

whisky glasses and the coloured ivory chips. At the table sat five

players, and only Jake was not in evening dress the other three were

the type of poker players that Jake would dearly love to have kept

locked up for his exclusive pleasure.

There was a minor British peer, out in Africa to decimate the wildlife.

He had recently returned from the interior, where a white hunter had

stood respectfully at his elbow with a heavy-calibre rifle,

while the peer mowed down vast numbers of buffalo, lion and

rhinoceros.

This gentleman had a nervous tic under his right eye which jumped

whenever he held three of a kind or better in his hand.

Despite this affliction, a phenomenal run of good cards had allowed him

to be the only winner, other than Jake, at the table.

There was a coffee planter with a deeply tanned and wrinkled face who

made an involuntary little hissing sound whenever he improvised on the

draw or squeezed out a pleasing combination.

On Jake's right hand was an elderly civil servant with thinning hair

and a fever-yellow complexion who broke out in a muck sweat whenever he

judged himself on the point of winning a pot an expectation which was

seldom realized.

In an hour's careful play, Jake had built up his winnings to a little

over a hundred pounds and he felt very warm and contented down there

where his dinner was digesting. The only element in his life that

afforded him any disquiet was his new friend and sponsor.

Gareth Swales sat at his ease, conversing with the peer as an equal,

condescending graciously to the planter and commiserating with the

civil servant on his run of luck. He had neither won nor lost any

significant amount, yet he handled the cards with a dexterity that was

impressive. In those long tapering fingers with the carefully

manicured nails, the pasteboards rustled and rippled, blurred and

snapped, with a speed that defied the eye.

Jake watched carefully, without appearing to do so, whenever the deal

passed to Major Gareth Swales. There is no way that a dealer,

even with the most magical touch, can stack a deck of cards without

facing them during the shuffle and Gareth never faced the deck as he

manipulated it. His eyes never even dropped to the cards, but played

lightly over the faces of the others as he chatted. Jake began to

relax a little.

The planter dealt him four to an open-ended flush, and he filled it