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 hot, relentless—even though the sun itself was masked by the dense foliage and the twisted, cable-like lianas overhead. The safari moved slowly, gleaming Bushongos at its head, their dark skins rippling with perfect muscles as they wielded their machetes.
The Europeans at the rear of the long trail moved with lassitude. So far they had escaped the ever-pestilential malaria: drugs had seen to that, as far as Harry Perrivale and Rita were concerned. Caleb Moon seemed to remain on his feet because of the amount of whiskey he consumed. He just sweated everything out of his system and kept on going—but the spirits had done many things to his temper since the long gone day when the journey into the interior had started.
In fact, his temper was the cause of the woefully thinned safari, and when the safari halted its journey for the night, Perrivale said so in no uncertain language. Caleb Moon listened to him, seated on the campstool in his own camp, and going through the routine of looking for chiggers’ eggs in his faded drill suit. The eggs, hatching at body heat, could drive a man or woman to frenzy if not ‘deloused.’
“Less drinking would help, Moon,” Perrivale said, and his dissolute mouth tightened.
Moon grinned. “What d’you expect a man to do in this blasted frying pan? Run around with his tongue out waiting for Mr. Perrivale to say, ‘You can have your water ration now’? I drink when I like, Perrivale—and that’ll be often. You’ve no authority over me. In fact, without me you won’t get anywhere! So get back to your tent and shut up!”
“This safari is mine,” Perrivale retorted. “Thanks to your damned temper, it’s cut in half. The boys are scared of you, flaring up at the least thing. They’re flesh and blood the same as us—and we can’t do without them. We’ll need every man we can get when we reach Akada.”
Moon dragged on his examined shirt. “I’ve handled this kind of scum all my life, Perrivale, and you only get results by making ’em afraid of you. I know my business.”
“Lessen this safari any further and we may as well go right back home,” Perrivale snapped. “Watch yourself, Moon, that’s all.”
Perrivale left, his mood black, and crossed the fire-lighted clearing to his own tent. Within it Rita was doing what she could with her damp tresses, She eyed her husband as he came in.
“Well, did you warn him?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I doubt it. You’re as scared of him as these poor black devils outside. And a scared man in the jungle is no use to anybody.”
Perrivale glared at her. She studied his reflection through the folding mirror in the lamplight.
“No use denying it, Harry,” she added. “You’ve got plenty of money but precious little nerve. You’ve only come on this expedition because you think there is safety in numbers. Well maybe