Hammond Innes - Solomons Seal

She saw me staring at her and half reached out her hand, a timid gesture that was retracted almost before it was begun. I felt a sudden surge of emotion — pity, love, compassion, I don’t know what it was. She lowered her head as though in embarrassment, and for that moment the sensuality of her body, its ability to arouse me, all my previous feelings for her were quite lacking. And then she lifted her head again, her eyelids, too, so that our eyes met, and something passed between us, something deep and personal. She lowered her eyes again, but squared her shoulders as though strengthened by some resolve. ‘Are you going up to the house with him?’ she asked.

‘Perhaps. I don’t know.’

Hans heard me and said, ‘You haven’t any choice. I want that letter.’

‘I’ll come with you then,’ she said.

He turned on her. ‘You’ll do as you’re told and stay on board till your brother arrives.’ We had left the last marker astern and were approaching North Madehas. ‘You wait here for the LCT,’ he told the Australian. ‘As soon as you’ve put Miss Holland aboard, then you’re free to head for Anewa.’

‘You’ll remain at Madehas, will you?’

Hans nodded.

‘So what do I tell them down at Anewa?’

Hans gave a quick, humourless bark of a laugh. ‘Don’t reck’n you need me to coach you. You were coerced. I brought you up here against your will. At gunpoint, was it?’ He smiled. ‘You’re a two-timing sodding bastard, aren’t you?’

‘Just impressionable.’ The Australian’s teeth showed brown in his beard as he reached for the engine controls. I never did discover the man’s name. A relief driver, that’s how he described himself. The revs dropped, and we slipped through between the shallows to the north and the reef arm reaching out from Madehas.

I didn’t see them anchor. I was down below, getting the letter from my bag and slipping it in with the dollars in my hip pocket. If Perenna hadn’t been there, I could have said I’d made a mistake and handed it straight over to him. I didn’t want to go back to that house, and certainly not with Hans Holland. There was something evil about it. I had felt it when I was there with Mac, a brooding menace hanging over it. And to go there now with a man whose world had collapsed … but I had no alternative. I had said the letter was still in the house, and if I produced it now, he would know I had shown it to Perenna. Pagan bad. Mac’s words came back to me as the chain rattled out and I climbed the ladder to the wheelhouse.

The dinghy was already over the side. Perenna looked at me, a wide-eyed stare. But she didn’t say anything. No last-minute appeal to me not to go, and I knew then she was scared — scared of what he would do if he discovered she knew the contents of that letter. And neither of us understood why it mattered so much to him. ‘You ready, Slingsby?’ He was waiting for me out on the flat rounded stern where the Mortlock man with the jet-black skin was holding the painter. As I went to join him, seeing the bulge of the gun under his shirt and myself unarmed, I wasn’t feeling all that confident. And what made it worse, the sun was coming out, everything fresh and sparkling after the rain. For the first time since I had arrived in the Buka Passage I was glad to be alive and in such a place.

Never having fought in a war, or seen a man in total defeat before, I had no yardstick with which to gauge Hans Holland’s state of mind. The fact that he had mixed blood, some of it, like Perenna’s, of Melanesian origin, did that make him more, or less, fatalistic? And to be worrying about a letter written in 1910 when the Papua New Guinea government would almost certainly blame him for what had happened and seek some form of retribution, a public trial, an execution even … I watched him as the Mortlock islander rowed us ashore. He was bareheaded, his red hair gleaming in the sun. Even his bare arms had a reddish glow. He didn’t talk, sitting silent in the bows, a small canvas grip at his feet and his eyes staring into space. What was he thinking? I wondered.

What the hell was he thinking?

The bows touched the landing pontoon where the oil drums on which it floated were still intact, and he stepped out of the boat, the painter in one hand, his canvas holdall in the other. It was then that I got the letter out of my hip pocket and slipped it into a side pocket where I could get at it easily. He held the boat for me, and as soon as I had joined him on the pontoon, he tossed the painter back on board, and the boat headed for the tug. I should have called the man back, told him to wait, but I was afraid that might be taken as provocation. I was treading warily, as though dealing with a psychopath, and I was very conscious that Hans was aware of my unease. He seemed to be smiling to himself as we reached the shore and started up the path together.

The houseboy appeared as mysteriously as before. Hans said something to him, and he fell in behind us, a silent shadow. I saw no sign of the woman. ‘Have you remembered where it is?’ Hans asked abruptly.

‘In the safe, probably.’

‘That isn’t what McAvoy said. He seemed to think you’d taken it with you.’

It was very hot, the air humid despite the sparkle. ‘It’ll be there somewhere,’ I said. And then I asked him what he was planning to do now. ‘Where will you go?’

He turned his head, a hard, angry stare. ‘D’you think I’d tell you, even if I knew?’ His tone was hostile as though he thought I was gloating. It was a sharp reminder of the delicateness of my position, alone with an armed man whose mind might well be unhinged, and only his own houseboy, a native of Buka, witness to anything that happened. We walked in silence the rest of the way to the house, passing the little flyblown summerhouse, the houseboy drawing level and plucking at Hans Holland’s shirt. But before he could make his ritual offer of coffee or Coke, he had been silenced by the coldness of his master’s gaze.

We reached the entrance porch with its unswept pile of winged insects. Hans trod them underfoot, not apparently noticing, pushed open the door and then stood back, motioning me to enter. From that moment he contrived always to have me in sight as though he were afraid I’d try to rush him. The sun was streaming in through the cobwebbed windows high above the halfway landing of the double staircase, dust motes shimmering in the air, and there was a lazy buzz of trapped insects. Where it had been gloomy before, it was now positively macabre, the stuffed crocodile, the carving, the panelling, everything brilliantly illuminated like a stage set. Hans closed the door. Then, watchful now and still keeping behind me, he pointed to one of the chairs against the wall at the foot of the staircase. ‘You sit there,’ he said.

Now that we were alone in this dreadful room his voice had an edge to it that I didn’t like. ‘You’ll need some help-’ I began.

‘Sit down.’

‘If you don’t mind-’

‘Sit down, damn you — where I can see you. I told you you were lying, remember? Go on, pull that chair out and sit down.’ His voice was calmer now, the chair he had indicated was by the table with the old newspapers. I dropped the letter on top of them as I picked up the chair. He was already standing at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Sit down.’ He watched me until I was seated, then he bent down, felt for the catch and, with both hands under the outer edge of the bottom tread, gave a quick heave and raised all four treads, folding them back in one easy movement. ‘Did you take anything else?’ He was already bending over the safe, his fingers turning the combination lock.

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Everything was put back just-’

‘What about McAvoy?’ He glanced up at me. ‘Are you saying he put it all back, neither of you took anything?’