The White Witch of the South Seas Page 8

  During their conversation the previous evening it had emerged that neither Gregory nor James had yet visited Petropolis, the Versailles of Brazil, where the Emperors used to hold their courts during the great winter heats, and de Carvalho had said, ‘I intend to return to Rio tomorrow, but had not meant to leave until the afternoon. Instead, we will set off earlier, take a picnic lunch and, as Petropolis lies about twenty miles north of Rio, make a big detour so that I can show you this charming little town.’

  In consequence, at midday the two cars left the fazenda. Gregory, with his young friend in mind, asked to go with Valentim, thus enabling James to have Olinda with him in the hired car.

  It was another lovely drive through mountains, beside lakes and over swollen rivers. But again they had to slow down every few miles owing to landslides, so it was not until four o’clock that they reached Petropolis.

  The town lay in a depression surrounded by wooded hills. Its centre of interest was the Palace, now a museum—a long, one-storey mansion in the style of late eighteenth-century Portuguese architecture. They spent half an hour looking round it, then drove on a mile further and pulled up at a huge, timbered building that looked like a gigantic Swiss chalet. It had, de Carvalho told them, been a Casino but, since the Government had prohibited gambling, was now a Country Club.

  In front of it there was an artificial lake, on which there were boats, rafts and every device for water sports. Inside, on the ground floor, there seemed to be an endless succession of lofty halls, restaurants, ballrooms, swimming baths and bars. As gaming was no longer permitted, Gregory wondered that such an immense establishment could continue to support itself. But de Carvalho told him that everyone who was anyone in Rio belonged to the club, and there were certainly plenty of people in it.

  After drinks there, they took the road to Rio. For several miles it wound down the wooded mountainside, revealing a succession of deep gorges beyond which lay lovely vistas, then they reached the narrow coastal plain with its seemingly endless suburbs sweltering in the heat. At the Hotel Gloria on the baia de Guanabara, where James was staying, the two cars pulled up and he took a reluctant farewell of Olinda. She joined her husband, good-byes were said, then Gregory took her place in the hired car and was driven on to the Copacabana Palace.

  When he had washed and changed he went down to dinner. Manon was seated at the table they had been sharing for the past few days and, not knowing what time he would be back, had just started. Elegant and piquant as ever, she received him with delight, said how greatly she had missed him and asked if his trip had been successful.

  ‘Interesting, anyhow,’ he replied with a smile. On the way back he had been considering whether he should tell her about the Ratu James’ sunken galleon. Obviously the fewer people who knew about the possibility of its containing gold the better; but if he did finance the venture he would be going to the South Seas, and Manon lived there. He was thoroughly enjoying their affaire, and to have a charming mistress within easy flying distance of the operation would provide him with delightful relaxation during the time that must elapse while preparations were being made and, later, during periods when rough weather made diving impossible. So he had decided to take her into his confidence.

  To begin with, as she listened, her face remained grave and intent. Then, when he told her of his intention of going to Tujoa, she exclaimed with delight, ‘To have you come to the South Seas would fulfil my dearest wish. The islands are unbelievably lovely and you must stay with me in my home. No matter what the gossips may say, I will willingly sacrifice my reputation for you.’

  ‘Darling, how sweet of you,’ he replied. ‘I’m greatly tempted to accept if we could find a way to get over that. No doubt I could hire a motor yacht, lie off your island and let it be thought that I was sleeping aboard. But once we’ve got the apparatus for the job, I fear my visits would be for only a day or two now and then, as I’ll have to spend most of my time on Tujoa.’

  At that she frowned, then said rather diffidently, ‘It’s not my business, of course, but do you think it really wise to sink a lot of money in such a speculative venture? The Pacific is littered with sunken galleons and for generations past any number of people have attempted to recover treasure from them. But I’ve never heard of anyone bringing up more than a few odd coins and things like weapons and bits of armour. That can be fun if it entails no more than skin-diving; but you say you’ll need pontoons with big cranes, and that sort of thing means a considerable capital investment.’

  Admiring her French shrewdness, he nodded. ‘You’re right about that, my sweet; and, as a matter of fact, I’m not going into this thing until I have found out a bit more about the prospects of getting a fair return for my money. In a few days’ time I mean to fly to Seville and consult the records of the Council of the Indies. With luck, I’ll learn from them what cargo this ship was carrying.’

  She made a little moué. ‘So you mean to desert me so soon. How horrid of you.’

  ‘Only temporarily. I’ll be back inside a week.’

  Leaning forward, Manon said earnestly, ‘Chéri, why waste your time and money in this way? The odds are enormous against your succeeding where so many other people have failed. This poor young Ratu is building castles in the clouds. It would be much kinder to refrain from encouraging his hopes now rather than allow him to be grievously disappointed later. Put this foolish business out of your mind and, instead, come to stay with me in Fiji.’

  Gregory took her hand and kissed it. ‘My love, you are most persuasive, and you are probably right that I should be an ass to go further with the matter. But I feel I owe it to young James not to back out until I have a valid excuse for doing so. I mean to book a passage to Spain tomorrow morning. You will stay on here until my return, and if I learn when I get back that you have been hitting it up with some other chap I’ll smack your lovely bottom until it’s purple.’

  She laughed uproariously. ‘What fun! You certainly tempt me to. That sort of beating puts fire into a girl. The following morning your legs would give under you. But seriously, chéri, have no thoughts but nice ones about me. As I have told you, I am not a woman who takes lovers after only a short acquaintance.’

  ‘Except myself,’ Gregory grinned, kissing her hand again.

  Nevertheless, he was not destined to go to Spain. On the following day they had both been invited to lunch with the Wellesleys. Knowing that anything he confided to them would go no further, Gregory told them about Ratu James and the quest for treasure which he was thinking of financing.

  Hugo reinforced Manon’s opinion that there was small hope of recovering a large quantity of gold from any galleon sunk in the Pacific. Then he went on:

  ‘Anyhow, I don’t think you need go to Seville to find out what your chances are. In the old days the whole of Spanish South America was ruled from Antigua, in what is now Guatemala, by a Captain General. The city was destroyed by a terrible earthquake in 1773, but it was rebuilt some twenty years later. If your ship was not sunk until the 1790s, or thereabouts, the records of the cargo it carried are certain to be in Antigua.’

  Manon clapped her hands. ‘How splendid! From here to Fiji the quickest route is up to Mexico City, then on by QANTAS, and Guatemala is on the way. We would go so far together, Gregory. That would be most pleasant.’ She did not add that she hoped he would accompany her for the rest of her journey, but he realised the implication and smiled at her.

  Next day Gregory telephoned James to tell him what he intended to do, and it was agreed that the Ratu should accompany them to Guatemala. On Wednesday the three of them left in a VARIG aircraft for Lima. It was the first time that Gregory had crossed the Andes and, peering down through the cloudless atmosphere, he was fascinated by the extraordinary barrenness of the lofty mountains and desolate valleys. He would have liked to stop off at Lima and spend a few days going up to Cuzco, the thirteen-thousand-foot-high capital of the Incas, to see the ruins there, composed of twenty-ton blocks of stone, reminis
cent of the Mycean civilisation in pre-Hellenic Greece; but now was not the time to do so.

  They spent the night a few miles outside the modern Peruvian capital, at a delightful Country Club, with acres of tropical gardens, three swimming pools and every other civilised amenity.

  On Thursday they did the short trip to Panama, again by the Brazilian line VARIG, which Gregory found put many other lines to shame. Instead of the horrid little vinegary kickshaws offered before a meal by most of them VARIG gave its passengers slices of genuine pâté de foie gras, cold crawfish and a big tin of caviare in which to dip. The wines were from first-class European vineyards, the meals excellent, the service impeccable; and the line prided itself on arriving on time.

  They could have gone on to Guatemala the same day, but Gregory wanted to see the Panama Canal; so they had engaged rooms at the ‘Siesta’ Airport Hotel. The heat was terrific and humming birds zoomed over them as they bathed that afternoon in the palm-shaded hotel pool. But the rooms were air-conditioned and their twenty-mile drive the following morning to Panama City and the Canal Zone was a most interesting expedition.

  Late in the afternoon they flew on to Guatemala and it was already dark when they landed. Antigua, the old capital, lay twenty-five miles inland and five thousand feet above sea level. A hired car took them up gradient after gradient and, looking back from an ever-greater height, for a long while they could see the lights of Guatemala City spread below them like a fairyland.

  For the rest of the way the car roared along an almost deserted road between banks of now-black forest or high bushes. Overhead, the night sky looked like a blue-black ribbon on which were floating thousands of bright stars.

  The main building of the hotel appeared to have once been a spacious, one-storey, Colonial mansion; but there were no bedrooms in it. These, again one-storey buildings, were set in blocks of four round a two-acre garden. As they were led to their rooms, they approached an oval swimming pool. Beyond it, over the garden wall, there reared up the ruins of a once lofty church which, as they were floodlit, formed a lovely backdrop to the scene.

  They found the bedrooms clean, roomy and well furnished, with bright, chintz curtains and, in one corner—an incongruous note for that part of the world but a pleasant amenity against cold weather at five thousand feet—a stone fireplace with a fire already laid.

  As is the custom throughout Latin America, dinner did not start until nine o’clock, so when they went into the restaurant numerous other guests were still lingering over the meal. While they were ordering, two men got up from a nearby table and left. One was a very tall and bulky man with fair hair and a flowing fair moustache, below which was a row of slightly protruding teeth. He looked about forty-five. The other was younger, much shorter; broad-shouldered, dark-haired and with a swarthy complexion. As they passed, James remarked, ‘I’m sure I’ve seen that tall, fair-haired man somewhere before, but I can’t think where.’

  Tired after their long day, as soon as they had finished dinner they went to their respective rooms. As the hotel was nearly full, to Gregory’s annoyance, they had had to accept rooms in separate blocks; but he did not anticipate much difficulty in finding Manon’s in the dark should he wish to do so.

  Having undressed, he went to bed, read for a quarter of an hour, then put out the light. Some time later, he awoke. Long years of living in acute danger had enabled him to train himself to become instantly alert when suddenly awakened. No sound came from near the door, but he felt certain that someone had entered the room stealthily and was standing there.

  6

  The Ambush

  Many people habitually lock the doors of their rooms at night, particularly when in hotels. But Gregory had been told when young that it was better not to do so as, in case of fire, one might half suffocate while still asleep and wake already befuddled by fumes. A locked door would then make any attempt at rescue much more difficult. It would, therefore, have been easy for anyone to get into his room almost noiselessly.

  During his secret missions he had always slept with a small automatic beneath his pillow and, as a precaution against sneak-thieves in hotels, he had resumed the habit during his travels.

  Now he slid his hand beneath his pillow, withdrew the gun, pointed it towards the door, then suddenly sat up and switched on his bedside light.

  At once he recognised the uninvited visitor as the tall, fair man whom James, at dinner, thought he had seen somewhere before.

  The intruder had one hand on the light switch beside the door. With the other he swept up his long, fair moustache, smiled disarmingly and said in French, ‘You forestalled me, Monsieur. Pray pardon this visit. I intend you no harm—at least for the moment.’

  ‘Do you presume to threaten me?’ Gregory snapped. ‘Try it, and I’ll put a bullet through your leg; then say I woke and found you here and took you to be a hotel thief.’

  The man gave a low laugh. ‘If you did that, my friend Jules Corbin would call in the police, and you would find yourself under arrest. But your hostile attitude is uncalled for. I have come here only because it is necessary for us to hold a short private conversation.’

  For a moment Gregory considered telling him to go to hell but, on second thoughts, decided to hear what he had to say. ‘Very well,’ he snapped. ‘But be brief. I have a rooted objection to being disturbed in the middle of the night.’

  Ignoring his remark, the other replied, ‘Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Pierre Lacost. I and several friends of mine are interested in the sunken ship off the coast of Tujoa. It came to our knowledge that Ratu James Omboloku was about to approach the Brazilian financier Valentim Mauá de Carvalho with a view to his financing a company that would attempt to salvage the gold believed to be down in the wreck. We sent an associate of ours to Rio to warn de Carvalho that if he agreed it would be the worse for him. Very wisely, he accepted the warning and declined to play. We then learned that you have now become interested in this project. I am here to give you the same warning. If you value your safety you will forget this matter, Monsieur. Go where you will when you leave here, provided it is not to the South Seas. Your presence there would bring you into grave danger.’

  Lowering the barrel of his automatic a little so that it pointed at Lacost’s left knee, Gregory said quietly, ‘And I warned you what would happen to you if you threatened me. Now get out.’

  The big man shrugged. ‘I am told, Monsieur Sallust, that you are very far from being a fool, but you would be one if you carried out your threat. In the first place, prisons in countries such as this are not pleasant places. I am unarmed and have robbed you of nothing. If you shot me you would undoubtedly be held, perhaps for months, while a full inquiry was made into your having used a firearm on another hotel guest who only walked into your room in mistake for his own. In the second place, I should so strongly resent a serious injury to my leg that soon after you left prison I should arrange for you to become the victim of a fatal accident.’

  Gregory had never had any intention of using his weapon unless he was attacked, and he felt that, in the circumstances, it would be wise to find out all he could about Monsieur Pierre Lacost; so, to encourage him to talk, he replied in a much milder tone:

  ‘There is certainly something in what you say about the unpleasantness of being held in a Guatemalan prison while an investigation is being carried out; and to be set upon and perhaps seriously injured by one of the thugs you appear to control strikes me as a high price to pay for a trip to the South Seas. But you will permit me to point out that if there is treasure in this ship the only person who has a legal right to it is Ratu James, as the hereditary ruler of the Nakapoa Group; so should you attempt to deprive him of it you will be committing a felony.’

  Again Lacost gave a low laugh. ‘Might is right, Monsieur. I and my friends have suffered much. We need money and we mean to get it.’

  ‘Do you mean that you have suffered at the Ratu’s hands and are taking this way of avenging yourselves upon hi
m?’

  ‘No, no! From all I have heard, he is a pleasant young man and we have no quarrel with him. I have no objection to telling you my own story, and those of my friends are very similar. In fact, by doing so I may persuade you to retire gracefully from this business. That would save me some trouble and you considerable pain. You must know of the unrest that beset Algeria from the fifties on. I was the owner of a big estate there, but that sale type, de Gaulle, let us Colons down. After Algeria was given independence the Arab Government dispossessed me of my property. Like countless others, from a comparatively wealthy man I was reduced to near poverty, and had to leave my country for France. To escape the trouble that our bitterness would have caused us to make, de Gaulle shipped several thousands of us off to Tahiti, with promises of a bright new future there. But again that unscrupulous traitor let us down. Next to nothing has been done for us. We were left to rot in poverty and idleness. Now do you understand why we feel entitled to mend our fortunes in any way we can, even if it entails taking strong measures against people like yourself who would thwart us?’

  ‘I do,’ Gregory agreed. ‘And I sympathise with you. But there is another side to the matter. Are you aware how the Ratu intends to use this gold, should he secure it?’

  ‘I neither know nor care.’

  ‘All the same, I will tell you. The natives of the Nakapoa Group are rapidly becoming dominated by Indian immigrants. Unless something can be done for them they will soon be reduced to poverty and semi-slavery. The Ratu plans to establish industries in the island that will save his people from being exploited and provide them with a means to make a decent living.’