The River of Diamonds

3

The young woman sitting opposite me rose.

Shelborne, a few chairs away from her, had also half-risen. I thought it was out of courtesy — until I saw his face. It was like lead. The bald head was thrust forwards and sideways towards the smart, black-hatted figure in a poinsettia red costume very much a la mode. Incredulity, doubt, fear one might almost have said, were perceptible in his face as she edged past him.

Shardelow leaned across towards Rhennin and myself: The old man from the sea is in trouble.'

Shelborne may or may not have taken leave of Caldwell in the way he had described, but the past was certainly coming up and hitting him right now.

Mennin, the counsel who had brushed off our inquiry by saying he was merely holding a watching brief for an important client, grinned across at the Mazy Zed side, scarcely able to contain his triumph at our discomfiture. Until that moment it seemed to have been generally accepted that Caldwell had been a bachelor.

Rhennin muttered, Three-sided fight now. I wonder what sob-stuff she's going to put over about dear old Dad.'

The Judge's ascetic, inquisitorial face held little promise for that line of approach.

The orderly intoned, 'You are Mary Caldwell and the evidence you shall give…'

She raised her black-gloved hand — which perfectly set off her elegant suit — and was duly sworn.

'Your age, Miss Caldwell?' Mennin asked.

Her voice was slightly husky, deeper than usual in a woman.. The hazel eyes were flecked with amber. 'Thirty-three.'

'Where were you born?'

She looked amused; I liked the smile. 'Do you really want to know?'

The fudge's voice was edged. 'Miss Caldwell…'

'In a train.'

'In a train?'

'In the desert south of here. The engine driver was trying to make his best time to the nearest railhead; my mother…'

'Yes, Miss Caldwell. Your occupation?'

'Diamond sorter.'

The best diamond sorters are Bushmen because of their keen eyesight. I had not heard of a woman sorter before. Certainly she wasn't dressed out of a sorter's pay.

Rhennin said in an aside to me, 'Looks as though Caldwell must have left money after all, despite his jinx.'

Mennin said, 'Isn't that a somewhat unusual occupation for a woman?'

She was defensive. 'I've trained for it, although I've never actually done it. For a number of years I have been a companion to my mother, who is an invalid.'

Shelborne was slumped forward, chin in hand, eyes fixed on Mary Caldwell.

Mennin said formally, 'My lord, the application I am making to this court is that the undersea prospecting rights of the Sperrgebiet seaboard rightly belong to Caldwell's widow, Mrs Kathleen Caldwell, at present resident in Cape Town and, as you have heard, a permanent invalid, and therefore unable to attend this hearing. My client contests the validity both of the claim of Frederick Shelborne and that of the Mazy Zed organization as counter to rights already accorded by the former German Government. We contest this cession made at Strandloper's Water on grounds that it was made under dubious circumstances.'

'Why then did you not cross-examine Mr Shelborne?'

Mennin smiled.

The reason is simple, my lord. Mr Shelborne had the document — the original — for which my client has been searching for many years. The best we were able to do was to produce a sworn copy from the records of the former German authorities. Mr Shelborne was good enough to produce irrefutable proof of my client's claim.'

The fudge said, 'Very well. Now, Miss Caldwell, why cannot your mother attend?'

She fumbled in her handbag. 'I have a medical certificate here. She has had a stroke and is not able to speak, or properly comprehend.'

The fudge nodded and Mennin asked, 'Your late father, the famous Mr Caldwell, made your mother his sole legatee and, one presumes, after her death yourself?'

'Not quite. My mother inherited nothing of value from my father.'

I could see the fudge's disbelief.

'May I explain. My father went away on his last adventure leaving us poor. We were living at a place called Kleinzee…'

Kleinzee! It was one of the great strikes of the diamond coast!

'We had a house, more of a shack really. My father went away. My mother has told me that a few days later she wanted some lime to whitewash the house; we

couldn't afford to buy paint. She searched in the veld for some likely rock to grind up. She kicked up a piece. It came away — full of diamonds. It was a diamond matrix.

The ground was next to our shack. Its owner made my mother a grant — a very handsome grant — for her lifetime. He soon became a millionaire. It ceases when she dies.'

'So, Miss Caldwell, the ill-luck which had dogged your father all his life once more had come into play?'

'Yes. He was recalled from what is now Oranjemund — four years before Merensky's strike — when he was on the point of making the discovery of discoveries. He'd found diamonds here…'

'And from what you have just told the court, he missed another fabulous fortune on his very doorstep at Kleinzee by going off into the unknown?'

She looked a little tired. 'Yes. His bad luck was proverbial. There was also The Cliffs, near Port Nolloth. He…'

She made a little defeatist gesture. Shelborne's hand on his chin twitched and he coughed asthmatically. His face seemed even more gaunt.

Mennin went on: 'Mr Shelborne, having been a close companion of your father's on many expeditions, must have been well known to your family?'

She looked puzzled. 'No. My mother never mentioned such a person.'

'Did he ever come to your home at Kleinzee?'

'I was a few months old when he went away, and I never heard of the name when a child.'

'After your father's… ah… final disappearance he did not show up?'

'No. My lord, all this is new to me. I have been told that the newspapers were full of the disappearance of my father. For months — even years later — there were articles about him. He was a name associated almost romantically with diamonds and I think people somehow expected him to come back, crowned with luck, you might say. Luck had eluded him so desperately all his life.'

Mennin said, 'Yes the only man who could have shed light on your father's disappearance was — we have his own words for it — training to become a master mariner, and then later crossing deserts in the remotest corners of the globe?'

She nodded and shot a glance at Shelborne, who was staring at the floor.

'Nevertheless, today, more than three decades later, he comes forward with a paper signed by your father ceding him the undersea prospecting rights. For half a lifetime he has done nothing about these rights except drop a few dredges and buoys with grease traps…'

'Ask questions, Mr Mennin — do not put words into the witness's mouth.'

'As your lordship pleases. Now, Miss Caldwell: do you remember what your father looked like?'

The Judge intervened. 'Mr Mennin, the witness could not have been a year old at the time of her father's disappearance.'

'I was about to say, my lord, that I naturally have no personal recollection of him. My mother, however, described him as big and dark.'

'Bearded or clean-shaven?'

She dug again in her bag. 'Here is a photograph of my father and mother, taken in Port Nolloth a few weeks after my birth. You'll see, he was bearded, with a shock of thick black hair. My mother said he could run down a buck in the desert, he was so strong.'

'After your father vanished, your mother never had any further communication from him?'

'None.'

Mennin, having created his impression, handed her over to Shardelow to cross-examine.

'Miss Caldwell, you are Mary Caldwell, are you not?'

She looked puzzled. 'Yes, of course.'

'Can you prove it?'

'You're implying that I am an impostor…'

'I said nothing of the kind. I merely asked, can you prove your identity?'

The judge leaned forward. The inquisitor disappeared momentarily. In its place was a rare kindliness which illuminated the medieval face. 'Can you produce a birth or baptismal certificate, Miss Caldwell? — something which would identity you positively?'

'I expect so, my lord.'

Shardelow was too clever to weaken his own case through a lengthy verbal duel. 'That is all, my lord.'

'All, Mr Shardelow?'

'Yes. The opposition of the Mazy Zed project by these two witnesses stems, in fact, from the same fundamental premise, and I propose to treat them as one. Perhaps one further question, though: did you ever undertake sea-bed prospecting, Miss Caldwell?'

She laughed, easily, warmly. 'Of course not.'

Shardelow seemed pleased, though for different reasons. 'No, of course not.' He sat down.

'Any questions, Mr Shelborne?' asked the Judge.

The old prospector got to his feet, glanced at the witness-box, and then suddenly sat down again, as if he had changed his mind. 'None, my lord.'

The court orderly put on the lights. I had scarcely noticed, during the long exchanges, how the afternoon had slipped away. Company Land-Rovers and trucks ground past bringing men in from the workings and field screening plants. Every night Oranjemund and its villas became a fortress besieged by an army of dunes. Man-made security completed the laager. The desert's silence and its corrosive fogs fell in cold dun hostility on the scrapers, the massive tournadozers, tournapull scrapers and bucket excavators, dulling their burnished steel blades a little before they started next dawn to tear out its guts in the endless hunt for precious stones.

As we adjourned for the day, I rose quickly to intercept Shelborne. Rhennin had decided to make him an offer to withdraw his claim and I was to be the intermediary. It was distasteful to me, but I was keen to meet the strange figure. Shelborne stood uncertainly in the doorway. Mary Caldwell paused when she reached him on her way out with Mennin. She gave him a searching, quizzical look and then smiled. His eyes were upon her so that he did not notice either myself or Colonel Duvenhage waiting for him.

Duvenhage said, 'Mr Shelborne, I'm afraid we'll have to search your boat. I'm sending one of my men — MacDonald, who is a good fellow…'

Shelborne replied abstractedly, 'Of course, of course. He can sleep aboard, if you wish.'

That won't be necessary,' said Duvenhage, 'but we will have to search again before you leave.'

I said, 'Perhaps you won't mind if I go along to the cutter with MacDonald, Colonel. I have something to discuss with Mr Shelborne.'

Close to Shelborne, the latent power of the man was even more evident.

'I'm John Tregard,' I added.

' The Mazy Zed?'

'Yes, and partly no,' I replied. 'I'm a freelance surveyor for the outfit.'

'Can we not discuss your business with me here, Mr Tregard? It has been a long day, and you won't find the amenities of the Recreation Club aboard my boat.'

It was another way of saying he wouldn't butter up the opposition with a couple of drinks. The man fascinated me. Atacama and Takla Makan were names with a magic resonance for me.

'No,' I said. 'It's private, and you may want to think it over.'

He nodded without speaking.

'Come on, then,' said Duvenhage. The security Land-Rover, parked nearby with MacDonald at the wheel, was conspicuous as the only vehicle in the street now. I sat in the back and Shelborne climbed in next to the driver, Jerrycans of petrol and water were slung on the tailboard. The fine 9-mm Mauser and.45 Colt, sealed by plastic strips in leather cases, were not for playing sheriff around this diamond town. When we reached the first dune beyond the limits of the town MacDonald flicked a switch. The dashboard lighting died and in its place was the green-white glow of a compass. He pulled the vehicle round until the needle settled on south-west. We churned across the roadless waste.

Shelborne glanced at the stars. 'I would have steered a little more south.'

'It's near enough,' replied MacDonald. 'We can run parallel with the creek until we strike your boat.'

The headlights were puny in the great emptiness. Shelborne's coming inland up the disused waterway could have taken Oranjemund completely by surprise.

MacDonald was brooding upon it: 'I never knew this creek joined the river and I thought, until you came along, that the mouth was effectively sealed by the sandbars.'

Shelborne's voice was alive. He was among the things he knew. 'I wouldn't care to come through mouth with a really stiff south-wester blowing.'

'I wouldn't care to try it at any time — period,' replied MacDonald. 'Man, the thought frightens me — those bloody awful sandbars and cross-currents. We've got a fishing club here, but the mouth is out of bounds since we lost a couple of fellows off the bars.'

'There she is,' said Shelborne.

The mast, spreaders and tracery of rigging looked wholly incongruous among the waterless dunes. Mac-Donald cut the engine. The silence was immense. I got out and paused at the gangplank, my torch on the name.

'Gquma.' Pride made Shelborne's voice more resonant. 'It's a Bushman word, meaning "the roar of the sea".'

She was a lovely little craft, gaff-rigged, a little old-fashioned perhaps, with a long-handled tiller and dinghy atop the coach house. The message of her clean, uncluttered sweep of deck, soaring sailplan, simple gear and deep, self-draining cockpit was clear: speed and seaworthiness. The flaring bow would stamp down the savage Sperrgebiet seas, and she looked sweet and easy to handle.

He sensed my enthusiasm. 'Thesen's at Luderitz built her to my own design. They know boats. They have built everything worth while on the coast.'

'I like that bow,' I said.

He grinned and looked twenty years younger as that pucker of flesh under his right eye which had appeared so harsh during the hearing smoothed away.

'Maybe that was the secret of getting through the sandbanks. I prayed that the seas would not be short and steep and the wind light, or else she's inclined to lift her head a bit high. She practically sails herself with the wind anywhere near astern. I'd take her anywhere, she's so certain in rough seas.

'She's all yours,' he told MacDonald, leading through to the saloon where two arm-chairs were built in at the stove. He pulled up the collapsible table from the floor. Forward of the mast was a curtain and through a gap I could see a pair of bunks.

'Brandy?' asked Shelborne.

MacDonald rummaging about outside was the only sound in the silence.

Thanks.'

He pulled a bottle and only one glass from a cupboard. He shook his head in reply to my unspoken question; he wasn't intending to talk with MacDonald within earshot. I admired the waxed red cedar of the interior fittings. We talked small-ship talk. There was nothing to give a clue to the man himself.

MacDonald emerged after a quarter of an hour, a little apologetic, gave a perfunctory look into the lockers in the saloon, and arranged to pick me up later and Shelborne in the morning.

'Now, Mr Tregard?' asked Shelborne, when he had gone.

'I want to make clear at the outset that I am acting on behalf of the Mazy Zed organization.'

'To quote Mr Justice de Villiers, you are clarifying your locus standi?'

We both laughed. Perhaps the small-ship talk, an enthusiasm mutually shared, had something to do with it, or perhaps it was just the man himself, but I felt at home aboard the cutter. At that moment, I would have liked nothing better than to have gone cruising among the islands with the crack old sailor.

I side-stepped my unpleasant mission: 'I'd like to see your islands.'

He was non-committal. 'Know them — or the Namib?'

'Not the islands. My job — if we win — will be to resurvey them, as well as the sea-bed. You know what existing charts are like.'

'It will be a big job, if…'

He, too, seemed unwilling to drag the court battle into our conversation. 'Know the Namib?'

'Scarcely. I've been on the eastern side only — the easy sector where the mountain plateau rises up from the desert. Not really the sort of wilderness you were describing to the court, but it was tough enough. But then I had a railway only two days' hike away — no roads, of course.'

'Were you prospecting the mountains?'

He was sitting back, keen, it seemed, to hear about myself.

I found myself telling him: 'No, it was my first job after the war, one of those miscellaneous things. I was with the South African Hydrographic Survey for the duration — for me there were no glorious battles, no medals, only routine surveys. Then the Smithsonian Institution…'

He looked at me keenly. 'You mean Mount Brukkaros?'

I nodded. 'That's it… I didn't think many people knew. The Institution had a solar research station right on top of that ruddy extinct volcano for years. It's a superb site — I've seen 100 miles from the summit on a clear day. Anyway, they couldn't find anyone to man it any longer. There were some instruments and equipment to bring down. It sounded interesting to me. It was.'

It was he who jerked us back into the present. 'So is sea-bed prospecting, Mr Tregard. You didn't come here to tell me your life story.'

'No.' I replied slowly. I sugared the pill the best I could. 'The Mazy Zed organization is big, Mr Shelborne. There is room for a man like you. Rhennin and I saw your enthusiasm in court. Rhennin wants you… would like you… in our project.'

The lamp shadowed the lower part of his face as he leaned forward. I was aware only of the power and anger of his eyes. 'At a price, not so?'

I had known it wouldn't be easy. This wasn't a charlatan looking for pickings. I felt cheap and softened the offer which I had jibbed at making in the first place. 'We could use your services, your knowledge, your drive. We have very big problems before we bring up the first diamond from the sea-bed. We would like you to join us.'

'Come, come, Mr Tregard, while I hold the sea-bed rights?'

'Not hold them, cede them. As Caldwell ceded them to you. Except our price is not a wagon load of stores and a case of brandy. It is five thousand pounds.'

'Five thousand pounds for what the Judge said was a potential of millions?'

The sneer gave an edge to his voice. I became angry — angry with myself really, I told myself afterwards — in the face of this stand.

'Listen, Shelborne, you won't bring up a single pay-load of diamonds and you know it. For thirty years you've done damn-all. Here's your chance to come in with a big, progressive organization.'

'No.'

'I am authorized to go up to ten thousand pounds.'

'Not for fifty thousand pounds.'

His curt rejection stung me. I might have guessed he couldn't be bought. My tongue ran away with me: 'What did you do with Caldwell, Shelborne? Why were you so shaken to see his daughter in court today?'

The lamp etched the lines in his face. His eyes blazed. 'Leave her out of it,' he said thickly, 'you can't…'

'… right an old injustice, can you?'

'What do you mean?'

My next words were thrown out as a taunt. I suppose his vehement reaction must have been an unconscious aftermath of Shardelow's needling him in court; I think that it was at that moment that I formed my first suspicion of Shelborne.

'Only you and God know what happened to Caldwell.'

'Only — me — and — God!'

I might have been alone, he was so withdrawn. Then he burst out savagely: 'In the desert, Tregard, strange things happen to men. They dream dreams…' He stopped short and then went on quietly. 'What happens about the girl?'

I shrugged. 'Shardelow said we regard both your applications as one. We'll fight you both.'

'No, I mean, are you approaching her — like me?'

'What the hell for? Yours is the original document. The fight's on, it seems — at your choosing. The girl comes second. She catches it anyway.'

He said, very quietly, 'And her mother?'

'Mother? What has she got to do with it?'

'She said she's had a stroke — you know what that means: she'll die.'

'Don't drag that sort of sentimental stuff into this, Shelborne. You know bloody well that if you wanted to help her, you need never have produced your document and the cession which Caldwell is supposed to have made you.'

The strange green eyes, rather widely set, stared at me, almost hypnotically. 'If you win — and the girl's mother dies — won't you offer her a job? She'll be penniless.'

'Why should we?'

'She's a diamond sorter. Good ones are hard to come by these days. She could be very useful to the Mazy Zed…'

I was uncomfortable, angry at myself, at Rhennin and the whole set-up. 'And if you win, I presume you'll offer her a job dropping dredges and greasy buoys?'

He didn't rise. 'Mine has been a long search, Tregard. I know what I am after and how far I have progressed.'

He said it so sincerely that I regretted my anger and sarcasm.

'That means you'll go back to Mercury — I'll come and look you up on my survey.'

He didn't relax. 'Mercury has an evil name on the coast, you know.'

'I'll come and see for myself.'

'Its reputation began at the very beginning, when the American explorer Captain Ben Morrell discovered it: he found half a million seals dead there. Mass suicide.'

I laughed, but there was something deep, sinister, about the way he spoke. Was it an indirect threat at me?

'So I must be scared off by an unexplained phenomenon which happened 140 years ago?'

'Not scared, but warned. Shortly after I took over as headman, millions of sea-birds died — equally mysteriously.'

'I expect it was some epidemic.'

He didn't seem to hear me 'In my time on Mercury several men have died — without reason. It is a very dangerous coast, Tregard, and there are many wrecks. Some of those men have died horribly.'

A ripple of fear ran through me at the way he spoke, and it triggered a retort:

'Did you murder Caldwell, Shelborne?'

For a split second the fine tracery of veins stood out against his forehead. If he rushes me, don't hit him too hard, he's old, I told myself. Just hard enough…

There was no need. Shelborne was on his feet and the gun was pointing at me. It was long, old-fashioned, and the light struck back from the beautiful engraving and inlay work on the barrel. I recognized it — the father of the modern Luger, a 7.65 mm Borchardt, first of the automatics. I knew that inside was a magazine with eight rounds. It was a superb collector's piece — and a killer's weapon.

Shelborne's thumb, moving as if of its own accord, patted the toggle. His hand was rock-steady. I'd have to risk the first shot. I'd be able to jump him before the second got me — the long heavy breechblock had to be activated by a relatively low-powered bullet before the next round came up from the magazine — and the next round would certainly kill me. But I hadn't got the modern Luger's mamba-quick repeat strike to deal with. Again the old centrefire cartridge wouldn't have the certainty of a modern rimfire. He might be using modern Mauser-types of the same calibre, though; in which case…

Shelborne must have seen it in my face. 'Don't…' he snarled.

I kicked the stay of the collapsible table and dived under it. I heard simultaneously the crash of the shot and the thud of the bullet into the thick planking top. I rocketed out at a crouch and grabbed his legs in a flying tackle. The second shot went into the coach roof above our heads. Time-lag — not Mauser. Completely off-balance, he tried for a moment to use the two-and-a-half-pound pistol to club me, but we went reeling against the side. His head struck the wood and he went limp.

I pulled myself clear and picked up the Borchardt. Keeping an eye on Shelborne, who was breathing heavily, I examined it. The Luger ancestry was clear in the delicate balance and long, tapering barrel. The toggle and breechblock were longer and heavier than in its modern counterpart — that is what had saved my life. But its beauty lay not only in its functionalism but in the engraving and gold and platinum inlay work on the butt and barrel. Even the crescent-shaped recoil-spring housing at the back was chased. I turned it over on to its right side. The cover-plate for the frame was circled by a thin line of gold engraving enclosing a masterfully executed Sperrgebiet gemsbok, looking almost like a unicorn.

But it was the lettering cut deep into the metal, which riveted my eyes.

It said: 'f.w. caldwell.'

So Shelborne had killed Caldwell at Strandloper's Water and taken his gun! There was no doubt in my mind about what had happened. I looked down at the big gaunt man, — he was only stunned. The skin had not been broken where his head had crashed against the woodwork, but he'd have a lump and a bruise. I slipped out the eight-shot clip and smiled grimly. They were the old low-velocity, special bottle-necked cartridges. If they had been Mausers I would not have been standing there.

From the direction of the desert I heard MacDonald coming back to fetch me. I slipped out the remaining cartridges. There should have been six. There were only five. The spring pushed up two objects under the last shell and they fell out with the bullets into my palm.

They were two small uncut diamonds.

I put the shells into my pocket and the diamonds back into the magazine. I snugged it home and put the fine old weapon next to the unconscious figure. He stirred slightly as he started to come round.

I went out into the dark.