A Twist Of Sand

I have only the vaguest recollection of the rest of the proceedings. It was only a question of disposing of the corpse, so to speak. I felt quite unmoved by it all. I remember John coming to chat with me, and then to plead, half-quizzically, and again with a measure of friendship which I did not realise he had for me. But the die was cast. Curva dos Dunas and I must keep our secret — until death do us part.

X

A Nymph Rejoins her Ancestors

"It is only a very small request, and I shall pay you well," murmured Stein blandly. The shadow from the light above his head in Etosha's saloon did not conceal, but rather accentuated, the cruel mouth. The mouth was twisted ingratiatingly, but the eyes and the face were deadly cold.

The faint movement of Etosha at her buoy rocked the whisky in my glass. I focused on the amber liquid to compose my thoughts. I was angry, furiously angry, at Stein again pushing his way into Etosha's cabin when Mac and I were having a drink together, as we always did after the crew had gone ashore. It was a month since that dreadful scene in the bar at Mark's. The drunken German was removed screaming like a madman and shouting obscene threats at me. Stein had just stood and stared at me as if he were trying to sort some mental jigsaw into place. The whole thing still jangled on my nerves. I hadn't seen Stein since, but the sight of him back in Etosha brought forward all my latent fears and caution. What did Stein really want of me?

Mac sat under an open porthole, his face inscrutable.

"Stein," I said and my voice rasped at the goading of anger and whisky. "Once and for all, I shall not put you ashore on the Skeleton Coast, even for a thousand pounds each way."

"I am a scientist," he replied, ignoring my mounting anger. "All I ask is the opportunity to collect a beetle which has been lost to science for many, many years."

"To hell with you and your precious beetles!" I swore. "Now get out and leave me alone."

"I repeat," said Stein and the cruel gash of a mouth grinned more sardonically than ever, "I am a scientist. So when a man starts to scream in a bar for no reason at all, I say to myself, there must be a reason. Not so?"

"What has a drunken sailor got to do with my taking you to the Skeleton Coast?"

Stein evaded the issue. His voice became prim.

"I say to myself, a man does not scream for nothing. There must be a cause. Could it be the little thing which fell out of Captain Macdonald's pocket? I ask myself. And what is that thing — a little lucky charm which we have in southern Germany. Surely that alone would not reduce a man to a frenzy and send him into a mental hospital afterwards?"

Stein was smiling again. He had some good cards somewhere, and he was playing them skilfully. I bit down my anger.

"A mental hospital?"

"Yes, Captain, a mental hospital." He gazed at me as though I were a scientific curiosity.

"The psychiatrist is a good friend of mine, and he finds the case of the German sailor very interesting. He has what you call a fixation about a hand. Captain Macdonald's little lucky charm triggers off the malady all over again."

I began to sweat, even in the cold early winter night. I poured myself another Haig. Mac did the same. I didn't offer Stein one.

"So? "I asked.

"Ah, Captain, that is much better," smirked Stein. "You may even become so interested in my story that you will offer me a drink next time, eh?"

"Perhaps," I said grimly.

"So, both of us being scientists, we go into the case history of this Johann. A curious case, in fact. We find that Johann is, in fact, an orphan — his life only begins after 1944-"

"What the hell are you talking about?" I asked.

"I will be frank," continued Stein. "Johann has no past. He was found with a tribe of Bushmen on the Khowarib, near Zessfontein, by a missionary in 1944. He was brought to Winkhoek and spent two years in hospital. They never found out who he was. But one thing is clear — he is a sailor, a U-boat man. He knows nothing of how he came to be wandering with a tribe of dirty little wild men. He lives in mortal fear of a hand."

I thought of the victory hand painted on Trout's conning-tower. The whisky I was drinking might have been water for all the stimulus it gave me.

"Johann improves daily, however, and he will soon be back at his old job again in Windhoek," smiled Stein. He rose as if to go. He turned back at the doorway. He was playing me as a cat does a mouse.

"I was interested in Lieutenant Garland," he said casually. "A friend of mine in Cape Town checked on a Navy List, and I was fascinated to know that he also once commanded H.M.S. Trout, a British submarine, with a most distinguished war record under her first captain, one Lieutenant-Commander Geoffrey Peace."

I had not heard my own name in years and it sent a cold shudder down my spine. So Stein was going to blackmail me with my past in order to force me to take him to the Skeleton Coast. It was impossible that he should know about Curva dos Dunas.

Stein came a pace back into the saloon.