Immediately he was totally absorbed.
After half an hour he pulled his head out of the engine, wiped his hands on a handful of cotton waste and hurried around to the front of the car.
The big muscles in his right arm bunched and rippled as he swung the crank handle, spinning the heavy engine easily with a steady whirring rhythm. After a minute of this, he released the handle and wiped off his sweat with the cotton waste that left grease marks down his cheeks.
He was breathing quickly but lightly.
"I knew you for a temperamental bitch the moment I laid eyes on you," he muttered. "But you are going to do it my way, darling. You really are." Once more his head and shoulders disappeared under the engine cowling and there was the clink of the spanner against metal and the monotonous repetition of "Tiger Rag" in a low off-key whistle for another ten minutes, then again Jake went to the crank handle.
"You are going to do it my way, baby and what's more you're going to like it." He spun the handle and the engine kicked viciously, back-fired like a rifle shot, and the crank handle snapped out of Jake's hand with enough force to have taken his thumb off if he had been holding it with an opposed grip.
"Jesus," whispered Jake, "a real little hell catV He scrambled up into the turret and reached down to the controls and reset the ignition.
At the next swing of the crank handle she bucked and fired, caught and surged, then fell back into a steady beat, quivering slightly on her rigid suspension, but come alive.
Jake stepped back, sweating, flushed, but with his dark green eyes shining with delight.
"Oh you beauty, "he said. "You bloody little beauty."
"Bravo," said a voice behind him, and Jake started and turned quickly. He had forgotten that he was not the only person left on earth, in his complete absorption with the machine, and now he felt embarrassed, as though he had been observed in some intimate and private bodily function.
He glowered at the figure that was leaning elegantly against the hole of the mango tree.
"Jolly good show," said the stranger, and the voice was sufficient to stir the hair upon the nape of Jake's neck. It was one of those pricey Limey accents.
The man was dressed in a cream suit of expensive tropical linen and two-tone shoes of white and brown. On his head he wore a white straw hat with a wide brim that cast a shadow over his face. But Jake could see the man had a friendly smile and an easy engaging manner. He was handsome in a conventional manner, with noble and regular features, a face that had flustered many a female's emotions and that fitted well with the voice. He would he a ranking government official probably, or an officer in one of the regular regiments stationed in Dares Salaam.
Upper class establishment, even to the necktie with its narrow diagonal stripes by which the British advertised at which seat of learning they had obtained their education and their place in the social order.
"It didn't take you long to get her going." The man lolled gracefully against the mango, his ankles crossed and one hand thrust into his coat pocket. He smiled again, and this time Jake saw the mockery and challenge in the eyes more clearly. He had judged him wrongly. This was not one of those cardboard men. They were pirate eyes, mocking and wolfish, dangerous as the glint of a knife in the shadows.
"I have no doubt the others are in as good a state of repair." It was an enquiry, not a statement.
"Well, you're wrong, friend. "Jake felt a pang of dismay. It was absurd that this fancy lad could have a real interest in the five vehicles but if he did, then Jake had just given him a generous demonstration of their value. "This is the only one that will run, and even her guts are blown. Listen to her knock. Sounds like a mad carpenter." He reached under the cowling and earthed the magneto.
In the sudden silence as the engine died, he said loudly, "Junk!"
and spat on the ground near the front wheel but not on it. He couldn't bring himself to do that. Then he gathered his tools, flung his jacket over his shoulder, hefted the carpet bag and, without another glance at the Englishman, ambled off towards the gates of the works yard.
"You not bidding then, old chap?" The stranger had left his post at the mango and fallen into step beside him.
"God, no." Jake tried to fill his voice with disdain. "Are you?"
"Now what would I do with five broken-down armoured cars?" The man laughed silently, and then went on, "Yankee, are you? Texas, what?"
"You've been reading my mail." Engineer?" :1 try, I try."
"Buy you a drink?"
"Give me the money. instead. I've got a train to catch." The elegant stranger laughed again, a light friendly laugh.
"God speed, then, old chap," he said, and Jake hurried out through the gates into the dusty heat-dazed streets of noonday Dares Salaam and walked away without a backward glance, trying to convey with his determined stride and the set of his shoulders that his departure was final.
Jake found a canteen around the first corner and within five minutes" walk of the works yard, where he went into hiding. The Tusker beer he ordered was blood warm, but he drank it while he worried. The English, man gave him a very queasy feeling, his interest was too bright to be mere curiosity. On the other hand, however, Jake might have to go over the twenty pounds bid that he had calculated and he took from the inside pocket of his jacket the worn pigskin wallet that contained his entire worldly wealth and, prudently using the table top as a screen, he counted the wad of notes.
Five hundred and seventeen pounds in Bank of England notes, three hundred and twenty-seven dollars in United States currency, and four hundred and ninety East African shillings was not a great fortune with which to take on the likes of the elegant Limey. However, Jake drained his warm beer, set his jaw and inspected his watch once more. It gave him five minutes to noon.
Major Gareth Swales was mildly dismayed, but not at all surprised to see the big American entering the works yard gates once more in a manner which was obviously intended to be unobtrusive but reminded him of Jack Dempsey sidling furtively into an old ladies" tea party.
Gareth Swales sat in the shade of the mangoes upon an upturned wheelbarrow, over which he had spread a silk handkerchief to protect the pristine linen of his suit. He had set aside his straw hat, and his hair was meticulously trimmed and combed, shining softly in that rare colour between golden blond and red, and there was just a sparkle of silver in the wings at his temples. His mustache was the same colour and carefully moulded to the curve of his upper lip. His face was deeply tanned by the tropical sun to a dark chestnut brown, so that the contrasting blue of his eyes was startlingly pale and penetrating, as he watched Jake Barton cross the yard to join the gathering of buyers under the mango trees. He sighed with resignation and returned his attention to the folded envelope on which he was making his financial calculations.
He really was finely drawn out, the previous eighteen months had been very unkind to him. The cargo that had been seized in the Liao River by the Japanese gunboat when he was only hours away from delivering it to the Chinese commander at Mukden and receiving payment for it had wiped away the accumulated capital of ten years. It had taken all his ingenuity and a deal of financial agility to assemble the package that was stored at this moment in No.
4 warehouse down at the main docks of Dares Salaam port.
His buyers would be arriving to take delivery in twelve days and the five armoured cars would have rounded out the package beautifully.
Armour, by God, he could fix his own price. Only aircraft would have been more desirable from his client's point of view.
Gareth had first seen them that morning in their neglected and decrepit state of repair, he had discounted them completely, and was on the point of turning away when he had noticed the long muscular pair of legs protruding from the engine of one of the vehicles and heard the barely recognizable strains of "Tiger Rag'.