As the plane for London passed low over Piemburg that night a large cheerful clergyman drew the attention of his companion to the fire and the crowds dancing in the streets.
'So all within is livelier than before,' he remarked enigmatically.
His companion put down the catalogue of rubber goods she had been reading. 'I'm sure you'll make a very good college chaplain,' she said and sighed, 'but I doubt if I'll find a Zulu cook in London.'
It was only a month before Kommandant van Heerden was well enough to leave hospital. His new heart had shown no signs of being rejected and the doctors were delighted with his progress. There had been a little trouble over the matter of injections and it had taken six male nurses all their strength to hold the Kommandant down, but apart from that he had been a model patient. After a fortnight he had been allowed out of bed and only then had he learnt the full story of the tragedy at Piemburg Prison.
'It was a miracle the ambulance men managed to get the body away in time,' he told Dr Erasmus. 'Another minute and I wouldn't be here today.'
Dr Erasmus had to agree. 'A genuine miracle,' he said.
'You're quite certain there won't be any rejection of the new heart?' the Kommandant asked, and was relieved that the doctor was so confident all would be well.
'I can honestly say,' said Dr Erasmus, 'that to all intents and purposes the heart that beats in your chest at this moment might well have been the one you were born with,' and with this assurance that there would be no rejection, the Kommandant smiled happily to himself.
When he finally left hospital, the Kommandant took a month's leave and spent it on the beach at Umhloti acquiring a healthy tan and reading books about the Hazelstone family. For a while he toyed with the idea of changing his name to van Heerden-Hazelstone. 'After all, I'm practically one of the family,' he thought, but he gave up the idea finally as being not in the best of taste. Instead he cultivated an air of arrogance which irritated Luitenant Verkramp and was ignored by everybody else. The doctors had told him that his new heart needed plenty of exercise and the Kommandant tried to get out of his office and walk about the town as much as possible.
His favourite stroll took him up Town Hill to Jacaranda Park where he would wander down the drive to the house. It was still empty and there was talk of turning it into a museum or even a National Park. In the meantime Kommandant van Heerden liked to go and sit on the stoep and recall the events of the week that had changed his life so momentously.
He often thought of Konstabel Els and now that Els was dead he felt quite sorry. There had been a good side to the Konstabel's nature, he supposed, and he had to admit that Els had saved his life more than once.
'If it hadn't been for Els and that damned gun, I wouldn't be here today,' he said to himself before remembering that it had been Els' lunacy that had caused his heart trouble in the first place. Still he could afford to be magnanimous now. Els died as he had lived, killing people. 'He went with a swing,' he thought, and recalled nostalgically the Konstabel's epic struggle with the Dobermann. It reminded him of a case he had read about in the paper recently. It concerned a coloured convict on a prison farm in Northern Zululand who had bitten a guard dog to death before hanging it. The fellow's name had been Harbinger, which the Kommandant thought sounded vaguely familiar. Anyway he had been given twenty lashes for indecent assault and the Kommandant thought he deserved them.
He settled himself comfortably in a wicker chair and looked out over the lawn at the new bust of Sir Theophilus which he had had erected at his own expense-or rather at the expense of the reward money Els no longer had any use for. He had paid the taxidermist too for his trouble, and had taken the stuffed Toby and put it in his office at the police station where it gave him an opportunity to wax eloquent to the new Konstabels on the virtues of Konstabel Els who had killed the dog to save his Kommandant's life.
All in all, the Kommandant reflected, he had good cause to be happy. The world was a good place to be in. South Africa was white still and would remain so. But above all he knew that he merited the high place he held in Piemburg and that his greatest ambition had finally been achieved. Within his chest there beat the heart of an English gentleman.
