‘By all means join us on Monday, if you would care to.’
Evan gave him no chance to retract and included Conrad in the deal.
When they and the three young ones had all gone off to place their bets, I apologised to van Huren that his generosity should have been stretched.
He shook his head. ‘It will be all right. We seldom take large parties of visitors down the mine as it slows or stops production too much, but we can manage four of you without a break in work, if you are all sensible, as I am sure you will be.’
By the end of the afternoon the number had grown to five, as Roderick Hodge also turned up at Germiston, and having learnt of the expedition begged van Huren privately to be allowed to tag along with a view to a feature article in the Rand Daily Star.
I would have thought that gold mines were a stale topic in Johannesburg, but Roderick had his way.
I found him unexpectedly at my elbow while I was watching Tables Turned amble round the parade ring looking the prize colt he was not. Danilo and all the van Hurens had gone to take tea with the Chairman, a meal I preferred to do without, and Conrad and Evan were away in the distance being accosted by the ever perspiring Clifford.
Roderick touched me on the arm, and said tentatively, ‘Link?’
I turned. His fortyish face had grown new lines in the last few days and looked much too old for the length of his trendy hair and the boyish cut of his clothes.
‘How is Katya?’ I asked.
‘She’s fine. Remarkable, really.’
I said I was glad, and then asked if he often went to the races.
‘No... actually I came to see you. I tried to get you at the Iguana Rock but they said you were at the races...’
‘Did they indeed,’ I murmured.
‘Er...’ he explained. I have what you might call a source there. Keeps me informed, you see.’
I saw. All over the world there was a grey little army which tipped off the Press and got tipped in return: hotel porters, railway porters, hospital porters, and anyone within earshot of V.I.P. lounges at airports.
‘I live this side of the city, so I thought I might just as well drift along.’
‘A nice day,’ I said.
He looked up at the sky as if it would have been all one to him if it had been snowing.
‘I suppose so... Look, I got a call this morning from Joe... that’s the chap who was setting up the radio equipment at Randfontein House.’
‘I remember,’ I said.
‘He said he had taken that microphone to pieces, and there was nothing wrong with it. The outer wire of the coaxial cable was of course connected to the metal casing, though...’
‘Ah,’ I interrupted. ‘And what exactly is a coaxial cable?’
‘Don’t you know? It’s an electric cable made of two wires, but one wire goes up the centre like a core, and the other wire is circular, outside it. Television aerial cables are coaxial... you can see that by the ends, where you plug them into the sets.’
‘Oh yes,’ I agreed. ‘I see.’
‘Joe says he found the earth wire and the live wire had been fastened to the wrong terminals in the power plug of the recorder he was using for Katya. He says people are warned over and over again about the dangers of doing that, but they still do it. The current would go straight through the mike’s casing, and earth itself through whoever was holding it.’
I thought. ‘Wouldn’t the whole recorder have been live too?’
He blinked. ‘Yes. Joe says that inside it must have been. But no one would have got a shock from it. The casing of the recorder was plastic, the knobs were plastic, and Joe himself was wearing rubber soled shoes, which he says he always does anyway, as a precaution.’
‘But he must have used that recorder before,’ I protested.
‘He says not. He says he plugged it in because it was just standing there when something went wrong with his own. He didn’t know whose it was, and no one seems to have claimed it since.’
Arknold gave his jockey a leg up on to Tables Turned and the horses began to move out for the race.
I said, ‘It was all very bad luck.’
‘Joe thinks so,’ he agreed. There was however a shade of doubt in his voice and I looked at him enquiringly. ‘Well... it’s an appalling thing to say, but Joe wondered whether it could possibly have been a publicity stunt that went too far. He says that Clifford Wenkins was fussing round the electronic equipment after your first broadcast, and that you yourself set up the conference, and you did get the most fantastic press coverage for saving Katya...’
‘I agree it’s an appalling thing to say,’ I said cheerfully. ‘Consider me appalled. Consider also that I have already wondered whether it was a publicity stunt set up by you and Katya... which went too far.’
He stared. Then relaxed. Then ruefully smiled.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Neither of us fixed it. How about our Clifford.’
‘You know him better than I do,’ I said. ‘But although he seems to have sold his soul to Worldic Cinemas, he doesn’t strike me as having the nerve or the ingenuity to fix it all up.’
‘You fluster him,’ Roderick observed. ‘He isn’t always as futile-seeming as he’s been since you arrived.’
Further along the rails from us stood Danilo, watching Nerissa’s colt with a smile on his frank and bonny face. I thought that if he had known he was so soon to inherit them, he would have been anxious instead.
Arknold joined him, and together they walked on to the stands to watch. Roderick and I tailed along after. We all watched Tables Turned set off at a great rate, run out of puff two furlongs from home, and finish a spent force.
Arknold, muttering under his breath and looking like thunder, bumped into me as he made his way down the stands’ steps to hold a post-mortem with the jockey.
He focused on me and said abruptly, ‘It’s too much, Mister. It’s too much. That’s a bloody good colt and he should have won by a mile in that company.’ He shut his mouth like a trap, brushed past me, and thrust his way down through the crowd.
‘Whatever’s all that about?’ Roderick asked casually; so casually that I remembered the Rand Daily Star, and didn’t tell him.
‘No idea,’ I said, putting on a bit of puzzle: but Roderick’s sceptical expression said that he similarly was remembering where I worked.
We walked down from the stands. I considered ways and means, and decided Klugvoigt was the best bet for what I wanted. So I drifted Roderick gently to where Conrad and Evan were discussing adjourning to the bar, inserted him into their notice, and left as he began telling Conrad the theories of Joe and the coaxial cable.
The Chairman was in his private box surrounded by ladies in decorative hats. He saw me hovering alone, beckoned to me to come up the adjacent stairs, and when I reached his side, pressed into my hand some drowned whiskey in a warmish glass.
‘How are you doing?’ I asked. ‘Winning, I hope.’
‘Not losing, anyway.’ I smiled.
‘What do you fancy in the next?’
‘I’d. have to see them in the parade ring first.’
‘Wise fellow,’ he agreed.
I admired the facilities. ‘The stands look new,’ I commented.
‘Not long built,’ he agreed. ‘Very much needed, of course.’
‘And the weighing room... from the outside it looks so comfortable.’
‘Oh, it is, my dear chap.’ A thought struck him. ‘Would you care to see round inside it?’
‘How very kind of you,’ I said warmly, and made ready-to-go-at-once movements so that he shouldn’t forget. After a moment or two we parked our unfinished drinks and strolled easily across to the large square administrative block which housed the weighing and changing rooms on the ground floor and the racecourse offices upstairs.