And that, I presumed, was what they thought had happened. But I wouldn’t grumble.
They opened cans of beer and gulped. I went on sipping.
‘We had sure enough paid for you at Skukuza,’ Evan said accusingly. ‘Including the window you broke.’
I only had to pick up the pen.
‘My God.’ Evan said, before I got it to the paper. ‘Danilo Cavesey broke the window... to get into your rondavel.’
I supposed so. He had got past the locked door without waking me.
‘You’re a fairly valuable property, dear boy,’ Conrad said, finishing the saga. ‘So we decided we ought perhaps to spend a day or so looking for you.’
‘We saw a splendid herd of elephants yesterday afternoon,’ said Evan, pointing out that the delay to their original plans had not been an entire waste. ‘And we might see some more today,’ he said.
They helped me into the rondavel in Satara and I asked them to turn the air-conditioning off, as to me the hut felt cold. If I got cold again I would get stiff again, which would only add to my aches... I lay on one of the beds with three blankets over me and felt lousy.
Conrad fetched a glass of water and he and Evan stood around looking helpless.
Evan said, ‘Let’s take your stinking clothes off. You’d embarrass a pig, as you are.’
I shook my head.
‘If we bring you some water, would you like to wash?’
No, again.
Evan wrinkled his nose. ‘Well, you won’t mind if neither of us sleeps in here with you?’
I shook my head. My smell was offensive to myself as well, now that I’d breathed so much clean fresh air.
Conrad went off to the camp shop to find something I could swallow and presently came back with a pint of milk and a tin of chicken soup. The only opener they had was the beer can opener, but they got the soup out into a jug in the end. There was nothing to heat the soup with, so they tipped in half the milk and stirred it around until it was runny. Then they poured out a glassful, and, grateful for their clumsy care, I drank it bit by bit.
‘Now,’ said Evan briskly, satisfied that they had done the best possible for me, ‘let’s get on with planning the trap.’
This time, when I tried, some semblance of speech came out.
‘Danilo is staying at the Vaal Majestic,’ I said.
‘What did you say?’ Evan demanded. ‘Thank God you can talk again, but I couldn’t understand a word of it.’
I wrote it down.
‘Oh. Right.’
I said, ‘Telephone in the morning, and tell him...’ It was a croak, rough and cracked.
‘Look,’ Evan interrupted. ‘We’ll get along quicker if you write it.’
I nodded. Much easier on my throat, if he preferred it that way.
‘At breakfast time, tell Danilo you are trying to find out where I am, because I have Conrad’s equipment in my car. Tell him I also have Conrad’s gold pencil in my pocket, and he especially wants it back. Tell him I also have one of your notebooks, and you need your notes. Tell him you are worried because I had some theory that someone I knew had been trying to kill me.’
Evan read, and looked dubious. ‘Are you sure that will bring him?’
I wrote: ‘Would you risk my being able to write down that theory, if you knew I had pencil and paper within reach?’
He considered. He said, ‘No. I wouldn’t.’
‘I did do it.’
‘So you did.’
Conrad sat heavily down in the armchair, nodding.
‘What next, dear boy?’
I wrote: ‘This evening, telephone Quentin van Huren. Tell him where and in what state you found me. Say I wrote some notes. Read them to him. Tell him about the trap for Danilo. Ask him to tell the police. With his authority, he can arrange it properly.’
‘Sure. Sure.’ Evan with undaunted wiry energy collected up my writings from the car and his notebook with all our plans, and strode off at once to the telephone in the main buildings.
Conrad stayed behind and lit a cigar, no doubt to fend off evil odours.
‘It was Evan who insisted on looking for you, dear boy,’ he said. ‘Absolutely fanatical, he was. You know how he never lets up when he gets an idea. We went up every unlikely track... bloody silly, I thought... until we found you.’
‘Who,’ I said slowly, trying to speak clearly, ‘told Danilo about the film...Man in the Car?’
He shrugged a little uncomfortably. ‘Maybe I did. At Germiston. They were all asking about your latest work... the van Hurens, Clifford Wenkins, Danilo... everybody.’
It didn’t matter. Wenkins could have got hold of the film’s plot easily enough, through Worldic.
‘Dear boy,’ Conrad said thoughtfully. ‘The make-up is all wrong in the film.’ He puffed the cigar. ‘Mind you,’ he said, ‘what you actually look like would be pretty poor box-office.’
‘Thanks.’
He smiled. ‘Have some more soup?’
Evan was gone a long time and came back looking earnest and intense.
‘He wants me to ring back later. He was pretty incoherent when I’d finished.’ Evan raised his eyebrows, surprised that anyone should need time to assimilate so many unwelcome facts. ‘He said he would think over what ought to be done. And oh yes, he said to ask you why you now thought it was Clifford Wenkins who helped Danilo.’
I said, ‘Clifford Wenkins would have helped...’
‘Write it down,’ said Evan impatiently. ‘You sound like a crow with laryngitis.’
I wrote: ‘Clifford Wenkins would do anything for publicity stunts. He would exchange recording gear and microphones, for instance. I do not believe he thought anyone would be killed, but if I got an electric shock at a press conference, it would put my name and the purpose of my visit in the papers. I believe Danilo put it all into his head, and gave him the live equipment. Wenkins was terrified when Katya was so badly shocked, and afterwards I saw him telephoning, looking very worried. I thought he was calling Worldic, but he might have been telling Danilo that the stunt had gone wrong.’
‘It went better, dear boy, from Worldic’s point of view,’ Conrad commented.
‘Worldic drove Clifford Wenkins unmercifully to arrange publicity stunts... so if Danilo suggested to him that they should kidnap me and lock me in a car, just like in my new film, he would have been foolish enough to agree.
‘When I’d been in the car for three days, I did not think it could be Wenkins who’d been helping Danilo, because I knew Wenkins would not leave me there very long. But once Wenkins was dead, no one but Danilo knew where I was. He had only to leave me there...
‘After my body was discovered, people would work out that it had been a publicity stunt planned by Wenkins and myself, which went wrong because he drowned and could not set in motion the necessary search.
‘I expect it was in Wenkins’s car that he and Danilo drove into the park, so that the Numbi gate office would have it on record that he had been there.’
Evan practically tore the notebook out of my hands, as he had been striding around with impatience while I wrote. He read to the end and handed the notebook to Conrad.
‘Do you realise,’ he demanded, ‘that you are practically accusing Danilo of killing Clifford Wenkins, so that you shouldn’t be found?’
I nodded.
‘I think he did,’ I croaked. ‘For a gold mine.’
They left me with water and soup to hand and went off to dinner in the restaurant. When they came back, Evan had telephoned again to van Huren.
‘He’d grasped everything a bit better,’ Evan allowed condescendingly. ‘I read him what you wrote about Wenkins, and he said he thought you could be right. He said he was upset about Danilo, because he had liked him, but he would do as you asked. He said that he himself would come down here... he’s flying down to the Skukuza airstrip first thing in the morning. The police will be properly genned up. Conrad and I will meet them and van Huren at Skukuza, and go on from there, if it looks likely that Danilo has taken the bait.’