I ran down the back stairs from the gallery into the main hall just ahead of him. And now it was a matter of hide-and-seek around the exhibits in the great hall and beneath the vast skeletal shapes of prehistoric animals: hide-and-seek with violence at the end of it, I thought, for one or both of us. For when I saw the African, just for an instant at the bottom of the stairs, I saw the piece of cord in his hand, knotted cord with stones or leaded weights tied to each end, some kind of bolas. My only chance was to lie low, and hope to surprise the man in some way — with a crack over the head or with the blow pipe.
So I stayed where I was, hidden behind the brontosaurus skeleton, down on my haunches, where I could see through the bones of the animal over to the corner of the building. The African was there: I saw his legs beneath a display case, moving out slowly into the hall. Then he disappeared, going towards the main entrance, and I took the chance of going in the opposite direction, back into another part of the museum, the ethnological section, down some steps and into another smaller, darker hall.
Here the exhibits were more numerous and the display cases packed closely together, so that the cover was far better. On the other hand I couldn’t find any exit here among the Indian totem poles, South-Sea-island war canoes, and every other conceivable tribal relic and knick-knack. Indeed, when I got right to the back of the room, I found the only exit there securely locked. I was trapped. I would either have to stay where I was and try and hide, or make my way forward to the main hall again. In the event I didn’t have time to make the choice.
Not finding me in the front of the museum, the African must have doubled back, and the first I knew of his presence again was a sudden sliding sound, as if some big marbles were being thrown along the floor somewhere ahead of me in the gloom. I was down on my knees, looking along beneath the display cases. And I saw what the noise was: the bolas with its round stone weights was sliding to a halt only a few feet ahead of me. Was the African unarmed now, with this attempt to set a decoy, to tempt me from my cover?
A minute later I knew he wasn’t. Something — I couldn’t see it in the half-light — flew through the air towards me from my left with a quick swishing sound and smashed into the exhibition case immediately behind me, breaking the glass in great fragments all about my ears. Looking up, just a foot above my head, I saw the tufted throwing-spear, an assegai taken from the wall or some case ahead of me, embedded in the war feathers of an Indian headdress, the ebony-dark shaft still quivering. But I couldn’t see anybody. The African had moved away. And I ran myself then, looking upwards now. There were two galleries, one above the other, round this smaller hall, as well. But the stairway up to them must have been at the front, and I was at the back. There was no escape that way. Indeed, my pursuer could use one of the galleries, I realised, to look down and attack me from above. So I moved further back into the shadows, tiptoeing past a huge basketwork prayer-wheel, seeking cover.
There was complete silence. And so I hardly dared move. All the same, though I couldn’t be seen from overhead, I was clearly visible, dark on white, against a great snow-filled Eskimo display case where I was standing.
To one side and slightly ahead was a huge, multi-coloured Indian totem pole, rising thirty feet up into the roof of the hall. There was some cover there, I saw, at its base. I crouched down and inched towards it, finally tucking myself in to one side of the pole where I had a view once more along the floor beneath the display cases. I got the blow pipe out again and was just fitting a dart into it when the dark hand emerged from behind the pole quick as a snake’s head and the cord — an ordinary piece of thick string this time — circled my neck.
I struggled but it was little use: the cord knifed hard round my throat and the best I could do was to get my feet, sliding up the totem pole, while the African held me tight against it now, my head forced back against the wood.
‘The girl,’ the man behind me said, ‘where is she?’
I couldn’t turn. I couldn’t see his face. And the blowpipe had dropped to the floor. But I still had the second dart in my hand.
‘Where have you her? The child?’ The accent was more Arab than African, and the cord came tighter then. The searing pain was worse than the lack of breath, though soon there would be no breath and that would be worse still.
Using the bamboo dart as a dagger I struck out blindly behind me again and again, stabbing the empty air as the noose contracted, the man trying to restrain me while moving back from me at the same time. But at last the sharp point found a home. It struck the man’s clothing first — I could hear something rip. But then it went further on: I felt the dart sink into some part of his flesh, like a skewer into a leg of mutton.
The man shouted then, a scream of agony, and he pulled the cord again viciously so that I thought I was done for. But it was his last effort against me. The cord dropped away and when I turned the African was stumbling about on one leg, trying desperately to extract the dart which the barbs held firm, deep in his thigh. There was little I could do, I thought, except run. But I stood there instead — amazed: first by the fact that this was quite a different African, a younger, much lighter-skinned man without any scars on his face, and then when I saw how quickly he subsided, his struggles dying away in a minute or so as paralysis overcame him. His leg seized up first and soon he was slumped on the floor, unable to move at all. Finally he just lay there, stretched out full length beneath the totem pole. But the strange thing was that, though he was now quite immobile, and obviously couldn’t speak, the man looked completely fit. He was entirely conscious, his eyes watching me, perfectly clearly, as I moved about him — vicious, frustrated eyes, like those of a wild beast alive in a trap, still confronting its hunter. And I saw then that the old Somali poison still worked. And I wondered if this must have been exactly its intended effect: to paralyse its victim, rather than to kill.
I went quickly through the man’s pockets while he lay there inertly, with a frozen gaze of fury. He had a lot of money on him, including some Libyan money, and a London — Oxford train timetable. But there was nothing else to identify him. I left him where he was. The police would find him soon enough. Indeed I was surprised they hadn’t arrived at the Museum already, since George had escaped a good twenty minutes before and I thought he would surely have contacted them by now. But perhaps he hadn’t phoned them. Perhaps he wanted to protect me from them, or rather to protect himself from guilt by association with me. I escaped from the museum a few minutes later myself, when I finally found an exit through a door to the side of the museum’s main hall which led into a small library. And from here I was able to walk through another door, just opening the Yale lock into the street.
Then I was striding quickly off across the parks into the evening light. I was sure that George had more to offer. True, his initial explanations had been convincing enough in his office. But why had he run away? And what of the African? And now this Libyan? How on earth did he fit in? I wondered, if George hadn’t phoned the police, if I might find him at home now, since his house was only just across the park. Indeed its back garden, though hidden by a line of great chestnuts, gave directly out onto the park. I could come at it that way, use the cover in the big trees first, scout the land out before approaching the house.