Eleventh Chapter
We’re all born brave, trusting and greedy (said Oom Schalk Lourens) and most of us remain greedy.
Gerrit Johannes Pretorius, having lost his own Webley revolver to Lieutenant Connelly, quickly and quietly searched the first-class compartment before finally finding what he was looking for. He had hoped for something more powerful, but he liked the small revolver hidden inside striped socks at the bottom of Detective Constable Thatcher’s suitcase. It was Belgian made, a fully loaded FN point two-two pistol at least thirty years old but in good condition. Thatcher took care of it. Could be a family weapon he inherited. In his years as a street urchin Gerrit Johannes never met a policeman who didn’t have a second weapon stashed somewhere. He was sure if he went through Detective Constable Blair’s suitcase he would locate a hidden gun as well.
There was no time for that.
He slipped the Belgian point two-two into his belt. If you strike bone with a point two-two it can’t do much damage. If you hit a soft part of the skull the force of the bullet won’t be enough for it to exit on the other side, but any calibre bullet bouncing around inside a skull can take a brain apart.
Gerrit Johannes was banking on that happening if he had to shoot.
Just above his head, on the roof of the first-class carriage, Johnny Zulu and Manny Porra snaked along using the sharp points of their pick-axes in rivet joints to advance against the force of the train’s rushing air. The moon was playing hide-and-see with clouds now, the dark protecting them from discovery by Lieutenant Connelly’s machine-gun nest on the forward edge of the first-class roof, close to the locomotive’s coal bin.
The two rogues were playing a dangerous game. They were gambling on the moonlight staying hidden behind cloud. When the clouds parted again the moonlight would reveal them to the two soldiers manning the machine-gun. They would never be able to reach the gun before it started chattering in their faces.
Fate was on their side again. The moon didn’t appear and the two men dozing inside the sandbag nest died before they could see the pick-axes coming at them. One of their heads went bouncing along the roof, making bloody marks wherever it hit.
“Orright,” Johnny Zulu grinned.
“Ja-nee.” Manny Porra was equally pleased.
At that moment the moon started shining again. It was a good sign.
Captain Lawrence stepped on the lower bench in his first-class compartment. He unsnapped the belt holding the bedding roll on the upper bench. As the bedding rolled open, it revealed the diamond’s chest hidden at its heart.
As he worked the key in the chest’s lock, Lawrence was very aware of the drama of the moment and prolonged it deliberately.
The tension play worked on Lieutenant Connolly, as well as on Miss Emily and Detective Constables Brian and Thatcher. The four of them were hardly breathing.
Did it work on Bernardus van Aswegen?
Not so you’d notice.
The so-called train conductor believed the real Gibson diamond was, at this moment in time, being carried to Pretoria by a father and son he trusted with his life. That meant he really believed Gerrit Johannes had somehow taken the real stone from the chest and replaced it with a fake one.
Miss Emily was still in two minds about this. Part of her desperately wanted to believe what Gerrit Johannes had told her about not stealing the real diamond, and she wanted to see with her own eyes if he had spoken the truth for a change.
Lawrence opened the chest.
“See?” he said with some satisfaction. “The lady’s safe and sound.”
On its little red pillow the diamond glowed in the compartment’s yellow light. Lieutenant Connolly audibly let his breath out. Blair and Thatcher were speechless.
Miss Emily believed. This was truly the Gibson diamond, the one her Willy wanted to buy his knighthood with. It was indeed larger than the fake Gerrit Johannes had shown her. With this immense rock she and her family could buy a chunk of Australia and never have to do a stitch of work again.
So she took her silly little pistol out of its warm hiding place in her bloomers and shot Lieutenant Connelly in the left thigh, so close to his prick she knew it would stop him from even thinking about retaliating. He went down sobbing with pain, the only man with enough courage and dedication capable of stopping her.
Emily Gibson knew her men. The detective constables immediately raised their hands in the air to prove they were not armed: Paid help never put their lives on the line. Captain Lawrence, his one eye bulging with fear, did the same: a coward, like a leopard, never changes his spots.
As for Bernardus van Aswegen, he just grinned broadly, a happy giant.
“I don’t want to shoot you,” she said quickly.
He laughed. “I admire your gumption, Miss Emily. Take the stone, please. I have no need of it.”
She kept her deadly little weapon aimed at him, used her free hand to snatch the diamond from the chest and force it down the front of her dress. She was wearing an extremely tight corset for this very purpose.
“I would like you all to sit down,” she said, sounding somewhat short of breath. “On the bench, please, don’t make me ask again. You can stay on the floor, Lieutenant.”
The lower bench was a bit of a squeeze, but Lawrence, the detectives and Bernardus van Aswegen managed it.
“You can’t get off this train,” Connelly snarled at her, pain sweating out of his face.
“You underestimate me again,” she smiled and stepped over him.
He tried to grab her leg. She hit his head with her tiny gun.
“Stop being silly,” she scolded him and walked out of the compartment, closing its door behind her.
In the corridor, about five feet away, moonlit dark thundering past in the train window behind him, Gerrit Johannes was waiting for her. He held a strange pistol in his hand but didn’t actually aim it at her. The two dark men standing with him, as if guarding him, held bloody pick-axes and looked as if they were not through using them tonight.
“So what now?” Gerrit Johannes asked her grimly.
Neef Berg screamed in frustrated anger when the clouds took the moon and kept it. Suddenly he could only see the lights through a V-shaped cleft in the Drakensberg and those strange black spots in between the lights.
Was he looking at the gaslights of a town? Were the black spots pieces of open land in the town? It was rushing closer now. Were there sharp rocks standing in front of the cleft? The gondola would hit them before he even knew they were there. All he could see were those lights beckoning him, promising him safety if he could only make it there.
Thanks to his shirt the gas leak was just a whisper now, but the balloon was still going down. He realised he was praying at the top of his voice, begging God to please take him through the cleft and not directly into the mountain.
Neef Berg, a truly terrible sinner in any believer’s book, must have done something good somewhere. Probably by accident. The balloon sailed through the gap. How close to the sheer mountain face on both sides Neef Berg would never know; the clouds did him a favour and kept moonlight from revealing the scary truth.
And then he ran out of luck.
The gondola struck a treetop or rock with considerable force, nearly throwing him out, and the tearing sound informed him whatever it was now had the gondola in its jaws and was crunching a hole in it.
When the hole was big enough, and the air blasting into the hole so icy it scorched his skin like fire, Neef Berg fell through the hole and into the arms of a tree. He knew it was a pine because the sharp aroma snapped his sinus wide open. That was the only thing he was allowed to be thankful for.
He couldn’t see much of the tree in the moonless dark, but he knew it was tall had many cruel branches. He felt it more than likely that he struck every single one on the way down. God was punishing him hard for Willy’s death, Neef Berg believed, he wasn’t even allowed the merciful relief of passing out.
There is a place beyond pain. You know you’re hurting and badly, but you are past feeling. If you’re fortunate, this is where the angel of death will swoop in and take you. In his particular case, Neef Berg believed, Satan was the only angel who showed up and the bastard enjoyed torturing this sinner until the very last second when the branches stopped breaking him and he hit the water of the mountain stream passing under the giant pine.
Did the angel of death at last show pity by drowning Neef Berg?
Not so you’d notice.
It was a shallow yet fast stream and had many rocks in it. Sharp rocks, very sharp. And then a high waterfall, very high.
In the freezing black water of the pool under the waterfall, Neef Berg hoped, he would finally find painless oblivion in death. He looked forward to it. He prayed it would happen before feeling returned to his broken body, because that was going to hurt worse than hell.
But then this fucking poacher, instead of minding his own business, turned Christian and dragged Neef Berg out of the mountain pool and back to horrible life.
The blockhouse was lit by a fire within, probably meant for serious cooking. It made the blockhouse look like an elongated skull with a big candle burning inside it. The grey smoke curling from it did smell of pumpkin. Were the Tommies having pumpkin soup again?
(Note to historians: The pumpkin originated in South America, Christopher Columbus brought it to Europe, the Portuguese sailed it in their wooden ships down to Africa and the British fighting the Boers at the end of the nineteenth century realised it was the easiest and healthiest vegetable to let curl and crawl around their camps and blockhouses. The pumpkin can feed quite a group and it has lovely white flowers too.)
Grootjan and Kleinjan sneaked past the blockhouse in the dark. Thanks be to God, the moon had gone behind cloud and seemed to be staying there. The armed Tommy at the top of the blockhouse was smoking a pipe, the glow of it on his face was the only reason the two Boers could see him.
They crossed the railway line from Pretoria to Durban about a hundred yards beyond the blockhouse. Kleinjan laid down and listened with his ear against the track. No trains coming. They walked on in the night, listening to its secret life swooping overhead and skittering through the tall grass. Climbing to the crown of a rocky hill, father and son looked down a dark sweeping valley and in the middle distance there was lamplight flickering in a farmhouse window.
Uncle Hermanus was awake, hopefully waiting for them with fresh horses.
“If it’s good horses we can make Heidelberg station before dawn,” said Grootjan.
“Can I send a telegram?” Kleinjan was thinking about his young wife again.
“Ja, but make it short, son. If we take the early morning train from Heidelberg we could be in Pretoria just after lunch. Won’t that be a surprise, Louis Botha will think we own a motor car.”
“A Chevrolet with big lamps,” Kleinjan grinned.
Uncle Hermanus was indeed waiting for them when they arrived at his farmhouse, but not with fresh horses. He had a shotgun and he was pointing it at them.
“Show me the diamond,” he insisted.