Page 11
With incredible deliberation the huge insect ambled across Bonds forehead. It stopped below the hair. What the hell was it doing now? Bond could feel it nuzzling at his skin. It was drinking! Drinking the beads of salt sweat. Bond was sure of it. For minutes it hardly moved. Bond felt weak with the tension. He could feel the sweat pouring off the rest of his body on to the sheet. In a second his limbs would start to tremble. He could feel it coming on. He would start to shake with an ague of fear. Could he control it, could he? Bond lay and waited, the breath coming softly through his open, snarling mouth.
The centipede started to move again. It walked into the forest of hair. Bond could feel the roots being pushed aside as it forced its way along. Would it like it there? Would it settle down? How did centipedes sleep? Curled up, or at full length? The tiny centipedes he had known as a child, the ones that always seemed to find their way up the plughole into the empty bath, curled up when you touched them. Now it had come to where his head lay against the sheet. Would it walk out on to the pillow or would it stay on in the warm forest? The centipede stopped. Out! OUT! Bonds nerves screamed at it.
The centipede stirred. Slowly it walked out of his hair on to the pillow.
Bond waited a second. Now he could hear the rows of feet picking softly at the cotton. It was a tiny scraping noise, like soft fingernails.
With a crash that shook the room Bonds body jackknifed out of bed and on to the floor.
At once Bond was on his feet and at the door. He turned on the light. He found he was shaking uncontrollably. He staggered to the bed. There it was crawling out of sight over the edge of the pillow. Bonds first instinct was to twitch the pillow on to the floor. He controlled himself, waiting for his nerves to quieten. Then softly, deliberately, he picked up the pillow by one corner and walked into the middle of the room and dropped it. The centipede came out from under the pillow. It started to snake swiftly away across the matting. Now Bond was uninterested. He looked round for something to kill it with. Slowly he went and picked up a shoe and came back. The danger was past. His mind was now wondering how the centipede had got into his bed. He lifted the shoe and slowly, almost carelessly, smashed it down. He heard the crack of the hard carapace.
Bond lifted the shoe.
The centipede was whipping from side to side in its agony-five inches of grey-brown, shiny death. Bond hit it again. It burst open, yellowly.
Bond dropped the shoe and ran for the bathroom and was violently sick.
VII
NIGHT PASSAGE
By the way, Quarrel-“ Bond dared a bus with Brown Bomber painted above its windshield. The bus pulled over and roared on down the hill towards Kingston sounding a furious chord on its triple windhorn to restore the drivers ego, ”-what do you know about centipedes?"
“Centipedes, capn?” Quarrel squinted sideways for a clue to the question. Bonds expression was casual. “Well, we got some bad ones here in Jamaica. Tree, fo, five inches long. Dey kills folks. Dey mosly lives in de old houses in Kingston. Dey loves de rotten wood an de mouldy places. Dey hoperates mosly at night. Why, capn? Yo seen one?”
Bond dodged the question. He had also not told Quarrel about the fruit. Quarrel was a tough man, but there was no reason to sow the seeds of fear. “Would you expect to find one in a modern house, for instance? In your shoe, or in a drawer, or in your bed?”
“Nossir. ” Quarrels voice was definite. “Not hunless dem put dere a purpose. Dese hinsecks love de holes and de crannies. Dey not love de clean places. Dey dirty-livin hinsecks. Mebbe yo find dem in de bush, under logs an stones. But never in de bright places. ”
“I see. ” Bond changed the subject. “By the way, did those two men get off all right in the Sunbeam?”
“Sho ting, capn. Dey plenty happy wid de job. An dey look plenty like yo an me, capn. ” Quarrel chuckled. He glanced at Bond and said hesitantly, “I fears dey werent very good citizens, capn. Had to find de two men wheres I could. Me, Im a beggarman, capn. An fo you, capn, I get a misrable no-good whiteman from Betsys. ”
“Whos Betsy?”
“She done run de lousiest brothel in town, capn,” Quarrel spat emphatically out of the window. “Dis whiteman, he does de book-keepin. ”
Bond laughed. “So long as he can drive a car. I only hope they get to Montego all right. ”
“Don* yo worry,” Quarrel misunderstood Bonds concern. “I say I tell de police dey stole de car if dey don. ”
They were at the saddleback at Stony Hill where the Junction Road dives down through fifty S-bends towards the North Coast. Bond put the little Austin A. 3O into second gear and let it coast. The sun was coming up over the Blue Mountain peak and dusty shafts of gold lanced into the plunging valley. There were few people on the road-an occasional man going off to his precipitous smallholding on the flank of a hill, his three-foot steel cutlass dangling from his right hand, chewing at his breakfast, a foot of raw sugar cane held in his left, or a woman sauntering up the road with a covered basket of fruit or vegetables for Stony Hill market, her shoes on her head, to be donned when she got near the village. It was a savage, peaceful scene that had hardly changed, except for the surface of the road, for two hundred years or more. Bond almost smelted the dung of the mule train in which he would have been riding over from Port Royal to visit the garrison at Morgans Harbour in 1750.
Quarrel interrupted his thoughts. “Capn,” he said apologetically, “beggin yo pardon, but kin yo tell me what yo have in mind for we? Ise bin puzzlin an Ah caint seem to figger bout yo game. ”
“Ive hardly figured it out myself, Quarrel. ” Bond changed up into top and dawdled through the cool, beautiful glades of Castleton Gardens. “I told you Im here because Commander Strangways and his secretary have disappeared. Most people think theyve gone off together. I think theyve been murdered. ”
“Dat so?” said Quarrel unemotionally. “Who yo tink done hit?”
“Ive come to agree with you. I think Doctor No, that Chinaman on Crab Key, had it done. Strangways was poking his nose into this mans affairs-something to do with the bird sanctuary. Doctor No has this mania for privacy. You were telling me so yourself. Seems hell do anything to stop people climbing over his wall. Mark you, its not more than a guess about Doctor No. But some funny things happened in the last twenty-four hours. Thats why I sent the Sunbeam over to Montego, to lay a false scent. And thats why were going to hide out at the Beau Desert for a few days. ”
“Den what, capn?”
“First of all I want you to get me absolutely fit-the way you trained me the last time I was here. Remember?”
“Sho, capn. Ah kin do dat ting. ”
“And then I was thinking you and me might go and take a look at Crab Key. ”
Quarrel whistled. The whistle ended on a downward note.
“Just sniff around. We neednt get too close to Doctor Nos end. I want to take a look at this bird sanctuary. See for myself what happened to the wardens camp. If we find anything wrong, well get away again and come back by the front door-with some soldiers to help. Have a full-dress inquiry. Cant do that until weve got something to go on. What do you think?”
Quarrel dug into his hip pocket for a cigarette. He made a fuss about lighting it. He blew a cloud of smoke through his nostrils and watched it whip out of the window. He said, “Capn, Ah tink yose plumb crazy to trespass hon dat island. ” Quarrel had wound himself up. He paused. There was no comment. He looked sideways at the quiet profile. He said more quietly, in an embarrassed voice, “Jess one ting, capn. Ah have some folks back in da Caymans. Would yo consider takin hout a life hinsurance hon me afore we sail?”
Bond glanced affectionately at the strong brown face. It had a deep cleft of worry between the eyes. “Of course, Quarrel. Ill fix it at Port Maria tomorrow. Well make it big, say five thousand pounds. Now then, how shall we go? Canoe?”
“Dats right, capn. ” Quarrels voice was reluctant. “We need a calm sea an a light wind. Come hin on d
e Nor-easterly Trades. Mus be a dark night. Dey startin right now. By end of da week we git da secon” moon quarter. Where yo reckon to land, capn?"
"South shore near the mouth of the river. Then well go up the river to the lake. Im sure thats where the wardens camp was. So as to have fresh water and be able to get down to the sea to fish.
Quarrel grunted without enthusiasm. “How long we stayin, capn? Caint take a whole lot of food wit us. Bread, cheese, salt pork. No tobacco-caint risk da smoke an light. Dats mighty rough country, capn. Marsh an mangrove. ”
Bond said: “Better plan for three days. Weather may break and stop us getting off for a night or two. Couple of good hunting knives. Ill take a gun. You never can tell. ”
“No, sir,” said Quarrel emphatically. He relapsed into a brooding silence which lasted until they got to Port Maria.
They went through the little town and on round the headland to Morgans Harbour. It was just as Bond remembered-the sugar-loaf of the Isle of Surprise rising out of the calm bay, the canoes drawn up beside the mounds of empty conch shells, the distant boom of the surf on the reef which had so nearly been his grave. Bond, his mind full of memories, took the car down the little side road and through the cane fields in the middle of which the gaunt ruin of the old Great House of Beau Desert Plantation stood up like a stranded galleon.
They came to the gate leading to the bungalow. Quarrel got out and opened the gate, and Bond drove through and pulled up in the yard behind the white single-storeyed house. It was very quiet. Bond walked round the house and across the lawn to the edge of the sea. Yes, there it was, the stretch of deep, silent water-the submarine path he had taken to the Isle of Surprise. It sometimes came back to him in nightmares. Bond stood looking at it and thinking of Solitaire, the girl he had brought back, torn and bleeding, from that sea. He had carried her across the lawn to the house. What had happened to her? Where was she? Brusquely Bond turned and walked back into the house, driving the phantoms away from him.
It was eight-thirty. Bond unpacked his few things and changed into sandals and shorts. Soon there was the delicious smell of coffee and frying bacon. They ate their breakfast while Bond fixed his training routine-up at seven, swim a quarter of a mile, breakfast, an hours sunbathing, run a mile, swim again, lunch, sleep, sunbathe, swim a mile, hot bath and massage, dinner and asleep by nine.
After breakfast the routine began.
Nothing interrupted the grinding week except a brief story in the Daily Gleaner and a telegram from Pleydell-Smith. The Gleaner said that a Sunbeam Talbot, H. 2473, had been involved in a fatal accident on the Devils Racecourse, a stretch of winding road between Spanish Town and Ochos Rio-on the Kingston-Montego route. A runaway lorry, whose driver was being traced, had crashed into the Sunbeam as it came round a bend. Both vehicles had left the road and hurtled into the ravine below. The two occupants of the Sunbeam, Ben Gibbons of Harbour Street, and Josiah Smith, no address, had been killed. A Mr Bond, an English visitor, who had been lent the car, was asked to contact the nearest police station.
Bond burned that copy of the Gleaner. He didnt want to upset Quarrel.