There was a telephone at the Cecilia Forestry Station and Shasa got through to Inspector Nel at CID headquarters and gave him a description of the killer.
You'll have to move fast. The man has obviously got his escape planned. The mountain club kept a lightweight stretcher at the forestry station, for this mountain took many human lives each year. The forester gave them six of his black labourers to Carry it, and accompanied them back up the bridle path and along the mountain rim to the head of Skeleton Gorge.
The women were there. Centaine and Anna were in tears, clinging to each other for comfort. They had spread one of the rugs over the dead man.
Shasa knelt beside the body and lifted the corner of the rug. In death Sir Garry Courtney's features had fallen in, so that his nose was arched and beaky, his closed eyelids were in deep cavities, but there was about him a gentle dignity so that he resembled the death mask of a fragile Caesar.
Shasa kissed his forehead and the skin was cool and velvety smooth against his lips.
When he stood up, Field-Marshal Smuts laid a hand of comfort on his shoulder. I'm sorry, my boy, the old fieldMarshal said. That bullet was meant for me., Manfred De La Rey pulled off the road, steering with one hand. He did not leave the driver's seat of the Morris, and he kept the engine running while he unbuttoned the front of his overalls.
The bullet had entered just below and in front of his armpit, punching into the thick pad of the pectoral muscle and it had angled upwards. He could find no exit wound, the bullet was still lodged in his body, and when he groped gently around the back of his own shoulder, he found a swelling that was so tender that he almost screamed involuntarily as he touched it.
The bullet was lying just under the skin, it did not appear to have penetrated the chest cavity. He wadded his handkerchief over the wound in his armpit and buttoned the overalls. He checked his watch. It was a few minutes before eleven o'clock, just twenty-three minutes since he had fired the shot that would set his people free.
A sense of passionate soaring triumph overrode the pain of his wound. He pulled back onto the road and drove sedately around the base of the mountain, down the main road through Woodstock. At the gates of the railway yards he showed his pass to the gatekeeper and went through to park the Morris outside the restrooms for off-duty firemen and engine drivers.
He left the Mauser under the seat of the Morris. Both the weapon and the vehicle would be taken care of. He crossed quickly to the back door of the restroom and they were waiting for him inside.
Roelf leapt to his feet anxiously as he saw the blood on the blue overalls.
you all right? What happened? Smuts is dead, Manfred said, and his savage joy was transmitted to them. They did not cheer or speak, but stood quietly, savouring the moment on which history would hinge.
Roelf broke the silence after a few seconds. You are hurt. While one of the stormjagers went out and drove the
Morris away, Roelf helped Manfred strip off his soiled overalls.
There was very little blood now, but the flesh around the wound was swollen and bruised. The bullet-hole itself was a black puncture that wept watery pink lymph. Roelf dressed and bound it up with bandages from a railway firstaid kit.
Because Manfred had very little use of his left arm, Roelf lathered the black beard and shaved it off with a straight razor for him. With the beard gone Manfred was years younger, handsome and clean-cut once again, but pale from loss of blood and the weakness of his wound. They helped him into a clean pair of overalls and Roelf set the fireman's cap on his head.
We will meet again soon, Roelf told him. And I am proud to be your friend. From now on glory will follow you all the days of your life. The engine driver came forward. We must go, he said.
Roelf and Manfred shook hands and then Manfred turned away and followed the driver out of the restroom and down the platform to the waiting locomotive.
The police stopped the northbound goods train at Worcester Station. They opened and searched all the trucks and a constable climbed into the cab of the locomotive and searched that also.
What is the trouble? the engine driver demanded.
There has been a murder. Some bigwig was shot on Table Mountain this morning. We've got a description of the killer.
There are police roadblocks on all the roads and we are searching every motor vehicle and ship and train. Who was killed? Manfred asked, and the constable shrugged.
I don't know, my friend, but judging by the fuss it's somebody important. He climbed down from the cab, and a few minutes later the signals changed to green and they rolled out of the station heading north.
By the time they reached Bloemfontein, Manfred's shoulder had swollen into a hard purple hump and the pain was insupportable. He sat hunched in a corner of the cab, moamng softly, teetering on the brink of consciousness, the rustle of dark wings filling his head.
Roelf had telephoned ahead, and there were friends to meet him and smuggle him out of the Bloemfontein railway yards.
Where are we going? A doctor, they told him, and reality broke up into a patchwork of darkness and pain.
He was aware of the choking reek of chloroform, and when he woke he was in a bed in a sunny but monastically furnished room. The shoulder was bound up in crisp white bandages, and despite the lingering nausea of the anaesthetic, he felt whole again.
There was a man sitting in the chair beside the window, and as soon as he realized Manfred was awake, he came to him.
How do you feel? Not too bad. Has it happened, the rising? Have our people seized power? The man looked at him strangely. You do not know? he asked.
I only know that we have succeeded,, Manfred began, but the man fetched a newspaper and laid it on the bed. He stood beside Manfred as he read the headlines:
ASSASSINATION ON TABLE MOUNTAIN
OB BLAMED FOR KILLING OF PROMINENT HISTORIAN
SMUTS ORDERS ARREST AND INTERNMENT OF 600
Manfred stared uncomprehendingly at the news-sheet, and the man told him, You killed the wrong man. Smuts has the excuse he wanted. All our leaders have been seized, and they are searching for you. There is a man-hunt across the land.
You cannot stay here. We expect the police to be here at any minute. Manfred was passed on and he left the city riding in the back of a truck under a load of stinking dry hides. The Ossewa Brandwag had been decimated by the arrests, and those members remaining at liberty were shaken and afraid, all of them running for cover. None of them wanted to take the risk of harbouring the fugitive. He was passed on again and again.
The plan had seen no further ahead than the assassination and successful revolt, after which Manfred would have emerged as a Volk hero and taken his rightful place in the councils of the republican government. Now it was run and hide, sick and weak, a price of five thousand pounds on his head. Nobody wanted him; he was a dangerous risk and they passed him on as quickly as they could find someone else to take him.
in the published lists of those arrested and interned in the government crackdown, he found many names he knew, and with dismay he read Roeffs name, and that of the Reverend Tromp Bierman amongst them. He wondered how Sarah, Aunt Trudi and the girls would fare now, but he found it difficult to think or concentrate, for despair had unmanned him, and he knew the terror of a hunted and wounded animal.
it took eight days to make the journey to Johannesburg.
He had not deliberately set out for the Witwatersrand, but circumstances and the whim of his helpers led him that way. By rail and truck and, later, when the wound began to heal and his strength returned, at night and on foot across the open veld, he at last reached the city.
He had an address, his last contact with the brotherhood and he took the tramcar from the main railway station along the Braamfontein ridge and watched the street numbers as they passed.
The number he needed was 36. It was one in a row of semi-detached cottages, and he started to rise to leave the tramcar at the next stop.