Yet the need to find Suzanne Clair, whose distant presence, like a baleful planet, hung over the jungle toward Mont Royal, still remained. For Louise, too, he sensed that there were other preoccupations. She had told him something of her unsettled background, a childhood in one of the French communities in the Congo, and later of some kind of humiliation during the revolt against the central government after independence, when she and several other journalists had been caught in the rebel province of Katanga by mutinous _gendarmerie_. For Louise, as well as for himself, Port Matarre with its empty light was a neutral point, a dead zone on the African equator to which they had both been drawn. However, nothing achieved there, between themselves or anyone else, would necessarily have any lasting value.
At the end of the street, opposite the lights of the halfempty police prefecture, Sanders turned right along the river and walked toward the native market. The steamer had sailed for Libreville, and the main wharves were deserted, the gray hulls of four landing craft tied together in pairs. Below the market was the native harbor, a maze of small piers and catwalks. This water-borne shanty town of some two hundred boats and rafts was occupied at night by the stall holders in the market. A few fires burned from the tin stoves in the steering wells, lighting up the sleeping cubicles beneath the curved rattan roofs. One or two men sat on the catwalks above the boats, and a small group were playing dice at the end of the first pier, but otherwise the floating cantonment was silent, its cargo of jewelry eclipsed by the night.
The bar which Louise and he had visited the previous afternoon was still open. In the alleyway opposite the entrance two African youths in blue denims were lounging around an abandoned motorcar, one of them sitting on the hood against the windscreen. As Sanders entered the bar they watched him with studied casualness.
The bar was almost empty. At the far end a European plantation manager and his African foreman were talking to two of the local half-caste traders. Sanders carried his whisky to a booth by the window, and looked out across the river, calculating when the satellite would make a second traverse.
He was thinking again of the jeweled leaves he had seen in the market that afternoon, when someone touched his shoulder and murmured: "Dr. Sanders? You're up late, Doctor?"
Sanders turned to find the small, white-suited figure of Ventress gazing down at him with his familiar ironic smile. Remembering their brush the previous day, Sanders said: "No, Ventress, _early_. I'm a day ahead of you."
Ventress nodded eagerly, as if glad to see Sanders gaining an advantage over him, even if only a verbal one. Although he was standing, he seemed to Sanders to have shrunk in size, his jacket tightly buttoned across his narrow chest.
"That's good, Sanders, very good." Ventress glanced around the deserted booths. "Can I join you for a moment?"
"Well-" Sanders made no effort to be agreeable. The incident with the automatic pistol reminded him of the element of calculation in everything Ventress did. After the past few hours with Louise the last person he wanted near him was Ventress with his manic rhythms. "Could you-?"
"My dear Sanders, don't let me embarrass you! I'll stand." Oblivious of Sanders's half-turned shoulder, Ventress carried on. "How sensible of you, Doctor. The nights in Port Matarre are far more interesting than the days. Don't you agree?"
Sanders looked around at this, uncertain of Ventress's point. The man watching from the opposite arcade as he and Louise made their way up the staircase might well have been Ventress. "In a sense-"
"Astronomy isn't one of your hobbies, by any chance?" Ventress asked. He leaned over the table with his mock smile.
"I saw the satellite, if that's what you're driving at," Sanders said. "Tell me, how do you account for it-the sudden increase in magnitude?"
Ventress nodded sagely. "A large question, Doctor. To answer it I would need-literally, I fear-all the time in the world-"
Before Sanders could question him the door opened and one of the African youths he had seen by the car outside entered. A quick glance passed between himself and Ventress, and the youth slipped out again.
With a short bow at Sanders, Ventress turned and pulled his crocodile-skin suitcase from the booth behind Sanders. He paused on his way out and whispered at Sanders: "All the time in the world… remember that, Doctor!"
Wondering what it was that Ventress felt the need to hide behind these riddles, Dr. Sanders finished his whisky. Ventress's white figure, suitcase in hand, disappeared into the darkness near the piers, the two Africans moving quickly ahead of him.
Sanders gave him five minutes to make his departure, assuming that Ventress was about to leave by boat, whether hired or stolen, for Mont Royal. Although he would soon be following Ventress there, Sanders was glad to be left alone in Port Matarre. Ventress's presence in some way added an unnecessary random element to the already confused patterns of arcade and shadow, like a chess-game in which both players suspected that there was a concealed piece on the board.
As he walked past the abandoned motor-car, Sanders noticed that some sort of commotion was going on in the center of the native harbor. Many of the fires had been doused. Others were being fanned to life, and the flames danced in the disturbed water as the boats shifted and moved about. The overhead catwalks that crisscrossed the piers swayed under the weight of running men, swinging themselves along the handrails as they swerved after each other like shuttles.
Sanders moved closer to the edge of the water. Then he saw Ventress's small white figure darting about in the center of the chase, like a spider trapped in a collapsing web. Ventress shouted to the youth carrying his suitcase along the catwalk ten yards in front of him. A tall crop-haired mulatto in a khaki bush-shirt was swarming towards them, a length of weighted hose-pipe in his scarred hand. Behind Ventress the second youth had been beaten to the floor of the catwalk by two men in dark sweatshirts. Knives flashed in their hands, and the youth kicked at them and leapt sideways through the catwalk like a wriggling fish about to be gutted. He landed on a boat below, a long gash torn down the side of his denims. Holding the blood against his leg with one hand, he scrambled across the next boat to the pier, then ran off among the bales of cocoa meal.
On the catwalk above, Ventress shouted again, and the youth carrying the suitcase lifted the bag and feinted with it as the mulatto swung the hose-pipe at his head. Tossing the suitcase through the air in front of him, the youth slid below the rail and vaulted down on to the second rank of boats moored against the pier, crushing the rattan roof as he landed. The hovel collapsed in a mêlée of blankets and upturned petrol cans. There was a vivid glimmer as a cache of crystalline jewelry was exposed to the fires in the other boats.
Watching the brilliant jewels reflected in the broken water of the harbor as the lines of boats slipped from their moorings, Sanders heard the hard detonation of a gunshot sound out above the noise. The automatic pistol in his hand, Ventress crouched down on the catwalk. He fired again at the mulatto with the truncheon. As the mulatto backed away up a gangway to the wharf Ventress glanced over his shoulder at the two men behind him, both now motionless against the handrail, their dark bodies almost invisible. Holstering the pistol, Ventress lowered himself off the edge of the catwalk and leapt down on to the deck of the boat below.