The Golden Keel / The Vivero Letter Read Online Free PDF Page B

carelessly. ‘They were shot while escaping. Coertze did it.’
IV
    Walker was too far gone to walk home that night, so I got his address from a club steward, poured him into a taxi and forgot about him. I didn’t think much of his story—it was just the maunderings of a drunk. Maybe he had found something in Italy, but I doubted if it was anything big—my imagination boggled at the idea of four truck loads of gold and jewels.
    I wasn’t allowed to forget him for long because I saw him the following Sunday in the club bar gazing moodily into abrandy glass. He looked up, caught my eye and looked away hastily as though shamed. I didn’t go over and speak to him; he wasn’t altogether my type—I don’t go for drunks much.
    Later that afternoon I had just come out of the swimming pool and was enjoying a cigarette when I became aware that Walker was standing beside me. As I looked up, he said awkwardly, ‘I think I owe you some money—for the taxi fare the other night.’
    ‘Forget it,’ I said shortly.
    He dropped on one knee. ‘I’m sorry about that. Did I cause any trouble?’
    I smiled. ‘Can’t you remember?’
    ‘Not a damn’ thing,’ he confessed. ‘I didn’t get into a fight or anything, did I?’
    ‘No, we just talked.’
    His eyes flickered. ‘What about?’
    ‘Your experiences in Italy. You told me rather an odd story.’
    ‘I told you about the gold?’
    I nodded. ‘That’s right.’
    ‘I was drunk,’ he said. ‘As shickered as a coot. I shouldn’t have told you about that. You haven’t mentioned it to anyone, have you?’
    ‘No, I haven’t,’ I said. ‘You don’t mean it’s true?’ He certainly wasn’t drunk now.
    ‘True enough,’ he said heavily. ‘The stuffs still up there—in a hole in the ground in Italy. I’d not like you to talk about it.’
    ‘I won’t,’ I promised.
    ‘Come and have a drink,’ he suggested.
    ‘No, thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m going home now.’
    He seemed depressed. ‘All right,’ he said, and I watched him walk lethargically up to the club house.
    After that, he couldn’t seem to keep away from me. It was as though he had delivered a part of himself into my keeping and he had to watch me to see that I kept it safe. He acted as though we were partners in a conspiracy, withmany a nod and wink and a sudden change of subject if he thought we were being overheard.
    He wasn’t so bad when you got to know him, if you discounted the incipient alcoholism. He had a certain charm when he wanted to use it and he most surely set out to charm me. I don’t suppose it was difficult; I was a stranger in a strange land and he was company of sorts.
    He ought to have been an actor for he had the gift of mimicry. When he told me the story of the gold his mobile face altered plastically and his voice changed until I could see the bull-headed Coertze, gentle Donato and the tougher-fibred Alberto. Although Walker had normally a slight trace of a South African accent, he could drop it at will to take on the heavy gutturals of the Afrikaner or the speed and sibilance of the Italian. His Italian was rapid and fluent and he was probably one of those people who can learn a language in a matter of weeks.
    I had lost most of my doubts about the truth of his story. It was too damned circumstantial. The bit about the inscription on the cigarette case impressed me a lot; I couldn’t see Walker making up a thing like that. Besides, it wasn’t the brandy talking all the time; he still stuck to the same story, which didn’t change a fraction under many repetitions—drunk and sober.
    Once I said, ‘The only thing I can’t figure is that big crown.’
    ‘Alberto thought it was the royal crown of Ethiopia,’ said Walker. ‘It wouldn’t be worn about the palace—they’d only use it for coronations.’
    That sounded logical. I said, ‘How do you know that the others haven’t dug up the lot? There’s still Harrison and Parker—and it would be dead easy for the two