فصل بیست و هفتم

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

From the diary of Sir Eustace Pedler, Johannesburg, March 6th.

Living here is like living on the edge of a volcano. Crowds of angry people on strike from their work walk the streets and look at you with thoughts of murder. You cannot ride in a taxi - if you do, they pull you out.

Pagett joins me tomorrow like the faithful servant he is. And this morning I was visited by a government official. It seems they were expecting serious trouble.

‘It is not the strikers who are causing the trouble, Sir Eustace,’ he told me. ‘There is some organization at work behind them. A lot of guns have been brought in. From documents we have discovered, we have learned there is a code. It seems vegetables are used to hide the weapons.’

We were interrupted by a telegram being handed to me. I read it with amazement.

‘Anne is safe. Here with me at Kimberley. Suzanne Blair.’

I still don’t understand why that young woman had to walk out of the hotel in the middle of the night to get to Kimberley. There was no train. I don’t suppose she will ever explain. Nobody explains anything to me. It was because of her work as a journalist, I suppose. ‘How I sailed down the Zambezi on a tree,’ perhaps, by our Special Reporter.