The Poison Oracle (13 page)

Allah was mighty that day. At least, at the sound of his name the office door clicked. Morris switched the camera on and moved hurriedly down the corridor to the corner. The flood of anger hit him like a beam of light. Their faces were set. The Sultan’s eyes were cold as stones, and Anne, though flushed and dishevelled, did not now look like a prince’s plaything but more like she had done that first day on the aeroplane wing. Whatever they had borrowed the office for, it hadn’t been a bit of idyll. Both of them looked at Morris as though he had been caught peeping through the keyhole.

“Bin Zair is here,” he muttered. “He’s in a considerable flap.”

“Who would be a monarch?” said the Sultan. “My dear, you had better not let him see you in that rig. He has high standards.”

“Oh, God!” snapped Anne.

“He’s in the top gallery, is he Morris? Well you’d better go along the lower one, my dear. Go straight to the women’s quarters. That’s an order. I’ll come and see you there.”

She opened her mouth but said nothing, then swung away and strode down the short passage with the red cloak streaming behind her. She was moving so rapidly that it seemed to stay in sight long after she herself had vanished round the corner. Morris turned into his office but he had hardly laid the papers on his desk when he heard the Sultan call. He went out into the corner to find bin Zair and the Sultan standing at the top of the steps into the upper gallery.

“Come here a moment, will you, old boy?” said the Sultan. But when Morris reached the top step it was bin Zair who spoke, in a low voice, in Arabic.

“Lord Morris,” he said, “will you go softly to the doors and there tell the young slave who guards them that he is to let no man enter, for any reason. You speak his tongue and can make your meaning clear.”

“Dyal could do it,” said the Sultan. “Morris is not a messenger boy.”

Bin Zair raised his head to the ceiling, as if in prayer. In fact for the moment he looked like a model for St Anthony at the height of his temptations.

“It’s all right—I’ll go,” said Morris.

Round the corner, in the upper gallery, he found Dyal leaning by the observation window, still watching the chimps with large affability. Morris nodded to him and hurried on, to find Gaur in a markedly contrasting state. The young man was just outside the main doors, posed like a sentry but groaning aloud, and with a face so contorted with grief and passion that even the two deaf-and-dumb eunuchs had stopped their touching-game and were looking at him pop-eyed. Morris gave his message quickly and hurried away. He had no desire to witness the fresh outpourings of torment that would probably begin when Anne, going the long way round, reached the lobby. Thank heavens I’ve missed out on all that, he thought, almost scampering past the point where the Sultan, bin Zair and Dyal were already involved in what seemed to be a council of state. Little bin Zair was talking in a low, urgent voice, while the two large men looked down at him in silence. As Morris came into earshot bin Zair stopped speaking, but began again as soon as he had rounded the corner into the short passage that led down to the office. Morris was so anxious not to overhear anything, not to become involved, that he almost fell down the flight of steps.

Deliberately he opened and closed the door with a rattle and a bang, and scuttered to his desk, reaching for the pile of papers bin Zair had brought. He was already reading the top one when a splash of unfamiliar scarlet caught the edge of his vision.

“I hope I’m not in your way,” said Anne, meekly.

“Good God! You’re mad!”

“In one sense, yes. But he’s mad all along the line.”

“You must go. Really. Please. He might . . .”

“OK, OK.”

“And quietly. He’s only just up there round the corner. You’ll just have to hope no one’s looking through the window into the chimp-cage.”

“So long. Thanks for everything.”

She slipped out. As the door opened and closed the deep note of Dyal’s voice reached down to him. Very uneasily he settled to the papers, not even looking up when the Sultan came down the steps and along the passage outside his door, on the way to the lower gallery. His angry voice was punctuated by bin Zair’s deprecating squeaks. Most of the documents turned out to be a mixture from two separate files, the first concerning a lengthy wrangle about who ought to pay for a pair of cheetahs that had been delivered dead after what had evidently been a journey of careless cruelty through the hands of half-a-dozen airlines, and the second consisting of correspondence with the court of a neighbouring Sultan, one of whose sons on a visit to Q’Kut had been foolish enough to lose his left arm between the bars of a lion-cage. Presumably the blood-money was a zoo expense. With these were a number of loose sheets, not apparently consecutive, on which a variety of clerks seemed to have made random attempts to detail more ordinary zoo expenses. The noise of some kind of rumpus in the chimpanzee grove came faintly to him. Normally he would have rushed out to see that Dinah was all right, but now he merely sighed and went on with the papers. He hadn’t even reached the bottom of the pile when somebody scratched at the door.

“What is it?” he called.

Bin Zair entered, looking very wild.

“Be welcome,” said Morris.

“May I rest here?” said bin Zair. “The Sultan is much enraged. He struck his servant. Did you hear?”

Indeed the old man’s headcloth was askew and he seemed to have been having another go at his beard. He settled shakily on to the tatty sofa.

“I heard nothing. Shall I make coffee?”

“No, no. His rage is not with me, his faithful old servant. It is with the treacherous marshmen. Children of dogs!”

“What has happened?”

“They have spoken with the oil company. With the company’s help they will send a delegation to the United Nations, declaring themselves an independent people.”

“But how . . .”

“They have done this thing through the Sultan’s own bodyguard, Dyal.”

“No!”

“It is true, Morris. And they have done worse. They are thieves and serpents. They have planned . . .”

He was interrupted. He had left the door open when he came, and so Morris heard clearly the sudden whoof of a spring-gun, a raucous cry, and then slightly nearer the sound of another gun. Still quivering bin Zair struggled to his feet as another inarticulate shout rang out, drowned in turn by an extraordinary clamour among the chimpanzees. Morris was first out of the door. Something very violent must be happening in the cage, he thought, for both Dyal and Sultan to loose off, especially when their minds were full of this stupid oil business. But when he rounded the corner he saw that the Sultan was lying flat on his back against the mesh of the grove. He hesitated. Bin Zair scuttled past him. The noise in the cage was appalling. Morris looked and saw Dinah scampering round the cage pursued by an infuriated Sparrow who struck or kicked at her continually. She must have heard the click of the latch, for she rushed towards the door, shot through and crouched whimpering on the floor of the gallery while Morris re-latched the door and Sparrow raged inside. One of the hypodermic darts lay glistening on the floor of the cage.

Morris shook his head and turned to where bin Zair was kneeling beside his master’s body. A curious orange flush suffused the Sultan’s cheeks. He was breathing heavily through his nose, but his lips were smiling. Bin Zair stood up as Morris knelt to feel for the pulse, which was slow and erratic.

“Does he live?” said bin Zair.

“Yes. But he’s not well. Get help—Dyal and Gaur.”

“Who has done this thing?”

“Nobody. It looks like a heart-attack. You told me he was much enraged.”

“Yet he fired a shot. Look, the gun is beneath him.”

Morris dragged it out by the barrel. It wasn’t the practice-gun and it was now unloaded.

“For God’s sake,” said Morris, “go to my office. Ring for the Sultan’s doctor.”

Bin Zair didn’t move. Morris looked up and for the first time noticed that the inspection window on the other side of the cage was open. Of course—there had been two shots.

“Dyal!” he yelled. “Dyal!”

There was no answer. Suddenly bin Zair made up his mind and ran off round the corner, lifting the skirts of his robe like a woman. Morris stayed where he was, uncertain what to do. The pattern of the Sultan’s heart-beats was very alarming. Dinah appeared at his side, still whimpering and prodding the tips of her fingers together. Morris reached out with his free hand to touch her shoulder reassuringly but she bent forward over the Sultan’s body, peering into the sick-hued face as if she could read signs there. Her “hurt” gesture, which she had continued making without thinking about it, suddenly became more urgent and meaningful.

“Yes,” said Morris, “he’s hurt too.”

“Lord Morris,” squeaked bin Zair. “Come hither. Look!”

His face pale and frenzied, leaned through the inspection window. Dammit, thought Morris, I bet he hasn’t phoned that doctor yet. But he rose, picked up Dinah and ran round to the upper gallery. He found bin Zair bending over another inert body, that of Dyal. A second hypodermic dart projected from the black flesh of the bodyguard’s neck; it looked as though it might have struck deep into the big vein that runs by the collar-bone. The face was contorted from its normal calm to a snarl almost like that of the stuffed gorilla, and a dribble of dark saliva ran down from the corner of the wrenched mouth.

“Who has done this thing?” cried bin Zair.

“It looks like an accident,” said Morris. “Dyal shot at one of the apes; and the Sultan perhaps in sport, shot at Dyal. The drug in the dart only makes a man sleep, but the Sultan has had a heart-attack.”

“Sleep!” cried bin Zair. “He is dead!”

Morris knelt. He could find no pulse at all. The lungs seemed not to move either.

“God take vengeance!” squealed bin Zair.

“Look, for heaven’s sake go and telephone for that doctor. A few minutes can make all the difference in a heart-attack.”

Bin Zair didn’t move. Impatiently Morris jumped up and strode back to the office with Dinah a pace behind him, whimpering to be carried; she seemed to have sensed his mood of fear and fret and sheer irritation at being involved in these dramas. The telephone exchange was having one of its capricious days; after half-a-dozen futile attempts to dial the doctor (feverishly copied by Dinah on her toy telephone) he found himself in contact with the Captain of the Guard.

“Thank God,” he said. “This is Morris . . . and may your sons all flourish . . . please, this is urgent. . . yes. The Sultan has become very ill in the zoo. I cannot make the doctor hear. Will you send a good man to him at once? At once, or the Sultan will surely die. Be quick! And captain, bring men up here, and a stretcher—two stretchers . . . good.”

He banged the receiver down, looked unhappily round the office as if longing for some excuse to stay there, then moved slowly out and along to the lower gallery, with Dinah still at his side, still whimpering.

The Sultan lay just as he had before, breathing heavily and even peacefully, but with the flesh of his face so strange a colour that it looked as though he had been appallingly bruised three days ago. His hands were the same hue. His pulse was rapid and feeble, but every few seconds would produce a single appallingly heavy beat, like a hammer blow. When Morris had been there a couple of minutes bin Zair came round the corner with a dart in his hand.

“What news?” said Morris.

“The news is good,” said bin Zair automatically. Morris stared until he realised that he had embarked, unintentionally, on one of the traditional desert greetings which always evokes the same answer, come plague, come famine, come slaughter of brothers.

“Look,” said bin Zair, thrusting the dart in front of his face. Morris took it. It was one of the new pattern, unblunted by repeated shots at the gorilla. Its needle was black with blood.

No, no blood was ever as black as that, nor glistened so, as molasses glistens. Morris swallowed several times.

“Do you think that’s poison?” he said.

“I think so. And this dart I pulled from the slave’s neck. Listen, Morris. When I left the upper gallery to talk privately with the Sultan, the slave gave my master the gun he was carrying. My master took it without thought. Now, I believe that when I left him the slave fired at my master and my master fired back at the slave. Perhaps one of your apes took the dart, and there it is now in the cage.”

“But why on earth . . .”

“I do not know, except that the marsh-people had turned against my master.”

“Even so, it won’t work,” said Morris. “The poison doesn’t make you sleep—it needs the drug in the dart to do that; and the other gun only had an empty practice dart in it.”

“How many guns are there, Morris?”

“Three. The practice-gun, the one we keep loaded, and a spare.”

“Where is the third?”

“In my office. Come and see.”

But the cupboard in the office was empty and three new darts were missing from the drawer below. They found the practice-gun at once, tucked in behind the stuffed gorilla. The one by Dyal’s body was the spare.

“Oh, God,” said Morris. “Where’s that bloody doctor?”

Impatiently he walked towards the main doors. Bin Zair scurried on one side of him and Dinah on the other.

“We must question the guards,” said bin Zair. “If no one entered the zoo and no one left, and you and I were together, then it is plain reason that they must have killed each other.”

“I don’t know. You say the Sultan was very angry. Perhaps he killed Dyal in a rage and then had a heart-attack.”

“I have seen men die with heart-attacks, but never with their skin of such a colour. And whence came the poison.”

“Oh God! I don’t know. Let’s see whether Gaur heard anything.”

The short passage to the zoo doors was empty. In the lobby beyond them stood Gaur alone. The lights of the lift-panel winked in descending order.

“What man descended in the box?” said Morris in the language of the marsh.

“No man, lord,” said Gaur, spreading his palms to show emptiness. And of course it was perfectly likely that the lift was plying between lower floors without ever having reached this level.

“Since I spoke with thee who has come and gone?”

“Only the white woman I love, lord.”

“How long since?”

(Yes, Anne had been standing by the gun-cupboard when he’d looked up from his desk and seen her. That damned silly cloak could easily have hidden a gun.)

“Thou didst go and she came. All that as long since as it takes a man to milk a buffalo with a four-month calf.”