Elephant Song - Smith Wilbur - Страница 56

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No, you can't leave me to that brute.  Please, Doctor.  Please I implore you.

The leopard raised its lip in a silent snarl of hatred and Chetti Singh urinated in a steady stream down the front of his khaki slacks.

It puddled on the cement floor around his sandalled feet.  It's going to kill me!  This is inhuman.  Please .  . . You can't allow this, please let me in.  Suddenly Chetti Singh's nerve snapped.

He pushed himself off the side of the Cadillac and ran for the closed main doors of the warehouse, a hundred feet away in the looming darkness.

He had not covered half that distance before the cat was on him.  It came from behind, snaking low across the bare cement floor, and rose to settle upon Chetti Singh's shoulders.

They looked like some grotesque hunchbacked creature with two heads, and then Chetti Singh was thrown forward by the leopard's weight and borne to the floor.  In a kicking clawing tangle they rolled together, Chetti Singh's screams blending with the rattling growls of the leopard.

For a moment the man came to his knees, but instantly the leopard was on him again, going for his face.  Chetti Singh tried to hold it off with his bare hands, thrusting them into its open jaws and the leopard clamped down on his wrist.

Even in the closed sedan Daniel heard the bones of the wrist go, crunching like dry toast, and Chetti Singh screamed on a shriller note.

Goaded to superhuman effort by the pain he came to his feet with the leopard hanging on his arm.

He staggered in an erratic circle, beating at the cat with his fist, trying to break its grip on his other wrist.  The leopard's back legs were slashing down the front of his thighs, ripping the khaki slacks, blood and urine mingling as the hooked yellow claws opened his flesh from groin to knee.

Chetti Sing blundered into a high pile of cardboard cartons, bringing them tumbling down around himself, and then his strength could no longer sustain the weight of the animal upon him.  He collapsed again with the leopard still on top of him.

The leopard ripped and bit and worried, and Chetti Singh's movements were becoming uncoordinated.  Like an electric toy with a weakening battery he was slowing down.  His screams were becoming feebler.

Daniel slid across to the controls of the Cadillac.  As he started the engine, the leopard sprang back from its victim and stared at the vehicle uncertainly.  Its tail lashed from side to side.

Daniel reversed slowly down off the loading ramp, and then manoeuvred the Cadillac so that its bulk would be between him and the leopard when he left the car and went to the door.  He left the engine running and the headlights on and stepped out of the Cadillac.  He watched the leopard steadfastly as he backed the few paces to the control-box.

The leopard was almost thirty yards from him but he never took his eyes off it as he inserted the key into its slot and the heavy door rumbled open.  He left the key in the slot, and then dropped the shotgun and backed out through the door.

He was careful not to run or to make any other hurried movement that might provoke the leopard, even though the body of the Cadillac should inhibit a charge, and the animal already had its victim.  Daniel was now well out of the cat's attack circle.

Daniel turned at last and strode away into the night.

He used Chawe's key-card to let himself out into the street, closed the main gates behind him and then broke into a jogtrot.

When they found Chetti Singh in the morning it would be apparent that for some unexplained reason he had gone to the wrong premises in response to the fire alarm call, and he had been attacked by his own animal while he was in the process of opening the warehouse door.  The police would reason that left-hand drive controls of the Cadillac had made it necessary for him to leave the vehicle in order to operate the door controls.

Daniel had left no fingerprints or other incriminating evidence behind him.

When he reached the furthest corner of the perimeter fence, Daniel paused and looked back.  The glow of the Cadillac's headlights still lit the open warehouse door.  He saw a dark feline shape, low and slinky, slip out through the door and streak to the high mesh of the perimeter fence.

The leopard went over the fence with the ease of a bird taking flight.

Daniel smiled.  He knew that the poor tormented brute would head unerringly for its home in the misty forested mountains.

After what it had suffered, it deserved that freedom at least, he thought.

Thirty minutes later he reached the hired Volkswagen.  He drove to the airport and parked it in one of the Avis bays.  He dropped the keys in the return box of the locked and deserted Avis office and then went to his Landcruiser in the public carpark.

At the Capital Hotel he packed quickly, stuffing his few possessions into the canvas valise.  He used one of his neckties as a sling for his arm.

All that exertion had aggravated the injury.  The sleepy night clerk at the hotel cashier's desk printed his credit card and he carried his own bag out to the Landcruiser.

Unable to restrain his curiosity he drove past the Chetti Singh supermarket.  There was no damage to the main building, although in the back alley a couple of firemen were still hosing down the pile of scorched garbage and the smoke-stained rear wall, watched by a dozen or so local residents in their nightclothes.

He turned westwards and left Lilongwe, heading back towards the Zambian border post.  It was a three-hour drive.

He turned on the radio and tuned to the early-morning service of Radio Malawi, listening to the music and news reports.

He was approaching the border post when it came on the six o'clock news.

It was the second item after a report on the breaching of the Berlin Wall and the flood of East Germans to the West.  Meanwhile, here in Lilongwe we have just received a report that a prominent Malawi businessman and entrepreneur has been savagely mauled by his own pet leopard.  Mr.  Chetti Singh was rushed to the Lilongwe General Hospital where he is now in the intensive-care unit.  A hospital spokesman said that Mr.  Singh was suffering from extensive injuries and his condition is described as critical.  The circumstances of the attack are unknown, but the police are seeking an employee of Mr.  Singh's, a certain Mr.

Chawe Gundwana, who they hope will be able to assist them with their enquiries.  Any person knowing the whereabouts of Mr.  Gundwana is asked to report to the nearest police station.  Daniel switched off the radio and parked outside the Malawi immigration post.  He was expecting trouble.

customs a There might be an APB out on him already, especially if Chetti Singh was in a condition to speak and had given Daniel's name to the police.  Chetti Singh's survival had not been part of Daniel's calculations.  He had expected the leopard to do a more thorough job.

His mistake had been in moving the Cadillac too soon.  It had distracted the leopard from its victim.

One thing was certain: Chetti Singh was going to need a few gallons of blood transfusion.  In Africa that involved an additional hazard.

He hummed his own version of the old song: Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

if the leopard don't get him, then I must.

Then with some trepidation, he took his passport into the border post. He need not have worried.  The law was all smiles and courtesy.

Did you enjoy your holiday in Malawi?  We are always pleased to see you, sir.

Come again soon, sir.  Old Hastings Banda had them well trained.

They all appreciated the vital role that tourism played in their lives.

There was none of the have-not resentment that was so evident in other parts of the continent.

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