The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [43]
On the second day he interviewed Mr. Youkoumian. They sat down together with a bottle of mastika at a little round table behind Mr. Youkoumian’s counter at ten in the morning. It was three in the afternoon before the reporter stepped out into the white-dust heat, but he had won his way. Mr. Youkoumian had promised to conduct him to the bandits’ camp. Both of them were pledged to secrecy. By sundown the whole of Matodi was discussing the coming expedition, but the journalist was not embarrassed by any inquiries; he was alone that evening, typing out an account of what he expected would happen next day.
He described the start at dawn . . . “grey light breaking over the bereaved township of Matodi . . . the camels snorting and straining at their reins . . . the many sorrowing Englishmen to whom the sun meant only the termination of one more night of hopeless watching . . . silver dawn breaking in the little room where Prunella’s bed stood, the coverlet turned down as she had left it on the fatal afternoon . . .” He described the ascent into the hills—“. . . luxuriant tropical vegetation giving place to barren scrub and bare rock . . .” He described how the bandits’ messenger blindfolded him and how he rode, swaying on his camel through darkness, into the unknown. Then, after what seemed an eternity, the halt; the bandage removed from his eyes . . . the bandits’ camp. “. . . twenty pairs of remorseless eastern eyes glinting behind ugly-looking rifles . . .” here he took the paper from his machine and made a correction; the bandits’ lair was to be in a cave “. . . littered with bone and skins.” . . . Joab, the bandit chief, squatting in barbaric splendour, a jewelled sword across his knees. Then the climax of the story; Prunella bound. For some time he toyed with the idea of stripping her, and began to hammer out a vivid word-picture of her girlish frame shrinking in the shadows, Andromeda-like. But caution restrained him and he contented himself with “. . . her lovely, slim body marked by the hempen ropes that cut into her young limbs . . .” The concluding paragraphs related how despair suddenly melted to hope in her eyes as he stepped forward, handing over the ransom to the bandit chief and “in the name of the Daily Excess and the People of Great Britain restored her to her heritage of freedom.”
It was late before he had finished, but he retired to bed with a sense of high accomplishment, and next morning deposited his manuscript with the Eastern Exchange Telegraph Company before setting out with Mr. Youkoumian for the hills.
The journey was in all respects totally unlike his narrative. They started, after a comfortable breakfast, surrounded by the well wishes of most of the British and many of the French colony, and instead of riding on camels they drove in Mr. Kentish’s baby Austin. Nor did they even reach Joab’s lair. They had not gone more than ten miles before a girl appeared walking alone on the track towards them. She was not very tidy, particularly about the hair, but, apart from this, showed every sign of robust well-being.
“Miss Brooks, I presume,” said the journalist, unconsciously following a famous precedent. “But where are the bandits?”
Prunella looked inquiringly towards Mr. Youkoumian who, a few steps in the rear, was shaking his head with vigour. “This British newspaper writing gentleman,” he explained, “e know all same Matodi gentlemen. E got the thousand pounds for Joab.”
“Well, he’d better take care,” said Miss Brooks, “the bandits are all round you. Oh you wouldn’t see them, of course, but I don’t mind betting that there are fifty rifles covering us at this moment from behind the boulders and bush and so on.” She waved a bare, suntanned arm expansively towards the innocent-looking landscape. “I hope you’ve brought the money in gold.”
“It’s all here, in the back of the car, Miss Brooks.”
“Splendid. Well, I’m afraid Joab won’t allow you into his lair, so you and I will wait here, and Youkoumian shall drive into the hills and deliver it.”