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'It's a hard world, senhor.'

'You can say that again.'

I let myself out and went down the stairs. It was very quiet on the waterfront and I walked along the pier and sat on a rail at the end smoking a cigarette, feeling absurdly calm in the circumstances.

It was as if I had always known and had not wanted to face it and perhaps that was so. But now it was out in the open. Now came the reckoning.

I got up and walked back along the pier, footsteps booming hollowly on the wooden flooring, echoing into the night.

ELEVEN

Showdown

I had a contract run to make at nine o'clock, a mail pick-up which meant it could not be avoided. It was a tedious run. Sixty miles down-river, another fifty to a trading post at the headwaters of a small tributary to the west.

I cut it down to sixty-five miles by taking the shortest route between two points and flying across country over virgin jungle. A crazy thing to do and asking for trouble, but it meant I could do the round trip in a couple of hours. A brief pause to re-fuel in Manaus and I could be on my way to Landro by noon. Perhaps because of that, the elements decided to take a hand and I flew into Manaus, thunder echoing on the horizon like distant drums.

The rain started as I landed, an instant downpour that closed my world down to a very small compass indeed. I taxied to the hangar and the mechanics ran out in rubber ponchos and helped me get her inside.

The mail was waiting for me, they re-fuelled her quickly enough, but afterwards I could do nothing except stand at the edge of the hangar smoking cigarette after cigarette, staring out at the worst downpour since the rainy season.

After my meeting with Maria of the Angels I had felt surprisingly calm in spite of her story. For most of the morning I'd had things well under control, but now, out of very frustration, I wanted to get to Landro so badly that I could taste it. Wanted to see Hannah's face when I produced my wallet and passport, confronted him with the evidence of his treachery. From the start of things I had never really cared for him. Now it was a question of hate more than anything else and it was nothing to do with Joanna Martin.

Looking back on it all I think that what stuck in my throat most was the feeling that he had used me quite deliberately to further his own ends all along the line. There was a kind of contempt in that which did not sit easy.

According to the radio the situation at Landro was no better, so more for something to do than anything else, I borrowed the Crossley tender, drove into town and had a meal at a fish restaurant on the waterfront.

At the bar afterwards and halfway through my second large brandy, I became aware of a stranger staring out at me from the mirror opposite.

Small for his size as my grandmother used to say, long arms, large hands, but a hard, tough, competent-looking young man or was that only what I wanted to believe? The leather flying jacket gaped satisfactorily revealing the .45 automatic in the chest holster, the mark of the true adventurer, but the weary young face had to be seen to be believed.

Was this all I had to show for two long years? Was this what I'd left home for? I looked down through the rain at a stern-wheeler making ready to leave for the coast. It came to me then that I could leave now. Leave it all. Book passage using Hannah's famous credit system. Once in Belem I would be all right. I had a passport again. I could always work my passage to Europe from there. Something would turn up.

I rejected the thought as instantly as I had considered it. There was something here that had to be worked through to the end and I was a part of it. To go now would be to leave the story unfinished like a novel with the end pages missing and the memory of him would haunt me for the rest of my life. I had to lay Hannah's ghost personally, there could be no other way.

The rain still fell in a heavy grey curtain as I drove back to the airstrip and so continued for the rest of the