The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene [42]
The sound of a car driving in off the road, headlamps moving across the window, woke him. He imagined it was a police car - that night he was the responsible officer and he thought that some urgent and probably unnecessary telegram had come in. He opened the door and found Yusef on the step. ‘Forgive me, Major Scobie, I saw your light as I was passing, and I thought...’
‘Come in,’ he said, ‘I have whisky or would you prefer a little beer ...?’
Yusef said with surprise, ‘This is very hospitable of you, Major Scobie.’
‘If I know a man well enough to borrow money from him, surely I ought to be hospitable.’
‘A little beer then, Major Scobie.’
‘The Prophet doesn’t forbid it?’
‘The Prophet had no experience of bottled beer or whisky. Major Scobie. We have to interpret his words in the modern light.’ He watched Scobie take the bottles from the ice chest ‘Have you no refrigerator, Major Scobie?’
‘No. Mine’s waiting for a spare part - it will go on waiting till the end of the war, I imagine.’
‘I must not allow that. I have several spare refrigerators. Let me send one up to you.’
‘Oh, I can manage all right, Yusef. I’ve managed for two years. So you were passing by.’
‘Well, not exactly. Major Scobie. That was a way of speaking. As a matter of fact I waited until I knew your boys were asleep, and I borrowed a car from a garage. My own car is so well known. And I did not bring a chauffeur. I didn’t want to embarrass you, Major Scobie.’
‘I repeat, Yusef, that I shall never deny knowing a man from whom I have borrowed money.’
‘You do keep harping on that so, Major Scobie. That was just a business transaction. Four per cent is a fair interest. I ask for more only when I have doubt of the security. I wish you would let me send you a refrigerator.’
‘What did you want to see me about?’
‘First, Major Scobie, I wanted to ask after Mrs Scobie. Has she got a comfortable cabin? Is there anything she requires? The ship calls at Lagos, and I could- have anything she needs sent on board there. I would telegraph my agent.’
‘I think she’s quite comfortable.’
‘Next, Major Scobie, I wanted to have a few words with you about diamonds.’
Scobie put two more bottles of beer on the ice. He said slowly and gently, ‘Yusef, I don’t want you to think I am the kind of man who borrows money one day and insults his creditor the next to reassure his ego.’
‘Ego?’
‘Never mind. Self-esteem. What you like. I’m not going to pretend that we haven’t in a way become colleagues in a business, but my duties are strictly confined to paying you four per cent.’
‘I agree, Major Scobie. You have said all this before and I agree. I say again that I am never dreaming to ask you to do one thing for me. I would rather do things for you.’
‘What a queer chap you are, Yusef. I believe you do like me.’
‘Yes, I do like you, Major Scobie.’ Yusef sat on the edge of his chair which cut a sharp edge in his great expanding thighs: he was I’ll at ease in any house but his own. ‘And now may I talk to you about diamonds, Major Scobie?’
‘Fire away then.’
‘You know I think the Government is crazy about diamonds. They waste your time, the time of the Security Police: they send special agents down the coast: we even have one here - you know who, though nobody is supposed to know but the Commissioner: he spends money on every black or poor Syrian who tells him stories. Then he telegraphs it to England and all down the coast. And after all this, do they catch a single diamond?’
‘This has got nothing to do with us, Yusef.’
‘I want to talk to you as a friend, Major Scobie. There are diamonds and diamonds and Syrians and Syrians. You people hunt the wrong men. You want to stop industrial diamonds going to Portugal and then to Germany, or across the border to the Vichy French. But all the time you are chasing people who are not interested in industrial diamonds, people who just want to get a few gem stones in a safe place for when peace comes again.’
‘In other words you? ‘
‘Six times this month police have been into my stores making everything untidy. They will never find any industrial diamonds that way. Only small men are interested in industrial diamonds. Why, for a whole matchbox full of them, you would only get two hundred pounds. I call them gravel collectors,