Текст книги "Elephant Song"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

Соавторы: Wilbur Smith
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The following morning an anonymous caller on Cheng's unlisted line spoke without introduction or explanation.  Look at page five of today's Herald, he said, then broke the connection, but the accent had been Asian, very similar to Chetti Singh's manner of speech.

Cheng found the article at the foot of the page.  It was six lines under an insignificant heading, Stabbed in Drunken Brawl.  Gomo Chisonda, a ranger employed by the National Parks Service, had been stabbed to death by an unknown assailant during an argument in a township beerball.

The next day the same anonymous caller told Cheng, Page seven.  This time Cheng was certain that he recognised the voice of Chetti Singh's son.

The heading of the newspaper article was Railway Accident, squib read, The body of David Shiri, an off-duty and the ranger in the National Parks Service, was found on the railway line near Hartley.

The dead man had a high blood alcohol level.  A spokesman for Zimbabwe Railways warned the public of the danger of using unguarded crossings.

This– is the fourth accident of the same kind on the Hartley line since the beginning of the year.  As Chetti Singh had promised, there were no longer any surviving witnesses or accomplices.

Three days later, Cheng received a telephone call from the commissioner of police in person.  I am very sorry indeed to disturb you, Your Excellency.  I presume you have read about the murderous attack on Chiwewe Camp.  I believe that you may be able to assist our enquiries into this most unfortunate incident.  I understand that you were a visitor .  . at the camp on that day, and that you left only hours before the attack.  That is correct, Commissioner.  Would you have any objection to making a statement to assist us?  You know that there is no obligation for you to do so.  You are fully protected by diplomatic privilege.  I will cooperate in any way possible.  I particularly admired and liked the warden who was murdered.  I will do all I can to help you apprehend the perpetrators of this foul crime.

am most grateful to you, Your Excellency.  May I send one of my senior inspectors to call upon you?  The inspector was a burly Shana in plain clothes.  He was accompanied by a sergeant in the smart uniform of the Zimbabwean police, and both of them were elaborately obsequious.

With profuse apologies the inspector took Cheng through a recital of his visit to Chiwewe, including his departure with the convoy of refrigerator trucks.  Cheng had rehearsed all this and he went through it faultlessly.  He was careful to mention his meeting with Daniel Armstrong.

When he had finished, the inspector fidgeted uncomfortably before asking, Doctor Armstrong has also made a statement, Your Excellency.

His.

account confirms everything you have told me, except that he mentioned that he noticed there were bloodstains on your clothing.

When was that?

Cheng looked puzzled.

When he encountered you and the Parks trucks, as he was returning to Chiwewe, after having seen the tracks of the raiders on the road.

Cheng's expression cleared.  All yes.  I had been an interested spectator of the Parks elephant culling.  As you can imagine, there was much blood about during the operation, I could easily have stepped in a puddle.  The inspector was sweating with embarrassment at this stage.

Do you remember what you were wearing that evening, Your Excellency?

Cheng frowned as he tried to remember.  I was wearing an open-neck shirt, blue cotton slacks, and probably a pair of comfortable running shoes.  That is my usual casual attire.  Do you still have those items?

Yes, of course.

The shirt and slacks will have been laundered by now, and the shoes will have been cleaned.  My valet is very efficient.  . . He broke off and smiled as though a thought had only just occurred to him.

Inspector, do you want to see these items?  You might even wish to take them away for examination.  Now the police inspector's embarrassment was painful.  He squirmed in his chair.  We have no right to ask for that kind of cooperation, Your Excellency.  However, in view of the statement made by Doctor Armstrong.  If you had no objection. Of course not.

Cheng smiled reassuringly.  As I told the commissioner of police, I want to cooperate in every possible way.  He glanced at his wristwatch.

However, I am due at lunch with the president at State House in an hour.

Do you mind if I send the clothing down to your headquarters with a member of my staff?  Both police officers sprang to their feet.  I am very sorry to have inconvenienced you, Your Excellency.  We appreciate your help.  I am sure the commissioner of police will be writing to you to tell you that himself.  Without rising from his desk, Cheng stopped the inspector at the door.  There was a report in the Herald that the raiders had been apprehended, he asked.  Is that correct?  Were you able to recover the stolen ivory?  The bandits were intercepted at the Zambezi as they tried to cross back into Zambia.  Unfortunately all of them were either killed or escaped, and the ivory was destroyed by fire or lost in the river.  What a pity.  . . Cheng sighed.  They should have been made to answer for these brutal killings.  However, it has simplified your work, has it not?  We are closing the file, the inspector agreed.  Now that you have helped us tidy up the loose ends, the commissioner will write to convey his appreciation and that will be the end of the matter The packet of clothing that Cheng selected from his wardrobe and sent to police headquarters, although agreeing with the description he had given the inspector, had never been worn anywhere near Chiwewe or the Zambezi valley.  Cheng sighed now as he thought about it.

He replaced the ivory netsuke on his desk and stared at it morosely.

But it was not the end of the matter, not now that Doctor Daniel Armstrong was nosing around, making trouble.

Could he rely on Chetti Singh once again, he wondered& It was one thing to get rid of two lowly Parks rangers, but Armstrong was game of a larger kind.  He had international reputation and fame, there would be questions if he disappeared.

He touched the intercom button and spoke into the microphone on his desk in Cantonese.  Lee, come in here please.  He could have asked his question without ordering his secretary through, but he liked to look at her.  Although she was of peasant stock from the hills, she was bright and nubile.  She had done well at Taiwan University, but Cheng had not chosen her for her academic achievements.

She stood to the side of his desk, close enough for him to touch if he had wished to, in an attitude of servility and submission.  Despite her modern accomplishments, she was a traditionally raised girl with the correct attitude to men, and in particular to her master.  Have you confirmed the reservations with Qantas Airlines?  he asked.  With Armstrong sniffing around in Lilongwe, it was as well that the return to Taipei was imminent.  He would never have taken the risk of the Chiwewe adventure if he had planned to stay on at the embassy.  Already his wife and family had left.

He would follow at the end of the month, only eight days from now.

Yes, the reservations have been confirmed, Your Excellency, Lee whispered respectfully.  To him her voice was as sweet as that of the nightingale in his father's lotus garden in the mountains.  It stirred him.  When are the packers coming in?  he asked, and touched her.  She trembled slightly under his hand and that stirred him further.  They will come in first thing on Monday, my lord.  She used the traditional title of respect.

Her straight black hair hung to her shoulders and shimmered with light.

Cheng ran his fingers lightly up the thigh slit of her cheongsam; her skin was as smooth as the ivory netsuke.  You have warned them of the value and fragility of my art collection?  he asked, and pinched her beneath the skirt.  He took a nip of that ivory skin between the nails of his thumb and second finger and she winced and bit her lower lip.

Yes, my lord, she whispered, with a catch of pain in her voice.  He pinched a little harder.  It would leave a tiny purple star on the flawless swell of her small firm buttock, a mark that would still be there when she came to him tonight.

The power of pain made him feel elated.  He forgot about Doctor Daniel Armstrong and any trouble he might be brewing.

For now, the police were off the track, and Lee Wang was lovely and compliant.  He had eight days while he was separated from his wife in which to enjoy her to the full.  Then he would return home, to his father's approbation.

Dan unlocked the rear door of the Landcruiser and packed the groceries and supplies that he had purchased from Chetti Singh's supermarket into his depleted tucker box.  Then he went round to the cab and sat at the wheel.  While he let the engine warm, he checked his notebook for the list of the Sikh's other business premises.

With help from a few obliging pedestrians he found his way into the light industrial area of the town, down near the railway line and the station.

Here it seemed that Chetti Singh owned four or five acres of industrial sites.  Some of these were undeveloped and overgrown with rank bush and weed.  On one of the vacant lots a large signboard declared: ANOTHER CHETTI SINGH PROJECT SITE OF PROPOSED COTTON CARDING FACTORY Development!  Employment!  Prosperity!  Uplift mend -MALAW FOR I!

On one side of the open plot, behind a barbed-wire security fence, stood the workshops of Chetti Singh's Toyota agency.

At least a hundred new Toyota vehicles were parked in the front lot.

They were still coated with the filth of the long rail journey up from the coast on open goods trucks.  Clearly they were awaiting delivery service in the main workshop building.

Through the open front doors Daniel could see a team of mechanics at work.  Though the foremen appeared all to be Asians, some in Sikh turbans, most of the overalled mechanics were black.  The enterprise appeared prosperous and well managed.

Daniel drove into the forecourt and left the Landcruiser parked at the reception bay.  He spoke to one of the foremen in a blue dust-coat.

Under the pretext of arranging a service for the Landcruiser he managed to get a good look around the workshop and administration building. There was no obvious place where a shipment of stolen ivory could be hidden.

While he made a booking to bring the Landcruiser in the following morning at eight o'clock, he chatted casually to the workshop foreman and learned that the sawmill and the Chetti Singh Trading Company warehouse were in the next street, backing on to the vehicle workshop.

He drove away and circled the block.  It was easy to pick out the sawmill, even from the far end of the street.  A dozen railway trucks stood at the private railway siding, every one of them piled high with heavy logs of indigenous timber cut in the heavily forested mountains.

The shrieks of the circular saws carried clearly up the street.

As he drove past the gates he looked into the open sheds where the saws were housed.  The spinning discs shone like quicksilver, and spurts of yellow sawdust flew from the rough logs as the blades bit into them. The resinous smell of freshly cut timber was pungent in the hot sunlight and mountains of raw planks were piled in the extensive yards, ready to be loaded on to the waiting railway trucks.

Daniel drove past slowly.  Diagonally opposite the sawmill closed by stood the warehouse complex.  It, was a high diamond-mesh fence, green plastic-coated wire on sturdy concrete poles with offset tops angled out towards the street and festooned with barbed wire.

The warehouse was in five semi-detached units; the valleys and peaks of the common roof formed a saw-tooth pattern of unpainted corrugated asbestos sheeting.  The walls were also of the same corrugated asbestos.

Each of the five units had separate doors of the roller type usually seen on aircraft hangars.

This time the signboard at the gates read CHETTI SINGH TRADING COMPANY CENTRAL DEPOT AND WAREHOUSE He was certainly not shy about advertising his name, Daniel thought wryly.  There was a swinging boom and a brick-built gatehouse at the entrance and Daniel noticed at least one uniformed guard at the gate.  As he drew level with the last building, he saw that the tall asbestos doors had been rolled open and he was able to look down the length of the cavernous warehouse.

Suddenly he leaned forward and his pulse accelerated as he recognised the huge pantechnicon parked in the centre of the warehouse.  It was the vehicle that he had last seen on the Chirundu road four nights previously.  The ten-wheel trailer with the green tarpaulin cover was still hitched behind it and the red dust that coated it matched that on his own Landcruiser.

The rear doors of the trailer were open and a team of a dozen or so black labourers assisted by a forklift truck were loading a cargo of brown sacks that could have contained maize, sugar or rice.

He could not see any of the distinctive dried fish bags that had been the cargo which he had seen in the Zambezi valley.

He lowered the side window, hoping for a whiff of fish, but he smelled only dust and diesel fumes.

Then he was past.  He thought about making a U-turn and another passing inspection.

Hell, I've drawn enough attention already, he told himself.  Like the circus coming to town.  He drove back to the Capital Hotel the way he had come left the truck in the guests car park and went up to his room.

He ran a bath, as deep and hot as he could stand it, and soaked the dust and grime of the African roads out of his pores, while his skin turned a rich puce.

As the water cooled he twiddled the tap with his toe, adding fresh steaming gouts.

At last he stood to lather his nether regions and regarded himself seriously in the dewy mirror over the washbasin.  Look here, Armstrong.

The sensible thing to do is go to the police with our suspicions.

It's their job, let them get on with it.

Since when, Armstrong, he replied, did we ever do the sensible thing?

Besides, this is Africa.  It will take the police three or four days to stir their butts, and Mr.  Singh has had quite enough time already to get rid of any ivory he may just have lying around.

By tomorrow it will probably be too late to catch him at it.  You -are trying to tell me, Armstrong, that time is of the essence?

Precisely, old chap.  It couldn't be that you'd enjoy a touch of cloak and dagger, a bit of boy-scouting, a spot of amateur sleuthing? Who me? Don't be silly!  You know me.  Indeed I do, he agreed with a wink at his image, and subsided back into the steamy suds, which slopped over the bath rim on to the tiled floor.

The dinner was a vast improvement on his last public meal.

The fillets of bream were fresh from the lake and the wine was a delicious Hamilton-Russell Chardonnay from the Cape of Good Hope.

Reluctantly he rationed himself to half the bottle.  Work to do, he muttered ruefully.  and went up to the room to make his preparations.

There was no hurry.  He couldn't move until after midnight.  When he was ready he lay on the bed and enjoyed the sensation of excitement and anticipation.  He kept looking at his wristwatch.  It seemed to have stopped and he held it to his ear.  The waiting was always the worst part.

Chetti Singh watched the security guards usher the last customer from the supermarket and close the double glass doors.  The wall clock pointed to ten minutes past five.

The sweepers were already at work and his daughters were busy at the tills, cashing up the day's receipts.  The girls were as devout as virgins ministering at the altar of some arcane religion, and his wife stood over them ISO as dignified as the high priestess.  This was the high point of the daily ritual.

At last the procession left the tills and made its way across the shop floor, in strict order of precedence, his wife leading and her daughters following, the eldest first and the youngest last.  They entered his office and laid the day's take on his desk in neatly banded bundles of currency notes, and canvas bags of coins, while his wife handed him the print-outs from the tills.  Oh, good!  Chetti Singh told them in Hindi.

The best day since Christmas Eve, I am sure.  He could recite the figures over the last six months without consulting his ledgers.

He entered the take in the day-book, and while his family watched respectfully, locked the cash and credit-card vouchers into the big Chubb safe built into the back wall.  I will be late home for dinner, he told his wife.  I must go down to the warehouse to attend to certain matters.

Papaii, your meal will be ready when you return.  She clasped her hands to her lips in a graceful gesture of respect, and her daughters imitated her example and then filed from his -office.

Chetti Singh sighed with pleasure.  They were good girls but if only they had been boys.  It was going to be the devil's own job finding husbands for all of them.

He drove down to the industrial area in the Cadillac.  The car was not new.  Dearth of foreign exchange would not permit an ordinary citizen to import such a luxurious vehicle.  Chetti Singh had, as always, a system.

He contacted newly appointed.

members of the American diplomatic staff before they left Washington.

Malawi customs regulations allowed them to import a new car and sell it locally at the end of their term.

Chetti Singh paid them twice the US value of the Cadillac in Malawi kwacha on arrival.  They could live in princely style on for the full three years of their tour i this amount n Mwi while still retaining use of the car and saving their official salaries.

When they left, Chetti Singh took over the vehicle, ran it for a year, until the next arrangement matured at which time he placed the Cadillac on the showroom floor of his Toyota agency with a price tag of three times its original US value.  It was usually sold within the week.  No profit was too small to despise; no loss was too small to abhor.  it was not by accident that over the years Chetti Singh had amassed a fortune the full extent of which not even his, wife could guess at.

At the warehouse gates Chawe swung open the boom to allow him to drive the Cadillac through.

Yes?  Chetti Singh asked the big Angoni.  He came, Chawe replied.  As you said he would.  He drove by on this road at ten minutes past four.

He was in the truck with the man's arm painted on the door.  He drove slowly and he was staring through the fence all the time.  Chetti Singh frowned with annoyance.  This chap is becoming an absolute pest.  Never mind, he said aloud, and Chawe looked bemused.  His English was rudimentary.  Come with me, Chetti Singh ordered, and Chawe climbed into the back seat of the Cadillac.  He would never be so presumptuous as to sit beside his master.

Chetti Singh drove slowly along the front of the warehouse complex.

All the call doors were already closed and locked for the night. There were no burglar alarms guarding the area; at night even the perimeter fence was unlit by floodlights.

There had been a period two or three years back during which he had suffered from repeated burglaries and break-ins.

Alarms and floodlights had done little to prevent these depredations.

In desperation he had consulted the most famous Sangorna in all the territory.  This old witch-doctor lived in dread isolation up on the top of the misty Mlanje plateau attended only by his acolytes.

For a fee commensurate with his reputation, the witch-doctor descended from the mountain with his entourage and, with great fanfare and ceremony, he placed the warehouse under the protection of the most powerful and malevolent of the spirits and demons that he controlled.

Chetti Singh invited all the idlers and loafers of the town to witness the ceremony.  They watched with interest and trepidation as the witch-doctor decapitated a black cockerel at each of the five doors of the warehouse and sprinkled its blood on the portals.  After this, to suitable incantations, he placed the skull of a baboon on each corner-post of the perimeter fence.  The spectators had been much impressed and the word spread swiftly through the townships and the beerballs that Chetti Singh was under magic protection.

For six months thereafter there were no further break-ins.

Then one of the township gangs worked up the courage to test the efficacy of the spell, and they got away with a dozen television sets and nearly forty transistor radios.

Chetti Singh sent for the witch-doctor and reminded him that his services carried a guarantee.  They haggled until finally Chetti Singh agreed to buy from him at a bargain price the ultimate deterrent.  Her name was Nandi.

Since Nandi's arrival there had been only a single break-in.

The burglar had died in Lilongwe hospital the following day with his scalp ripped off his skull and his bowels bulging out of the rents in his belly.  Nandi had solved the problem, permanently.

Chetti Singh drove the Cadillac around the peripheral pathway inside the fence.  The fence was in good order, even the baboon skulls still grinned down from the tops of the cornerposts, but the infra-red alarms were gone.  Chetti Singh had sold them at a good price to a Zambian customer.  After Nandi's arrival they had become redundant.

Completing the circuit of the fence, Chetti Singh parked the Cadillac at the rear of the warehouse, beside a neat shed of the same corrugated sheeting as the main building.  This was obviously a later addition, tacked on as an afterthought to the rear wall of the warehouse.

As Chetti Singh stepped out of the Cadillac, his nostrils flared to the faint but rank odour that wafted from the single small window in the shed.  This was set high up and was heavily barred.

He glanced at Chawe.  Is she safe?  She is in the small cage, as you ordered, Mambo.

Despite the assurance, Chetti Singh peered through the peephole in the door before he opened it and stepped into the shed.

The only light came from the high window and the room was in semi-darkness, made more intense by the contrast of the late sunshine outside.

The smell was stronger now, a pungent wild scent, and suddenly from the gloom there was a spitting snarl so vicious that Chetti Singh stepped back involuntarily.  My goodness.  he chuckled to hide his nerves.  We are in absolutely foul mettle today.  An animal moved behind the bars of the cage, a dark shape on silent pads and there was a gleam of yellow eyes.  Nandi.  Chetti Singh smiled.  "'The sweet one".  Nandi had been the name of King Chaka's mother.

Chetti Singh reached out to the switch beside the door and the fluorescent tube in the ceiling spluttered and then lit the shed with a cold blue light.

In the cage a female leopard shrank away against the far wall, crouching there, staring at the man with murderous eyes, her upper lip lifting in a creased and silent snarl to reveal her fangs.

She was a huge cat, over seven feet from nose to tail, one of the animals from Mlanje mountain forest, who would turn the scale at 120 pounds.  A wild creature captured by the old witchdoctor in her maturity, she had once been a notorious goat and dog-killer, terrorising the villages on the slopes of the mountain.  Shortly before her capture she had savagely mauled a young herdboy who had tried to defend his flock against her.

The forest cats were darker than those of the open savanna, the jet-b lack rosettes that dappled her skin were close-set, so that she was close in coloration to the melanistic panther.  Her tail curled and flicked like a metronome, the gauge of her temper.

She watched the man unblinkingly.  The force of her hatred was as thick as the wild animal stench in the small hot room.  Are you angry?

Chetti Singh asked, and her lip lifted higher to the sound of his voice. She knew him well.  Not angry enough, Chetti Singh decided, and reached for the cattle prod on the rack beside the light switch.

The cat reacted immediately.  She knew the sting of the electric prod.

Her next snarl was a crackling rattle and she ran back and forth trying to escape from the torment she had come to expect.  At the end nearest the main wall of the warehouse the steel mesh cage narrowed into a bottleneck just wide enough to admit the leopard's body, a low tunnel that ended against a steel sliding door in the warehouse wall.

The prod was bolted on to a long aluminium pole.  Chetti Singh slipped it between the cage bars and reached out to touch the leopard.

Her movements became frantic as she tried to avoid the device, and Chetti Singh laughed at her antics as he pursued her around the cage.

He was trying to drive her into the bottle-necked tunnel.

At last she flung herself against the bars of the cage, ripping at the steel with her claws as she tried to reach him, coughing and grunting with fury, but the length of the pole kept Chetti Singh out of range.

Goodness gracious me!  he said, and touched the side of her neck with the points of the prod.  Blue electricity flashed and the leopard recoiled from the sting of it and bounded to the tunnel at the end of the cage.

Chawe was ready for this, and he dropped the mesh door behind her.

Now she was trapped.  Her nose was against the steel hatch in the warehouse wall, while at her heels the mesh door prevented her backing away.  The tunnel was so low that it almost touched her back and she could not rear up, it was so narrow that she could not turn her head to protect her heaving flanks.  She was helplessly pinioned and Chetti Singh handed the prod to Chawe.

He returned to the table near the door and uncoiled the lead of a small electric soldering iron and plugged it into the wall socket.

With the plastic-covered lead trailing behind him he came back to where the leopard crouched in the tunnel.  He reached through the bars and stroked her back.  Her pelt was thick and silky, and she could not avoid his touch.

Her whole body seemed to swell with her fury and she snarled and tried to twist her neck to savage his hand but the bars prevented it.

Chetti Singh lifted the soldering iron and spat on the copper point to test its heat.  His spittle sizzled and evaporated in a puff of steam. He grunted with satisfaction and reached through the bars once again. He grasped the leopard's tail and lifted it high, exposing her fluffy genitalia and the tight puckered black collar of her anus.

The leopard hissed with outrage and ripped at the cement floor with her claws fully extended.  She knew what was coming and she tried to lower her tail and cover her delicate parts.

Help me, Chetti Singh grunted, and Chawe seized the tail.

It writhed like a serpent in his grip but he forced it upwards, allowing his master free use of both hands.

Chetti Singh inspected the delicate flesh thoughtfully.  It was dimpled and cratered with healed scars, some so fresh that the cicatrice was stilt pink and glossy.  He reached out gently with the hot iron, choosing the spot to burn with care, avoiding the freshly healed skin.

The cat felt the heat of the approaching iron and her body convulsed in anticipation.  Just a little one, my beauty, Chetti Singh assured her.

Just enough to make you very angry if you should meet Doctor Armstrong tonight.  Unmolested, leopards are not a serious threat to human beings.

Man does not form a part of their natural prey, and their instinctive fear is enough to make them avoid rather than attack him.  However, once injured or wounded, or particularly when they are deliberately tormented, they are, amongst the most dangerous and vicious of all African animals.

Chetti Singh touched the glowing iron to the soft rim of the leopard's anus.  There was a puff of smoke and the stink of burned skin and hair.

The leopard shrieked with pain and bit at the steel bars.

Chetti Singh inspected the injury.  With practice he could inflict a burn that was exquisitely painful, but which would heal within the week and would not damage the animal's appearance nor hamper her movements when she attacked.  Good!  he congratulated himself.  The iron had only superficially penetrated the outer skin.  It was a shallow painful little wound, yet it had infuriated the golden cat.

He laid the soldering iron back on the table and picked up a bottle of disinfectant.  It was raw iodine, dark yellow and pungent on the swab that he pressed against the open wound.

The sting of it would increase her fury.

The leopard shrieked and hissed and struggled wildly against the restraining bars.  Her eyes were huge and yellow and froth lined her open snarling lips.  That's enough.  Open the hatch, Chetti Singh ordered, and the Angoni released the cat's tail.  She whipped it down between her legs to protect herself.

Chawe went to the handle of the steel hatch and raised it.

With one last snarl the leopard bounded through the opening and disappeared into the warehouse beyond.

At first it had been difficult to get the cat to leave the warehouse at dawn each morning, but with free use of the electric prod and the lure of the goat's meat on which she was fed, she had at last been trained to return to her cage in the shed on command.

It was the only training she had received.  All night she prowled the warehouse, tormented and murderous.  At dawn she returned to the shed and crouched there in the gloom, growling softly to herself and licking her deliberately inflicted injuries, awaiting the first opportunity to avenge her humiliation and pain.

Chawe closed the hatch behind the leopard and followed his master out into the last glow of the sunset.  Chetti Singh mopped his face with a white handkerchief It had been hot in the fetid little shed.  You will remain in your guardhouse at the main gate, -he commanded.  Do not patrol the fence or attempt to stop the white man from entering the warehouse.

If he does get in, Nandi will warn you .

They both smiled at the thought.  They remembered the last intruder and his condition as they took him down to the casualty department of the general hospital.  When you hear Nandi working on him, ring me from the main gate.  The telephone is beside my bed.  Do not enter the warehouse until I arrive.  It will take fifteen or twenty minutes for me to get here.  By that time Nandi may have saved us a great deal of trouble.