In the Hour Before Midnight Read Free Page A

dreamlike. It was as if I was outside looking into the packed room and things moved in a kind of slow motion.
    What was I doing here on the rim of the dark continent, Africa all around me? Faces everywhere, looming through the smoke, black, white, brown and subtle variations in between, riff-raff, not even a common humanity holding us together, all running from something.
    Suddenly I’d had enough. In a way, I’d taken a look, not so much at myself as I was then, but at what I would soon become and I didn’t like what I’d seen. I was hot and sticky, sweat trickling from my armpits, and I decided to change my shirt. I realise now, of course, that I was only looking for some excuse to go upstairs.
    My room was on the third floor, Coimbra’s apartment on the second, the girls being downbelow. As a rule it was quiet up there because that was the way Coimbra liked it, but now, as I paused at the end of the passage, I was aware again of that same strange stillness I had experienced earlier.
    The voices, when I heard them, seemed far away and I walked on, aware that someone was speaking angrily. The first door opened into a kind of anteroom. I went in cautiously and moved through darkness to where a thousand fingers of light pierced a lattice screen.
    Coimbra was seated at his desk, one of his heavies, Gilberto, at his back holding a gun. Herrara, the man who had brought Burke up from the café, leaned against the door, arms folded.
    Burke was standing a couple of yards away from the desk, legs slightly apart, hands in the pockets of his bush jacket. I could see him in profile and his face might have been carved from stone.
    â€œYou don’t seem to understand,” Coimbra was saying. “No one was interested in your proposition, it’s as simple as that.”
    â€œAnd my five thousand dollars?”
    Coimbra looked as if he was fast losing his patience. “I have been put to considerable expense in this matter—considerable expense.”
    â€œI’m sure you have.”
    â€œNow you are being sensible, major. In businessthese things happen. One must be prepared to take risks for quick returns. And now you must excuse me. My men will escort you. This is a rough district. It would desolate me if anything were to happen to you.”
    â€œI’m sure it would,” Burke said dryly.
    Gilberto smiled for the first time and hefted the Luger in his hand and Burke took off his bush hat, wiping his face with the back of his right hand, looking suddenly beaten.
    But I could see what they could not. Inside the crown of his hat an old short-barrelled Banker’s special was held in place by a spring clip. He shot Gilberto from cover, so to speak, slamming him back against the wall, turned and covered Herrara who was starting to draw.
    â€œI don’t think so,” Burke said, and I was aware of the power in the man, the vital force.
    He made Herrara face the wall and searched him quickly. And Coimbra, man of surprises to the end, opened a silver cigar box and produced a small automatic.
    I had a friend once who took up golf and was a scratch man within three months. He had a natural flair for the game just as some people have language kinks and others can rival computers in mental calculation.
    On one memorable Sunday afternoon during my first month at Harvard, another student took me to a local pistol club. I’d never fired a gun in my life, yet when he put a Colt Woodsman in my hand and told me what to do, I experienced a new feeling. The gun became a part of me and the things I did with it in one short hour had astonished everyone there.
    So I was a natural shot with something of a genius for handguns, but I had never aimed at a human being. What happened next seemed so natural that, in retrospect, it was frightening. I flung open the door, dropped to one knee and grabbed for Gilberto’s Luger where it lay on the floor. In the same moment, I shot Coimbra through the