The Twelve African Novels (A Collection). Edgar WallaceЧитать онлайн книгу.
her head.
“Phew!” said Sanders, breaking into a sweat — for by all custom this was not an act of fealty, but the very act of marriage.
“Stand up, queen!” said the Commissioner when he had got his breath, “lest your people think foolish thoughts.”
“Lord,” she murmured, “I love you! and Bosambo, your nephew, looks favourably upon our marriage.”
Sanders said nothing. He reached down, and catching her by the arm, drew her to her feet.
“Oh, people!” he said loudly to the amazed throng at the foot of the little hill on which the palaver house stood, “your queen is, by her act, wedded to my government, and has sworn to serve me in all matters of queenship — be faithful as she is. The palaver is finished.”
It was an ingenious escape — though the girl’s eyes narrowed as she faced him, and her bare bosom rose and fell in her anger.
“Lord,” she breathed, “this was not as I meant.”
“It is as I mean,” said Sanders gently.
She faced him for a moment; then, turning swiftly, walked to her hut, and Sanders saw her no more that day.
“We stay till tomorrow,” said Sanders to his sergeant as he went on board the Zaire that evening. “Afterwards we go to Ochori — I will have a palaver with Bosambo.”
“Master,” said Abiboo, “Bosambo will be pleased.”
“I doubt it,” said Sanders.
He went to bed that night to sleep the sleep of one who had earned the daily two pounds with which a grateful government rewarded him.
He was dead tired, but not too tired to slip the fine-meshed wire fly-door into its place, or to examine the windows to see if they were properly screened.
This must be done in the dark, because, if by chance a window or a door is open when a light appears, certain it is that the cabin will be filled with tiny little brothers of the forest, a hundred varieties of flies, winged beetles, and most assuredly musca — which, in everyday language, is the fever-carrying mosquito. With the habit formed of long practice, Sanders’ hand touched the three windows, found the screens in their place and latched.
Then he switched on the electric light — a luxurious innovation which had come to him with the refitment of the Zaire. Leading from his cabin was a tiny bathroom. He pulled his pyjamas from under his pillow and disappeared into the cupboard — it was nothing more — to reappear at the end of five minutes arrayed in his grey sleeping kit.
He turned on a light over his pillow, switched out the other, and pulled back the clothes.
He did not immediately jump into bed, because, carefully arranged at regular intervals in the centre of the bed, were three round thorns.
Sanders turned on the other light, opened his desk, and found a pair of tweezers. With these he removed the uncomfortable burrs, placing them under a glass on his table.
After this he made a very thorough search of the room — especially of the floor. But whosoever had placed the thorns had evidently forgotten the possibilities of a man walking barefooted — nor was there any sign of the unknown’s thoughtful attention in the bathroom.
He pulled the bed to pieces, shaking every article carefully; then he remade his couch, turned out the lights, climbed into bed, and went to sleep.
Two hours before dawn he woke. This was the time he intended waking. He sat up in bed and groaned — deliberately and inartistically. He groaned at intervals for five minutes, then he was quiet.
He listened and thought he heard a slight movement on the bank to which the Zaire was moored.
He bent his head and waited. Yes, a twig snapped.
Sanders was out of the door in a second; he flew across the gangway which connected the steamer with the bank, and plunged into the forest path that led to the village of E’tomolini. Ahead of him he heard a patter of bare feet.
“Stop! O walker of the night,” called Sanders in the Bomongo dialect, “or you die!”
The figure ahead halted and Sanders came up with it.
“Walk back the way you came,” he said, and followed the shadowy form to the boat.
Sanders observed that the night-wanderer was a little taller than a boy, and had a method of walking which was not inconsistent with the theory that it was a girl.
“Go straight to my cabin,” said the Commissioner, “if you know it.”
“Lord, I know it,” quavered the other, and Sanders learnt that it was indeed a girl.
A girl of fifteen, he judged, as she stood in the glare of the electric light — shapely of build, not bad-looking, and very frightened.
“I am plagued by women,” said Sanders wrathfully. “You shall tell me how it comes about that you spy upon me in the night, also how you come to be abroad so early.”
The girl hesitated, casting a bewildered glance round the cabin.
“Lord,” she said, “I did that which seemed best.”
“Who sent you here?”
Again she hesitated.
“I came for no reason, lord, but that I wish to see the strange devil-light.”
This was a reasonable excuse, for the new electric installation had proved irresistibly fascinating to the raw folk of the upper river.
Sanders uncovered the three thorn burrs, and she looked at them curiously.
“What do they call you?” asked Sanders.
“Medini, the woman with nine lovers,” she said simply.
“Well, Medini,” said Sanders with a grim little smile, “you shall pick up those thorns and hold them in your hand — they will wound you a little because they are very sharp.”
The girl smiled.
“A little thorn does not hurt,” she quoted, and stretched out her hand fearlessly.
Before she could touch the thorns Sanders’ hand shot out and caught her wrist.
The girl was puzzled and for a moment a look of apprehension filled her eyes and she shrank back, dragging her wrist from the Commissioner’s hand.
“Sit down,” said Sanders. “You shall tell me before you go who sent you to the bank to watch my boat.”
“None, lord,” she faltered.
Sanders shook his head.
“I have a ju-ju,” he said slowly, “and this ju-ju has told me that somebody said, ‘Go you, Medini, to the bank near where Sandi lies and listen. And when you hear him groan aloud like a man in great pain, you shall come and tell me.”
Consternation and horror were on the girl’s face.
“Lord,” she gasped, “that is true — yet if I speak I die!”
“Also, if you do not speak, I shall take you away from here to a place far from your own people,” said Sanders.
The girl’s eyes dropped.
“I came to see the devil-lights,” she said sullenly.
Sanders nodded.
He went out from the cabin and called up the guard — an alert guard which had watched a flying Commissioner in pyjamas cross the plank gangway and reappear with a prisoner.
“Keep this woman under your eyes,” he said. “Let none speak with her.”
When daylight came he removed a spike from the thorn and placed