The Twelve African Novels (A Collection). Edgar WallaceЧитать онлайн книгу.
I may be guided and strengthened by your lordships’ wisdom. I have built you four new huts,” he went on, “knowing that your honours were coming; here you shall be lodged, and by my heart and my life no living man shall injure you.”
“No dead man can, Bosambo,” said Otalikari, and there was a rocking shout of laughter. Bosambo laughed too; he laughed louder and longer than all the rest, he laughed so that Ofalikari was pleased with him.
“Go in peace,” said Bosambo, and the delegates went to their huts.
In the early hours of the morning Bosambo sent for Tomba, an enemy and a secret agent of the society.
“Go to the great lords,” he said, “tell them I come to them tonight by the place where the Isisi River and the big river meet. And say to them that they must go quickly, for I do not wish to see them again, lest our adventure does not carry well, and Sandi punish me.”
At daybreak with his cloak of monkey tails about him — for the dawn was chilly — he watched the delegation leave the village and each go its separate way.
He noted that Tomba accompanied them out of sight. He wasted half an hour, then went to his hut and emerged naked save for his loin cloth, his great shield on his left arm, and in the hand behind the shield a bundle of throwing spears.
To him moved fifty fighting men, the trusted and the faithful, and each carried his wicker war shield obliquely before him.
And the Ochori people, coward at heart, watched the little company in awe. They stood waiting, these fierce, silent warriors, till at a word they marched till they came to the four huts where Bosambo’s guests had lain. Here they waited again. Tomba came in time and stared uneasily at the armed rank.
“Tomba,” said Bosambo gently, “did you say farewell to the Goat lords?”
“This I did, chief,” said Tomba.
“Embracing them as is the Goat custom?” asked Bosambo more softly still.
“Lord, I did this.”
Bosambo nodded.
“Go to that hut, O Tomba, great Goat and embracer of Goats.”
Tomba hesitated, then walked slowly to the nearest hut. He reached the door, and half turned.
“Slay!” whispered Bosambo, and threw the first spear.
With a yell of terror the man turned to flee, but four spears struck him within a space of which the palm of a hand might cover and he rolled into the hut, dead.
Bosambo selected another spear, one peculiarly prepared, for beneath the spear head a great wad of dried grass had been bound and this had been soaked in copal gum.
A man brought him fire in a little iron cup and he set it to the spear, and with a jerk of his palm sent the blazing javelin to the hut’s thatched roof.
In an instant it burst into flame — in ten minutes the four new houses were burning fiercely.
And on the flaming fire, the villagers, summoned to service, added fresh fuel and more and more, till the sweat rolled down their unprotected bodies. In the afternoon Bosambo allowed the fire to die down. He sent two armed men to each of the four roads that led into the village, and his orders were explicit.
“You shall kill any man or woman who leaves this place,” he said; “also you shall kill any man or woman who, coming in, will not turn aside. And if you do not kill them, I myself will kill you. For I will not have the sickness mongo in my city, lest our lord Sandi is angry.”
Sanders, waiting far he knew not what, heard the news, and went steaming to headquarters, sending pigeons in front asking for doctors. A week later he came back with sufficient medical stores to put the decks of the Zaire awash, but he came too late. The bush plague had run its course. It had swept through cities and lands and villages like a tempest, and strange it was that those cities which sent delegates to Bosambo suffered most, and in the N’Gombi city to which Ofalikari stumbled to die, one eighth of the population were wiped out.
“And how has it fared with you, Bosambo?” asked Sanders when the medical expedition came to Ochori.
“Lord,” said Bosambo, “it has passed me by.”
There was a doctor in the party of an inquiring mind. “Ask him how he accounts for his immunity,” he said to Sanders, for he had no knowledge of the vernacular, and Sanders repeated the question.
“Lord,” said Bosambo with simple earnestness, “I prayed very earnestly, being, as your lordship knows, a bueno Catolico.”
And the doctor, who was also a “good Catholic,” was so pleased that he gave Bosambo a sovereign and a little writing pad — at least he did not give Bosambo the latter, but it is an indisputable fact that it was in the chief’s hut when the party had gone.
XVI. The Crime of Sanders
It is a fine thing to be confidential clerk to a millionaire, to have placed to your credit every month of your life the sum of forty-one pounds thirteen shillings and fourpence.
This was the experience of a man named Jordon, a young man of considerable character, as you shall learn. He had a pretty wife and a beautiful baby, and they were a contented and happy little family.
Unfortunately the millionaire died, and though he left “£100 to my secretary, Derik Arthur Jordon,” the sum inadequately compensated young Jordon for the forty-one pounds thirteen shillings and fourpence which came to his banker with monotonous regularity every month.
A millionaire’s confidential clerk is a drug on the market which knows few millionaires, and those admirably suited in the matter of secretaries. The young man spent six months and most of his money before he came to understand that his opportunities were limited.
Had he been just an ordinary clerk, with the requisite knowledge of shorthand and typewriting, he would have found no difficulty in securing employment. Had he had an acquaintance with a thousand and one businesses he might have been “placed,” but he had specialised in millionaires — an erratic millionaire whose memory and purse and Times he was — and the world of business had no opening for his undisputed qualities. He had exactly £150 left of his savings and his legacy, when the fact was brought home to him.
Then it happened, that returning to his suburban home one evening, he met a man who had just met another man, who on a capital of a few pounds had amassed a fortune by trading on the West Coast of Africa.
Jordon sought an introduction to the friend and they met in the splendour of a West End hotel, where the trader drank whiskey and talked of his “little place at Minehead.”
“It’s dead easy,” he said, “especially if you get into a country which isn’t overrun by traders, like Sanders’ territory. But of course that’s impossible. Sanders is a swine to traders — won’t have them in his territory. He’s a sort of little god…”
He drew a picture of the wonderful possibilities of such a field, and the young man went home full of the prospect.
He and his pretty wife sat up till the early hours of the morning discussing the plan. They got a map of Africa showing the territory over which Mr. Commissioner Sanders had dominion. It seemed absurdly small, but it was a little map.
“I wonder what he is like?” asked the girl thoughtfully. She concealed her own agony of mind at the prospect of parting with him, because she was a woman, and women are very extraordinary in their unselfishness.
“Perhaps he would let you go in,” she said wistfully. “I am sure he would if he knew what it meant to us.”
Jordon shook his head a little ruefully.
“I