The Keepers of the King's Peace. Edgar Wallace

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      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664640000

Table of Contents

       PAT

       (P. M. C. W.)

       THE KEEPERS OF THE KING'S PEACE

       CHAPTER I

       BONES, SANDERS AND ANOTHER

       CHAPTER II

       BONES CHANGES HIS RELIGION

       CHAPTER III

       THE MAKER OF STORMS

       CHAPTER IV

       BONES AND THE WIRELESS

       CHAPTER V

       THE REMEDY

       CHAPTER VI

       THE MEDICINE MAN

       CHAPTER VII

       BONES, KING-MAKER

       CHAPTER VIII

       THE TAMER OF BEASTS

       CHAPTER IX

       THE MERCENARIES

       CHAPTER X

       THE WATERS OF MADNESS

       CHAPTER XI

       EYE TO EYE

       CHAPTER XII

       THE HOODED KING

       THE END

      TO

      PAT

       Table of Contents

(P. M. C. W.)

       Table of Contents

THE KEEPERS OF THE KING'S PEACE

       Table of Contents

CHAPTER I

       Table of Contents

BONES, SANDERS AND ANOTHER

       Table of Contents

      To Isongo, which stands upon the tributary of that name, came a woman of the Isisi who had lost her husband through a providential tree falling upon him. I say "providential," for it was notorious that he was an evil man, a drinker of beer and a favourite of many bad persons. Also he made magic in the forest, and was reputedly the familiar of Bashunbi the devil brother of M'shimba-M'shamba. He beat his wives, and once had set fire to his house from sheer wickedness. So that when he was borne back to the village on a grass bier and the women of his house decked themselves with green leaves and arm in arm staggered and stamped through the village street in their death dance, there was a suspicion of hilarity in their song, and a more cheery step in their dance than the occasion called for.

      An old man named D'wiri, who knew every step of every dance, saw this and said in his stern way that it was shameless. But he was old and was, moreover, in fear for the decorum of his own obsequies if these outrageous departures from custom were approved or allowed to pass without reprimand.

      When M'lama, the wife of G'mami, had seen her lord depart in the canoe for burial in the middle island and had wailed her conventional grief, she washed the dust from her body at the river's edge and went back to her hut. And all that was grief for the dead man was washed away with the dust of mourning.

      Many moons came out of the sky, were wasted and died before the woman M'lama showed signs of her gifts. It is said that they appeared one night after a great storm wherein lightning played such strange tricks upon the river that even the old man D'wiri could not remember parallel instances.

      In the night the wife of a hunter named E'sani-Osoni brought a dying child into the СКАЧАТЬ