The Twelve African Novels (A Collection). Edgar Wallace

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СКАЧАТЬ 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

       Table of Contents

      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 don’t suppose that our position will have much influence with him. Ammett says that he’s a very strict man and unpleasant to deal with.”

      They went into the cost of the expedition. By selling up the furniture and moving into lodgings it could be done. He could leave her fifty or sixty pounds, sufficient to last her with economy for a year. The rest he would sink into goods — a list of which the successful trader had given him.

      Some weeks later Jordon took the great step. He sailed from Liverpool with a stock of gewgaws and cloth, and, as the tiny figure of his weeping girl-wife grew more and more indistinct on the quay, he realised, as all men realise sooner or later, that death is not the most painful of humanity’s trials.

      He changed his ship at Grand Bassam for the accommodation of a small steamer.

      He did not confide his plans to the men he met on board — hard-drinking men in white duck — but what he learnt of Sanders made his heart sink.

      Sanders went down to the beach to meet the steamer, which usually brought the mails.

      A tall young man in white sprang from the boat and a portmanteau followed. Sanders looked at the newcomer with suspicion. He did not love strangers — his regulation in this respect was known from Dacca to Mossamades and the phrase “Sanders’ Welcome” had become idiomatic.

      “Good morning,” said Jordon, with his heart quaking.

      “Good morning,” said Sanders; “do you want to see me? I am afraid you will not have much time, the boat does not stay very long.”

      The newcomer bit his lip.

      “I am not going on yet,” he said, “I — I want to stay here.”

      “Oh!” said Sanders, without enthusiasm.

      In the cool of the verandah over an iced drink the young man spoke without reserve.

      “I’ve come out here to make a fortune, or at any rate a living,” he said, and the thought of her he had left in her tiny lodging gave him courage.

      “You’ve come to a very unlucky place,” said Sanders, smiling in spite of his resentment at this intrusion on his privacy.

      “That is why I came,” said the other with surprising boldness; “all the likely places are used up, and I have got to justify my existence somehow.” And without attempting to hide his own poverty or his inexperience, he told his story.

      The Commissioner was interested. This side of life, as the young man recited it, was new to him; it was a life which he himself did not know or understand, this struggle for existence in a great uncaring city.

      “You seem to have had the average kind of bad luck,” he said simply. “I can’t advise you to go back because you have burned your boats, and in the second place because I am pretty sure that you would not go. Let me think.”

      He frowned at the police huts shimmering in the morning СКАЧАТЬ