The Twelve African Novels (A Collection). Edgar Wallace

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      “I could find work for you,” he said, “if you spoke any of the languages, which of course you do not, or if—” He was silent.

      “I am supposed to have an assistant,” he said at last, “I could appoint you—”

      The young man shook his head.

      “That’s good of you, sir,” he said, “but I’d be no use to you. Give me a trader’s licence. I believe you’ve got authority to do so, in fact nobody else seems to have that authority.”

      Sanders grinned. There was a licence once issued by the Administrator’s secretary to an Eurasian trader — but that story will keep.

      “I’ll give you the licence,” he said after a pause, and the young man’s heart leapt; “it will cost you a guinea to start with, all the money you’ve got eventually, and in course of time you will probably add to the bill of costs your health and your life.”

      He issued the licence that day.

      For a couple of weeks the young man remained his guest whilst his stores came on from Sierra Leone.

      Sanders found an interpreter and headman for him, and the young man started off in his new canoe to wrestle with fortune, after a letter to his wife in which he described Sanders as something between a Peabody and an angel.

      Before he went Sanders gave him a few words of advice.

      “I do not like traders,” he said, “and I never issue a licence unless I can help it: do not upset my people, do not make any kind of trouble. Avoid the N’Gombi, who are thieves and the bush people, who are chronically homicidal. The Isisi will buy salt with rubber — there is plenty of rubber in the back country. The Ochori will buy cloth with gum — by the way, Bosambo, the chief, speaks English and will try to swindle you. Goodbye and good luck.”

      He watched the canoe till it disappeared round the bluff, and went back to his hut to record the departure in his diary.

      After which he sat himself down to decipher a long despatch in Arabic from one of his intelligence men — a despatch which dealt minutely with three other strangers who had come to his land, and arriving mysteriously, had as mysteriously disappeared.

      These were three men who dwelt by the River, being of no village, and of no denned race, for they were settled on the borderline between Akasava, Isisi, and Ochori, and though one had the lateral face-marks of a Bogindi man, yet there was little doubt that he was not of that people.

      They lived in three huts set side by side and they fished and hunted. A strange fact was that none of these men had wives.

      For some reason which the psychologist will understand, the circumstances isolated the three from their kind. Women avoided them, and when they came to the adjacent village to sell or to buy, the girls and the young matrons went into their huts and peered at them fearfully.

      The chief of the three was named M’K-aroka — or so it sounded — and he was a broad, tall man, of surly countenance, sparing of speech, and unpleasant in dispute. He accounted himself outside of all the village laws, though he broke none, and as he acted and thought so did his fellows.

      Their lives if strange were inoffensive, they did not steal nor abuse the privileges which were theirs. They were honest in their dealings and cleanly.

      Sanders, who had made inquiries through channels which were familiar enough to those who understand the means by which a savage country is governed, received no ill-report, and left the three to their own devices. They fished, hunted, grew a little maize in a garden they won from the forest, sought for and prepared manioc for consumption, and behaved as honest husbandmen should do.

      One day they disappeared. They vanished as though the earth had opened and swallowed them up. None saw their going. Their huts were left untouched and unspoiled, their growing crops stood in the gardens they had cultivated, the dying fish hung on lines between poles just as they had placed them, and the solitary canoe they shared was left beached.

      But the three had gone. The forest, impenetrable, unknown, had swallowed them, and no more was heard of them.

      Sanders, who was never surprised and took it for granted that the most mysterious of happenings had a natural explanation, did no more than send word to the forest villages asking for news of the three men. This was not forthcoming, and the matter ended so far as the Commissioner was concerned.

      He heard of Jordon throughout the year. Letters addressed to his wife came to headquarters, and were forwarded. His progress from village to village was duly charted by Sanders’ agents. Such accounts as reached Sanders were to the effect that the young man was finding it difficult to make both ends meet. The rubber that arrived at irregular intervals for shipment was not of the best quality, and one load of gum was lost in the river by the overturning of a canoe. Sanders, knowing the young man’s story, was worried, and caused word to go up river that patronage of the trader would be pleasing to the Commissioner.

      Then one day, a year after he had set forth, he unexpectedly turned up at headquarters, thinner, burnt black by the Sun, and the possessor of a straggling beard.

      He came in an old canoe with four paddlers, and he brought nothing with him save his rifle, his cooking pots and bedding.

      His clothes were patched and soiled, he wore clumsy moccasins of skins, and a helmet which was no longer white and was considerably battered.

      He had learnt something and greeted Sanders fluently in the Bomongo dialect.

      “Chasi o!” he said, with a bitter little laugh, as he stepped from the canoe, and that word meant “finished” in a certain River dialect.

      “As bad as that?” said Sanders.

      “Pretty nearly,” replied the other. “I’m no trader, Mr. Sanders, I’m a born philanthropist.”

      He laughed again and Sanders smiled in sympathy.

      “I’ve seen a lot of life,” he said, “but it doesn’t pay dividends.”

      Sanders took him to the residency and found a suit that nearly fitted him.

      “I’ll have just one more try,” Jordon went on, “then I light out for another field.”

      There were letters awaiting him — letters of infinite sweetness and patience. Letters filled with heroic lies — but too transparent to deceive anybody.

      The young man read them and went old-looking.

      There were remittances from his agent at Sierra Leone — very small indeed these were, after commission and the like had been subtracted.

      Still there was enough to lay in a fresh trading stock, and three weeks later the young man again disappeared into the unknown.

      His departure from headquarters coincided with the return of one of the mysterious three.

      He came back alone to the place by the River. The huts had disappeared, the garden was again forest, the canoe rotted on the beach — for none had dared disturb it.

      He set to work to rebuild a hut. He cleared the garden unaided, and СКАЧАТЬ