The Twelve African Novels (A Collection). Edgar Wallace

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 it under his microscope. What he saw interested him, and again he had recourse to the microscope — scraping another spike and placing the shavings between two slides.

      Native people have a keen sense of humour, but that humour does not take the form of practical joking.

      Moreover, he had detected blood on the spike, and an organism which old blood generates.

      Thus the bushmen poison their arrows by leaving them in the bodies of their dead enemies.

      He sent a guard for the queen and brought her on board.

      “I shall take you away,” he said, “because you have tried to kill me by placing poisoned thorns in my bed.”

      “Medini, my woman, did this, because she loved me,” said the queen, “and if she says I told her to do the thing she lies.”

      “You have said enough,” said Sanders. “Abiboo, let there be steam quickly, for I carry the queen with me to the Ochori country.”

      Bosambo was not prepared for the Commissioner’s arrival. He was a man singularly free from illusions, and when they brought him word that Sanders was accompanied by the Queen of the N’Gombi he had no doubt in his mind that the times ahead were troublesome.

      So they proved.

      Sanders cut short the flower of his welcome. He nipped it as the frost nips young buds, and as coldly.

      “You have put foolish ideas into this woman’s head,” he said, “and I have brought her here that you might do that which is honourable.”

      “Lord, I am your man,” said Bosambo, with proper humility.

      “And my uncle also,” said Sanders, “if all СКАЧАТЬ