The Essential Edgar Wallace Collection. Edgar Wallace

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СКАЧАТЬ certain men, yet I know that, upon a day to come, you will pay me all that I desire. Go in peace."

      It was a hilarious, joyous, industrious Bones who went down the river to headquarters, occupying his time in writing diligently upon large sheets of foolscap in his no less large unformed handwriting, setting forth all that Bosambo had told him, and all the conclusions he might infer from the confidence of the Ochori king.

      He was bursting with his news. At first, he had to satisfy his chief that he had carried out his orders.

      Fortunately, Hamilton needed little convincing; his own spies had told him of the quietening down of certain truculent sections of his unruly community and he was prepared to give his subordinate all the credit that was due to him.

      It was after dinner and the inevitable rice pudding had been removed and the pipes were puffing bluely in the big room of the Residency, when Bones unburdened himself.

      "Sir," he began, "you think I am an ass."

      "I was not thinking so at this particular moment," said Hamilton; "but, as a general consensus of my opinion concerning you, I have no fault to find with it."

      "You think poor old Bones is a goop," said Lieutenant Tibbetts with a pitying smile, "and yet the name of poor old Bones is going down to posterity, sir."

      "That is posterity's look-out," said Hamilton, offensively; but Bones ignored the rudeness.

      "You also imagine that there is no such land as the N'bosini, I think?"

      Bones put the question with a certain insolent assurance which was very irritating.

      "I not only think, but I know," replied Hamilton.

      Bones laughed, a sardonic, knowing laugh.

      "We shall see," he said, mysteriously; "I hope, in the course of a few weeks, to place a document in your possession that will not only surprise, but which, I believe, knowing that beneath a somewhat uncouth manner lies a kindly heart, will also please you."

      "Are you chucking up the army?" asked Hamilton with interest.

      "I have no more to say, sir," said Bones.

      He got up, took his helmet from a peg on the wall, saluted and walked stiffly from the Residency and was swallowed up in the darkness of the parade ground.

      A quarter of an hour later, there came a tap upon his door and Mahomet Ali, his sergeant, entered.

      "Ah, Mah'met," said Hamilton, looking up with a smile, "all things were quiet on the river my lord Tibbetts tells me."

      "Lord, everything was proper," said the sergeant, "and all people came to palaver humbly."

      "What seek you now?" asked Hamilton.

      "Lord," said Mahomet, "Bosambo of the Ochori is, as you know, of my faith, and by certain oaths we are as blood brothers. This happened after a battle in the year of Drought when Bosambo saved my life."

      "All this I know," said Hamilton.

      "Now, lord," said Mahomet Ali, "I bring you this."

      He took from the inside of his uniform jacket a little canvas bag, opened it slowly and emptied its golden contents upon the table. There was a small shining heap of sovereigns and a twisted note; this latter he placed in Hamilton's hand and the Houssa captain unfolded it. It was a letter in Arabic in Bosambo's characteristic and angular handwriting.

      "From Bosambo, the servant of the Prophet, of the upper river in the city of the Ochori, to M'ilitani, his master. Peace on your house.

      "In the name of God I send you this news. My lord with the moon-eye, making inquiries about the N'bosini, came to the Ochori and I told him much that he wrote down in a book. Now, I tell you, M'ilitani, that I am not to blame, because my lord with the moon-eye wrote down these things. Also he gave me twenty English pounds because I told him certain stories and this I send to you, that you shall put it in with my other treasures, making a mark in your book that this twenty pounds is the money of Bosambo of the Ochori, and that you will send me a book, saying that this money has come to you and is safely in your hands. Peace and felicity upon your house.

      "Written in my city of Ochori and given to my brother, Mahomet Ali, who shall carry it to M'ilitani at the mouth of the river."

      "Poor old Bones!" said Hamilton, as he slowly counted the money. "Poor old Bones!" he repeated.

      He took an account book from his desk and opened it at a page marked "Bosambo." His entry was significant.

      To a long list of credits which ran:

      Received 30. (Sale of Rubber.)

      Received 25. (Sale of Gum.)

      Received 130. (Sale of Ivory.)

      he added:

      Received 20. (Author's Fees.)

      CHAPTER IV

      THE FETISH STICK

      N'gori the Chief had a son who limped and lived. This was a marvellous thing in a land where cripples are severely discouraged and malformity is a sure passport for heaven.

      The truth is that M'fosa was born in a fishing village at a period of time when all the energies of the Akasava were devoted to checking and defeating the predatory raidings of the N'gombi, under that warlike chief G'osimalino, who also kept other nations on the defensive, and held the river basin, from the White River, by the old king's territory, to as far south as the islands of the Lesser Isisi.

      When M'fosa was three months old, Sanders had come with a force of soldiers, had hanged G'osimalino to a high tree, had burnt his villages and destroyed his crops and driven the remnants of his one-time invincible army to the little known recesses of the Itusi Forest.

      Those were the days of the Cakitas or government chiefs, and it was under the beneficent sway of one of these that M'fosa grew to manhood, though many attempts were made to lure him to unfrequented waterways and blind crocodile creeks where a lame man might be lost, and no one be any the wiser.

      Chief of the eugenists was Kobolo, the boy's uncle, and N'gori's own brother. This dissatisfied man, with several of M'fosa's cousins, once partially succeeded in kidnapping the lame boy, and they were on their way to certain middle islands in the broads of the river to accomplish their scheme--which was to put out the eyes of M'fosa and leave him to die--when Sanders had happened along.

      He it was who set all the men of M'fosa's village to cut down a high pine tree--at an infernal distance from the village, and had men working for a week, trimming and planing that pine; and another week they spent carrying the long stem through the forest (Sanders had devilishly chosen his tree in the most inaccessible part of the woods), and yet another week digging large holes and erecting it.

      For he was a difficult man to please. Broad backs ran sweat to pull and push and hoist that СКАЧАТЬ