The Essential Edgar Wallace Collection. Edgar Wallace

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СКАЧАТЬ it as plain as your dashed old nose? They don't want it!"

      Hamilton looked down at him.

      "What a brain you must have, Bones!" he said admiringly. "I often wonder you don't employ it."

      II

      By the Blue Pool in the forest there is a famous tree gifted with certain properties. It is known in the vernacular of the land, and I translate it literally, "The-tree-that-has-no-echo-and-eats-up-sound." Men believe that all that is uttered beneath its twisted branches may be remembered, but not repeated, and if one shouts in its deadening shade, even they who stand no farther than a stride from its furthermost stretch of branch or leaf, will hear nothing.

      Therefore is the Silent Tree much in favour for secret palaver, such as N'gori and his limping son attended, and such as the Lesser Isisi came to fearfully.

      N'gori, who might be expected to take a very leading part in the discussion which followed the meeting, was, in fact, the most timorous of those who squatted in the shadow of the huge cedar.

      Full of reservations, cautions, doubts and counsels of discretion was N'gori till his son turned on him, grinning as his wont when in his least pleasant mood.

      "O, my father," said he softly, "they say on the river that men who die swiftly say no more than 'wait' with their last breath; now I tell you that all my young men who plot secretly with me, are for chopping you--but because I am like a god to them, they spare you."

      "My son," said N'gori uneasily, "this is a very high palaver, for many chiefs have risen and struck at the Government, and always Sandi has come with his soldiers, and there have been backs that have been sore for the space of a moon, and necks that have been sore for this time," he snapped finger, "and then have been sore no more."

      "Sandi has gone," said M'fosa.

      "Yet his fetish stands," insisted the old man; "all day and all night his dreadful spirit watches us; for this we have all seen that the very lightnings of M'shimba M'shamba run up that stick and do it no harm. Also M'ilitani and Moon-in-the-Eye----"

      "They are fools," a counsellor broke in.

      "Lord M'ilitani is no fool, this I know," interrupted a fourth.

      "Tibbetti comes--and brings no soldiers. Now I tell you my mind that Sandi's fetish is dead--as Sandi has passed from us, and this is the sign I desire--I and my young men. We shall make a killing palaver in the face of the killing stick, and if Sandi lives and has not lied to us, he shall come from the end of the world as he said."

      He rose up from the ground. There was no doubt now who ruled the Akasava.

      "The palaver is finished," he said, and led the way back to the city, his father meekly following in the rear.

      Two days later Bones arrived at the city of the Akasava, bringing with him no greater protection than a Houssa orderly afforded.

      III

      On a certain night in September Mr. Commissioner Sanders was the guest of the Colonial Secretary at his country seat in Berkshire.

      Sanders, who was no society man, either by training or by inclination, would have preferred wandering aimlessly about the brilliantly lighted streets of London, but the engagement was a long-standing one. In a sense he was a lion against his will. His name was known, people had written of his character and his sayings; he had even, to his own amazement, delivered a lecture before the members of the Ethnological Society on "Native Folk-lore," and had emerged from the ordeal triumphantly. The guests of Lord Castleberry found Sanders a shy, silent man who could not be induced to talk of the land he loved so dearly. They might have voted him a bore, but for the fact that he so completely effaced himself they had little opportunity for forming so definite a judgment.

      It was on the second night of his visit to Newbury Grange that they had cornered him in the billiard-room. It was the beautiful daughter of Lord Castleberry who, with the audacity of youth, forced him, metaphorically speaking, into a corner, from whence there was no escape.

      "We've been very patient, Mr. Sanders," she pouted; "we are all dying to hear of your wonderful country, and Bosambo, and fetishes and things, and you haven't said a word."

      "There is little to say," he smiled; "perhaps if I told you--something about fetishes...?"

      There was a chorus of approval.

      Sanders had gained enough courage from his experience before the Ethnological Society, and began to talk.

      "Wait," said Lady Betty; "let's have all these glaring lights out--they limit our imagination."

      There was a click, and, save for one bracket light behind Sanders, the room was in darkness. He was grateful to the girl, and well rewarded her and the party that sat round on chairs, on benches around the edge of the billiard-table, listening. He told them stories ... curious, unbelievable; of ghost palavers, of strange rites, of mysterious messages carried across the great space of forests.

      "Tell us about fetishes," said the girl's voice.

      Sanders smiled. There rose to his eyes the spectacle of a hot and weary people bringing in a giant tree through the forest, inch by inch.

      And he told the story of the fetish of the Akasava.

      "And I said," he concluded, "that I would come from the end of the world----"

      He stopped suddenly and stared straight ahead. In the faint light they saw him stiffen like a setter.

      "What is wrong?"

      Lord Castleberry was on his feet, and somebody clicked on the lights.

      But Sanders did not notice.

      He was looking towards the end of the room, and his face was set and hard.

      "O, M'fosa," he snarled, "O, dog!"

      They heard the strange staccato of the Bomongo tongue and wondered.

      * * * * *

      Lieutenant Tibbetts, helmetless, his coat torn, his lip bleeding, offered no resistance when they strapped him to the smooth high pole. Almost at his feet lay the dead Houssa orderly whom M'fosa had struck down from behind.

      In a wide circle, their faces half revealed by the crackling fire which burnt in the centre, the people of the Akasava city looked on impressively.

      N'gori, the chief, his brows all wrinkled in terror, his shaking hands at his mouth in a gesture of fear, was no more than a spectator, for his masterful son limped from side to side, consulting his counsellors.

      Presently the men who had bound Bones stepped aside, their work completed, and M'fosa came limping across to his prisoners.

      "Now," he mocked. "Is it hard for you this fetish stick which Sandi has placed?"

      "You're a low cad," СКАЧАТЬ