The Pools of Silence. H. De Vere Stacpoole

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СКАЧАТЬ even seen the man,” replied Duthil, “but from what I have heard, he is a regular buccaneer of the old type, who values human life not one hair. Bauchardy, that last doctor he took with him, was a friend of mine. Perhaps that is why I feel vicious about the man, for he killed Bauchardy as sure as I didn’t.”

      “Killed him?”

      “Yes; with hardship and overwork.”

      “Overwork?”

      “Mon Dieu, yes. Dragged him through swamps after his infernal monkeys and tigers, and Bauchardy died in the hospital at Marseilles of spinal meningitis, brought on by the hardships of the expedition—died as mad as Berselius himself.”

      “As mad as Berselius?”

      “Yes; this infernal Berselius seemed to have infected him with his own hunting fever, and Bauchardy—mon Dieu, you should have seen him during his illness, shooting imaginary elephants, and calling for Berselius.”

      “What I want to get at is this,” said Adams. “Was Bauchardy driven into these swamps you speak of, and made to hunt against his will—treated cruelly, in fact—or did Berselius take his own share of the hardships?”

      “His own share! Why, from what I can understand, he did all the hunting. A man of iron with the ferocity of a tiger—a very devil, who made others follow him as poor Bauchardy did, to his death——”

      “Well,” said Adams, “this man interests me somehow, and I intend to have a look at him.”

      “The pay is good,” said Duthil, “but I have warned you fully, if Thénard hasn’t. Good evening.”

      The Rue Dijon, where Adams lived, was a good way from the Beaujon. He made his way there on foot, studying the proposition as he went.

      The sporting nature of the proposal coming from the sedate Thénard rather tickled him.

      “He wants to pit me against this Berselius,” said Adams to himself, “same as if we were dogs. That’s the long and short of it. Yes, I can understand his meaning in part; he’s afraid if Berselius engages some week-kneed individual, he’ll give the weak-kneed individual more than he can take. He wants to stick a six-foot Yankee in the breach, instead of a five-foot froggie, all absinthe and cigarette ends. Well, he was frank, at all events. Hum, I don’t like the proposition—and yet there’s something—there’s something—there’s something about it I do like. Then there’s the two thousand francs a month, and not a penny out of pocket, and there’s the Congo, and the guggly-wuggly alligators, and the great big hairy apes, and the feel of a gun in one’s hand again. Oh, my!”

      “All the same, it’s funny,” he went on, as he drew near the Boulevard St. Michel. “When Thénard spoke of Berselius there was something more than absence of friendship in his tone. Can old man Thénard have a down on this Berselius and does he in his heart of hearts imagine that by allotting P. Quincy Adams to the post of physician extraordinary to the expedition, he will get even with the Captain? My friend, remember that hymn the English Salvationists were yelling last Sunday outside the American Presbyterian Church in the Rue de Berry—‘Christian, walk carefully, danger is near.’ Not a bad motto for Paris, and I will take it.”

      He walked into the Café d’Italie, which, as everyone knows, is next to Mouton’s, the pork shop, on the left-hand side of the Boul’ Miche, as you go from the Seine; called for a boc, and then plunged into a game of dominoes with an art student in a magenta necktie, whom he had never met before, and whom, after the game, he would, a million to one, never meet again.

      That night, when he had blown out his candle, he reviewed Thénard’s proposition in the dark. The more he looked at it the more attraction it had for him, and—“Whatever comes of it,” said he to himself, “I will go and see this Captain Berselius to-morrow. The animal seems worth the trouble of inspection.”

CHAPTER III

       Table of Contents

CAPTAIN BERSELIUS

       Table of Contents

      Next morning was chill and a white Seine mist wrapped Paris in its folds. It clung to the trees of the Avenue Champs Elysées, and it half veiled the Avenue Malakoff as Adams’s fiacre turned into that thoroughfare and drew up at No. 14, a house with a carriage drive, a porter’s lodge, and wrought-iron gates.

      The American paid off his cab, rang at the porter’s lodge, was instantly admitted, and found himself in an enormous courtyard domed in with glass. He noted the orange and aloe trees growing in tubs of porcelain, as the porter led him to the big double glass doors giving entrance to the house.

      “He’s got the money,” thought Adams, as the glass swing-door was opened by a flunkey as magnificent as a Lord Mayor’s footman, who took the visitor’s card and the card of M. Thénard and presented them to a functionary with a large pale face, who was seated at a table close to the door.

      This personage, who was as soberly dressed as an archbishop, and had altogether a pontifical air, raised himself to his feet and approached the visitor.

      “Has monsieur an appointment——”

      “No,” said Adams. “I have come to see your master on business. You can take him my card—yes, that one—Dr. Adams, introduced by Dr. Thénard.”

      The functionary seemed perplexed; the early hour, the size of the visitor, his decided manner, all taken together, were out of routine. Only for a moment he hesitated, then leading the way across the warm and flower-scented hall, he opened a door and said, “Will monsieur take a seat?” Adams entered a big room, half library, half museum; the door closed behind him, and he found himself alone.

      The four walls of the room showed a few books, but were mostly covered with arms and trophies of the chase. Japanese swords in solid ivory scabbards, swords of the old Samurai so keen that a touch of the edge would divide a suspended hair. Malay krisses, double-handed Chinese execution swords; old pepper-pot revolvers, such as may still be found on the African coast; knob-kerries, assegais, steel-spiked balls swinging from whips of raw hide; weapons wild and savage and primitive as those with which Attila drove before him the hordes of the Huns, and modern weapons of to-day and yesterday; the big elephant gun which has been supplanted by the express rifle; the deadly magazine rifle, the latest products of Schaunard of the Rue de la Paix and Westley Richards of London.

      Adams forgot time as he stood examining these things; then he turned his attention to the trophies, mounted by Borchard of Berlin, that prince of taxidermists. Here stood a great ape, six feet and over—monstrum horrendum—head flung back, mouth open, shouting aloud to the imagination of the gazer in the language that was spoken ere the earliest man lifted his face to the chill mystery of the stars. In the right fist was clutched the branch of a M’bina tree, ready lifted to dash your brains out—the whole thing a miracle of the taxidermist’s art. Here crawled an alligator on a slab of granitic rock; an alligator—that is to say, the despair of the taxidermist—for you can make nothing out of an alligator; alive and not in motion he looks stuffed, stuffed, he looks just the same. Hartbeest, reedbuck, the maned and huge-eared roan antelope, gazelle, and bush-buck, all were here, skull or mask, dominated by the СКАЧАТЬ