Bones of the River (22 page)

And then, raising his eyes, he saw a pigeon circling and heard the excited calls of the grey birds housed in the coop above the deck cabin.

“Your bird, I think, sir,” he said, and whistled the pigeon down.

*  *  *

The steamer which carried Miss Honor Brent and her companion stopped at the village of Bofuru, which is not a regular landing-place.

Mr Garfield was a man of fifty. He had a square, white face, and stiff, upstanding hair, and it was he who had suggested the landing. The girl who landed with him was past her first youth, but pretty, and there was in her voice and movement a suggestion of capability which had puzzled her companion, for they had been fellow-passengers from London to Sierra Leone. Bofuru might be an interesting centre, for her object in coming to the Congo (she had said) was to add to her collection of butterflies. Curiously enough, Garfield had anticipated her acquiescence.

“It is a wonderful part of the river for butterflies,” he said. “I’ve seen them ten inches across from wing to wing.”

“You know the country, then?”

“I’ve been here three or four times,” he said, carelessly. “I am interested in the palm-oil industry.”

They landed on the slip of beach at a time when the village of Bofuru was all agog with awful wonder.

For days strange men had come down the river in their canoes, had landed here, leaving their craft high and dry on the beach, and the villagers had watched them in awestricken silence. For was not “
Ta
” abroad? and had not secret word run from hut to hut that the Great Ones of the land would pass through Bofuru on their way to a
jikambo
(it is true they use the “j” on the river) of ultra-magnificence?

The visitors came generally between dawn and the sun-on-the-trees, because there was a Government post to pass, and the very furtiveness and secrecy of their arrival gave them additional importance. There were solitary paddlers and delegates who came in larger canoes with their own paddle-men, there were chiefs, great and small, known and unknown, and they went into the forest, and the forest swallowed them up.

The advent of two white visitors was the culminating moment of an exciting two days. The villagers stood with folded arms and incredulous faces, watching the landing, until Mr Garfield beckoned his finger at the man who appeared, by reason of the medal hung upon his breast, to be chief.

“
O Bantu
,” he said, “prepare a hut for this lady, who stays a while, for she is a very clever woman who seeks flowers-with-wings.”

“Lord, she shall have the hut of my wife’s own sister,” said the chief, “and if she is a God woman, I will send all my people to listen to her beautiful words.”

“This is no God woman,” said Garfield, and his Bomongo was perfect. “Now keep her and guard her, and do not let her stray into the forest, which, as you know, is full of devils.”

He explained to the girl what arrangements he had made for her. Six strange carriers had come from the interior to carry his luggage – strange to the people of Bofuru.

They headed their burdens and marched away with that curious, springing pace which is the natives’ own.

“Perhaps you will walk to the edge of the village with me?” said Garfield, and she assented.

They talked of things and of people, neither of any great importance, until they reached the thick bush out of sight of the village. Here the path turned abruptly through a forest of great topal trees.

“I think I’ll say good-bye,” said the girl with a smile. “I am going to see my hut. You will be returning in four days, you say, Mr Garfield?”

“I shall be returning in four days,” repeated Garfield, and looked at her strangely.

A hint of her danger came to her, but she did not change colour, and not a muscle of her face moved as she held out her hand.

“I think not,” said Mr Garfield, and his big hand closed on her arm. “You will continue the journey, Miss Brent. I don’t know whether that is your real name, but I am not curious. Your hut has been prepared for you, and if you do not go back the natives will understand, for this forest is full of treacherous marshes.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, and now she was as white as death.

“I was warned before I left New York that an agent of the British secret service would come on board at Plymouth,” he said, speaking slowly, “and that that agent would probably be a woman. Any doubt I had upon the matter was removed when I searched your cabin on the night of a dance we had just outside Madeira. Your instructions were to get into my confidence and accompany me so far as it was safe for you to do so. You have gone just beyond that point.” He smiled, and it was the first time she had seen him smile.

“Now, Miss Brent, as you have been instructed to watch the Inspector-General of the All-Africa Army, I am going to bestow upon you the privilege of being present at a council of war. If you scream I shall strangle you until you are silent, and then I shall hand you over to my carriers.”

She was breathing quickly. “How absurd you are!” she said bravely. “This is a little comedy of yours–”

“A little tragedy, I think,” he corrected her.

He took her arm and, realising the futility of resistance, she went with him.

“We have not far to go, though our rendezvous will be a difficult one for our friend Sanders to find.”

“I have no friend – I have never seen Mr Sanders,” she said, and he chuckled.

“You will be a little more talkative later on,” he said significantly. “Mr Sanders, by all accounts, does not hesitate to employ coercive methods when he is anxious to discover something from an unfortunate agent of ours who falls into his hands.”

“I tell you I don’t know him,” she cried, for the horror of her situation was dawning upon her. “I swear I have never met him, and that I have no knowledge of his existence.”

“That we shall discover,” said Garfield again.

They trudged along for some time in silence, leaving the beaten path and following a native guide through the trees.

The unmarked way was an extraordinarily tortuous one, and the girl understood why, when now and again she glimpsed the waters of a great swamp. Every two hours they rested, and at the second rest the man gave her chocolate and water from the big skin which hung from the guide’s shoulder.

“What are you going to do with me?” she asked, putting into words the thought which had occupied her mind all day.

“After?” For the second time he smiled. “You will not give information to your friend Sanders, that I promise you,” he said significantly.

“You’re going to kill me?” she asked wildly, starting up.

“Nothing so unpleasant,” he said, and offered no other information.

They came at last to the strangest village she had ever seen. A circle of new huts evidently built for this convention. The place was alive with men – she saw no women – who looked at her in wonder as she passed, but saluted Mr Garfield with every evidence of respect and fear.

They were met outside the village by a young native, who spoke English until, with a sharp word, Garfield silenced him. She was conducted to a hut, and a native squatted in front of the door to prevent her escape, and there she sat until the night came and the big moon showed through the tracery of the trees. She heard movements and caught the reflection of a great fire which burnt before a newly erected palaver-house, and now and again she heard the sing-song of a man crying “Kwa!” which meant “Silence!” and another voice speaking in the Bomongo dialect, which she recognised as Garfield’s.

And then they brought her out. The pleasant Mr Garfield she had known was not the man who sat on a carved stool under the thatched roof of the palaver-house. Except for a cloth wound about his waist, the loose ends of which were sewn up over his shoulder, he was as innocent of clothing as any of his audience. A strange, obscene figure he made, with his dead-white skin and his bristling black hair, and the incongruity of his appearance was heightened by the fact that he wore his black-rimmed spectacles.

At another time she could have laughed, but now she was speechless with fear.

“Brent.” He spoke in English and addressed her by her surname. “My brethren desire that you should speak and tell them of Sanders and the letter you handed secretly to the English officer at the mouth of the river.”

She looked round at the scowling faces and past them, in the direction, as she guessed, of Bofuru, and he read her thoughts.

“There is no escape for you,” he said. “Get that out of your mind, my friend. No human being could find his way across the marsh even if friend Sanders was on hand. Now, you shall tell me” – his manner changed suddenly, and his voice was harsh – “where is Sanders?”

“I do not know,” she said, and her voice was husky.

“Then I will find a way of making you speak,” he answered through his teeth, “as Sanders made Molaka speak. What was that letter – you know its contents?”

There was no spoken answer. Only there ran through the squatting figures a man who crouched, a man in grey-green uniform suit, who came swiftly yet stealthily, a long-barrelled revolver in each hand.

He came from nowhere, but, looking past him with staring eyes, Garfield saw the glitter of bayonets, and in the light of the fire, the red fezes of Government soldiers, and dropped his hand to where, concealed by his waistcloth, his pistol belt was strapped.

Sanders fired twice, once from each hand, and the square-faced man stood suddenly erect, covering his face with those tell-tale hands of his – the hands with the half-moon nails that betrayed his native origin. Then he as suddenly fell, and there was no life in him when Sanders turned him over.

*  *  *

“You who are chiefs shall be chiefs no longer,” said Sanders, sitting in the palaver-house an hour later, and addressing a confused and miserable assembly. “This is the order of the Government. As to the young man who is a foreigner amongst you and speaks English and teaches you cunning ways of fighting, he shall hang before you all. This, too, is the word of my lords.” He paused a moment. “Come to me, Lolango.”

The tall native who was called “The Desired” came forward in trepidation.

“O Lolango,” mocked Sanders, “because you put upon the ground red berries which have a great magic, you are pardoned.”

“Lord, I did this because of a woman,” stammered Lolango.

“That I know,” replied Sanders grimly, and well he knew it, for it was by those red berries dropped at intervals that he had found his way across the swamp.

He turned to the white-faced girl by his side. “I think, Miss Brent, that this is no job for you. I have decided views about the employment of women for Secret Service work.”

“I didn’t expect I should have to come so far,” said the girl ruefully. “I – I did my best to make him talk on the ship, but he was very reticent.”

“Now he is more reticent than ever,” said Sanders.

There was a man named Pinto Fernandez who was called, by courtesy and right, “Portuguese.” He possessed an indubitable title to that description, for he was born a native of Angola, being the consequence of a union between a minor official of Sao Paul de Loanda and the half-coloured maid to the wife of His Excellency the Governor of Bonguella. Even by Portuguese standards, Pinto was “dark.” It is not necessary to trace his career from Loanda to Sierra Leone, nor to mention more than this fact, that he took a school certificate at one of Marriott Brothers’ educational establishments.

His wife was indubitably white. She had been a Miss Hermione de Vere-Biddiford, and at one time was partner to Professor Zoobola, the famous hypnotist and illusionist, who “travelled” the coast from Dakfur to Cape Town. She spoke with a strong Cockney accent, and her father’s name was Juggs, so that the balance of probability is weighted toward the supposition that Vere-Biddiford was a nom-de-guerre adopted to meet the exigencies of a profession which demands classiness.

Pinto knew the coast backwards. Before he met his wife, left derelict at Grand Bassam by a bankrupt professor, he had served terms of imprisonment in French, German, Portuguese, and British West African gaols, for divers petty larcenies, impersonations, and trickeries. His wife, on the other hand, had only twice appeared before a magistrate, on each occasion charged with attempting to obtain money by threats.

Mr and Mrs Pinto Fernandez met in the waiting-room of the magistrate’s court at Lagos, and were expelled from the country together. At Funchal, in the island of Madeira, they were legally married, and rented a small house in one of those steep streets down which it is the delight of the visiting tourist to toboggan. And there, combining their separate understandings of the people and atmosphere of the coast, and aided largely by Pinto’s command of English, they began operations…

Nearly twelve months later: “It seems to me, dear old centurion,” said Lieutenant Tibbetts, glaring up from the company clothing accounts, “that either I’m a jolly bad old accountant–”

“I wouldn’t say that, Bones,” said Hamilton soothingly. “Maybe, as usual, you’ve added the day of the month and subtracted the year. Or perhaps you’ve put the pounds in the pence column – try again.”

Bones sighed wearily and passed his hand before his eyes. Hamilton could not guess what black despair lay in the heart of his subordinate.

The day was swelteringly hot and the breeze that crawled through the open window of Bones’ hut came from landward and had the fragrance and comfort of a large wood fire.

With an effort Bones hunched his shoulders, jabbed the pen into the ink, dropped a large black splodge on his white overalls and began again.

“Nine an’ seven’s fourteen and eight’s twenty-four and three’s twenty-five – six, seven, and one’s twenty-eight an’ four’s thirty-six and eight’s forty…”

Hamilton did a rapid mental calculation. “The total’s right, but the Lord knows how you got it,” he said, and reached for the paper.

Suddenly he roared. “You dithering ass, you’re adding up the men’s chest measurements!”