Bones of the River - Edgar Wallace [12]
Sanders duly acknowledged and communicated the momentous news to his subordinate. Bones received the intelligence very gravely.
“Of course, dear old excellency, I shall do my best,” he said seriously. “The responsibility is simply fearful.”
Thereafter, to use Hamilton’s own expressive language, life became simply Hell.
At breakfast, Bones invariably came late, smelling strongly of disinfectant, his manner subdued, his tone severely professional.
“Good morning, excellency…Ham – Ham!”
“What the devil’s the matter with you?” demanded the startled Ham.
“Have you washed your hands, dear old officer?”
“That’s sunburn, you jackass!”
Bones shook his head. “Use a weak solution of carbolic acid, dear old infectious one,” he murmured. “Can’t be too careful in these days.”
He invariably carried a sheet of white paper, which he laid on the chair before he sat down, and he insisted upon a cup of boiling-hot water being placed on the table so that he might sterilise his fork and knife.
When, one morning, Sanders came into breakfast and found the dining-room reeking with carbolic, he struck.
“Bones, I appreciate your conscientious efforts on behalf of hygiene, but if you don’t mind, I’d rather die of disease than endure this stink.”
“Microbes, dear old excellency,” murmured Bones. “This is stuff that makes naughty old Mike go red in the face.”
“I prefer that he remains pale,” said Sanders, and called his orderly to open the windows.
More annoying was the practice which Bones initiated of inspecting his superiors’ sleeping quarters. Hamilton found him in his bedroom with a tape measure and a look of profound distress.
“Ham, old fugg-wallah, this won’t do at all!” said Bones, shaking his head reprovingly. “Bless my jolly old life and soul, you’d be dead if I hadn’t come in! How many cubic feet do you think you’ve got?”
“I’ve got two feet,” answered the exasperated Hamilton, “and if you’re not out of this room in three twinks, I’m going to use one of them!”
“And what’s all this?” Bones stirred a heap of clothing with the end of his stick. “Trousers, dear old thing, coats an’ hats – don’t get peevish, Ham. Us medical lads–”
“‘Us’,” sneered Hamilton. “You illiterate hound! Get out!”
It is very trying to be brought into daily and hourly contact with a man who smelt alternately of lysol and naphthaline. It was maddening to find dinner delayed because Bones had strolled into the kitchen and had condemned the cooking arrangements; but the culmination of his infamy came when he invented a new filter that turned the drinking water a deep, rich pink that made it taste of iron filings.
“Can’t you telegraph to headquarters and have him reduced to the ranks, sir?” asked Hamilton savagely, after he had found crystals of pure carbolic acid in his shaving mug. “I’m being sanitised to death!”
Happily a tax-collecting tour was due, and Sanders was not sorry. Bones, of course, ordered the thorough fumigation of the Zaire, and for three days after the little steamer started on her voyage, the unhappy crew breathed sulphur fumes and drank sulphur water and ate sulphurated rice.
Bones came down to the quay, a strange and awesome spectacle; a thin veil of antiseptic gauze hung from the edges of his helmet like a curtain, and on his hands were odorous gloves.
“Hail to the bride!” snarled Hamilton from the bridge. “Where’s your orange blossom, Birdie?”
“I order you to keep away from the Ochori,” cried Bones in a muffled voice. “There’s measles there – drink nothing but Lithia water…”
Hamilton replied offensively.
* * *
There runs between the Pool of the Silent Ones and the Lesser Isisi, a strip of land which is neither forest nor swamp, and yet is of the nature of both. Here grow coarse trees that survive even the parasitical growths which shoot upward in one humid night to the height of a tall man; and here come the silent ones to sleep between trees, secure in the swamps