Bones of the River - Edgar Wallace [60]
“Yes, the beggar got away just before I arrived, but this jolly old doctor’s looked after me, and a real good chap he is.”
“Oh!” said Sanders. He beckoned the Healer outside. “Speak to me truthfully, Bobolara,” he said, “and I will make life easy for you.”
He glanced from the man to the dangling rope and smiled inwardly, guessing all that it meant.
“Lord, what shall I say?” said Bobolara. “I am a healing man, cunning in the ways of pain, and knowing the ways of strange poisons, such as the little red berry that grows by the swamp. I have slain none, but I have cured many, and if Lujaga hates me he has his reasons. Lord, I think your son will live.”
Sanders inclined his head. “Man, if you speak the truth, another man lies,” he said. “Tell me why Lujaga hates you.”
Bobolara hesitated. “It was about a woman, lord, who came from the Ochori country. She was brought here in a raid by the king.”
“By Lujaga?” said Sanders sharply.
“There are many raids,” said the other. “Sometimes women are brought here, sometimes goats. This woman I sent back to her home, which is on the edge of the Ochori, and Lujuga would have killed me, but he was afraid.”
“Tell me more of these little red berries,” said Sanders.
“Lord, I know nothing of them except that if men eat them they die, becoming very sleepy, with terrible pains in the head.”
With a nod Sanders left him and walked slowly through the village street, his head on his breast, his hands gripping his long walking-stick behind him. The king watched him apprehensively, but Sanders passed the hut and came to a halt at the end of the village street. He beckoned a man to him.
“Bring me Ligi, who is the king’s man,” he said, and they brought Ligi from his hut.
“Ligi, you came with my lord Tibbetti in his fine ship?”
“Yes, master,” said Ligi.
“And in a day and a day the sickness came to him,” said Sanders, watching the man closely. “Such a sickness as men have who eat the little red berries from the swamp.”
Ligi twiddled his bare toes in the dust, a sign of agitation which did not escape the Commissioner. He turned his head and called two of his soldiers.
“Take this man and tie him to a tree,” he said simply. “Then you will whip him till he tells all he has to tell.”
Ligi did not struggle in the grip of the tall Kano men, nor was he in the mood to be tied to a tree.
“Lord, I am the king’s man,” he said, “and I did that which he told me to do. Now, I will tell you the truth.”
The truth took much telling, and in the end, Sanders sent him on board the Zaire, had irons put upon his legs, and then he called Lujaga, the king, to him.
“Lujaga,” he said, “you are going a short journey, and I hope the pain will be little.”
“I will tell you the truth – ” began Lujaga, and Sanders smiled unpleasantly.
“Tell it to the ghosts,” he said, and looked meaningly at the tree with the rope.
THE WAZOOS
When Bones brushed his hair, he made preparations beside which the preliminary arrangements of a prima donna were feeble and ineffective. Under the broad window of his hut was a dressing-table, on which stood, in serried ranks, row upon row of bottles containing hair tonics of all kinds, cosmetics, fixers, gums, washes and divers other lotions. He had two silver-backed brushes on which his monogram was beautifully engraved, and a wooden brush that would, at any period of its existence, have welcomed a nice hot bath. With this latter, a comb, certain contortions of face, bendings of head, pattings and smoothings, Bones made ready his crown for the day.
He had an especial reason for care one bright day in July, for two days earlier the mail steamer had brought the Hon. Muriel Witherspan; and Bones had fallen in love with her the moment her dainty foot touched the yellow beach.
The Hon. Muriel was the daughter of one Secretary of State and the niece of another. She was an artist, who had conceived the idea of making an exhibition of native studies; and in course of time, preceded by many telegrams, urgent private notes and anxious inquiries from headquarters, she had arrived,