Bones of the River - Edgar Wallace [72]
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