The Achmed Abdullah Megapack

by Achmed Abdullah

  “Well?”

  “He still has the pride and strength of his horns—to rend and gore—and kill, if need be!”

  He rose and left the room with unhurried step; and, a few minutes later, James Donachie could hear his partner’s voice brushing in from the compound near the river’s edge, talking in gently purring accents; then, suddenly, a wicked curse in Arabic; the swish of the sjambok as it cut through the air and raised welts on naked, plum-colored backs, and the command, in clicking Galla:

  “It is thus then—” down came the sjambok—“and thus—and again thus, O ye evil-mouthed grandsons of great filth, that I argue with you—aye—plead with you, belike, to remain loyal to the house of Double-Dee that has been your father and mother these many years! A covenant—This is the covenant—” another sharp swish-swish-swish and answering howls of pain and imploring voices—“between ye dogs and Double-Dee! A most secret covenant which ye will keep faithfully! A covenant of silence—and no questions answered, whoever may ask them—and no desertions—and all of ye held responsible for every single one among ye—do ye understand, O ye sons of burnt fathers?”

  “Yes, yes, O greatness, O clemency!” came the sobbing chorus.

  And then the Arab’s final:

  “Great I am indeed! Clement to all the world—but most clement to ye, dogs, though ye do not deserve it!”

  And once more the acrid swash of the sjambok.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  SIR CHARLES LANE-FOX.

  Half an hour later Mahmoud Ali Daud exchanged the usual grave and elaborate oriental salutations with Sir Charles Lane-Fox, the governor of the colony and an old friend of his, in the latter’s office. Sir Charles Lane-Fox, ruling a land of many races, prided himself on being all things to all men—British to the British, Portuguese to the Portuguese, and Arab to the Arabs. Thus it was classic Arabic he talked to his visitor, and Arabic, too, was the manner in which the Galla servant appeared, poured thick, burning, musk-flavored coffee into tiny cups, and placed on the low, inlaid taborets orange-flower water, cigarettes, rose-scented fruit-pastes cut in small squares, and honey-balls made of ground almonds and pistache-nuts.

  Slowly Mahmoud Ali Daud sipped the aromatic and nearly scalding liquid, uttered a polite “Bismillah,” replied to in kind by the Englishman, wiped his fingers daintily on the embroidered napkin, and then remarked, with studied carelessness, that soul speaks closely to soul, but that the head and the hand answer for both.

  “In other words,” smiled Sir Charles, “you want my help?”

  “Yes, old friend,” said Mahmoud Ali Daud, slipping easily into English. “I want your help. I need it. There is nobody like you in the whole of Africa. Guide, philosopher, and friend—is not this the English saying—you are not only to Europeans and Arabs, but also—the which is salt to the impossible—to the natives themselves!”

  Salt to the impossible, indeed! And it was the truth.

  For it is known to all the world that Sir Charles Lane-Fox is the only man who understands the Africans—not only their virtues and their vices, which is nothing—but their mysteries—mysteries of which the Royal British Society for the Advancement of Science is completely and jeeringly ignorant, mysteries, the telling of which does not look well in an official, red-taped report to the Colonial Office.

  He had lived up—is still living up—to the extraordinary theory that, as the governor of an Imperial Crown Colony, it is his duty to know more about the Dark Continent than the natives themselves—more even than the Congolese Arabs; and intent on such knowledge, he has dabbled in many unsavory places of that festering, gangrened, brooding land where he is serving his country because of his pride of race and class.

  Withal, a lifetime in Africa had not scotched his sense of humor; and it was with humor—dry, slightly mischievous, slightly ironic—that he looked at the Arab and thanked him for the compliment, adding:

  “Haven’t I read something somewhere or other about looking out when an Arab becomes too eloquent? And, too, didn’t a little bird whisper words to me a while back about an Arab’s greed?”

  “Possibly,” came the unruffled reply, “and it is indeed greed which has sent me here. For, through recent events, the very existence of Double-Dee has become threatened.”

  The governor laughed.

  “Joshing me, aren’t you?” he asked. “Double-Dee threatened? Why—might as well threaten the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street!”

  “True, though. The dagger of bankruptcy is at our throat.”

  The words carried utter conviction, and Sir Charles looked serious. Double-Dee, apart certain lapses, the result of climate more than anything else, to which a wise governor did well to close his official eyes, had been a steady influence for law and order in the colony.

  “Surely not as bad as all that, Mahmoud,” said the Englishman.

  “Absolutely. You know that African trade depends on long credit with the banks—”

  “Of course. Well?”

  “The banks have stopped our credit—” the Arab’s voice broke slightly—“the credit of Double-Dee—”

  “No—no—impossible—”

  “But a fact!”

  “Spite work—perhaps of the Chartered Company?”

  “That—and more—and worse—”

  “But—why—why?”

  “Because of something that has happened to us up in the interior—in the Waranga country. And we need your help, Sir Charles.”

  The latter was a rich man and a generous man.

  “How much money do you need?” he asked. “I fancy I can—”

  “No, no. Many thanks. But it isn’t that. Money—even a large amount—would only help us temporarily. How do you say in English—a drop in—”

  “A drop in the bucket?”

  “Yes. Big trade needs continuous support, continuous, almost automatic credit. You see—it is the foundation of our building which is shaking.”

  “Been over-speculating?”

  “No. We have not speculated at all. We have seen and grasped the greatest commercial opportunity in the whole of Africa—the Waranga country—a country twice the size of France, and rich—Allah—choking with riches! We have devoted all our influence and time and money to its development—and—now—” Mahmoud Ali Daud made a great gesture.

  The governor inclined his head. Of late he had heard a great deal about the Waranga country, and there was at that moment, in his safe, a code message from the Colonial Office, marked secret and confidential, which spoke of it, spoke of British Imperial ambitions and interests and demands, of an all-British railway from the west to the east of Africa; spoke finally of a former treaty with a certain Continental power, that delineated the frontiers of future colonies and spheres of interests to be carved out of the huge African carcass. The certain Continental power was friendly. And still—there were the British Imperial interests; there was the old treaty gone into by a careless ambassador when the wine had been red and the little glasses of liqueur many and varicolored.

  The Waranga country—thought Sir Charles—and Double-Dee’s mysterious, potent influence up there—the old, foolish treaty—and, perhaps, since even the best are ambitious, dreams of a peerage—

  Sir Charles was silent. He considered. Tried to develop and dovetail half-formed thoughts. Momentarily, the friend was lost in the shrewd diplomat.

  “Yes, yes,” he said finally, with the suspicion of a drawl that might have stood for many things. “Very interesting, I am sure, my dear Mahmoud—”

  He was still suave, courtly, friendly. But there was a subtle, psychic change in the atmosphere, and the other, a Semite, sensitive to the core of him, noticed it, thought rapidly, then hid a smile. For years he had followed Europe’s shifting, gliding game on the African chessboard, and—to quote his own metaphorical boast—when it came to African politics he could “hear the fleas cough.”

  Thus, for all the good it did in that particular quarter, the code message sent Sir Charles by the Col
onial Office might as well have been written in plain English and lie on the table in full view. He lit a cigarette, sipped his coffee; then, with crafty ingenuousness, he told the other exactly what had happened in the Waranga country, winding up with:

  “Therefore I repeat, we need your help—to discover the murderers—to bring them to justice. If we fail, the natives will lose confidence—might be won over by—”

  “The Chartered Company?”

  “You have said it. Will you help us?”

  He was fully prepared for Sir Charles’s reply that, in his official capacity, he had no right to interfere.

  “Of course you can’t,” Daud agreed. “The Waranga country is independent—the property of the native chiefs—”

  “Under the—ah—protection of Double-Dee?” gently suggested Sir Charles.

  The Arab gave a tiny wink, and the governor smiled.

  “Suppose—well—” he began, stopped, stroked his honey-colored, silken mustache, and smiled again; and, at once, the Arab knew that the psychological moment had arrived, and put his cards on the table, face up.

  “You have wondered about Double-Dee’s influence among the Warangas?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Ah—” the Arab lowered his voice—“there is a head—a shriveled, human juju head—a very great fetish!”

  “The possession of—”

  “Yes. Of Double-Dee. But, supposing Double-Dee should prefer to paint this shriveled old fetish head with the Union Jack?”

  “Splendid idea! Only—there happens to be an old treaty, Mahmoud, of which you know nothing—”

  “Of which I know everything!” calmly interrupted the Arab. “A treaty with a certain Continental power—a power which also, incidentally, is the sovereign lord of the Chartered Company!”

  “Right,” admitted Sir Charles.

  And again the Arab winked slowly and meaningly.

  “Tell me,” he asked. “Is it not the immortal principle of Great Britain to protect weak and independent countries against foreign aggression—too, against the ruthless inroads of corporate interests—such as”—he purred—“the Chartered Company?”

  “Quite so. Only—such weak and independent nations, to rely on Britain’s strong arm, must show—well—a reason for existence, stability, a measure of civilization, certain political stamina—a something, in other words, hardly ever obtained by savage African chiefs.”

  Came a pause. Then the Arab’s casual:

  “How about the men of my own race? Are they savages—without civilization—without stamina and political stability?”

  “No.”

  “Ah—” gently breathed the Arab, and they looked at each other as Greek is said to look at Greek, and for many minutes they conversed in a flat, cozy undertone.

  Half an hour later Mahmoud Ali Daud left the governor’s residence with a mocking salaam in the direction of the Chartered Company’s corrugated building that looked like a gray stain upon the yellow nakedness of the square near the Chapel of the Jesuit Fathers, while Sir Charles Lane-Fox sent for his aide-de-camp and caused a certain amount of relief to that festively inclined young Briton by announcing that he had decided to take a leave of absence.

  “How long, sir?”

  “Don’t know yet. I am leaving tomorrow, Molyneux.”

  “Going to England, sir?” inquired the aide-de-camp, dreams in his heart of shorter work hours, longer play hours, and a special gymkhana to be arranged in honor of a rosy-cheeked, violet-eyed Sussex maiden recently arrived in the colony on a visit to her uncle, Major Patterson of the Haussa Gunners.

  “No. I am chevying up the interior for a bit, on safari—big game hunting—”

  “Hope you’ll have jolly good sport. Any special instructions, sir?”

  “Come back in an hour. Cable to go to the Colonial Office.”

  “Code, sir?”

  “Yes. But I’ll attend to the coding myself, Molyneux.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  * * * *

  And, late the next afternoon, the purse-necked, red-faced Yorkshire knight who presided over the destinies of the Colonial Office, in Downing Street, London, read a cable slip, whistled through his teeth, and remarked in the direction of a framed portrait of Disraeli—Lord Beaconsfield—that “by gad! there are still a few constructive imperialists left in the bally old empire”; while, far out on the fringes of the little West African coast town where it merges, with the dramatic suddenness of the tropics, into a purple-gray welter of jungle and forest and thorny bush, the governor was stepping out with the easy, hip-swinging step of a man used to the long trek.

  He was alone, nor had this created comment or curiosity. For years it had been a habit of his to roam through the hinterland unaccompanied by as much as a porter or a gun-bearer.

  The second day out, late in the afternoon, he met an ash-smeared, wild-locked, fierce-eyed Moslem dervish—a sort of Islamic hedge-priest—who popped out at him from a clump of odorous cinnamon palms with a sonorous:

  “Salaam aleykhum!”

  “Yah aleykhum salaam!” came the courtly retort.

  Then a low-voiced inquiry, an answer; and the governor disappeared in a small palm-leaf hut that blended perfectly into the thick undergrowth, to reappear, not long afterward, the first dervish’s brother-in-the-craft in sacred unkemptness.

  “Sir Charles—” began the first dervish.

  “Sir Charles no more! I am the Hajji Othman ibn Othman el-Yezdi, and a most learned man, well versed in the Koran and the Hadith, a disciple of the great Saint Abu Hanifyieh, and your lodge brother, Mahmoud!”

  “Oh—Mahmoud?” smiled the other.

  “Yes. No reason why you should change your name. It’s as common among you Arabs as Campbell is in the Highlands of Scotland. Come—lodge brother—together we two shall bring the blessed lessons of the Koran to the naked savages of the outer kraals!”

  And, with correct, nasal, guttural intonation, thereby slightly scandalizing the Arab, the Englishman chanted the Moslem declaration of faith—the “Allah il’ulah Mohammed rasul ’ilah—” and “Allah il’ulah Mohammed rasul ’ilah,” he chanted again, with hierarchic, pontifical unction, a day or two later as, well beyond the northeastern frontier of the Crown colony, he entered the hut of a Waranga tribal chief who bowed before the two dervishes with courtly greetings and a barbarous clanking and jingling of copper ornaments.

  For to savages—they being perhaps the most tolerant people on earth—a holy man is a holy man, be he Moslem or Christian or Jew or Buddhist or fetish medicine man; and so the Waranga chief treated his guests with respect, gave them food and drink, and replied to their questions to the best of his ability.

  CHAPTER IX.

  THE WORD FROM NOWHERE.

  And it seemed that the two wandering dervishes had many questions to ask, that they were leaky-tongued gossips even when measured with the garrulous Arab yardstick. The news of the villages they wanted to know, of the pasture lands, of the desert and the town, the forests and the jungles and the swamps, of kraals and compounds and voodoo huts; gossip of white man and black and half-breed.

  Everything appeared to interest them, everything they asked, of chief and medicine man and villager and shepherd, day after day, the farther they penetrated into the hinterland. The natives gave answer readily, unsuspecting, even a little amused; for, of old, since the days of the Congolese Arab conquerors, did they know that curiosity and greed for information are the besetting sins of the tribe of Shem.

  It was thus, by gradual elimination, never pushing a point too far for all their insatiable curiosity, that Arab and Englishman—working the one for his and his partner’s private interests, the other for imperial glory, yet, both, somehow, for civilization and peace—discovered a certain thin trail that, while proving nothing exactly startling or altogether new, yet corroborated Mahmoud Ali Daud’s instinctive suspicion that the Chartered Company was at the back of the whole trouble.

  Their firs
t discovery was of the negative variety. For they found out that nobody had attempted to interfere with the juju head by fief of which Double-Dee held spiritual, political, and commercial sway over the country.

  On the other hand, since the unknown assassins had plied their deadly trade almost within sight of the fetish temple, they must surely have known of its existence and powerful significance.

  Why then had they not tried to steal it, to do away with it, to duplicate, to all intents and purposes, the trick by which Double-Dee had gained possession?

  Here Arab and Englishman differed radically as to the reason.

  The former opined that the juju head’s sacro-sanctity was entirely due to physical causes, to the armed show of force by which he had surrounded it, since he had strengthened the Waranga guard of honor about the lodge temple by picked and trustworthy blacks from among his own followers, Bakotos and Bagaweles and Banonogos, chief of them M’Kindi, the outcast Balolo, who had first brought him word about the mysterious coming of Darwaysh Ukkhab, alias Navarro d’Albani; while Sir Charles Lane-Fox explained the continued state of inviolability in which the juju head was held as really a master stroke on the part of the Chartered Company.

  “For,” he said, “a savage is a simple human nature. He understands force, but is quite blind to intrigue, to subterranean underhandedness. To obtain the juju head by force, or theft, since theft is force would—oh—rather cheapen its spiritual value. But, if it should get under the control of the Chartered Company by clever, invisible manipulations, by intrigues—why, my dear Mahmoud, that would be rather a tremendous point gained by the Continental gentry—what?”

  At all events, whatever the reasons, the fact remained the juju head seemed inviolate in its place of honor in the jungle temple, its sightless eyes, as before, surveying the grisly collection of voodoo charms that the worshipers had spread below it on the ground.

  The other discovery was that a certain dissatisfaction was spreading like powder under spark among the Warangas. It was not exactly directed against Double-Dee themselves, but rather an uneasiness—even a sort of affectionate worry since both partners were popular with the native population—as to the firm’s spiritual standing and salvation.