Bones

by Edgar Wallace

  Bosambo thought.

  “How can your lord and father feast so many as I would bring?” he asked thoughtfully, as he sat, chin on palm, pondering the invitation, “for I have a thousand spearmen, all young men and fond of food.”

  M’fosa’s face fell.

  “Yet, Lord Bosambo,” said he, “if you come without your spearmen, but with your counsellors only–”

  Bosambo looked at the limper, through half-closed eyes. “I carry spears to a Dance of Rejoicing,” he said significantly, “else I would not Dance or Rejoice.”

  M’fosa showed his teeth, and his eyes were filled with hateful fires. He left the Ochori with bad grace, and was lucky to leave it at all, for certain men of the country, whom he had put to torture (having captured them fishing in unauthorised waters), would have rushed him but for Bosambo’s presence.

  His other invitation was more successful. Hamilton of the Houssas was at the Isisi City when the deputation called upon him.

  “Here’s a chance for you, Bones,” he said.

  Lieutenant Tibbetts had spent a vain day, fishing in the river with a rod and line, and was sprawling upon a deckchair under the awning of the bridge.

  “Would you like to be the guest of honour at N’gori’s little thanksgiving service?”

  Bones sat up.

  “Shall I have to make a speech?” he asked cautiously.

  “You may have to respond for the ladies,” said Hamilton. “No, my dear chap, all you will have to do will be to sit round and look clever.”

  Bones thought awhile.

  “I’ll bet you’re putting me on to a rotten job,” he accused, “but I’ll go.”

  “I wish you would,” said Hamilton, seriously. “I can’t get the hang of M’fosa’s mind, ever since you treated him with such leniency.”

  “If you’re goin’ to dig up the grisly past, dear old sir,” said a reproachful Bones, “if you insist recalling events which I hoped, sir, were hidden in oblivion, I’m going to bed.”

  He got up, this lank youth, fixed his eyeglass firmly and glared at his superior.

  “Sit down and shut up,” said Hamilton, testily; “I’m not blaming you. And I’m not blaming N’gori. It’s that son of his – listen to this.”

  He beckoned the three men who had come down from the Akasava as bearers of the invitation.

  “Say again what your master desires,” he said.

  “Thus speaks N’gori, and I talk with his voice,” said the spokesman, “that you shall cut down the devil-stick which Sandi planted in our midst, for it brings shame to us, and also to M’fosa the son of our master.”

  “How may I do this?” asked Hamilton, “I, who am but the servant of Sandi? For I remember well that he put the stick there to make a great magic.”

  “Now the magic is made,” said the sullen headman; “for none of our people have died the death since Sandi set it up.”

  “And dashed lucky you’ve been,” murmured Bones.

  “Go back to your master and tell him this,” said Hamilton. “Thus says M’ilitani, my lord Tibbetti will come on your feast day and you shall honour him; as for the stick, it stands till Sandi says it shall not stand. The palaver is finished.”

  He paced up and down the deck when the men had gone, his hands behind him, his brows knit in worry.

  “Four times have I been asked to cut down Sanders’ pole,” he mused aloud. “I wonder what the idea is?”

  “The idea?” said Bones, “the idea, my dear old silly old fellow, isn’t it as plain as your dashed old nose? They don’t want it!”

  Hamilton looked down at him. “What a brain you must have, Bones!” he said admiringly. “I often wonder you don’t employ it.”

  II

  By the Blue Pool in the forest there is a famous tree gifted with certain properties. It is known in the vernacular of the land, and I translate it literally, “The-tree-that-has-no-echo-and-eats-up-sound.” Men believe that all that is uttered beneath its twisted branches may be remembered, but not repeated, and if one shouts in its deadening shade, even they who stand no farther than a stride from its furthermost stretch of branch or leaf, will hear nothing.

  Therefore is the Silent Tree much in favour for secret palaver, such as N’gori and his limping son attended, and such as the Lesser Isisi came to fearfully.

  N’gori, who might be expected to take a very leading part in the discussion which followed the meeting, was, in fact, the most timorous of those who squatted in the shadow of the huge cedar.

  Full of reservations, cautions, doubts and counsels of discretion was N’gori till his son turned on him, grinning as was his wont when in his least pleasant mood.

  “O, my father,” said he softly, “they say on the river that men who die swiftly say no more than ‘wait’ with their last breath; now I tell you that all my young men who plot secretly with me, are for chopping you – but because I am like a god to them, they spare you.”

  “My son,” said N’gori uneasily, “this is a very high palaver, for many chiefs have risen and struck at the Government, and always Sandi has come with his soldiers, and there have been backs that have been sore for the space of a moon, and necks that have been sore for this time,” he snapped his fingers, “and then have been sore no more.”

  “Sandi has gone,” said M’fosa.

  “Yet his fetish stands,” insisted the old man; “all day and all night his dreadful spirit watches us; for this we have all seen that the very lightnings of M’shimba M’shamba run up that stick and do it no harm. Also M’ilitani and Moon-in-the-Eye–”

  “They are fools,” a counsellor broke in.

  “Lord M’ilitani is no fool, this I know,” interrupted a fourth.

  “Tibbetti comes – and brings no soldiers. Now I tell you my mind that Sandi’s fetish is dead – as Sandi has passed from us, and this is the sign I desire – I and my young men. We shall make a killing palaver in the face of the killing stick, and if Sandi lives and has not lied to us, he shall come from the end of the world as he said.”

  He rose up from the ground. There was no doubt now who ruled the Akasava.

  “The palaver is finished,” he said, and led the way back to the city, his father meekly following in the rear.

  Two days later Bones arrived at the city of the Akasava, bringing with him no greater protection than a Houssa orderly afforded.

  III

  On a certain night in September Mr Commissioner Sanders was the guest of the Colonial Secretary at his country seat in Berkshire.

  Sanders, who was no society man, either by training or by inclination, would have preferred wandering aimlessly about the brilliantly lighted streets of London, but the engagement was a long-standing one. In a sense he was a lion against his will. His name was known, people had written of his character and his sayings; he had even, to his own amazement, delivered a lecture before the members of the Ethnological Society on “Native Folk-lore,” and had emerged from the ordeal triumphantly. The guests of Lord Castleberry found Sanders a shy, silent man who could not be induced to talk of the land he loved so dearly. They might have voted him a bore, but for the fact that he so completely effaced himself they had little opportunity for forming so definite a judgment.

  It was on the second night of his visit to Newbury Grange that they had cornered him in the billiard-room. It was the beautiful daughter of Lord Castleberry who, with the audacity of youth, forced him, metaphorically speaking, into a corner, from whence there was no escape.

  “We’ve been very patient, Mr Sanders,” she pouted; “we are all dying to hear of your wonderful country, and Bosambo, and fetishes and things, and you haven’t said a word.”

  “There is little to say,” he smiled; “perhaps if I told you – something about fetishes…?” There was a chorus of approval.

  Sanders had gained enough courage from his experience before the Ethnological Society, and began to talk.

  “Wait,” said Lady Betty; “let’s have all these glaring lights
out – they limit our imagination.”

  There was a click, and, save for one bracket light behind Sanders, the room was in darkness. He was grateful to the girl, and well rewarded her and the party that sat round on chairs, on benches around the edge of the billiard-table, listening. He told them stories…curious, unbelievable; of ghost palavers, of strange rites, of mysterious messages carried across the great space of forests.

  “Tell us about fetishes,” said the girl’s voice.

  Sanders smiled. There rose to his eyes the spectacle of a hot and weary people bringing in a giant tree through the forest, inch by inch.

  And he told the story of the fetish of the Akasava.

  “And I said,” he concluded, “that I would come from the end of the world–”

  He stopped suddenly and stared straight ahead. In the faint light they saw him stiffen like a setter.

  “What is wrong?”

  Lord Castleberry was on his feet, and somebody clicked on the lights.

  But Sanders did not notice.

  He was looking towards the end of the room, and his face was set and hard.

  “O, M’fosa,” he snarled, “O, dog!”

  They heard the strange staccato of the Bomongo tongue and wondered.

  Lieutenant Tibbetts, helmetless, his coat torn, his lip bleeding, offered no resistance when they strapped him to the smooth high pole. Almost at his feet lay the dead Houssa orderly whom M’fosa had struck down from behind.

  In a wide circle, their faces half revealed by the crackling fire which burnt in the centre, the people of the Akasava city looked on impressively.

  N’gori, the chief, his brows all wrinkled in terror, his shaking hands at his mouth in a gesture of fear, was no more than a spectator, for his masterful son limped from side to side, consulting his counsellors.

  Presently the men who had bound Bones stepped aside, their work completed, and M’fosa came limping across to his prisoners.

  “Now,” he mocked. “Is it hard for you this fetish stick which Sandi has placed?”

  “You’re a low cad,” said Bones, dropping into English in his wrath. “You’re a low, beastly bounder, an’ I’m simply disgusted with you.”

  “What does he say?” they asked M’fosa.

  “He speaks to his gods in his own tongue,” answered the limper; “for he is greatly afraid.”

  Lieutenant Tibbets went on: “Hear,” said he in fluent and vitriolic Bomongo – for he was using that fisher dialect which he knew so much better than the more sonorous tongue of the Upper River – “O hear, eater of fish, O lame dog, O nameless child of a monkey!”

  M’fosa’s lips went up one-sidedly.

  “Lord,” said he softly, “presently you shall say no more, for I will cut your tongue out that you shall be lame of speech…afterwards I will burn you and the fetish stick, so that you all tumble together.”

  “Be sure you will tumble into hell,” said Bones cheerfully, “and that quickly, for you have offended Sandi’s Ju-ju, which is powerful and terrible.”

  If he could gain time – time for some miraculous news to come to Hamilton, who, blissfully unconscious of the treachery to his second-in-command, was sleeping twenty miles downstream – unconscious, too, of the Akasava fleet of canoes which was streaming towards his little steamer.

  Perhaps M’fosa guessed his thoughts.

  “You die alone, Tibbetti,” he said, “though I planned a great death for you, with Bosambo at your side; and in the matter of ju-jus, behold! you shall call for Sandi – whilst you have a tongue.”

  He took from the raw-hide sheath that was strapped to the calf of his bare leg, a short N’gombi knife, and drew it along the palm of his hand.

  “Call now, O Moon-in-the-Eye!” he scoffed.

  Bones saw the horror and braced himself to meet it.

  “O Sandi!” cried M’fosa, “O planter of ju-ju, come quickly!”

  “Dog!”

  M’fosa whipped round, the knife dropping from his hand. He knew the voice, was paralysed by the concentrated malignity in the voice.

  There stood Sandi – not half a dozen paces from him. A Sandi in strange black clothing, with a big whitebreasted shirt…but Sandi, hard-eyed and threatening.

  “Lord, lord!” he stammered, and put up his hands to his eyes.

  He looked again – the figure had vanished.

  “Magic!” he mumbled, and lurched forward in terror and hate to finish his work.

  Then through the crowd stalked a tall man.

  A rope of monkey’s tails covered one broad shoulder, his left arm and hand were hidden by an oblong shield of hide.

  In one hand he held a slim throwing spear and this he balanced delicately.

  “I am Bosambo of the Ochori,” he said magnificently and unnecessarily; “you sent for me and I have come – bringing a thousand spears.”

  M’fosa blinked, but said nothing.

  “On the river,” Bosambo went on, “I met many canoes that went to a killing – behold!”

  It was the head of M’fosa’s lieutenant, who had charge of the surprise party.

  For a moment M’fosa looked, then turned to leap, and Bosambo’s spear caught him in mid-air.

  “Jolly old Bosambo!” muttered Bones, and fainted.

  Four thousand miles away Sanders was offering his apologies to a startled company.

  “I could have sworn I saw – something,” he said, and he told no more stories that night.

  A FRONTIER AND A CODE

  To understand this story you must know that at one point of Ochori borderline, the German, French, and Belgian territories shoot three narrow tongues that form, roughly, the segments of a half-circle. Whether the German tongue is split in the middle by N’glili River, so that it forms a flattened broad arrow, with the central prong the river is a moot point. We, in Downing Street, claim that the lower angle of this arrow is wholly ours, and that all the flat basin of the Field of Blood (as they call it) is entitled to receive the shadow which a flapping Union Jack may cast.

  If Downing Street were to send that frantic code-wire to “Polonius” to Hamilton in these days he could not obey the instructions, for reasons which I will give. As a matter of fact the code has now been changed, Lieutenant Tibbetts being mainly responsible for the alteration.

  Hamilton, in his severest mood, wrote a letter to Bones, and it is worth reproducing.

  That Bones was living a dozen yards from Captain Hamilton, and that they shared a common mess-table, adds rather than distracts from the seriousness of the correspondence. The letter ran:

  The Residency,

  September 24th.

  From Officer commanding Houssas detachment Headquarters, to Officer commanding “B” company of Houssas.

  Sir,

  I have the honour to direct your attention to that paragraph of King’s regulations which directs that an officer’s sole attention should be concentrated upon executing the lawful commands of his superior.

  I have had occasion recently to correct a certain tendency on your part to employing War Department property and the servants of the Crown for your own special use. I need hardly point out to you that such conduct on your part is subversive to discipline and directly contrary to the spirit and letter of regulations. More especially would I urge the impropriety of utilizing government telegraph lines for the purpose of securing information regarding your gambling transactions. Matters have now reached a very serious crisis, and I feel sure that you will see the necessity for refraining from these breaches of discipline.

  I have the honour to be, sir,

  Your obedient servant,

  P G Hamilton, Captain.

  When two white men, the only specimen of their race and class within a radius of hundreds of miles, are living together in an isolated post, they either hate or tolerate one another. The exception must always be found in two men of a similar service having similar objects to gain, and infused with a common spirit of endeavour.

  Fortunately
neither Lieutenant Tibbetts nor his superior were long enough associated to get upon one another’s nerves.

  Lieutenant Tibbetts received this letter while he was shaving, and came across the parade ground outrageously attired in his pyjamas and his helmet. Clambering up the wooden stairs, his slippers flap-flapping across the broad verandah, he burst into the chief’s bedroom interrupting a stern and frigid Captain Hamilton in the midst of his early morning coffee and roll.

  “Look here, old sport,” said Bones, indignantly waving a frothy shaving-brush at the other, “what the dooce is all this about?”

  He displayed a crumpled letter.

  “Lieutenant Tibbetts,” said Hamilton of the Houssas severely, “have you no sense of decency?”

  “Sense of decency, my dear old thing!” repeated Bones. “I am simply full of it. That is why I have come.”

  A terrible sight was Bones at that early hour with the open pyjama jacket showing his scraggy neck, with his fish mouth drooping dismally, his round, staring eyes and his hair rumpled up, one frantic tuft at the back standing up in isolation.

  Hamilton stared at him, and it was the stern stare of a disciplinarian. But Bones was not to be put out of countenance by so small a thing as an icy glance.

  “There is no sense in getting peevish with me, old Ham,” he said, squatting down on the nearest chair; “this is what I call a stupid, officious, unnecessary letter. Why this haughtiness? Why these crushing inferences? Why this unkindness to poor old Bones?”

  “The fact of it is, Bones,” said Hamilton, accepting the situation, “you are spending too much of your time in the telegraph station.”

  Bones got up slowly.

  “Captain Hamilton, sir!” he said reproachfully, “after all I have done for you.”