“So I cabled Freetown to see if anyone’s been tryin’ to bootleg himself through the lines, or if there’d been much sudden immigration through the French ports. You have the answer. All these coves will have to do is strike cross-country through the bush and—”
“And we shall apprehend them!” Renouard exclaimed delightedly.
“Right-o, dear sir and fellow policeman,” the Englishman returned. “I’m bookin’ passage for West Africa this mornin’, and—”
“Book two,” Renouard cut in. “This excavation of Monsieur MacAndrews, it is near the border; me, I shall be present, with a company of Senegalese gendarmes and—”
“And with me, pardieu! Am I to have no pleasure?” broke in Jules de Grandin.
“Me, too,” John Davisson asserted. “If they’ve got Alice, I must be there too.”
“You might as well book passage for five,” I finished. “I’ve been with you so far, and I’d like to see the finish of this business. Besides, I owe ’em something for that bomb they dropped on me last night.”
23. Pursuit
THERE WAS NO SCARCITY of offered labor when we debarked at Monrovia. A shouting, sweating, jostling throng of black boys crowded round us, each member of the crowd urging his own peculiar excellence as a baggage-carrier in no uncertain terms. Foremost—and most vocal—was a young man in long and much soiled nightgown, red slippers and very greasy tarboosh. “Carry luggage, sar? Carry him good; not trust dam’ bush nigger!” he asseverated, worming with serpentine agility through the pressing crowd of volunteers and plucking Ingraham’s sleeve solicitously.
“Right; carry on, young feller,” the Englishman returned, kicking his kit toward the candidate for partnership.
“Hi-yar, this way—grab marster’s duffle!” the favored one called out, and from the crowd some half-dozen nondescript individuals sprang forward, shouldered our gear and, led by the man Ingraham had engaged, preceded us at a shuffling jog-trot up the winding street toward the apology for a hotel.
Evidently Ingraham was familiar with conventions, for when we had arrived at our hotel he made no effort to distribute largess among the porters, but beckoned to the head man to remain in our room while the remainder of the gang dispersed themselves in such shade as offered in the street outside, awaiting the emergence of their leader.
The moment the door closed a startling transformation came over our chief porter. The stooping, careless bearing which marked his every movement fell from him like a cloak, his shoulders straightened back, his chin went up, and heels clicked together, he stood erectly at attention before Ingraham. “Sergeant Bendigo reporting, sar,” he announced.
“At ease,” commanded Ingraham. Then: “Did you go out there?”
“Yes, O Hiji, even as you ordered, so I did. Up to the place where all of the great waters break in little streams I went, and there at the old camp where ghosts and djinn and devils haunt the night I found the tribesmen making poro. Also, O Hiji, I think the little leopards are at large again, for in the night I heard their drums, and once I saw them dancing round a fire while something—wah, an unclean thing, I think—stewed within their pots. Also, I heard the leopard scream, but when I looked I saw no beast, only three black feller walking through a jungle path.”
“U’m? Any white men there?” demanded Ingraham.
“Plenty lot, sar. No jolly end. Plenty much white feller, also other feller with dark skin, not white like Englishman or French, not black like bush boy or brown like Leoni, but funny-lookin’ feller, some yeller, some brown, some white, but dark and big-nosed, like Jewish trading man. Some, I think, are Hindoos, like I see sometime in Freetown. They come trekking long time through the jungle from Monrovia, ten, twenty, maybe thirty at once, with Liberian bush boys for guide, and—”
“All right, get on with it,” Ingraham prompted sharply.
“Then make killing palaver, Hiji,” the young man told him earnestly. “Those bush boys come as guides; but they not return. They start for home, but something happen—I saw one speared from ambush. I think those white men put bad thoughts in bush men’s heads. Very, very bad palaver, sar.”
“What’s doing up at MacAndrews’?”
“Hou! Bush nigger from all parts of the forest work like slaves; all time they dig and chop. Clear off the jungle, dig up old stones where ghosts are buried. I think there will be trouble there.”
“No doubt of it,” the Englishman concurred. Then: “Tell me, O Sergeant Man, was there among these strangers some one woman of uncommon beauty whom they guarded carefully, as though a prisoner, yet with reverence, as though a queen?”
“Allah!” exclaimed the sergeant, rolling up his eyes ecstatically.
“Never mind the religious exercises. Did you see the woman?”
“Wah, a woman, truly, Hiji, but a woman surely such as never was before. Her face is like the moon at evening, her walk like that of the gazelle, and from her lips drips almond-honey. Her voice is like the dripping of the rain in thirsty places, and her eyes—bismillah, when she weeps the tears are sapphires. She has the first-bloom of the lotus on her cheek, and—”
“Give over, you’ve been reading Hafiz or Elinor Glyn, young feller. Who’s the leader of this mob?”
“Wallah!”—Sergeant Bendigo passed his fingers vertically across his lips and spat upon the floor—“he is called Bazarri, Hiji, and verily he is the twin of Satan, the stoned and the rejected. A face of which the old and wrinkled monkey well might be ashamed is his, with great sad eyes that never change their look, whatever they behold. Wah, in Allah’s glorious name I take refuge from the rejected one—”
“All right; all right, take refuge all you please, but get on with your report,” Ingraham cut in testily. “You say he has the natives organized?”
“Like the blades of grass that come forth in the early rains, O Hiji. Their spears are numerous as the great trees of the forest, and everywhere they range the woods lest strangers come upon them. They killed two members of the Mendi who came upon them unawares, and I was forced to sleep in trees like any of the monkey people; for to be caught near MacAndrews’ is to enter into Paradise—and the cooking-pot.”
“Eh? The devil! They’re practising cannibalism?”
“Thou sayest.”
“Who—”
“The white man of the evil, wrinkled face; he whom they call Bazarri; he has appointed it. Also he gives them much trade gin. I think there will be shooting before long; spears will fly as thick as gnats about the carcass—hai, and bullets, too. The little guns which stutter will laugh the laugh of death, and the bayonets will go bung, as we drive them home to make those dam’ bush feller know our lord the Emperor-King is master still.”
“Right you are,” the Englishman returned, and there was something far from pleasant at the corners of his mouth as he smiled at Sergeant Bendigo.
“Gentlemen”—he turned to us—“this is my sergeant and my right-hand man. We can accept all that he tells us as the truth.
“Sergeant, these men come from far away to help us hunt this evil man of whom you tell me.”
The sergeant drew himself erect again and tendered us a grave salute. His slightly flaring nostrils and smooth, brown skin announced his Negroid heritage, but the thin-lipped mouth, the straight, sleek hair and finely modeled hands and feet were pure Arab, while the gleaming, piercing eyes and quick, cruel smile were equally pure devil. De Grandin knew him for a kindred spirit instantly.
“Tiens, mon brave, it is a fine thing you have done, this discovering of their devil’s nest,” he complimented as he raised his hand in answer to the sergeant’s military courtesy. “You think we yet shall come to grips with them?”
Bendigo’s eyes shone with anticipation and delight, his white teeth flashed between his back-drawn lips. “May Allah spare me till that day!” He answered. It was a born killer speaking, a man who took as aptly to the deadly risks of police work as ever duckling took to water.
“Very well, Sergeant,” Ingraham ordered: “
Take the squad and hook it for Freetown as fast as you can; we’ll be along in a few days.”
Bendigo saluted again, executed a perfect about-face and marched to the door. Once in the hotel corridor he dropped his military bearing and slouched into the sunshine where his confreres waited.
“Stout feller, that,” Ingraham remarked. “I sent him a wire to go native and pop up to MacAndrews’ and nose round, then follow the trail overland to Monrovia, pickin’ up what information he could en route. It’s a holy certainty nothing happened on the way he didn’t see, too.”
“But isn’t there a chance some of that gang he called to help him with our luggage may give the show away?” I asked. “They didn’t seem any too choice a crowd to me.”
Ingraham smiled a trifle bleakly. “I hardly think so,” he replied. “You see, they’re all members of Bendigo’s platoon. He brought ’em here to help him carry on.”
DE GRANDIN AND RENOUARD went on to Dakar, while Ingraham, John Davisson and I took packet north to Freetown.
Our expedition quickly formed. A hundred frontier policemen with guns and bayonets, five Lewis guns in charge of expert operators, with Ingraham and Bendigo in command, set out in a small wood-burning steamer toward Falaba. We halted overnight at the old fortress town, camping underneath the loopholed walls, then struck out overland toward the French border.
The rains had not commenced, nor would they for a month or so, and the Narmattan, the ceaseless northwest wind blowing up from the Sahara, swept across the land like a steady draft from a boiler room. The heat was bad, the humidity worse; it was like walking through a superheated hothouse as we beat our way along the jungle trails, now marching through comparatively clear forest, now hacking at the trailing undergrowth, or pausing at the mud-bank of some sluggish stream to force a passage while our native porters beat the turbid water with sticks to keep the crocodiles at a respectful distance.
“We’re almost there,” Ingraham announced one evening as we sat before his tent, imbibing whisky mixed with tepid water, “and I don’t like the look of things a bit.”
“How’s that?” I asked. “It seems extremely quiet to me; we’ve scarcely seen—”
“That’s it! We haven’t seen a bloomin’ thing, or heard one, either. Normally these woods are crawlin’ with natives—Timni or Sulima, even if the beastly Mendi don’t show up. This trip we’ve scarcely seen a one. Not only that, they should be gossipin’ on the lokali—the jungle telegraph-drum, you know—tellin’ the neighbors miles away that we’re headin’ north by east, but—damn it; I don’t like it!”
“Oh, you’re getting nerves,” Davisson told him with a laugh. “I’m going to turn in. Good-night.”
Ingraham watched him moodily as he walked across the little clearing to his tent beneath an oil-palm tree. “Silly ass,” he muttered. “If he knew this country as I do he’d be singin’ a different sort o’ chanty. Nerves—good Lord!”
He reached inside his open tunic for tobacco pouch and pipe, but stiffened suddenly, like a pointer coming on a covey of quail. Next instant he was on his feet, the Browning flashing from the holster strapped against his leg, and a savage spurt of flame stabbed through the darkness.
Like a prolongation of the pistol’s roar there came a high-pitched, screaming cry, and something big and black and bulky crashed through the palm-tree’s fronds, hurtling to the earth right in Davisson’s path.
We raced across the clearing, and Ingraham stooped and struck a match. “Nerves, eh?” he asked sarcastically, as the little spot of orange flame disclosed a giant native, smeared with oil and naked save for a narrow belt of leopard hide bound round his waist and another band of spotted fur wound round his temples. On each hand he wore a glove of leopard skin, and fixed to every finger was a long, hooked claw of sharpened iron. One blow from those spiked gloves and anyone sustaining it would have had the flesh ripped from his bones.
“Nerves, eh?” the Englishman repeated. “Jolly good thing for you I had ’em, young feller me lad, and that I saw this beggar crouchin’ in the tree—
“The devil! You would, eh?” The inert native, bleeding from a bullet in his thigh, had regained the breath the tumble from the tree knocked from him, raised on his elbow and struck a slashing blow at Ingraham’s legs. The Englishman swung his pistol barrel with crushing force upon the native’s head; then, as Bendigo and half a dozen Houssas hurried up:
“O Sergeant Man, prepare a harness for this beast and keep him safely till his spirit has returned.”
The sergeant saluted, and in a moment the prisoner was securely trussed with cords.
Some twenty minutes later Bendigo stood at Ingraham’s tent, a light of pleased anticipation shining in his eyes. “Prisoner’s spirit has come back, O Hiji,” he reported.
“Good, bring him here.
“I see you, Leopard Man,” he opened the examination when they brought the fettered captive to us.
The prisoner eyed him sullenly, but volunteered no answer.
“Who sent you through the woods to do this evil thing?” Ingraham pursued.
“The leopard hates and kills, he does not talk,” the man replied.
“Oko!” the Englishman returned grimly. “I think this leopard will talk, and be jolly glad to. Sergeant, build a fire!”
Sergeant Bendigo had evidently anticipated this, for dry sticks and kindling were produced with a celerity nothing short of marvelous.
“I hate to do this, Trowbridge,” Ingraham told me, “but I’ve got to get the truth out of this blighter, and get it in a hurry. Go to your tent if you think you can’t stand it.”
The captive howled and beat his head against the earth and writhed as though he were an eel upon the barbs when they thrust his bare soles into the glowing embers; but not until the stench of burning flesh rose sickeningly upon the still night air did he shake his head from side to side in token of surrender.
“Now, then, who sent you?” Ingraham demanded when the prisoner’s blistered feet were thrust into a canvas bucket full of water. “Speak up, and speak the truth, or—” he nodded toward the fire which smoldered menacingly as a Houssa policeman fed it little bits of broken sticks to keep it ready for fresh service.
“You are Hiji,” said the prisoner, as though announcing that the sun had ceased to shine and the rivers ceased to flow. “You are He-Who-Comes-When-No-Man-Thinks-Him-Near. They told us you were gone away across the mighty water.”
“Who told you this great lie, O fool?”
“Bazarri. He came with other white men through the woods and told us you were fled and that the soldiers of the Emperor-King would trouble us no more. They said the Leopard Men should rule the land again, and no one bid us stop.”
“What were you doing here, son of a fish?”
“Last moon Bazarri sent us forth in search of slaves. Much help is needed for this digging which he makes, for he prepares a mighty pit where, in a night and a night, they celebrate the marriage of a mortal woman to the King of all the Devils. My brethren took the prisoners back, but I and as many others as a man has eyes remained behind to—”
“To stage a little private cannibalism, eh?”
“They told us that the soldiers would not come this way again,” the prisoner answered in excuse.
Ingraham smiled, but not pleasantly. “That’s the explanation, eh?” he murmured to himself. “No wonder we haven’t seen or heard anything of the villagers. These damned slavers have taken most of ’em up to MacAndrews’ and those they didn’t kill or capture are hidin’ in the bush.” To the prisoner:
“Is this Bizarri a white man with the body of a youth and the wrinkled face of an old monkey?”
“Lord, who can say how you should know this thing?”
“Does he know that I am coming with my soldiers to send him to the land of ghosts?”
“Lord, he does not know. He thinks that you have gone across the great water. If he knew you were here he would have gone against you with his guns, and with the Leopa
rd Men to kill you while you slept.”
“The Emperor-King’s men never sleep,” retorted Ingraham. To Bendigo: “A firing-party for this one, Sergeant. The palaver is over.
“We must break camp at once,” he added as eight tarbooshed policemen marched smartly past, their rifles at slant arms. “You heard what he said; they’re all set to celebrate that girl’s marriage to the Devil in two more nights. We can just make it to MacAndrews’ by a forced march.”
“Can’t you spare this poor fellow’s life?” I pleaded. “You’ve gotten what you want from him, and—”
“No chance,” he told me shortly. “The penalty for membership in these Leopard Societies is death; so is the punishment for slaving and cannibalism. If it ever got about that we’d caught one of the ‘Little Leopards’ red-handed and let him off, government authority would get an awful black eye.”
He buttoned his blouse, put on his helmet and marched across the clearing. “Detail halt; front rank, kneel; ready; take aim—fire!” his orders rang in sharp staccato, and the prisoner toppled over, eight rifle bullets in his breast.
Calmly as though it were a bit of everyday routine, Sergeant Bendigo advanced, drew his pistol and fired a bullet in the prone man’s ear. The head, still bound in its fillet of leopard skin, bounced upward with the impact of the shot, then fell back flaccidly. The job was done.
“Dig a grave and pile some rocks on it, then cover it with ashes from the fire,” Ingraham ordered. To me he added:
“Can’t afford to have hyenas unearthin’ him or vultures wheelin’ round, you know. It would give the show away. If any of his little playmates found him and saw the bullet marks they might make tracks for MacAndrews—and we want to get there first.”
We broke camp in half an hour, pushed onward through the night and marched until our legs were merely so much aching muscles the next day. Six hours’ rest then again the endless, hurrying march.
Twice we saw evidence of the Leopards’ visits, deserted villages where blackened rings marked the site of burned huts, red stains upon the earth, vultures disputing over ghastly scraps of flesh and bone.
The Dark Angel Page 36
