Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  Hassan went, after a deal of polite salaaming. Then boys began bringing the German’s breakfast, and unless I chose to confess myself an eavesdropper it became my business to be in the tent ahead of them. So I strode forward as if just arrived and purposely tripped over a tent-rope, stumbling under the awning with a laugh and an apology.

  “Who are you?” demanded the German without rising. He had the splay shovel beard described to us in Zanzibar — big dark man, sitting in the doorway of a tent all hung with guns, skins and antlers. He was in night-shirt and trousers — bare feet — but with a helmet on the back of his head.

  “A visitor,” I answered, “staying at the hotel — out for a morning shot at something — had no luck — got nothing — saw your tents in the distance, and came out of curiosity to find out who you are.”

  “My name is Professor Schillingschen,” he answered, still without getting up. There was no other chair near the awning, so I had to remain standing. I told him my name, hoping that Hassan had either not done so already, or else that he might have so bungled the pronunciation as to make it unrecognizable. I detected no sign of recognition on Schillingschen’s face.

  The boys reached the tent with his breakfast, and one of them dragged a chair from inside the tent for me. I sat down on it without waiting for the professor to invite me.

  “I’m tired,” I said, untruthfully, minded to refuse an invitation to eat, but interested to see whether he would invite me or not.

  “Have you any friends at the hotel?” he asked, looking up at me darkly under the bushiest eyebrows I ever saw.

  “I’ve got friends wherever I go,” I answered. “I make friends.”

  “Are you going far?” he demanded, holding out a foot for his boy to pull a stocking on.

  “That depends,” I said.

  “On what?”

  “On whether I get employment.”

  I said that at random, without pausing to think what impression I might create. He pulled the night-shirt off over his head, throwing the helmet to the ground, and sat like a great hairy gorilla for the boy to hang day-clothes on him. He had the hairiest breast and arms I ever saw, hung with lumpy muscles that heightened his resemblance to an ape.

  “I might give you work,” he said presently, beginning to eat before the boy had finished dressing him.

  “I want to travel” I said. “If I could find a job that would take me up and down the length and breadth of this land, that would suit me finely.”

  “That is the kind of a man I want,” he said, eying me keenly. “I have a German, but I need an Englishman. Do you speak native languages?”

  “Scarcely a word.”

  To my surprise he nodded approval at that answer.

  “I have parties of natives traveling all over the country gathering folk lore, and ethnographical particulars, but they get into a village and sit down for whole weeks at a time, drawing pay for doing nothing. I need an Englishman to go with them and keep them moving.”

  “All well and good,” I said, “but I understand the government is not in favor of white men traveling about at random.”

  “But I am known to the government,” he answered. “I have been accorded facilities because of my professional standing. Have you references you can give me?”

  “No,” I said. “No references.”

  I thought that would stump him, but on the contrary he looked rather pleased.

  “That is good. References are too frequently evidence of back-stairs influence.”

  All this while he kept eying me between mouthfuls. Whenever I seemed to look away his eyes fairly burned holes in me. Whenever food got in his beard (which was frequently) be used the napkin more as a shield behind which to take stock of me than as a means of getting clean again. By the time his breakfast was finished his beard was a beastly mess, but he probably had my features from every angle fixed indelibly in his memory. The sensation was that I had been analyzed and card indexed.

  “I pay good wages,” he remarked, and then stuck his face, beard and all, into the basin of warm water his boy had brought. “Where did you get that rifle?” he demanded, spluttering, and combing the beard out with his fingers.

  It was on the tip of my tongue to say “At Zanzibar,” but, as that might have started him on a string of questions as to how I came to that place and whom I knew there, I temporized.

  “Oh, I bought it from a man.”

  “That is no answer!” he retorted.

  If I had been possessed of much inclination to play deep games and match wits with big rascals I suppose I would have answered him civilly and there and then learned more of his purpose. But I was not prepossessed by his charms or respectful of his claim to superiority. The German type super-education never did impress me as compatible with good breeding or good sense, and it annoyed me to have to lie to him.

  “It’s all the answer you’ll get!” I said.

  “Where is your license for it?” he growled.

  The game began to amuse me.

  “None of your business!” I answered.

  “How long have you been in the country!”

  “Since I came,” I said.

  “And you have no license! You have been out shooting. A lucky thing you came to my camp and not to some other man’s! The game laws are very strict!”

  He spoke then to a boy who was standing behind me, giving him very careful directions in a language of which I did not know one word. The boy went away.

  “The last man who went shooting near Nairobi without a license,” he said, “tried to excuse himself before the magistrate by claiming ignorance of the law. He was fined a thousand rupees and sentenced to six months in jail!”

  “Very severe!” I said.

  “They are altogether too severe,” he answered. “I hope you have killed nothing. It is good you came first to me. You would better stand that rifle over here in the corner of my tent. To walk back to the hotel with it over your shoulder would be dangerous.”

  “I’ve taken bigger chances than that,” said I.

  “If you have shot nothing, then it is not so serious,” he said, disappearing behind a curtain into the recesses of his tent.

  He stayed in there for about ten minutes. I had about made up my mind to walk away when four of his boys approached the tent from behind, and one of them cried “Hodi!” The boy to whom he had given directions across my shoulder was not among them.

  They threw the buck down near my feet, and he came out from the gloomy interior and stared at it. He asked them questions rapidly in the native tongue, and they answered, pointing at me.

  “They say you shot it,” he told me, stroking his great beard alternately with either hand.

  “Then they lie!” I answered.

  “Let me see that rifle!” he said, reaching out an enormous freckled fist to take it.

  I saw through his game at last. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to extract a cartridge from the clip in the magazine and claim afterward that I had fired it away. Evidently he proposed to get me in his power, though for just what reason he was so determined to make use of me rather than any one else was not so clear.

  “So I shot the buck, did I?” I asked.

  “Those four natives say they saw you shoot it.”

  “Then it’s mine?”

  He nodded.

  “It’s heavy,” I said, “but I expect I can carry it.”

  I took the buck by the hind legs and swung myself under it. It weighed more than a hundred pounds, but the African climate had not had time enough to sap my strength or destroy sheer pleasure in muscular effort.

  “What’s mine’s my own!” I laughed. “You gave me something to eat after all! Good day, and good riddance!”

  The boys tried to prevent my carrying the buck away.

  “Come back!” growled the professor. “I will take responsibility for that buck and save you from punishment. Bring it back! Lay it down!”

  But I continued to walk
away, so he ordered his boys to take the carcass from me. I laid it down and threatened them with my butt end. He brought his own rifle out and threatened me with that. I laughed at him, bade him shoot if he dared, offered him three shots for a penny, and ended by shouldering the buck again and walking off.

  Meat was cheap in Nairobi in those days, so the owner of the hotel was not so delighted as I expected. He reprimanded me for being late for breakfast, and told me I was lucky to get any. Fred and Will had waited for me, and while we ate alone and I told them the story of my morning’s adventure a police officer in khaki uniform tied up his mule outside and clattered in.

  “Whose buck is that hanging outside the kitchen?” he demanded.

  “There’s some doubt about it,” I said. “I’ve been accused of being the owner.”

  “Then you’re the man I want. The court sits at nine. You’d better be there, or you’ll be fetched!”

  He placed in my hand what proved to be a summons to appear before the district court that morning on the charge of carrying an unregistered rifle and shooting game without a license. Two native policemen he had with him took down the buck from the hook outside the kitchen door and carried it off as evidence.

  We finished our breakfast in great contentment, and strode off arm-in-arm to find the court-house, feeling as if we were going to a play — perhaps a mite indignant, as if the subject of the play were one we did not quite approve, but perfectly certain of a good time.

  The court was crowded. The bearded professor, his four boys, and two other natives were there, as well as several English officials, all apparently on very good terms indeed with Schillingschen.

  As we entered the court under the eyes of a hostile crowd I heard one official say to the man standing next him:

  “I hope he’ll make an example of this case. If he doesn’t every new arrival in this country will try to take the law in his own hands. I hope he fines him the limit!”

  “Give me your hunting-knife, Fred!” said I, and Fred laughed as he passed it to me. For the moment I think he thought I meant to plunge it into the too talkative official’s breast.

  First they called a few township cases. A drunken Muhammedan was fined five rupees, and a Hindu was ordered to remove his garbage heap before noon. Three natives were ordered to the chain-gang for a week for fighting, and a Masai charged with stealing cattle was remanded. Then my case was called, very solemnly, by a magistrate scarcely any older than myself.

  The police officer acted as prosecutor. He stated that “acting on information received” he had proceeded to the hotel. Outside of which he saw a buck hanging (buck produced in evidence); that he had entered the hotel, found me at breakfast, and that I had not denied having shot the buck. He called his two colored askaris to prove that, and they reeled off what they had to say with the speed of men who had been thoroughly rehearsed. Then he put the German on the stand, and Schillingschen, with a savage glare at me, turned on his verbal artillery. He certainly did his worst.

  “This morning,” he announced, after having been duly sworn on the Book, “that young man whose name I do not know approached my tent while I was dressing. The sound of a rifle being fired had awakened me earlier than usual. He carried a rifle, and I put two and two together and concluded he had shot something. Not having seen him ever before, and he standing before my tent, I asked him his name. He refused to tell me, and that made me suspicious. Then came my four boys carrying a buck, which they assured me they had seen him shoot. I asked him whether he had a license to shoot game, and he at once threatened to shoot me if I did not mind my own business. Therefore, I sent a note to the police at once.”

  His four boys were then put on the stand in turn, and told their story through an interpreter. Their words identical. If the interpreter spoke truth one account did not vary from the next in the slightest degree, and that fact alone should have aroused the suspicion of any unprejudiced judge.

  Having the right to cross-examine, I asked each in turn whether the rifle I had brought with me to court was the same they had seen me using. They asserted it was. Then I recalled the German and asked him the same question. He also replied in the affirmative. I asked him how he knew. He said he recognized the mark on the butt where the varnish had been chafed away. Then I handed the hunting knife I had borrowed from to the police officer and demanded that he have the bullet cut out of the buck’s carcass. The court could not object to that, so under the eyes of at least fifty witnesses a flattened Mauser bullet was produced. I called attention to the fact that my rifle was a Lee-Enfield that could not possibly have fired a Mauser bullet. The court was young and very dignified — examined the bullet and my rifle — and had to be convinced.

  “Very well,” was the verdict on that count, “it is proved that you did not shoot this particular buck, unless the police have evidence that you used a different rifle.”

  The policeman confessed that he had no evidence along that line, so the first charge was dismissed.

  “But you are charged,” said the magistrate, “with carrying an unregistered rifle, and shooting without a license.”

  For answer I produced my certificate of registration and the big game license we had paid for in Mombasa.

  “Why didn’t you say so before?” demanded the magistrate.

  “I wasn’t asked,” said I.

  “Case dismissed!” snapped his honor, and the court began to empty.

  “Don’t let it stop there!” urged Will excitedly. “That Heinie and his boys have all committed perjury; charge them with it!”

  I turned to the police officer.

  “I charge all those witnesses with perjury!” I said.

  “Oh,” he laughed, “you can’t charge natives with that. If the law against perjury was strictly enforced the jails wouldn’t hold a fiftieth of them! They don’t understand.”

  “But that blackguard with a beard — that rascal Schillingschen understands!” said I. “Arrest him! Charge him with it!”

  “That’s for the court to do,” he answered. “I’ve no authority.”

  The magistrate had gone.

  “Who is the senior official in this town?” I demanded.

  “There he goes,” he answered. “That man in the white suit with the round white topee is the collector.”

  So we three followed the collector to his office, arriving about two minutes after the man himself. The Goanese clerk had been in the court, and recognized me. He had not stayed to hear the end.

  “Fines should be paid in the court, not here!” he intimated rudely.

  We wasted no time with him but walked on through, and the collector greeted us without obvious cordiality. He did not ask us to sit down.

  “My friend here has come to tell you about that man Schillingschen,” said Fred.

  “I suppose you mean Professor Schillingschen!”

  The collector was a clean-shaven man with a blue jowl that suffered from blunt razors, and a temper rendered raw by native cooking. But he had photos of feminine relations and a little house in a dreary Midland street on his desk, and was no doubt loyal to the light he saw. I wished we had Monty with us. One glimpse of the owner of a title that stands written in the Doomsday Book would have outshone the halo of Schillingschen’s culture.

  I rattled off what I had to say, telling the story from the moment I started to follow Hassan from the hotel down to the end, omitting nothing.

  “Schillingschen is worse than a spy. He’s a black-hearted, schemer. He’s planning to upset British rule in this Protectorate and make it easy for the Germans to usurp!”

  “This is nonsense!” the collector interrupted. “Professor Schillingschen is the honored friend of the British government. He came to us here with the most influential backing — letter of introduction from very exalted personages, I assure you! Professor Schillingschen is one of the most, if not the most, learned ethnologists in the world to-day. How dare you traduce him!”

  “But you heard him tell lies in cou
rt!” I gasped. “You were there. You heard his evidence absolutely disproved. How do you explain that away?”

  “I don’t attempt to! The explanation is for you to make!” he answered. “The fact that he did not succeed in proving his case against you is nothing in itself! Many a case in court is lost from lack of proper evidence! And one more matter! Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon is staying — or rather, I should say, was staying at the hotel. She is now staying at my house. She complains to me of very rude treatment at the hands of you three men — insolent treatment I should call it! I can assure you that the way to get on in this Protectorate is not to behave like cads toward ladies of title! I understand that her maid is afraid to be caught alone by any one of you, and that Lady Saffren Waldon herself feels scarcely any safer!”

  Fred and I saw the humor of the thing, and that enabled us to save Will from disaster. There never was a man more respectful of women than Will. He would even get off the sidewalk for a black woman, and would neither tell nor laugh at the sort of stories that pass current about women in some smoking-rooms. His hair bristled. His ears stuck out on either side of his head. He leaned forward — laid one strong brown hand on the desk — and shook his left fist under the collector’s nose.

  “You poor boob!” he exploded. Then he calmed himself. “I’m sorry for your government if you’re the brightest jewel it has for this job! That Jane will use everything you’ve got except the squeal! Great suffering Jemima! Your title is collector, is it? Do you collect bugs by any chance? You act like it! So help you two men and a boy, a bughouse is where I believe you belong! Come along, fellows, he’ll bite us if we stay!”

  “Be advised” said the collector, leaning back in his chair and sneering. “Behave yourselves! This is no country for taking chances with the law!”

  “Remember Courtney’s advice,” said Fred when we got outside. “Suppose we give him a few days to learn the facts about Lady Isobel, and then go back and try him again?”

  “Say!” answered Will, stopping and turning to face us. “What d’you take me for? I like my meals. I like three squares a day, and tobacco, and now and then a drink. But if this was the Sahara, and that man had the only eats and drinks, I’d starve.”