‘Or should,’ Holmes said. ‘We are not policemen to arrest Sir Mowgli or judges to sentence him. I suggest, Your Ladyship, that you can bring suit against him when we return to civilisation. If we ever do.’
Holmes had winced every time she spoke. To him she was only a rather unpleasant creature who might or might not have just cause for her complaints. He never attended movies, and he had little regard for those who did and for those involved in their making.
He said, ‘Your Ladyship, perhaps you would be kind enough to tell me how you came here?’
The countess, suddenly looking nervous, said, ‘We’d best follow him. We might get lost.’
‘From what you said,’ I spoke, ‘I’d suppose that you’d like to get rid of him.’
‘I don’t want to starve to death, you decrepit old simp!’ she said. ‘Or get eaten by a leopard.’
‘Really?’ I said coolly.
‘Come, Watson,’ Holmes said. ‘Let’s go after the baronet. He may be insane, but he seems to be adjusted to the jungle. He is at present our only hope for survival.’
We walked swiftly after the wild-man baronet; Lady Liza in the lead, and soon we saw his broad brown back, dappled by sunlight and the shadows of leaves. The countess told us her story while we continued to follow the baronet.
The movie, Mowgli’s Revenge, was being filmed near a village about three hundred miles west of the place where we were. Only a few days had remained before its completion when a messenger had arrived. Though he had carried the letter on a forked stick, he was a British soldier, and the message was an order for Major Sir Mowgli to report to the East African Headquarters as soon as his part in the film was done. The baronet had received orders to that effect when the filming started, but the letter was a reminder. On the final day of shooting, however, trouble with the local natives had erupted. The tribe, led by its chief, had tried to abduct the countess.
‘He wanted by fair white body,’ she said.
‘More likely, she had insulted him, and he wanted revenge,’ Holmes muttered in my ear.
The baronet had played his final scene and had set out on foot for the east an hour before the tribe made its raid.
‘If it was a raid,’ Holmes said softly.
The countess had eluded the lustful chief and his henchmen and had fled eastward. Eventually, she had caught up with Sir Mowgli. To her indignation, he had refused to return and punish the chief and the other troublemakers.
‘Probably with good reason,’ Holmes said to me. ‘He knew who was at fault.’
To her, he said, ‘Your Ladyship, you claim that the chief was willing to incur the wrath of the white authorities, perhaps suffer execution, imprisonment certainly, because of his overriding lechery? What tribe, may I ask, did he belong to?’
‘The Mbandwana,’ she replied. ‘What difference does that make?’
‘Ah, the Mbandwana,’ he said, his eyebrows shooting up. ‘I am no anthropologist, My Lady, except among the denizens of London, but I happen to know something about that tribe.’
‘Really?’ she said coolly, if loudly. After a pause, she said, ‘What of them?’
He said in a low voice to me, ‘The Mbandwana have as their female ideal very fat women, the closer to a tub of lard, the better. They would regard the countess’ body with indifference and even contempt.’
To her, he said, ‘My Lady, were some of the tribesmen carrying a circular device of iron, a narrow band with a large square piece attached to the front?’
‘Why, yes,’ she screeched. ‘So they were. I have no idea what they were for, but I supposed they were some form of torture instrument.’
‘They were,’ Holmes said. Aside, he said, ‘Actually, they were instruments designed to prevent torture. The Mbandwana put them on the mouths of loud and nagging shrews to shut off their offending voices.’
Doubtless, the tribesmen intended to silence her. They must have been desperate indeed to attempt muzzling a wealthy, white, and well-known woman, but I can well understand and sympathize with them.’
‘What are you saying?’ the countess shrilled.
‘Nothing of any importance, Your Ladyship,’ Holmes said.
She glared at him but did not press her curiosity. A few minutes later, we came into a glade where the baronet was waiting for us. Near him, hanging head down, its hind legs tied by a grass rope to a tree-branch, was a freshly killed forest pig. The baronet had gutted it, and, despite the flies swarming over his face, was devouring a raw and bloody hunk of haunch.
‘Lunch!’ he said cheerfully, and he handed each of us a slice.
‘Good God, are we supposed to eat this uncooked?’ Holmes said.
‘He’s an utter filthy disgusting troglodytish cannibalistic Calibanian boorish savage lycanthropic freak,’ the countess said. ‘Utterly beyond the pale of humanity.’
‘Thank you, Your Ladyship,’ the baronet said gravely. ‘You are too kind. However, though I’ll eat just about anything if circumstances dictate it for survival, I would never eat you, My lady. And, despite the fact that we have been eating raw flesh, I really prefer my meat well cooked. A fire, however, attracts certain creatures whom I would prefer did not suspect our presence.
‘For instance, just now I hear sounds in the jungle which indicate that a group of men are moving toward us. They may be Germans and their native askaris. Thus, no fire to draw their attention. Also, I request, and it’s a strong request, that you lower your voice. In fact, why don’t you just shut up?’
I tried to eat the piece of stinking pork, but I could not manage it despite my hunger. Holmes, however, munched on his as if it were a delicacy offered by one of the finer restaurants in London.
He caught my glance, and he said, ‘It’s superior to most examples of English cooking.’
I went to the edge of the glade where the loud noises of the countess devouring her pork would not interfere with my hearing. Though I strained my ears, I could detect only the usual sounds one heard in the jungle. After a while, driven by my conscienceless stomach, I returned to the flesh that I had cast down on the ground, wiped it off on my sleeve, and began chewing on it. Holmes was right; it was not so bad.
The wild man wiped some of the blood from his hands with leaves, licked the rest off, and said, ‘Those men are getting closer. I’ll go see who they are and what they’re up to. You all stay here. And keep quiet. That means you, too, Your Ladyship, even if it kills you to do so. Which I hope it does.’
The countess had been squatting like one of those troglodytes she had referred to. Now she rose up and threw her piece of meat at the baronet, but he was disappearing into the green tangle surrounding us.
The missile missed him.
Minutes passed. We sat silently until the countess said, ‘I’m going into the bushes.’
‘Sir Mowgli said to wait here,’ Holmes said sharply.
‘To hell with that nigger baronet, that crazy sex-obsessed beast-man!’ she said loudly, causing more birds to fly screaming from the trees. ‘Anyway, I really have to go!’
‘Go?’ Holmes said, his eyebrows rising. ‘Go where? And why?’
‘Yes, go, you dunderhead!’ she said. ‘I have to take a [word blotted out and a marginal note by Watson to rephrase this scene]! Don’t you know that even we aristocracy have to [word blotted out]!’
Holmes blushed, but he said, ‘I am well aware that they do; they are no better than Hollywood film actresses or washerwomen and not as good as some.’
‘[Word blotted out] you!’ the countess cried, and she strode down the trail for about twenty feet and went around a bush.
‘I hope a leopard gets her,’ said Holmes. ‘Or ants crawl up her [word blotted out].’
‘Really, Holmes!’ I gasped.
‘The jungle brings out the worst in us,’ he said. ‘But it also demands the best—if we are to survive.’
‘Your comment was uncharitable,’ I said, ‘but understandable.’
More silence ensued. Then Holm
es burst out, ‘How I miss my pipe, Watson! Nicotine is more than an aid to thought, it is a necessity! It’s a wonder that anything was done in the sciences and the arts before the discovery of America!’
Absently, he reached out and picked up a stick off the ground. He put it in his mouth, no doubt intending to suck on it as a substitute, however unsatisfactory, for the desiderated pipe. The next moment he leaped up, with a yell that startled me. I cried, ‘What have you found, Holmes? What is it?’
‘That, curse it!’ he shouted and pointed at the stick. It was travelling at a fast rate on a number of thin legs toward a refuge under a log.
‘Great Scott!’ I said. ‘It’s an insect, a mimetic!’
‘How observant of you,’ he said, snarling. But the next moment he was down on his knees and groping after the creature.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ I said.
‘It does taste like tobacco,’ he said. ‘Expediency is the mark of a . . .’
I never heard the rest. An uproar broke out in the jungle nearby, the shouts of men mortally wounded.
‘What is it?’ I said. ‘Could Mowgli have found the Germans?’
Then I fell silent and clutched him, as he clutched me, while a yell pierced the forest, a yell that froze our blood and hushed the jungle. It sounded to me like the victory cry of a wolf. There are no wild wolves in Africa, so I knew who had uttered that terrifying ululation.
IX
Holmes unfroze and started in the direction of the sound. I said, ‘Wait, Holmes! Mowgli ordered us not to leave this place! He must have had his reasons for that!’
‘He isn’t going to order me around! Not now!’ Holmes said. Nevertheless, he halted. It was not a change of mind about the command; it was the crashing of men thrusting through the jungle toward us. We turned and plunged into the bush in the opposite direction while a cry behind us told us that we had been seen. A moment later, heavy hands fell upon us and dragged us down. Someone gave an order in a language unknown to me, and we were jerked roughly to our feet.
Our captors were four tall men of a dark Caucasian race with features somewhat like those of the ancient Persians. They wore thick quilted helmets of some cloth, thin sleeveless shirts, short kilts, and knee-high leather boots. They were armed with small round steel shields, short heavy two-edged swords, heavy two-headed steel axes with long wooden shafts, and bows and arrows.
They said something to us. We looked blank. Then they turned as a weak cry came from the other side of the clearing. One of their own staggered out from the bush only to fall flat on his face and lie there unmoving. His own sword projected from his back.
Seeing this, the men became alarmed, though I suppose they had been alarmed all along. One ran out, examined the man, shook his head, and raced back. We were halflifted, half-dragged along with them in a mad dash through vegetation that tore and ripped our clothes and us. Evidently they had run up against Mowgli, which was not a thing to be recommended at any time. I didn’t know why they burdened themselves with two exhausted old men, but I surmised that it was for no beneficient purpose.
I will not recount in detail that terrible journey. Suffice it to say that we were four days and nights in the jungle, walking all day, trying to sleep at night. We were scratched, bitten, and torn, tormented with itches that wouldn’t stop and sometimes sick from insect bites. We went through almost impenetrable jungle and waded waist-deep in swamps which held hordes of blood-sucking leeches. Half of the time, however, we progressed fairly swiftly along paths whose ease of access convinced me that they must be kept open by regular work parties.
The third day we started up a small mountain. The fourth day we went down it by being let down in a bamboo cage suspended by ropes from a bamboo boom. Below us lay the end of a lake that wound out of sight among the precipices that surrounded it. We were moved along at a fast pace toward a canyon into which the arm of the lake ran. Our captors pulled two dugouts out of concealment and we were paddled into the fjord. After rounding a corner, we saw before us a shore that sloped gently upward to a precipice several miles beyond it. A village of bamboo huts with thatched roofs spread along the shore and some distance inland.
The villagers came running when they saw us. A drum began beating some place, and to its beat we were marched up a narrow street and to a hut near the biggest hut. We were thrust into this, a gate of bamboo bars was lashed to the entrance, and we sat against its back wall while the villagers took turns looking in at us. As a whole, they were a good-looking people, the average of beauty being much higher than that seen in the East End of London, for instance. The women wore only long cloth skirts, though necklaces of shells hung around their necks and their long hair was decorated with flowers. The prepubescent children were stark naked.
Presently, food was brought to us. This consisted of delicious baked fish, roasted pgymy antelope, unleavened bread, and a brew that would under other circumstances have been too sweet for my taste. I am not ashamed to admit that Holmes and I gorged ourselves, devouring everything set before us.
I went to sleep shortly afterward, waking after dusk with a start. A torch flared in a stanchion just outside the entrance, at which two guards stood. Holmes was sitting near it, reading his Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, With Some Observations Upon the Segretation of the Queen. ‘Holmes,’ I began, but he held up his hand for silence. His keen ears had detected a sound a few seconds before mine did. This swelled to a hubbub. With the villagers swarming out while the drum beat again. A moment later we saw the cause of the uproar. Six warriors, with Reich and Von Bork among them, were marching toward us. And while we watched curiously the two Germans were shoved into our hut.
Though both were much younger than Holmes and I, they were in equally bad condition—probably, I suppose, because they had not practised the good old British custom of walking whenever possible. Von Bork refused to talk to us, but Reich, always a gentleman, told us what had happened to his party.
‘We too heard the noises and that horrible cry,’ he said, referring to the baronet’s attack on our captors. ‘We made our way cautiously toward it until we saw the carnage in a clearing. There were five dead men sprawled there, and six running in one direction and four in another. Standing with his foot on the chest of the largest corpse was a dark white man, utterly naked, a bloody knife in his hand. He was the one giving that awful cry, which I would swear no human throat could make.
‘Three of the men had been pierced with arrows. The other two had obviously had their necks broken. The arrows were just like the dead men’s, so I suppose that the killer stole a bow and arrows from them. Or perhaps he is a renegade seeking vengeance on his fellow tribesmen for some reason or other. I whispered to my men to fire at him. Before we could do so, he had leaped up and pulled himself by a branch into a tree, and he was gone. We searched for him for some time without success. Then we started out to the east, but at dusk one of my men fell with an arrow through his neck. The angle of the arrow showed that it had come from above. We looked upward but could see nothing. Then a voice, speaking in excellent German, but with an Oxford accent yet, ordered us to turn back. We were to march to the southwest. If we did not, one of us would die at dusk each day until no one was left. I asked him why we should do this, but there was no reply. Obviously, he had us entirely at his mercy—which, I suspected, from the looks of him, he utterly lacked.’
‘He is Major Sir Mowgli of the Seeonee, a British officer and baronet of Indian origin,’ Holmes said. ‘He is the same Mowgli—or at least claims to be—the same Mowgli of whom Rudyard Kipling wrote in his Jungle Book.’
‘Ach, der Wolfmensch!’ Von Bork said. ‘But I had thought that he was a myth, a creation of Herr Kipling’s imagination!’
‘Surely you must have read that the real Mowgli, or a man claiming to be the real one, appeared some time after Kipling’s book was published. You must know that he was accepted as the genuine article and eventually inherited a vast fortune and was made a baronet by the
queen. For what reason, I forget, though I’m sure that his monetary contributions to certain causes had something to do with it.’
‘I read about him, yes,’ Von Bork said. ‘But . . .?’ Holmes smiled and shrugged and also said, ‘But . . .?’ Reich continued his story:
‘My first concern was the safety and well-being of my men. To have ignored the savage would have been to be brave but stupid. So I ordered the march to the southwest. After two days it became evident that the stalker intended for us to starve to death. All our food was stolen that night, and we dared not leave the line of march to hunt, even though I doubt that we would have been able to shoot anything. The evening of the second day, I called out, begging that he let us at least hunt for food. He must have had some pangs of conscience, some mercy in him after all. That morning we woke to find a freshly killed wild pig, one of those orange-bristled swine, in the centre of the camp. From somewhere in the branches overhead his voice came mockingly. ‘Pigs should eat pigs!’
‘And so we struggled southwestward until today. We were attacked by these people. The stalker had not ordered us to lay down our arms, so we gave a good account of ourselves. But only Von Bork and I survived, and we were knocked unconscious by the flats of their axes. And marched here, the Lord only knows for what end.’
‘I suspect that the Lord of the Jungle, one of Mowgli’s unofficial titles, knows,’ Holmes said. ‘No doubt, he is lurking out there in the jungle somewhere. Oh, by the way, did you happen to see a white woman, an Englishwoman, while you were out there?’
‘No, we did not,’ Reich said.
‘That’s good,’ Holmes said.
X
If the wild man did know, he did not appear to tell us what to expect. Several days passed while we slept and ate and talked to Reich. Von Bork continued to ignore us, even though Holmes several times addressed him. Holmes asked him about his health, which I though a strange concern for a man who had not killed us only because he lacked the opportunity.
The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes II Page 13
