And this child lived here! I shuddered, even though the heat was flickering in waves across the distant veldt.
Her steps became slower, as we approached, and she seemed to be laboring under a clutching fear. I remember that the few cheerful and rather idiotic remarks I made fell flat, and truly I was in no mood for jesting.
As we neared the house I could see half a dozen black slaves working about the kraal, but I could see no sign of life within the house. It was fearfully hot, and far, far to the east I thought I could make out the distant line of the sea, but I knew it was a mirage.
Well, I met Dr. Denham. We had entered the coolness of the hallway, and as I stood wondering what fashion of man it was who had furnished this dreary place so well, I saw a smiling face peering at us from beyond the draperies.
“Mr. Scott, I presume?”
A soft voice, and it fitted the man. In the semi-darkness which was the nearest approach to comfort in sweltering British East Africa, I saw Irene’s father. A man of fifty, perhaps, smooth-shaven and neatly dressed in white. The mouth under his rather hooked nose was curved into a smile, and yet, somehow, I felt chilled. No smile of welcome that! Not that there was anything alarming about the doctor’s appearance, for he was nearly as I had pictured him, with his scholarly spectacles and abstracted manner. A naturalist and scientist, he looked his part. I bowed.
“I am very glad to know you, Professor Denham,” I said, and extended my hand.
That handclasp was like ice ! Denham’s skin was repulsively cold and moist, like that of a bloated leech. I shuddered, and looked at the man closely.
The eyes! The heavy lenses of his glasses failed to utterly conceal the serpentine power of those greenish eyes. They were at once the eyes of a hypnotist and snake charmer. Though the professor was smiling with his thin lips, the eyes remained icy and the skin across his lofty brows was wrinkled into a frown. I remember that he made a few commonplace remarks and invited me inside. Dinner, he said, would soon be served. He was happy to have an Englishman for his guest. Yes, it was lonely here, but he was fond of loneliness. All the time he was talking I could not keep my eyes from his face. There was some mystery here—some strange secret in this man’s life. And Irene knew of it, for I remembered that little slip she had made while we were crossing the sands. She was worried now, and she was watching her father with mingled fear and apprehension, if I read aright.
At dinner, which was served by a good-looking black, the professor talked of many things. Did I like the country? When did I expect to return to Cairo and Port Said? He asked many questions, and for the first time since I met him I felt at ease. Perhaps I had been mistaken, after all. First impressions do not always furnish one with a character guide. I warmed up, and we talked until late afternoon, over our wine. I was just about to come to the point, and tell him the real reason for my journey there, when he asked me to look at his specimens.
“Something that you’ll find interesting, Mr. Scott, I’m sure,” he smiled. “I doubt if you’ve ever seen anything like them. It has taken years for me to perfect my plans, and it is only recently that I have had any success. Do you know anything of bacteriology?"
“Very little,” I confessed. “From what your daughter told me I thought your experiments were confined to insects. I did not know that bacteriol-
