THE NJO HAPA SONG
Gleam, oh brighter than jewels! gleam my swinging stars in the opal dark,
Mirrored along wi’ the fire-fly dance of ’longshore light and off-shore mark,
The roof-lamps and the riding lights, and phosphor wake of ship and shark.
I was old when the fires of Arab ships
(All seas were lawless then!)
Abode the tide where liners ride
To-day, and Malays then;—
Old when the bold da Gama came
With culverin and creed
To trade where Solomon’s men fought,
And plunder where the banyans bought,
I sighed when the first o’ the slaves were brought,
And laughed when the last were freed.
Deep, oh deeper than anchors drop, the bones o’ the outbound sailors lie,
Far, oh farther than breath o’ wind the rumors o’ fabled fortune fly,
And the ’venturers yearn from the ends of earth, for none o’ the isles is as fair as I!
CHAPTER TWO
The enormous map of Africa loses no lure or mystery from the fact of nearness to the continent itself. Rather it increases. In the hot upper room that night, between the wreathing smoke of oil lamps, we pored over the large scale map Monty had saved from the wreck along with our money drafts and papers.
The atmosphere was one of bygone piracy. The great black ceiling beams, heavy-legged table of two-inch planks, floor laid like a dhow’s deck—making utmost use of odd lengths of timber, but strong enough to stand up under hurricanes and overloads of plunder, or to batten down rebellious slaves—murmurings from rooms below, where men of every race that haunts those shark-infested seas were drinking and telling tales that would make Münchhausen’s reputation—steaminess, outer darkness, spicy equatorial smells and, above all, knowledge of the nature of the coming quest united to veil the map in fascination.
No man gifted with imagination better than a hot-cross bun’s could be in Zanzibar and not be conscious of the lure that made adventurers of men before the first tales were written. Old King Solomon’s traders must have made it their headquarters, just as it was Sindbad the Sailor’s rendezvous and that of pirates before he or Solomon were born or thought of. Vasco da Gama, stout Portuguese gentleman adventurer, conquered it, and no doubt looted the godowns to a lively tune. Wave after wave of Arabs sailed to it (as they do to-day) from that other land of mystery, Arabia; and there isn’t a yard of coral beach, coconut-fringed shore, clove orchard, or vanilla patch—not a lemon tree nor a thousand-year-old baobab but could tell of battle and intrigue; not a creek where the dhows lie peacefully to-day but could whisper of cargoes run by night—black cargoes, groaning fretfully and smelling of the ’tween-deck lawlessness.
“There are two things that have stuck in my memory that Lord Salisbury used to say when I was an Eton boy, spending a holiday at Hatfield House,” said Monty. “One was, Never talk fight unless you mean fight; then fight, don’t talk. The other was, Always study the largest maps.”
“Who’s talking fight?” demanded Fred.
Monty ignored him. “Even this map isn’t big enough to give a real idea of distances, but it helps. You see, there’s no railway beyond Victoria Nyanza. Anything at all might happen in those great spaces beyond Uganda. Borderlands are quarrel-grounds. I should say the junction of British, Belgian, and German territory where Arab loot lies buried is the last place to dally in unarmed. You fellows ’ud better scour Zanzibar in the morning for the best guns to be had here.”
So I went to bed at midnight with that added stuff for building dreams. He who has bought guns remembers with a thrill; he who has not, has in store for him the most delightful hours of life. May he fall, as our lot was, on a gunsmith who has mended hammerlocks for Arabs, and who loves rifles as some greater rascals love a woman or a horse.
We all four strolled next morning, clad in the khaki reachmedowns that a Goanese “universal provider” told us were the “latest thing,” into a den between a camel stable and an even mustier-smelling home of gloom, where oxen tied nose-to-tail went round and round, grinding out semsem everlastingly while a lean Swahili sang to them. When he ceased, they stopped. When he sang, they all began again.
In a bottle-shaped room at the end of a passage squeezed between those two centers of commerce sat the owner of the gun-store, part Arab, part Italian, part Englishman, apparently older than sin itself, toothless, except for one yellow fang that lay like an ornament over his lower lip, and able to smile more winningly than any siren of the sidewalk. Evidently he shaved at intervals, for white stubble stood out a third of an inch all over his wrinkled face. The upper part of his head was utterly bald, slippery, shiny, smooth, and adorned by an absurd, round Indian cap, too small, that would not stay in place and had to be hitched at intervals.
He said his name was Captain Thomas Cook, and the license to sell firearms framed on the mud-brick wall bore him witness. (May he live forever under any name he chooses!)
“Goons?” he said. “Goons? You gentlemen want goons? I have the goon what settled the hash of Sayed bin Mohammed—here it be. This other one’s the rifle—see the nicks on her butt!—that Kamarajes the Greek used. See ’em—Arab goons—slaver goons—smooth-bore elephant goons—fours, eights, twelves—Martinis—them’s the lot that was reekin’ red-hot, days on end, in the last Arab war on the Congo, considerable used up but goin’ cheap;—then here’s Mausers (he pronounced it “Morsers”)—old-style, same as used in 1870—good goons they be, long o’ barrel and strong, but too high trajectory for some folks;—some’s new style, magazines an’ all—fine till a grain o’ sand jams ’em oop;—an’ Lee-Enfields, souvenirs o’ the Boer War, some o’ them bought from folks what plundered a battle-field or two—mostly all in good condition. Look at this one—see it—hold it—take a squint along it! Nineteen elephants shot wi’ that Lee-Enfleld, an’ the man’s in jail for shootin’ of ‘em! Sold at auction by the gov’ment, that one was. See, here’s an Express—a beauty—owned by an officer fr’m Indy—took by a shark ’e was, in swimmin’ against all advice, him what had hunted tigers! There’s no goon store a quarter as good as mine ’tween Cairo an’ the Cape or Bombay an’ Boma! Captain Cook’s the boy to sell ye goons all right! Sit down. Look ’em over. Ask anything ye want to know. I’ll tell ye. No obligation to buy.”
There is no need to fit out with guns and tents in London. Until both good and bad, both cowardly and brave give up the habit of dying in bed, or getting killed, or going broke, or ending up in jail for one cause and the other, there will surely always be fine pickings for men on the spot with a little money and a lot of patience—guns, tents, cooking pots, and all the other things.
We spent a morning with Captain Thomas Cook, and left the store—Fred, Yerkes and I—with a battery of weapons, including a pistol apiece—that any expedition might be proud of. (Monty, since he had to go home in any case, preferred to look over the family gun-room before committing himself.)
Then, since the first leg of the journey would be the same for all of us we bought other kit, packed it, and booked passages for British East Africa. Between then and the next afternoon when the British India steamboat sailed we were fairly bombarded by inquisitiveness, but contrived not to tell much. And with patience beyond belief Monty restrained us from paying court to Tippoo Tib.
“The U.S. Consul says he’s better worth a visit than most of the world’s museums,” Yerkes assured us two or three times. “He says Tippoo Tib’s a fine old sport—damned rogue—slave-hunter, but white somewhere near the middle. What’s the harm in our having a chin with him?”
But Monty was adamant.
“A call on him would prove nothing, but he and his friends would suspect. Spies would inform the German government. No. Let’s act as if Tippoo Tib were out of mind.”
We grumbled, but we yielded. Hassan came again, shiny with sweat and voluble with offers of information and assistance. “Where you gentlemen going?” he kept asking.
“England,” said Monty, and showed his own steamer ticket in proof of it.
That settled Hassan for the time but Georges Coutlass was not so easy. He came swaggering upstairs and thumped on Monty’s door with the air of a bearer of king’s messages.
“What do you intend to do?” he asked. (We were all sitting on Monty’s bed, and it was Yerkes who opened the door.)
“Do you an injury,” said Yerkes, “unless you take your foot away!” The Greek had placed it deftly to keep the door open pending his convenience.
“Let him have his say” advised Monty from the bed.
“Where are you going? Hassan told me England. Are you all going to England? If so, why have you bought guns? What will you do with six rifles, three shot-guns, and three pistols on the London streets? What will you do with tents in London? Will you make campfires in Regent Circus, that you take with you all those cooking pots? And all that rice, is that for the English to eat? Bah! No tenderfoot can fool me! You go to find my ivory, d’you hear! You think to get away with it unknown to me! I tell you I have sharp ears! By Jingo, there is nothing I can not find out that goes on in Africa! You think to cheat me? Then you are as good as dead men! You shall die like dogs! I will smithereen the whole damned lot of you before you touch a tusk!”
“Get out of here!” growled Yerkes.
“Give him a chance to go quietly, Will,” urged Monty, and Coutlass heard him. Peaceful advice seemed the last spark needed to explode his crowded magazines of fury. He clenched his fists—spat because the words would not flow fast enough—and screamed.
“Give me a chance, eh? A chance, eh?” Other doors began opening, and the appearance of an audience stimulated him to further peaks of rage. “The only chance I need is a sight of your carcasses within range, and a long range will do for Georges Coutlass!” He glared past Yerkes at Monty who had risen leisurely. “You call yourself a lord? I call you a thief! A jackal!”
“Here, get out!” growled Yerkes, self-constituted Cerberus.
“I will go when I damned please, you Yankee jackanapes!” the Greek retorted through set teeth. Yerkes is a free man, able and willing to shoulder his own end of any argument. He closed, and the Greek’s ribs cracked under a vastly stronger hug than he had dreamed of expecting. But Coutlass was no weakling either, and though he gasped he gathered himself for a terrific effort.
“Come on!” said Monty, and went past me through the door like a bolt from a catapult. Fred followed me, and when he saw us both out on the landing Monty started down the stairs.
“Come on!” he called again.
We followed, for there is no use in choosing a leader if you don’t intend to obey him, even on occasions when you fail at once to understand. There was one turn on the wide stairs, and Monty stood there, back to the wall.
“Go below, you fellows, and catch!” he laughed. “We don’t want Will jailed for homicide!”
The struggle was fierce and swift. Coutlass searched with a thumb for Will’s eye, and stamped on his instep with an iron-shod heel. But he was a dissolute brute, and for all his strength Yerkes’ cleaner living very soon told. Presently Will spared a hand to wrench at the ambitious thumb, and Coutlass screamed with agony. Then he began to sway this way and that without volition of his own, yielding his balance, and losing it again and again. In another minute Yerkes had him off his feet, cursing and kicking.
“Steady, Will!” called Monty from below; but it was altogether too late for advice. Will gathered himself like a spring, and hurled the Greek downstairs backward.
Then the point of Monty’s strategy appeared. He caught him, saved him from being stunned against the wall, and, before the Greek could recover sufficiently to use heels and teeth or whisk out the knife he kept groping for, hurled him a stage farther on his journey—face forward this time down to where Fred and I were waiting. We kicked him out into the street too dazed to do anything but wander home.
“Are you hurt, Will?” laughed Monty. “This isn’t the States, you know; by gad, they’ll jail you here if you do your own police work! Instead of Brussels I’d have had to stay and hire lawyers to defend you!”
“Aw—quit preaching!” Yerkes answered. “If I hadn’t seen you there on the stairs with your mouth open I’d have been satisfied to put him down and spank him!”
It was then that the much more unexpected struck us speechless—even Monty for the moment, who is not much given to social indecision. We had not known there was a woman guest in that hotel. One does not look in Zanzibar for ladies with a Mayfair accent unaccompanied by menfolk able to protect them. Yet an indubitable Englishwoman, expensively if carelessly dressed, came to the head of the stairs and stood beside Yerkes looking down at the rest of us with a sort of well bred, rather tolerant scorn.
“Am I right in believing this is Lord Montdidier?” she asked, pronouncing the word as it should be—Mundidger.
She had been very beautiful. She still was handsome in a hard-lipped, bold way, with abundant raven hair and a complexion that would have been no worse for a touch of rouge. She seemed to scorn all the conventional refinements, though. Her lacy white dress, open at the neck, was creased and not too clean, but she wore in her bosom one great jewel like a ruby, set in brilliants, that gave the lie to poverty provided the gems were real. And the amber tube through which she smoked a cigarette was seven or eight inches long and had diamonds set in a gold band round its middle. She wore no wedding ring that I could see; and she took no more notice of Will Yerkes beside her than if he had been a part of the furniture.
“Why do you ask?” asked Monty, starting upstairs. She had to make way for him, for Will Yerkes stood his ground.
“A fair question!” she laughed. Her voice had a hard ring, but was very well trained and under absolute control. I received the impression that she had been a singer at some time. “I am Lady Saffren Waldon—Isobel Saffren Waldon.”
Fred and I had followed Monty up and were close behind him. I heard him mutter, “Oh, lord!” under his breath.
“I knew your brother,” she added.
“I know you did.”
“You think that gives me no claim on your acquaintance? Perhaps it doesn’t. But as an unprotected woman—”
“There is the Residency,” objected Monty, “and the law.”
She laughed bitterly. “Thank you, I am in need of no passage home! I overheard that ruffian say, and I think I heard you say too that you are going to England. I want you to take a message for me.”
There is a post-office here” said Monty without turning a hair. He looked straight into her iron eyes. “There is a cable station. I will lend you money to cable with.”
“Thank you, my Lord!” she sneered. “I have money. I am so used to being snubbed that my skin would not feel a whip! I want you to take a verbal message!”
It was perfectly evident that Monty would rather have met the devil in person than this untidy dame; yet he was only afraid apparently of conceding her too much claim on his attention. (If she had asked favors of me I don’t doubt I would have scrambled to be useful. I began mentally taking her part, wondering why Monty should treat her so cavalierly; and I fancy Yerkes did the same.)
“Tell me the message, and I’ll tell you whether I’ll take it,” said Monty.
She laughed again, even more bitterly.
“If I could tell it on these stairs,” she answered, “I could cable it. They censor cablegrams, and open letters in this place.”
“I suspect that isn’t true,” said Monty. “But if you object to witnesses, how do you propose to deliver your message to me?” he asked pointedly.
“You mean you refuse to speak with me alone?”
“My friends would draw out of earshot,” he answered.
“Your friends? Your gang, you mean!” She drew herself up very finely—very stately. Very lovely she was to look at in that half-light, with the shadows of Tippoo Tib’s[1] old stairway hiding her tale of years. But I felt my regard for her slipping downhill (and so, I rather think did Yerkes). “You look well, Lord Montdidier, traipsing about the earth with a leash of mongrels at your heel! Falstaff never picked up a more sordid-looking pack! What do you feed them—bones? Are there no young bloods left of your own class, that you need travel with tradesmen?”
Monty stood with both hands behind him and never turned a hair. Fred Oakes brushed up the ends of that troubadour mustache of his and struck more or less of an attitude. Will reddened to the ears, and I never felt more uncomfortable in all my life.
“So this is your gang, is it?” she went on. “It looks sober at present! I suppose I must trust you to control them! I dare say even tavern brawlers respect you sufficiently to keep a lady’s secret if you order them. I will hope they have manhood enough to hold their tongues!”
Of course, dressed in the best that Zanzibar stores had to offer we scarcely looked like fashion plates. My shirt was torn where Coutlass had seized it to resist being thrown out, but I failed to see what she hoped to gain by that tongue lashing, even supposing we had been the lackeys she pretended to believe we were.
“The message is to my brother,” she went on.
“I don’t know him!” put in Monty promptly.
“You mean you don’t like him! Your brother had him expelled from two or three clubs, and you prefer not to meet him! Nevertheless, I give you this message to take to him! Please tell him—you will find him at his old address—that I, his sister, Lady Saffren Waldon, know now the secret of Tippoo Tib’s ivory. He is to join me here at once, and we will get it, and sell it, and have money, and revenge! Will you tell him that!”
“No!” answered Monty.
I looked at Yerkes, Yerkes looked at Fred, and Fred at me. There was nothing to do but feel astonished.
“Why not, if you please?”
“I prefer not to meet Captain McCauley,” said Monty.
“Then you will give the message to somebody else?” she insisted.
“No” said Monty. “I will carry no message for you.”
“Why do you say that? How dare you say that? In front of your following—your gang!”
I should have been inclined to continue the argument myself—to try to find out what she did know, and to uncover her game. It was obvious she must have some reason for her extraordinary request, and her more extraordinary way of making it. But Monty saw fit to stride past her through his open bedroom door, and shut it behind him firmly. We stood looking at her and at one another stupidly until she turned her back and went to her own room on the floor above. Then we followed Monty.
“Did she say anything else?” he asked as soon as we were inside. I noticed he was sweating pretty freely now.
“Didums, you’re too polite!” Fred answered. “You ought to have told her to keep her tongue housed or be civil!”
“I don’t hold with hitting back at a lone woman,” said Yerkes, “but what was she driving at? What did she mean by calling us a pack of mongrels?”
“Merely her way,” said Monty offhandedly. “Those particular McCauleys never amounted to much. She married a baronet, and he divorced her. Bad scandal. Saffren Waldon was at the War Office. She stole papers, or something of that sort—delivered them to a German paramour—von Duvitz was his name, I think. She and her brother were lucky to keep out of jail. Ever since then she has been—some say a spy, some say one thing, some another. My brother fell foul of her, and lived to regret it. She’s on her last legs I don’t doubt, or she wouldn’t be in Zanzibar.”
“Then why the obvious nervous sweat you’re in?” demanded Fred.
“And that doesn’t account for the abuse she handed out to us,” said Yerkes.
“Why not tip off the authorities that she’s a notorious spy?” I asked.
“I suspect they know all about her,” he answered.
“But why your alarm?” insisted Fred.
“I’m scarcely alarmed, old thing. But it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it, that she wants us to believe she knows what we’re after. She’s vindictive. She imagines she owes me a grudge on my brother’s account. It might soothe her to think she had made me nervous. And by gad—it sounds like lunacy, and mind you I’m not propounding it for fact!—there’s just one chance that she really does know where the ivory is!”
“But where’s the sense of abusing us?” repeated Yerkes.
“That’s the poor thing’s way of claiming class superiority,” said Monty. “She was born into one class, married into another, and divorced into a third. She’d likely to forget she said an unkind word the next time she meets you. Give her one chance and she’ll pretend she believes you were born to the purple—flatter you until you half believe it yourself. Later on, when it suits her at the moment, she’ll denounce you as a social imposter! It’s just habit—bad habit, I admit—comes of the life she leads. Lots of ’em like her. Few of ’em quite so well informed, though, and dangerous if you give ’em a chance.”
“I still don’t see why you’re sweating,” said Fred.
“It’s hot. There’s a chance she knows where the ivory is! She has money, but how? She’d have begged if she were short of cash! It’s my impression she has been in German government employ for a number of years. Possibly they have paid her to do some spy-work—in the Zanzibar court, perhaps—the Sultan’s a mere boy—”
“Isn’t he wooly-headed?” objected Yerkes.
“Mainly Arab. It’s a French game to send a white woman to intrigue at colored courts, but the Germans are good imitators.”
“Isn’t she English?” asked Yerkes.
“Her trade’s international,” said Monty dryly. “My guess is that Coutlass or Hassan told her what we’re supposed to be doing here, and she pretends to know where the ivory is in order to trap us all in some way. The net’s spread for me, but there’s no objection to catching you fellows as well.”
“She’ll need to use sweeter bait than I’ve seen yet!” laughed Yerkes.
“She’ll probably be sweetness itself next time she sees you. She’ll argue she’s created an impression and can afford to be gracious.”
“Impression is good!” said Yerkes. “I mean it’s bad! She has created one, all right! What’s the likelihood of her having double-crossed the Germans? Mightn’t she have got a clue to where the stuff is, and be holding for a better market than they offer?”
“I was coming to that,” said Monty. “Yes, it’s possible. But whatever her game is, don’t let us play it for her. Let her do the leading. If she gets hold of you fellows, one at a time or all together, for the love of heaven tell her nothing! Let her tell all she likes, but admit nothing—tell nothing—ask no questions! That’s an old rule in diplomacy (and remember, she’s a diplomat, whatever else she may be!) Old-stagers can divine the Young ones’ secrets from the nature of the questions they ask! So if you got the chance, ask her nothing! Don’t lie, either! It would take a very old hand to lie to her in such way that she couldn’t see through it!”
“Why not be simply rude and turn our backs?” said I.
“Best of all—provided you can do it! Remember, she’s a old hand!”
“D’you mean,” said Yerkes, “that if she were to offer proof that she knows where that ivory is, and proposed terms, you wouldn’t talk it over?”
“I mean let her alone!” said Monty.
But it turned out she would not be let alone. We dine in the public room, but she had her meals sent up to her and we flattered ourselves (or I did) that her net had been laid in vain. Folk dine late in the tropics, and we dallied over coffee and cigars, so that it was going on for ten o’clock when Yerkes and I started upstairs again. Monty and Fred went out to see the waterfront by moonlight.
We had reached our door (he and I shared one great room) when we heard terrific screams from the floor above—a woman’s—one after another, piercing, fearful, hair-raising, and so suggestive in that gloomy, grim building that a man’s very blood stood still.
Yerkes was the first upstairs. He went like an arrow from a bow, and I after him. The screams had stopped before we reached the stairhead, but there was no doubting which her room was; the door was partly open, permitting a view of armchairs and feminine garments in some disorder. We heard a man talking loud quick Arabic, and a woman—pleading, I thought. Yerkes rapped on the door.
“Come in!” said a voice, and I followed Yerkes in.
We were met by her Syrian maid, a creature with gazelle eyes and timid manner, who came through the doorway leading to an inner room.
“What’s the trouble?” demanded Yerkes, and the woman signed to us to go on in. Yerkes led the way again impulsively as any knight-errant rescuing beleaguered dames, but I looked back and saw that the Syrian woman had locked the outer door. Before I could tell Will that, he was in the next room, so I followed, and, like him, stood rather bewildered.
Lady Saffren Waldon sat facing us, rather triumphant, in no apparent trouble, not alone. There were four very well-dressed Arabs standing to one side. She sat in a basket chair by a door that pretty obviously led into her bedroom; and kept one foot on a pillow, although I suspected there was not much the matter with it.
“We heard screams. Thought you were being murdered!” said Yerkes, out of breath.
“Oh, indeed, no! Nothing of the kind! I fell and twisted my ankle—very painful, but not serious. Since you are here, sit down, won’t you?”
“No, thanks,” said he, turning to go.
“The maid locked the door on us!” said I, and before the words were out of my mouth three of the Arabs slipped into the outer room. There was no hint or display of weapons of any kind, but they were big men, and the folds of their garments were sufficiently voluminous to have hidden a dozen guns apiece.
“She’ll open it!” said Will, with inflection that a fool could understand.
“One minute, please!” said Lady Saffren Waldon. (It was no poor imitation of Queen Elizabeth ordering courtiers about.)
“We didn’t come to talk,” said Will. “Heard screams. Made a mistake. Sorry. We’re off!”
“No mistake!” she said; and the sweetness Monty prophesied began to show itself. The change in her voice was too swift and pronounced to be convincing. “I did scream. I was, in pain. It was kind of you to come. Since you are here I would like you to talk to this gentleman.”
She glanced at the Arab, an able-looking man, with nose and eyes expressive of keen thought, and the groomed gray beard that makes an Arab always dignified.
“Some other time,” said Will. “I’ve an engagement!” And he turned to go again.
“No—now!” she said. “It’s no use—you can’t get out! You may as well be sensible and listen!”
We glanced at each other and both remembered Monty’s warning. Will laughed.
“Take seats,” she said, with a very regal gesture. She was not carelessly dressed, as she had been earlier in the day. From hair to silken hose and white kid shoes she was immaculate, and she wore rouge and powder now. In that yellow lamplight (carefully placed, no doubt) she was certainly good-looking. In fact, she was good-looking at any time, and only no longer able to face daylight with the tale of youth. Her eyes were weapons, nothing less. We remained standing.
“This gentleman will speak to you,” she said, motioning to the Arab to commence, and he bowed—from the shoulders upward.
“I am from His Highness the Sultan of Zanzibar” he announced, a little pompously. “A minister from His Highness.” (In announcing their own importance Arabs very seldom err in the direction of under-estimate.) “I speak about the ivory, which I am informed you propose to set out on a journey to discover.”
“Where did you get your information?” Yerkes countered.
“Don’t be absurd!” ordered Lady Saffren Waldon. “I gave it to him! Where else need he go to get it?”
“Where did you get it, then?” he retorted.
“Never mind! Listen to what Hamed Ibrahim has to say!”
The Arab bowed his bead slightly a second time.
“The ivory you seek,” he said, “is said to be Tippoo Tib’s own, and he will not tell the hiding-places. It does not belong to him. Such little part of it as ever was his was long ago swallowed by the interest on claims against him. The whole is now in truth the property of His Highness the Sultan of Zanzibar, and whoever discovers it shall receive reward from the owner. His Highness is willing, through me his minister, to make treaty in advance in writing with suitable parties intending to make search.”
“You mean the Sultan wants to hire me to hunt for ivory for him?” Will asked, and the Arab made a gesture of impatience. At that Lady Saffren Waldon cut in, very vinegary once more.
“You two men are prisoners! Show much more sense! Come to terms or take the consequences! Listen! Tippoo Tib buried the ivory. The Sultan of Zanzibar claims it. The German government, for reasons of its own, backs the Sultan’s claim; ivory found in German East Africa will be handed over to him in support of his claim to all the rest of it. If you—Lord Montdidier and the rest of you—care to sign an agreement with the Sultan of Zanzibar you can have facilities. You shall be supplied with guides who can lead you to the right place to start your search from—”
“Thought you wanted Lord Montdidier to say in London that you know where it all is,” Will objected.
She colored slightly, and glared.
“Perhaps I am one of the guides,” she said darkly. “I know more than I need tell for the sake of this argument! The point is, you can have facilities if you sign an agreement with the Sultan. Otherwise, you will be dogged wherever you go! Whatever you should find would be claimed! Every difficulty will be made for you—every treachery conceivable practised on you. Lord Montdidier can get influential backing, but not influence among the natives! He can not get good men and true information by pulling wires in London. The British government once offered ten per cent. of the value of the ivory found. The Sultan of Zanzibar offers twenty per cent.—”
“Twenty-five per cent.,” corrected Hamed Ibrahim.
“Yes, but I should want five per cent. for my commission!”
“This sounds like a different yarn to the one you told on the stairs this afternoon,” said Will. “See Monty and tell it to him.”
“It is for you to tell Lord Montdidier. He runs away from me!”
“I refuse to tell him a word!” said Will, with a laugh like that of a boy about to plunge into a swimming pool—sort of “Here goes!” laugh.
“You are extremely ill advised!”
“Do your worst! Monty’ll be hunting for us two in about a minute. We’re prisoners, are we? Suit yourself!”
“You are prisoners while I choose! You could be killed in this room, removed in sacks, thrown to the sharks in the roadstead, and nobody the wiser! But I have no intention of killing you. As it happens, that would not suit my purpose!”
We both glanced behind us involuntarily. It may be that we both heard a footstep, but it is always difficult to say certainly after the event. At any rate, while in the act of turning our heads, two of the three Arabs, who had previously left the room, threw nooses over them and bound our arms to our sides with the jiffy-swiftness only sailors know. The third man put the finishing touches, and presently adjusted gags with a neatness and solicitude worthy of the Inquisition.
“Throw them!” she ordered, and in a second our heels were struck from under us and I was half stunned by the impact of my head against the solid floor (for all the floors of that great place were built to resist eternity).
“Now!” she said. “Show them knives!”
We were shown forthwith the ugliest, most suggestive weapons I have ever seen—long sliver-thin blades sharper than razors. The Arabs knelt on our chests (their knees were harder and more merciless than wooden clubs) and laid the blades, edge-upward, on the skin of our throats.
“Let them feel!” she ordered.
I felt a sharp cut, and the warm blood trickled down over my jugular to the floor. I knew it was only a skin-cut, but did not pretend to myself I was enjoying the ordeal.
“Now!” she said.
The Arabs stepped away and she came and stood between us, looking down at one and then the other.
“There isn’t a place in Africa,” she said, “that you can hide in where the Sultan’s men can’t find you! There isn’t a British officer in Africa who would believe you if you told what has happened in this room to-night! Yet Lord Montdidier will believe you—he knows you presumably, and certainly he knows me! So tell Lord Montdidier exactly what has happened! Assure him with my compliments that his throat and yours shall be cut as surely as you dare set out after that ivory without signing my agreement first. Tell Lord Montdidier he may be friends with me if he cares to. As his friend I will help make him rich for life! As his enemy, I will make Africa too hot and dangerous to hold him! Let him choose!”
She stepped back and, without troubling to turn away, put powder on her nose and chin.
“Now let them up!” she said.
The Arabs lifted us to our feet.
“Loose them!”
The expert of the three slipped the knots like a wizard doing parlor tricks; but I noticed that the other two held their knives extremely cautiously. We should have been dead men if we had made a pugnacious motion.
“Now you may go! Unless Lord Montdidier agrees with me, the only safety for any of you is away from Africa! Go and tell him! Go!”
“I’ll give you your answer now!” said Will.
“No, you don’t!” said I, remembering Monty’s urgent admonition to tell her nothing and ask no questions. “Come away, Will! There’s nothing to be gained by talking back!”
“Right you are!” he said, laughing like a boy again—this time like a boy whose fight has been broken off without his seeking or consent. Like me, he pulled out a handkerchief and wiped blood from his neck. The sight of his own blood—even such a little trickle as that—has peculiar effect an a man.
“By Jiminy, she has scratched the wrong dog’s ear!” he growled to me as we went to the door together.
“They’re all in there!” I said excitedly, when the door slammed shut behind us. “Hurry down and get me a gun! I’ll hold the door while you run for police and have ’em arrested!”
“Piffle!” he said. “Come on! Three Sultan’s witnesses and two lone white women against us two—come away! Come away!”
Monty and Fred were still out, so we went to our own room.
“I’m wondering,” I said, “what Monty will say.”
“I’m not!” said Will. “I’m not troubling, either! I’m not going to tell Monty a blessed word! See here—she thinks she knows where some o’ that ivory is. Maybe the government of German East Africa is in on the deal, and maybe not; that makes no present difference. She thinks she’s wise. And she has fixed up with the Sultan to have him claim it when found, so’s she’ll get a fat slice of the melon. There’s a scheme on to get the stuff, when who should come on the scene but our little party, and that makes ’em all nervous, ’cause Monty’s a bad man to be up against. Remember: she claimed that she knows Monty and he knows her. She means by that that he knows she’s a desperado, and she thinks he’ll draw the line at a trip that promises murder and blackmail and such like dirty work. So she puts a scare into us with a view to our throwing a scare into him. If I scare any one, it’s going to be that dame herself. I’ll not tell Monty a thing!”
“How about Coutlass the Greek?” said I. “D’you suppose he’s her accomplice?”
“Maybe! One of her dupes perhaps! I suspect she’ll suck him dry of information and cast him off like a lemon rind. I dare bet she’s using him. She can’t use me! Shall you tell Monty?”
“No,” I said. “Not unless we both agreed.”
He nodded. “You and I weren’t born to what they call the purple. We’re no diplomatists; but we get each other’s meaning.”
“Here come Monty and Fred,” said I. “Is my neck still bloody? No, yours doesn’t show.”
We met them at the stairhead, and Monty did not seem to notice anything.
“Fred has composed a song to the moonlight on Zanzibar roadstead while you fellows were merely after-dinner mundane. D’you suppose the landlord ’ud make trouble if we let him sing it?”
“Let’s hope so!” said Will. “I’m itching for a row like they say drovers in Monty’s country itch for mile-stones! Let Fred warble. I’ll fight whoever comes!”
Monty eyed him and me swiftly, but made no comment.
“Bill’s homesick!” said Fred. “The U.S. eagle wants its Bowery! We’ll soothe the fowl with thoughts of other things—where’s the concertina?”
“No, no, Fred, that’ll be too much din!”
Monty made a grab for the instrument, but Fred raised it above his head and brought it down between his knees with chords that crashed like wedding bells. Then he changed to softer, languorous music, and when he had picked out an air to suit his mood, sat down and turned art loose to do her worst.
He has a good voice. If he would only not pull such faces, or make so sure that folk within a dozen blocks can hear him, he might pass for a professional.
“Music suggestive of moonlight!” he said, and began:
“The sentry palms stand motionless. Masts move against the sky.
With measured creak of curving spars dhows gently to the jeweled stars
Rock out a lullaby.
“Silver and black sleeps Zanzibar. The moonlit ripples croon
Soft songs of loves that perfect are, long tales of red-lipped spoils of war,
And you—you smile, you moon!
For I think that beam on the placid sea
That splashes, and spreads, and dips, and gleams,
That dances and glides till it comes to me
Out of infinite sky, is the path of dreams,
And down that lane the memories run
Of all that’s wild beneath the sun!”
“You fellows like that one? Anybody coming? Nobody for Will to fight yet? Too bad! Well—we’ll try again! There’s no chorus. It’s all poetic stuff, too gentle to be yowled by three such cannibals as you! Listen!
<poem>“Old as the moonlit silences, to-night’s loves are the same As when for ivory from far, and cloves and gems of Zanzibar King Solomon’s men came.
“Sinful and still the same roofs lie that knew da Gama’s heel, Those beams that light these sleepy waves looked on when men threw murdered slaves To make the sharks a meal. And I think that beam on the silvered swell That spreads, and splashes, and gleams, and dips, That has shone on the cruel and brave as well, On the trail o’ the slaves and the ivory ships, Is the lane down which the memories run Of all that’s wild beneath the sun.”<poem>
The concertina wailed into a sort of minor dirge and ceased. Fred fastened the catch, and put the instrument away.
“Why don’t you applaud?” he asked.
“Oh, bravo, bravo!” said Will and I together.
Monty looked hard at both of us.
“Strange!” he remarked. “You’re both distracted, and you’ve each got a slight cut over the jugular!”
“Been trying out razors,” said Yerkes.
“Um-m-m!” remarked Monty. “Well—I’m glad it’s no worse. How about bed, eh? Better lock your door—that lady upstairs is what the Germans call gefaehrlich![2] Goo’night!”