The Keepers of the King's Peace, Edgar Wallace [affordable ebook reader .txt] 📗

("Omar will never be dead so long as Bones quotes him," Hamilton once said; "he simply couldn't afford to be dead and leave it to Bones!")

Ali rose, blinking and shivering, for the early morning was very cold, and he had been sleeping under an old padded dressing-gown which Bones had donated.

"Muster all the hands," said Bones, setting his lantern on the deck.

"Sir," said Ali slowly, "the subjects are not at our disposition. Your preliminary instructions [Pg 86]presupposed that you had made necessary arrangements re personnel."

Bones scratched his head.

"Dash my whiskers," he said, in his annoyance, "didn't I tell you that I was taking the honourable lady for a trip? Didn't I tell you, you jolly old slacker, to have everything ready by daybreak? Didn't I issue explicit an' particular instructions about grub?"

"Sir," said Ali, "you didn't."

"Then," said Bones wrathfully, "why the dickens do I think I have?"

"Sir," said Ali, "some subjects, when enjoying refreshing coma, possess delirium, hallucinations, highly imaginative, which dissipate when the subject recovers consciousness, but retain in brain cavity illusory reminiscences."

Bones thrust his face into the other's.

"Do you mean to tell me I dreamt it?" he hissed.

"Sir," said Ali, "self-preservation compels complete acquiescence in your diagnosis."

"You're childish," said Bones.

He gave a few vague instructions in the best Bones manner, and stole up to the dark Residency. He had solemnly promised Sanders that he would rouse the girl without waking up the rest of the house.

They were to go up stream to the Village Island, where the ironworkers of the Akasava had many curious implements to show her. Breakfast was [Pg 87]to be taken on the boat, and they were to return for tiffin.

Overnight she had shown Bones the window of her room, and Hamilton had offered to make a chalk mark on the sash, so there could be no mistaking the situation of the room.

"If you wake me before sunrise, I shall do something I shall be sorry for," he warned Bones. "If you return without straightening the accounts, I shall do something which you will be sorry for."

Bones remembered this as he crept stealthily along the wooden verandah. To make doubly sure, he took off his boots and dropped them with a crash.

"Sh!" said Bones loudly. "Sh, Bones! Not so much noise, you silly old ass!"

He crept softly along the wooden wall and reconnoitred. The middle window was Hamilton's room, the left was Sanders's, the right was Patricia's. He went carefully to the right window and knocked. There was no answer. He knocked again. Still no reply. He knocked loudly.

"Is that you, Bones?" growled Sanders's voice.

Bones gasped.

"Awfully sorry, sir," he whispered agitatedly—"my mistake entirely."

He tiptoed to the left window and rapped smartly. Then he whistled, then he rapped again.

[Pg 88]He heard a bed creak, and turned his head modestly away.

"It's Bones, dear old sister," he said, in his loudest whisper. "Arise, for mornin' in the bowl of light has——"

Hamilton's voice raged at him.

"I knew it was you, you blithering——"

"Dear old officer," began Bones, "awfully sorry! Go to sleep again. Night-night!"

"Go to the devil!" said a muffled voice.

Bones, however, went to the middle window; here he could make no mistake. He knocked authoritatively.

"Hurry up, ma'am," he said; "time is on the wing——"

The sash was flung up, and again Bones confronted the furious Hamilton.

"Sir," said the exasperated Bones, "how the dooce did you get here?"

"Don't you know this room has two windows? I told you last night, you goop! Pat sleeps at the other end of the building. I told you that, too, but you've got a brain like wool!"

"I am obliged to you, sir," said Bones, on his dignity, "for the information. I will not detain you."

Hamilton groped on his dressing-table for a hair-brush.

"Go back to bed, sir," said Bones, "an' don't forget to say your prayers."

He was searching for the window in the other [Pg 89]wing of the Residency, when the girl, who had been up and dressed for a quarter of an hour, came softly behind him and tapped him on the shoulder.

"Wow!" screeched Bones. "Oh, Lord, dear old sister, you gave me the dickens of a fright! Well, let's get along. Thank heavens, we haven't disturbed anybody."

He was followed to the boat with the imprecations of two pyjamaed figures that stood on the stoep and watched his lank body melt in the darkness.

"Send us a wireless when you're coming back!" roared Hamilton.

"Cad!" said Bones, between his teeth.

Ali Abid had not been idle. He had aroused Yoka, the steersman, and Boosoobi, the engineer, and these two men had accepted the unexpected call with the curious readiness which natives show on such occasions, and which suggests that they have pre-knowledge of the summons, and are only waiting the word.

In one of the small cabins Ali had arranged the much-discussed company accounts ready for his lord's attention, and there was every promise of a happy and a profitable day when Yoka rang the engines "ahead," and the Wiggle jerked her way to midstream.

The east had grown pale, there was a murmur from the dark forests on either bank, the timorous chirping or bad-tempered squawk of a bird, a [Pg 90]faint fragrance of burning gumwood from the fishing villages established on the river bank, where, in dancing spots of light, the women were tending their fires.

There is no intermediate stage on the big river between darkness and broad daylight. The stars go out all at once, and the inky sky which serves then becomes a delicate blue. The shadows melt deeper and deeper into the forest, clearly revealing the outlines of the straight-stemmed trees. There is just this interregnum of pearl greyness, a sort of hush-light, which lasts whilst a man counts twenty, before the silver lances of the sun are flashing through the leaves, and the grey veil which blurs the islands to shapeless blotches in a river of dull silver is burnt to nothingness, and the islands are living things of vivid green set in waters of gold.

"The sunrise!" said Bones, and waved his hand to the east with the air of one who was responsible for the miracle.

The girl sat in a deep wicker chair and breathed in the glory and the freshness of the scene. Across the broad river, right ahead of the boat, a flock of parroquets was flying, screeching their raucous chorus. The sun caught their brilliant plumage, and she saw, as it seemed, a rainbow in flight.

"Isn't that wonderful?" she whispered.

Bones peered up at the birds, shading his eyes.

"Just like a jolly old patchwork quilt," he [Pg 91]said. "What a pity they can't talk till you teach 'em! They're awful bad eatin', too, though some fellers say they make a good curry——"

"Oh, look, look!"

The Wiggle was swerving to the southern bank of the river, and two majestic flamingos standing at the water's edge had arrested the girl's attention.

"They're bad eatin', too," said the informative Bones. "The flesh is fishy an' too fat; heron are just the same."

"Haven't you a soul, Bones?" she asked severely.

"A soul, dear ma'am?" Bones asked, in astonishment. "Why, that's my specialty!"

It was a delightful morning for the girl, for Bones had retired to his cabin at her earnest request, and was struggling with the company accounts, and she was left to enjoy the splendour of the day, to watch the iron-red waters piling up against the Wiggle's bows, to feel the cool breezes that swept down from the far-away mountains, and all this without being under the necessity of making conversation with Bones.

That gentleman had a no less profitable morning, for Ali Abid was a methodical and clerkly man, and unearthed the missing thirty-nine dollars in the Compensation Record.

"Thank goodness!" said Bones, relieved. "You're a jolly old accountant, Ali. I'd never have found it."

[Pg 92]"Sir," said Ali, "some subjects, by impetuous application, omit vision of intricate detail. This is due to subjects' lack of concentration."

"Have it your way," said Bones, "but get the statement out for me to copy."

He awoke the girl from a profound reverie—which centred about shy and solemn bachelors who adopted whole nations of murderous children as their own—and proceeded to "take charge."

This implied the noisy issuing of orders which nobody carried out, the manipulation of a telescope, anxious glances at the heavens, deep and penetrating scrutinies of the water, and a promenade back and forward from one side of the launch to the other. Bones called this "pacing the bridge," and invariably carried his telescope tucked under his arm in the process, and, as he had to step over Pat's feet every time, and sometimes didn't, she arrested his nautical wanderings.

"You make me dizzy," she said. "And isn't that the island?"

In the early hours of the afternoon they re-embarked, the capita of the village coming to the beach to see them off.

They brought back with them a collection of spear-heads, gruesome execution knives, elephant swords, and wonder-working steel figures.

"And the lunch was simply lovely, Bones," agreed the girl, as the Wiggle turned her nose [Pg 93]homeward. "Really, you can be quite clever sometimes."

"Dear old Miss Hamilton," said Bones, "you saw me to-day as I really am. The mask was off, and the real Bones, kindly, thoughtful, considerate, an'—if I may use the word without your foundin' any great hope upon it—tender. You saw me free from carkin' care, alert——"

"Go along and finish your accounts, like a good boy," she said. "I'm going to doze."

Doze she did, for it was a warm, dozy afternoon, and the boat was running swiftly and smoothly with the tide. Bones yawned and wrote, copying Ali's elaborate and accurate statement, whilst Ali himself slept contentedly on the top of the cabin. Even the engineer dozed at his post, and only one man was wide awake and watchful—Yoka, whose hands turned the wheel mechanically, whose dark eyes never left the river ahead, with its shoals, its sandbanks, and its snags, known and unknown.

Two miles from headquarters, where the river broadens before it makes its sweep to the sea, there are three islands with narrow passages between. At this season only one such passage—the centre of all—is safe. This is known as "The Passage of the Tree," because all boats, even the Zaire, must pass so close beneath the overhanging boughs of a great lime that the boughs brush their very funnels. Fortunately, the current is never strong here, for the passage is a shallow one. Yoka [Pg 94]felt the boat slowing as he reached shoal water, and brought her nearer to the bank of the island. He had reached the great tree, when a noose dropped over him, tightened about his arms, and, before he could do more than lock the wheel, he was jerked from the boat and left swinging between bough and water.

"O Yoka," chuckled a voice from the bough, "between sunrise and moonset is no long time for a man to be with his wife!"

Bones had finished his account, and was thinking. He thought with his head on his hands, with his eyes shut, and his mouth open, and his thought was accompanied by strange