The Keepers of the King's Peace, Edgar Wallace [children's ebooks free online .txt] 📗

great magic."

Bones grinned, for he had that sense of humour which rises superior to all other emotions. "Then you shall try your magic, my man, and lift this ship to deep water."

Wafa was not at all embarrassed. "Lord, this is a greater magic, for it concerns men, and brings to life the dead. For, lord, in this forest is a wonderful tree. Behold!"

He took from his loose-rolled waistband a piece of wood. Bones took it in his hand. It was the size of a corn cob, and had been newly cut, so that the wood was moist with sap. Bones smelt it. There was a faint odour of resin and camphor. Patricia Hamilton smiled. It was so like Bones to be led astray by side issues.

"Where is the wonder, man, that you should drive my ship upon a sandbank! And who are these?" Bones pointed to six canoes, filled with men, approaching the _Zaire_. The man did not answer, but, taking the wood from Bones's hand, pulled a knife from his belt and whittled a shaving.

"Here, lord," he said, "is my fine magic. With this wood I can do many miracles, such as making sick men strong and the strong weak."

Bones heard the canoes bump against the side of the boat, but his mind was occupied with curiosity.

"Thus do I make my magic, Tibbetti," droned Wafa.

He held the knife by the haft in the right hand, and the chip of wood in his left. The point of the knife was towards the white man's heart.

"Bones!" screamed the girl.

Bones jumped aside and struck out as the man lunged. His nobbly fist caught Wafa under the jaw, and the man stumbled and fell. At the same instant there was a yell from the lower deck, the sound of scuffling, and a shot.

Bones jumped for the girl, thrust her into the cabin, sliding the steel door behind him. His two revolvers hung at the head of his bunk, and he slipped them out, gave a glance to see whether they were loaded, and pushed the door.

"Shut the door after me," he breathed.

The bridge deck was deserted, and Bones raced down the ladder to the iron deck. Two Houssas and half a dozen natives lay dead or dying. The remainder of the soldiers were fighting desperately with whatever weapons they found to their hands--for, with characteristic carefulness, they had laid their rifles away in oil, lest the river air rust them--and, save for the sentry, who used a rifle common to all, they were unarmed.

"O dogs!" roared Bones.

The invaders turned and faced the long-barrelled Webleys, and the fight was finished. Later, Wafa came to the bridge with bright steel manacles on his wrist. His companions in the mad adventure sat on the iron deck below, roped leg to leg, and listened with philosophic calm as the Houssa sentry drew lurid pictures of the fate which awaited them.

Bones sat in his deep chair, and the prisoner squatted before him. "You shall tell my lord Sandi why you did this wickedness," he said, "also, Wafa, what evil thought was in your mind."

"Lord," said Wafa cheerfully, "what good comes to me if I speak?" Something about the man's demeanour struck Bones as strange, and he rose and went close to him.

"I see," he said, with a tightened lip. "The palaver is finished."

They led the man away, and the girl, who had been a spectator, asked anxiously: "What is wrong, Bones?"

But the young man shook his head. "The breaking of all that Sanders has worked for," he said bitterly, and the very absence of levity in one whose heart was so young and gay struck a colder chill to the girl's heart than the yells of the warring N'gombi. For Sanders had a big place in Patricia Hamilton's life. In an hour the _Zaire_ was refloated, and was going at full speed down stream.

* * * * *

Sanders held his court in the thatched palaver house between the Houssa guard-room and the little stockade prison at the river's edge--a prison hidden amidst the flowering shrubs and acacia trees.

Wafa was the first to be examined. "Lord," he said, without embarrassment, "I tell you this--that I will not speak of the great wonders which lay in my heart unless you give me a book[6] that I shall go free."

[Footnote 6: A written promise.]

Sanders smiled unpleasantly. "By the Prophet, I say what is true," he began confidentially; and Wafa winced at the oath, for he knew that truth was coming, and truth of a disturbing character. "In this land I govern millions of men," said Sanders, speaking deliberately, "I and two white lords. I govern by fear, Wafa, because there is no love in simple native men, save a love for their own and their bellies."

"Lord, you speak truth," said Wafa, the superior Arab of him responding to the confidence.

"Now, if you make to kill the lord Tibbetti," Sanders went on, "and do your wickedness for secret reasons, must I not discover what is that secret, lest it mean that I lose my hold upon the lands I govern?"

"Lord, that is also true," said Wafa.

"For what is one life more or less," asked Sanders, "a suffering smaller or greater by the side of my millions and their good?"

"Lord, you are Suliman," said Wafa eagerly. "Therefore, if you let me go, who shall be the worse for it?"

Again Sanders smiled, that grim parting of lip to show his white teeth. "Yet you may lie, and, if I let you go, I have neither the truth nor your body. No, Wafa, you shall speak." He rose up from his chair. "To-day you shall go to the Village of Irons," he said; "to-morrow I will come to you, and you shall answer my questions. And, if you will not speak, I shall light a little fire on your chest, and that fire shall not go out except when the breath goes from your body. This palaver is finished."

So they took Wafa away to the Village of Irons, where the evil men of the Territories worked with chains about their ankles for their many sins, and in the morning came Sanders.

"Speak, man," he said.

Wafa stared with an effort of defiance, but his face was twitching, for he saw the soldiers driving pegs into the ground, preparatory to staking him out. "I will speak the truth," he said.

So they took him into a hut, and there Sanders sat with him alone for half an hour; and when the Commissioner came out, his face was drawn and grey. He beckoned to Hamilton, who came forward and saluted. "We will get back to headquarters," he said shortly, and they arrived two hours later.

Sanders sat in the little telegraph office, and the Morse sounder rattled and clacked for half an hour. Other sounders were at work elsewhere, delicate needles vacillated in cable offices, and an Under-Secretary was brought from the House of Commons to the bureau of the Prime Minister to answer a question.

At four o'clock in the afternoon came the message Sanders expected: "London says permit for Corklan forged. Arrest. Take extremest steps. Deal drastically, ruthlessly. Holding in residence three companies African Rifles and mountain battery support you. Good luck. Administration."

Sanders came out of the office, and Bones met him.

"Men all aboard, sir," he reported.

"We'll go," said Sanders.

He met the girl half-way to the quay. "I know it is something very serious," she said quietly; "you have all my thoughts." She put both her hands in his, and he took them. Then, without a word, he left her.

* * * * *

Mr. P. T. Corklan sat before his new hut in the village of Fimini. In that hut--the greatest the N'gombi had ever seen--were stored hundreds of packages all well wrapped and sewn in native cloth.

He was not smoking a cigar, because his stock of cigars was running short, but he was chewing a toothpick, for these, at a pinch, could be improvised. He called to his headman. "Wafa?" he asked.

"Lord, he will come, for he is very cunning," said the headman.

Mr. Corklan grunted. He walked to the edge of the village, where the ground sloped down to a strip of vivid green rushes. "Tell me, how long will this river be full?" he asked.

"Lord, for a moon."

Corklan nodded. Whilst the secret river ran, there was escape for him, for its meandering course would bring him and his rich cargo to Spanish territory and deep water.

His headman waited as though he had something to say. "Lord," he said at last, "the chief of the N'coro village sends this night ten great teeth and a pot."

Corklan nodded. "If we're here, we'll get 'em. I hope we shall be gone."

And then the tragically unexpected happened. A man in white came through the trees towards him, and behind was another white man and a platoon of native soldiers.

"Trouble," said Corklan to himself, and thought the moment was one which called for a cigar.

"Good-morning, Mr. Sanders!" he said cheerfully.

Sanders eyed him in silence.

"This is an unexpected pleasure," said Corklan.

"Corklan, where is your still?" asked Sanders.

The plump man laughed. "You'll find it way back in the forest," he said, "and enough sweet potatoes to distil fifty gallons of spirit--all proof, sir, decimal 1986 specific gravity water extracted by Soemmering's method--in fact, as good as you could get it in England."

Sanders nodded. "I remember now--you're the man that ran the still in the Ashanti country, and got away with the concession."

"That's me," said the other complacently. "P. T. Corklan--I never assume an alias."

Sanders nodded again. "I came past villages," he said, "where every man and almost every woman was drunk. I have seen villages wiped out in drunken fights. I have seen a year's hard work ahead of me. You have corrupted a province in a very short space of time, and, as far as I can judge, you hoped to steal a Government ship and get into neutral territory with the prize you have won by your----"

"Enterprise," said Mr. Corklan obligingly. "You'll have to prove that--about the ship. I am willing to stand any trial you like. There's no law about prohibition--it's one you've made yourself. I brought up the still--that's true--brought it up in sections and fitted it. I've been distilling spirits--that's true----"

"I also saw a faithful servant of Government, one Ali Kano," said Sanders, in a low voice. "He was lying on the bank of this secret river of yours with two revolver bullets in him."

"The nigger was spying on me, and I shot him," explained Corklan.

"I understand," said Sanders. And then, after a little pause: "Will you be hung or shot?"

The cigar dropped from the man's mouth. "Hey?" he said hoarsely. "You--you can't--do that--for making a drop of liquor--for niggers!"

"For murdering a servant of the State," corrected Sanders. "But, if it is any consolation to you,