Bones, Edgar Wallace [top ten ebook reader txt] 📗

on, "and this is the greatest message of all. Before I speak further you must make a book of my words."

Sanders frowned. It was an unusual request from a native, for his offer to be set down in writing. "You might take a note of this, Hamilton," he said aside, "though why the deuce he wants a note of this made I cannot for the life of me imagine. Go on, messenger," he said more mildly; "for as you see my lord Hamilton makes a book."

"Thus says my lord Mimbimi," resumed the man, "that because of his love for Sandi he would give you the fat white lord whom he has taken, asking for no rods or salt in repayment, but doing this because of his love for Sandi and also because he is a just and a noble man; therefore do I deliver the fat one into your hands."

Sanders gasped.

"Do you speak the truth?" he asked incredulously.

The man nodded his head.

"Where is the fat lord?" asked Sanders. This was no time for ceremony or for polite euphemistic descriptions even of Cabinet Ministers.

"Master, he is in the forest, less than the length of the village from here, I have tied him to a tree."

Sanders raced across the plank and through the Houssa lines, dragging the messenger by the arm, and Hamilton, with a hastily summoned guard, followed. They found Joseph Blowter tied scientifically to a gum-tree, a wedge of wood in his mouth to prevent him speaking, and he was a terribly unhappy man. Hastily the bonds were loosed, and the gag removed, and the groaning Cabinet Minister led, half carried to the _Zaire_.

He recovered sufficiently to take dinner that night, was full of his adventures, inclined perhaps to exaggerate his peril, pardonably exasperated against the man who had led him through so many dangers, real and imaginary. But, above all things, he was grateful to Sanders.

He acknowledged that he had got into his trouble through no fault of the Commissioner.

"I cannot tell you how sorry I am all this has occurred," said Sanders.

It was after dinner, and Mr. Blowter in a spotless white suit--shaved, looking a little more healthy from his enforced exercise, and certainly considerably thinner, was in the mood to take an amused view of his experience.

"One thing I have learnt, Mr. Sanders," he said, "and that is the extraordinary respect in which you are held in this country. I never spoke of you to this infernal rascal but that he bowed low, and all his followers with him; why, they almost worship you!"

If Mr. Blowter had been surprised by this experience no less surprised was Sanders to learn of it.

"This is news to me," he said dryly.

"That is your modesty, my friend," said the Cabinet Minister with a benign smile. "I, at any rate, appreciate the fact that but for your popularity I should have had short shrift from this murderous blackguard."

He went down stream the next morning, the _Zaire_ overcrowded with Houssas.

"I should have liked to have left a party in the forest," said Sanders; "I shall not rest until we get this thief Mimbimi by the ear."

"I should not bother," said Hamilton dryly; "the sobering influence of your name seems to be almost as potent as my Houssas."

"Please do not be sarcastic," said Sanders sharply, he was unduly sensitive on the question of such matters as these. Nevertheless, he was happy at the end of the adventure, though somewhat embarrassed by the telegrams of congratulation which were poured upon him not only from the Administrator but from England.

"If I had done anything to deserve it I would not mind," he said.

"That is the beauty of reward," smiled Hamilton; "if you deserve things you do not get them, if you do not deserve them they come in cartloads, you have to take the thick with the thin. Think of the telegrams which ought to have come and did not."

They took farewell of Mr. Blowter on the beach, the surf-boat waiting to carry him to a mail steamer decorated for the occasion with strings of flags.

"There is one question which I would like to ask you," said Sanders, "and it is one which for some reason I have forgotten to ask before--can you describe Mimbimi to me so that I may locate him? He is quite unknown to us."

Mr. Blowter frowned thoughtfully.

"He is difficult to describe! all natives are alike to me," he said slowly. "He is rather tall, well-made, good-looking for a native, and talkative."

"Talkative!" said Sanders quickly.

"In a way; he can speak a little English," said the Cabinet Minister, "and evidently has some sort of religious training, because he spoke of Mark, and Luke, and the various Apostles as one who had studied possibly at a missionary school."

"Mark and Luke," almost whispered Sanders, a great light dawning upon him. "Thank you very much. I think you said he always bowed when my name was mentioned?"

"Invariably," smiled the Cabinet Minister.

"Thank you, sir." Sanders shook hands.

"O! by the way, Mr. Sanders," said Blowter, turning back from the boat, "I suppose you know that you have been gazetted C.M.G.?"

Sanders flushed red and stammered "C.M.G."

"It is an indifferent honour for one who has rendered such service to the country as you," said the complacent Mr. Blowter profoundly; "but the Government feel that it is the least they can do for you after your unusual effort on my behalf and they have asked me to say to you that they will not be unmindful of your future."

He left Sanders standing as though frozen to the spot.

Hamilton was the first to congratulate him.

"My dear chap, if ever a man deserved the C.M.G. it is you," he said.

It would be absurd to say that Sanders was not pleased. He was certainly not pleased at the method by which it came, but he should have known, being acquainted with the ways of Governments, that this was the reward of cumulative merit. He walked back in silence to the Residency, Hamilton keeping pace by his side.

"By the way, Sanders," he said, "I have just had a pigeon-post from the river--Bosambo is back in the Ochori country. Have you any idea how he arrived there?"

"I think I have," said Sanders, with a grim little smile, "and I think I shall be calling on Bosambo very soon."

But that was a threat he was never destined to put into execution. That same evening came a wire from Bob.

"Your leave is granted: Hamilton is to act as Commissioner in your temporary absence. I am sending Lieutenant Francis Augustus Tibbetts to take charge of Houssas."

"And who the devil is Francis Augustus Tibbetts?" said Sanders and Hamilton with one voice.


CHAPTER I

HAMILTON OF THE HOUSSAS


Sanders turned to the rail and cast a wistful glance at the low-lying shore. He saw one corner of the white Residency, showing through the sparse _isisi_ palm at the end of the big garden--a smudge of green on yellow from this distance.

"I hate going--even for six months," he said.

Hamilton of the Houssas, with laughter in his blue eyes, and his fumed-oak face--lean and wholesome it was--all a-twitch, whistled with difficulty.

"Oh, yes, I shall come back again," said Sanders, answering the question in the tune. "I hope things will go well in my absence."

"How can they go well?" asked Hamilton, gently. "How can the Isisi live, or the Akasava sow his barbarous potatoes, or the sun shine, or the river run when Sandi Sitani is no longer in the land?"

"I wouldn't have worried," Sanders went on, ignoring the insult, "if they'd put a good man in charge; but to give a pudden-headed soldier----"

"We thank you!" bowed Hamilton.

"----with little or no experience----"

"An insolent lie--and scarcely removed from an unqualified lie!" murmured Hamilton.

"To put him in my place!" apostrophized Sanders, tilting back his helmet the better to appeal to the heavens.

"'Orrible! 'Orrible!" said Hamilton; "and now I seem to catch the accusing eye of the chief officer, which means that he wants me to hop. God bless you, old man!"

His sinewy paw caught the other's in a grip that left both hands numb at the finish.

"Keep well," said Sanders in a low voice, his hand on Hamilton's back, as they walked to the gangway. "Watch the Isisi and sit on Bosambo--especially Bosambo, for he is a mighty slippery devil."

"Leave me to deal with Bosambo," said Hamilton firmly, as he skipped down the companion to the big boat that rolled and tumbled under the coarse skin of the ship.

"I _am_ leaving you," said Sanders, with a chuckle.

He watched the Houssa pick a finnicking way to the stern of the boat; saw the solemn faces of his rowmen as they bent their naked backs, gripping their clumsy oars. And to think that they and Hamilton were going back to the familiar life, to the dear full days he knew! Sanders coughed and swore at himself.

"Oh, Sandi!" called the headman of the boat, as she went lumbering over the clear green swell, "remember us, your servants!"

"I will remember, man," said Sanders, a-choke, and turned quickly to his cabin.

Hamilton sat in the stern of the surf-boat, humming a song to himself; but he felt awfully solemn, though in his pocket reposed a commission sealed redly and largely on parchment and addressed to: "Our well-beloved Patrick George Hamilton, Lieutenant, of our 133rd 1st Royal Hertford Regiment. Seconded for service in our 9th Regiment of Houssas--Greeting...."

"Master," said his Kroo servant, who waited his landing, "you lib for dem big house?"

"I lib," said Hamilton.

"Dem big house," was the Residency, in which a temporarily appointed Commissioner must take up his habitation, if he is to preserve the dignity of his office.

"Let us pray!" said Hamilton earnestly, addressing himself to a small snapshot photograph of Sanders, which stood on a side table. "Let us pray that the barbarian of his kindness will sit quietly till you return, my Sanders--for the Lord knows what trouble I'm going to get into before you return!"

The incoming mail brought Francis Augustus Tibbetts, Lieutenant of the Houssas, raw to the land, but as cheerful as the devil--a straight stick of a youth, with hair brushed back from his forehead, a sun-peeled nose, a wonderful collection of baggage, and all the gossip of London.

"I'm afraid you'll find I'm rather an ass, sir," he said, saluting stiffly. "I've only just arrived on the Coast an' I'm simply bubbling over with energy, but I'm rather short in the brain department."

Hamilton, glaring at his subordinate through his monocle, grinned sympathetically.

"I'm not a whale of erudition myself," he confessed. "What is your name, sir?"

"Francis Augustus Tibbetts, sir."

"I shall call you Bones," said Hamilton, decisively.

Lieut. Tibbetts saluted. "They called me Conk at Sandhurst, sir," he suggested.

"Bones!" said Hamilton, definitely.

"Bones it is, skipper," said Mr. Tibbetts; "an' now all this beastly formality is over we'll have a bottle to celebrate things." And a bottle they had.

It was a splendid evening they spent, dining on chicken and palm-oil chop, rice pudding and sweet potatoes. Hamilton sang, "Who wouldn't be a soldier in the Army?" and--by request--in his shaky falsetto baritone, "My heart