The Third Murray Leinster

by Murray Leinster

  “We might try, anyway. Some of us would get through. You’ve heard nothing?”

  “No,” I replied. “Just the drums.”

  I went indoors and lay down to sleep. When I surrendered myself to the rhythm of the drumming, it put me quickly into a deep slumber. I knew what the sound meant, that naked savages yelled and danced themselves into a frenzy of hatred against us, but if one allowed it to become so, it was very soothing.

  At one time I half started from my sleep. Some sound within the house aroused me, but a moment later I heard Evan’s footstep on the veranda and recognized the sound of his shoe soles on the flooring. He was humming a little tune to himself. I was reassured and slept again.

  I heard when Arthur relieved Evan, too. Their voices came clearly in to me as they exchanged greetings.

  “Nothing new?” asked Arthur nervously.

  “No. I say, Arthur, the natives are taking a deuced long time to get worked up to the sticking point. I had them pretty thoroughly frightened. Perhaps they’ll hold a big palaver for several days, yell and dance themselves into exhaustion, and let it go at that. I’ve known such things to happen. Our primitive ancestors used to hold hee-hee councils and work off their surplus emotions in the same way. If this juju festival lasts two days more, I think it will peter out and wind up in a palm-wine debauch. Then they’ll come back and be good!”

  “It’s the gorilla I’m worried most about just now,” said Arthur grimly. “The natives are men, and you can anticipate their moves, but there’s no telling what an animal will do, particularly a pongo.”

  Evan laughed. “I had a start just now,” he said. “I heard a queer sound in Biheta’s room.” Biheta was the native girl. “She gave a queer gurgle. I didn’t know what was up, and I went and peered in the door. She was lying there quite still, evidently sound asleep. She must have had a nightmare, but it gave me the creeps for an instant.”

  Arthur seemed to pick up his rifle.

  “Well, I’m going indoors to get some beauty sleep,” said Evan with a yawn. “Cheer up, Arthur. There’s a damn good chance that the natives will just yell themselves hoarse and come peaceably back to work. As long as the drums stay at a distance, we’re all right. But wake all of us if they stop.”

  He came into the house and went into his own room. I dozed off again. When I woke, it was well after daylight. Evan had stuck his head inside my door and was grinning cheerfully.

  “Get up,” he ordered. “Breakfast will be ready in a minute or two.”

  I rolled out of bed and heard him go to the rear of the house. He rasped out an order in the local dialect, but there was no reply. He spoke again, harshly. There was still no reply. I heard him fling open a door. Then he exclaimed aloud.

  “Arthur! Murray! Come here!”

  We went quickly, and into the room in which he was. It was the room assigned to the native girl. Evan was standing over her couch, looking grimly down at the figure lying there.

  The dull features of the girl were twisted into an expression of the most horrible fear. It was appalling that such ultimate terror could show itself upon a human face. The eyes were wide and staring, the mouth was drawn back in a voiceless shriek of utter, despairing fright. The hands were clenched so that the nails bit into the flesh of the palms, and the head was oddly askew. The girl was dead.

  Evan lifted up her shoulders and the head fell back.

  “Neck broken,” he said laconically. “The gorilla!”

  “Great Heaven!” said Arthur desperately, white as a sheet. “What next? How did he get in here? Alicia!” He ran from the room and called hoarsely.

  Alicia’s voice answered instantly. “What’s the matter?”

  “The native girl’s dead, killed by the gorilla during the night. Are you safe?”

  Alicia appeared in person and proved it. She was pale, but composed.

  “Where? What—?”

  I lost the rest of her question. Evan and myself were searching for the gorilla’s means of ingress and exit. The flimsily screened window was intact. The door had been unlocked, but Evan remembered that he had found it closed and had closed it again after peering into the room during the night.

  Was it possible that the monstrous animal possessed the cunning to unlatch the door gently before entering, and then the diabolical forethought to latch it again on leaving? It seemed impossible, but what other explanation was there?

  “He’s been in the house,” said Evan grimly. “Where is he now?”

  I went out and got one of the dogs. We brought it into the room and it sniffed at the dead body. Then we led it about the house. Once we thought it showed some excitement. It sniffed at the door of a room that was used as a storeroom.

  With our rifles at the ready, we flung open the door. No sound came from within. The dog, bristling, walked slowly into the room. Cautiously, we followed. Boxes and bales were scattered all about, but there was no sign of the animal that had killed the native girl. The dog growled, and moved about, stiff-legged, but soon grew puzzled and sniffed perplexedly all over the place. He could find nothing.

  We explored the room thoroughly, though with our hearts in our mouths. Three men and a gorilla in a small store room would be unpleasant for the men, armed though they might be. We could find no niche in which the beast might have hidden, nor any evidence of his presence. After a time the dog gave it up, and lay down on the floor with his tongue lolling out.

  “Do you suppose it could be a black that killed her?” asked Arthur suddenly. “A native would have known about the latch. One of them might have crept into the house and killed the girl in punishment for her having stayed behind when the rest left.”

  “If he did,” I remarked grimly, “it’s safe to say we’d better not touch any of the food he could have got at. Those voodoo poisons are deadly things, and you can bank on it he was prepared to use them.”

  “Hardly likely,” said Evan.

  “It must have been a native,” insisted Arthur anxiously. “No animal would have had the cunning to creep in, kill the poor girl silently, and then creep out again. It must have been one of the blacks.”

  “Gorilla,” said Evan, shaking his head.

  Arthur suddenly looked up.

  “I’ve got it! We’ll take a photo of the girl’s eyes. I saw a cloudy form on the retina. I’ve got an insect camera in my luggage, and can make sure what it was that frightened her that last moment of her life.”

  The expression on the girl’s face had been one of terrible fear. Whatever it was that had killed her, she had seen it before she died—seen and known it for a deadly and horrible thing.

  “Try it,” I urged. “We can’t be sure otherwise. If it was a native, our food is poisoned for a certainty.”

  Arthur went to his room and presently appeared with the queer camera. It was a long box, and evidently the lens was one of great focal length. It took Arthur a long time to adjust it properly. He proposed to take advantage of the fact that the eye of a dead person will retain for from twenty-four to forty-eight hours the impression of what it saw last while living. A great many people think that the shining image on the outer surface of the eye retains that picture, and wonder at it. As a matter of fact the picture is kept on the retina, in the inside of the eyeball. It is extremely difficult to photograph the retina without dissecting the eye, but it can be done—as Arthur proceeded to prove.

  I went outside and searched around the house for possible footprints. After a preliminary search, I got Evan to help me. We could find no single sign of tracks leading toward or away from the house. There had been a heavy dew, and the top layer of the earth was dark and damp. Footprints would inevitably have been shown. When we had completed our search, we stared at each other. Whatever or whoever had killed the native girl must be still in the house. There were absolutely no signs of his having left.

  We went insid
e. Beast or man, something had been in the house, moving quietly and undiscovered despite our watching. It had entered the room occupied by the native girl and had awakened her. She had seen it, and it had been a thing she recognized as frightful. Her horror-stricken face was proof of that. It had been cunning enough to latch the door of the room after the killing. That meant a native. On the other hand, it had broken the girl’s neck, a feat that would require incredible strength. That spoke of a monstrous animal. We heard Arthur shuffling about in his improvised dark room, and the clink of the dishes in which he had mixed his solutions.

  How had the creature—man or beast—reached the house? How had it made its way silently through the rooms at midnight, with one of us awake and on guard? Could it be that one of the servants had remained, hidden in some secret place while the others had left, and now prowled about at night while the rest far off in the bush yelled and howled, drummed and danced, and gradually became ripe to attack us?

  Arthur came out of his dark room with a glass plate in his hand. His face was pale.

  “Look at this,” he said quietly. “If you’ll hold it so the light strikes it diagonally, you’ll see it in its proper lights and shades, instead of reversed.”

  The plate was still wet, where he had just taken it from the fixing bath. We looked. We saw, running aimlessly here and there, curiously like the branches of a tree, little dark lines. Those were the blood vessels that nourished the eye. We gave no heed to them, however. The sight that made both Evan and myself gasp was the strange picture that we saw amid all those little blood vessels.

  There, distorted and hideous, menacing and terrible, we saw the cause of the native girl’s death, and of her terror. We saw the head of a gorilla, with its horrible, discolored fangs protruding from blackened lips in a grimace of unspeakable ferocity.

  CHAPTER V

  AS BY MAGIC.

  “And it’s in the house,” observed Evan grimly. “A full-grown beast will weigh three hundred pounds, and he’d leave plenty of sign when he walked. There are no tracks leading away from here. Murray and I looked.”

  Arthur was ashen as he stared at us. I felt rather shaky myself. The thought of a creature like that in the same house, with Alicia exposed to its insane rage at any moment it might choose to emerge from its hiding place, was appalling.

  The two ladies were in the large front room. I went in and remained with them, my rifle in my hand, while Arthur and Evan went over the house again. They had the dogs with them, and they went into every room and every corner, ready at any instant to face what is possibly the most terrible of all wild beasts at close quarters.

  A full-grown gorilla has easily the strength of six or eight men, and in a confined space firearms would be almost useless. I heard the dogs pattering all through the house, sniffing eagerly everywhere they were taken, but finding nothing. Again they seemed excited at the door of the storeroom, and again they gave up the search after they had entered.

  Arthur rejoined me and Alicia with discouragement on every feature.

  “He isn’t here,” he said wearily, “and he is here. He was here and he wasn’t here. I don’t know where he is!”

  Evan slumped into a chair, though it was noticeable that he kept his rifle in his hands. Through the window came the menacing rumble of the drums from all sides.

  “I think,” said Alicia, with a ghastly attempt at a smile, “I think a fit of hysterics would be a relief.”

  She looked as if she meant it. All of us looked thoroughly on edge. To have hostile drums beating all about you and to realize that a hundred and fifty miles of jungle lie between you and the nearest help is bad enough in itself. When you add to that the consciousness of having hidden in the same house with you a beast almost human in its cunning and fiendish in its hatred, with the face of the devil and the strength of seven men, hysterics seem excusable. She did not give way, however, though we all felt on the verge of hysteria from the strain.

  That day was one of the most terrible I have ever spent. It was not that anything happened to make it terrible. The strain came from the fact that nothing happened. If the beast were hidden about the house, it did not show itself, but we did not hear a board creak or a curtain swish against the window without turning with a start, prepared to face anything and to fire vengefully into a hideous, furry form.

  The bush outside the casa seemed to take on a threatening aspect. The house was built on a small elevation and we looked for miles over the tops of trees, broken here and there by gaps which meant the existence of clearings and open fields. The treetops were dancing from the heat. The sun beat down with fierce intensity. Blasts of hot, humid wind blew upon us and scorched us, but we paid no attention. And always, from the mysterious, unknown and unknowable bush all around us, drums beat and beat and beat tirelessly and ominously.

  When one of us went back to get food for the rest, he went with an automatic held ready in his hand, and the other two were prepared at any instant to hear a shot or the snarl that would mean the reappearance of the gorilla. We were doubly besieged, by the natives without and by the gorilla within. For fear of the natives in the bush, we kept to the house. For fear of the gorilla in the house, we kept to the one room.

  Toward evening insensibly we relaxed. No one could keep to such an intensity of attention as we had maintained during the day. We ate a sketchy meal at nightfall and dragged two cots into one of the rooms adjoining the large front one in which we had stayed all day. We explored the room thoroughly, and Alicia and Mrs. Braymore went in to lie down.

  None of us thought of taking off our clothes. We three men prepared for a night-long vigil. One of us would keep thoroughly awake, and the other two would snatch such sleep as they could.

  Long hours passed. We felt sure that some time during the night the beast would make his appearance. I sat alertly by a window, a dog at my feet, listening to the night sounds outside and the ceaseless drumming that meant the juju councils were debating whether the blacks were sufficiently worked up to attempt an attack.

  Arthur and Evan reclined in their chairs and tried to doze, but there was little rest for any of us. We could think of nothing but the animal we felt sure would make some attempt upon us during the night.

  At one o’clock Evan took my place by the window with the dog at his feet. I sat in one of the easier chairs and tried to relax, but it was impossible. I was suddenly conscious of the overpowering heat and humidity. I was bathed in perspiration.

  “I’ve got to have a drink,” I said abruptly. “I need it.”

  Arthur looked up wearily.

  “We all need a drink,” he said. “It’s in the back of the house, isn’t it?”

  We looked at each other uncertainly.

  “I’ll go,” said Arthur quietly.

  I interposed. “We’ll both go. Here, in the light, Evan can see to shoot if necessary. We’ll use a flash lamp.”

  It was curious that neither of us cared to walk through three rooms and a hallway inside a house we had been in for days. That animal had fretted our nerves badly.

  Slowly and cautiously we made our way through the dark rooms, searching before us with the flash light. I can’t speak for Arthur, but my breath was coming quickly, and I heartily regretted having expressed a wish for a drink. I would not back out now, though.

  We went cautiously and slowly out to the rear of the house. I was in the act of reaching for the siphon of seltzer when we heard the dog scream in pain and a shout from Evan. We rushed madly for the front, our hearts in our mouths, and cursing our absence at such a critical time. When we burst into the room, Evan was dashing out on the veranda, and Alicia was in the act of emerging from the room into which she and Mrs. Braymore had retired. Alicia had an automatic in her hand and, though her face was full of dread, she was evidently prepared to face anything.

  Arthur and myself were quickly by Evan’s side and found him s
taring about the darkness, his rifle half raised.

  “What is it?” Arthur demanded quickly.

  Evan’s breath was coming in gasps. “I heard you two moving,” he said sharply, as one whose nerves are strained to the breaking point. “I heard a noise from your direction. I turned to look at the door and caught a movement at the window by my side. I jerked back and the dog screamed. A long, hairy arm had reached in the window and seized him. He was drawn through the window before I could lift my rifle, and the arm vanished. It’s the gorilla!”

  We listened, but the house was still. A faint moan came from the courtyard, and I flashed the lamp down. The dog, flung bodily from the porch, stirred feebly and stiffened. Its neck was broken. There on the shadowed veranda, with the bright African moon shining pitilessly down upon the hot, dank, fevered earth, the three of us swore nervously while we stood with our rifles pointing in as many directions, hoping, even praying for that monstrous ape to rush upon us.

  “He must have gone somewhere!” said Arthur despairingly. “Where did the beast go?”

  “Into the house, no,” said Evan crisply. “Under the house, perhaps. The roof, perhaps. We’ll see.”

  My legs crawled as I descended the stairs to the ground. The house was raised from the ground on piles, and I could look clear underneath it. The moon was shining down whitely, and I saw the pillars silhouetted against the brightness on the other side. Half a dozen steps convinced me that the animal was not beneath. It would have shown as a dark outline. I tried to see up, over the roof, but could not. The roof slanted just a little and I could not see the center. The house being on an elevation, moreover, prevented me from backing off and getting a clear view of the top. I called up to the other two on the porch.

  “He’s not under the house, but I can’t see the roof. He must be there.”

  The tree trunks of the forest all about us echoed my words strangely. I could see dim white blurs where the faces of the two brothers showed their position. One of them moved oddly, and in a moment I saw that Evan was swinging himself up the pillar before him. He grasped the edge of the roof and drew himself up. In a second he dropped down again. He spoke quietly enough to Arthur, but I heard his voice.