“Well,” he said slowly. “They’ve gone.”
Alicia, for the first time, gave way. She burst into sobs, against which she struggled bravely.
“The gorilla!” I snapped, fearful lest I too give way.
Evan shook his head. “The blacks had crept up to and filled the servants’ quarters during the night. I suppose that’s why the dogs were restless. When they made a rush, they dashed out from there and I couldn’t stop them. They were inside, and I was just about gone when the gorilla appeared from nowhere. I dare say I shouted, and then the beast made for the blacks. I suppose it was as frightened as they were, but it charged them, screaming with rage, and they ran. It got one of them. The poor devil is out there now. I’d been knocked down and one of the blacks was just about to finish me off when the brute appeared.”
“Where is it now?”
Evan shook his head again. “I don’t know where it went. It was going for the blacks.”
Alicia stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth and tried desperately to get a grip on herself again.
“We’ll go and look out at the back,” said Arthur grimly. “You stay here, Evan.”
We went cautiously out toward the rear. There lay one of the natives with his neck broken, an expression of infinite horror on his face. Others lay in twisted attitudes about the place, gaping wounds from the buckshot at close range showing how desperately Evan had fought. Of the gorilla there was no sign. We searched the place thoroughly, but found nothing.
We returned to the others, a curious lethargy settling upon us. We had been at such high tension for so long that it was impossible to keep keyed up. I, for one, felt an almost-overpowering desire to sleep. Alicia had recovered her composure by now and was trying to bandage Evan’s hand. He was indifferently submitting, but after she had finished, he looked at it and took the bandage off, substituting a mere strip of adhesive for the many turns of the cloth.
“I can handle my rifle like this,” he said dully.
Mrs. Braymore made coffee and we drank it in silence. Presently Arthur motioned to the women to leave the room and began to tug at the bodies lying on the floor. It was absurd for us to think of trying to bury them. He dragged them to the edge of the veranda and dropped them over the edge to the ground below. He moved jerkily, almost like a man asleep.
“No need to do that,” said Evan suddenly, a little while later.
Arthur stopped and looked at him questioningly.
“We’ll have to start for the coast,” Evan explained uninterestedly. “We can’t stick it out here. The natives won’t bother us now. The fight’s taken out of them.”
“But the gorilla?”
“Have to chance it,” said Evan slowly. “There’s nothing else to do.”
“He’ll get us within the first ten miles,” I remarked, speaking with difficulty because of the peculiar lethargy that affected us all. “You know how he trailed Arthur.”
There was a moment’s silence, then Arthur automatically resumed his task. Alicia came into the room and silently gave us something to eat. Arthur stopped dumbly and began to chew on his food, forgetting the grisly labor he had been performing but a moment before.
“We can’t start today, anyway,” he said after a little. “We’ve got to rest. We’re all in bad shape and we’ve two weeks’ travel before we reach another white man’s house.”
Evan made some reply, but I did not catch it. I fell asleep with food in my hands and slept like a dead man for hours. Alicia waked me at noon to eat again.
All that day we were possessed by a peculiar indifference, the result of the reaction from the tension at which we had lived for so many days. I woke with a start at three o’clock, hearing the dogs bark. Evan came slowly into the room.
“I let the dogs loose,” he said, noticing my expression. “They were whining.”
“We’ll need them tonight, in case the beast comes back.” I rose stiffly and went back to douse my head with water. It roused me a little and, after a cup of coffee, I joined the other two. We were all languid and tired, but thoroughly awake now.
“Of course we can’t stay on here,” Arthur was admitting, “but we wouldn’t have one chance in a hundred to make it through the jungle with that ape following us. You’ve seen how it manages to reach the house here.”
“I’ve figured,” said Evan thoughtfully, “that it was in the fringe of bush, and when the drums began to close in from three sides, it was flushed out and came on to hide here in or about the house. It had hidden here before.”
“Probably,” Arthur agreed. “But that doesn’t say how we’re going to elude it during a journey of a hundred and fifty miles without carriers.”
Evan threw out his hands. “But what are we going to do?” He appealed to me. “What do you think, Murray?”
“If we stay here,” I reasoned, “either we’ll get him or he’ll get us. If we go, he’ll probably get one or more of us and we may get him. But we can’t stay here. The only thing I can think of is that we had better try for him tonight. With the dogs to warn us, we’ll have a better chance than before. If he doesn’t come tonight, try tomorrow night. Hang on here as long as we dare and then, if we must, try the trail. If we could strike a caravan coming down from the Hungry Country, now—”
Evan shook his head. “I haven’t been very hospitable to the Portuguese traders,” he remarked. “They steal my slaves and sell them in Ticao. They don’t turn off the main slave trail to my villages any more.”
We were, silent for a moment or two.
“Are there any of the rest barricades any short distance away?” asked Arthur. “We might reach one of them and wait for a caravan to come.”
From time to time along the great slave trail from the interior, you will find big inclosures made of tree trunks and filled with grass huts. They were originally built for halting places for the caravans that go up and down from beyond the Hungry Country. Of course they are in ill repair because of the attacks of insects and rot upon dead timber in that climate, but the carriers feel safer in them after nightfall, and the slave traders find them convenient to avoid possible attempts to escape off the part of the “voluntary labor recruits” they are escorting to the coast.
“We might try,” I said doubtfully. “Frankly, I think the beast would have as much chance at us there as here. If we happened on a caravan right away, though, it would help.”
“Why doesn’t the damned thing go away?” Arthur looked at us with something of dread in his eyes. “I shot its mate four hundred miles away, up in the Kongo. It trailed me those four hundred miles, making attempt after attempt on me. I wounded it once, and got a fair shot at it two weeks before Murray brought Alicia and Mrs. Braymore here. I thought I had killed it then. It went off through the trees as if it were badly injured. I’d made sure it was dead.”
He began to pace up and down the room nervously.
“I’ve never known one so far from Kongo before,” I said, in an attempt to encourage him. “You know what animals are. They’ll stick at a thing for an amazing length of time and then will drop it like a shot. He may get a touch of homesickness any day and swing off to the north again.”
“If he only would!” Arthur burst out. “I’m beginning to feel that he’s going to get me yet. Something tells me he’s going to get me.”
“Nonsense,” said Evan heartily. “Get a grip on yourself, old man.”
“If he killed me,” Arthur muttered morosely, “he’d be satisfied. I’m the one he’s after. If he killed me, he might go off and leave the rest of you in peace.”
“Don’t be an ass, Arthur,” I told him sharply. “The beast can’t distinguish between white men. He’d be just as apt to try to wipe out the lot of us, and I have a strong objection to being wiped out.”
Arthur walked out on the veranda and stood there, leaning against the side of the house and
staring moodily off into the bush. Evan looked at me significantly.
“Nerves,” he said quietly. “I feel the same way, but I’m trying not to show it. I’ll go and round up the dogs. I have a feeling that something is due to happen tonight.”
I went out to the back. Alicia saw me passing her door and joined me, leaving Mrs. Braymore behind.
“Have you decided on your course?” she asked in a low voice. “You know both of us are willing to do anything you think wise. You mustn’t hold back for fear we may not be able to stand hardships.”
I shook my head. “The only thing we can do,” I said wearily, “is hope the beast turns up tonight and that we kill him.”
Alicia put out her hand and let it rest on my shoulder in comradely fashion.
“Please don’t be discouraged,” she said urgently. “We’ve stood so much, surely we can endure a little more.”
I tried to smile. “We’ll stick it out. It must be much harder for you and Mrs. Braymore.”
“Don’t worry about us.” Alicia shook her head decidedly. “It’s the waiting for the beast to come that worries you. We’re growing accustomed to grisly sights, but you’ll never be used to just waiting. Why, I’ve got so I can look at those poor natives and not even shiver.”
My eyes followed her glance. I smiled wryly. “It isn’t pleasant for me to look at that particular native,” I remarked. “He was one of my carriers. I bought and freed him when he was to be used for food—a tribe in the interior. All my boys joined Evan’s blacks.”
Alicia looked at me with her large eyes. “Let’s go and talk to Arthur,” she said suddenly. “He needs cheering as much as you do.”
The veranda of the casa went all the way around it. Arthur, when I had seen him, was leaning against the wall before the main door. Alicia and I walked around the outside.
“I didn’t thank you for shooting down the hole in the flooring—” I began, then quickly snapped my hand to the pistol at my belt.
From inside the house had come a snarl! Before I could take another step, I heard a queer, gurgling gasp and a sickening crack. In a second I had bolted around the corner of the casa, rushing madly, my automatic in my hand. Arthur had been leaning against the wall near one of the windows. Now he was crumpling limply to the floor, while the curtains behind him were still fluttering where the arms that had broken his neck had beat jerked back. I dashed through the door, absolutely desperate and utterly reckless. A dark form was bounding down the hall that led to the rear. A frightened cry came from the room in which Mrs. Braymore had been left. I ran down the passageway, furious and desperate, I heard a door slam shut—the door of the storeroom! I made for it, stumbled, and fell into the room on all fours.
Evan Graham was in the room, trying to stuff a furry something into an open box! As I sprawled on the floor he whirled and saw me. From his lips issued the identical snarl I had heard five seconds before, and he raised his automatic pistol and fired!
CHAPTER IX
THE GORILLA’S SCREAM.
I came slowly back to consciousness, feeling weak and giddy. I essayed to move and found I could not. I opened my eyes. Despite the gathering darkness, I discovered that I was seated in a chair in the large room of the casa. A second attempt to move disclosed the fact that I was tied tightly.
Alicia stared at me dumbly from an opposite chair, and Mrs. Braymore sat in one corner, her face white and set and her eyes full of horror. Evan was standing at his ease by the doorway, smoking with evident enjoyment.
In one of his hands he held a shaggy object that for some seconds held, weakly, my half-focused attention. It was a baglike object, that yet seemed to contain a framework. Not yet awake to full consciousness, I saw that it was strangely animal. It was a mask in the perfect, horrible likeness of a gorilla.
Evan turned and saw my eyes open. “Well, Murray, old top,” he said amiably. “You caught me, didn’t you?”
My throat was dry and parched, and my shoulder ached abominably. “What the devil?” I croaked weakly.
“Give him some water, Alicia,” said Evan cheerfully. “He’s thirsty.”
Alicia gave me water. “He has my pistol,” she whispered despairingly as she bent over me.
Full consciousness returned with a jerk. Evan had shot me. Evan had snarled at me as he fired. Evan—why Evan must have killed Arthur! He grinned approvingly as he saw me straighten in an instinctive effort to break my bonds.
“Ah, feeling better,” he commented. “I’m sorry you caught me. I’d have liked to take you back to Ticao and hear you tell the tale of this week’s work of ours. You always were a great one for telling tales, Murray.”
He puffed luxuriously at his cigarette and looked at the gathering darkness outside.
“You’re a connoisseur of tales, Murray, so I think I’ll tell you one. I’m going off to get in touch with my natives in a little while, as soon as it’s dark, but I’ve a few minutes to spare and might as well be pleasant during that little while. I’m afraid I’ll have to be unpleasant later on, you know.”
“I didn’t know.”
I have never found that losing one’s head is an advantage under any circumstances, so I prepared to make an effort to keep mine. Evan waved his hand airily.
“Oh, I’m going to be put to the unpleasant necessity of disposing of you and Mrs. Braymore. No one could regret it more than I do, but the necessity is there. You see, I was the gorilla.” He indicated the gorilla mask. “And it wouldn’t do for you to tell that story about.”
“I can believe it,” I admitted. My head was spinning, but I tried to follow what he was saying in the hope of finding something therein to my own advantage.
“You understand, of course,” said Evan cheerfully, “that I don’t mean that I was the beast whose mate Arthur so inconsiderately shot, or the one who followed his caravan all the way here from the Kongo. That was another gorilla altogether. I simply happen to be the one that hung about the house here. Arthur shot the other one two weeks before you came. It got away, but he must have wounded it fatally. Otherwise it would have turned up long before. I’ll admit that I was a little nervous about the animal at first, but I soon realized that it must be dead. I saw to it that Arthur was not similarly convinced, however. I had already made more or less of a plan. You know about my slaves?”
“No,” I said rather weakly. I had lost a lot of blood.
“I’d knocked about the West Coast for quite a while before I came here.” Evan stopped and drew up a chair. He sat down comfortably. “I had learned the secret of controlling natives. As you know, that secret is fear. I knew that if I could get, say, a village full of them thoroughly afraid of me, they would be to all practical purposes my slaves. Normal means of frightening them would have the disadvantage of not frightening them too much to invoke juju to get rid of me. And juju, invoked against a white man, means poison. The obvious solution was to frighten them by means of the very juju they would use against me.”
“Poison?” I asked. My head was spinning, but I tried not to show it.
“No.” Evan puffed casually upon his cigarette. “Poison would be the result of the juju. I went at the fountain head. Kongo natives are deadly afraid of gorillas, but just a little way from gorilla country, the natives fear them vastly more than where familiarity has had time to breed, if not contempt, at least some measure of accustomedness. The natives here would be horribly afraid of them. I made my preparations accordingly. Having bribed his excellency the colonial governor, and having had this mask made and learned how to imitate to a fair degree of perfection the cries of the beasts, I came out here. Have you seen my mask?”
He held it out for me to see, even going so far as to strike a light so that I might examine the thing more closely. He held it before my eyes and turned it about. It was an amazingly perfect bit of work, perhaps larger than a normal skull of one of the beasts would be.
For all their size, their skulls are comparatively small. It was lifelike to a surprising degree. The disgustingly human, and yet unhuman ears stuck out against the skull. The jaw protruded in truly simian fashion, and the caked, black lips were drawn back from discolored fangs in a grimace of almost unimaginable ferocity. The broad, flat nostrils were distended in rage, and the eyeholes of the mask sank deep back below the low and beetling forehead. If small, glittering eyes had shone evilly from those now blank holes, I would have been tempted to believe that a live beast was before me.
“Good work, isn’t it?” asked Evan. “I came out here with my four overseers, wandered into the village, and metamorphosed myself before the villagers’ eyes into a gorilla clad as a man, which at one moment spoke with the voice of a man, ordering them to obey, and the next screamed at them in tones of one of the monstrous apes of which they were in such dread. I built myself this casa, demanded tribute of gums and produce, started a small juju house off in a small clearing, and in a couple of weeks had established myself as a deity, demanding to be worshiped and sacrificed to, exacting all sorts of tribute, and so on. Very profitable, I assure you.
“They soon believed that I could change myself into a gorilla at will and respected me immensely. I took care to throw a few scares into them. In Japan, some years ago, I learned a small and very elemental jujutsu trick which requires very little strength to break a man’s neck. A few broken necks, a few snarls, a scream or so of rage, and they’d no more think of crossing my will than they’d think of jumping into the fires of hell.”
“They attacked the house,” I remarked, trying behind my back to wriggle one of my hands free from the bonds that held it fast.
“They’ll suffer for that.” Evan was smiling, but there was something in his tone that made me feel slightly cold. “They’ll suffer for that. I told my juju priests to take the people off into the woods and keep them busy with a juju council until I had finished my business with you. They forced your boys to go with them. They simply got out of hand, that’s all. The witch doctor you and Arthur shot was coming to tell me that they were out of control. If I had gone and appeared among them, wearing my gorilla mask, and snarled at them once, they would have been like lambs. I simply couldn’t, get away from you people without making you suspicious.”
The Third Murray Leinster Page 35