The Arab paused for a moment and looked around. There were no sentinels at the fence gate, no watchmen near the jetty and the warehouses. It was more evident than ever that no bush messages had been sent, that his coming was unexpected, and that the black employees of Double-Dee, in the absence of a master, were devoting themselves to a lengthy and truly African siesta. One of the warehouses was gaping wide open.
The Arab frowned. A great rage rose in his throat. For, true son of Shem, he was a greedy man; a hard businessman who hated waste worse than he hated Shaitan himself.
He crossed the yard silently, noiselessly, and stopped in front of the agency bungalow.
A little shudder ran through him. Beyond the fence he could see the forest standing out spectrally in the dazzling moonlight, and through the stir of the leaves and the refuse, blown about by some vagabond wind of the night, was the mystery, the mad, amazing stillness of the Dark Continent, touching his heart with clay-cold fingers.
Next to the bungalow the medicine-house loomed up, large, flat, low.
The Arab measured the distance between the two houses with his eye. Just a few yards…enough to carry a dead body across and inside. But what then? The bush-detective had investigated the place. He was a first-class man—he would have found some sort of trace if murder had been committed in that hut. And, after all, there were always medicine men in the north, he thought; there were always medicine-houses in the tradingstations.
Yet there was some sort of connection between this umlino and the murder—the disappearance—of the three agents. Of that he was positive. For there was that dead pig with the red blanket who had come down the river to whisper evil words to the peaceful Warangas. There was the memory of things he knew—of former risings, of massacres, revolts, of fire and flame sweeping through the land…and always preceded by the brewing of miracles, the heathenish craft of some ochresmeared umlino.
He stared at the medicine-hut. A faint light shone through its tightly-woven rush walls.
“O Allah, Lord of Daytime, protect me against the darkness of the night when it overtaketh me!” he whispered. Then, as was his wont, he snapped his fingers rapidly to ward against unspoken evil, and touched reverently the little blue necklace, protection against unclean spirits, which was strung around his neck.
But still the atmosphere oppressed him horribly—a commingling of hatred and contempt for these unbelieving savages, but also of despair and red terror. He had been a fool to come up here alone, he said to himself.
Then he got a hold on his nerves.
He walked up to the medicine-hut with firm steps, and pushed open the door unceremoniously.
With a swing of the door, a heavy rush of air poured from the interior of the building and hit him square in the chest, with almost physical force. Momentarily he felt sick, dazed. For the column of air which came from the building was thick, smoky, fetid—a mixture of oiled, perspiring bodies and burning torches.
He steadied himself and looked.
The interior of the medicine-hut, seen dimly through a reddish fuliginous haze which swirled up to the low ceiling with opalescent tongues, was a sea of naked bodies, black, shiny, supple. Hundreds of natives knelt there, close together, with curved backs, foreheads and outstretched hands touching the ground.
They had neither seen nor heard his entry.
They were swaying rhythmically from side to side with all the hysterical frenzy of the African in moments of supreme religious exaltation; mumbling an amazing, staccato hymn of guttural, clicking words which resembled no human language; with now and then a sharply-defined pause, followed by a deep, heaving murmur, like the response of some satanic litany.
At the farther end of the hut were five man-size idols, roughly shaped to resemble human figures, and covered with red clay: the usual ju-jus of the river tribes.
All this Mahmoud Daud perceived in the flash of a moment; and in the flash of the same moment something touched him. It touched none of his five senses; neither hearing, nor smell, nor vision, nor taste, nor touch itself; it touched a sixth sense, as it were, with a faint flavor of unspeakable death, an aroma of torture and agony.
But he had his wits about him. And when, the very next moment, from behind one of the ju-jus, the umlino appeared with a sharp jingle and flash of barbarous ornaments, the Arab was his old, suave self.
“Greetings, medicine man of the river tribes!” he said in a loud, sonorous voice.
His words seemed to galvanize the worshipers. They jumped up, turned, saw the intruder. There were savage, throaty shouts; an ominous rattling of spears and brandishing of broad-bladed daggers. Momentarily they surged forward, a solid black phalanx, with unthinking, elemental force.
Then they stopped. They hesitated. They turned and looked at the umlino, as if asking silently for advice.
And skillfully Mahmoud Daud used the short interval. He took a step forward, a smile on his grave, dark face.
“Greetings, my people!” he said, extending both his hands in a ceremonious salaam.
Then, with slow, stately step, he walked up to them. They gave way instinctively.
Here and there he recognized a man in the crowd, and addressed him by name:
“Ho, Lakaga! Ho, L’wana! Ho, son of Asafi!”
The men gave greetings in return.
A few seconds later he found himself face to face with the medicine man, half-a-dozen feet from the clay-covered ju-jus.
“Greetings, umlino!” he said once more.
The umlino looked at him. A savage glint was in his rolling eyes. But at once it gave way to an expression of deep cunning.
“Greetings, master!” he replied courteously, and bowed.
Mahmoud Daud looked at him. Fanatic, contemptuous of pagan faith, he had never paid much attention to the medicine men who lived near the kraals and sponged on the people of Double—Dee. But even so, he was positive that this was a new medicine man.
At once, with the sharp, quick perception of a photographic shutter, his mind received and registered the fact that this man did not belong to any of the tribes who had their kraals near the station of Grand L’Popo Basin. He came doubtless from farther inland. He looked different from the others.
His hair had been carefully trained in the shape of a helmet, and was ornamented with antelope horns, which stood out on both sides. He wore many-coiled brass-wire anklets which reached from his feet to his knees, and broad brass bracelets on both his forearms. His body was smeared with ochre, while his face was plastered with white and striped with crimson.
Innumerable necklaces of beads were strung around his massive throat, and from his girdle hung a large collection of witch-charms, which flittered and rattled with every gesture and movement. There was something ominous, something savagely superb in the poise of his huge, muscular body.
Mahmoud Daud said to himself that this medicine man was not the ordinary variety of sponger, feeding on the superstitions and fears of the blacks. This was a rich man, as wealth goes in Africa, wearing about his person the value of several elephant tusks.
In his right hand he carried an ebony staff, tipped with gold, from which swung a round something which looked at first like a dried gourd, and which Daud recognized with a little shiver as a human head, scientifically preserved and shriveled.
No, no;…this was not an ordinary medicine man who could be bullied or bribed. This was a man after the pattern of Chakka and Lobengula; a man of cunning and craft, to be met with cunning and craft.
* * * *
When Mahmoud Daud spoke, it was with hearty sincerity.
“I have heard tell of thy great craft, umlino,” he said, squatting down on his haunches with negligent grace and inviting the other to do likewise. “The fame of—”
Suddenly he stopped; it seemed to him that somewhere, quite near, a muffled voice was whispering his name—half-articulate, thick, strangled. At once he dismissed the idea as chimerical. The impression, his sudden silence had only lasted the merest
fraction of a second, and so he continued practically in the same breath.
“The fame of thy wisdom has reached the coast. Behold: I have come to see.”
The medicine man replied with the same hearty sincerity, parrying easily.
“Thy words are as the sweet winds of night moving gently through the dreadful hours. Thanks! Yet have I heard tell that thou art a Moslem, a follower of the One-God faith, despising the craft of our lodges, and proselytizing among the kraals.”
The Arab smiled. For a moment he felt nonplused. He did not know how to reply. The other’s thrust had gone home. For, true Arab, he was renowned no less for his business acumen as for his missionary zeal—which, if the truth be told, he helped along with fluent abuse and generous applications of the sjambok.
So he was silent for a few seconds, and looked into the room.
The negroes were massing around close. They were torn between their fear of Mahmoud Ali Daud and the superstitious awe they felt for the medicine man. Somehow, in the back-cells of their savage, atrophied brains, they realized that a decision would be demanded of them presently. Subconsciously they feared it.
So they spoke among themselves, with a confused utterance which came in bursts of uneven strength, with unexpected pauses and throaty yells; a short interval of palpable silence, then again shrill voices leaping into tumultuous shouts.
The Arab knew that he was on the brink of a catastrophe. One wrong word, one wrong gesture, and the avalanche of black bodies would be about him, killing, crushing. So he sat absolutely still, watching beneath lowered eyelids without betraying that he was doing so by the slightest nervous twitching.
Then, very suddenly, he seemed to hear again his name being whispered somewhere close by—by the same thick, strangled voice.
At the same moment he felt that some definite intelligence was focused upon him, an intelligence which held both an entreaty and a demand. It did not come from the brain of the medicine man, nor from any one of the blacks in the crowd. It was some superior intelligence which was trying to communicate with him. It made him nervous, uneasy. He endeavored to force the belief on himself that it was a chimera of his imagination.
But still the impression remained.
The medicine man was talking to him. But he hardly heard the words. Obeying the prompting of the bodiless intelligence, he shifted the least little bit on his supple haunches, so that he was directly face-to-face with the clay covered ju-jus.
Immediately the sensation gained in strength and positiveness. He became aware of one who watched him, one who wanted to talk to him.
He looked narrowly at the ju-jus from underneath his lowered eyelids. They stood in a row. The farthest two were quite crude. Then he noticed, with a little shudder of revulsion, that the other three were startlingly lifelike. Their bodies and arms and legs, beneath the thick covering of red clay, were sculptured and fashioned with extreme skill. Never before had he seen such ju-jus, and he knew Africa from Coast to Coast.
Suddenly the fantastic words of the dead Makupo came back to his memory…“clay-gods who talk, talk.”…Merciful Allah! was there then really such a thing as witchcraft in this stinking, accurst land?
He was about to dismiss the thought with a snapping of the fingers, a mumbled prayer to his favorite Moslem saint, when again he heard his name whispered…faint, muffled, eerie, uncanny. This time there was no doubt of it, and it brought him up rigid, tense, with fists clenched, with eyes glaring. But he controlled himself almost immediately, before the medicine man, who was narrowly watching him, could have noticed it.
He smiled at the umlino. He spoke with a calm, even voice, while at the same time his brain was rapidly working in a different direction.
“Thou hast given true talk, umlino,” he said. “My faith is indeed the One-God faith, a tree, whose root is firm, whose branches are spreading, whose shade is perpetual. A Syyed am I, and a Moslem, a follower of the True Prophet, taking refuge with Allah from Shaitan the Stoned, the Father of Lies. Subhan’ Allah! A learned man did I think myself when I studied Hadis and Tafsir in the university of Al-Azhar, observing closely the written precepts of the great teachers of the Abu Hanifah sect. Wah! The father and mother of learning and wisdom did I consider myself. Proudly did I enlarge my turban. Ay wa’llahi!”
The medicine man smiled thinly, arrogantly.
“Then, why come here, to the lodge of darkness?”
Again Mahmoud Daud’s reply was suave and soft, while his brain was working feverishly. He stared intently at the clay-covered ju-ju which was directly in front of him.
“Because my mind has mirrored a faint glimmering of a new truth…a faint glimmering of the real truth,” he repeated with peculiar emphasis, still staring beyond the squatting medicine man at the ju-ju, and imperceptibly nodding his head.
Even as he spoke he knew that he had solved the problem which had brought him here. Gradually his voice gathered volume and incisiveness.
“Because my groping feet have led me to the edge of mysteries, because, no longer blinded by the veil of my intolerance, I have come to thy feet, O umlino, humbly, as a searcher, a disciple.”
He rose. Now or never, he said to himself. Once more he stared raptly at the foremost ju-ju; then he turned and addressed the negroes.
“Listen to me, men of the river tribes! For years have I been your master, averting calamity with the hand of kindness and generosity; giving fair prices for rubber and ivory; giving with open hands when your crops were parched; giving yet again when your broad-horned cattle died of the black fever. Who can deny this?”
“Yes,” a clicking, high-pitched voice; gave answer. “It is true talk, indeed.”
“True—true—” The black, swaying mass of humanity took up the words, like a Greek chorus.
The Arab continued:
“I have spoken to you of my faith, the faith of Islam, when I believed that it was the true path to salvation. Then,” he lowered his voice with dramatic intent, “then rumor came to me from the distance of the new mysteries. At first I doubted. I ridiculed. I did not believe. But the rumor grew. It echoed in the ears of my soul—stark, portentous, immutable. It spoke to me at night, sighing on the wings of the wind which came from the upland. It drew me, drew me! Thus I came here—to see—ay, to hear!”
He paused for a breathless moment. Then he shot out the next words.
“I, also, am a searcher in the lodges. I came here to do worship before the gods—the red gods who talk, talk!”
The crowd moaned and shivered. Again the medicine man jumped forward. He lifted his ebony stick with a threatening gesture. But the Arab continued without a tremor.
“Thrice tonight, as I was sitting here exchanging courteous greetings with the umlino, did I hear the gods talk—faintly, faintly—and they called me by name!”
“A lie! A lie!” shrieked the medicine man. “A blasphemous lie! Kill him! Kill—kill—”
There was an uneasy movement in the crowd. They surged forward in a solid body, with an ominous rattling of spears. But the Arab lifted his hands above his head and spoke rapidly.
“Not a lie, but the truth! Ask the gods—ask them!”
Sudden, brown silence fell over the temple. Then, very faint, half-articulate, strangled, a voice came from the first ju-ju.
“Mahmoud Ali Daud!” and again with a peculiar low sob. “Mahmoud—”
The crowd surged back, toward the door. Men were knocked down in the wild flight. They pushed each other. They trampled on each other. There were yells of entreaty and despair, and once a sharper yell as an assegai struck home.
But again the Arab spoke to them.
“Fear not, my people. The gods will not harm you. For I, also, am a searcher. The truth has been revealed to me. Listen, listen!”
Once more the crowd stopped and turned. Mahmoud Daud continued in a lower key.
“Do you remember the disappearance of my three servants, my three white servants, one after the other, within four months
?”
“Yes—yes—” came the shivering chorus.
“Good! Leave the hut, and return in an hour. For the gods, being kind gods, have decided to send them back to life, to work once more for me, to rule once more in my name over the river tribes. Now go, go!”
There was a stampede toward the door, and a few seconds later the medicine man and the Arab stood facing each other. Daud smiled.
“Thou knowest, and I know, oh dog! Thou didst kidnap the three white men. Thou didst gag them and cover their bodies with clay, and once in a while give them a little food. And, when they moaned with the great pain, thou didst tell these blacks that the gods talked, talked—eh?”
The medicine man smiled in his turn.
“True, my master. And how didst thou discover the truth?”
“Because I have seen ju-jus a plenty—but never before have I seen a ju-ju with human eyes!”
There was a short silence. The Arab continued:
“Thou wilt help me to release these men from their clay prisons. Also wilt thou tell the people of Grand L’Popo Basin that in the future it is I, Mahmoud Ali Daud, who is the beloved of the gods, the maker of many miracles.” Then, half to himself: “It should be worth the value of much rubber, of many ivory tusks.”
The medicine man smiled craftily.
“To listen is to obey, master! But my life—is it safe?”
“It is for thee to choose, dog and son of dogs! Either—this—” and he slipped his broad Arab dagger from the voluminous folds of his burnoose, “or thou wilt continue to make medicine. But thou wilt make it in the uplands, in the kraals of the hinterland.” He smiled. “And thou wilt make it as a hired servant, a paid servant, of my firm of Donachie & Daud, of Double-Dee!… Hast thou chosen?”
“Yes, master,” the medicine man replied. “I shall work for thee and thy partner.”
The Arab slipped the dagger back into the folds of his burnoose.
“Mashallah!” he said. “Thou wilt make a shrewd servant.”
The Achmed Abdullah Megapack Page 39