by Roy Vickers
He gulped down half his whisky and sat for a moment gazing into the fire.
“Jim, old man,” he said at length, “I’ve had awful news.”
“Not connected with Miss Glanville?” I asked.
“In a way, yes. It’s broken off, but there’s worse than that—far worse. I can hardly realize it; I feel numbed at present; it’s too horrible. You remember that when you and I were at Winchester together my father was killed during the Matabele War?”
I nodded.
“Well,” continued Jack, “I heard today that he was not killed by the Matabele, but was hanged in Bulawayo for murder. In other words, I am the son of a murderer.”
“Hanged for murder!” I exclaimed in horror. “Surely there’s some mistake?”
“No,” groaned Jack, “it’s true enough. I’ve seen the newspaper cutting of the time, and I’m the son of a murderer, who was also a forger, a thief, and a card-sharper. Old Glanville told me this evening. It was then that our engagement was broken off.”
“Your mother?” I asked. “Have you seen her?”
Jack nodded.
“Poor little woman!” he groaned. “She has known all along, and her one aim and object in life has been to keep the awful truth from me. That was why I was told he died an honorable death during the war. I’ve often wondered why the little mother was always so sad, and so weighed down by trouble. Now I know. Good God, what her life must have been!”
He rose from his chair and paced up and down the room for a minute; then he stopped and stood in front of me, his face working with emotion.
“But I don’t believe it, Jim,” he said, and there was a ring in his voice. “I don’t believe it, and neither does the little mother. It’s impossible to reconcile the big, bluff man with the heart of a child that I remember as my father, with murder, forgery, or any other crime. And yet, according to Glanville and the old newspapers he showed me, Richard Bridges was one of the most unscrupulous ruffians in South Africa. In my heart of hearts I know he didn’t do it, and though on the face of it there’s no doubt, I’m going to try and clear his name. I am sailing for South Africa on Friday.”
“Sailing for South Africa!” I exclaimed. “What about your work?”
“My work can go hang!” replied Jack heatedly. “I want to wipe away the stain from my father’s name, and I mean to do it somehow. That’s why I’ve run round to see you, old pal, for I want you to come with me. Knowing Rhodesia as you do, you’re just the man to help me. Say you’ll come?” he pleaded.
It seemed quite the forlornest hope I had ever heard of, but Jack’s distress was so acute that I hadn’t the heart to refuse.
“All right, Jack,” I said, “I’m with you. But don’t foster any vain hopes. Remember, it’s twenty years ago. It will be a pretty tough job to prove anything after all these years.”
During the voyage out we had ample time to go through the small amount of information about the long-forgotten case that Jack had been able to collect from the family solicitors.
In the year 1893, Richard Bridges, who was a mining engineer of some standing, had made a trip to Rhodesia with a view to gold and diamond prospecting. He had been accompanied by a friend, Thomas Symes, who, so far as we could ascertain, was an ex-naval officer; and the two, after a short stay at Bulawayo, had gone northward across the Guai river into what was in those days a practically unknown land. In a little over a year’s time Bridges had returned alone—his companion having been, so he stated, killed by the Matabele, and for six months or so he led a dissolute life in Bulawayo and the district, which ended ultimately in his execution for murder. There was no doubt whatever about the murder, or the various thefts and forgeries that he was accused of, as he had made a confession at his trial, and we seemed to be on a wild-goose chase of the worst variety so far as I could see; but Jack, confident of his father’s innocence, would not hear of failure.
“It’s impossible to make surmises at this stage,” he said. “On the face of it there appears to be little room for doubt, but no one who knew my father could possibly connect him with any sort of crime. Somehow or other, Jim, I’ve got to clear his name.”
My memory went back to a tall, sunburnt man with a kindly manner who had come down to the school one day and put up a glorious feed at the tuck shop to Jack and his friends. Afterwards, at his son’s urgent request, he had bared his chest to show us his tattooing of which Jack had, boy-like, often boasted to us. I recalled how we had gazed admiringly at the skillfully worked picture of Nelson with his empty sleeve and closed eye and the inscription underneath: “England expects that every man this day will do his duty.” Jack had explained with considerable pride that this did not constitute all, as on his father’s back was a wonderful representation of the Victory, and on other parts of his body a lion, a snake, and other fauna, but Richard Bridges had protested laughingly and refused to undress further for our delectation.
We reached Bulawayo, but no one in the city appeared to recall the case at all; indeed, Bulawayo had grown out of all recognition since Richard Bridges had passed through it on his prospecting trip. It was difficult to know where to start. Even the police could not help, and had no knowledge of where the murderer had been buried. No one but an old saloon-keeper and a couple of miners could recollect the execution even, and they, so far as they could remember, had never met Richard Bridges in the flesh, though his unsavory reputation was well known to them.
In despair, Jack suggested a trek up country towards Barotseland, which was the district that Bridges and Symes had proposed to prospect, though, according to all accounts, Symes had been murdered by the Matabele before they reached the Guai river.
For the next month we trekked steadily northwards, having very fair sport; but, as I expected, extracting no information whatever from the natives about the two prospectors who had passed that way years before. At length, Jack became more or less reconciled to failure, and realizing the futility of further search suggested a return to Bulawayo. As our donkey caravan was beginning to suffer severely from the fly, I concurred, and we started to travel slowly back to Bulawayo, shooting by the way.
One night after a particularly hard trek we inspanned at an old kraal, the painted walls of which told that at one time it had served as a royal residence, and as I had shot an eland cow that afternoon, which provided far more meat than we could consume, we invited the induna and his tribe to the feast. Not to be outdone in hospitality, the old chief produced the kaffir beer of the country, a liquid which has nothing to recommend it beyond the fact that it intoxicates rapidly.
A meat feast and a beer drink is a great event in the average kaffir’s life, and as the evening wore on a general jollification started to the thump of tom-toms and the squeak of kaffir fiddles. There was one very drunk old Barotse, who sat close to me, and, accompanying himself with thumps on his tom-tom, sang in one droning key a song about a man who kept snakes and lions inside him, and from whose chest the evil eye looked out. At least, so far as I could gather that was roughly the gist of the song; but as his tom-tom was particularly large and most obnoxious I politely took it away from him, and Jack and I used it as a table for our gourds of kaffir beer, which we were pretending to consume in large quantities.
A gourd, however, is a top-heavy sort of drinking vessel, and in a very short time I had succeeded in spilling half a pint or so of my drink on the parchment of the drum. Not wishing to spoil the old gentleman’s plaything, which he evidently valued above all things, I mopped up the beer with my handkerchief, and in doing so removed from the parchment a portion of the accumulated filth of ages.
“Hullo!” said Jack, taking the instrument from me and holding it up to the firelight. “There’s a picture of some sort here. It looks like a man in a cocked hat.”
He rubbed it hard with his pocket handkerchief, and the polishing brought more of the
picture to light, till, plain enough in places and faded in others, there stood out, the portrait of a man in an old-fashioned naval uniform with stars on his breast, and underneath some letters in the form of a scroll.
“That’s not native work,” I exclaimed. “These are English letters,” for I could distinctly make out the word “man” followed by a “t” and an “h.”
“Rub it hard, Jack.”
The grease on the parchment refused to give way to further polishing, however, and remembering a bottle of ammonia I kept for insect bites, I mixed some with kaffir beer and poured it on the head of the tom-tom. One touch of the handkerchief was sufficient once the strong alkali got to work, and out came the grand old face of Nelson and underneath his motto:
“England expects that every man this day will do his duty.” Jack dropped the drum as if it had bitten him.
“What does it mean?” he gasped. “My father had this on his chest. I remember it well!”
I was, however, too busy with the reverse end of the drum to heed him. On the other side the ammonia brought out a picture of the Victory, with the head of a roaring lion below it.
“Good God!” exclaimed Jack. “My father had that on his back. Quick, Jim, rub hard! There should be the family crest to the right—an eagle with a snake in its talons and R. B. underneath.”
I rubbed in the spot indicated, and out came the crest and initials exactly as Jack had described them. There was something horribly uncanny and gruesome in finding the tattoo marks of the dead man on the parchment of a Barotse tom-tom two hundred miles north of the Zambesi, and for a moment I was too overcome with astonishment to grasp exactly what it meant. Then it came to my mind in a flash that the parchment was nothing else than human skin, and Richard Bridges’ skin at that. I put it down with sudden reverence, and, beckoning to its owner, demanded its full history. At first he showed signs of fear, but promising him a waist length of cloth if he told the truth, he squatted on his hams before us and began.
“Many, many moons ago, before the white men came to trade across the Big Water as they do now, two white baases came into this country to look for white stones and gold. One baas was bigger than the other, and on his chest and on his body were pictures of birds, and beasts, and strange things. On his chest was a great inkoos with one eye covered, and on his back a hut with trees growing straight up into the air from it. On his loins was a lion of great fierceness, and coiled round his waist was a hissing mamba (snake). We were sore afraid, for the white baas told us he was bewitched, and that if harm came to either he would uncover the closed eye of the great inkoos upon his chest, which was the Evil Eye, and command him to blast the Barotse and their land for ever.
“So the white men were suffered to come and go in peace, for we dreaded the Evil Eye of the great inkoos. They toiled, these white baases, digging in the hillside and searching the riverbed; and then one day it came to pass that they quarreled and fought, and the baas with the pictures was slain. We knew then that his medicine was bad medicine, otherwise the white baas without the pictures could not have killed him. So we were wroth and made to slay the other baas, but he shot us down with a fire stick and returned to his own country in haste. Then did I take the skin from the dead baas, for I loved him for his pictures, and I made them into a tom-tom. I have spoken.”
“Good heavens!” exclaimed Jack when I had translated the story. “Then my father was killed here in Barotseland, and it was Symes, his murderer, who went back to Bulawayo. It was that fiend Symes, also, who took my father’s name, probably to draw any money that might have been left behind, and who, as Richard Bridges, was hanged for murder. Poor old dad,” he added brokenly, “murdered, and his body mutilated by savages! But how glad I am to know that he died an honest man!”
With the evidence at hand it was easy to prove the identity of the murderer of twenty years ago, and, having settled the matter satisfactorily and cleared the dead man’s name, Jack and I returned to England, where a few weeks later I had to purchase wedding garments in order that I might play the part of best man at Jack’s wedding.
THE CASE OF SIR ALISTER MOERAN, by Margaret Strickland
“Ethne?” My aunt looked at me with raised brows and smiled. “My dear Maurice, hadn’t you heard? Ethne went abroad directly after Christmas, with the Wilmotts, for a trip to Egypt. She’s having a glorious time!”
I am afraid I looked as blank as I felt. I had only landed in England three days ago, after two years’ service in India, and the one thing I had been looking forward to was seeing my cousin Ethne again.
“Then, since you did not know she was away, you, of course, have not heard the other news?” went on my aunt.
“No,” I answered in a wooden voice. “I’ve heard nothing.”
She beamed. “The dear child is engaged to a Sir Alister Moeran, whom she met in Luxor. Everyone is delighted, as it is a splendid match for her. Lady Wilmott speaks most highly of him, a man of excellent family and position, and perfectly charming to boot.”
I believe I murmured something suitable, but it was absurd to pretend to be overjoyed at the news. The galling part of it was that Aunt Linda knew, and was chuckling, so to speak, over my discomfiture.
“If you are going up to Wimberley Park,” she went on sweetly, “you will probably meet them both, as your Uncle Bob has asked us all there for the February house-party. He cabled an invitation to Sir Alister as soon as he heard of the engagement. Wasn’t it good of him?”
I replied that it was; then, having heard quite enough for one day of the charms of Ethne’s fiancé, I took my leave.
That night, after cursing myself for a churl, I wrote and wished her good luck. The next morning I received a letter from Uncle Bob asking me to go to Wimberley; and early in the following week I travelled up to Cumberland. I received a warm welcome from the old General. As a boy I used to spend the greater part of my holidays with him, and being childless himself, he regarded me more or less as a son.
On February 16th Ethne, her mother, and Sir Alister Moeran arrived. I motored to the station to meet them. The evening was cold and raw and so dark that it was almost impossible to distinguish people on the badly lighted little platform. However, as I groped my way along, I recognized Ethne’s voice, and thus directed, hurried towards the group. As I did so two gleaming, golden eyes flashed out at me through the darkness.
“Hullo!” I thought. “So she’s carted along the faithful Pincher!” But the next moment I found I was mistaken, for Ethne was holding out both hands to me in greeting. There was no dog with her, and in the bustle that followed, I forgot to seek further for the solution of those two fiery lights.
“It was good of you to come, Maurice,” Ethne said with unmistakable pleasure, then, turning to the man at her side, “Alister, this is my cousin, Captain Kilvert, of whom you have heard me speak.”
We murmured the usual formalities in the usual manner, but as my fingers touched his, I experienced the most curious sensation down the region of my spine. It took me back to Burma and a certain very uncomfortable night that I once passed in the jungle. But the impression was so fleeting as to be indefinable, and soon I was busy getting everyone settled in the car.
So far, except that he possessed an exceptionally charming voice, I had no chance of forming an opinion of my cousin’s fiancé. It was half-past seven when we got back to the house, so we all went straight up to our rooms to dress for dinner.
Everyone was assembled in the drawing-room when Sir Alister Moeran came in, and I shall never forget the effect his appearance made. Conversation ceased entirely for an instant. There was a kind of breathless pause, which was almost audible as my uncle rose to greet him. In all my life I had never seen a handsomer man, and I don’t suppose anyone else there had either. It was the most startling, arresting style of beauty one could possibly imagine, and yet, even as I stared at him in admi
ration, the word “Black!” flashed into my mind.
Black! I pulled myself up sharply. We English, who have lived out in the East, are far too prone to stigmatize thus anyone who shows the smallest trace of being a “half breed”; but in Sir Alister’s case there was not even a suspicion of this. He was no darker than scores of men of my own nationality, and besides, he belonged, I knew, to a very old Scottish family. Yet, try as I would to strangle the idea, all through the evening the same horrible, unaccountable notion clung to me.
That he was the personality of the gathering there was not the slightest doubt. Men and women alike seemed attracted by him, for his individuality was on a par with his looks.
Several times during dinner I glanced at Ethne, but it was easy to see that all her attention was taken up by her lover. Yet, oddly enough, I was not jealous in the ordinary way. I saw the folly of imagining that I could stand a chance against a man like Moeran, and, moreover, he interested me too deeply. His knowledge of the East was extraordinary, and later, when the ladies had retired, he related many curious experiences.
“Might I ask,” said my uncle’s friend, Major Faucett, suddenly, “whether you were in the Service, or had you a Government appointment out there?”
Sir Alister smiled, and under his moustache I caught the gleam of strong, white teeth.
“As a matter of fact, neither. I am almost ashamed to say I have no profession, unless I may call myself an explorer.”
“And why not?” put in Uncle Bob. “Provided your explorations were to some purpose and of benefit to the community in general, I consider you are doing something worthwhile.”
“Exactly,” Sir Alister replied. “From my earliest boyhood I have always had the strangest hankering for the East. I say strange, because to my parents it was inexplicable, neither of them having the slightest leaning in that direction, though to me it seemed the most natural desire in the world. I was like an alien in a foreign land, longing to get home. I recollect, as a child, my nurse thought me a beastly uncanny kid because I loved to lie in bed and listen to the cats howling and fighting outside. I used to put my head half under the blankets and imagine I was in my lair in the jungle, and those were the jackals and panthers prowling around outside.”