“Nobody wants to go up in the Reserved Forests, so they sent me. ‘Let good old Hiji do it; Hiji’s the lad for this show!’ they said; so I took a dozen Houssa policemen, two Lewis guns and ten pounds or so of quinine and set out.
“Ten days back in the brush we ran across the leopards’ spoor. We’d stopped at a Mendi village and I sent word forward for the headman to come out. He didn’t come.
“That wasn’t so good. If I waited too long for him outside the place I’d lose face; if I went in to him after summoning him to come to me; he would have ‘put shame on me.’ Finally I compromised by going in alone.
“The chief lolled before his hut with his warriors and women around him, and it didn’t take more than half an eye to see he’d placed no seat for me.
“‘I see you, Chief,’ I told him, swaggering, forward with the best assurance I could summon. I also saw that he was wearing a string of brummagem beads about his neck, as were most of his warriors, and wondered at it, for no license had been issued to a trader recently, and we’d had no reports of white men in the section for several years.
“‘I see you, white man,’ he replied, but made no move to rise or offer me a seat.
“‘Why do you thus put shame upon the King-Emperor’s representative?’ I demanded.
“‘We want no dealings with the Emperor-King, or any of his men,’ the fellow answered. ‘The land is ours, the English have no right here; we will have no more of him.’ The patter rattled off his tongue as glibly as though he had been a soap-box orator preaching communism in Hyde Park.
“This was rank sedition, not at all the sort of thing to be countenanced, you know, so I went right for the blighter. ‘Get up from there, you unholy rotter,’ I ordered, ‘and tell your people you have spoken with a crooked tongue, or—’
“It was a lucky thing for me I’m handy with my feet. A spear came driving at me, missing me by less than half an inch, and another followed it, whistling past my head so close I felt the wind of it.
“Fortunately, my men were hiding just outside, and Bendingo, my half-caste Arab sergeant, was a willing worker with the Enfield. He shot the foremost spearman through the head before the fellow had a chance to throw a second weapon, and the other men began to shoot before you could say, ‘knife.’ It was a gory business, and we’d rather killed half the poor beggars before they finally called it quits.
“The chief was most apologetic when the fracas ended, of course, and swore he had been misled by white men who spoke with crooked tongues.
“This was interesting. It seemed, from what the beggar told me, there had been several white men wandering at large through the area distributing what would be equivalent to radical literature at home—preaching armed and violent rebellion to government and all that sort of thing. Furthermore, they’d told the natives the brummagem beads they gave ’em would act as ‘medicine’ against the white man’s bullets, and that no one need fear to raid a mission station or refuse to pay the hut-tax, for England had been overthrown and only a handful of Colonial administrators remained—no army to come to their rescue if the natives were to rise and wipe ’em out.
“This was bad enough, but worse was coming. It appeared these playful little trouble-makers were preaching miscegenation. This was something new. The natives had never regarded themselves as inferior beings, for it’s strictly against regulations to say or do anything tending to do more than make ’em respect the whites as agents of the government, but they’d never—save in the rarest instances—attempted to take white women. Oh, yes they killed ’em sometimes, often with torture, but that was simply part of the game—no chivalry, you know. But these white agitators were deliberately urging the Timni, Mendis and Sulima to raid settlements and mission stations and spare the women that they might be carried off as prizes.
“That was plenty. Right there the power of the British rule had to be shown, so I rounded up all the villagers who hadn’t taken to the woods, told ’em they’d been misled by lying white men whom I’d hang as soon as caught, then strung the chief up to the nearest oil-palm. His neck muscles were inordinately strong and he died in circumstances of considerable elaboration and discomfort, but the object lesson was worth while. There’d be no more defiance of a government agent by that gang.
“We were balked at every turn. Most of our native informers had been killed and eaten, and the other blacks were sullen. Not a word could we get from ’em regarding leopard depredations, and they shut up like a lot of clams when we asked about the white trouble-makers.
“We’d never have gotten anywhere if it hadn’t been for Old Man Anderson. He was a Wesleyan missionary who ran a little chapel and clinic ’way up by the French border. His wife and daughter helped him. He might have loved his God; he certainly had a strange love for his womenfolk to bring ’em into that stinkin’ hellhole.
“It was a month after our brush with the Mendi when we crashed through the jungle to Anderson’s. The place was newly raided, burned and leveled to the ground, ashes still warm. What was left of the old man we found by the burned chapel—all except his head. They’d taken that away for a souvenir. We found the bodies of several of his converts, too. They’d been flayed, their skins stripped off as you’d turn off a glove. His wife and daughter were nowhere to be found.
“They hadn’t taken any special pains to cover up their tracks, and we followed at a forced march. We came upon ’em three days later.
“The blighters had eaten ’emselves loggy, and drunk enough trade-gin to float the Berengaria, so they didn’t offer much resistance when we charged. I’d always thought a man who slaughtered unresisting enemies was a rotten beast, but the memory of old Anderson’s dismembered body and those pink, skinless corpses made me revise my notion. We came upon ’em unawares, opened with the Lewis guns from both sides of the village and didn’t sound cease firin’ till the dead lay round like logwood corded in a lumber camp. Then, and not till then, we went in.
“We found old Mrs. Anderson dead, but still warm. She’d—I think you can imagine what she’d been through, gentlemen.
“We found the daughter, too. Not quite dead.
“In the four days since her capture she’d been abused by more than a hundred men, black and white, and was barely breathing when we came on her. She—”
“White and black, Monsieur?” de Grandin interrupted.
“Right-o. The raiding party had been led by whites. Five of ’em. Stripped off their clothes and put on native ornaments, carried native weapons, and led the blacks in their hellish work. Indeed, I don’t believe the poor black beggars would have gone out against the ‘Jesus Papa’ if those white hellions hadn’t set ’em up to it.
“They’d regarded Rebekah Anderson as good as dead, and made no secret of their work: The leader was a Russian, so were two of his assistants. A fourth was Polish and the last some sort of Asiatic—a Turk, the poor child thought.
“They’d come up through Liberia, penetrated the Protectorate and set the natives up to devilment, finally organizing the raid on Anderson’s. Now their work was done, and they were on their way.
“She heard the leader say he was going to America, for in Harrisonville, New Jersey, the agents of his society had found a woman whom they sought and who would lead some sort of movement against organized religion. The poor kid didn’t understand it all—no more did I—but she heard it, and remembered.
“The white men had left the night before, striking east into French Guinea on their way to the coast, and leaving her as a plaything for the natives.
“Before the poor child died she told me the Russian in command had been a man with a slender, almost boyish body, but with the wrinkled face of an old man. She’d seen him stripped for action, you know, and was struck by the strange contrast of his face and body.
“One other thing she told me: When they got to America they intended holding meetings of their damned society, and the road to their rendezvous would be directed by pictures of the Devil with his
pitchfork pointing the way the person seeking it should take. She didn’t understand, of course, but—I had all the clues I wanted, and as soon as we got back to Freetown I got a leave of absence to hunt that foul murderer down and bring him to justice.”
The young man paused a moment to relight his pipe, and there was something far from pleasant in his lean and sun-burned face as he continued: “Rebekah Anderson went to her grave like an old Sumerian queen. I impounded every man who’d had a hand in the raid and put ’em to work diggin’ a grave for her, then a big, circular trench around it. Then I hanged ’em and dumped their carcasses into the trench to act as guard of honor for the girl they’d killed. You couldn’t bribe a native to go near the place, now.
“I was followin’ the little pictures of the Devil when Renouard set on me. I mistook him for one of ’em of course, and—well, it’s a lucky thing for all of us Costello bashed me when he did.”
De Grandin’s little, round blue eyes were alight with excitement and appreciation. “And how did you escape, Monsieur?” he asked.
The Englishman laughed shortly. “Got a pair of handcuffs?” he demanded.
“I have,” supplied Renouard.
“Lock ’em on me.”
The manacles clicked round his wrists and he turned to us with a grin. “Absolutely no deception, gentlemen, nothing concealed in the hands, nothing up the sleeves,” he announced in a droning sing-song, then, as easily as though slipping them through his shirt sleeves, drew his hands through the iron bracelets. “Just a matter of small bones and limber muscles,” he added with another smile. “Being double-jointed helps some, too. It was no trick at all to slip the darbies off when the constables joined Costello for the raid. I put the irons on the other person—locked ’em on his ankles—so the boys would find ’em when they came back to the motor.”
“But—” Renouard began, only to pause with the next word half uttered. From upstairs came a quavering little frightened cry, like the tremulous call of a screech-owl or of a child in mortal terror.
“No noise!” de Grandin warned as he leaped from his seat and bounded up the stairway three steps at a time, Renouard and Ingraham close behind him.
We raced on tiptoe down the upper hall and paused a second by the bedroom door; then de Grandin kicked it open.
Alice crouched upon the bed, half raised upon one elbow, her other arm bent guardingly across her face. The red robe we had put upon her when we fled the Devil’s temple had fallen back, revealing her white throat and whiter breast, her loosened hair fell across her shoulders.
Close by the open window, like a beast about to spring, crouched a man. Despite his changed apparel, his heavy coat and tall, peaked cap of astrakhan, we recognized him in a breath. Those big, sad eyes fixed on the horror-stricken girl, that old and wrinkle-bitten face, could be none other’s than the red priest’s. His slender, almost womanish hands were clenched to talons, every muscle of his little, spare frame was taut—stretched harp-string tight for the leap he poised to make. Yet there was no malignancy—hardly any interest—in his old, close-wrinkled face. Rather, it seemed to me, he looked at her a gaze of brooding speculation.
“Parbleu, Monsieur du Diable, you honor us too much; this call was wholly unexpected!” de Grandin said, as he stepped quickly forward.
Quick as he was, the other man was quicker. One glance—one murderous glance which seemed to focus all the hate and fury of a thwarted soul—he cast upon the Frenchman, then leaped back through the window.
Crash! de Grandin’s pistol-shot seemed like a clap of thunder in the room as he fired at the retreating form, and a second shot sped through the window as the intruder landed on the snow below and staggered toward the street.
“Winged him, by Jove!” the Englishman cried exultantly. “Nice shooting, Frenchy!”
“Nice be damned and roasted on the grates of hell—” de Grandin answered furiously. “Is he not free?”
They charged downstairs, leaving me to comfort Alice, and I heard their voices as they searched the yard. Ten minutes later they returned, breathing heavily from their efforts, but empty-handed.
“Slipped through us like an eel!” the Englishman exclaimed. “Must have had a motor waiting at the curb, and—”
“Sacré nom d’un nom d’un nom!” de Grandin stormed. “What are they thinking of, those stupid-heads? Is not he charged with murder? Yes, pardieu, yet they let him roam about at will, and—it is monstrous; it is vile; it is not to be endured!”
Snatching up the telephone he called police headquarters, then: “What means this, Sergeant?” he demanded when Costello answered. “We sit here like four sacré fools and think ourselves secure, and that one—that so vile murderer—comes breaking in the house and—what? Pas possible!”
“It is, sor,” we heard Costello’s answer as de Grandin held the receiver from his ear. “That bur-rd ye handed me is in ’is cell this minute, an’ furthermore, he’s been there every second since we locked ’im up!”
18. Reunion
LOOKING VERY CHARMING AND demure in a suit of Jules de Grandin’s lavender pajamas and his violet silk dressing-gown, Alice Hume lay upon the chaise-lounge in the bedroom, toying with a grapefruit and poached egg. “If you’d send for Mother, please,” she told us. “I’d feel so much better. You see”—her voice shook slightly and a look of horror flickered in her eyes—“you see there are some things I want to tell her—some advice I’d like to get—before you let John see me, and—why, what’s the matter?” She put the breakfast tray upon the tabouret and looked at us in quick concern. “Mother—there’s nothing wrong, is there? She’s not ill? Oh—”
“My child,” de Grandin answered softly, “your dear mother never will again be ill. You shall see her, certainly; but not until God’s great tomorrow dawns. She is—”
“Not—dead?” the word was formed rather than spoken, by the girl’s pale lips.
The little Frenchman nodded slowly.
“When? How?”
“The night you—you went away, ma pauvre. It was murder.”
“Murder?” slowly, unbelievingly, she repeated. “But that can’t be! Who’d want to murder my poor mother?”
De Grandin’s voice was level, almost toneless. “The same unconscionable knaves who stole you from the marriage altar,” he returned. “They either feared she knew too much of family history—knew something of the origin of David Hume—or else they wished all earthly ties you had with home and kindred to be severed. At any rate, they killed her. They did it subtly, in such a manner that it was thought suicide, but it was murder, none the less.”
“O-oh!” The girl’s faint moan was pitiful, hopeless. “Then I’m all alone, all, all alone—I’ve no one in the world to—”
“You have your fiancé, the good young Monsieur Jean,” the Frenchman told her softly. “You also have Friend Trowbridge, as good and staunch a friend as ever was, then there is Jules de Grandin. We shall not fail you in your need, my small one.”
For a moment she regarded us distractedly, then suddenly put forth her hands, one to Jules de Grandin, one to me. “Oh, good, kind friends,” she whispered. “Please help me, if you can. God knows I am in need of help, if ever woman was, for I’m as foul a murderess as ever suffered death. I was accessory to those little children’s murders—I was—oh—what was it that the lepers used to cry? ‘Unclean’? Oh, God, I am unclean, unclean—not fit to breathe the air with decent men! Not fit to marry John! How could I bring children into the world? I who have been accessory to the murder of those little innocents?” She clenched her little hands to fists and beat them on her breast, her tear-filled eyes turned upward as though petitioning pardon for unpardonable sin. “Unclean, unclean!” she wailed. Her breath came slowly, like that of a dumb animal which resents the senseless persistency of pain.
“What is that you say? A murderess—you?” de Grandin shot back shortly.
“Yes—I. I lay there on their altar while they brought those little boys and cut t
heir—oh, I didn’t want to do it, I didn’t want them to be killed; but I lay there just the same and let them do it—I never raised a finger to prevent it!”
De Grandin took a deep breath. “You are mistaken, Mademoiselle,” he answered softly. “You were in a drugged condition; the victim of a vicious Oriental drug. In that all-helpless state one sees visions, unpleasant visions, like the figments of a naughty dream. There were no little boys; no murders were committed while you lay thus upon the Devil’s altar. It was a seeming, an illusion, staged for the edification of those wicked men and women who made their prayer to Satan. In the olden days, when such things were, they sacrificed small boys upon the altar of the Devil, but this is now; even those who are far gone in sin would halt at such abominations. They were but waxen simulacra, mute, senseless reproductions of small boys, and though they went through all the horrid rite of murder, they let no blood, they did perform no killings. No; certainly not.” Jules de Grandin, physician, soldier and policeman, was lying like the gallant gentleman he was, and lying most convincingly.
“But I heard their screams—I heard them call for help, then strangle in their blood!” the girl protested.
“All an illusion, ma chère,” the little Frenchman answered. “It was a ventriloqual trick. At the conclusion of the ceremony the good Trowbridge and I would have sworn we heard a terrible, thick voice conversing with the priest upon the altar; that also was a juggler’s trick, intended to impress the congregation. Non, ma chere, your conscience need not trouble you at all; you are no accessory to a murder. As to the rest, it was no fault of yours; you were their prisoner and the helpless slave of wicked drugs; what you did was done with the body, not the soul. There is no reason why you should not wed, I tell you.”
She looked at him with tear-dimmed eyes. Though she had mastered her first excess of emotion, her slender fingers clasped and unclasped nervously and she returned his steady gaze with something of the vague, half-believing apprehension of a child. “You’re sure?” she asked.
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