“Who—”
“I don’t know.”
“What was he doing in the jungle alone?”
“I’ve warned him a hundred times, Jeff. But he was a kid, full of fight. Only he didn’t know how to fight out here. He was looking for a black who skipped out with a few raw diamonds from the diggings.”
“Has that happened before?”
“The workmen making off with the stuff? Yes, before I sent for you, Jeff, half a dozen lit out.” The Scot leaned forward, his eyes ablaze. “And every one of them was found murdered in the jungle! Every one!” he repeated. “Stabbed and lacerated and torn, those we were able to find, with handfuls of their hair yanked out by the roots as if—”
“What!” Westman barked fiercely, coming upright in his seat.
“The savages hide small stones in the kinks of their hair. You know that, Jeff. Someone’s laying for them out there in the jungle. Whoever it is, after murdering ’em he hunts their scalps for the looted stuff. It’s bestial, I tell you! Doesn’t just pick the pebbles out of their hair. Blast him, he fairly rips the scalp off! Why, what’s the matter, Jeff?”
Westman relaxed slowly. “Mac,” he breathed, “that’s exactly what I noticed about Craig’s head when I found him.”
“You—” Macrae stopped short. A moment of silence fell between the two friends.
“Are there are any other whites around here beside yourself?” Westman asked at length.
“Not for twenty miles, Jeff.” The Scot shook his head. “Not till Lulatala, an old slave-trading village far up the river. Trader called Joe Swango lives there. Comes down the trails once a month for me with supplies. Decent sort, only close-mouthed.”
“These men of yours, Mac, who ran off and died. How’d you find ’em?”
“Riddled through the back with spear holes.”
“And their own assegai? Were they flung? Was there ever signs of a fight?”
“Never, Jeff! Their spears were still in their hands. Too yellow to show fight.”
“Would you call young Craig yellow, Mac?”
“Good Lord, no! He’d fight ten wildcats twice his size.
“Well, he never put up a fight, either.”
“What—!”
“His rifle was still in his hand, without a shell fired. And the rottenest part of it is, Mac, that he was killed not more than five minutes before we got to him. And there wasn’t even a bootmark or the track of a foot to show who did it!”
“Tommyrot! You must be wrong. What do you think killed him? Black jungle magic?”
“That’s what Kilimi thinks, Mac,” Westman said.
“Bah! You, too? Some savage leaped on his back and speared him for the diamonds he thought he had.”
“Impossible! If couldn’t have been a Wambute forest pygmy—their spears are always poisoned with datura lily extract. The wounds swell blue and they don’t bleed. I tell you, it wasn’t a spear at all. The holes are too clean, not like the wound from the broad paddle of a spear!”
“But for the love of God, Jeff, what was it then that—”
“A white man’s long steel dagger. Nothing else makes wounds like that.”
“But there isn’t a white man between here and Lulatala!” Macrae gasped incredulously.
“Except this Joe Swango you tell me about,” Westman reminded him.
“That’s a wrong trail.” The Scotsman shook his head. “Joe’s no angel, but he hasn’t the nerve for that. If you saw him, you’d know. Besides, he can’t kill blacks and murder Craig a mile from my compound while he’s in Lulatala twenty miles away. Half these blacks were murdered when runner boys of mine swear they were talking to him the same night in Lulatala. It’s a band of savages, I tell you!”
Westman shook his head. He leaned back against the wattled wall of the hut, his hard, gray eyes half closed.
“Wrong, Mac,” he mused. “Blacks don’t work that way, and you know it. What chance would a black have of disposing of looted diamonds? Suppose he came to a post and offered raw diamonds to a trader? They’d jump him so quick he wouldn’t know what struck him. No, there’s something far more sinister and a blessed sight more dangerous about this than a band of stray savages or Wambute forest pygmies.” The lean hunter straightened slowly in his chair. “You remember Abd el Hussan, Mac?” he asked quietly.
“I’ll say I remember him! Didn’t I have a time getting the Governor General to send the approval you wanted so that man of yours, Kilimi, could mummify the swine’s head for his collection of post decorations!”
Westman grinned at this. Kilimi cherished those bizarre and ghastly relics of his hunts. But the smile vanished from his angular face almost at once.
“Well, Mac, I was wondering,” he mused on. “You remember the Arab was digging here for raw diamonds before you and your company ever knew the deposit was here? I’ll wager someone in Lulatala knew about his pretty game before we broke it up six months ago.”
“But Abd el Hussan is dead, Jeff.”
“Sure he’s dead. But he’s not the only crooked trader in the Congo.”
“Well, I don’t mind admitting I’m stumped, Jeff,” Mac conceded. “Unless this killer flies through the night like a bat! All I know is there’s murder stalking around this place till it’s got me balmy. When I told Joe Swango about the way the blacks died, he grinned and said something was wrong with their face dye if it wouldn’t keep off the jungle magic. They smear their faces with white ngula dye for night travel, you know. It’s supposed to scare off the evil devils of the forest.” Macrae shuddered. “I can’t help thinking of poor Craig.”
Westman nodded and seemed to be listening to the moan of the dank night breeze through the swaying creepers of the ancient banyan. At last he stood up.
“We’ll both think clearer after a sleep, Mac.”
“Aye, Jeff,” the Scot murmured from his seat.
The ivory hunter turned away. But he never reached the curtained doorway of the sleeping room. At the instant his hand touched it, a piercing shriek stabbed the night outside. Westman whirled. Bellows of terror sounded outside now, hoarse native growls, the swift patter of naked feet racing for shelter.
Then that single blood-curdling shriek sounded once more, and it ended as if a savage hand had instantly clutched the throat.
Outside the door-flap, Kilimi’s unmistakable bass sounded anxiously:
“Bwana, bwana!” he cried; and, waiting for no summons, he tore aside the curtain. “Come quick! The accursed magic again!”
Macrae leaped to his feet. Westman sprang forward, plucking up his Winchester as he went.
“Come along, Mac!”
One after the other, they plunged into the night.
CHAPTER III
White Man’s Weapon
“Down, Mac! On the ground!” Westman warned the Scot.
At the foot of Macrae’s hut, Kilimi had already fallen prone on his stomach, the ivory hunter at his side. For a moment, still blinded by their sudden dash into the dark clearing from the lamp-lit room, they could see nothing. Then gradually monstrous forms and waving shapes materialized amid the black tops of the jungle.
At the mouth of the native workers’ stockade, the mob of Macrae’s workers crowded, paralyzed with fright. In the center of the clearing, Westman’s eight warrior porters crouched beyond the light of their dying campfire, all eyes glued to a single spot in the jungle’s wall.
“Look, bwana!” Kilimi raised his hand, pointed.
A tall shape staggered into the dim light from the wall of forest. It swayed drunkenly from side to side: a stalwart savage, naked except for a loin clout. His face, streaked white with ngula dye, wobbled goblin-like above the jet torso.
“Tamwa,” Macrae gasped. “The black who bolted with three stolen ‘bort’ stones—the one poor Craig was hunting.”
He started up from his knees. Westman dragged him back to earth. And the black, reaching the edge of the clearing, let out again a single dreadful shriek of terror. A
t the same instant a dark shape leaped out of blackness, on to the terrified man’s back. In the pale light something flashed three times in rising and descending arcs.
Westman came to one knee, the Winchester at his shoulder. Sighting carefully, he awaited an opportunity to fire. But the attacker, clinging to Tamwa’s back, made a true fire impossible in that weird light. Only once his face was turned toward the clearing for an instant. It showed distorted, bestial, framed in shaggy hair, teeth gleaming between snarling lips.
“Batwa! Forest dwarf!” Kilimi growled.
“The swine!” Mac roared in helpless rage.
Tamwa collapsed, his attacker still clinging to his back.
Throwing caution to the winds, Westman pulled the trigger without any attempt at a hit, but more with the intention of scaring off the horrible shape. The flash of fire from his Winchester blinded them momentarily. When the smoke cleared, they caught sight of another short, dwarfed body darting out of the jungle. Once more Westman pumped his gun. It was like firing at dancing shadows.
“Kilimi!” he barked. “Throw wood on the fire. Quick!”
Macrae leaped to his feet. Westman followed. The Scot, enraged beyond all caution, started forward. The ivory hunter dragged him back.
“Don’t be a fool, Scotty!” he snapped. “Get a brand from the fire. Kilimi! A torch!”
Kilimi came back with a smoking brand in one hand, his long assegai clutched in the other. Behind the stockade, a fierce pounding of tom-toms started as Macrae’s savages took up the chant of their medicine man’s desperate effort to scare away the evil spirits of the jungle devils.
“Come on,” Westman bit off shortly. “Fire at the first moving thing you see, Mac!”
He led the way carefully toward the spot. On the rim of the jungle nothing stirred. It was as if everything they had seen had been a hallucination, a nightmare. Kilimi came closer with his rude torch. In the narrow circle of its light, Westman and Macrae inspected the torn terrain closely.
Tamwa’s body had disappeared. Only a slight hollow betrayed where he had fallen. Macrae gasped, then caught the ivory hunter’s arm.
“Jeff! Look here!”
He stooped quickly. When he straightened up, he held a long narrow-bladed dagger. It was red with blood.
“You were right, Jeff! It is a white man’s knife that murdered poor Craig—and Tamwa.”
Westman nodded. Taking the wicked looking poniard by the haft, he inspected it carefully. Its point was clean. There was no evidence of poison. Hair clung to the handle. When the ivory hunter handed the weapon back to Macrae and brought his fingers to his face, he caught the unmistakable animal odor of the jungle.
Westman turned to Kilimi. “Are you are sure you saw no white man?”
The Wambuba shook his head insistently. “No white man. Batwa—forest dwarf!”
“They’ve dragged his body off, Jeff,” the Scot put in awed tones.
“Blast it, Mac!” the ivory hunter exploded in exasperation. “It doesn’t make sense. Forest dwarfs don’t use knives like this. Wouldn’t know what to do with a thing like that if they had one. Spears and poisoned darts from blowguns are their weapons! And look at these tracks.” He pointed to the torn earth revealed in the flickering light of their torch.
“One of them stabbed Tamwa. At least one more came to help him drag the body away. But, Mac, aside from the track your black left here, there’s only one trail of naked savage feet! I don’t believe in magic. Walking men leave footprints behind them on this jungle earth!”
Macrae shuddered. For an instant they stood stock still on the rim of the clearing. Kilimi watched his master. Then, as they stood there, irresolute, a distant drum beat a single reverberating thump. It echoed loudly on the fevered night air above the dolorous whine of the medicine man in the compound behind their backs. Then it sounded again in a slow characteristic rhythm that gradually filled the entire night of darkness with its monstrous throbbing.
Thump! Thump! Thump! Different from the cadence of signal drums. The ivory hunter knew that. Kilimi knew it, too, for he shrank back a pace.
“That’s a sacramental drum, Mac,” Westman explained with a strange softness to the Scot. “There’ll be a moon soon. Somewhere in the heart of the jungle, they’re calling the followers of Congo magic for the ceremony. That drum and the black we just saw murdered are bound together somehow, just as surely as Tamwa was killed by the same hand that murdered Craig. I feel it, Mac. I don’t believe in jungle magic. Whoever is behind this business is playing for high stakes. He’s using all he knows of white man’s cunning and black man’s superstitions. If we find the drum and the orgy it symbolizes, we’ll find—something.”
“You mean, Jeff, that—”
“I mean, Mac, that we can’t sit here any longer waiting. Any one of us may be next! I mean to follow the sound of that drum and see where it leads to. The moon’ll be up soon. We may find tracks—and we may not. But we can follow the sound, Kilimi and I.”
“Let’s go!” the Scot cut in harshly.
“Dangerous business, Mac,” the ivory hunter warned. “If we come on a tribe of blacks in a ceremonial orgy and we’re discovered, it’s certain death.”
“Better than sitting here waiting!”
Westman nodded and turned to Kilimi.
“We go to avenge the death of a black man and a white,” he said quietly in Swahili, “We need Kilimi, the good hunter. You lead us into the jungle to the noise of the big drum?”
In the sputtering light of the torch, the black man’s face was a study in emotion. Superstitious dreads, fear, and faithfulness struggled visibly on his jet countenance. Only for an instant he hesitated. Then he drew himself to his full height.
“Bwana go—Kilimi go,” he growled.
“Good, Kilimi. Go pick four Wambuba men with strong hearts and long spears. They will come, too.”
The black man turned toward the fire where his men stood anxiously waiting. Westman and Macrae followed soberly, intent on inspecting rifles and filling cartridge belts for their perilous venture. The Scot raised his face in undisguised admiration to the young ivory hunter.
“How in the world do you do it, Westman?” he asked softly. “That man of yours is scared to death, and he hasn’t a thing to gain—yet he’d follow you into the jaws of hell if you told him to!”
“Pride, Mac,” the ivory hunter muttered, almost to himself. “I’ve taught Kilimi to be proud.”
CHAPTER IV
Worshipers of the Monkey God
As the little party moved along the trail, Kilimi and Westman, in the lead, guided their direction by the booming sound of the single drum. Macrae and the four blacks followed. For perhaps an hour, through tangles and festoons of jungle growth, they traveled the heart of the Ituri jungles, the deep, dull-throated boom of the drum beating ever closer and louder. Suddenly it ceased entirely.
The silence froze Kilimi in his tracks, his body tense as a tiger’s set for the spring. For a full minute the drum remained silent. Then it started again on its repeated, single note like the beating of some gigantic heart. Kilimi’s head came back on his shoulder.
“Karibu, bwana,” he whispered. “Very close.”
He dropped to his hands and knees now. Crawling forward, he parted the vines and peered through. Then he signaled with his free hand. With a silent gesture, Westman ordered the others to the ground. He led the crawling advance himself to the spot Kilimi commanded. At his side Macrae let out a low hissing of breath between his teeth.
Directly before them—in a slight depression of the land—the worshiping savages were revealed.
The narrow clearing lay bathed in moonlight. In its center stood a raised dais formed naturally by the rent trunk of a gigantic tree. Some of its dead limbs still reached weirdly upward from its sides. Upon it stood a naked dwarf savage before the great drum. With clenched fists, he pounded it in a maddening rhythm.
At the other end of the platform stood a huge cage of bamboo stak
es. In it something black and fantastic, a shaggy creature, danced in a frenzy, chattering insanely with bared teeth. Besides the cage stood a man—giant by contrast with the Wambute pygmies—clothed in dirty white drill trousers and naked from the waist up. His face was covered entirely by a black cloth.
Below him and all about the riven tree trunk that served as their grisly sacrificial altar sat hunched on their heels the tribe of dwarfs. And these swayed backward and forward to the maddening beat of the drum.
In the light of the ascending moon their torsos looked brown and red rather than black, their faces imp-like and bestial. They were the savage forest dwarfs of the Ituri.
Macrae, crouching beside Westman, tensed angrily.
“That man!” he growled in a fierce whisper. “The tall one by that cage. He—Jeff, he’s white. Look at his chest. What’s he wearing that black mask for? Westman, he—”
“Quiet, Mac,” the ivory hunter cautioned.
“Shenzi nzombi!” Kilimi’s whisper was half dread and half a snort of rage. “Worshipers of the Monkey God!” And he spat to show his disgust—a frightened disgust, for he knew their terrible fanaticism.
Tense and anxious, they watched. Suddenly the white man below them dragged upward what appeared to be a human form. This he trussed by means of a rope creeper to one of the jutting limbs of the tree. There it dangled directly before him, a shapeless bundle with a grisly white-dyed face. From his thigh he whipped out a dagger and raised it on high. Above his head its steel blade caught all the light there was in a fierce and wicked gleam.
Macrae’s rifle snapped to his shoulder. The next instant he would have fired. Westman grabbed the barrel and barked out a low command.
“Stop it. You want that whole mob at our throats?”
“Good God, Westman! You gonna sit here and let—”
“Don’t be a fool, Mac. Look at the thing. It’s a dummy. Sacking stuffed with grass and a white face painted on it. Look!”
Macrae gasped. His rifle came down from his shoulder. There was no mistaking it now.
The beat of the drum ceased. The swaying mob of pygmies leaned forward eagerly. In the silence, the brutal, senseless chattering of the thing in the bamboo cage rose with horrible clarity as it danced about in frenzy. The next moment the masked white man plunged his dagger downward into the grass-stuffed dummy. Again and again he buried the flashing steel blade.
The Adventure Megapack: 25 Classic Adventure Stories Page 54