Bones by Edgar Wallace (best color ebook reader txt) 📖

upon which it shines. Now, I say to you and to all men, deliver to me the slayer of B'chumbiri that I may deal with him according to the law."

There was a dead silence, and Bones waited.

Then the silence grew into a whisper, from a whisper into a babble of suppressed talk, and finally somebody laughed. Bones stood up, for this was his supreme moment.

"Come out to me, O killer!" he said softly, "for who am I that I can injure you? Did I not hear some voice say _g'la_, and is not _g'la_ the name of a fool? O, wise and brave men of the Akasava who sit there quietly, daring not so much as to hit a finger before one who is a fool!"

Again the silence fell. Bones, his helmet on the back of his head, his hands thrust into his pockets, came a little way down the hill towards the semi-circle of waiting eldermen.

"O, brave men!" he went on, "O, wonderful seeker of danger! Behold! I, _g'la_, a fool, stand before you and yet the killer of B'chumbiri sits trembling and will not rise before me, fearing my vengeance. Am I so terrible?"

His wide open eyes were fixed upon the uncle of B'chumbiri, and the old man returned the gaze defiantly.

"Am I so terrible?" Bones went on, gently. "Do men fear me when I walk? Or run to their huts at the sound of my puc-a-puc? Do women wring their hands when I pass?"

Again there was a little titter, but M'gobo, the uncle of B'chumbiri, grimacing now in his rage, was not amongst the laughers.

"Yet the brave one who slew----"

M'gobo sprang to his feet.

"Lord," he said harshly, "why do you put all men to shame for your sport?"

"This is no sport, M'gobo," answered Bones quickly. "This is a palaver, a killing palaver. Was it a woman who slew B'chumbiri? so that she is not present at this palaver. Lo, then I go to hold council with women!"

M'gobo's face was all distorted like a man stricken with paralysis.

"Tibbetti!" he said, "I slew B'chumbiri--according to custom--and I will answer to Sandi, who is a man, and understands such palavers."

"Think well," said Bones, deathly white, "think well, O man, before you say this."

"I killed him, O fool," said M'gobo loudly, "though his father turned woman at the last--with these hands I cut him, using two knives----"

"Damn you!" said Bones, and shot him dead.

* * * * *

Hamilton, so far convalescent that he could smoke a cigarette, heard the account without interruption.

"So there you are, sir," said Bones at the side. "An' I felt like a jolly old murderer, but, dear old officer, what was I to do?"

Still Hamilton said nothing, and Bones shifted uncomfortably.

"For goodness gracious sake don't sit there like a bally old owl," he said, fretfully. "Was I wrong?"

Hamilton smiled.

"You're a jolly old commissioner, sir," he mimicked, "and for two pins I'd mention you in dispatches."

Bones examined the piping of his khaki jacket and extracted the pins.


CHAPTER XII

THE MAN WHO DID NOT SLEEP


No doubt whatever but that Lieutenant Tibbetts of the Houssas had a pretty taste for romance. It led him to exercise certain latent powers of imagination and to garnish his voluminous correspondence with details of happenings which had no very solid foundation in fact.

On one occasion he had called down the heavy sarcasm of his superior officer by a reference to lions--a reference which Hamilton's sister had seen and, in the innocence of her heart, had referred to in a letter to her brother.

Whereupon Bones swore to himself that he would carefully avoid corresponding with any person who might have the remotest acquaintance with the remotest of Hamilton's relatives.

Every mail night Captain Hamilton underwent a cross-examination which at once baffled and annoyed him.

Picture a great room, the walls of varnished match-boarding, the bare floor covered in patches by skins. There are twelve windows covered with fine mesh wire and looking out to the broad verandah which runs round the bungalow. The furniture is mainly wicker work, a table or two bearing framed photographs (one has been cleared for the huge gramophone which Bones has introduced to the peaceful life of headquarters). There are no pictures on the walls save the inevitable five--Queen Victoria, King Edward, Queen Alexandra, and in a place of honour above the door the King and his Consort.

A great oil lamp hangs from the centre of the boarded ceiling, and under this the big solid table at either side of which two officers write silently and industriously, for the morrow brings the mail boat.

Silent until Bones looked up thoughtfully.

"Do you know the Gripps, of Beckstead, dear old fellow?"

"No."

"None of your people know 'em?" hopefully.

"No--how the dickens do I know?"

"Don't get chuffy, dear old chap."

Then would follow another silence, until----

"Do you happen to be acquainted with the Lomands of Fife?"

"No."

"I suppose none of your people know 'em?"

Hamilton would put down his pen, resignation on his face.

"I have never heard of the Lomands--unless you refer to the Loch Lomonds; nor to the best of my knowledge and belief are any of my relations in blood or in law in any way acquainted with them."

"Cheer oh!" said Bones, gratefully.

Another ten minutes, and then:

"You don't know the Adamses of Oxford, do you, sir?"

Hamilton, in the midst of his weekly report, chucked down his pen.

"No; nor the Eves of Cambridge, nor the Serpents of Eton, nor the Angels of Harrow."

"I suppose----" began Bones.

"Nor are my relations on speaking terms with them. They don't know the Adamses, nor the Cains, nor the Abels, nor the Moseses, nor the Noahs."

"That's all I wanted to know, sir," said an injured Bones. "There's no need to peeve, sir."

Step by step Bones was compiling a directory of people to whom he might write without restraint, providing he avoided mythical lion hunts and confined himself to anecdotes which were suggestively complimentary to himself.

Thus he wrote to one pal of his at Biggestow to the effect that he was known to the natives as "The-Man-Who-Never-Sleeps," meaning thereby that he was a most vigilant and relentless officer, and the recipients of this information, fired with a sort of local patriotism, sent the remarkable statement to the _Biggestow Herald and Observer and Hindhead Guardian_, thereby upsetting all Bones' artful calculations.

"What the devil does 'Man-Who-Never-Sleeps' mean?" asked a puzzled Hamilton.

"Dear old fellow," said Bones, incoherently, "don't let's discuss it ... I can't understand how these things get into the bally papers."

"If," said Hamilton, turning the cutting over in his hand, "if they called you 'The-Man-Who-Jaws-So-Much-That-Nobody-Can-Sleep,' I'd understand it, or if they called you 'The-Man-Sleeps-With-His-Mouth-Open-Emitting-Hideous-Noises,' I could understand it."

"The fact is, sir," said Bones, in a moment of inspiration, "I'm an awfully light sleeper--in fact, sir, I'm one of those chaps who can get along with a couple of hours' sleep--I can sleep anywhere at any time--dear old Wellin'ton was similarly gifted--in fact, sir, there are one or two points of resemblance between Wellington and I, which you might have noticed, sir."

"Speak no ill of the dead," reproved Hamilton; "beyond your eccentric noses I see no points of resemblance."

It was on a morning following the dispatch of the mail that Hamilton took a turn along the firm sands to settle in his mind the problem of a certain Middle Island.

Middle Islands, that is to say the innumerable patches of land which sprinkle the river in its broad places, were a never-ending problem to Sanders and his successor. Upon these Middle Islands the dead were laid to rest--from the river you saw the graves with fluttering ragged flags of white cloth planted about them--and the right of burial was a matter of dispute when the mainland at one side of the river was Isisi land, and Akasava the other. Also some of the larger Middle Islands were colonized.

Hamilton had news of a coming palaver in relation to one of these.

Now, on the river, it is customary for all who desire inter-tribal palavers to announce their intention loudly and insistently. And if Sanders had no objection he made no move, if he did not think the palaver desirable he stopped it. It was a simple arrangement, and it worked.

Hamilton came back from his four-mile constitutional satisfied in his mind that the palaver should be held. Moreover, they had, on this occasion, asked permission. He could grant this with an easy mind, being due in the neighbourhood of the disputed territory in the course of a week.

It seemed that an Isisi fisherman had been spearing in Akasava waters, and had, moreover, settled, he and his family to the number of forty, on Akasava territory. Whereupon an Akasava fishing community, whose rights the intruder had violated, rose up in its wrath and beat Issmeri with sticks.

Then the king of the Isisi sent a messenger to the king of Akasava begging him to stay his hand "against my lawful people, for know this, Iberi, that I have a thousand spears and young men eager for fire."

And Iberi replied with marked unpleasantness that there were in the Akasava territory two thousand spears no less inclined to slaughter.

In a moment of admirable moderation, significant of the change which Mr. Commissioner Sanders had wrought in these warlike peoples, they accepted Hamilton's suggestion--sent by special envoy--and held a "small palaver," agreeing that the question of the disputed fishing ground should be settled by a third person.

And they chose Bosambo, paramount and magnificent chief of the Ochori, as arbitrator. Now, it was singularly unfortunate that the question was ever debatable. And yet it was, for the fishing ground in question was off one of the many Middle Islands. In this case the island was occupied by Akasava fishermen on the one shore and by the intruding Isisi on the other. If you can imagine a big "Y" and over it a little "o" and over that again an inverted "Y" thus "+" and drawing this you prolong the four prongs of the Y's, you have a rough idea of the topography of the place. To the left of the lower "Y" mark the word "Isisi," to the right the word "Akasava" until you reach a place where the two right hand prongs meet, and here you draw a line and call all above it "Ochori." The "o" in the centre is the middle island--set in a shallow lake through which the river (the stalk, of the Y's) runs.

Bosambo came down in state with ten canoes filled with counsellors and bodyguard. He camped on the disputed ground, and was met thereon by the chiefs affected.

"O, Iberi and T'lingi!" said he, as he stepped ashore, "I come in peace, bringing all my wonderful counsellors, that I may make you as brothers, for as you know I have a white man's way of knowing all their magic, and being a brother in blood to our Lord Tibbetti, Moon-in-the-Eye."

"This we know, Bosambo," said Iberi, looking askance at the size of Bosambo's retinue, "and my