BLACK AS HE IS PAINTED. (continued 2)

“I wonder if you know anything about him, Dr Koomadhi,” said Mr Letts.

“He has not been near me since the night before last,” said the Doctor. “Has he been here?”

Before the Secretary could reply a servant knocked at the office door conveying Mrs Minton’s compliments to Dr Koomadhi, and to inquire if he would be good enough to step into the breakfast-room until the Commissioner returned from the mail steamer.

Dr Koomadhi said he would be pleased to do so, and he left the office and followed the servant into the breakfast-room—an apartment which occupied one end of the Residency, and had windows opening upon the verandah, and affording a view of that portion of the jungle which was nearest Picotee.

He scarcely recognised Gertrude Minton. The deadly pale, worn woman who greeted him silently, had nothing in common with the brilliant daughter of the Commissioner who, a few months before, had been as exquisite as a lily in the midst of a jungle.

“What are we to do—what are we to do?” she whispered. “You have seen him since we saw him. What did he say? Will he return in time to be put aboard the steamer? Oh, for God’s sake, give me a word of hope—one word to keep me from going mad too!”

“Mrs Minton,” said Dr Koomadhi, “you have asked me a great many questions. May I remind you that I never asked but one question of you?”

“One question? What do you mean?”

“I asked you if you thought you could marry me. What was your answer?”

“Why do you come here to remind me of that? If you are thinking of that fault of mine—it was cruel, I know, but I did not mean it—if you are thinking of that rather than of the best way to help us, you had much better have stayed away.”

“You said you would as soon marry a baboon as marry me.”

“I checked myself.”

“When you had practically said it.”

“Well, what then?”

“Nothing; you did not marry me, and the alternative was your own choice.”

“The alternative?”

“Yes; you married a baboon. You know it. Is there any doubt on your mind? Come to this window.”

He had suddenly crossed the room to a window facing the jungle. She staggered to his side. He threw open the shutter and pointed out.

What Mrs Minton saw was a huge ape running on all fours across the cleared space just outside the jungle. The creature ran on for some distance, then stopped and turned round gibbering. Then from the jungle there came another ape, only in a more upright posture. With a yell he caught the hand of the first, and the creature stood upright. Then, hand in hand, in a horribly grotesque dance, they advanced together until they were within a hundred yards of the Residency.

“You see—you see,” laughed Dr Koomadhi. “You may still be able to recognise some of his features in spite of the transformation. You have had your choice. A baboon is your husband, and your child——”

The shriek that the woman gave before falling to the floor frightened even Dr Koomadhi.

In a second the room door was opened. Mr Letts appeared. He rushed at Dr Koomadhi, and had his hands on his throat before the Doctor could raise Mrs Minton. He forced the negro backward into the porch, and flung him out almost upon the Commissioner and Mr Ross, the surgeon of the Penguin, who were in the act of entering.

“For heaven’s sake, Letts!” cried the Commissioner.

“You infernal nigger!” shouted Letts, as Dr Koomadhi picked himself up. “You infernal nigger! if ever you show your face here again, I’ll break every bone in your body!”

“What the blazes is the matter?” asked. Ross.

“I believe that that devil has killed Mrs Minton,” said the Secretary. “If he has, by God! I’ll kill him.”

XV.

Dr Koomadhi went to his house in dignified silence. He put a couple of glasses of brandy into a bottle of champagne and gulped down the whole. Then he wrote a short note to the officer of the Houssas, mentioning that he would be happy to help him to shoot the great ape at daybreak.

He sent off the letter, and before he closed his desk he thought he would restore the carved stones to their receptacle. He had put them into his pocket before starting for the Residency; but now when he felt for them in his pocket he failed to find them. He was overcome with the fear that he had lost them. It suddenly occurred to him that they had been thrown out of his pocket by the violence of the man who had flung him into the road. If so, they would be lying on the pathway, and they would be safe enough there until dark, when he could go and search for them.

At moonrise he went out and walked down the road to the “Residency, but when just at the porch he was confronted by Ross, who was leaving the house.

“Hallo!” cried the surgeon. “I was just about to stroll up to you.”

“And I was determined not to miss you,” said Koomadhi. “How is Mrs Minton? It will be brain fever, I’m afraid.”

“It looks very like it,” said Ross. “She is delirious. How did the attack come? That fool of a Secretary will give no explanation of his conduct to you. The Commissioner says he will either apologise or leave the station.”

“The Secretary is a fool,” said Koomadhi. “Great heavens! to think that there are still some men like that—steeped to the lips in prejudice against the race to which I am proud to belong! We’ll not talk of him; but I’ll certainly demand an apology. The poor woman—she is little more than a girl, Ross! The breaking strain was reached when she was in the act of telling me about her husband.”

“Sunstroke, I suppose?”

“Undoubtedly. He has been behaving queerly for some time. Walk back with me and have something to drink.”

“I can only stay for an hour,” said Ross. “Mrs Bryson, the wife of the telegraphist, is nursing Mrs Minton; but it won’t do for me to be absent for long.”

He remained chatting with Koomadhi for about an hour, and then left for the Residency alone.

Dr Koomadhi determined to wait until midnight, when he might be pretty certain that his search for the stones would not be interrupted.

The door of the Residency was opened for Mr Ross by Letts.

“Step this way, Ross,” said he, in a low voice.

Ross went into the Secretary’s room. Sitting on a cane chair with a cigar in his mouth and a tall glass at his elbow was a man from whom came a strong perfume of shaving-soap. The man had plainly been recently shaved. His face was very smooth.

“Hallo, Ross, old chap!” said this man.

“My God, it’s Minton!” cried the surgeon.

“No one else,” said Minton. “What is all this about my poor wife? Don’t tell me that it’s serious.”

“It’s serious enough,” said Ross. “But, unless a change for the worse comes before morning, there is no reason for alarm.”

“Thank God!” said Minton. “What a fool I was to set about investigating that monkey language! I fancied that I had mastered a word or two, and I ventured into the jungle and got lost. I returned here an hour ago in a woful state of dilapidation. I’m getting better every minute. For God’s sake let me know how my poor wife is now!”

“I’ll get your report, Ross, to save your leaving the room,” said Letts.

The Secretary took the surgeon into an empty apartment.

“He returned three-quarters of an hour ago,” he said, in a low voice. “I never got such a shock as when I saw him—luckily I was at the door. He was practically naked; and with his hair tangled over his head, and his face one mass of bristles, he was to all intents and purposes a baboon. That nigger is at the bottom of it all. I followed him when he visited Mrs Minton this morning, and I even brought myself to listen outside the door of the breakfast-room, where they had an interview. I overheard enough to convince me that the ruffian had made Minton the victim of some of his hellish magic. I’ve been long enough on the West Coast to know what some of the niggers can do in this way. I have questioned Minton adroitly, and he admitted to me that Koomadhi had put a certain stone carved like a human ear into his hand, and had induced him to place it at his own ear. That was the famous Sacred Ear stone that the Ashantees speak of in whispers.”

“We’ll talk more of this to-morrow,” said Ross. “I don’t believe much in negro magic; but—my God! what is the meaning of that?”

A window was open in the room, and through it there came the sound of a shot, followed by appalling yells: then came another shot, and such a wild chorus of shrieking as far surpassed in volume the first series.

XVI.

Letts ran to a cupboard and whipped out a revolver. He rushed outside without a word. Ross followed him: he felt that wherever a revolver was going he should go also.

The two men ran in the moonlight toward Koomadhi’s house, for the yells were still coming from that direction. When they got within sight of the house Letts cried out in amazement. By the light of the full moon the strangest sight that he had ever seen was before his eyes. Koomadhi’s house was invisible; but where it should have been there was an enormous pyramid of jabbering apes. They were so thick upon the roof and the verandah as to conceal every portion of the building, and hundreds were on the pathway around the place. The noise they made was appalling.

Letts and the surgeon crouched behind a cane-brake and watched that strange scene; but they had not been long in concealment before the creatures began trooping off to the jungle. Baboons, chimpanzees, and gorillas, more horrible than had ever been depicted, were rushing from the house yelling and gibbering with grotesque gestures beneath the light of the moon.

Before the last of the monstrous procession had disappeared—while the shrieks of the wild parrots were still filling the air—the two men left their place of concealment and hurried toward the house. They had to struggle through an odour of monkeys that would have overpowered most men. A glance was sufficient to show them that the shutters of the room in which Koomadhi slept had been torn away. Letts sprang through the open window, and Boss heard his cry of horror before he followed him—before he saw the ghastly sight that the moonlight revealed. The body of Dr Koomadhi lay torn and mangled upon the floor, his empty revolver still warm in his hand. Around him lay the carcases of four enormous apes, with bullet-holes in their breasts.

“Ross,” said Letts after a long pause, “there is a stronger power still than the devil even on the West Coast of Africa.”

“Women, I have often heard, have strange notions at times,” said Major Minton, leaning over the deck-chair under the awning of the Penguin, where his wife was sitting, “but that fancy which you say you had before your attack beats the record. Still, I was greatly to blame. I’ll never forgive myself. I had no business interesting myself in that simian jabber. If at any time I feel a craving in such a direction I’ll get an order for the Strangers’ Gallery of the House of Commons when a debate on an Irish question is going on. Poor Koomadhi! Letts declared that, as he lay among the dead apes, it was difficult to say whether he was an ape or a man.”