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.