THE GORILLA'S SCREAM.
I came slowly back to consciousness, feeling weak and giddy. I essayed
to move and found I could not. I opened my eyes. Despite the gathering
darkness, I discovered that I was seated in a chair in the large room
of the casa. A second attempt to move disclosed the fact that I was
tied tightly.
Alicia stared at me dumbly from an opposite chair, and Mrs. Braymore
sat in one corner, her face white and set and her eyes full of horror.
Evan was standing at his ease by the doorway, smoking with evident
enjoyment.
In one of his hands he held a shaggy object that for some seconds held,
weakly, my half-focused attention. It was a baglike object, that yet
seemed to contain a framework. Not yet awake to full consciousness,
I saw that it was strangely animal. It was a mask in the perfect,
horrible likeness of a gorilla.
Evan turned and saw my eyes open. "Well, Murray, old top," he said
amiably. "You caught me, didn't you?"
My throat was dry and parched, and my shoulder ached abominably. "What
the devil?" I croaked weakly.
"Give him some water, Alicia," said Evan cheerfully. "He's thirsty."
Alicia gave me water. "He has my pistol," she whispered despairingly as
she bent over me.
Full consciousness returned with a jerk. Evan had shot me. Evan had
snarled at me as he fired. Evan--why Evan must have killed Arthur! He
grinned approvingly as he saw me straighten in an instinctive effort to
break my bonds.
"Ah, feeling better," he commented. "I'm sorry you caught me. I'd have
liked to take you back to Ticao and hear you tell the tale of this
week's work of ours. You always were a great one for telling tales,
Murray."
He puffed luxuriously at his cigarette and looked at the gathering
darkness outside.
"You're a connoisseur of tales, Murray, so I think I'll tell you one.
I'm going off to get in touch with my natives in a little while, as
soon as it's dark, but I've a few minutes to spare and might as well
be pleasant during that little while. I'm afraid I'll have to be
unpleasant later on, you know."
"I didn't know."
I have never found that losing one's head is an advantage under any
circumstances, so I prepared to make an effort to keep mine. Evan waved
his hand airily.
"Oh, I'm going to be put to the unpleasant necessity of disposing of
you and Mrs. Braymore. No one could regret it more than I do, but the
necessity is there. You see, I was the gorilla." He indicated the
gorilla mask. "And it wouldn't do for you to tell that story about."
"I can believe it," I admitted. My head was spinning, but I tried to
follow what he was saying in the hope of finding something therein to
my own advantage.
"You understand, of course," said Evan cheerfully, "that I don't mean
that I was the beast whose mate Arthur so inconsiderately shot, or the
one who followed his caravan all the way here from the Kongo. That
was another gorilla altogether. I simply happen to be the one that
hung about the house here. Arthur shot the other one two weeks before
you came. It got away, but he must have wounded it fatally. Otherwise
it would have turned up long before. I'll admit that I was a little
nervous about the animal at first, but I soon realized that it must be
dead. I saw to it that Arthur was not similarly convinced, however. I
had already made more or less of a plan. You know about my slaves?"
"No," I said rather weakly. I had lost a lot of blood.
"I'd knocked about the West Coast for quite a while before I came
here." Evan stopped and drew up a chair. He sat down comfortably.
"I had learned the secret of controlling natives. As you know, that
secret is fear. I knew that if I could get, say, a village full of them
thoroughly afraid of me, they would be to all practical purposes my
slaves. Normal means of frightening them would have the disadvantage
of not frightening them too much to invoke juju to get rid of me. And
juju, invoked against a white man, means poison. The obvious solution
was to frighten them by means of the very juju they would use against
me."
"Poison?" I asked. My head was spinning, but I tried not to show it.
"No." Evan puffed casually upon his cigarette. "Poison would be the
result of the juju. I went at the fountain head. Kongo natives are
deadly afraid of gorillas, but just a little way from gorilla country,
the natives fear them vastly more than where familiarity has had time
to breed, if not contempt, at least some measure of accustomedness. The
natives here would be horribly afraid of them. I made my preparations
accordingly. Having bribed his excellency the colonial governor, and
having had this mask made and learned how to imitate to a fair degree
of perfection the cries of the beasts, I came out here. Have you seen
my mask?"
He held it out for me to see, even going so far as to strike a light
so that I might examine the thing more closely. He held it before my
eyes and turned it about. It was an amazingly perfect bit of work,
perhaps larger than a normal skull of one of the beasts would be. For
all their size, their skulls are comparatively small. It was lifelike
to a surprising degree. The disgustingly human, and yet unhuman ears
stuck out against the skull. The jaw protruded in truly simian fashion,
and the caked, black lips were drawn back from discolored fangs in a
grimace of almost unimaginable ferocity. The broad, flat nostrils were
distended in rage, and the eyeholes of the mask sank deep back below
the low and beetling forehead. If small, glittering eyes had shone
evilly from those now blank holes, I would have been tempted to believe
that a live beast was before me.
"Good work, isn't it?" asked Evan. "I came out here with my four
overseers, wandered into the village, and metamorphosed myself before
the villagers' eyes into a gorilla clad as a man, which at one moment
spoke with the voice of a man, ordering them to obey, and the next
screamed at them in tones of one of the monstrous apes of which they
were in such dread. I built myself this casa, demanded tribute of gums
and produce, started a small juju house off in a small clearing, and in
a couple of weeks had established myself as a deity, demanding to be
worshiped and sacrificed to, exacting all sorts of tribute, and so on.
Very profitable, I assure you.
"They soon believed that I could change myself into a gorilla at will
and respected me immensely. I took care to throw a few scares into
them. In Japan, some years ago, I learned a small and very elemental
jujutsu trick which requires very little strength to break a man's
neck. A few broken necks, a few snarls, a scream or so of rage, and
they'd no more think of crossing my will than they'd think of jumping
into the fires of hell."
"They attacked the house," I remarked, trying behind my back to wriggle
one of my hands free from the bonds that held it fast.
"They'll suffer for that." Evan was smiling, but there was something
in his tone that made me feel slightly cold. "They'll suffer for that.
I told my juju priests to take the people off into the woods and keep
them busy with a juju council until I had finished my business with
you. They forced your boys to go with them. They simply got out of
hand, that's all. The witch doctor you and Arthur shot was coming to
tell me that they were out of control. If I had gone and appeared among
them, wearing my gorilla mask, and snarled at them once, they would
have been like lambs. I simply couldn't, get away from you people
without making you suspicious."
"But what was the object of it all?" I demanded. I had found it
impossible to free even one hand.
"Arthur was my elder brother," said Evan amiably. "Consequently, being
English, he had all the money in the family. I do not like West Africa.
If I disposed of Arthur, I could go back to England and live with some
comfort. I thought of shooting him and calling it an accident, but
people would talk, you know. When he came here with his tale of being
followed by a gorilla, I saw the possibilities. When I heard you people
were coming up, I saw I would have witnesses. My idea was to convince
you of the presence of a gorilla, break Arthur's neck precisely as I
did this afternoon, and return to England. I rather thought I would be
able to comfort Alicia, in time."
Alicia shuddered. Evan grinned at her.
"I shall comfort you, Alicia, but presently. My people will return,
Murray and your estimable chaperon will be disposed of, and you and
I will escape precariously to Ticao, telling the tale of hairbreadth
escapes during the uprising of my natives and during the trip."
"Never!" said Alicia desperately.
"Oh, yes." Evan was polite, but there was evil determination in his
tone. "You never cared much for Arthur, and I more than suspect you're
in love with Murray. You'll do as I say for his sake."
There was mute interrogation in my expression.
"Not to save your life, of course, Murray," Evan hastened to assure
me. "I really can't allow you to spread tales of what happened up
here. She'll be pleasant to make sure that you depart this life,
er--comfortably."
Alicia looked at me in despair.
Evan glanced out the window. "Not time for me to start off yet," he
remarked. "They'll have to go down and worship me when I turn up in
this little fixing." He indicated the gorilla-head mask in his hand.
"Is there anything that isn't clear to you?"
"I don't understand anything," I said.
"I'll begin at the beginning, in your own fashion. Let's see. Biheta.
You remember you were here the night she was installed in the casa?
One of my servants had been insolent. I sent word to the village
that Biheta was to be sent here to take the other's place. She was
frightened, and the juju ceremony you saw was for the purpose of
heartening her for the time she would spend in proximity to my godlike
person. When the other servants left, by my orders, she was too stupid
to go with them. She was perpetually frightened, anyway. You see,
she saw me dispose of the servant that had been insolent. Jujutsu is
useful. I'll show you how to break a neck." He started to rise, then
sank back in his chair. "Come to think of it, I need you to convince
Alicia that she had better do as I tell her. You will depart this life
to-morrow. As I was saying, Biheta stayed behind when she should have
cleared out with the others. So, in the middle of the night, while on
guard, I went into her room, wearing my mask. I made a noise, she woke,
saw me--and that was the end of that. The photograph of the retina of
her eye showed the face of this mask. Rather clever idea, don't you
think?"
"Very," I admitted.
"Thanks." Evan smiled sarcastically. "Well, Arthur just imagined he
heard the beast following him through the trees. He shot at nothing,
when you and he went down to explore the village. My own 'encounter'
with the animal when I started off in the jungle alone was purely
imaginary. I scratched my own face and jabbered like the gorilla
myself. Like this----"
He emitted a succession of incredible sounds, so beastlike and
ferocious in their tones that I could hardly believe it was not an
animal uttering them. There was a peculiar echo from the bush outside.
"The dogs were excited in the storeroom," Evan went on easily, "because
they could smell the fur of the mask I kept in a small box in there.
When I told that wild tale of a hairy arm reaching in at the window
and dragging the dog out, to fling it with a broken neck into the
courtyard, I need not say that I had done the killing. And my 'seeing'
the gorilla on the roof was more fiction. Of course he wasn't there at
dawn. I was laughing in my sleeve at you people all night long, while
we patrolled the courtyard. The silhouette of the gorilla's head you
two saw on the window curtain was the shadow of your humble servant.
I had decided that the play had gone far enough. The presence of the
gorilla had been proved. The three of you, my present audience, would
corroborate my story of the gorilla's having killed Arthur. I was on my
way to break his neck. You nearly got me that time, and I had to kill
the dog to get away. Then the natives got out of hand. I could have
stopped them by a simple appearance, but you people would have missed
me. I waited until they were near the house, then rushed out in my
mask, snarling and raging at them, and they ran. After that I hid the
mask quickly and pretended to you that I had been knocked down. It was
really very simple. With the natives quieted for a few days, I simply
carried out my plans to dispose of Arthur. I'm sorry I'll have to put
you two out of the way, but Arthur's dead, I'm his heir, I'm going to
marry Alicia and become a country gentleman in England, and I can't let
you two people talk."
"You'll never dare take me to England," said Alicia, desperately white.
"You'll marry me, Alicia," said Evan coolly. "You won't split. When you
see the preparations my natives will make for the entertainment of
Murray and Mrs. Braymore, you'll swear to anything, and you'll marry me
when we get to Ticao. You'll corroborate my tales of a slave uprising,
too. You don't know what can be done to Murray, and will be done before
he dies, unless you do as I say."
Alicia moistened her lips. I saw her half close her eyes.
Evan laughed. "It's about time for me to call on my natives. This will
be our wedding night, Alicia. One of the local witch doctors will marry
us, and the ceremony will be repeated when we get to Ticao. Murray and
Mrs. Braymore will be kept alive until to-morrow lest you refuse to go
through with the ceremony. If you hesitate, I dare say I'll be able to
make up your mind for you. Too bad I'll have to kill the other two,
though." He strolled over to the door. "I'll call up my natives. You'll
hear the gorilla again."
Derisively he opened his lips and from them issued a strange cry, that
I had heard once before. It was the challenge of a bull ape to battle.
And--good Heaven! _It was answered!_
There was a snarl behind him. He turned with a gasp. There on the
veranda, leaping toward him, he saw, not a masquerading white man,
posing as a jungle god, but a colossal gorilla in actuality, gnashing
its teeth in rage, and with its huge, hairy arms outstretched.
I shall remember Evan's shriek when the beast seized him, to the end of
my days. Sometimes, even now, I start up at midnight with the echo of
it in my ears. For one instant the two figures were outlined against
the fading light of the sky. Then the ferocious fangs buried themselves
in Evan's throat and the beast leaped clumsily to the ground, bearing
the still-struggling body in its immensely muscled arms.
We heard the sounds from the courtyard, sounds at whose meaning I
do not wish to guess. And then our ears rang with the horrible,
incredible, terrifying scream of a gorilla that has made a kill.