“_Ah me! we believe in evil,_
_Where once we believed in good._”
The first puff of cool afternoon wind came sighing up from the
distant sea, stirring the creepers on Harding’s veranda. As the cool
breeze moved the heated air there was a slight stir in a hammock slung
across its shadiest corner. At the movement, a washed-out English
nurse, sitting close at hand, glanced at her patient--a girl so thin
and wasted that she appeared to leave no impression on the pillows
supporting her.
Nearly a month had passed since Leslie had come, soaked and
blood-splashed, to Harding’s bungalow.
The happenings of that night stood out like a ghastly nightmare--a
chaos of blackness, wild wind, driving rain, mad laughter and blood.
She had stumbled on, lost in the blinding darkness, battling against
the raging storm in a maze of trees and thorns and mud, with the
feeling of some Terror close behind her; so close that the fact froze
out all thought of the elements she was battling against with the mad
haste of a hunted thing.
Out of the black night and driving rain a voice had called her by
name.
“Leslie, my darling, where are you? Oh God!” it had cried again and
again.
The sound had made her rush into a deep stagnant pool, and stay there,
crouched up to the neck in foul water, heedless of the swarm of great
leeches that had fixed on her, screening her face with the blackness
of her hair, lest its whiteness should betray her: in shivering,
deadly terror lest the frantic thumping of her heart and her own
sobbing, panting breath should be heard above the howl of the storm.
How long she crouched there listening as Lebrassa searched round she
did not know. Then he had gone, still calling frantically, until his
voice was lost in the night.
Creeping out from her refuge, she had gone on and on and on, her only
desire to reach whiteness and light again.
She had found Molly’s house at last.
Light was reached. Then--!
Something must have snapped in her head, for she woke up in a strange
bedroom with a shriveled, dried, grasshopper-looking little man
sitting beside her.
In his patient, as well as shock and strain, Atherley had had to fight
against malaria fever. Yet, with skilful nursing and in the care of a
doctor who knew every turn of the treacherous tropical disease, Leslie
was slowly creeping back to life.
Fletcher and his brother officers had scoured the country. However,
they had found no trace of Lebrassa, and learned nothing of him except
that the morning after the massacre in Cooper’s bungalow, a couple of
Mohammedan traders had called at a medical mission about twenty-five
miles away. The younger of the two, a giant of a man, had a broken
right arm, the result, so he had said, of his companion’s revolver
going off accidentally.
Beyond a doubt the man was the Hyena.
When Leslie returned to reason she had told all she knew of that
night’s happenings, and there the matter ended.
On the river bank the Lebrassa & Cooper factory lay closed and silent.
On the outskirts of the settlement the bungalow stood empty and
lifeless, overgrown and entangled, its tragedy sleeping quietly in the
embrace of black earth. And on the balcony of Harding’s house lay the
girl who had escaped from that night of rapine and slaughter.
Presently the sound of men’s voices drifted along with the sighing
wind. A couple of soldierly figures came up the balcony steps. Harding
went on, round the corner to the shady spot where Leslie’s hammock was
slung, but his companion remained at the head of the stairs, in a
state of obvious fidgets.
When the Major appeared round the corner, a feeble smile greeted him.
By Leslie’s side, he came to a halt, patting her worn face tenderly.
“Well, how’s my little girl?” he asked. “Feeling equal to a visitor?”
Leslie guessed who the visitor was, and a faint tinge of color came to
her white cheeks.
“If it’s Captain Fletcher, I’d like to see him,” she said faintly.
So far she had seen no one except the nurse, doctor, and her host.
Perhaps Fletcher had never felt so clumsy and nervous, or so
speechless, as when, a few moments later, he sat by Leslie’s hammock
bereft of the support of his friend and the nurse, who had withdrawn,
leaving him alone with the patient.
He was not used to feminine society. Most of his adult life had been
spent on the edge of one of the wildest parts of the Empire, where
from year’s end to year’s end he never saw a white woman. Now, as he
watched the girl among the pillows, he felt keenly the loss of the
gift of free and easy conversation.
However, Leslie broke the silence before it grew strained.
“Captain Fletcher, I can never thank you enough for all you did--that
night. I know you were wounded in saving me. I’m awfully sorry you’ve
been hurt, because it… it was all my fault.”
Fletcher could answer remarks, even if he could not broach subjects of
his own.
“Some one must have been exaggerating about my injuries,” he said. “I
was out and running about the same day. So you see I couldn’t have
been seriously damaged. And how do you make it out to be all your
fault?”
“If I hadn’t told that--that dreadful man what I overheard you saying
that night in the Harrogate hotel, all this would never have
happened.”
No one knew better than Fletcher what had been lost by that piece of
thoughtlessness, but he had always kept to himself the fact that
Leslie had inadvertently told Lebrassa he was under suspicion. Now,
his one idea was to soothe the girl, never to let her know the extent
of her folly.
“You foolish child,” he said gently. “Lebrassa would have suspected
the moment he saw me. What you said made no difference at all.”
Leslie cast a quick glance at the sun-bitten face beside her.
“It’s very kind of you to say so,” she said humbly.
“I mean it,” he replied emphatically. “He knows I’ve been on his trail
for the last ten years. If you must know, that’s really my job. Sort
of secret police business. Sleuthhounding round for any clue that may
lead up to the catching of that villain.”
His words comforted Leslie a little.
“He took my letter,” she volunteered. “The one Molly never got, that
made her marry Mr. Cooper. I can’t think why he did it.”
Fletcher agreed it was a mystery.
“He told me all about the Hyena,” she went on. “I’d no idea there
really were people of that sort. So different from what they seemed…
so absolutely dreadful.”
“Lebrassa has deceived most people, many of them men twice your age
and used to dealing with all manner of villains. So it’s not very
surprising if he succeeded in your case.”
“I thought you were not just, not fair,” Leslie confessed, “and all
the time you were right. I shall never forgive myself for not
listening to you from the first.”
The arrival of Atherley with “Time’s up, young man,” resulted in the
routing of Fletcher.
However, he did not go very far away. Only round the corner to a spot
where Harding was sitting.
Presently Atherley joined the two. Then over whiskey and soda, they
listened to Fletcher’s plan for getting Leslie out of the country in
such a way that Lebrassa would have no inkling of where she was.
The doctor, whose leave was about due, was to take her, and Fletcher
insisted the financing of the affair was his concern alone.
The plan of campaign was as follows.
From Calabar River it was possible to get to another river, Rio del
Rey, about forty miles away. At the trading stations there, steamers
called at stated times. By one of these Atherley and his charge would
proceed to the island of Fernando Po. An express German steamer was
due there within the next fortnight. By it the two would proceed to
Hamburg, and on by rail to some place on the Riviera until Leslie was
fit to take up life again.
“And then?” Harding asked, as Fletcher finished.
“Then I expect she’ll go her own way,” the captain answered in a
gloomy manner. “Because none of us has any legal claim or hold on
her.”
“You great overgrown ass, why don’t you ask her to marry you?”
Atherley put in.
For a moment it looked as though Fletcher would resent the question.
“I’ve no reason to believe she even likes me,” he replied stiffly. “To
ask her now when she’s under an obligation to me would be taking a
mean advantage. The child is absolutely penniless. She might feel
bound to take my offer--no matter what her own feelings were--as the
only possible way of paying off her debt.”
Harding’s voice eased the situation.
“I’ve a brother-in-law in the Portuguese wine trade. If I wrote to my
sister and asked her to take Miss Graham as her companion, I know she
would. Then at least we should know where the child was.”
“I say, that’s awfully decent of you,” Fletcher said, relieved.
During the next week the three men devoted a good deal of time to the
mechanism and working of the doctor’s launch. Dispensing with the
negro crew, the little craft took short runs in the cool of the
afternoon with these three budding engineers and Leslie as passenger.
On the river bank the usual crowd of loafing negroes watched their
exit and return.
One day the three Englishmen and their solitary passenger set off as
usual. However, they failed to return at the customary hour. This fact
appeared to interest a couple of the negroes, for they waited until
darkness came.
Night fell, but there was no sign of the truant launch.
Presently, out of the dark forest, came the wild roll of a native drum
with curious little intermittent taps. Another answered it. And still
another, from farther and ever farther away, repeating the rhythm
until it was lost in distance.
However, before the news of Leslie’s departure reached Lebrassa, she
was lying under the awning of a steamer in Rio del Rey, waiting for
the evening tide to bear her down the river and away from Africa.
By her side Fletcher was sitting.
Now that the actual parting had come he was more tongue-tied than
ever. On Leslie, too, had fallen a cloak of silence.
Strained and anxious, she was watching the man at her side.
“Captain Fletcher,” she said presently in a nervous voice, “I can
never thank you for all your kindness to me.”
“That’s nothing,” he said hastily. “If you’ll drop me a line
occasionally I shall be more than repaid.”
“Of course I shall write to you.”
There was another pause, broken this time by the “All ashore” bell.
“Well, I must push off,” Fletcher said, getting to his feet.
Leslie got up also.
“You will keep out of the way of that dreadful Hyena, won’t you?” she
asked anxiously.
He took the hand she was offering, holding it carefully.
“Don’t you worry about that,” he said cheerfully. “Lebrassa will make
it his business to avoid me. Now, good-by, and take care of yourself.
And… and may I come and see you during my next leave,” he stammered.
“If you think such a foolish person is… is worth keeping in touch
with,” she said shyly.
“Worth keeping in touch with!” he echoed.
Then feeling himself on the edge of a proposal, hastily he shook the
girl’s hand and turned quickly away.
Presently he was gazing longingly after a steamer that was
disappearing round a bend of the river.
On its deck Leslie lay, wondering drearily if her folly had quite
alienated Captain Fletcher. During the past week, although they had
been quite a lot together, he had never shown the least sign of
straying beyond the friendship stage. In her eyes, now, he was a hero,
not the interfering busybody he had once seemed.
As she pondered on the problem she watched the sunset.
Great, black clouds, flecked with lurid red, loomed up over the land
she was leaving, looking almost as if they were chasing her.
As she gazed at them a violent shiver ran through her. She would much
rather have had one of the brilliant, rainbow-hued sunsets that had
fallen to her lot many times during her brief tragic stay in Africa.
Not this ominous banking of black and red. For it seemed to suggest
that the blood and blackness could not be left behind so easily.
PART TWO
“Love of my life! we had lights in season--
Hard to part from, harder to keep.
We had strength to labor and souls to reason,
And seed to scatter and fruits to reap.
Though time estranges and fate disperses,
We have _had_ our loves and our loving mercies:
Though the gifts of the light in the end are curses
Yet bides the gift of the darkness--sleep!”