The Keepers of the King's Peace - Edgar Wallace (short novels to read TXT) 📗

thanks, hurried back to the _Zaire_.

"Behold, M'lama," he said, as he thrust his loot through the window of the little deck-house, "there are many grand things such as great ladies wear--now you shall appear before Sandi beautiful to see."

He logged the happening in characteristic language, and was in the midst of this literary exercise when the tiny steamer charged a sandbank, and before her engines could slow or reverse she had slid to the top and rested in two feet of water.

A rueful Bones surveyed the situation and returned to his cabin to conclude his diary with--

"12.19 struck a reef off B'lidi Bay. Fear vessel total wreck. Boats
all ready for lowering."

As a matter of fact there were neither boats to lower nor need to lower them, because the crew were already standing in the river (up to their hips) and were endeavouring to push the _Zaire_ to deep water.

In this they were unsuccessful, and it was not for thirty-six hours until the river, swollen by heavy rains in the Ochori region, lifted the _Zaire_ clear of the obstruction, that Bones might record the story of his salvage.

He had released a reformed M'lama to the greater freedom of the deck, and save for a shrill passage at arms between that lady and the corporal she had bitten, there was no sign of a return to her evil ways. She wore a white pique skirt and a white blouse, and on her head she balanced deftly, without the aid of pins, a yellow straw hat with long trailing ribbons of heliotrope. Alternately they trailed behind and before.

"A horrible sight," said Bones, shuddering at his first glimpse of her.

The rest of the journey was uneventful until the _Zaire_ had reached the northernmost limits of the Residency reserve. Sanders had partly cleared and wholly drained four square miles of the little peninsula on which the Residency stood, and by barbed wire and deep cutting had isolated the Government estate from the wild forest land to the north.

Here, the river shoals in the centre, cutting a passage to the sea through two almost unfathomable channels close to the eastern and western banks. Bones had locked away his journal and was standing on the bridge rehearsing the narrative which was to impress his superiors with a sense of his resourcefulness--and incidentally present himself in the most favourable light to the new factor which was coming into his daily life.

He had thought of Hamilton's sister at odd intervals and now....

The _Zaire_ was hugging the western bank so closely that a bold and agile person might have stepped ashore.

M'lama, the witch, was both bold and agile.

He turned with open mouth to see something white and feminine leap the space between deck and shore, two heliotrope ribbons streaming wildly in such breeze as there was.

"Hi! Don't do that ... naughty, naughty!" yelled the agonized Bones, but she had disappeared into the undergrowth before the big paddle-wheel of the _Zaire_ began to thresh madly astern.

Never was the resourcefulness of Bones more strikingly exemplified. An ordinary man would have leapt overboard in pursuit, but Bones was no ordinary man. He remembered in that moment of crisis, the distressing propensity of his prisoner to the "eradication of garments." With one stride he was in his cabin and had snatched a counterpane from his bed, in two bounds he was over the rail on the bank and running swiftly in the direction the fugitive had taken.

For a little time he did not see her, then he glimpsed the white of a pique dress, and with a yell of admonition started in pursuit.

She stood hesitating a moment, then fled, but he was on her before she had gone a dozen yards; the counterpane was flung over her head, and though she kicked and struggled and indulged in muffled squeaks, he lifted her up in his arms and staggered back to the boat.

They ran out a gangway plank and across this he passed with his burden, declining all offers of assistance.

"Close the window," he gasped; "open the door--now, you naughty old lady!"

He bundled her in, counterpane enmeshed and reduced to helpless silence, slammed the door and leant panting against the cabin, mopping his brow.

"Phew!" said Bones, and repeated the inelegant remark many times. All this happened almost within sight of the quay on which Sanders and Hamilton were waiting. It was a very important young man who saluted them.

"All correct, sir," said Bones, stiff as a ramrod; "no casualties--except as per my nose which will be noted in the margin of my report--one female prisoner secured after heroic chase, which, I trust, sir, you will duly report to my jolly old superiors----"

"Don't gas so much, Bones," said Hamilton. "Come along and meet my sister--hullo, what the devil's that?"

They turned with one accord to the forest path.

Two native policemen were coming towards them, and between them a bedraggled M'lama, her skirt all awry, her fine hat at a rakish angle, stepped defiantly.

"Heavens!" said Bones, "she's got away again.... That's my prisoner, dear old officer!"

Hamilton frowned.

"I hope she hasn't frightened Pat ... she was walking in the reservation."

Bones did not faint, his knees went from under him, but he recovered by clutching the arm of his faithful Ali.

"Dear old friend," he murmured brokenly, "accidents ... error of judgment ... the greatest tragedy of my life...."

"What's the matter with you?" demanded Sanders in alarm, for the face of Bones was ghastly.

Lieutenant Tibbetts made no reply, but walked with unsteady steps to the lock-up, fumbled with the key and opened the door.

There stepped forth a dishevelled and wrathful girl (she was a little scared, too, I suspect), the most radiant and lovely figure that had ever dawned upon the horizon of Bones.

She looked from her staggered brother to Sanders, from Sanders to her miserable custodian.

"What on earth----" began Hamilton.

Then her lips twitched and she fell into a fit of uncontrollable laughter.

"If," said Bones huskily, "if in an excess of zeal I mistook... in the gloamin', madame ... white dress...."

He spread out his arms in a gesture of extravagant despair.

"I can do no more than a gentleman.... I have a loaded revolver in my cabin ... farewell!"

He bowed deeply to the girl, saluted his dumbfounded chief, tripped up over a bucket and would have fallen but for Hamilton's hand.

"You're an ass," said Hamilton, struggling to preserve his sense of annoyance. "Pat--this is Lieutenant Tibbetts, of whom I have often written."

The girl looked at Bones, her eyes moist with laughter.

"I guessed it from the first," she said, and Bones writhed.


CHAPTER II

BONES CHANGES HIS RELIGION


Captain Hamilton of the King's Houssas had two responsibilities in life, a sister and a subaltern.

The sister's name was Patricia Agatha, the subaltern had been born Tibbetts, christened Augustus, and named by Hamilton in his arbitrary way, "Bones."

Whilst sister and subaltern were separated from one another by some three thousand miles of ocean--as far, in fact, as the Coast is from Bradlesham Thorpe in the County of Hampshire--Captain Hamilton bore his responsibilities without displaying a sense of the burden.

When Patricia Hamilton decided on paying a visit to her brother she did so with his heartiest approval, for he did not realize that in bringing his two responsibilities face to face he was not only laying the foundation of serious trouble, but was actually engaged in erecting the fabric.

Pat Hamilton had come and had been boisterously welcomed by her brother one white-hot morning, Houssas in undress uniform lining the beach and gazing solemnly upon Militini's riotous joy. Mr. Commissioner Sanders, C.M.G., had given her a more formal welcome, for he was a little scared of women. Bones, as we know, had not been present--which was unfortunate in more ways than one.

It made matters no easier for the wretched Bones that Miss Hamilton was an exceedingly lovely lady. Men who live for a long time in native lands and see little save beautiful figures displayed without art and with very little adornment, are apt to regard any white woman with regular features as pretty, when the vision comes to them after a long interval spent amidst native people. But it needed neither contrast nor comparison to induce an admiration for Captain Hamilton's sister.

She was of a certain Celtic type, above the medium height, with the freedom of carriage and gait which is the peculiar possession of her country-women. Her face was a true oval, and her complexion of that kind which tans readily but does not freckle.

Eyes and mouth were firm and steadfast; she was made for ready laughter, yet she was deep enough, and in eyes and mouth alike you read a tenderness beyond disguise. She had a trinity of admirers: her brother's admiration was natural and critical; Sanders admired and feared; Lieutenant Tibbetts admired and resented.

From the moment when Bones strode off after the painful discovery, had slammed the door of his hut and had steadfastly declined all manner of food and sustenance, he had voluntarily cut himself off from his kind.

He met Hamilton on parade the following morning, hollow-eyed (as he hoped) after a sleepless night, and there was nothing in his attitude suggestive of the deepest respect and the profoundest regard for that paragraph of King's Regulations which imposes upon the junior officer a becoming attitude of humility in the presence of his superior officer.

"How is your head, Bones?" asked Hamilton, after the parade had been dismissed.

"Thank you, sir," said Bones bitterly--though why he should be bitter at the kindly inquiry only he knew--"thank you, sir, it is about the same. My temperature is--or was--up to one hundred and four, and I have been delirious. I wouldn't like to say, dear old--sir, that I'm not nearly delirious now."

"Come up to tiffin," invited Hamilton.

Bones saluted--a sure preliminary to a dramatic oration.

"Sir," he said firmly, "you've always been a jolly old officer to me before this contretemps wrecked my young life--but I shall never be quite the same man again, sir."

"Don't be an ass," begged Hamilton.

"Revile me, sir," said Bones dismally; "give me a dangerous mission, one of those jolly old adventures where a feller takes his life in one hand, his revolver in the other, but don't ask me----"

"My sister wants to see you," said Hamilton, cutting short the flow of eloquence.

"Ha, ha!" laughed Bones hollowly, and strode into his hut.

"And what I'm going to do with him, Heaven knows," groaned Hamilton at tiffin. "The fact is, Pat, your arrival on the scene has thoroughly demoralized him."

The girl folded her serviette and walked to the window, and stood looking out over the yellow stretch of the deserted parade-ground.

"I'm going to call on Bones," she said suddenly.

"Poor Bones!" murmured Sanders.

"That's very rude!" She took down her solar helmet from the peg behind the door and adjusted it carefully. Then she stepped through the open door, whistling cheerfully.

"I hope you don't mind, sir," apologized Hamilton, "but we've never succeeded in stopping her habit of whistling."

Sanders laughed.

"It would be strange if she didn't whistle," he said cryptically.

Bones was lying on his back, his hands behind his head. A half-emptied