He struck earlier, as it proved. They were within half a mile of the village when a hoarse voice challenged them.
"Stand for the Little Leopard, white man!"
"Shoot!" snarled Bones, and whipped out his automatic.
The forest rang with the staccato crash of shots. Bones went down under three N'gombi warriors and waited expectantly for the end. Something struck him on the head…
It was the consciousness of pain which revived him. The sun was up, and he was sitting with his back to a slim tree, his arms most painfully drawn back, and knotted on the tree's other side; and within a few feet of him sat Mr. Donald Murdock, naked to the waist and bearing marks of battle.
"Hullo, you alive?… I thought they'd bumped you off," he said cheerfully. "What are they going to do?"
Bones turned his aching head left and right. They were entirely surrounded by spearmen; and sitting on his stool of chieftainship immediately before them, was N'kema the king.
"O Tibbetti, I see you!" he mocked. "Where is the great ghost of my little mad brother? Is he not by you and will not his strong arm be against me and my young men?"
Bones was puzzled: how did the king know of the meeting in the forest and all that the dying boy had said?
And then his eyes fell on something brown and still that lay in the long grass… a wisp of smoke curled up near by… the brother of the king, who had led him to B'lala, had told before he too found in death a pleasant relief.
"I see you, N'kema," he said hoarsely, for his throat was parched; "and as to madmen and ghosts, are you not mad to do this evil thing, and will not your ghost go weeping on the mountains when Sandi comes? Yet I will speak well for you and leave a book for Sandi, if you let this young man go." He nodded towards the uncomprehending Murdock, for Bones was speaking in the dialect of the N'gombi. "For he belongs to a strange people and has no part in this palaver."
N'kema grinned fearfully.
"O ko! That is the talk of a fool. Now let me see your ghost, Tibbetti. And if he is strong he shall hold the arm of my slayer."
He spat left and right and lifted his hand to his eyes. It was the signal to the lithe warrior who squatted at his feet, bending the supple execution knife in his hands. Up to his feet he rose and came swiftly before Bones.
"Speak well for me to all ghosts and devils," he muttered conventionally, and swung back his arm.
Bones glared up at him and did not flinch. The curved knife glittered in the sunlight, and then…
Bones heard a little thud, saw the knife drop from the man's hand, as he gripped a bloody elbow with a shriek of pain.
N'kema was on his feet, gray-brown.
"O ko!" he gasped. "This ghost…!"
And then he saw Sanders.
The Commissioner was standing on the edge of the clearing, and on each side of him knelt six tarboshed Houssas, their rifles leveled. Slowly Sanders walked across the open and the armed throng flowed back noiselessly, each man seeking the kindly obscurity of the forest.
"I see you, N'kema."
Sanders' voice was low, almost caressing. And then he pointed to a tree, and Sergeant Abiboo, who walked behind him, flung the rope he carried, so deftly that the noose slipped down over the smooth branch almost to the level of N'kema's neck.
"Ghosts – phew!" Donald wiped his brow. "Did you see… just as this bird was going to strike… something stopped him… that beats everything."
Bones coughed. He had seen the new silencers on the Houssas' rifles.
"We've got a pretty bright brand of bogies, dear old thing," he said.
Murdock shook his head.
"I've got a new slant on this spiritualistic business. There was something there – I'll swear it… Gosh! it was more awful than being carved up!"
"A common phenomenon, dear old Atlantist," murmured Bones.
"I'm going to cable Jane and say I'm strong for spiritualism if you get the right brand."
As it happened, it was unnecessary. The Eurasian operator handed him a cablegram as he arrived at headquarters:
"You are right. Spooks are bunk. Experts found professor's fingermarks on tin trumpet. Come home. JANE"
Donald shook his head.
"I've got to convince that girl," he said.
THE HEAD OF CAESAR
G. K. Chesterton
The fame of G. K. Chesterton’s (1874-1936) modest clerical detective, Father Brown, is second only to that of the wizard of Baker Street himself. Although he is unprepossessing, "as round and dull as a Norfolk dumpling… eyes as empty as the North Sea," this exterior hides one of the sharpest and most subtle brains in detectivedom. However, Father Brown’s aims are a bit different from those of most fictional detectives. Far from viewing culprits as wrongdoers in need of punishment, he sees them as misguided souls in need of salvation. In this respect, his greatest triumph comes when he meets the master-criminal, Flambeau, and reforms him. Thereafter the two work in harmony, with the brilliant, resourceful Flambeau still typically a step or two behind the good father. Father Brown’s original adventures spanned a twenty-four year period between The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) and The Scandal of Father Brown (1935). Chesterton’s priest-detective proved so popular that he was the basis of a television series staring BBC stalwart Kenneth Moore, as well as a half-dozen motion pictures in which he was portrayed, among others, by Alec Guinness.
There is somewhere in Brompton or Kensington an interminable avenue of tall houses, rich but largely empty, that looks like a terrace of tombs. The very steps up to the dark front doors seem as steep as the side of pyramids; one would hesitate to knock at the door, lest it should be opened by a mummy. But a yet more depressing feature in the grey facade is its telescopic length and changeless continuity. The pilgrim walking down it begins to think he will never come to a break or a corner; but there is one exception – a very small one, but hailed by the pilgrim almost with a shout. There is a sort of mews between two of the tall mansions, a mere slit like the crack of a door by comparison with the street, but just large enough to permit a pigmy ale-house or eating-house, still allowed by the rich to their stable-servants, to stand in the angle. There is something cheery in its very dinginess, and something free and elfin in its very insignificance. At the feet of those grey stone giants it looks like a lighted house of dwarfs.
Anyone passing the place during a certain autumn evening, itself almost fairylike, might have seen a hand pull aside the red half-blind which (along with some large white lettering) half hid the interior from the street, and a face peer out not unlike a rather innocent goblin's. It was, in fact, the face of one with the harmless human name of Brown, formerly priest of Cobhole in Essex, and now working in London. His friend, Flambeau, a semi-official investigator, was sitting opposite him, making his last notes of a case he had cleared up in the neighborhood. They were sitting at a small table, close up to the window, when the priest pulled the curtain back and looked out. He waited till a stranger in the street had passed the window, to let the curtain fall into its place again. Then his round eyes rolled to the large white lettering on the window above his head, and then strayed to the next table, at which sat only a navvy with beer and cheese, and a young girl with red hair and a glass of milk. Then (seeing his friend put away the pocket-book), he said softly:
"If you've got ten minutes, I wish you'd follow that man with the false nose."