CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIIIEVELYN ENTERS THE FRAYOnly a woman can fathom another woman’s mind. A man tries to think logically; a woman throws logic to the winds, and reads her opponent’s tactics by intuition. Though Warden was not wholly devoid of suspicion of Rosamund’s disinterestedness when he penned the plain statement which Evelyn now skimmed through by the light of the Las Palmas moon, he little dreamed that he was framing a damning indictment of one who claimed to be his friend. But Evelyn extracted from every line the hidden truth. A gentlewoman to her finger–tips, her loathing of Mrs. Laing’s despicable tactics was so overpowering for a while that she could only vent her scorn and contempt by little gasps and sobs of indignation.Her lover’s account of events at Ostend and in London was transparently honest. She saw now that by some clever and unscrupulous device his letters and telegrams had been withheld. The burking of her own letters, sent with unfailing regularity until outraged pride bade her cease, was equally clear. But how had their common enemy achieved these results? Why did Mrs. Laing flush and look guilty when Lord Fairholme recognized Warden’s name half an hour ago?Well, she would ask the genial little nobleman for an explanation. He would be candid, she was sure; perhaps he might help to illumine some of the dark places of the last four months.Peter Evans, watching her eyes as they devoured page after page, winked solemnly at Chris, but held his peace until the letter was restored to its envelope. Then he felt that his innings had come.“Well, miss,” he remarked quietly, “does that round off everything in ship–shape style?”For answer, she put both hands on his shoulders, and looked into his weather–beaten face.“Peter,” she said, “I can never repay you for what you have done. Captain Warden tells me he had faith in you, and indeed you have justified his confidence. But how did you and Chris manage to travel all this long way to find me? What has it cost you? I have not much money at my command here——”“Money, miss? Did the Cap’n say nothink about it?”“No.”“Just like ‘im. There neverwasa more free–handed gent than ‘im. Funny thing, ain’t it, that the wrong people are bloomin’ millionaires. I s’pose that’s w’y they ‘ave it—coss they stick to it. Lord love a duck, ther’s bin no trouble aboutmoney! He did some tricks at the Casino——”“Yes, yes, he has told me that.”“Well, w’en ‘e gives me that there packidge, ‘e forks out fifty quid, an’ says, ‘Peter, if you want more,go to my bank.’ But fifty golden suvrins is a small fortin to a sailorman—I’ve known the time it ‘ud keep me an’ my missus an’ Chris for a year—an’ I wasn’t flingin’ it about for bookin’ clerks an’ pursers to pick up, neether. We ‘ad to dig a bit out o’ the bank w’en this trip showed up, but afore that Chris an’ me worked our passidge to Scotland, an’ Hamburg, an’ as far south as Bordeaux.”“You went to Scotland? Why?”“Afore the Cap’n left Lunnon ‘e ‘ad a telegram from the coas–tguard to say theSan Sowsyheaded sou’east by east from Lochmerig, an’ them ain’t the sailin’ directions for the Shetlands, or they wasn’t w’en I was at sea. It seemed to me some old salt thereabouts might help a bit—fishermen keep a pretty close eye on passin’ craft, miss—so off we goes. I shipped as extra hand on theInverkeld, bound from London to Aberdeen, an’ Chris was stooard in the engineers’ mess. Sure enough, I lights on a Montrose herrin’–boat as ‘ad seen the yacht bearin’ away in the line for Hamburg, I follered, on a tramp from Newcastle, but I was a week late. You see, my orders was ‘into her own ‘ands, Peter.’”“Oh, you are a dear!”“Well, mebbe. I’ve bin called most things in me time, miss. But it’s spinnin’ a tremenjous long yarn to go over all the ground. Wot I want to ax you now is this—wot stopped Cap’n Warden from gettin’ your letters?”“Ah, Peter! a wicked woman, I am afraid.”“D’ye ‘ear, Chris?” and Peter turned solemnly to his son. “Wot did I tell yer? You see, miss,” he went on, “I looked in at the Lodge, an’ med friends with a servant or two, an’ it kem out that Mrs. Laing collared a telegram addressed to you. ‘Was it himportant?’ sez one chap. ‘Reel himportant,’ sez I, ‘it was from ‘er young man.’ Beg pardon, miss, but that’s the way we talks among ourselves. ‘Oo is he?’ sez the other fellow. ‘Captain Warden,’ sez I. ‘Not Captain Arthur Warden, of Ostend?’ sez ‘e. ‘The very man,’ sez I. ‘Dash my eyes,’ sez ‘e, ‘that’s queer. Mrs. Laing wanted a letter out of the box one day w’en I was goin’ to the post, an’ that’s the very name as was on it. Wot’s ‘is little game? Is ‘e a–playin’ up to both of ‘em?’ ‘Young man,’ sez I, ‘you don’t know ‘im. ‘E’s the straightest gentleman as ever wore shoe–leather.’ I axed ‘im w’en the incident occurred, as they say in the noospapers, an’ ‘e tole me it was just arter Mrs. Laing kem to Lochmerig. In fact, ‘e wouldn’t ha’ known ‘oo she was if she ‘adn’t bin standin’ in the ‘all talkin’ to—to—wot’s ‘is name, Chris?”“Lord Fairholme?” broke in Evelyn.“No, miss, that wasn’t it—not in the same street.”“Billy Thring?”“Tally! I’ve got it all logged up in my cabin. I wasn’t sartin I’d see you to–night, or I’d ha’ brought the book. That’s ‘im—Billy Thring—it sounds familiar like, if he’s a swell, but that’s wot they called ‘im at Lochmerig.”“Peter, you are a wonder. You have found out the one thing I wanted to know.”“Excuse me, miss, but you’re a bit of a wonder yourself. If that was the on’y missin’ link, w’y didn’t you write to me, care o’ the Pilots’ Office, Cardiff? I could ha’ put you straight within a week. Any ship’s skipper would ha’ guessed my address, if you tole ‘im about theNancyan’ gev ‘im my name.”“I fear I am very much to blame,” said Evelyn contritely. “But you hardly realize yet how I have been victimized. Now I must go. It is very late. Where are you staying?”“Chris an’ me will turn in with our engineer friend on board theCid. At least that’s wot I call the old tub, but these Spanish jokers make it intoThith. Did y’ ever ‘ear anythink funnier’n that?”She laughed blithely, arranged an early hour to meet the two at the mole next day, and sped back to the hotel. She wanted to read that thrice–precious letter again. Seen in the moonlight, it seemed to be fantastic, unreal. The words danced before her eyes. Her brain had only half grasped its extraordinary meanings.ill257Peter, you are a wonderPage238In the privacy of her own room she should go through it slowly, weighing its bewildering revelations, taking to her very heart the outspoken, manly sentences that assured her of Warden’s devotion, and planning with new zest the means whereby she might circumvent her enemies and his. Warden had been deceived even more grossly than she herself. His faithful record of Rosamund’s malicious innuendoes during the dinner at the Savoy Hotel gave ample proof of that. It was quite true she had talked with Figuero in the garden at Lochmerig. The man naturally interested her; his manner of speech was quaint, and he told her strange things about the country in which the whole of her lover’s active career might be passed. Was that a crime? And how shameful that any woman should write such a wicked untruth as to say that she had gossiped to Thring and others about the men of Oku! Of course, Mrs. Laing had obtained her information from the stolen letter. Evelyn remembered perfectly well the unfortunate postscript in which she alluded to the negroes and the calabash. She meant only to soften the harshness of her comments on Rosamund and the two foreigners, but it was obvious now that she could have written nothing more harmful to Warden’s mission.And then, with a sudden horror that made her white to the lips, she realized what it meant—that Warden had never received her letter, that Rosamund had adroitly availed herself of the details it contained, and that her lover had gone to Africa with a lurking doubt in his heart of the one woman in the world whom he trusted. Did he think her really the base creature she was depicted? Oh, it was intolerable! She would never forgive Mrs. Laing—no, never! Her rival had stooped to a meanness that could not be borne—she must be punished, with a vengeance at once swift and merciless.All this was very un–Christian, and wholly unlike the delightfully shy yet lovable girl to whom Warden lost his heart during the midsummer madness of Cowes and Plymouth, but Evelyn was stirred to the depths of a passionate nature; not for the first time in Las Palmas, she cried herself to sleep.She awoke in a better frame of mind, though still determined to bring Mrs. Laing to her knees at the first opportunity. Keeping the tryst with Peter, she took him fully into her confidence. He was able to supply many minor items of information that fitted the pieces of the puzzle more accurately together. He did not know what had become of Warden, but Evelyn made no scruple of telling him the facts within her knowledge.She recked little of Government secrets and the byways of Imperial politics. The ex–pilot and his sturdy offspring were now the only witnesses of her good faith. Perhaps they might meet Warden in England before he was able to communicate with her. In that event, she wanted Peter to be in a position to do for her lover what he had done for her, and disabuse Warden’s mind of the cloud of lies by which it had been darkened.Father and son were returning at once by the out–going mail steamer. She pressed Peter to accept what little money she could spare, but he would not take a penny.“No, miss,” he said, with emphatic head–shaking. “There’s some shot left in the locker yet, an’ me an’ the Cap’n will ‘ave a reckonin’ w’en he comes ‘ome. If I’m short of a pound or two afore I get theNancyin commission this spring, I’ll ax that gentleman at the bank for it. P’raps you’ll write ‘im a line, an’ say I’ve kep’ me contract.”She had to be content with that. Were it practicable, she would have gone back to England in the same steamer. Here, in Las Palmas, she felt so utterly unbefriended. Though thousands of miles nearer Africa than in England, she seemed to be more thousands of miles removed from the chance of receiving a letter or a cablegram. True, she possessed a very useful acquaintance in the commander of theValiant, but she could hardly expect one of His Majesty’s cruisers to fly to and fro in the East Atlantic in order to keep her conversant with developments in Nigeria. Peter, however, undertook to call at the Colonial Office, while she would cable him her address after the lapse of a fortnight. Then, if there was any news of Warden, he would communicate with her.At luncheon she had her first meeting with Mrs. Laing since the arrival of that epoch–marking letter. A special menu was ordered, and the table was gay with flowers, for the Baumgartners dearly loved a lord, and were resolved to make the most of their friendly relations with the Earl of Fairholme.Mr. Baumgartner looked worried and preoccupied. The coming of the mail which meant so much to Evelyn perhaps had its importance for him also. At any rate, he left the entertainment of his guests largelyto his wife, until a sharp clash of wits rudely dispelled his reverie.Beryl Baumgartner was the unconscious agent that brought about an unforeseen crisis. Her restless eyes speedily caught the glint of diamonds on Evelyn’s left hand, and she cried ecstatically:“Oh, Evelyn, what a lovely ring! Where did you get it?”Each woman at the table was on thequi viveinstantly. In a place like Las Palmas the mere mention of a diamond ring in connection with a young and pretty girl suggests that one more infatuated male has voluntarily removed his name from the list of eligibles.Evelyn, having stilled the volcano that raged over night, might have allowed the opportunity to pass if she had not happened to catch the mocking smile on Rosamund’s face when the nature of the ring became self–evident. That steeled her intent.“It is my engagement ring,” she said quietly.“What?” shrieked Beryl, to whom this was news indeed. “Who is he?”“You do not know him, dear, but his name is Captain Warden. He is at present in West Africa, somewhere near the Benuë River.”“And did he send it to you?”“Yes. I received it only last night. It would have reached me four months ago, had not Mrs. Laing stolen one of my letters—perhaps others as well—and that naturally led to some confusion.”There was a moment of stupefied silence at thetable. Everybody seemed to be stricken dumb. Rosamund, crimson with anger, could only mutter:“What insolence!”“It is an unpleasant thing to say, but it is true,” said Evelyn, discussing her rival’s transgression in the most matter–of–fact tone, though she was conscious of a queer tingling at the roots of her hair, and she hardly recognized the sound of her own voice.Baumgartner felt it imperative to stop what threatened to develop into a scandal.“Miss Dane, you are making a serious charge against a lady of the highest repute,” he said, in his best chairman–of–the–company style.“I mean it, every word,” cried Evelyn, a trifle more vehemently. “Lord Fairholme, am I speaking the truth or not?” she demanded, suddenly wheeling round on the inoffensive peer.“Really—er—really——” he spluttered, for once too bewildered to grin.“Please tell Mr. Baumgartner what happened in the hall at Lochmerig when Mrs. Laing asked the postman to give her a letter addressed to Captain Arthur Warden, at Ostend. You were present. It was my letter she obtained. Perhaps she has it yet if her boxes were searched.”Here was no timid girl striving vainly to bolster up a false accusation, but a fiery young goddess impeaching an erring mortal. The atmosphere was electrical; Beryl Baumgartner said afterwards that she felt pins and needles attacking her at all points!“I’m awfully sorry, Miss Dane, but I gave very little attention to the incident,” said Fairholme, partly recovering himself.“But you remembered Captain Warden’s name last night? Was it not at Lochmerig that you heard it, and from Mrs. Laing?”“Well—yes, but, you know, Mrs. Laing might have written to him.”“She did, after obtaining the address from my letter and reading what I wrote.”Then she turned on Rosamund with magnificent disdain.“Shall I give you a copy of your letter? Captain Warden has sent it to me.”Sheer fury enabled Rosamund to regain her self–control.“Your foolish attack on me is disproved out of your own mouth,” she said, striving desperately to speak with her accustomed nonchalance. “Captain Warden has not written to you since I saw him in London. He is in Africa, it is true, but he has never been heard of after going ashore at Rabat fully three months ago. How can you pretend that you received a letter from him last night? My authority is an Under Secretary of State. Pray, who is yours?”Under other conditions, Evelyn might have been warned by the imperious command to “hold her tongue” that Baumgartner telegraphed to his wife when that good lady was minded to interfere. But no consideration would stop her now. The memoryof all she had suffered through the machinations of one evilly disposed woman upset her calm judgment. In other respects, she acted with a restraint that was worthy of a first–rate actress; people at the next table might have thought she was discussing the weather. Taking Warden’s letter from her pocket, she handed it to Lord Fairholme.“I cited you as a witness,” she said. “Will you now act as a judge? Read that, and tell my friends which of us two is speaking truly.”Despite his self–supposed shortcomings, Fairholme was a gentleman. Instinctively he believed Evelyn, but he shrank from the duty she entrusted to him.“Oh, I say,” he bleated, “hasn’t this thing gone a bit too far already? Is it worth all the beastly fuss? There may be a mistake somewhere, you know. I’m sure, Miss Dane, nobody doubts your statement where this lucky chap Warden is concerned, an’, on the other hand, don’t you know, Mrs. Laing may have a perfectly fair explanation of the other business. So let it go at that, eh, what?”“May I act as arbitrator?” said Baumgartner. “If I glance through your letter, Miss Dane, I may discover a means of settlement.”Something in his tone, some hint of a crafty purpose behind the smooth–spoken words, beat through the haze of wrath and grief that clouded Evelyn’s mind. She could trust Fairholme with her lover’s letter, but not Baumgartner. To reveal to him what Warden had said about Mrs. Laing’s extraordinarily accurateknowledge of proceedings in the Solent and affairs in Nigeria would be tantamount to betraying her lover’s faith.With splendid calmness she took the letter from the table and replaced it in her pocket.“No, thank you, Mr. Baumgartner,” she said, “if Lord Fairholme declines to help me, nobody else can take his place. I appealed to him because he is aware that Mrs. Laing induced your groom to unlock the post–box and hand her my letter. The proof of my words lies here. It is for him to say whether or not he is satisfied he saw Mrs. Laing commit a theft.”Fairholme shook his head. He was not lacking in pluck, and his artificial humor was only the veneer of an honest nature, but he surprised a look in Rosamund’s eyes that startled him. She was pale now, ashen pale. She uttered no word, but continued to glower at Evelyn with a suppressed malevolence that was more threatening than the mere rage of a detected trickster.His lordship evidently thought it high time Baumgartner or his wife exercised their authority.“Don’t you think this matter has gone quite far enough?” he asked, glancing from one to the other, and avoiding the eyes of either Evelyn or Mrs. Laing.“Yes,” said Baumgartner, speaking with a pomposity that contrasted sharply with his prompt offer to supplant Fairholme as judge. “This absurd dispute about a purely private affair must end at once. I andmy family are going to Europe by the next mail steamer——”“Isadore!” gasped his wife.“Father, you can’t mean it!” cried Beryl, who, at the lowest calculation, had made arrangements for a good three weeks’ further frivolity at Las Palmas.“Unfortunately, I am quite in earnest.”The financier looked it. Despite his magisterial air, his puffy face was drawn and haggard, and he had the aspect of a man who needed rest and sleep.“You will accompany us, of course, Miss Dane,” he went on, speaking slowly, as though he were groping for the best way out of a difficulty. “Your quarrel with Mrs. Laing can be much more easily adjusted in England than here. I hope, therefore, we shall be spared further bickering during our brief stay in the Canaries.”“But, father dear,” put in his daughter, “you said we were going home on the yacht, and calling at Gibraltar and Algiers.”“I have changed my plans,” he retorted curtly, and that was all he would say on the subject.Evelyn left the table at the earliest moment. When too late, she regretted the impulse that led her to declare open war against Mrs. Laing. But it was done now. Those words “theft” and “steal” were irrevocable. She had retreated to a nook in the garden where a dense clump of tropical trees and shrubs gave shelter from the sun, and was trying to discover if she had imperilled the success of Warden’s mission by anyunguarded phrase, when Lord Fairholme came to her.“May I sit down here a few minutes?” he asked. “I want to try to understand things.”“I should be sorry to test your lordship’s capacity so greatly,” she said. She had not yet forgiven him for not taking her part. She was young; her world was tumbling about her ears; she believed that everybody ought to stand aghast at Rosamund’s wickedness.“Oh, come now, that’s a bit severe, isn’t it?” grinned Fairholme. “You don’t make allowances for the ruffled feelin’s of a poor fellow who has just had his image battered——”“Will you please tell me what you are talking about?”“Eh—beg pardon, I meant idol shattered. Silly mistake, eh, what?”Evelyn’s lips relaxed in a smile. There was no resisting “Billy” when (in his own phrase) he was goin’ strong.“I fear you all thought me very rude,” she said, with a pathetic little gesture of helplessness. “But what was I to do?—listen in silence to fresh insults?”“I think you did the only possible thing.”“Then why did you refuse to bear out my statement?”“There were reasons. May I see that letter now?”“Have you come of your own accord?” she asked.Evelyn fighting for the man she loved was a very different girl from the proud, disdainful Evelyn who, twenty–four hours earlier, would have endured almost any infliction rather than flout her adversary in apublic dining–room. She credited Rosamund with the adoption of any petty device to gain her ends, and felt that Fairholme was just the man to be used as a stalking–horse.“No,” he said, “or rather, yes—and no. I am anxious to know the truth, but Baumgartner suggested that I ought to accept your offer of reading the evidence. Don’t you see, he has to consider the future a bit.”“In what way?”“Well, if Mrs. Laing stole a letter in his house, she—it’s a jolly hard thing to say—but she must be warned off.”Baumgartner as a guardian of morals was a new conception. Evelyn felt that a more powerful foe than Rosamund was in the field. Her unimportant romance had suddenly widened out into the world–domain of politics. She must decide quickly and decide right. In that vital moment she realized that her postscript to the Lochmerig letter might have consequences far beyond their effect on Warden’s fortunes and her own.“Lord Fairholme,” she said, turning so that she could watch the slightest change in the expression of his face, “does Mr. Baumgartner strike you as a man who would go out of his way to interfere in a dispute between two women?”“Not unless there was money in it,” said Fairholme cheerfully.“Then why is he showing such interest now in a matter which he deliberately closed at luncheon?”“I gave you his explanation. Even Baumgartner likes to associate with people of good character.”“No, that is not the reason. Mr. Baumgartner is engaged at this moment in a plot against British dominion in West Africa. You see that cruiser in the harbor? Well, she is here to watch theSans Souci. You yourself heard to–day that our party is going to Europe by the mail steamer. Why, when theSans Souciis at our disposal? I will tell you. The British authorities believe that the yacht will help, or further in some way, a native rising in Southern Nigeria. Now, the letter in my possession, read by any one who could extract its inner meaning, would yield a valuable clue to the amount of information at the disposal of the home government. If you, without knowing this, answered Mr. Baumgartner’s questions as to its contents, you would be doing the gravest injury to Great Britain.”“By gad!” exclaimed Fairholme.“You can easily assure yourself that I am not exaggerating the facts. Here is the letter. Read it, and remember what I have told you.”Fairholme pursed his lips and bent his brows in deep mental effort. He held the letter in his hand unopened during this unusual and seemingly painful process. Then he gave it back to Evelyn.“No, Miss Dane,” he said emphatically. “I’m far too candid an ass to be laden with state secrets. Now, if you wouldn’t mind just pickin’ out the bits that refer to Mrs. Laing, an’ skippin’ all the political part,I’ll be able to bounce old Baumgartner for all he’s worth.”“But I cannot. It is the political part which proves that my letter was stolen.”“Same thing! Change the names. Turn West Africa into Newmarket, an’ call the Emperor Lord Rosebery.”“The Emperor,” said Evelyn, surprised at Fairholme’s chance shot.“He’s in it, I guess. He has his finger in every pie, an’ some of ‘em have bin jolly hot. Now, go ahead. If it’s at all awkward, leave me to fill in a bit about the Ditch Mile an’ the Epsom gradients that will bamboozle Baumgartner.”Evelyn did her best. Fairholme was delighted with Warden’s description of the baccarat and roulette incidents, but his face lengthened when he heard Rosamund’s allusions to himself. Once, Evelyn forgot his stipulation, and spoke of the “men of Oku.”“Oku,” broke in Fairholme, “where is that?”“It is a savage native state in West Africa. That is the one name you must not remember, Lord Fairholme.”He did not interrupt again till she had finished reading. Then she told him how Peter Evans had brought her the ring and the letter; and, finding him sympathetic, she explained the extraordinary chance that led to Warden’s capture by a Mohammedan fanatic at Rabat.“Funny thing!” he said, when she had made anend. “That chap Figuero joined my steamer at Lisbon.”“He is not here?” cried Evelyn, genuinely startled, for she feared Figuero.“Yes, he is. I fancy he’s on board theSans Souci. I didn’t speak to him; I have a notion that he didn’t recognize me under my new name. We also picked up a number of German officers at the same port, but they left us at Funchal, where another ship took them on to the Cameroons. That is German West Africa, isn’t it?”“I believe so. My geographical knowledge of this part of the world is of the vaguest. It dates chiefly from last night.”“When the naval Johnny was showing you the map, I suppose?”“But how do you know that?” she demanded, and another wave of surprise flooded her face with color.“Mrs. Laing and I watched you for quite a time—the watchin’ was involuntary on my part, but she wouldn’t come away from the veranda, an’ now I know why. You will observe, Miss Dane, that I have bin the goat all through the proceedin’s.”“I can hardly say that.”“No, you wouldn’t. But it’s true. The only bit of luck I’ve had is that I am saved the painful necessity of bein’ refused as a husband by Mrs. Laing. I came here to ask her to marry me.”“Oh, I am so sorry——” began Evelyn, but Fairholme’s cackling laugh checked her.“Why sorry? You’ve done me a good turn, twice over, an’ if I can do you one, just ask. In the first place, she would probably have said ‘No,’ and in the second, where should I have been if she said ‘Yes.’ In the soup, eh, what?”Lord Fairholme seemed to pride himself on his narrow escape, and gave Evelyn the credit of rescuing him. She protested that if she had known he was really bent on marrying Mrs. Laing she would neither have attacked the latter in his presence nor called on him to bear out her statements. But he refused to admit that she had conferred other than a favor on him, and repeated his desire to serve her if the opportunity offered. It came quickly.That night, when Evelyn was sound asleep, her room was entered and Warden’s letter taken. It lay with the ring and some other trinkets on a dressing–table. The door was locked and bolted, but the window was wide open to admit the sea breeze, and, although the room was on the third floor, and therefore some forty feet or more above the ground level, it was impossible that the thief could have entered it except through the window. That the letter alone was the objective was shown by the fact that the exceedingly valuable ring was left untouched. There was almost a hint of malicious humor in the discrimination exercised. An ordinary criminal, though bribed to procure a document of great importance to some other person, would certainly have made away with any jewelry that was lying handy. In this instance, thereseemed to be an unspoken warning to the girl that she was powerless in the toils that surrounded her.At first, she suspected Rosamund of complicity in this new theft, but when she asked herself who had most to gain from the perusal of the letter, suspicion pointed, not to Rosamund, who could guess its contents with fair accuracy, but to Baumgartner and his associates, who were evidently more afraid of one man than of the armed might of Britain.In the height of her distress her employer came to her.“We have decided to return by the Portuguese mail from Madeira,” he said, “and in order to catch the next steamer we shall sail in theSans Soucito–night. Would it be convenient for you to go aboard the yacht this afternoon?”“But what action am I to take with regard to my stolen letter?” she demanded. “You heard what I said to Mrs. Laing. That letter is my evidence against her.”“It may have blown out of your window. There is generally a strong breeze just before dawn. At any rate, it is better lost. Such disputes are useless.”“But it was of the utmost importance in other ways.”“Young ladies’ love–letters always are,” he gurgled with forced laughter. “Still, if it really has gone, you can hardly propose to remain in Las Palmas on the off chance that it may be recovered.”She felt that she was trapped, but for what purpose it was hard to imagine. Lord Fairholme had told her already that Baumgartner was very much annoyedwith him for failing to remember what Warden had written, and it was now beyond doubt that theSans Souci’svoyage to Funchal was a blind for some ulterior object.In her dilemma, she thought of Mortimer. When Baumgartner went away, she hurried out of the hotel and drove straight to the harbor. A boat brought her to theValiant; the commander himself met her at the gangway, and escorted her to his cabin.“Sorry I couldn’t call last evening Miss Dane,” he said, “but I was detained on board unexpectedly. Things are happening, I hear.”“Yes. Figuero is here, and we leave on the yacht for Funchal to–night.”He smiled.“Is that the dodge?” he exclaimed. “Of course, I was posted in the movements of the Portuguese and his friends, but the trip to Madeira is clever. What has caused the change of programme?”She told him, and he banged a clenched fist emphatically on a table which a steward had just arranged for tea.“For once, I can find it in my heart to wish you were a man,” he cried. “A steamer starts for Lagos within two hours, and it would be a fine thing if the Nigeria administration heard your story from your own lips. Of course, I can write, but it is difficult to put on paper one’s guesses and surmises at the trickery that is going on.”The words were scarcely uttered ere a wild notion leaped into Evelyn’s brain. Why should she not goto Lagos? She might be able to clear away some of the doubts and misgivings that must have gathered around Warden’s name. Above all else, if there was news of him, it would surely reach the officials there long before it became known in England.“If I were a man,” she said tremulously, “would you pay my passage on that ship?”“Of course. You would be traveling on Government service.”“Then I shall go. Please arrange matters for me, and send some one to take me on board.”“Do you mean it?” he cried.“Yes.”“By Jove, Miss Dane, you astonish me more each time I see you. But how about the Baumgartners?”“I shall simply write a note resigning my situation. It is a mere question of doing that to–day or three weeks hence. But I shall not tell them why I am leaving their service so suddenly.”“Baumgartner will find out. Unless I am much mistaken, it will worry him. Now, you are sure you intend to take this trip?”“Quite certain.”“Very well. I shall give myself the pleasure of calling for you at three o’clock.”Evelyn packed her boxes as speedily as possible. Counting her money, she found she had only twenty–five pounds. But there was that new treasure, the ring. How better could she use it than in furthering the interests of the man she loved? She wondered ifLord Fairholme would lend her fifty pounds on its security? A note brought him to her room, and she explained briefly that she meant to visit Lagos, and might need more funds than she had at her command.“Well, that beats the band,” he said. “Mrs. Laing is going there too.”“Not on to–day’s steamer?” she protested, for it seemed that an unkind fate was conspiring against her.“Sure thing! Heard her tellin’ Beryl an hour ago.”Though Evelyn wished heartily that her rival had chosen any other route of the many which lead from Las Palmas, her resolution remained unaltered. But there was another thrill in store for her.“Tell you what, Miss Dane,” said Fairholme, “I don’t think you ought to tackle an expedition of this sort single–handed. You may want some one to pull you out of a tight place—what price me as a puller–out? I’m a pretty useless sort of chap in most things, but there is no reason why I shouldn’t try to do my country a good turn once in a way. Let me go with you, and then you’ll have no need to worry about coin.”“You are really very kind,” she faltered, “but—but——”“You are afraid of Mrs. Laing again,” he grinned. “Don’t worry yourself about her, dear girl. Not even Mrs. Grundy can growl at me for bein’ your fellow–passenger. I’m mixed up in this business, an’, by Jove, I mean to see it through. Look here, can’t you adopt me as a sort of elder brother, an’ make it ‘Billy’ an’ ‘Evelyn,’ an’ that sort of thing—eh, what?”CHAPTER XIVTHE DRUMS OF OKUEvelyn, ferried across the harbor by a boat’s crew from the warship, boarded theEstremadurain almost regal state. The vessel’s cabin accommodation was poor, but the English girl was given of its best. Not every day does a small West African trader receive a passenger under the escort of a peer of the realm and a Captain in the Royal Navy. It was an interesting moment when Rosamund Laing, accompanied by Figuero, came alongside. The Portuguese made off at once, but the lady, when it was too late to retreat, affected a blank indifference to Evelyn’s presence that showed how conscious she was of it. She seldom appeared on deck, ate each meal in the seclusion of her cabin, and spoke no word, even to Lord Fairholme. On arriving at Lagos she hurried from the ship, and Evelyn breathed a sigh of relief as she watched her enemy go ashore.She did not carry her dislike of Mrs. Laing to the point of imagining her to be in active co–operation with the plotters against British supremacy in that quarter of the world. It was far more probable that a rich woman who drew some part of her revenues fromfactories on the coast might be combining business with the desire to obtain news of Warden at first hand. At any rate, the girl fondly hoped they might never meet again, and she trusted to the strength of her own story, supplemented by a letter from Captain Mortimer to the Governor, to place her beyond the reach of misrepresentation.But her troubles, instead of diminishing, became even more pronounced when she called at Government House. Both she and Lord Fairholme were entirely ignorant of local conditions. Neither of them knew that Lagos, though the chief West African port, and practically the only safe harbor on the Guinea Coast, was the capital of an administration quite separate from that of North and of South Nigeria. To reach Old Calabar, the headquarters of Warden’s service, they must take a long journey down the coast and penetrate some forty miles into the Niger delta. Captain Mortimer, in all probability, thought she was aware of this vital distinction, but, at the outset, Evelyn almost felt that she had undertaken a useless task.Her manifest distress at an unpleasing discovery won her the sympathy of the deputy Governor of Lagos, his chief having crossed from the island to the mainland only the day before. But sympathy could not altogether cloak a skepticism that was galling in the extreme. He was fully acquainted with the position of affairs in the sister protectorate, he said. He appreciated Captain Mortimer’s motives in wishing to acquaint the Government of Nigeria with certaincurious circumstances which might or might not be connected with tribal uneasiness in the Benuë River districts, but the fact remained that all was quiet now in that region.“Owing to Captain Warden’s unfortunate disappearance,” he went on, “another commissioner visited Oku. He found matters there in a fairly settled state. The people were cultivating their lands with greater assiduity than such semi–cannibals usually display, and this is a sure sign of content in a West African community. Indeed, Captain Forbes is now about to return to headquarters. A few companies of Hausa constabulary, who were moved to more convenient centers in case a strong column was required for an expedition to the Benuë, are going back to their original cantonments. The incident is ended.”The official tone was blandly disconcerting. Evelyn was aware that the deputy Governor looked on her somewhat in the light of a runaway schoolgirl, who had no reason whatever to bother her pretty head about the business of a prosperous and thriving colony.“You seem to imply that the Home authorities acted in a panic,” she said, wondering if it were really true that Warden and the men he had seen in London were laboring under a delusion.“No. They misread the motives of the Nigeria administration in curtailing Captain Warden’s furlough—that is all. There undoubtedly were rumors of some border disturbances. The people in that region hinted that the Oku men were arranging whatthey term a Long Ju–ju. There was also a trading activity on the part of our neighbors that gave rise to unpleasant suspicions. To be forewarned is to be forearmed, and His Excellency the Governor regarded Captain Warden as the man who could best deal with and remove any causes of discontent. Within the last two months, however, all unfavorable symptoms have vanished, and Oku is now as quiet as Old Calabar, or Lagos itself.”“I am glad of it,” she said earnestly. “It is far from my wish to figure as a messenger of strife. May I revert to a more personal matter? If Captain Warden has succeeded in crossing the Sahara, when and where may I reasonably expect to hear of him?”The deputy Governor stroked his chin. He was a kind–hearted man, and circumstances had prepared him for that question.“It is hard to say,” he answered, “Assuming he reaches Timbuktu in safety, he can follow that course of the Upper Niger, through what is known as the Dahomey hinterland, until he arrives at Ilo, the first town in the British sphere of influence in that direction. Thence to the sea, at this season, the river is navigable. If he makes for Lagos—having been ordered here in the first instance—he might strike overland from Jebbu to the railhead at Ibadan, but if he sticks to the river and goes to his own headquarters, by remaining here you should obtain telegraphic information of his arrival at a town called Lokoja, situated at the junction of the Niger and the Benuë.”He paused. His brief review conveyed no hint to his hearer of the tremendous difficulties any man must overcome ere he reached the comparative civilization of the telegraph, and he flinched from the task of enlightening her.“Is it quite certain,” he asked, “that Captain Warden went ashore at Rabat?”The astonishment in Evelyn’s face was almost sufficient answer.“Unless every one in some Government department in London has gone mad, it is quite certain,” she cried. “Did not an officer from Nigeria go to meet him at Cape Coast Castle, and is it not evident that he went to Hassan’s Tower to obtain the ruby I have told you of?”The official smiled. He had effectually distracted her thoughts from the far more embarrassing topic of Warden’s chances of reaching Nigeria alive.“One learns to distrust circumstantial evidence, Miss Dane. Have you heard that the passenger on theWater Witchwas known as Mr. Alfred Williams? Yes? Well, we do not know Captain Warden. We have no means here of identifying the baggage landed by the captain of theWater Witchwhen he reported the Rabat incident. Could you recognize any of Captain Warden’s belongings?”“No,” said Evelyn blankly—“that is, I fear not.”“You mentioned a gourd. I have not seen the thing myself, but one of my assistants says that a mostremarkable object of that nature was found in one of the missing man’s boxes.”“Ah, I should know that anywhere,” and she shuddered at the recollection of the evil face whose appearance had so strangely synchronized with the stormy events of her recent life.“Well, have you any objection to examining the gourd now? If it is the undoubted article you picked up in the Solent, it goes far to prove that Captain Warden did really take passage on theWater Witch.”“I cannot imagine how you can think otherwise,” she declared. “Of course it was he!”“There is no harm in making sure,” he said, having already decided to entrust to his wife the trying duty of making known to this charming girl the almost certain fact that her lover was long since dead.The calabash was brought and taken from its canvas wrapper. Oddly enough, mildew had formed on its bright lacquer, and the sheen of the mosaic eyes was dulled. It had lost some of its artistic power, and was far from being the terrifying creation that scared her so badly when first she saw it on the deck of theNancy.“Yes, that is it,” she said. “You see, this crown is really a lid, and the piece of vellum, or parchment, was hidden inside. It is not there now, yet it is more than likely that Captain Warden kept them both together.”The servant who had brought the calabash was sent back to search for the tattooed skin. He soon returnedwith it, and the deputy Governor examined the two curios with manifest interest.“It is not native work,” he said. “I have never seen anything just like it, even in museums at home.”Moved by an impulse which she could never afterwards explain, Evelyn asked if both the gourd and the parchment might be given to her.“They are really mine,” she explained sadly. “Captain Warden asked me to accept the carved head, as it was I who discovered it. But I was afraid of it then. Now, I should be pleased to have it in my possession. It brought us together in the first instance. Perhaps it may do the same thing a second time.”“Nigeria is the home of the ju–ju—may this fetish prove a lucky one!” said the official gravely. “Take it, by all means, Miss Dane, but let no native see it, or you will attract a notoriety that I am sure you would dislike. Meanwhile, I shall telegraph to Old Calabar asking for news, though I should certainly have heard if Warden had turned up already.”That same afternoon the deputy Governor’s wife called on Evelyn, and invited her to come and stay at her house, urging that she would find residence in a private family vastly preferable to the hotel in which she had passed the previous night. For fully three weeks she lived with this most friendly and hospitable lady. By degrees, as they became more intimate, her new acquaintance gathered the threads of the unusual story in which the girl figured so prominently. Similarly, as Evelyn gained more knowledge of Africanaffairs, she could not help but discover that it would be nothing less than a miracle if Warden ever reached Nigeria. The difficulties facing even a well–equipped expedition on the desert route were so great that all but the most enthusiastic explorers shrank from them. How, then, could one white man, accompanied by a solitary Hausa, hope to overcome them? The deputy Governor scouted the idea that Warden could raise a caravan at Bel Abbas. He was dubious about the incidents reported from Lektawa, but he made no secret of the utter improbability that Warden would have the means of buying camels and hiring men for the dangerous journey outlined by Captain Mortimer. And, to complete Evelyn’s dismay, the Southern Nigeria administration sent the most positive assurances that Warden had not been heard of in the upper river districts.She learned incidentally that Mrs. Laing had gone to Lokoja in a river steamer. Her hostess believed that Rosamund had found out the latest version of Warden’s adventures, and cherished a faint hope that even yet she might forestall Evelyn. No small consideration would take her so far into the interior, especially as the journey was both risky and useless.“But that need not trouble you at all, my dear,” said her outspoken friend. “If Captain Warden lives, you can rest assured that my husband will hear of him long before Mrs. Laing hears. I am afraid that if news comes at all, it will reach us in the form of a native rumor that a white man died of fever awayup there beyond the hills. It is always fever—never a spear thrust or a quantity of powdered glass mixed with a man’s food. The natives are loyal enough to each other in that respect. Even when they know the truth, it is almost impossible to get them to tell it.”So now it was death, and not life, that was talked of, and Evelyn lived on in dry–eyed misery until Fairholme hinted one day that she ought to return home, as the climate was beginning to affect her health.There were not lacking indications that the merry–souled little peer had quickly reconciled himself to the loss of Mrs. Laing. He was the most popular man in Lagos, and he hardly ever visited Evelyn when he did not assure her that he was “havin’ a giddy time with the dear girls.“ Yet she knew that he was only waiting until the last hope of Warden’s escape from the desert must be abandoned. When that hour came, and she was prepared to take ship for England, Fairholme would ask her to marry him.The belief became an obsession. To get away from it, to cut herself wholly adrift from painful associations, she offered her help to an American Baptist missionary and his wife who were going up the Benuë. They tried to dissuade her, pointing out the hardships and positive dangers of the undertaking and the humdrum nature of the nursing, teaching, and doctoring that constituted the lot of a medical missionary in West Africa. Finally, they consented, but stipulated that she should give her new career a six months’ trial.Fairholme protested, and stormed, and was only prevented from proposing on the spot by Evelyn’s placid statement that no matter what the future might decide, she should not be happy unless she had visited the little–known land to which her lover had given the best years of his life.The reference to Warden effectually sealed his lips. He hastened to the club, asked a man to dine with him, drank the larger part of a bottle of champagne, and mournfully informed his friends that he had never enjoyed a moment’s real fun since he ceased to be hard up.So Evelyn said good–by to the hospitable people who entertained her at Lagos, and made the long voyage up the great river that perplexed mankind during so many centuries. Even yet its whole course has not been surveyed, and it has important tributaries that are unknown beyond their confluence with the main stream. But the river steamer followed the established trade route through Old Calabar and Asabao and Idah to Lokoja; thence a steam launch took the small party of Europeans up the Benuë to Ibi, and they completed the journey in a roofed boat of shallow draft manned by krooboys.The girl seemed now to have left behind the cares and troubles of the outer world. Busying herself with the daily life of the mission compound—once a stockaded trading–station and noted center for the distribution of gin, but now a peaceful hive of simple tuition and industry—she soon experienced a calmsense of duty accomplished that had certainly been denied her in the Baumgartner household. At Lagos she had received one letter from Beryl, who complained bitterly of her “desertion.“ A police patrol–boat brought her a letter from home, in which her stepmother expressed the strongest disapproval of her new departure as announced by a hurried note sent from Lagos. And that was all. The links that bound her with England were completely snapped. She might almost be the kidnapped Domenico Garcia, of whom she thought occasionally when some chance aspect of a negro’s face startled her by its close resemblance to the black mask on the calabash.Mindful of the Lagos official’s warning, she never showed the carved head to any one. Not even Mr. and Mrs. Hume, the mission couple, knew that it was in her possession.She had been nearly two months in Kadana, as the group of houses and huts in the clearing by the side of the yellow Benuë was called, when an apparently trivial incident upset the placid routine of the mission. One evening, just before sunset, a ju–ju man, fearsomely bedaubed, and decked with an amazing headdress and skirt of scarlet feathers, came into the native section of the compound. He cut off the head of an unhappy fowl that he carried with him, sprinkled its warm blood in a circle on the ground, chanted some hoarse incantation, and vanished into the bush.The white people saw him from a distance. They happened to be standing on the veranda of an oldfactory used as a schoolhouse and dwelling, and Mr. Hume was greatly annoyed by the witch–doctor’s visit.“This will unsettle every native for a week or two,” he said, eying the man’s antics with evident disfavor. “Those fellows are a far more enduring curse to Africa than the gin traffic. Governments can legislate gin out of existence, but they cannot touch ju–ju.”“We are doing something in that direction here,” said Evelyn, glancing over her shoulder at the rows of woolly–headed little black figures in the class–room.“Yes, we are educating the children, but their parents will undo to–night all that we have accomplished since our return. Look at Bambuk. He has mixed with Europeans during the past ten years, yet he is white with terror.”It was an odd phrase to use with regard to a negro, but it was quite accurate. Bambuk, interpreter, head servant, and factotum–in–chief to the mission, who was peering through the doorway at the proceedings of the ju–ju man, showed every sign of alarm when he saw the fowl–killing ceremony. His ebony face, usually shining and jovial looking, became livid and drawn. His eyes glistened like those of a frightened animal.Turning for a second to make sure that the children were not listening, he drew near and whispered:“Oku man make war ju–ju. Him say all black people lib for bush, or dem King of Oku nail ebery one to tree w’en he burn mission.”Bambuk could speak far better English than that. The fact that he had reverted so thoroughly to the jargon of the krooboy proved the extent of his fear.Hume affected to make light of the witch–doctor and his threats.“Go and tell him to stop his nonsense”, he said. “Say I have a bale of cotton here which I brought especially from Lagos as a present for King M’Wanga.”But before Bambuk could descend the broad flight of steps leading from the veranda, the fetish performance was at an end and its chief actor had rushed off among the trees.Evelyn felt a chill run through her body, though the air was hot and vapor–laden.“Is M’Wagna the name of the King of Oku?” she asked.“I believe so. I have been absent nearly eight months, as you are aware, but I haven’t heard of any change in the local dynasty.”“Do you think it likely that he has ever visited England?”“Most improbable,” said Hume. “He is an absolute savage. I have seen him only once, and I should be sorry to think that my life depended on his good will. But why did you imagine he might have been in England?”“Because a native of that name came there with two others last August.”“We have been visited by ju–ju men before, Charles,” put in Mrs. Hume.“Yes. Generally they come begging for something they want—usually drugs—which they pretend to concoct themselves out of a snake’s liver or the gizzard of a bird. Don’t lay too much stress on Bambuk’s fright. He is a chicken–hearted fellow at the best. If there is really any likelihood of a native disturbance I shall send him with you and Miss Dane down the river——”“I shall not go without you, dear,” said Mrs. Hume.“Nor I—unless both of you come,” answered Evelyn.Hume laughed constrainedly.“You will both obey orders, I hope,” he said, but he did not urge the matter further at the moment.They were eating their evening meal when the distant tapping of a drum caught their ears. It was not the rhythmical beating of a tom–tom by some musically–inclined bushman. It much more closely resembled the dot and dash code of the Morse alphabet, or that variant of it which Private Thomas Atkins, in a spasm of genius, christened “Umty–iddy.“ Heard in the stillness of the forest, with not a breath of air stirring the leaves of the tallest trees, and even the tawny river murmuring in so low a note that it was inaudible from the mission–house, this irregular drum–beating had a depressing, almost a sinister effect. It jarred on the nerves. It suggested the unseen and therefore the terrible. At all costs they must find out what it signified.Bambuk was summoned. He was even more distraughtthan during the fetish performance of two hours earlier.“Dem Oku drum play Custom tune,” he explained. “Dem Custom mean——”“Do you savvy what they are saying?” broke in Hume sharply. He did not imagine that his wife had discussed the habits of native potentates with her youthful helper, and even she herself did not know the full extent of the excesses, the sheer lust of bloodshed, hidden under a harmless–sounding word.“Savvy plenty. Dem drum made of monkey–skin—p’haps other kind of skin—an’ dem ju–ju man say: ‘Come, come! Make sharp dem knife! Come! Load dem gun! Come, den, come! Dem ribber (river) run red wid blood!’ Den dey nail some men to tree an’ make dance.”The missionary did not check his assistant’s recital. It was best that the women should at least understand the peril in which they were placed. The compound held not more than fifty able–bodied men, and the only arms they possessed were native weapons. Hume’s influence depended wholly on his skill in treating the ailments of the people and his patience in teaching their children not only the rudiments of English but the simpler forms of handicraft. His experience as an African missioner was not of long standing, but from the outset he had consistently refused to own any firearm more deadly than a shotgun. Hitherto he had regarded the Upper Benuë region as a settled and fairly prosperous one. His cherished day–dreamwas that before he died he might see the pioneer settlement at Kadana transmuted into a well–equipped college and training school, whence Christianity and science might spread their light throughout that part of Africa. It shocked him now to think that all his work might be submerged under a wave of fanaticism, yet he clung to the hope that the warlike preparations of the men of Oku might mean nothing more serious than a tribal quarrel. This had happened once before, and he stepped in as arbitrator. By a liberal distribution of presents, including the whole of the mission stock of wine and brandy, he sent away both parties highly gratified with both his award and his method of arriving at it.“There are war–drums beating in more than one place,” said Evelyn, who was listening in silence to the spasmodic tap–tap, tap–tap–tap, tap, that voiced the dirge translated by Bambuk.“Ah, you have hit on my unspoken thought,” cried Hume. “Come, now, Bambuk, are you not enlarging your story somewhat? Two chiefs make war–palaver; isn’t that the explanation?”“Dem Oku drum,” repeated the native, “all Oku drum. Dey call for Custom to–night.”“What exactlyisCustom, Charles?” said Mrs. Hume.“Unfortunately, it means in this instance an offering of human sacrifice.”He saw no help for it. They must know, sooner or later, and his soul turned sick at the thought of hiswife and this gentle girl who had thrown in her lot with theirs falling into the clutches of the fetish–maddened bushmen. Each minute he grew more assured that some unusual movement was taking place among the surrounding tribes. Even to his untutored ear there was a marked similarity in the drumming, and he determined that the two women should go down the river in the mission canoe as soon as the moon rose. A crew of eight men could take them to the nearest constabulary post, and within twenty–four hours a steam launch would bring back an armed body of Hausas officered by an Englishman. Till then, he would trust to Providence for the safety of the people under his care. That he himself could desert the mission never entered his mind. Not only would the settlement break up in direst confusion the moment his back was turned, but the society’s houses and stores would be looted and destroyed, and the work of years swept away in a single night.He was considering what excuse would serve to get the women on board the canoe, when the splash of paddles close at hand stirred all four to sudden excitement. It was Bambuk who read instantly the meaning of this unexpected sound. He rushed out, yelling words that proved how soon the veneer of civilization can wear off the West African negro. Soon he came back, looking sick with fear.“Dem dam pagan nigger make off in dem canoe,” he almost screamed. “Dey savvy plenty too much bushman lib. We all be killed one–time.”Even Evelyn, new to the country and its ways, realized what this meant. The river was their only highway. There were native tracks in plenty through the dense forest, but to march along any one of them while a hostile force was lying across every path was to court immediate disaster. By running away from a peril which was only passive as yet, they made it active. On the river they might escape; in the bush they could not travel a mile except on native sufferance.Hume tried bravely to minimize the force of this unlooked–for blow. It was true the fugitives might be expected to carry the alarm to the police post, but until the following night it was quite impossible for succor to reach Kadana. And now they must all stand or fall by the mission.“I did not think any of our men would be such cowards,” he said with quiet sadness. “Let us go and pacify the others. When all is said and done, we have harmed no one in Oku territory, but given relief to many who were in pain. I still believe that this scare is unwarranted, and our presence among our people will tend to calm them.”A minute later he was sorry he had not gone alone. Every hut in the compound was empty. Nearly two hundred men, women, and children had fled into the bush, preferring to obey the order of the ju–ju man rather than defy him by remaining in the mission. Bambuk had not been taken into their confidence because he was originally a Foulah Mohammedan. The colony at Kadana was precisely what Bambukhad called its members in his rage, for the Mohammedan negro looks down upon his “pagan“ brethren with supreme contempt. In a crisis such as that which now threatened to engulf the mission, these nice distinctions of class and creed are apt to spring into startling prominence.Hume faced the situation gallantly.“Another illusion shattered,” he sighed. “Most certainly I did not expect that all my people would desert me at the first hint of danger. But we must make the best of it. Even now I cannot believe that the king of Oku—if it really is he who has created this disturbance—can contemplate an attack on Europeans. He has many faults, but he is not a fool, and he knows quite well how swift and complete would be his punishment if he interfered with us.”Mrs. Hume accepted her husband’s views, and tried to look at matters with the same optimism. Evelyn, curiously enough, was better informed than even their native companion as to the serious nature of the outbreak. She was convinced that Warden’s theory was correct. Some stronger influence than a mere tribalémeutelay behind those horrible drumbeats. The authorities had been completely hoodwinked. In her heart of hearts she feared that Kadana shared its deadly peril that night with many a stronger trading–post and station down the river.Bambuk, quieting down from his earlier paroxysms of fear, seemed to await his certain doom with a dignified fatalism. Even when he heard the thud ofpaddles on the sluggish waters of the river he announced the fact laconically.“Bush man lib!” he muttered.Perhaps the white faces blanched somewhat, and hearts beat a trifle faster, but Hume alone spoke.“Where?” he asked.“On ribber—in dem war canoe.”They strained their ears, and soon caught the measured plashing. Then Mrs Hume began to weep. Evelyn knelt by her side in mute sympathy. She was too dazed to find relief in tears. For the moment she seemed to be passing through a torturing dream from which she would soon awake. Hume, who had gone to the door, came to his wife.“Don’t cry, Mary,” he said. “That does no good—and—it breaks my heart. I have not abandoned hope. God can save us even yet. Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.”His voice was strong and self–reliant. Even Bambuk glanced at him with a kind of awe, and thought, it may be, that the creed he had tried dimly to understand was nobler than the mere stoicism that was the natural outcome of his own fantastic beliefs. The negro was stupid with terror, or he could not have failed to distinguish the steady hum of an engine running at half speed.And so they waited, while the thud of the paddles came nearer, until at last the bow of a heavy craft crashed into the foliage overhanging the bank, andthey were rapt into a heaven of relief by hearing an English voice.“Hello, there!” it shouted. “Is this the Kadana Mission?”Mrs. Hume straightway fainted, but Evelyn was there to tend her, and Hume rushed down to the landing–place. The gleam of a moon rising over some low hills was beginning to make luminous the river mist. He was able dimly to note the difference between the pith hats of two Europeans and the smart round caps of a number of Hausa policemen. And, though a man of peace, he found the glint of rifle barrels singularly comforting.“Who are you?” he asked.“Well,” said he who had spoken in the first instance, “I am Lieutenant Colville of the constabulary, but I have brought with me the Earl of Fairholme. Have you a lady named Dane, Miss Evelyn Dane, staying with you?”Hume, who wanted to fall on his knees and offer thanks to Providence, managed to say that Evelyn Dane was certainly at Kadana at that moment.“Ah, that’s the ticket!” said another voice. “I suppose you can put us up for the night? Any sort of shake–down will do, so long as we get away from this beastly river. Sleepin’ on board gives one the jim–jams, eh, what?”

CHAPTER XIIIEVELYN ENTERS THE FRAYOnly a woman can fathom another woman’s mind. A man tries to think logically; a woman throws logic to the winds, and reads her opponent’s tactics by intuition. Though Warden was not wholly devoid of suspicion of Rosamund’s disinterestedness when he penned the plain statement which Evelyn now skimmed through by the light of the Las Palmas moon, he little dreamed that he was framing a damning indictment of one who claimed to be his friend. But Evelyn extracted from every line the hidden truth. A gentlewoman to her finger–tips, her loathing of Mrs. Laing’s despicable tactics was so overpowering for a while that she could only vent her scorn and contempt by little gasps and sobs of indignation.Her lover’s account of events at Ostend and in London was transparently honest. She saw now that by some clever and unscrupulous device his letters and telegrams had been withheld. The burking of her own letters, sent with unfailing regularity until outraged pride bade her cease, was equally clear. But how had their common enemy achieved these results? Why did Mrs. Laing flush and look guilty when Lord Fairholme recognized Warden’s name half an hour ago?Well, she would ask the genial little nobleman for an explanation. He would be candid, she was sure; perhaps he might help to illumine some of the dark places of the last four months.Peter Evans, watching her eyes as they devoured page after page, winked solemnly at Chris, but held his peace until the letter was restored to its envelope. Then he felt that his innings had come.“Well, miss,” he remarked quietly, “does that round off everything in ship–shape style?”For answer, she put both hands on his shoulders, and looked into his weather–beaten face.“Peter,” she said, “I can never repay you for what you have done. Captain Warden tells me he had faith in you, and indeed you have justified his confidence. But how did you and Chris manage to travel all this long way to find me? What has it cost you? I have not much money at my command here——”“Money, miss? Did the Cap’n say nothink about it?”“No.”“Just like ‘im. There neverwasa more free–handed gent than ‘im. Funny thing, ain’t it, that the wrong people are bloomin’ millionaires. I s’pose that’s w’y they ‘ave it—coss they stick to it. Lord love a duck, ther’s bin no trouble aboutmoney! He did some tricks at the Casino——”“Yes, yes, he has told me that.”“Well, w’en ‘e gives me that there packidge, ‘e forks out fifty quid, an’ says, ‘Peter, if you want more,go to my bank.’ But fifty golden suvrins is a small fortin to a sailorman—I’ve known the time it ‘ud keep me an’ my missus an’ Chris for a year—an’ I wasn’t flingin’ it about for bookin’ clerks an’ pursers to pick up, neether. We ‘ad to dig a bit out o’ the bank w’en this trip showed up, but afore that Chris an’ me worked our passidge to Scotland, an’ Hamburg, an’ as far south as Bordeaux.”“You went to Scotland? Why?”“Afore the Cap’n left Lunnon ‘e ‘ad a telegram from the coas–tguard to say theSan Sowsyheaded sou’east by east from Lochmerig, an’ them ain’t the sailin’ directions for the Shetlands, or they wasn’t w’en I was at sea. It seemed to me some old salt thereabouts might help a bit—fishermen keep a pretty close eye on passin’ craft, miss—so off we goes. I shipped as extra hand on theInverkeld, bound from London to Aberdeen, an’ Chris was stooard in the engineers’ mess. Sure enough, I lights on a Montrose herrin’–boat as ‘ad seen the yacht bearin’ away in the line for Hamburg, I follered, on a tramp from Newcastle, but I was a week late. You see, my orders was ‘into her own ‘ands, Peter.’”“Oh, you are a dear!”“Well, mebbe. I’ve bin called most things in me time, miss. But it’s spinnin’ a tremenjous long yarn to go over all the ground. Wot I want to ax you now is this—wot stopped Cap’n Warden from gettin’ your letters?”“Ah, Peter! a wicked woman, I am afraid.”“D’ye ‘ear, Chris?” and Peter turned solemnly to his son. “Wot did I tell yer? You see, miss,” he went on, “I looked in at the Lodge, an’ med friends with a servant or two, an’ it kem out that Mrs. Laing collared a telegram addressed to you. ‘Was it himportant?’ sez one chap. ‘Reel himportant,’ sez I, ‘it was from ‘er young man.’ Beg pardon, miss, but that’s the way we talks among ourselves. ‘Oo is he?’ sez the other fellow. ‘Captain Warden,’ sez I. ‘Not Captain Arthur Warden, of Ostend?’ sez ‘e. ‘The very man,’ sez I. ‘Dash my eyes,’ sez ‘e, ‘that’s queer. Mrs. Laing wanted a letter out of the box one day w’en I was goin’ to the post, an’ that’s the very name as was on it. Wot’s ‘is little game? Is ‘e a–playin’ up to both of ‘em?’ ‘Young man,’ sez I, ‘you don’t know ‘im. ‘E’s the straightest gentleman as ever wore shoe–leather.’ I axed ‘im w’en the incident occurred, as they say in the noospapers, an’ ‘e tole me it was just arter Mrs. Laing kem to Lochmerig. In fact, ‘e wouldn’t ha’ known ‘oo she was if she ‘adn’t bin standin’ in the ‘all talkin’ to—to—wot’s ‘is name, Chris?”“Lord Fairholme?” broke in Evelyn.“No, miss, that wasn’t it—not in the same street.”“Billy Thring?”“Tally! I’ve got it all logged up in my cabin. I wasn’t sartin I’d see you to–night, or I’d ha’ brought the book. That’s ‘im—Billy Thring—it sounds familiar like, if he’s a swell, but that’s wot they called ‘im at Lochmerig.”“Peter, you are a wonder. You have found out the one thing I wanted to know.”“Excuse me, miss, but you’re a bit of a wonder yourself. If that was the on’y missin’ link, w’y didn’t you write to me, care o’ the Pilots’ Office, Cardiff? I could ha’ put you straight within a week. Any ship’s skipper would ha’ guessed my address, if you tole ‘im about theNancyan’ gev ‘im my name.”“I fear I am very much to blame,” said Evelyn contritely. “But you hardly realize yet how I have been victimized. Now I must go. It is very late. Where are you staying?”“Chris an’ me will turn in with our engineer friend on board theCid. At least that’s wot I call the old tub, but these Spanish jokers make it intoThith. Did y’ ever ‘ear anythink funnier’n that?”She laughed blithely, arranged an early hour to meet the two at the mole next day, and sped back to the hotel. She wanted to read that thrice–precious letter again. Seen in the moonlight, it seemed to be fantastic, unreal. The words danced before her eyes. Her brain had only half grasped its extraordinary meanings.ill257Peter, you are a wonderPage238In the privacy of her own room she should go through it slowly, weighing its bewildering revelations, taking to her very heart the outspoken, manly sentences that assured her of Warden’s devotion, and planning with new zest the means whereby she might circumvent her enemies and his. Warden had been deceived even more grossly than she herself. His faithful record of Rosamund’s malicious innuendoes during the dinner at the Savoy Hotel gave ample proof of that. It was quite true she had talked with Figuero in the garden at Lochmerig. The man naturally interested her; his manner of speech was quaint, and he told her strange things about the country in which the whole of her lover’s active career might be passed. Was that a crime? And how shameful that any woman should write such a wicked untruth as to say that she had gossiped to Thring and others about the men of Oku! Of course, Mrs. Laing had obtained her information from the stolen letter. Evelyn remembered perfectly well the unfortunate postscript in which she alluded to the negroes and the calabash. She meant only to soften the harshness of her comments on Rosamund and the two foreigners, but it was obvious now that she could have written nothing more harmful to Warden’s mission.And then, with a sudden horror that made her white to the lips, she realized what it meant—that Warden had never received her letter, that Rosamund had adroitly availed herself of the details it contained, and that her lover had gone to Africa with a lurking doubt in his heart of the one woman in the world whom he trusted. Did he think her really the base creature she was depicted? Oh, it was intolerable! She would never forgive Mrs. Laing—no, never! Her rival had stooped to a meanness that could not be borne—she must be punished, with a vengeance at once swift and merciless.All this was very un–Christian, and wholly unlike the delightfully shy yet lovable girl to whom Warden lost his heart during the midsummer madness of Cowes and Plymouth, but Evelyn was stirred to the depths of a passionate nature; not for the first time in Las Palmas, she cried herself to sleep.She awoke in a better frame of mind, though still determined to bring Mrs. Laing to her knees at the first opportunity. Keeping the tryst with Peter, she took him fully into her confidence. He was able to supply many minor items of information that fitted the pieces of the puzzle more accurately together. He did not know what had become of Warden, but Evelyn made no scruple of telling him the facts within her knowledge.She recked little of Government secrets and the byways of Imperial politics. The ex–pilot and his sturdy offspring were now the only witnesses of her good faith. Perhaps they might meet Warden in England before he was able to communicate with her. In that event, she wanted Peter to be in a position to do for her lover what he had done for her, and disabuse Warden’s mind of the cloud of lies by which it had been darkened.Father and son were returning at once by the out–going mail steamer. She pressed Peter to accept what little money she could spare, but he would not take a penny.“No, miss,” he said, with emphatic head–shaking. “There’s some shot left in the locker yet, an’ me an’ the Cap’n will ‘ave a reckonin’ w’en he comes ‘ome. If I’m short of a pound or two afore I get theNancyin commission this spring, I’ll ax that gentleman at the bank for it. P’raps you’ll write ‘im a line, an’ say I’ve kep’ me contract.”She had to be content with that. Were it practicable, she would have gone back to England in the same steamer. Here, in Las Palmas, she felt so utterly unbefriended. Though thousands of miles nearer Africa than in England, she seemed to be more thousands of miles removed from the chance of receiving a letter or a cablegram. True, she possessed a very useful acquaintance in the commander of theValiant, but she could hardly expect one of His Majesty’s cruisers to fly to and fro in the East Atlantic in order to keep her conversant with developments in Nigeria. Peter, however, undertook to call at the Colonial Office, while she would cable him her address after the lapse of a fortnight. Then, if there was any news of Warden, he would communicate with her.At luncheon she had her first meeting with Mrs. Laing since the arrival of that epoch–marking letter. A special menu was ordered, and the table was gay with flowers, for the Baumgartners dearly loved a lord, and were resolved to make the most of their friendly relations with the Earl of Fairholme.Mr. Baumgartner looked worried and preoccupied. The coming of the mail which meant so much to Evelyn perhaps had its importance for him also. At any rate, he left the entertainment of his guests largelyto his wife, until a sharp clash of wits rudely dispelled his reverie.Beryl Baumgartner was the unconscious agent that brought about an unforeseen crisis. Her restless eyes speedily caught the glint of diamonds on Evelyn’s left hand, and she cried ecstatically:“Oh, Evelyn, what a lovely ring! Where did you get it?”Each woman at the table was on thequi viveinstantly. In a place like Las Palmas the mere mention of a diamond ring in connection with a young and pretty girl suggests that one more infatuated male has voluntarily removed his name from the list of eligibles.Evelyn, having stilled the volcano that raged over night, might have allowed the opportunity to pass if she had not happened to catch the mocking smile on Rosamund’s face when the nature of the ring became self–evident. That steeled her intent.“It is my engagement ring,” she said quietly.“What?” shrieked Beryl, to whom this was news indeed. “Who is he?”“You do not know him, dear, but his name is Captain Warden. He is at present in West Africa, somewhere near the Benuë River.”“And did he send it to you?”“Yes. I received it only last night. It would have reached me four months ago, had not Mrs. Laing stolen one of my letters—perhaps others as well—and that naturally led to some confusion.”There was a moment of stupefied silence at thetable. Everybody seemed to be stricken dumb. Rosamund, crimson with anger, could only mutter:“What insolence!”“It is an unpleasant thing to say, but it is true,” said Evelyn, discussing her rival’s transgression in the most matter–of–fact tone, though she was conscious of a queer tingling at the roots of her hair, and she hardly recognized the sound of her own voice.Baumgartner felt it imperative to stop what threatened to develop into a scandal.“Miss Dane, you are making a serious charge against a lady of the highest repute,” he said, in his best chairman–of–the–company style.“I mean it, every word,” cried Evelyn, a trifle more vehemently. “Lord Fairholme, am I speaking the truth or not?” she demanded, suddenly wheeling round on the inoffensive peer.“Really—er—really——” he spluttered, for once too bewildered to grin.“Please tell Mr. Baumgartner what happened in the hall at Lochmerig when Mrs. Laing asked the postman to give her a letter addressed to Captain Arthur Warden, at Ostend. You were present. It was my letter she obtained. Perhaps she has it yet if her boxes were searched.”Here was no timid girl striving vainly to bolster up a false accusation, but a fiery young goddess impeaching an erring mortal. The atmosphere was electrical; Beryl Baumgartner said afterwards that she felt pins and needles attacking her at all points!“I’m awfully sorry, Miss Dane, but I gave very little attention to the incident,” said Fairholme, partly recovering himself.“But you remembered Captain Warden’s name last night? Was it not at Lochmerig that you heard it, and from Mrs. Laing?”“Well—yes, but, you know, Mrs. Laing might have written to him.”“She did, after obtaining the address from my letter and reading what I wrote.”Then she turned on Rosamund with magnificent disdain.“Shall I give you a copy of your letter? Captain Warden has sent it to me.”Sheer fury enabled Rosamund to regain her self–control.“Your foolish attack on me is disproved out of your own mouth,” she said, striving desperately to speak with her accustomed nonchalance. “Captain Warden has not written to you since I saw him in London. He is in Africa, it is true, but he has never been heard of after going ashore at Rabat fully three months ago. How can you pretend that you received a letter from him last night? My authority is an Under Secretary of State. Pray, who is yours?”Under other conditions, Evelyn might have been warned by the imperious command to “hold her tongue” that Baumgartner telegraphed to his wife when that good lady was minded to interfere. But no consideration would stop her now. The memoryof all she had suffered through the machinations of one evilly disposed woman upset her calm judgment. In other respects, she acted with a restraint that was worthy of a first–rate actress; people at the next table might have thought she was discussing the weather. Taking Warden’s letter from her pocket, she handed it to Lord Fairholme.“I cited you as a witness,” she said. “Will you now act as a judge? Read that, and tell my friends which of us two is speaking truly.”Despite his self–supposed shortcomings, Fairholme was a gentleman. Instinctively he believed Evelyn, but he shrank from the duty she entrusted to him.“Oh, I say,” he bleated, “hasn’t this thing gone a bit too far already? Is it worth all the beastly fuss? There may be a mistake somewhere, you know. I’m sure, Miss Dane, nobody doubts your statement where this lucky chap Warden is concerned, an’, on the other hand, don’t you know, Mrs. Laing may have a perfectly fair explanation of the other business. So let it go at that, eh, what?”“May I act as arbitrator?” said Baumgartner. “If I glance through your letter, Miss Dane, I may discover a means of settlement.”Something in his tone, some hint of a crafty purpose behind the smooth–spoken words, beat through the haze of wrath and grief that clouded Evelyn’s mind. She could trust Fairholme with her lover’s letter, but not Baumgartner. To reveal to him what Warden had said about Mrs. Laing’s extraordinarily accurateknowledge of proceedings in the Solent and affairs in Nigeria would be tantamount to betraying her lover’s faith.With splendid calmness she took the letter from the table and replaced it in her pocket.“No, thank you, Mr. Baumgartner,” she said, “if Lord Fairholme declines to help me, nobody else can take his place. I appealed to him because he is aware that Mrs. Laing induced your groom to unlock the post–box and hand her my letter. The proof of my words lies here. It is for him to say whether or not he is satisfied he saw Mrs. Laing commit a theft.”Fairholme shook his head. He was not lacking in pluck, and his artificial humor was only the veneer of an honest nature, but he surprised a look in Rosamund’s eyes that startled him. She was pale now, ashen pale. She uttered no word, but continued to glower at Evelyn with a suppressed malevolence that was more threatening than the mere rage of a detected trickster.His lordship evidently thought it high time Baumgartner or his wife exercised their authority.“Don’t you think this matter has gone quite far enough?” he asked, glancing from one to the other, and avoiding the eyes of either Evelyn or Mrs. Laing.“Yes,” said Baumgartner, speaking with a pomposity that contrasted sharply with his prompt offer to supplant Fairholme as judge. “This absurd dispute about a purely private affair must end at once. I andmy family are going to Europe by the next mail steamer——”“Isadore!” gasped his wife.“Father, you can’t mean it!” cried Beryl, who, at the lowest calculation, had made arrangements for a good three weeks’ further frivolity at Las Palmas.“Unfortunately, I am quite in earnest.”The financier looked it. Despite his magisterial air, his puffy face was drawn and haggard, and he had the aspect of a man who needed rest and sleep.“You will accompany us, of course, Miss Dane,” he went on, speaking slowly, as though he were groping for the best way out of a difficulty. “Your quarrel with Mrs. Laing can be much more easily adjusted in England than here. I hope, therefore, we shall be spared further bickering during our brief stay in the Canaries.”“But, father dear,” put in his daughter, “you said we were going home on the yacht, and calling at Gibraltar and Algiers.”“I have changed my plans,” he retorted curtly, and that was all he would say on the subject.Evelyn left the table at the earliest moment. When too late, she regretted the impulse that led her to declare open war against Mrs. Laing. But it was done now. Those words “theft” and “steal” were irrevocable. She had retreated to a nook in the garden where a dense clump of tropical trees and shrubs gave shelter from the sun, and was trying to discover if she had imperilled the success of Warden’s mission by anyunguarded phrase, when Lord Fairholme came to her.“May I sit down here a few minutes?” he asked. “I want to try to understand things.”“I should be sorry to test your lordship’s capacity so greatly,” she said. She had not yet forgiven him for not taking her part. She was young; her world was tumbling about her ears; she believed that everybody ought to stand aghast at Rosamund’s wickedness.“Oh, come now, that’s a bit severe, isn’t it?” grinned Fairholme. “You don’t make allowances for the ruffled feelin’s of a poor fellow who has just had his image battered——”“Will you please tell me what you are talking about?”“Eh—beg pardon, I meant idol shattered. Silly mistake, eh, what?”Evelyn’s lips relaxed in a smile. There was no resisting “Billy” when (in his own phrase) he was goin’ strong.“I fear you all thought me very rude,” she said, with a pathetic little gesture of helplessness. “But what was I to do?—listen in silence to fresh insults?”“I think you did the only possible thing.”“Then why did you refuse to bear out my statement?”“There were reasons. May I see that letter now?”“Have you come of your own accord?” she asked.Evelyn fighting for the man she loved was a very different girl from the proud, disdainful Evelyn who, twenty–four hours earlier, would have endured almost any infliction rather than flout her adversary in apublic dining–room. She credited Rosamund with the adoption of any petty device to gain her ends, and felt that Fairholme was just the man to be used as a stalking–horse.“No,” he said, “or rather, yes—and no. I am anxious to know the truth, but Baumgartner suggested that I ought to accept your offer of reading the evidence. Don’t you see, he has to consider the future a bit.”“In what way?”“Well, if Mrs. Laing stole a letter in his house, she—it’s a jolly hard thing to say—but she must be warned off.”Baumgartner as a guardian of morals was a new conception. Evelyn felt that a more powerful foe than Rosamund was in the field. Her unimportant romance had suddenly widened out into the world–domain of politics. She must decide quickly and decide right. In that vital moment she realized that her postscript to the Lochmerig letter might have consequences far beyond their effect on Warden’s fortunes and her own.“Lord Fairholme,” she said, turning so that she could watch the slightest change in the expression of his face, “does Mr. Baumgartner strike you as a man who would go out of his way to interfere in a dispute between two women?”“Not unless there was money in it,” said Fairholme cheerfully.“Then why is he showing such interest now in a matter which he deliberately closed at luncheon?”“I gave you his explanation. Even Baumgartner likes to associate with people of good character.”“No, that is not the reason. Mr. Baumgartner is engaged at this moment in a plot against British dominion in West Africa. You see that cruiser in the harbor? Well, she is here to watch theSans Souci. You yourself heard to–day that our party is going to Europe by the mail steamer. Why, when theSans Souciis at our disposal? I will tell you. The British authorities believe that the yacht will help, or further in some way, a native rising in Southern Nigeria. Now, the letter in my possession, read by any one who could extract its inner meaning, would yield a valuable clue to the amount of information at the disposal of the home government. If you, without knowing this, answered Mr. Baumgartner’s questions as to its contents, you would be doing the gravest injury to Great Britain.”“By gad!” exclaimed Fairholme.“You can easily assure yourself that I am not exaggerating the facts. Here is the letter. Read it, and remember what I have told you.”Fairholme pursed his lips and bent his brows in deep mental effort. He held the letter in his hand unopened during this unusual and seemingly painful process. Then he gave it back to Evelyn.“No, Miss Dane,” he said emphatically. “I’m far too candid an ass to be laden with state secrets. Now, if you wouldn’t mind just pickin’ out the bits that refer to Mrs. Laing, an’ skippin’ all the political part,I’ll be able to bounce old Baumgartner for all he’s worth.”“But I cannot. It is the political part which proves that my letter was stolen.”“Same thing! Change the names. Turn West Africa into Newmarket, an’ call the Emperor Lord Rosebery.”“The Emperor,” said Evelyn, surprised at Fairholme’s chance shot.“He’s in it, I guess. He has his finger in every pie, an’ some of ‘em have bin jolly hot. Now, go ahead. If it’s at all awkward, leave me to fill in a bit about the Ditch Mile an’ the Epsom gradients that will bamboozle Baumgartner.”Evelyn did her best. Fairholme was delighted with Warden’s description of the baccarat and roulette incidents, but his face lengthened when he heard Rosamund’s allusions to himself. Once, Evelyn forgot his stipulation, and spoke of the “men of Oku.”“Oku,” broke in Fairholme, “where is that?”“It is a savage native state in West Africa. That is the one name you must not remember, Lord Fairholme.”He did not interrupt again till she had finished reading. Then she told him how Peter Evans had brought her the ring and the letter; and, finding him sympathetic, she explained the extraordinary chance that led to Warden’s capture by a Mohammedan fanatic at Rabat.“Funny thing!” he said, when she had made anend. “That chap Figuero joined my steamer at Lisbon.”“He is not here?” cried Evelyn, genuinely startled, for she feared Figuero.“Yes, he is. I fancy he’s on board theSans Souci. I didn’t speak to him; I have a notion that he didn’t recognize me under my new name. We also picked up a number of German officers at the same port, but they left us at Funchal, where another ship took them on to the Cameroons. That is German West Africa, isn’t it?”“I believe so. My geographical knowledge of this part of the world is of the vaguest. It dates chiefly from last night.”“When the naval Johnny was showing you the map, I suppose?”“But how do you know that?” she demanded, and another wave of surprise flooded her face with color.“Mrs. Laing and I watched you for quite a time—the watchin’ was involuntary on my part, but she wouldn’t come away from the veranda, an’ now I know why. You will observe, Miss Dane, that I have bin the goat all through the proceedin’s.”“I can hardly say that.”“No, you wouldn’t. But it’s true. The only bit of luck I’ve had is that I am saved the painful necessity of bein’ refused as a husband by Mrs. Laing. I came here to ask her to marry me.”“Oh, I am so sorry——” began Evelyn, but Fairholme’s cackling laugh checked her.“Why sorry? You’ve done me a good turn, twice over, an’ if I can do you one, just ask. In the first place, she would probably have said ‘No,’ and in the second, where should I have been if she said ‘Yes.’ In the soup, eh, what?”Lord Fairholme seemed to pride himself on his narrow escape, and gave Evelyn the credit of rescuing him. She protested that if she had known he was really bent on marrying Mrs. Laing she would neither have attacked the latter in his presence nor called on him to bear out her statements. But he refused to admit that she had conferred other than a favor on him, and repeated his desire to serve her if the opportunity offered. It came quickly.That night, when Evelyn was sound asleep, her room was entered and Warden’s letter taken. It lay with the ring and some other trinkets on a dressing–table. The door was locked and bolted, but the window was wide open to admit the sea breeze, and, although the room was on the third floor, and therefore some forty feet or more above the ground level, it was impossible that the thief could have entered it except through the window. That the letter alone was the objective was shown by the fact that the exceedingly valuable ring was left untouched. There was almost a hint of malicious humor in the discrimination exercised. An ordinary criminal, though bribed to procure a document of great importance to some other person, would certainly have made away with any jewelry that was lying handy. In this instance, thereseemed to be an unspoken warning to the girl that she was powerless in the toils that surrounded her.At first, she suspected Rosamund of complicity in this new theft, but when she asked herself who had most to gain from the perusal of the letter, suspicion pointed, not to Rosamund, who could guess its contents with fair accuracy, but to Baumgartner and his associates, who were evidently more afraid of one man than of the armed might of Britain.In the height of her distress her employer came to her.“We have decided to return by the Portuguese mail from Madeira,” he said, “and in order to catch the next steamer we shall sail in theSans Soucito–night. Would it be convenient for you to go aboard the yacht this afternoon?”“But what action am I to take with regard to my stolen letter?” she demanded. “You heard what I said to Mrs. Laing. That letter is my evidence against her.”“It may have blown out of your window. There is generally a strong breeze just before dawn. At any rate, it is better lost. Such disputes are useless.”“But it was of the utmost importance in other ways.”“Young ladies’ love–letters always are,” he gurgled with forced laughter. “Still, if it really has gone, you can hardly propose to remain in Las Palmas on the off chance that it may be recovered.”She felt that she was trapped, but for what purpose it was hard to imagine. Lord Fairholme had told her already that Baumgartner was very much annoyedwith him for failing to remember what Warden had written, and it was now beyond doubt that theSans Souci’svoyage to Funchal was a blind for some ulterior object.In her dilemma, she thought of Mortimer. When Baumgartner went away, she hurried out of the hotel and drove straight to the harbor. A boat brought her to theValiant; the commander himself met her at the gangway, and escorted her to his cabin.“Sorry I couldn’t call last evening Miss Dane,” he said, “but I was detained on board unexpectedly. Things are happening, I hear.”“Yes. Figuero is here, and we leave on the yacht for Funchal to–night.”He smiled.“Is that the dodge?” he exclaimed. “Of course, I was posted in the movements of the Portuguese and his friends, but the trip to Madeira is clever. What has caused the change of programme?”She told him, and he banged a clenched fist emphatically on a table which a steward had just arranged for tea.“For once, I can find it in my heart to wish you were a man,” he cried. “A steamer starts for Lagos within two hours, and it would be a fine thing if the Nigeria administration heard your story from your own lips. Of course, I can write, but it is difficult to put on paper one’s guesses and surmises at the trickery that is going on.”The words were scarcely uttered ere a wild notion leaped into Evelyn’s brain. Why should she not goto Lagos? She might be able to clear away some of the doubts and misgivings that must have gathered around Warden’s name. Above all else, if there was news of him, it would surely reach the officials there long before it became known in England.“If I were a man,” she said tremulously, “would you pay my passage on that ship?”“Of course. You would be traveling on Government service.”“Then I shall go. Please arrange matters for me, and send some one to take me on board.”“Do you mean it?” he cried.“Yes.”“By Jove, Miss Dane, you astonish me more each time I see you. But how about the Baumgartners?”“I shall simply write a note resigning my situation. It is a mere question of doing that to–day or three weeks hence. But I shall not tell them why I am leaving their service so suddenly.”“Baumgartner will find out. Unless I am much mistaken, it will worry him. Now, you are sure you intend to take this trip?”“Quite certain.”“Very well. I shall give myself the pleasure of calling for you at three o’clock.”Evelyn packed her boxes as speedily as possible. Counting her money, she found she had only twenty–five pounds. But there was that new treasure, the ring. How better could she use it than in furthering the interests of the man she loved? She wondered ifLord Fairholme would lend her fifty pounds on its security? A note brought him to her room, and she explained briefly that she meant to visit Lagos, and might need more funds than she had at her command.“Well, that beats the band,” he said. “Mrs. Laing is going there too.”“Not on to–day’s steamer?” she protested, for it seemed that an unkind fate was conspiring against her.“Sure thing! Heard her tellin’ Beryl an hour ago.”Though Evelyn wished heartily that her rival had chosen any other route of the many which lead from Las Palmas, her resolution remained unaltered. But there was another thrill in store for her.“Tell you what, Miss Dane,” said Fairholme, “I don’t think you ought to tackle an expedition of this sort single–handed. You may want some one to pull you out of a tight place—what price me as a puller–out? I’m a pretty useless sort of chap in most things, but there is no reason why I shouldn’t try to do my country a good turn once in a way. Let me go with you, and then you’ll have no need to worry about coin.”“You are really very kind,” she faltered, “but—but——”“You are afraid of Mrs. Laing again,” he grinned. “Don’t worry yourself about her, dear girl. Not even Mrs. Grundy can growl at me for bein’ your fellow–passenger. I’m mixed up in this business, an’, by Jove, I mean to see it through. Look here, can’t you adopt me as a sort of elder brother, an’ make it ‘Billy’ an’ ‘Evelyn,’ an’ that sort of thing—eh, what?”

EVELYN ENTERS THE FRAY

Only a woman can fathom another woman’s mind. A man tries to think logically; a woman throws logic to the winds, and reads her opponent’s tactics by intuition. Though Warden was not wholly devoid of suspicion of Rosamund’s disinterestedness when he penned the plain statement which Evelyn now skimmed through by the light of the Las Palmas moon, he little dreamed that he was framing a damning indictment of one who claimed to be his friend. But Evelyn extracted from every line the hidden truth. A gentlewoman to her finger–tips, her loathing of Mrs. Laing’s despicable tactics was so overpowering for a while that she could only vent her scorn and contempt by little gasps and sobs of indignation.

Her lover’s account of events at Ostend and in London was transparently honest. She saw now that by some clever and unscrupulous device his letters and telegrams had been withheld. The burking of her own letters, sent with unfailing regularity until outraged pride bade her cease, was equally clear. But how had their common enemy achieved these results? Why did Mrs. Laing flush and look guilty when Lord Fairholme recognized Warden’s name half an hour ago?Well, she would ask the genial little nobleman for an explanation. He would be candid, she was sure; perhaps he might help to illumine some of the dark places of the last four months.

Peter Evans, watching her eyes as they devoured page after page, winked solemnly at Chris, but held his peace until the letter was restored to its envelope. Then he felt that his innings had come.

“Well, miss,” he remarked quietly, “does that round off everything in ship–shape style?”

For answer, she put both hands on his shoulders, and looked into his weather–beaten face.

“Peter,” she said, “I can never repay you for what you have done. Captain Warden tells me he had faith in you, and indeed you have justified his confidence. But how did you and Chris manage to travel all this long way to find me? What has it cost you? I have not much money at my command here——”

“Money, miss? Did the Cap’n say nothink about it?”

“No.”

“Just like ‘im. There neverwasa more free–handed gent than ‘im. Funny thing, ain’t it, that the wrong people are bloomin’ millionaires. I s’pose that’s w’y they ‘ave it—coss they stick to it. Lord love a duck, ther’s bin no trouble aboutmoney! He did some tricks at the Casino——”

“Yes, yes, he has told me that.”

“Well, w’en ‘e gives me that there packidge, ‘e forks out fifty quid, an’ says, ‘Peter, if you want more,go to my bank.’ But fifty golden suvrins is a small fortin to a sailorman—I’ve known the time it ‘ud keep me an’ my missus an’ Chris for a year—an’ I wasn’t flingin’ it about for bookin’ clerks an’ pursers to pick up, neether. We ‘ad to dig a bit out o’ the bank w’en this trip showed up, but afore that Chris an’ me worked our passidge to Scotland, an’ Hamburg, an’ as far south as Bordeaux.”

“You went to Scotland? Why?”

“Afore the Cap’n left Lunnon ‘e ‘ad a telegram from the coas–tguard to say theSan Sowsyheaded sou’east by east from Lochmerig, an’ them ain’t the sailin’ directions for the Shetlands, or they wasn’t w’en I was at sea. It seemed to me some old salt thereabouts might help a bit—fishermen keep a pretty close eye on passin’ craft, miss—so off we goes. I shipped as extra hand on theInverkeld, bound from London to Aberdeen, an’ Chris was stooard in the engineers’ mess. Sure enough, I lights on a Montrose herrin’–boat as ‘ad seen the yacht bearin’ away in the line for Hamburg, I follered, on a tramp from Newcastle, but I was a week late. You see, my orders was ‘into her own ‘ands, Peter.’”

“Oh, you are a dear!”

“Well, mebbe. I’ve bin called most things in me time, miss. But it’s spinnin’ a tremenjous long yarn to go over all the ground. Wot I want to ax you now is this—wot stopped Cap’n Warden from gettin’ your letters?”

“Ah, Peter! a wicked woman, I am afraid.”

“D’ye ‘ear, Chris?” and Peter turned solemnly to his son. “Wot did I tell yer? You see, miss,” he went on, “I looked in at the Lodge, an’ med friends with a servant or two, an’ it kem out that Mrs. Laing collared a telegram addressed to you. ‘Was it himportant?’ sez one chap. ‘Reel himportant,’ sez I, ‘it was from ‘er young man.’ Beg pardon, miss, but that’s the way we talks among ourselves. ‘Oo is he?’ sez the other fellow. ‘Captain Warden,’ sez I. ‘Not Captain Arthur Warden, of Ostend?’ sez ‘e. ‘The very man,’ sez I. ‘Dash my eyes,’ sez ‘e, ‘that’s queer. Mrs. Laing wanted a letter out of the box one day w’en I was goin’ to the post, an’ that’s the very name as was on it. Wot’s ‘is little game? Is ‘e a–playin’ up to both of ‘em?’ ‘Young man,’ sez I, ‘you don’t know ‘im. ‘E’s the straightest gentleman as ever wore shoe–leather.’ I axed ‘im w’en the incident occurred, as they say in the noospapers, an’ ‘e tole me it was just arter Mrs. Laing kem to Lochmerig. In fact, ‘e wouldn’t ha’ known ‘oo she was if she ‘adn’t bin standin’ in the ‘all talkin’ to—to—wot’s ‘is name, Chris?”

“Lord Fairholme?” broke in Evelyn.

“No, miss, that wasn’t it—not in the same street.”

“Billy Thring?”

“Tally! I’ve got it all logged up in my cabin. I wasn’t sartin I’d see you to–night, or I’d ha’ brought the book. That’s ‘im—Billy Thring—it sounds familiar like, if he’s a swell, but that’s wot they called ‘im at Lochmerig.”

“Peter, you are a wonder. You have found out the one thing I wanted to know.”

“Excuse me, miss, but you’re a bit of a wonder yourself. If that was the on’y missin’ link, w’y didn’t you write to me, care o’ the Pilots’ Office, Cardiff? I could ha’ put you straight within a week. Any ship’s skipper would ha’ guessed my address, if you tole ‘im about theNancyan’ gev ‘im my name.”

“I fear I am very much to blame,” said Evelyn contritely. “But you hardly realize yet how I have been victimized. Now I must go. It is very late. Where are you staying?”

“Chris an’ me will turn in with our engineer friend on board theCid. At least that’s wot I call the old tub, but these Spanish jokers make it intoThith. Did y’ ever ‘ear anythink funnier’n that?”

She laughed blithely, arranged an early hour to meet the two at the mole next day, and sped back to the hotel. She wanted to read that thrice–precious letter again. Seen in the moonlight, it seemed to be fantastic, unreal. The words danced before her eyes. Her brain had only half grasped its extraordinary meanings.

ill257

Peter, you are a wonderPage238

Peter, you are a wonderPage238

Peter, you are a wonder

Page238

In the privacy of her own room she should go through it slowly, weighing its bewildering revelations, taking to her very heart the outspoken, manly sentences that assured her of Warden’s devotion, and planning with new zest the means whereby she might circumvent her enemies and his. Warden had been deceived even more grossly than she herself. His faithful record of Rosamund’s malicious innuendoes during the dinner at the Savoy Hotel gave ample proof of that. It was quite true she had talked with Figuero in the garden at Lochmerig. The man naturally interested her; his manner of speech was quaint, and he told her strange things about the country in which the whole of her lover’s active career might be passed. Was that a crime? And how shameful that any woman should write such a wicked untruth as to say that she had gossiped to Thring and others about the men of Oku! Of course, Mrs. Laing had obtained her information from the stolen letter. Evelyn remembered perfectly well the unfortunate postscript in which she alluded to the negroes and the calabash. She meant only to soften the harshness of her comments on Rosamund and the two foreigners, but it was obvious now that she could have written nothing more harmful to Warden’s mission.

And then, with a sudden horror that made her white to the lips, she realized what it meant—that Warden had never received her letter, that Rosamund had adroitly availed herself of the details it contained, and that her lover had gone to Africa with a lurking doubt in his heart of the one woman in the world whom he trusted. Did he think her really the base creature she was depicted? Oh, it was intolerable! She would never forgive Mrs. Laing—no, never! Her rival had stooped to a meanness that could not be borne—she must be punished, with a vengeance at once swift and merciless.

All this was very un–Christian, and wholly unlike the delightfully shy yet lovable girl to whom Warden lost his heart during the midsummer madness of Cowes and Plymouth, but Evelyn was stirred to the depths of a passionate nature; not for the first time in Las Palmas, she cried herself to sleep.

She awoke in a better frame of mind, though still determined to bring Mrs. Laing to her knees at the first opportunity. Keeping the tryst with Peter, she took him fully into her confidence. He was able to supply many minor items of information that fitted the pieces of the puzzle more accurately together. He did not know what had become of Warden, but Evelyn made no scruple of telling him the facts within her knowledge.

She recked little of Government secrets and the byways of Imperial politics. The ex–pilot and his sturdy offspring were now the only witnesses of her good faith. Perhaps they might meet Warden in England before he was able to communicate with her. In that event, she wanted Peter to be in a position to do for her lover what he had done for her, and disabuse Warden’s mind of the cloud of lies by which it had been darkened.

Father and son were returning at once by the out–going mail steamer. She pressed Peter to accept what little money she could spare, but he would not take a penny.

“No, miss,” he said, with emphatic head–shaking. “There’s some shot left in the locker yet, an’ me an’ the Cap’n will ‘ave a reckonin’ w’en he comes ‘ome. If I’m short of a pound or two afore I get theNancyin commission this spring, I’ll ax that gentleman at the bank for it. P’raps you’ll write ‘im a line, an’ say I’ve kep’ me contract.”

She had to be content with that. Were it practicable, she would have gone back to England in the same steamer. Here, in Las Palmas, she felt so utterly unbefriended. Though thousands of miles nearer Africa than in England, she seemed to be more thousands of miles removed from the chance of receiving a letter or a cablegram. True, she possessed a very useful acquaintance in the commander of theValiant, but she could hardly expect one of His Majesty’s cruisers to fly to and fro in the East Atlantic in order to keep her conversant with developments in Nigeria. Peter, however, undertook to call at the Colonial Office, while she would cable him her address after the lapse of a fortnight. Then, if there was any news of Warden, he would communicate with her.

At luncheon she had her first meeting with Mrs. Laing since the arrival of that epoch–marking letter. A special menu was ordered, and the table was gay with flowers, for the Baumgartners dearly loved a lord, and were resolved to make the most of their friendly relations with the Earl of Fairholme.

Mr. Baumgartner looked worried and preoccupied. The coming of the mail which meant so much to Evelyn perhaps had its importance for him also. At any rate, he left the entertainment of his guests largelyto his wife, until a sharp clash of wits rudely dispelled his reverie.

Beryl Baumgartner was the unconscious agent that brought about an unforeseen crisis. Her restless eyes speedily caught the glint of diamonds on Evelyn’s left hand, and she cried ecstatically:

“Oh, Evelyn, what a lovely ring! Where did you get it?”

Each woman at the table was on thequi viveinstantly. In a place like Las Palmas the mere mention of a diamond ring in connection with a young and pretty girl suggests that one more infatuated male has voluntarily removed his name from the list of eligibles.

Evelyn, having stilled the volcano that raged over night, might have allowed the opportunity to pass if she had not happened to catch the mocking smile on Rosamund’s face when the nature of the ring became self–evident. That steeled her intent.

“It is my engagement ring,” she said quietly.

“What?” shrieked Beryl, to whom this was news indeed. “Who is he?”

“You do not know him, dear, but his name is Captain Warden. He is at present in West Africa, somewhere near the Benuë River.”

“And did he send it to you?”

“Yes. I received it only last night. It would have reached me four months ago, had not Mrs. Laing stolen one of my letters—perhaps others as well—and that naturally led to some confusion.”

There was a moment of stupefied silence at thetable. Everybody seemed to be stricken dumb. Rosamund, crimson with anger, could only mutter:

“What insolence!”

“It is an unpleasant thing to say, but it is true,” said Evelyn, discussing her rival’s transgression in the most matter–of–fact tone, though she was conscious of a queer tingling at the roots of her hair, and she hardly recognized the sound of her own voice.

Baumgartner felt it imperative to stop what threatened to develop into a scandal.

“Miss Dane, you are making a serious charge against a lady of the highest repute,” he said, in his best chairman–of–the–company style.

“I mean it, every word,” cried Evelyn, a trifle more vehemently. “Lord Fairholme, am I speaking the truth or not?” she demanded, suddenly wheeling round on the inoffensive peer.

“Really—er—really——” he spluttered, for once too bewildered to grin.

“Please tell Mr. Baumgartner what happened in the hall at Lochmerig when Mrs. Laing asked the postman to give her a letter addressed to Captain Arthur Warden, at Ostend. You were present. It was my letter she obtained. Perhaps she has it yet if her boxes were searched.”

Here was no timid girl striving vainly to bolster up a false accusation, but a fiery young goddess impeaching an erring mortal. The atmosphere was electrical; Beryl Baumgartner said afterwards that she felt pins and needles attacking her at all points!

“I’m awfully sorry, Miss Dane, but I gave very little attention to the incident,” said Fairholme, partly recovering himself.

“But you remembered Captain Warden’s name last night? Was it not at Lochmerig that you heard it, and from Mrs. Laing?”

“Well—yes, but, you know, Mrs. Laing might have written to him.”

“She did, after obtaining the address from my letter and reading what I wrote.”

Then she turned on Rosamund with magnificent disdain.

“Shall I give you a copy of your letter? Captain Warden has sent it to me.”

Sheer fury enabled Rosamund to regain her self–control.

“Your foolish attack on me is disproved out of your own mouth,” she said, striving desperately to speak with her accustomed nonchalance. “Captain Warden has not written to you since I saw him in London. He is in Africa, it is true, but he has never been heard of after going ashore at Rabat fully three months ago. How can you pretend that you received a letter from him last night? My authority is an Under Secretary of State. Pray, who is yours?”

Under other conditions, Evelyn might have been warned by the imperious command to “hold her tongue” that Baumgartner telegraphed to his wife when that good lady was minded to interfere. But no consideration would stop her now. The memoryof all she had suffered through the machinations of one evilly disposed woman upset her calm judgment. In other respects, she acted with a restraint that was worthy of a first–rate actress; people at the next table might have thought she was discussing the weather. Taking Warden’s letter from her pocket, she handed it to Lord Fairholme.

“I cited you as a witness,” she said. “Will you now act as a judge? Read that, and tell my friends which of us two is speaking truly.”

Despite his self–supposed shortcomings, Fairholme was a gentleman. Instinctively he believed Evelyn, but he shrank from the duty she entrusted to him.

“Oh, I say,” he bleated, “hasn’t this thing gone a bit too far already? Is it worth all the beastly fuss? There may be a mistake somewhere, you know. I’m sure, Miss Dane, nobody doubts your statement where this lucky chap Warden is concerned, an’, on the other hand, don’t you know, Mrs. Laing may have a perfectly fair explanation of the other business. So let it go at that, eh, what?”

“May I act as arbitrator?” said Baumgartner. “If I glance through your letter, Miss Dane, I may discover a means of settlement.”

Something in his tone, some hint of a crafty purpose behind the smooth–spoken words, beat through the haze of wrath and grief that clouded Evelyn’s mind. She could trust Fairholme with her lover’s letter, but not Baumgartner. To reveal to him what Warden had said about Mrs. Laing’s extraordinarily accurateknowledge of proceedings in the Solent and affairs in Nigeria would be tantamount to betraying her lover’s faith.

With splendid calmness she took the letter from the table and replaced it in her pocket.

“No, thank you, Mr. Baumgartner,” she said, “if Lord Fairholme declines to help me, nobody else can take his place. I appealed to him because he is aware that Mrs. Laing induced your groom to unlock the post–box and hand her my letter. The proof of my words lies here. It is for him to say whether or not he is satisfied he saw Mrs. Laing commit a theft.”

Fairholme shook his head. He was not lacking in pluck, and his artificial humor was only the veneer of an honest nature, but he surprised a look in Rosamund’s eyes that startled him. She was pale now, ashen pale. She uttered no word, but continued to glower at Evelyn with a suppressed malevolence that was more threatening than the mere rage of a detected trickster.

His lordship evidently thought it high time Baumgartner or his wife exercised their authority.

“Don’t you think this matter has gone quite far enough?” he asked, glancing from one to the other, and avoiding the eyes of either Evelyn or Mrs. Laing.

“Yes,” said Baumgartner, speaking with a pomposity that contrasted sharply with his prompt offer to supplant Fairholme as judge. “This absurd dispute about a purely private affair must end at once. I andmy family are going to Europe by the next mail steamer——”

“Isadore!” gasped his wife.

“Father, you can’t mean it!” cried Beryl, who, at the lowest calculation, had made arrangements for a good three weeks’ further frivolity at Las Palmas.

“Unfortunately, I am quite in earnest.”

The financier looked it. Despite his magisterial air, his puffy face was drawn and haggard, and he had the aspect of a man who needed rest and sleep.

“You will accompany us, of course, Miss Dane,” he went on, speaking slowly, as though he were groping for the best way out of a difficulty. “Your quarrel with Mrs. Laing can be much more easily adjusted in England than here. I hope, therefore, we shall be spared further bickering during our brief stay in the Canaries.”

“But, father dear,” put in his daughter, “you said we were going home on the yacht, and calling at Gibraltar and Algiers.”

“I have changed my plans,” he retorted curtly, and that was all he would say on the subject.

Evelyn left the table at the earliest moment. When too late, she regretted the impulse that led her to declare open war against Mrs. Laing. But it was done now. Those words “theft” and “steal” were irrevocable. She had retreated to a nook in the garden where a dense clump of tropical trees and shrubs gave shelter from the sun, and was trying to discover if she had imperilled the success of Warden’s mission by anyunguarded phrase, when Lord Fairholme came to her.

“May I sit down here a few minutes?” he asked. “I want to try to understand things.”

“I should be sorry to test your lordship’s capacity so greatly,” she said. She had not yet forgiven him for not taking her part. She was young; her world was tumbling about her ears; she believed that everybody ought to stand aghast at Rosamund’s wickedness.

“Oh, come now, that’s a bit severe, isn’t it?” grinned Fairholme. “You don’t make allowances for the ruffled feelin’s of a poor fellow who has just had his image battered——”

“Will you please tell me what you are talking about?”

“Eh—beg pardon, I meant idol shattered. Silly mistake, eh, what?”

Evelyn’s lips relaxed in a smile. There was no resisting “Billy” when (in his own phrase) he was goin’ strong.

“I fear you all thought me very rude,” she said, with a pathetic little gesture of helplessness. “But what was I to do?—listen in silence to fresh insults?”

“I think you did the only possible thing.”

“Then why did you refuse to bear out my statement?”

“There were reasons. May I see that letter now?”

“Have you come of your own accord?” she asked.

Evelyn fighting for the man she loved was a very different girl from the proud, disdainful Evelyn who, twenty–four hours earlier, would have endured almost any infliction rather than flout her adversary in apublic dining–room. She credited Rosamund with the adoption of any petty device to gain her ends, and felt that Fairholme was just the man to be used as a stalking–horse.

“No,” he said, “or rather, yes—and no. I am anxious to know the truth, but Baumgartner suggested that I ought to accept your offer of reading the evidence. Don’t you see, he has to consider the future a bit.”

“In what way?”

“Well, if Mrs. Laing stole a letter in his house, she—it’s a jolly hard thing to say—but she must be warned off.”

Baumgartner as a guardian of morals was a new conception. Evelyn felt that a more powerful foe than Rosamund was in the field. Her unimportant romance had suddenly widened out into the world–domain of politics. She must decide quickly and decide right. In that vital moment she realized that her postscript to the Lochmerig letter might have consequences far beyond their effect on Warden’s fortunes and her own.

“Lord Fairholme,” she said, turning so that she could watch the slightest change in the expression of his face, “does Mr. Baumgartner strike you as a man who would go out of his way to interfere in a dispute between two women?”

“Not unless there was money in it,” said Fairholme cheerfully.

“Then why is he showing such interest now in a matter which he deliberately closed at luncheon?”

“I gave you his explanation. Even Baumgartner likes to associate with people of good character.”

“No, that is not the reason. Mr. Baumgartner is engaged at this moment in a plot against British dominion in West Africa. You see that cruiser in the harbor? Well, she is here to watch theSans Souci. You yourself heard to–day that our party is going to Europe by the mail steamer. Why, when theSans Souciis at our disposal? I will tell you. The British authorities believe that the yacht will help, or further in some way, a native rising in Southern Nigeria. Now, the letter in my possession, read by any one who could extract its inner meaning, would yield a valuable clue to the amount of information at the disposal of the home government. If you, without knowing this, answered Mr. Baumgartner’s questions as to its contents, you would be doing the gravest injury to Great Britain.”

“By gad!” exclaimed Fairholme.

“You can easily assure yourself that I am not exaggerating the facts. Here is the letter. Read it, and remember what I have told you.”

Fairholme pursed his lips and bent his brows in deep mental effort. He held the letter in his hand unopened during this unusual and seemingly painful process. Then he gave it back to Evelyn.

“No, Miss Dane,” he said emphatically. “I’m far too candid an ass to be laden with state secrets. Now, if you wouldn’t mind just pickin’ out the bits that refer to Mrs. Laing, an’ skippin’ all the political part,I’ll be able to bounce old Baumgartner for all he’s worth.”

“But I cannot. It is the political part which proves that my letter was stolen.”

“Same thing! Change the names. Turn West Africa into Newmarket, an’ call the Emperor Lord Rosebery.”

“The Emperor,” said Evelyn, surprised at Fairholme’s chance shot.

“He’s in it, I guess. He has his finger in every pie, an’ some of ‘em have bin jolly hot. Now, go ahead. If it’s at all awkward, leave me to fill in a bit about the Ditch Mile an’ the Epsom gradients that will bamboozle Baumgartner.”

Evelyn did her best. Fairholme was delighted with Warden’s description of the baccarat and roulette incidents, but his face lengthened when he heard Rosamund’s allusions to himself. Once, Evelyn forgot his stipulation, and spoke of the “men of Oku.”

“Oku,” broke in Fairholme, “where is that?”

“It is a savage native state in West Africa. That is the one name you must not remember, Lord Fairholme.”

He did not interrupt again till she had finished reading. Then she told him how Peter Evans had brought her the ring and the letter; and, finding him sympathetic, she explained the extraordinary chance that led to Warden’s capture by a Mohammedan fanatic at Rabat.

“Funny thing!” he said, when she had made anend. “That chap Figuero joined my steamer at Lisbon.”

“He is not here?” cried Evelyn, genuinely startled, for she feared Figuero.

“Yes, he is. I fancy he’s on board theSans Souci. I didn’t speak to him; I have a notion that he didn’t recognize me under my new name. We also picked up a number of German officers at the same port, but they left us at Funchal, where another ship took them on to the Cameroons. That is German West Africa, isn’t it?”

“I believe so. My geographical knowledge of this part of the world is of the vaguest. It dates chiefly from last night.”

“When the naval Johnny was showing you the map, I suppose?”

“But how do you know that?” she demanded, and another wave of surprise flooded her face with color.

“Mrs. Laing and I watched you for quite a time—the watchin’ was involuntary on my part, but she wouldn’t come away from the veranda, an’ now I know why. You will observe, Miss Dane, that I have bin the goat all through the proceedin’s.”

“I can hardly say that.”

“No, you wouldn’t. But it’s true. The only bit of luck I’ve had is that I am saved the painful necessity of bein’ refused as a husband by Mrs. Laing. I came here to ask her to marry me.”

“Oh, I am so sorry——” began Evelyn, but Fairholme’s cackling laugh checked her.

“Why sorry? You’ve done me a good turn, twice over, an’ if I can do you one, just ask. In the first place, she would probably have said ‘No,’ and in the second, where should I have been if she said ‘Yes.’ In the soup, eh, what?”

Lord Fairholme seemed to pride himself on his narrow escape, and gave Evelyn the credit of rescuing him. She protested that if she had known he was really bent on marrying Mrs. Laing she would neither have attacked the latter in his presence nor called on him to bear out her statements. But he refused to admit that she had conferred other than a favor on him, and repeated his desire to serve her if the opportunity offered. It came quickly.

That night, when Evelyn was sound asleep, her room was entered and Warden’s letter taken. It lay with the ring and some other trinkets on a dressing–table. The door was locked and bolted, but the window was wide open to admit the sea breeze, and, although the room was on the third floor, and therefore some forty feet or more above the ground level, it was impossible that the thief could have entered it except through the window. That the letter alone was the objective was shown by the fact that the exceedingly valuable ring was left untouched. There was almost a hint of malicious humor in the discrimination exercised. An ordinary criminal, though bribed to procure a document of great importance to some other person, would certainly have made away with any jewelry that was lying handy. In this instance, thereseemed to be an unspoken warning to the girl that she was powerless in the toils that surrounded her.

At first, she suspected Rosamund of complicity in this new theft, but when she asked herself who had most to gain from the perusal of the letter, suspicion pointed, not to Rosamund, who could guess its contents with fair accuracy, but to Baumgartner and his associates, who were evidently more afraid of one man than of the armed might of Britain.

In the height of her distress her employer came to her.

“We have decided to return by the Portuguese mail from Madeira,” he said, “and in order to catch the next steamer we shall sail in theSans Soucito–night. Would it be convenient for you to go aboard the yacht this afternoon?”

“But what action am I to take with regard to my stolen letter?” she demanded. “You heard what I said to Mrs. Laing. That letter is my evidence against her.”

“It may have blown out of your window. There is generally a strong breeze just before dawn. At any rate, it is better lost. Such disputes are useless.”

“But it was of the utmost importance in other ways.”

“Young ladies’ love–letters always are,” he gurgled with forced laughter. “Still, if it really has gone, you can hardly propose to remain in Las Palmas on the off chance that it may be recovered.”

She felt that she was trapped, but for what purpose it was hard to imagine. Lord Fairholme had told her already that Baumgartner was very much annoyedwith him for failing to remember what Warden had written, and it was now beyond doubt that theSans Souci’svoyage to Funchal was a blind for some ulterior object.

In her dilemma, she thought of Mortimer. When Baumgartner went away, she hurried out of the hotel and drove straight to the harbor. A boat brought her to theValiant; the commander himself met her at the gangway, and escorted her to his cabin.

“Sorry I couldn’t call last evening Miss Dane,” he said, “but I was detained on board unexpectedly. Things are happening, I hear.”

“Yes. Figuero is here, and we leave on the yacht for Funchal to–night.”

He smiled.

“Is that the dodge?” he exclaimed. “Of course, I was posted in the movements of the Portuguese and his friends, but the trip to Madeira is clever. What has caused the change of programme?”

She told him, and he banged a clenched fist emphatically on a table which a steward had just arranged for tea.

“For once, I can find it in my heart to wish you were a man,” he cried. “A steamer starts for Lagos within two hours, and it would be a fine thing if the Nigeria administration heard your story from your own lips. Of course, I can write, but it is difficult to put on paper one’s guesses and surmises at the trickery that is going on.”

The words were scarcely uttered ere a wild notion leaped into Evelyn’s brain. Why should she not goto Lagos? She might be able to clear away some of the doubts and misgivings that must have gathered around Warden’s name. Above all else, if there was news of him, it would surely reach the officials there long before it became known in England.

“If I were a man,” she said tremulously, “would you pay my passage on that ship?”

“Of course. You would be traveling on Government service.”

“Then I shall go. Please arrange matters for me, and send some one to take me on board.”

“Do you mean it?” he cried.

“Yes.”

“By Jove, Miss Dane, you astonish me more each time I see you. But how about the Baumgartners?”

“I shall simply write a note resigning my situation. It is a mere question of doing that to–day or three weeks hence. But I shall not tell them why I am leaving their service so suddenly.”

“Baumgartner will find out. Unless I am much mistaken, it will worry him. Now, you are sure you intend to take this trip?”

“Quite certain.”

“Very well. I shall give myself the pleasure of calling for you at three o’clock.”

Evelyn packed her boxes as speedily as possible. Counting her money, she found she had only twenty–five pounds. But there was that new treasure, the ring. How better could she use it than in furthering the interests of the man she loved? She wondered ifLord Fairholme would lend her fifty pounds on its security? A note brought him to her room, and she explained briefly that she meant to visit Lagos, and might need more funds than she had at her command.

“Well, that beats the band,” he said. “Mrs. Laing is going there too.”

“Not on to–day’s steamer?” she protested, for it seemed that an unkind fate was conspiring against her.

“Sure thing! Heard her tellin’ Beryl an hour ago.”

Though Evelyn wished heartily that her rival had chosen any other route of the many which lead from Las Palmas, her resolution remained unaltered. But there was another thrill in store for her.

“Tell you what, Miss Dane,” said Fairholme, “I don’t think you ought to tackle an expedition of this sort single–handed. You may want some one to pull you out of a tight place—what price me as a puller–out? I’m a pretty useless sort of chap in most things, but there is no reason why I shouldn’t try to do my country a good turn once in a way. Let me go with you, and then you’ll have no need to worry about coin.”

“You are really very kind,” she faltered, “but—but——”

“You are afraid of Mrs. Laing again,” he grinned. “Don’t worry yourself about her, dear girl. Not even Mrs. Grundy can growl at me for bein’ your fellow–passenger. I’m mixed up in this business, an’, by Jove, I mean to see it through. Look here, can’t you adopt me as a sort of elder brother, an’ make it ‘Billy’ an’ ‘Evelyn,’ an’ that sort of thing—eh, what?”

CHAPTER XIVTHE DRUMS OF OKUEvelyn, ferried across the harbor by a boat’s crew from the warship, boarded theEstremadurain almost regal state. The vessel’s cabin accommodation was poor, but the English girl was given of its best. Not every day does a small West African trader receive a passenger under the escort of a peer of the realm and a Captain in the Royal Navy. It was an interesting moment when Rosamund Laing, accompanied by Figuero, came alongside. The Portuguese made off at once, but the lady, when it was too late to retreat, affected a blank indifference to Evelyn’s presence that showed how conscious she was of it. She seldom appeared on deck, ate each meal in the seclusion of her cabin, and spoke no word, even to Lord Fairholme. On arriving at Lagos she hurried from the ship, and Evelyn breathed a sigh of relief as she watched her enemy go ashore.She did not carry her dislike of Mrs. Laing to the point of imagining her to be in active co–operation with the plotters against British supremacy in that quarter of the world. It was far more probable that a rich woman who drew some part of her revenues fromfactories on the coast might be combining business with the desire to obtain news of Warden at first hand. At any rate, the girl fondly hoped they might never meet again, and she trusted to the strength of her own story, supplemented by a letter from Captain Mortimer to the Governor, to place her beyond the reach of misrepresentation.But her troubles, instead of diminishing, became even more pronounced when she called at Government House. Both she and Lord Fairholme were entirely ignorant of local conditions. Neither of them knew that Lagos, though the chief West African port, and practically the only safe harbor on the Guinea Coast, was the capital of an administration quite separate from that of North and of South Nigeria. To reach Old Calabar, the headquarters of Warden’s service, they must take a long journey down the coast and penetrate some forty miles into the Niger delta. Captain Mortimer, in all probability, thought she was aware of this vital distinction, but, at the outset, Evelyn almost felt that she had undertaken a useless task.Her manifest distress at an unpleasing discovery won her the sympathy of the deputy Governor of Lagos, his chief having crossed from the island to the mainland only the day before. But sympathy could not altogether cloak a skepticism that was galling in the extreme. He was fully acquainted with the position of affairs in the sister protectorate, he said. He appreciated Captain Mortimer’s motives in wishing to acquaint the Government of Nigeria with certaincurious circumstances which might or might not be connected with tribal uneasiness in the Benuë River districts, but the fact remained that all was quiet now in that region.“Owing to Captain Warden’s unfortunate disappearance,” he went on, “another commissioner visited Oku. He found matters there in a fairly settled state. The people were cultivating their lands with greater assiduity than such semi–cannibals usually display, and this is a sure sign of content in a West African community. Indeed, Captain Forbes is now about to return to headquarters. A few companies of Hausa constabulary, who were moved to more convenient centers in case a strong column was required for an expedition to the Benuë, are going back to their original cantonments. The incident is ended.”The official tone was blandly disconcerting. Evelyn was aware that the deputy Governor looked on her somewhat in the light of a runaway schoolgirl, who had no reason whatever to bother her pretty head about the business of a prosperous and thriving colony.“You seem to imply that the Home authorities acted in a panic,” she said, wondering if it were really true that Warden and the men he had seen in London were laboring under a delusion.“No. They misread the motives of the Nigeria administration in curtailing Captain Warden’s furlough—that is all. There undoubtedly were rumors of some border disturbances. The people in that region hinted that the Oku men were arranging whatthey term a Long Ju–ju. There was also a trading activity on the part of our neighbors that gave rise to unpleasant suspicions. To be forewarned is to be forearmed, and His Excellency the Governor regarded Captain Warden as the man who could best deal with and remove any causes of discontent. Within the last two months, however, all unfavorable symptoms have vanished, and Oku is now as quiet as Old Calabar, or Lagos itself.”“I am glad of it,” she said earnestly. “It is far from my wish to figure as a messenger of strife. May I revert to a more personal matter? If Captain Warden has succeeded in crossing the Sahara, when and where may I reasonably expect to hear of him?”The deputy Governor stroked his chin. He was a kind–hearted man, and circumstances had prepared him for that question.“It is hard to say,” he answered, “Assuming he reaches Timbuktu in safety, he can follow that course of the Upper Niger, through what is known as the Dahomey hinterland, until he arrives at Ilo, the first town in the British sphere of influence in that direction. Thence to the sea, at this season, the river is navigable. If he makes for Lagos—having been ordered here in the first instance—he might strike overland from Jebbu to the railhead at Ibadan, but if he sticks to the river and goes to his own headquarters, by remaining here you should obtain telegraphic information of his arrival at a town called Lokoja, situated at the junction of the Niger and the Benuë.”He paused. His brief review conveyed no hint to his hearer of the tremendous difficulties any man must overcome ere he reached the comparative civilization of the telegraph, and he flinched from the task of enlightening her.“Is it quite certain,” he asked, “that Captain Warden went ashore at Rabat?”The astonishment in Evelyn’s face was almost sufficient answer.“Unless every one in some Government department in London has gone mad, it is quite certain,” she cried. “Did not an officer from Nigeria go to meet him at Cape Coast Castle, and is it not evident that he went to Hassan’s Tower to obtain the ruby I have told you of?”The official smiled. He had effectually distracted her thoughts from the far more embarrassing topic of Warden’s chances of reaching Nigeria alive.“One learns to distrust circumstantial evidence, Miss Dane. Have you heard that the passenger on theWater Witchwas known as Mr. Alfred Williams? Yes? Well, we do not know Captain Warden. We have no means here of identifying the baggage landed by the captain of theWater Witchwhen he reported the Rabat incident. Could you recognize any of Captain Warden’s belongings?”“No,” said Evelyn blankly—“that is, I fear not.”“You mentioned a gourd. I have not seen the thing myself, but one of my assistants says that a mostremarkable object of that nature was found in one of the missing man’s boxes.”“Ah, I should know that anywhere,” and she shuddered at the recollection of the evil face whose appearance had so strangely synchronized with the stormy events of her recent life.“Well, have you any objection to examining the gourd now? If it is the undoubted article you picked up in the Solent, it goes far to prove that Captain Warden did really take passage on theWater Witch.”“I cannot imagine how you can think otherwise,” she declared. “Of course it was he!”“There is no harm in making sure,” he said, having already decided to entrust to his wife the trying duty of making known to this charming girl the almost certain fact that her lover was long since dead.The calabash was brought and taken from its canvas wrapper. Oddly enough, mildew had formed on its bright lacquer, and the sheen of the mosaic eyes was dulled. It had lost some of its artistic power, and was far from being the terrifying creation that scared her so badly when first she saw it on the deck of theNancy.“Yes, that is it,” she said. “You see, this crown is really a lid, and the piece of vellum, or parchment, was hidden inside. It is not there now, yet it is more than likely that Captain Warden kept them both together.”The servant who had brought the calabash was sent back to search for the tattooed skin. He soon returnedwith it, and the deputy Governor examined the two curios with manifest interest.“It is not native work,” he said. “I have never seen anything just like it, even in museums at home.”Moved by an impulse which she could never afterwards explain, Evelyn asked if both the gourd and the parchment might be given to her.“They are really mine,” she explained sadly. “Captain Warden asked me to accept the carved head, as it was I who discovered it. But I was afraid of it then. Now, I should be pleased to have it in my possession. It brought us together in the first instance. Perhaps it may do the same thing a second time.”“Nigeria is the home of the ju–ju—may this fetish prove a lucky one!” said the official gravely. “Take it, by all means, Miss Dane, but let no native see it, or you will attract a notoriety that I am sure you would dislike. Meanwhile, I shall telegraph to Old Calabar asking for news, though I should certainly have heard if Warden had turned up already.”That same afternoon the deputy Governor’s wife called on Evelyn, and invited her to come and stay at her house, urging that she would find residence in a private family vastly preferable to the hotel in which she had passed the previous night. For fully three weeks she lived with this most friendly and hospitable lady. By degrees, as they became more intimate, her new acquaintance gathered the threads of the unusual story in which the girl figured so prominently. Similarly, as Evelyn gained more knowledge of Africanaffairs, she could not help but discover that it would be nothing less than a miracle if Warden ever reached Nigeria. The difficulties facing even a well–equipped expedition on the desert route were so great that all but the most enthusiastic explorers shrank from them. How, then, could one white man, accompanied by a solitary Hausa, hope to overcome them? The deputy Governor scouted the idea that Warden could raise a caravan at Bel Abbas. He was dubious about the incidents reported from Lektawa, but he made no secret of the utter improbability that Warden would have the means of buying camels and hiring men for the dangerous journey outlined by Captain Mortimer. And, to complete Evelyn’s dismay, the Southern Nigeria administration sent the most positive assurances that Warden had not been heard of in the upper river districts.She learned incidentally that Mrs. Laing had gone to Lokoja in a river steamer. Her hostess believed that Rosamund had found out the latest version of Warden’s adventures, and cherished a faint hope that even yet she might forestall Evelyn. No small consideration would take her so far into the interior, especially as the journey was both risky and useless.“But that need not trouble you at all, my dear,” said her outspoken friend. “If Captain Warden lives, you can rest assured that my husband will hear of him long before Mrs. Laing hears. I am afraid that if news comes at all, it will reach us in the form of a native rumor that a white man died of fever awayup there beyond the hills. It is always fever—never a spear thrust or a quantity of powdered glass mixed with a man’s food. The natives are loyal enough to each other in that respect. Even when they know the truth, it is almost impossible to get them to tell it.”So now it was death, and not life, that was talked of, and Evelyn lived on in dry–eyed misery until Fairholme hinted one day that she ought to return home, as the climate was beginning to affect her health.There were not lacking indications that the merry–souled little peer had quickly reconciled himself to the loss of Mrs. Laing. He was the most popular man in Lagos, and he hardly ever visited Evelyn when he did not assure her that he was “havin’ a giddy time with the dear girls.“ Yet she knew that he was only waiting until the last hope of Warden’s escape from the desert must be abandoned. When that hour came, and she was prepared to take ship for England, Fairholme would ask her to marry him.The belief became an obsession. To get away from it, to cut herself wholly adrift from painful associations, she offered her help to an American Baptist missionary and his wife who were going up the Benuë. They tried to dissuade her, pointing out the hardships and positive dangers of the undertaking and the humdrum nature of the nursing, teaching, and doctoring that constituted the lot of a medical missionary in West Africa. Finally, they consented, but stipulated that she should give her new career a six months’ trial.Fairholme protested, and stormed, and was only prevented from proposing on the spot by Evelyn’s placid statement that no matter what the future might decide, she should not be happy unless she had visited the little–known land to which her lover had given the best years of his life.The reference to Warden effectually sealed his lips. He hastened to the club, asked a man to dine with him, drank the larger part of a bottle of champagne, and mournfully informed his friends that he had never enjoyed a moment’s real fun since he ceased to be hard up.So Evelyn said good–by to the hospitable people who entertained her at Lagos, and made the long voyage up the great river that perplexed mankind during so many centuries. Even yet its whole course has not been surveyed, and it has important tributaries that are unknown beyond their confluence with the main stream. But the river steamer followed the established trade route through Old Calabar and Asabao and Idah to Lokoja; thence a steam launch took the small party of Europeans up the Benuë to Ibi, and they completed the journey in a roofed boat of shallow draft manned by krooboys.The girl seemed now to have left behind the cares and troubles of the outer world. Busying herself with the daily life of the mission compound—once a stockaded trading–station and noted center for the distribution of gin, but now a peaceful hive of simple tuition and industry—she soon experienced a calmsense of duty accomplished that had certainly been denied her in the Baumgartner household. At Lagos she had received one letter from Beryl, who complained bitterly of her “desertion.“ A police patrol–boat brought her a letter from home, in which her stepmother expressed the strongest disapproval of her new departure as announced by a hurried note sent from Lagos. And that was all. The links that bound her with England were completely snapped. She might almost be the kidnapped Domenico Garcia, of whom she thought occasionally when some chance aspect of a negro’s face startled her by its close resemblance to the black mask on the calabash.Mindful of the Lagos official’s warning, she never showed the carved head to any one. Not even Mr. and Mrs. Hume, the mission couple, knew that it was in her possession.She had been nearly two months in Kadana, as the group of houses and huts in the clearing by the side of the yellow Benuë was called, when an apparently trivial incident upset the placid routine of the mission. One evening, just before sunset, a ju–ju man, fearsomely bedaubed, and decked with an amazing headdress and skirt of scarlet feathers, came into the native section of the compound. He cut off the head of an unhappy fowl that he carried with him, sprinkled its warm blood in a circle on the ground, chanted some hoarse incantation, and vanished into the bush.The white people saw him from a distance. They happened to be standing on the veranda of an oldfactory used as a schoolhouse and dwelling, and Mr. Hume was greatly annoyed by the witch–doctor’s visit.“This will unsettle every native for a week or two,” he said, eying the man’s antics with evident disfavor. “Those fellows are a far more enduring curse to Africa than the gin traffic. Governments can legislate gin out of existence, but they cannot touch ju–ju.”“We are doing something in that direction here,” said Evelyn, glancing over her shoulder at the rows of woolly–headed little black figures in the class–room.“Yes, we are educating the children, but their parents will undo to–night all that we have accomplished since our return. Look at Bambuk. He has mixed with Europeans during the past ten years, yet he is white with terror.”It was an odd phrase to use with regard to a negro, but it was quite accurate. Bambuk, interpreter, head servant, and factotum–in–chief to the mission, who was peering through the doorway at the proceedings of the ju–ju man, showed every sign of alarm when he saw the fowl–killing ceremony. His ebony face, usually shining and jovial looking, became livid and drawn. His eyes glistened like those of a frightened animal.Turning for a second to make sure that the children were not listening, he drew near and whispered:“Oku man make war ju–ju. Him say all black people lib for bush, or dem King of Oku nail ebery one to tree w’en he burn mission.”Bambuk could speak far better English than that. The fact that he had reverted so thoroughly to the jargon of the krooboy proved the extent of his fear.Hume affected to make light of the witch–doctor and his threats.“Go and tell him to stop his nonsense”, he said. “Say I have a bale of cotton here which I brought especially from Lagos as a present for King M’Wanga.”But before Bambuk could descend the broad flight of steps leading from the veranda, the fetish performance was at an end and its chief actor had rushed off among the trees.Evelyn felt a chill run through her body, though the air was hot and vapor–laden.“Is M’Wagna the name of the King of Oku?” she asked.“I believe so. I have been absent nearly eight months, as you are aware, but I haven’t heard of any change in the local dynasty.”“Do you think it likely that he has ever visited England?”“Most improbable,” said Hume. “He is an absolute savage. I have seen him only once, and I should be sorry to think that my life depended on his good will. But why did you imagine he might have been in England?”“Because a native of that name came there with two others last August.”“We have been visited by ju–ju men before, Charles,” put in Mrs. Hume.“Yes. Generally they come begging for something they want—usually drugs—which they pretend to concoct themselves out of a snake’s liver or the gizzard of a bird. Don’t lay too much stress on Bambuk’s fright. He is a chicken–hearted fellow at the best. If there is really any likelihood of a native disturbance I shall send him with you and Miss Dane down the river——”“I shall not go without you, dear,” said Mrs. Hume.“Nor I—unless both of you come,” answered Evelyn.Hume laughed constrainedly.“You will both obey orders, I hope,” he said, but he did not urge the matter further at the moment.They were eating their evening meal when the distant tapping of a drum caught their ears. It was not the rhythmical beating of a tom–tom by some musically–inclined bushman. It much more closely resembled the dot and dash code of the Morse alphabet, or that variant of it which Private Thomas Atkins, in a spasm of genius, christened “Umty–iddy.“ Heard in the stillness of the forest, with not a breath of air stirring the leaves of the tallest trees, and even the tawny river murmuring in so low a note that it was inaudible from the mission–house, this irregular drum–beating had a depressing, almost a sinister effect. It jarred on the nerves. It suggested the unseen and therefore the terrible. At all costs they must find out what it signified.Bambuk was summoned. He was even more distraughtthan during the fetish performance of two hours earlier.“Dem Oku drum play Custom tune,” he explained. “Dem Custom mean——”“Do you savvy what they are saying?” broke in Hume sharply. He did not imagine that his wife had discussed the habits of native potentates with her youthful helper, and even she herself did not know the full extent of the excesses, the sheer lust of bloodshed, hidden under a harmless–sounding word.“Savvy plenty. Dem drum made of monkey–skin—p’haps other kind of skin—an’ dem ju–ju man say: ‘Come, come! Make sharp dem knife! Come! Load dem gun! Come, den, come! Dem ribber (river) run red wid blood!’ Den dey nail some men to tree an’ make dance.”The missionary did not check his assistant’s recital. It was best that the women should at least understand the peril in which they were placed. The compound held not more than fifty able–bodied men, and the only arms they possessed were native weapons. Hume’s influence depended wholly on his skill in treating the ailments of the people and his patience in teaching their children not only the rudiments of English but the simpler forms of handicraft. His experience as an African missioner was not of long standing, but from the outset he had consistently refused to own any firearm more deadly than a shotgun. Hitherto he had regarded the Upper Benuë region as a settled and fairly prosperous one. His cherished day–dreamwas that before he died he might see the pioneer settlement at Kadana transmuted into a well–equipped college and training school, whence Christianity and science might spread their light throughout that part of Africa. It shocked him now to think that all his work might be submerged under a wave of fanaticism, yet he clung to the hope that the warlike preparations of the men of Oku might mean nothing more serious than a tribal quarrel. This had happened once before, and he stepped in as arbitrator. By a liberal distribution of presents, including the whole of the mission stock of wine and brandy, he sent away both parties highly gratified with both his award and his method of arriving at it.“There are war–drums beating in more than one place,” said Evelyn, who was listening in silence to the spasmodic tap–tap, tap–tap–tap, tap, that voiced the dirge translated by Bambuk.“Ah, you have hit on my unspoken thought,” cried Hume. “Come, now, Bambuk, are you not enlarging your story somewhat? Two chiefs make war–palaver; isn’t that the explanation?”“Dem Oku drum,” repeated the native, “all Oku drum. Dey call for Custom to–night.”“What exactlyisCustom, Charles?” said Mrs. Hume.“Unfortunately, it means in this instance an offering of human sacrifice.”He saw no help for it. They must know, sooner or later, and his soul turned sick at the thought of hiswife and this gentle girl who had thrown in her lot with theirs falling into the clutches of the fetish–maddened bushmen. Each minute he grew more assured that some unusual movement was taking place among the surrounding tribes. Even to his untutored ear there was a marked similarity in the drumming, and he determined that the two women should go down the river in the mission canoe as soon as the moon rose. A crew of eight men could take them to the nearest constabulary post, and within twenty–four hours a steam launch would bring back an armed body of Hausas officered by an Englishman. Till then, he would trust to Providence for the safety of the people under his care. That he himself could desert the mission never entered his mind. Not only would the settlement break up in direst confusion the moment his back was turned, but the society’s houses and stores would be looted and destroyed, and the work of years swept away in a single night.He was considering what excuse would serve to get the women on board the canoe, when the splash of paddles close at hand stirred all four to sudden excitement. It was Bambuk who read instantly the meaning of this unexpected sound. He rushed out, yelling words that proved how soon the veneer of civilization can wear off the West African negro. Soon he came back, looking sick with fear.“Dem dam pagan nigger make off in dem canoe,” he almost screamed. “Dey savvy plenty too much bushman lib. We all be killed one–time.”Even Evelyn, new to the country and its ways, realized what this meant. The river was their only highway. There were native tracks in plenty through the dense forest, but to march along any one of them while a hostile force was lying across every path was to court immediate disaster. By running away from a peril which was only passive as yet, they made it active. On the river they might escape; in the bush they could not travel a mile except on native sufferance.Hume tried bravely to minimize the force of this unlooked–for blow. It was true the fugitives might be expected to carry the alarm to the police post, but until the following night it was quite impossible for succor to reach Kadana. And now they must all stand or fall by the mission.“I did not think any of our men would be such cowards,” he said with quiet sadness. “Let us go and pacify the others. When all is said and done, we have harmed no one in Oku territory, but given relief to many who were in pain. I still believe that this scare is unwarranted, and our presence among our people will tend to calm them.”A minute later he was sorry he had not gone alone. Every hut in the compound was empty. Nearly two hundred men, women, and children had fled into the bush, preferring to obey the order of the ju–ju man rather than defy him by remaining in the mission. Bambuk had not been taken into their confidence because he was originally a Foulah Mohammedan. The colony at Kadana was precisely what Bambukhad called its members in his rage, for the Mohammedan negro looks down upon his “pagan“ brethren with supreme contempt. In a crisis such as that which now threatened to engulf the mission, these nice distinctions of class and creed are apt to spring into startling prominence.Hume faced the situation gallantly.“Another illusion shattered,” he sighed. “Most certainly I did not expect that all my people would desert me at the first hint of danger. But we must make the best of it. Even now I cannot believe that the king of Oku—if it really is he who has created this disturbance—can contemplate an attack on Europeans. He has many faults, but he is not a fool, and he knows quite well how swift and complete would be his punishment if he interfered with us.”Mrs. Hume accepted her husband’s views, and tried to look at matters with the same optimism. Evelyn, curiously enough, was better informed than even their native companion as to the serious nature of the outbreak. She was convinced that Warden’s theory was correct. Some stronger influence than a mere tribalémeutelay behind those horrible drumbeats. The authorities had been completely hoodwinked. In her heart of hearts she feared that Kadana shared its deadly peril that night with many a stronger trading–post and station down the river.Bambuk, quieting down from his earlier paroxysms of fear, seemed to await his certain doom with a dignified fatalism. Even when he heard the thud ofpaddles on the sluggish waters of the river he announced the fact laconically.“Bush man lib!” he muttered.Perhaps the white faces blanched somewhat, and hearts beat a trifle faster, but Hume alone spoke.“Where?” he asked.“On ribber—in dem war canoe.”They strained their ears, and soon caught the measured plashing. Then Mrs Hume began to weep. Evelyn knelt by her side in mute sympathy. She was too dazed to find relief in tears. For the moment she seemed to be passing through a torturing dream from which she would soon awake. Hume, who had gone to the door, came to his wife.“Don’t cry, Mary,” he said. “That does no good—and—it breaks my heart. I have not abandoned hope. God can save us even yet. Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.”His voice was strong and self–reliant. Even Bambuk glanced at him with a kind of awe, and thought, it may be, that the creed he had tried dimly to understand was nobler than the mere stoicism that was the natural outcome of his own fantastic beliefs. The negro was stupid with terror, or he could not have failed to distinguish the steady hum of an engine running at half speed.And so they waited, while the thud of the paddles came nearer, until at last the bow of a heavy craft crashed into the foliage overhanging the bank, andthey were rapt into a heaven of relief by hearing an English voice.“Hello, there!” it shouted. “Is this the Kadana Mission?”Mrs. Hume straightway fainted, but Evelyn was there to tend her, and Hume rushed down to the landing–place. The gleam of a moon rising over some low hills was beginning to make luminous the river mist. He was able dimly to note the difference between the pith hats of two Europeans and the smart round caps of a number of Hausa policemen. And, though a man of peace, he found the glint of rifle barrels singularly comforting.“Who are you?” he asked.“Well,” said he who had spoken in the first instance, “I am Lieutenant Colville of the constabulary, but I have brought with me the Earl of Fairholme. Have you a lady named Dane, Miss Evelyn Dane, staying with you?”Hume, who wanted to fall on his knees and offer thanks to Providence, managed to say that Evelyn Dane was certainly at Kadana at that moment.“Ah, that’s the ticket!” said another voice. “I suppose you can put us up for the night? Any sort of shake–down will do, so long as we get away from this beastly river. Sleepin’ on board gives one the jim–jams, eh, what?”

THE DRUMS OF OKU

Evelyn, ferried across the harbor by a boat’s crew from the warship, boarded theEstremadurain almost regal state. The vessel’s cabin accommodation was poor, but the English girl was given of its best. Not every day does a small West African trader receive a passenger under the escort of a peer of the realm and a Captain in the Royal Navy. It was an interesting moment when Rosamund Laing, accompanied by Figuero, came alongside. The Portuguese made off at once, but the lady, when it was too late to retreat, affected a blank indifference to Evelyn’s presence that showed how conscious she was of it. She seldom appeared on deck, ate each meal in the seclusion of her cabin, and spoke no word, even to Lord Fairholme. On arriving at Lagos she hurried from the ship, and Evelyn breathed a sigh of relief as she watched her enemy go ashore.

She did not carry her dislike of Mrs. Laing to the point of imagining her to be in active co–operation with the plotters against British supremacy in that quarter of the world. It was far more probable that a rich woman who drew some part of her revenues fromfactories on the coast might be combining business with the desire to obtain news of Warden at first hand. At any rate, the girl fondly hoped they might never meet again, and she trusted to the strength of her own story, supplemented by a letter from Captain Mortimer to the Governor, to place her beyond the reach of misrepresentation.

But her troubles, instead of diminishing, became even more pronounced when she called at Government House. Both she and Lord Fairholme were entirely ignorant of local conditions. Neither of them knew that Lagos, though the chief West African port, and practically the only safe harbor on the Guinea Coast, was the capital of an administration quite separate from that of North and of South Nigeria. To reach Old Calabar, the headquarters of Warden’s service, they must take a long journey down the coast and penetrate some forty miles into the Niger delta. Captain Mortimer, in all probability, thought she was aware of this vital distinction, but, at the outset, Evelyn almost felt that she had undertaken a useless task.

Her manifest distress at an unpleasing discovery won her the sympathy of the deputy Governor of Lagos, his chief having crossed from the island to the mainland only the day before. But sympathy could not altogether cloak a skepticism that was galling in the extreme. He was fully acquainted with the position of affairs in the sister protectorate, he said. He appreciated Captain Mortimer’s motives in wishing to acquaint the Government of Nigeria with certaincurious circumstances which might or might not be connected with tribal uneasiness in the Benuë River districts, but the fact remained that all was quiet now in that region.

“Owing to Captain Warden’s unfortunate disappearance,” he went on, “another commissioner visited Oku. He found matters there in a fairly settled state. The people were cultivating their lands with greater assiduity than such semi–cannibals usually display, and this is a sure sign of content in a West African community. Indeed, Captain Forbes is now about to return to headquarters. A few companies of Hausa constabulary, who were moved to more convenient centers in case a strong column was required for an expedition to the Benuë, are going back to their original cantonments. The incident is ended.”

The official tone was blandly disconcerting. Evelyn was aware that the deputy Governor looked on her somewhat in the light of a runaway schoolgirl, who had no reason whatever to bother her pretty head about the business of a prosperous and thriving colony.

“You seem to imply that the Home authorities acted in a panic,” she said, wondering if it were really true that Warden and the men he had seen in London were laboring under a delusion.

“No. They misread the motives of the Nigeria administration in curtailing Captain Warden’s furlough—that is all. There undoubtedly were rumors of some border disturbances. The people in that region hinted that the Oku men were arranging whatthey term a Long Ju–ju. There was also a trading activity on the part of our neighbors that gave rise to unpleasant suspicions. To be forewarned is to be forearmed, and His Excellency the Governor regarded Captain Warden as the man who could best deal with and remove any causes of discontent. Within the last two months, however, all unfavorable symptoms have vanished, and Oku is now as quiet as Old Calabar, or Lagos itself.”

“I am glad of it,” she said earnestly. “It is far from my wish to figure as a messenger of strife. May I revert to a more personal matter? If Captain Warden has succeeded in crossing the Sahara, when and where may I reasonably expect to hear of him?”

The deputy Governor stroked his chin. He was a kind–hearted man, and circumstances had prepared him for that question.

“It is hard to say,” he answered, “Assuming he reaches Timbuktu in safety, he can follow that course of the Upper Niger, through what is known as the Dahomey hinterland, until he arrives at Ilo, the first town in the British sphere of influence in that direction. Thence to the sea, at this season, the river is navigable. If he makes for Lagos—having been ordered here in the first instance—he might strike overland from Jebbu to the railhead at Ibadan, but if he sticks to the river and goes to his own headquarters, by remaining here you should obtain telegraphic information of his arrival at a town called Lokoja, situated at the junction of the Niger and the Benuë.”

He paused. His brief review conveyed no hint to his hearer of the tremendous difficulties any man must overcome ere he reached the comparative civilization of the telegraph, and he flinched from the task of enlightening her.

“Is it quite certain,” he asked, “that Captain Warden went ashore at Rabat?”

The astonishment in Evelyn’s face was almost sufficient answer.

“Unless every one in some Government department in London has gone mad, it is quite certain,” she cried. “Did not an officer from Nigeria go to meet him at Cape Coast Castle, and is it not evident that he went to Hassan’s Tower to obtain the ruby I have told you of?”

The official smiled. He had effectually distracted her thoughts from the far more embarrassing topic of Warden’s chances of reaching Nigeria alive.

“One learns to distrust circumstantial evidence, Miss Dane. Have you heard that the passenger on theWater Witchwas known as Mr. Alfred Williams? Yes? Well, we do not know Captain Warden. We have no means here of identifying the baggage landed by the captain of theWater Witchwhen he reported the Rabat incident. Could you recognize any of Captain Warden’s belongings?”

“No,” said Evelyn blankly—“that is, I fear not.”

“You mentioned a gourd. I have not seen the thing myself, but one of my assistants says that a mostremarkable object of that nature was found in one of the missing man’s boxes.”

“Ah, I should know that anywhere,” and she shuddered at the recollection of the evil face whose appearance had so strangely synchronized with the stormy events of her recent life.

“Well, have you any objection to examining the gourd now? If it is the undoubted article you picked up in the Solent, it goes far to prove that Captain Warden did really take passage on theWater Witch.”

“I cannot imagine how you can think otherwise,” she declared. “Of course it was he!”

“There is no harm in making sure,” he said, having already decided to entrust to his wife the trying duty of making known to this charming girl the almost certain fact that her lover was long since dead.

The calabash was brought and taken from its canvas wrapper. Oddly enough, mildew had formed on its bright lacquer, and the sheen of the mosaic eyes was dulled. It had lost some of its artistic power, and was far from being the terrifying creation that scared her so badly when first she saw it on the deck of theNancy.

“Yes, that is it,” she said. “You see, this crown is really a lid, and the piece of vellum, or parchment, was hidden inside. It is not there now, yet it is more than likely that Captain Warden kept them both together.”

The servant who had brought the calabash was sent back to search for the tattooed skin. He soon returnedwith it, and the deputy Governor examined the two curios with manifest interest.

“It is not native work,” he said. “I have never seen anything just like it, even in museums at home.”

Moved by an impulse which she could never afterwards explain, Evelyn asked if both the gourd and the parchment might be given to her.

“They are really mine,” she explained sadly. “Captain Warden asked me to accept the carved head, as it was I who discovered it. But I was afraid of it then. Now, I should be pleased to have it in my possession. It brought us together in the first instance. Perhaps it may do the same thing a second time.”

“Nigeria is the home of the ju–ju—may this fetish prove a lucky one!” said the official gravely. “Take it, by all means, Miss Dane, but let no native see it, or you will attract a notoriety that I am sure you would dislike. Meanwhile, I shall telegraph to Old Calabar asking for news, though I should certainly have heard if Warden had turned up already.”

That same afternoon the deputy Governor’s wife called on Evelyn, and invited her to come and stay at her house, urging that she would find residence in a private family vastly preferable to the hotel in which she had passed the previous night. For fully three weeks she lived with this most friendly and hospitable lady. By degrees, as they became more intimate, her new acquaintance gathered the threads of the unusual story in which the girl figured so prominently. Similarly, as Evelyn gained more knowledge of Africanaffairs, she could not help but discover that it would be nothing less than a miracle if Warden ever reached Nigeria. The difficulties facing even a well–equipped expedition on the desert route were so great that all but the most enthusiastic explorers shrank from them. How, then, could one white man, accompanied by a solitary Hausa, hope to overcome them? The deputy Governor scouted the idea that Warden could raise a caravan at Bel Abbas. He was dubious about the incidents reported from Lektawa, but he made no secret of the utter improbability that Warden would have the means of buying camels and hiring men for the dangerous journey outlined by Captain Mortimer. And, to complete Evelyn’s dismay, the Southern Nigeria administration sent the most positive assurances that Warden had not been heard of in the upper river districts.

She learned incidentally that Mrs. Laing had gone to Lokoja in a river steamer. Her hostess believed that Rosamund had found out the latest version of Warden’s adventures, and cherished a faint hope that even yet she might forestall Evelyn. No small consideration would take her so far into the interior, especially as the journey was both risky and useless.

“But that need not trouble you at all, my dear,” said her outspoken friend. “If Captain Warden lives, you can rest assured that my husband will hear of him long before Mrs. Laing hears. I am afraid that if news comes at all, it will reach us in the form of a native rumor that a white man died of fever awayup there beyond the hills. It is always fever—never a spear thrust or a quantity of powdered glass mixed with a man’s food. The natives are loyal enough to each other in that respect. Even when they know the truth, it is almost impossible to get them to tell it.”

So now it was death, and not life, that was talked of, and Evelyn lived on in dry–eyed misery until Fairholme hinted one day that she ought to return home, as the climate was beginning to affect her health.

There were not lacking indications that the merry–souled little peer had quickly reconciled himself to the loss of Mrs. Laing. He was the most popular man in Lagos, and he hardly ever visited Evelyn when he did not assure her that he was “havin’ a giddy time with the dear girls.“ Yet she knew that he was only waiting until the last hope of Warden’s escape from the desert must be abandoned. When that hour came, and she was prepared to take ship for England, Fairholme would ask her to marry him.

The belief became an obsession. To get away from it, to cut herself wholly adrift from painful associations, she offered her help to an American Baptist missionary and his wife who were going up the Benuë. They tried to dissuade her, pointing out the hardships and positive dangers of the undertaking and the humdrum nature of the nursing, teaching, and doctoring that constituted the lot of a medical missionary in West Africa. Finally, they consented, but stipulated that she should give her new career a six months’ trial.

Fairholme protested, and stormed, and was only prevented from proposing on the spot by Evelyn’s placid statement that no matter what the future might decide, she should not be happy unless she had visited the little–known land to which her lover had given the best years of his life.

The reference to Warden effectually sealed his lips. He hastened to the club, asked a man to dine with him, drank the larger part of a bottle of champagne, and mournfully informed his friends that he had never enjoyed a moment’s real fun since he ceased to be hard up.

So Evelyn said good–by to the hospitable people who entertained her at Lagos, and made the long voyage up the great river that perplexed mankind during so many centuries. Even yet its whole course has not been surveyed, and it has important tributaries that are unknown beyond their confluence with the main stream. But the river steamer followed the established trade route through Old Calabar and Asabao and Idah to Lokoja; thence a steam launch took the small party of Europeans up the Benuë to Ibi, and they completed the journey in a roofed boat of shallow draft manned by krooboys.

The girl seemed now to have left behind the cares and troubles of the outer world. Busying herself with the daily life of the mission compound—once a stockaded trading–station and noted center for the distribution of gin, but now a peaceful hive of simple tuition and industry—she soon experienced a calmsense of duty accomplished that had certainly been denied her in the Baumgartner household. At Lagos she had received one letter from Beryl, who complained bitterly of her “desertion.“ A police patrol–boat brought her a letter from home, in which her stepmother expressed the strongest disapproval of her new departure as announced by a hurried note sent from Lagos. And that was all. The links that bound her with England were completely snapped. She might almost be the kidnapped Domenico Garcia, of whom she thought occasionally when some chance aspect of a negro’s face startled her by its close resemblance to the black mask on the calabash.

Mindful of the Lagos official’s warning, she never showed the carved head to any one. Not even Mr. and Mrs. Hume, the mission couple, knew that it was in her possession.

She had been nearly two months in Kadana, as the group of houses and huts in the clearing by the side of the yellow Benuë was called, when an apparently trivial incident upset the placid routine of the mission. One evening, just before sunset, a ju–ju man, fearsomely bedaubed, and decked with an amazing headdress and skirt of scarlet feathers, came into the native section of the compound. He cut off the head of an unhappy fowl that he carried with him, sprinkled its warm blood in a circle on the ground, chanted some hoarse incantation, and vanished into the bush.

The white people saw him from a distance. They happened to be standing on the veranda of an oldfactory used as a schoolhouse and dwelling, and Mr. Hume was greatly annoyed by the witch–doctor’s visit.

“This will unsettle every native for a week or two,” he said, eying the man’s antics with evident disfavor. “Those fellows are a far more enduring curse to Africa than the gin traffic. Governments can legislate gin out of existence, but they cannot touch ju–ju.”

“We are doing something in that direction here,” said Evelyn, glancing over her shoulder at the rows of woolly–headed little black figures in the class–room.

“Yes, we are educating the children, but their parents will undo to–night all that we have accomplished since our return. Look at Bambuk. He has mixed with Europeans during the past ten years, yet he is white with terror.”

It was an odd phrase to use with regard to a negro, but it was quite accurate. Bambuk, interpreter, head servant, and factotum–in–chief to the mission, who was peering through the doorway at the proceedings of the ju–ju man, showed every sign of alarm when he saw the fowl–killing ceremony. His ebony face, usually shining and jovial looking, became livid and drawn. His eyes glistened like those of a frightened animal.

Turning for a second to make sure that the children were not listening, he drew near and whispered:

“Oku man make war ju–ju. Him say all black people lib for bush, or dem King of Oku nail ebery one to tree w’en he burn mission.”

Bambuk could speak far better English than that. The fact that he had reverted so thoroughly to the jargon of the krooboy proved the extent of his fear.

Hume affected to make light of the witch–doctor and his threats.

“Go and tell him to stop his nonsense”, he said. “Say I have a bale of cotton here which I brought especially from Lagos as a present for King M’Wanga.”

But before Bambuk could descend the broad flight of steps leading from the veranda, the fetish performance was at an end and its chief actor had rushed off among the trees.

Evelyn felt a chill run through her body, though the air was hot and vapor–laden.

“Is M’Wagna the name of the King of Oku?” she asked.

“I believe so. I have been absent nearly eight months, as you are aware, but I haven’t heard of any change in the local dynasty.”

“Do you think it likely that he has ever visited England?”

“Most improbable,” said Hume. “He is an absolute savage. I have seen him only once, and I should be sorry to think that my life depended on his good will. But why did you imagine he might have been in England?”

“Because a native of that name came there with two others last August.”

“We have been visited by ju–ju men before, Charles,” put in Mrs. Hume.

“Yes. Generally they come begging for something they want—usually drugs—which they pretend to concoct themselves out of a snake’s liver or the gizzard of a bird. Don’t lay too much stress on Bambuk’s fright. He is a chicken–hearted fellow at the best. If there is really any likelihood of a native disturbance I shall send him with you and Miss Dane down the river——”

“I shall not go without you, dear,” said Mrs. Hume.

“Nor I—unless both of you come,” answered Evelyn.

Hume laughed constrainedly.

“You will both obey orders, I hope,” he said, but he did not urge the matter further at the moment.

They were eating their evening meal when the distant tapping of a drum caught their ears. It was not the rhythmical beating of a tom–tom by some musically–inclined bushman. It much more closely resembled the dot and dash code of the Morse alphabet, or that variant of it which Private Thomas Atkins, in a spasm of genius, christened “Umty–iddy.“ Heard in the stillness of the forest, with not a breath of air stirring the leaves of the tallest trees, and even the tawny river murmuring in so low a note that it was inaudible from the mission–house, this irregular drum–beating had a depressing, almost a sinister effect. It jarred on the nerves. It suggested the unseen and therefore the terrible. At all costs they must find out what it signified.

Bambuk was summoned. He was even more distraughtthan during the fetish performance of two hours earlier.

“Dem Oku drum play Custom tune,” he explained. “Dem Custom mean——”

“Do you savvy what they are saying?” broke in Hume sharply. He did not imagine that his wife had discussed the habits of native potentates with her youthful helper, and even she herself did not know the full extent of the excesses, the sheer lust of bloodshed, hidden under a harmless–sounding word.

“Savvy plenty. Dem drum made of monkey–skin—p’haps other kind of skin—an’ dem ju–ju man say: ‘Come, come! Make sharp dem knife! Come! Load dem gun! Come, den, come! Dem ribber (river) run red wid blood!’ Den dey nail some men to tree an’ make dance.”

The missionary did not check his assistant’s recital. It was best that the women should at least understand the peril in which they were placed. The compound held not more than fifty able–bodied men, and the only arms they possessed were native weapons. Hume’s influence depended wholly on his skill in treating the ailments of the people and his patience in teaching their children not only the rudiments of English but the simpler forms of handicraft. His experience as an African missioner was not of long standing, but from the outset he had consistently refused to own any firearm more deadly than a shotgun. Hitherto he had regarded the Upper Benuë region as a settled and fairly prosperous one. His cherished day–dreamwas that before he died he might see the pioneer settlement at Kadana transmuted into a well–equipped college and training school, whence Christianity and science might spread their light throughout that part of Africa. It shocked him now to think that all his work might be submerged under a wave of fanaticism, yet he clung to the hope that the warlike preparations of the men of Oku might mean nothing more serious than a tribal quarrel. This had happened once before, and he stepped in as arbitrator. By a liberal distribution of presents, including the whole of the mission stock of wine and brandy, he sent away both parties highly gratified with both his award and his method of arriving at it.

“There are war–drums beating in more than one place,” said Evelyn, who was listening in silence to the spasmodic tap–tap, tap–tap–tap, tap, that voiced the dirge translated by Bambuk.

“Ah, you have hit on my unspoken thought,” cried Hume. “Come, now, Bambuk, are you not enlarging your story somewhat? Two chiefs make war–palaver; isn’t that the explanation?”

“Dem Oku drum,” repeated the native, “all Oku drum. Dey call for Custom to–night.”

“What exactlyisCustom, Charles?” said Mrs. Hume.

“Unfortunately, it means in this instance an offering of human sacrifice.”

He saw no help for it. They must know, sooner or later, and his soul turned sick at the thought of hiswife and this gentle girl who had thrown in her lot with theirs falling into the clutches of the fetish–maddened bushmen. Each minute he grew more assured that some unusual movement was taking place among the surrounding tribes. Even to his untutored ear there was a marked similarity in the drumming, and he determined that the two women should go down the river in the mission canoe as soon as the moon rose. A crew of eight men could take them to the nearest constabulary post, and within twenty–four hours a steam launch would bring back an armed body of Hausas officered by an Englishman. Till then, he would trust to Providence for the safety of the people under his care. That he himself could desert the mission never entered his mind. Not only would the settlement break up in direst confusion the moment his back was turned, but the society’s houses and stores would be looted and destroyed, and the work of years swept away in a single night.

He was considering what excuse would serve to get the women on board the canoe, when the splash of paddles close at hand stirred all four to sudden excitement. It was Bambuk who read instantly the meaning of this unexpected sound. He rushed out, yelling words that proved how soon the veneer of civilization can wear off the West African negro. Soon he came back, looking sick with fear.

“Dem dam pagan nigger make off in dem canoe,” he almost screamed. “Dey savvy plenty too much bushman lib. We all be killed one–time.”

Even Evelyn, new to the country and its ways, realized what this meant. The river was their only highway. There were native tracks in plenty through the dense forest, but to march along any one of them while a hostile force was lying across every path was to court immediate disaster. By running away from a peril which was only passive as yet, they made it active. On the river they might escape; in the bush they could not travel a mile except on native sufferance.

Hume tried bravely to minimize the force of this unlooked–for blow. It was true the fugitives might be expected to carry the alarm to the police post, but until the following night it was quite impossible for succor to reach Kadana. And now they must all stand or fall by the mission.

“I did not think any of our men would be such cowards,” he said with quiet sadness. “Let us go and pacify the others. When all is said and done, we have harmed no one in Oku territory, but given relief to many who were in pain. I still believe that this scare is unwarranted, and our presence among our people will tend to calm them.”

A minute later he was sorry he had not gone alone. Every hut in the compound was empty. Nearly two hundred men, women, and children had fled into the bush, preferring to obey the order of the ju–ju man rather than defy him by remaining in the mission. Bambuk had not been taken into their confidence because he was originally a Foulah Mohammedan. The colony at Kadana was precisely what Bambukhad called its members in his rage, for the Mohammedan negro looks down upon his “pagan“ brethren with supreme contempt. In a crisis such as that which now threatened to engulf the mission, these nice distinctions of class and creed are apt to spring into startling prominence.

Hume faced the situation gallantly.

“Another illusion shattered,” he sighed. “Most certainly I did not expect that all my people would desert me at the first hint of danger. But we must make the best of it. Even now I cannot believe that the king of Oku—if it really is he who has created this disturbance—can contemplate an attack on Europeans. He has many faults, but he is not a fool, and he knows quite well how swift and complete would be his punishment if he interfered with us.”

Mrs. Hume accepted her husband’s views, and tried to look at matters with the same optimism. Evelyn, curiously enough, was better informed than even their native companion as to the serious nature of the outbreak. She was convinced that Warden’s theory was correct. Some stronger influence than a mere tribalémeutelay behind those horrible drumbeats. The authorities had been completely hoodwinked. In her heart of hearts she feared that Kadana shared its deadly peril that night with many a stronger trading–post and station down the river.

Bambuk, quieting down from his earlier paroxysms of fear, seemed to await his certain doom with a dignified fatalism. Even when he heard the thud ofpaddles on the sluggish waters of the river he announced the fact laconically.

“Bush man lib!” he muttered.

Perhaps the white faces blanched somewhat, and hearts beat a trifle faster, but Hume alone spoke.

“Where?” he asked.

“On ribber—in dem war canoe.”

They strained their ears, and soon caught the measured plashing. Then Mrs Hume began to weep. Evelyn knelt by her side in mute sympathy. She was too dazed to find relief in tears. For the moment she seemed to be passing through a torturing dream from which she would soon awake. Hume, who had gone to the door, came to his wife.

“Don’t cry, Mary,” he said. “That does no good—and—it breaks my heart. I have not abandoned hope. God can save us even yet. Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.”

His voice was strong and self–reliant. Even Bambuk glanced at him with a kind of awe, and thought, it may be, that the creed he had tried dimly to understand was nobler than the mere stoicism that was the natural outcome of his own fantastic beliefs. The negro was stupid with terror, or he could not have failed to distinguish the steady hum of an engine running at half speed.

And so they waited, while the thud of the paddles came nearer, until at last the bow of a heavy craft crashed into the foliage overhanging the bank, andthey were rapt into a heaven of relief by hearing an English voice.

“Hello, there!” it shouted. “Is this the Kadana Mission?”

Mrs. Hume straightway fainted, but Evelyn was there to tend her, and Hume rushed down to the landing–place. The gleam of a moon rising over some low hills was beginning to make luminous the river mist. He was able dimly to note the difference between the pith hats of two Europeans and the smart round caps of a number of Hausa policemen. And, though a man of peace, he found the glint of rifle barrels singularly comforting.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Well,” said he who had spoken in the first instance, “I am Lieutenant Colville of the constabulary, but I have brought with me the Earl of Fairholme. Have you a lady named Dane, Miss Evelyn Dane, staying with you?”

Hume, who wanted to fall on his knees and offer thanks to Providence, managed to say that Evelyn Dane was certainly at Kadana at that moment.

“Ah, that’s the ticket!” said another voice. “I suppose you can put us up for the night? Any sort of shake–down will do, so long as we get away from this beastly river. Sleepin’ on board gives one the jim–jams, eh, what?”

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