The Keepers of the King's Peace by Edgar Wallace (mobi ebook reader TXT) đź“•
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- Author: Edgar Wallace
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She sat down by his side.
"Please tell me the joke. This isn't the first [Pg 136]time you have ragged Bones about 'the baby'; even Mr. Sanders has done it."
She looked across at the Commissioner with a reproving shake of her pretty head.
"Have I ragged Bones?" asked Sanders, in surprise. "I never thought I was capable of ragging anybody."
"The truth is, Pat," said her brother, "there isn't any rag about the matter. Bones adopted a piccanin."
"A child?"
"A baby about a month old. Its mother died, and some old bird of a witch-doctor was 'chopping' it when Bones appeared on the scene."
Patricia gave a little gurgle of delight and clapped her hands. "Oh, please tell me everything about it."
"It was Sanders who told her of Henry Hamilton Bones, his dire peril and his rescue; it was Hamilton who embellished the story of how Bones had given his adopted son his first bath.
"Just dropped him into a tub and stirred him round with a mop."
Soon after this Bones came blithely up from the beach and across the parade-ground, his large pipe in his mouth, his cane awhirl.
Hamilton watched him from the verandah of the Residency, and called over his shoulder to Patricia.
It had been an anxious morning for Bones, [Pg 137]and even Hamilton was compelled to confess to himself that he had felt the strain, though he had not mentioned the fact to his sister.
Outside in the roadstead the intermediate Elder Dempster boat was waiting the return of the doctor. Bones had been to see him off. An important day, indeed, for Henry Hamilton Bones had been vaccinated.
"I think it 'took,'" said Bones gravely, answering the other's question. "I must say Henry behaved like a gentleman."
"What did Fitz say?"
(Fitzgerald, the doctor, had come in accordance with his promise to perform the operation.)
"Fitz?" said Bones, and his voice trembled. "Fitz is a cad!"
Hamilton grinned.
"He said that babies didn't feel pain, and there was Henry howling his young head off. It was horrible!"
Bones wiped his streaming brow with a large and violent bandana, and looked round cautiously.
"Not a word, Ham, to her!" he said, in a loud whisper.
"Sorry!" said Hamilton, picking up his pipe. "Her knows."
"Good gad!" said Bones, in despair, and turned to meet the girl.
"Oh, Bones!" she said reproachfully, "you never told me!"
Bones shrugged his shoulders, opened his mouth, [Pg 138]dropped his pipe, blinked, spread out his hands in deprecation, and picked up his pipe.
From which it may be gathered that he was agitated.
"Dear old Miss Hamilton," he said tremulously, "I should be a horrid bounder if I denied Henry Hamilton Bones—poor little chap. If I never mentioned him, dear old sister, it is because——Ah, well, you will never understand."
He hunched his shoulders dejectedly.
"Don't be an ass, Bones. Why the dickens are you making a mystery of the thing?" asked Hamilton. "I'll certify you're a jolly good father to the brat."
"Not 'brat,' dear old sir," begged Bones. "Henry is a human being with a human heart. That boy"—he wagged his finger solemnly—"knows me the moment I go into the hut. To see him sit up an' say 'Da!' dear old sister Hamilton," he went on incoherently, "to see him open his mouth with a smile, one tooth through, an' one you can feel with your little finger—why, it's—it's wonderful, jolly old Miss Hamilton! Damn it, it's wonderful!"
"Bones!" cried the shocked girl.
"I can't help it, madame," said Bones miserably. "Fitz cut his poor little, fat little arm. Oh, Fitz is a low cad! Cut it, my dear old Patricia, mercilessly—yes, mercilessly, brutally, an' the precious little blighter didn't so much as call for the police. Good gad, it was terrible!"
[Pg 139]His eyes were moist, and he blew his nose with great vigour.
"I'm sure it was awful," she soothed him. "May I come and see him?"
Bones raised a warning hand, and, though the habitat of the wonderful child could not have been less than half a mile away, lowered his voice.
"He's asleep—fitfully, but asleep. I've told them to call me if he has a turn for the worse, an' I'm goin' down with a gramophone after dinner, in case the old fellow wants buckin' up. But now he's asleep, thankin' you for your great kindness an' sympathy, dear old miss, in the moment of singular trial."
He took her hand and shook it heartily, tried to say something, and swallowed hard, then, turning, walked from the verandah in the direction of his hut.
The girl was smiling, but there were tears in her eyes.
"What a boy!" she said, half to herself.
Sanders nodded.
"Bones is very nice," he said, and she looked at him curiously.
"That is almost eloquent," she said quietly.
"I thought it was rather bald," he replied. "You see, few people really understand Bones. I thought, the first time I saw him, that he was a fool. I was wrong. Then I thought he was effeminate. I was wrong again, for he has played [Pg 140]the man whenever he was called upon to do so. Bones is one of those rare creatures—a man with all the moral equipment of a good woman."
Her eyes were fixed on his, and for a moment they held. Then hers dropped quickly, and she flushed ever so slightly.
"I think you have defined the perfect man," she said, turning the leaves of her book.
The next morning she was admitted to an audience with that paragon of paragons, Henry Hamilton Bones.
He lived in the largest of the Houssa huts at the far end of the lines, and had for attendants two native women, for whom Bones had framed the most stringent and regimental of orders.
The girl paused in the porch of the hut to read the typewritten regulations which were fastened by drawing-pins to a green baize board.
They were bi-lingual, being in English and in coast Arabic, in which dialect Bones was something of a master. The girl wondered why they should be in English.
"Absolutely necessary, dear old lady friend," explained Bones firmly. "You've no idea what a lot of anxiety I have had. Your dear old brother—God bless him!—is a topping old sport, but with children you can't be too careful, and Ham is awfully thoughtless. There, I've said it!"
The English part of the regulations was brief, and she read it through.
[Pg 141]
Henry Hamilton Bones (Care of).
1. Visitors are requested to make as little noise as possible. How would you like to be awakened from refreshing sleep! Be unselfish, and put yourself in his place.
2. It is absolutely forbidden to feed the child except with articles a list of which may be obtained on application. Nuts and chocolates are strictly forbidden.
3. The undersigned will not be responsible for articles broken by the child, such as watches. If watches are used to amuse child, they should be held by child's ear, when an interested expression will be observed on child's face. On no account should child be allowed—knowing no better—to bite watch, owing to danger from glass, minute hand, etc.
4. In lifting child, grasp above waist under arms and raise slowly, taking care that head does not fall back. Bring child close to holder's body, passing left arm under child and right arm over. Child should not be encouraged to sit up—though quite able to, being very forward for eight months—owing to strain on back. On no account should child be thrown up in the air and caught.
5. Any further information can be obtained at Hut 7.
(Signed)
Augustus Tibbetts, Lieutenant.
"All based upon my personal observation and [Pg 142]experience," said Bones triumphantly—"not a single tip from anybody."
"I think you are really marvellous, Bones," said the girl, and meant it.
Henry Hamilton Bones sat upright in a wooden cot. A fat-faced atom of brown humanity, bald-headed and big-eyed, he sucked his thumb and stared at the visitor, and from the visitor to Bones.
Bones he regarded with an intelligent interest which dissolved into a fat chuckle of sheer delight.
"Isn't it—isn't it simply extraordinary?" demanded Bones ecstatically. "In all your long an' painful experience, dear old friend an' co-worker, have you ever seen anything like it? When you remember that babies don't open their eyes until three weeks after they're born——"
"Da!" said Henry Hamilton Bones.
"Da yourself, Henry!" squawked his foster-father.
"Do da!" said Henry.
The smile vanished from Bones's face, and he bit his lip thoughtfully.
"Do da!" he repeated. "Let me see, what is 'do da'?"
"Do da!" roared Henry.
"Dear old Miss Hamilton," he said gently, "I don't know whether Henry wants a drink or whether he has a pain in his stomach, but I think that we had better leave him in more experienced hands."
[Pg 143]He nodded fiercely to the native woman nurse and made his exit.
Outside they heard Henry's lusty yell, and Bones put his hand to his ear and listened with a strained expression on his face.
Presently the tension passed.
"It was a drink," said Bones. "Excuse me whilst I make a note." He pulled out his pocket-book and wrote: "'Do da' means 'child wants drink.'"
He walked back to the Residency with her, giving her a remarkable insight into Henry's vocabulary. It appeared that babies have a language of their own, which Bones boasted that he had almost mastered.
She lay awake for a very long time that night, thinking of Bones, his simplicity and his lovableness. She thought, too, of Sanders, grave, aloof, and a little shy, and wondered....
She woke with a start, to hear the voice of Bones outside the window. She felt sure that something had happened to Henry. Then she heard Sanders and her brother speaking, and realized that it was not Henry they were discussing.
She looked at her watch—it was three o'clock.
"I was foolish to trust that fellow," Sanders was saying, "and I know that Bosambo is not to blame, because he has always given a very wide berth to the Kulumbini people, though they live on his border."
[Pg 144]She heard him speak in a strange tongue to some unknown fourth, and guessed that a spy of the Government had come in during the night.
"We'll get away as quickly as we can, Bones," Sanders said. "We can take our chance with the lower river in the dark; it will be daylight before we reach the bad shoals. You need not come, Hamilton."
"Do you think Bones will be able to do all you want?" Hamilton's tone was dubious.
"Pull yourself together, dear old officer," said Bones, raising his voice to an insubordinate pitch.
She heard the men move from the verandah, and fell asleep again, wondering who was the man they spoke of and what mischief he had been brewing.
On a little tributary stream, which is hidden by the island of bats, was the village of Kulumbini. High elephant grass hid the poor huts even from they who navigate a cautious way along the centre of the narrow stream. On the shelving beach one battered old canoe of ironwood, with its sides broken and rusted, the indolence of its proprietor made plain by the badly spliced panels, was all that told the stranger that the habitations of man were nigh.
Kulumbini was a term of reproach along the great river and amongst the people of the Akasava, the Isisi, and the N'gombi, no less than among that most tolerant of tribes the Ochori. They [Pg 145]were savage people, immensely brave, terrible in battle, but more terrible after.
Kulumbini, the village and city of the tribe, was no more than an outlier of a fairly important tribe which occupied forest land stretching back to the Ochori boundary. Their territory knew no frontier save the frontiers of caprice and desire. They had neither nationality nor national ambition, and would sell their spears for a bunch of fish, as the saying goes. Their one consuming passion and one great wish was that they should not be overlooked, and, so long as the tribes respected this eccentricity, the Kulumbini distressed no man.
How this desire for isolation arose, none know. It is certain that once upon a time they possessed a king who so shared their views that he never came amongst them, but lived in a forest place which is called to this day S'furi-S'foosi, "The trees (or glade) of the distant king." They had demurred at Government inspection, and Sanders, coming up the little river on the first of his visits, was greeted by a shower of arrows, and his landing opposed by locked shields.
There are many ways of disposing of opposition, not the least important of which is to be found in two big brass-barrelled guns which have their abiding place at
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