The Great Impersonation by E. Phillips Oppenheim (books to read now txt) 📕

he will join our evening meal. I present my excuses. I have a despatch to write.”

The man on the couch turned his head and watched the departing figure with a shade of envy in his eyes.

“What is my preserver’s name?” he asked the doctor.

The latter looked as though the questions were irreverent.

“It is His Excellency the Major-General Baron Leopold Von Ragastein.”

“All that!” Dominey muttered. “Is he the Governor, or something of that sort?”

“He is Military Commandant of the Colony,” the doctor replied. “He has also a special mission here.”

“Damned fine-looking fellow for a German,” Dominey remarked, with unthinking insolence.

The doctor was unmoved. He was feeling his patient’s pulse. He concluded his examination a few minutes later.

“You have drunk much whisky lately, so?” he asked.

“I don’t know what the devil it’s got to do with you,” was the curt reply, “but I drink whisky whenever I can get it. Who wouldn’t in this pestilential climate!”

The doctor shook his head.

“The climate is good as he is treated,” he declared. “His Excellency drinks nothing but light wine and seltzer water. He has been here for five years, not only here but in the swamps, and he has not been ill one day.”

“Well, I have been at death’s door a dozen times,” the Englishman rejoined a little recklessly, “and I don’t much mind when I hand in my checks, but until that time comes I shall drink whisky whenever I can get it.”

“The cook is preparing you some luncheon,” the doctor announced, “and it will do you good to eat. I cannot give you whisky at this moment, but you can have some hock and seltzer with bay leaves.”

“Send it along,” was the enthusiastic reply. “What a constitution I must have, doctor! The smell of that cooking outside is making me ravenous.”

“Your constitution is still sound if you would only respect it,” was the comforting assurance.

“Anything been heard of the rest of my party?” Dominey enquired.

“Some bodies of Askaris have been washed up from the river,” the doctor informed him, “and two of your ponies have been eaten by lions. You will excuse. I have the wounds of a native to dress, who was bitten last night by a jaguar.”

The traveller, left alone, lay still in the hut, and his thoughts wandered backwards. He looked out over the bare, scrubby stretch of land which had been cleared for this encampment to the mass of bush and flowering shrubs beyond, mysterious and impenetrable save for that rough elephant track along which he had travelled; to the broad-bosomed river, blue as the sky above, and to the mountains fading into mist beyond. The face of his host had carried him back into the past. Puzzled reminiscence tugged at the strings of memory. It came to him later on at dinner time, when they three, the Commandant, the doctor and himself, sat at a little table arranged just outside the hut, that they might catch the faint breeze from the mountains, herald of the swift-falling darkness. Native servants beat the air around them with bamboo fans to keep off the insects, and the air was faint almost to noxiousness with the perfume of some sickly, exotic shrub.

“Why, you’re Devinter!” he exclaimed suddenly⁠—“Sigismund Devinter! You were at Eton with me⁠—Horrock’s House⁠—semifinal in the racquets.”

“And Magdalen afterwards, number five in the boat.”

“And why the devil did the doctor here tell me that your name was Von Ragastein?”

“Because it happens to be the truth,” was the somewhat measured reply. “Devinter is my family name, and the one by which I was known when in England. When I succeeded to the barony and estates at my uncle’s death, however, I was compelled to also take the title.”

“Well, it’s a small world!” Dominey exclaimed. “What brought you out here really⁠—lions or elephants?”

“Neither.”

“You mean to say that you’ve taken up this sort of political business just for its own sake, not for sport?”

“Entirely so. I do not use a sporting rifle once a month, except for necessity. I came to Africa for different reasons.”

Dominey drank deep of his hock and seltzer and leaned back, watching the fireflies rise above the tall-bladed grass, above the stumpy clumps of shrub, and hang like miniature stars in the clear, violet air.

“What a world!” he soliloquised. “Siggy Devinter, Baron Von Ragastein, out here, slaving for God knows what, drilling niggers to fight God knows whom, a political machine, I suppose, future Governor-General of German Africa, eh? You were always proud of your country, Devinter.”

“My country is a country to be proud of,” was the solemn reply.

“Well, you’re in earnest, anyhow,” Dominey continued, “in earnest about something. And I⁠—well, it’s finished with me. It would have been finished last night if I hadn’t seen the smoke from your fires, and I don’t much care⁠—that’s the trouble. I go blundering on. I suppose the end will come somehow, sometime⁠—Can I have some rum or whisky, Devinter⁠—I mean Von Ragastein⁠—Your Excellency⁠—or whatever I ought to say? You see those wreaths of mist down by the river? They’ll mean malaria for me unless I have spirits.”

“I have something better than either,” Von Ragastein replied. “You shall give me your opinion of this.”

The orderly who stood behind his master’s chair, received a whispered order, disappeared into the commissariat hut and came back presently with a bottle at the sight of which the Englishman gasped.

“Napoleon!” he exclaimed.

“Just a few bottles I had sent to me,” his host explained. “I am delighted to offer it to someone who will appreciate it.”

“By Jove, there’s no mistake about that!” Dominey declared, rolling it around in his glass. “What a world! I hadn’t eaten for thirty hours when I rolled up here last night, and drunk nothing but filthy water for days. Tonight, fricassee of chicken, white bread, cabinet hock and Napoleon brandy. And tomorrow again⁠—well, who knows? When do you move on, Von Ragastein?”

“Not for several days.”

“What the mischief do you find to do so far from headquarters, if you don’t shoot lions or elephants?” his