A Frontier Mystery

Not long, however, did he stay there, and on Aïda’s account I was glad to see the last of him. Had I been alone I might have gone after him and asked the meaning of the performance. As it was, she had better forget it. For a time we sat there in the dead silence of the moonlight.

“What does it mean?” she whispered, when we had allowed Ukozi sufficient time to make himself scarce.

“Oh, some Mumbo Jumbo arrangement all his own,” I answered. “Well that certainly is a whacking big python – the very biggest I’ve ever seen. If I had anything in the shape of a gun I’d be inclined to try and sneak the brute wherever he’s lying.”

“Wouldn’t it be in the water then?”

“No. Lying up somewhere under the banks. In hot weather they’re fond of lying in a waterhole, but on a cool night like this – not. I must come and stalk the brute another night though; and yet, do you know, it seems strange, but I don’t like interfering with anything that bears a sort of religious significance to anybody. And the snake does come in that way with Zulus.”

She thought a moment. Then:

“You remember, dear, how I told you that one of the things this man was going to show father was the mystery of the waterhole. Now supposing that horror had suddenly seized him?”

An uncomfortable wave swept through me. The fact is that no white man, however well he is known to natives, ever gets really to the bottom of the darker mysteries of their superstitions, which indeed remain utterly unsuspected in most cases, so well are they concealed. Who could say what might underlie this one! However I answered:

“I don’t think there would have been danger of that sort. Ukozi would have shown him the performance we have witnessed, as something very wonderful. As a matter of fact it isn’t wonderful at all, in that it resolves itself into a mere question of snake charming. Ukozi has half trained this brute by feeding it periodically as we have seen. That’s all. Hallo!”

Well might I feel amazement, but the exclamation had escaped me involuntarily. We had come round the pool now, and here, very near the spot whereon Ukozi had gone through his strange performance – instinctively we had kept a little back from the water – an odour struck upon my nostrils, and it was the same sickly overpowering effluvium that had filled the air when my horse had refused to proceed on that memorable night I had intended to ride back from Kendrew’s.

“What is it?” exclaimed Aïda, with a start.

“Nothing. Nothing at all. I’ve frightened you, and you are a little wound up already by that uncanny performance,” I answered.

“Frightened? No. I don’t believe I could be that when I’m with you. I always feel so safe. Otherwise it would seem strange that this witch doctor whom we have not seen for so long, and in fact whom we thought had left this part of the country, should have been here right in our midst all the time.”

“He may not have been. He may only just have returned,” I said. “Worthies of his profession are inclined to be somewhat sporadic in their movements. Meanwhile if I were you, I wouldn’t say anything about what we’ve just seen until I’ve had time to make a few inquiries.”

She promised, of course, and as we took our way homeward in the splendour of the clear African night we thought no more of the uncanny episode we had just witnessed, except as something out of the common which had lent an element of unexpected excitement to our walk.

Chapter Twenty Six.

Into Empty Air

I had completed my purchase of the farm, and was well satisfied with my bargain. It was a nice place, and the homestead was in good repair and very picturesquely situated, commanding a beautiful view. Aïda would revel in it. The veldt was good, and so were the faculties for stocking water. Game too was plentiful, though the dark bushy kloofs intersecting a high rand on one side of the place gave promise of the more undesirable kind from the stock-raiser’s point of view – such as leopards and wild dogs and baboons. However it would be hard if I couldn’t manage to keep the numbers of these down, and if they took toll of a calf or two now and then, why one could take toll of them in the way of sport – so that the thing was as broad as it was long.

Yes, I was well satisfied, and as I rode homeward I fell castle building. The place would be a Paradise when I should take Aïda there. It was too marvellous. How could such a wealth of happiness come my way? There was no cloud to mar it. Even as the vivid, unbroken blue of the sky overhead so was this marvel of bliss which had come in upon my life. There was no cloud to mar it.

I was not rich but I had enough. I had done myself exceedingly well in the course of my ventures, and was beyond any anxiety or care for the future from a pecuniary point of view. I had always lived simply and had no expensive tastes. Now I was beginning to reap the benefit of that fortunate condition of things. I could afford the luxury of castle building as I cantered along mile after mile in the glorious sunlight.

I had not seen Aïda for three whole days, it was that time since the uncanny episode of the waterhole. Now I was treasuring up the anticipation of our meeting, the light of glad welcome that would come into her eyes, only a few hours hence, for I would call in at my own place to see that things were all right, and get a bit of dinner, and ride on immediately afterwards. So, mile upon mile went by and at last shortly after mid-day I walked my horse up the long acclivity that led to my trading store.

As I gained the latter I descried a horseman approaching from the other direction, and he was riding too – riding as if he didn’t want to use his horse again for at least a week. By Jove! it was Kendrew, I made out as he came nearer, but – what the devil was Kendrew in such a cast-iron, splitting hurry about?

My boy Tom came out as I dismounted. I hardly noticed that he hadn’t got on the usual broad grin of welcome.

“Where is Jan Boom?” I asked.

“He is out after the cattle, Nkose,” answered Tom, rather glumly I thought. But I paid no attention to this, because Tom had taken it into his head to be rather jealous of Jan Boom of late, as a newcomer and an alien who seemed to be rather more in his master’s confidence than he had any right to be – from Tom’s point of view.

“Well, wait a bit,” I said. “Here comes another Nkose, Nyamaki’s nephew. You can take his horse at the same time.”

Kendrew came racing up as if he were riding for his life.

“You back, Glanton?” he cried, as he flung himself off his panting, dripping steed. “Well, that’s a devilish good job. I say. What does this mean?”

“What does what mean?”

“Man! Haven’t you heard? They sent for me post-haste this morning. Knew you were away.”

“Quit jaw, Kendrew, and tell me what the devil’s the row,” I said roughly, for some horrible fear had suddenly beset me.

“Miss Sewin. She’s disappeared,” he jerked forth.

“What?”

I have an idea that I articulated the word, though speech stuck in my throat I felt myself go white and cold, and strong healthy man that I was, the surroundings danced before my eyes as though I were about to swoon. I remember too, that Kendrew ground his teeth with pain under the grip that I had fastened upon his shoulder.

“What do you say? Disappeared?” I gasped forth again. “How? When?”

I heard him as through a mist as he told me how the afternoon before she had gone for a walk alone with her dog. It was towards sundown. She had not returned, and a search had been instituted, with the result that her dog had been found dead not very far from the waterhole, but of her no trace remained. “My God, Glanton,” he ended up. “Buck up, man. Pull yourself together or you’ll go clean off your chump. Buck up, d’you hear!”

I daresay I had a look that way, for I noticed Tom staring at me as if he contemplated taking to his heels.

“I’m on my way down there now,” said Kendrew.

I nodded. I couldn’t speak just then somehow. I went into the house, slung on a heavy revolver, and crammed a handful of cartridges into my pocket. Then I remounted, Kendrew doing likewise, and so we took our way down that rocky bush path at a pace that was neither wise nor safe.

“Is that all they have to go upon?” I said presently, as soon as I had recovered my voice.

“That’s all – I gather from the old man’s note. I say, Glanton, what can be behind it all? It seems on all fours with my old uncle taking himself off. I’m beginning to think now there’s some infernal foul play going on among the niggers round us.”

I was thinking the same. At first a thought of Dolf Norbury had crossed my mind, but I dismissed it. Ukozi was behind this, somewhere. The proximity to the waterhole associated him in my mind with the outrage. His beastly performance with the snake! – was he training it to seize human beings, in the furtherance of some devilish form of native superstition? Oh, good Heavens no! That wouldn’t bear thinking about. But Aïda – my love – had disappeared – had disappeared even as Hensley had. He had never been found; the mystery of his disappearance had never been solved. And she! Had she been hideously and secretly done to death? Oh God! I shall go mad!

When we arrived, the Major and Falkner had just returned, and their horses were simply reeking. They had scoured the whole farm, but utterly without result. As for Mrs Sewin and Edith their grief was pitiable – would have been only it was nothing by the side of mine.

“How was the dog killed?” was my first question, ignoring all greeting. I had resolved to waste no time in grief. I had now pulled myself together, and was going to do all that man was capable of to find my loved one again.

“That’s the strange part of it,” said Falkner gruffly. “There’s no wound of any kind about the beast, and he hasn’t even been hit on the head, for his skull is quite smooth and unbroken. But, there he is – as dead as the traditional herring.”

“You didn’t move him, did you?”

“No. He’s there still.”

“Well let’s go there. I may light on a clue.”

“You’d better not come, uncle,” said Falkner. “You’re played out, for one thing, and there ought to be one man on the place with all this devilish mystery going about.”

“Played out be damned, sir,” retorted the Major fiercely. “I’d tire you any day. I’m going.”

The dead dog was lying right in the path, just beyond where we had found the lost coin on that memorable day. The first thing I looked for were traces of a struggle, but if there had been any they were now completely obliterated by hoof marks and footmarks made by Falkner and the Major when they first made the discovery.

“The dog died before sundown,” I said, after a momentary examination.

“How do you know that?” asked Falkner.

“Because the ground underneath him is perfectly dry. If he had been killed or died later it wouldn’t have been. It would have been damp with dew. Look – Ah!”

The last exclamation was evoked by a curious circumstance as I moved the body of the dead animal. A strange odour greeted my nostrils. It was as the odour of death, and yet not altogether, and – it was the same that poisoned the air on the occasion of my horse refusing to go forward on that night at Kendrew’s, and again here, almost on this very spot three nights ago when we had come away from witnessing Ukozi’s uncanny performance at the pool. Some dark villainy underlay this, and that the witch doctor was connected with it was borne in upon my mind without a doubt.

I examined the dead dog long and carefully, but could read no clue as to the manner of his death, unless he had been poisoned, but this I thought unlikely. One thing was certain. Never in life would he have allowed harm or violence to reach his mistress. Poor Arlo! At any other time I should have been moved to genuine grief for his loss; now that loss was not even felt.

Quickly, eagerly, I cast around for spoor, beyond the radius of the disturbed part of the ground. All in vain. No trace. No trampled grass or broken twig, or displaced leaf, absolutely nothing to afford a clue. The thing was incomprehensible. It was as if she had been caught up bodily into the air.

The ground here was a gentle declivity, moderately studded with bush. It was not rocky nor rugged, and was entirely devoid of holes or caves into which anyone might fall.

Suddenly every drop of blood within me was set tingling. I had found a trace. Where the ground was stony, just above the path I discovered an abrasion, as though a boot, with nail heads in the soles, had scraped it.

It was very faint, but still – there was no mistaking it. It was a genuine spoor. And it led on and on, utterly undiscernible to the Major or Falkner, hardly visible to Kendrew at times, but plain enough to me. And now hope beat high. We would find her. We had only to follow on this spoor which we had struck, and we would find her. Heaven knew how, but still! we would find her. She might have met with an accident and be sorely in need of help, but – still we would find her, and this – even this – after the blank, awful realisation of her loss, akin, as it was, to the disappearance of Hensley – contained relative comfort.

The others were watching me with mingled anxiety and curiosity as, bent low over the ground, I followed these faint indications. The latter were tolerably perceptible now to a practised eye, though to no other, and I kept upon them steadily. Then a ghastly fear smote me again upon the heart. The spoor was leading straight for the waterhole.

What did it mean? She would not have gone there – voluntarily. After the spectacle we had witnessed that night nothing on earth would have induced her to revisit the uncanny place alone, even by daylight. Yet the dreadful thought had already forced itself upon my mind, that there, if anywhere, would the mystery be solved.

In silence, eager, intensified, we pursued our way; for the others would not speak lest they should distract my mind from its concentration. Thus we came out upon the waterhole.

The spoor had led us straight to the high brow of cliff overhanging the pool – the spot upon which we had all stood that afternoon when we had first seen the mysterious monster which had disturbed the water. And – what was this?

All the soil here, where it was not solid rock, had been swept with branches. There was the pattern in the dust, even if stray leaves and twigs scattered about had not gone towards showing that, beyond a doubt. The object was manifest – to efface all traces of a struggle.

Heavens! my brain seemed to be turning to mud with the drear despair of each fresh discovery. The witch doctor’s promise to show the old man the mystery of the waterhole came back to my mind. I put together the words of sibongo to the snake I had heard him chanting. Ukozi had been preparing a way towards a sacrifice to his demon. He had accustomed the great python to seizing its victim as he brought it – and he had always brought it, so small, so insufficient, in the shape of the kid we had seen him give it, as to excite the appetite of the monster rather than to gratify it. He had been practising on Major Sewin’s curiosity, so that when the time should be ripe he would bring him to the edge of the pool, where all unsuspecting he would be seized by the monster and never be seen or heard of again. And now, and now – this unspeakably horrible and revolting fate, instead of overtaking the old man, had overtaken Aïda, my love, the sun and Paradise of my life, instead. She had been substituted for him, as the easier, possibly the more acceptable victim.

But, Ukozi! Whatever might happen to me I would capture and revenge myself upon him in a manner which should out-do the vengeance of the most vindictive and cruel of his own countrymen. I would spend days and nights gloating over his agony, and afterwards it should be talked about with fear and shuddering among the whole population of the border – ay, and beyond it I would do it; how I knew not, but, I would do it. All hell was seething in my brain just then – all hell, as I thought of my love, in her daintiness and grace; the very embodiment of a refinement and an elevating influence that was almost – no, entirely – divine, sacrificed horribly to the revolting superstitions of these savages, whom I had hitherto regarded as equalling in manly virtues those who could boast of centuries of so-called civilisation at their backs. And yet – revenge – could it bring back to me my love – my sweet lost love?

Chapter Twenty Seven.

The Dive of the Water Rat

We stood there – we four – gazing into each other’s livid faces. Then the Major broke down. Sinking to the ground he covered his face with his hands and sobbed. I broke fiercely away. I could not stand for a moment doing nothing, so I set to work to go right round the pool and see if I could find any further trace. But the search was a vain one.

“The next thing is, what are we going to do?” said Falkner when we had rejoined them. “We don’t propose to spend the rest of the day staring at each other like stuck pigs, I take it?”

“We ought to drag the hole,” I said, “but we haven’t got the necessary appliances, nor even a draw net. Can any of you think of some expedient?”

“We might get a long pole, and splice a couple of meat-hooks to the end somehow,” said Falkner, “and probe about with that. Only, the cursed hole is about a mile too deep for the longest pole to get anywhere near the bottom in the middle.”

“Amakosi!”

We started at the interruption. So intent had we been that not one of us had been aware of the approach of a fifth – and he a native.

“Ha, Ivondwe!” I cried, recognising him. “What knowest thou of this, for I think thou couldst not have been far from this place at sundown yesterday?”

He answered in English.

“Do the Amakosi think the young missis has got into the water?”

“They do,” I said, still keeping to the vernacular. “Now, Water Rat, prove worthy of thy name. Dive down, explore yon water to its furthest depths for her we seek. Then shall thy reward be great.”

“That will I do, Iqalaqala,” he answered – greatly to my surprise I own, for I had been mocking him by reason of his name.

“And the snake?” I said. “The snake that dwells in the pool. Dost thou not fear it?”

I had been keenly watching his face, and the wonder that came into it looked genuine.

“Why as to that,” he answered, “and if there be a snake yet I fear it not. I will go.”

He stood looking down upon the water for a moment; he needed to lose no time in undressing, for save for his mútya he was unclad. Now he picked up two large stones and holding one in each hand, he poised himself at a point about ten feet above the surface. Then he dived.

Down he went – straight down – and the water closed over him. We stood staring at the widening circles, but could see nothing beneath the surface. Then it suddenly dawned upon us that he had been under water an abnormally long time.

“He’ll never come up again now,” declared Falkner. “No man living could stick under water all that time,” he went on after a wait that seemed like an hour to us. “The beast has either got hold of him, or he’s got stuck somehow and drowned. Oh good Lord!”

For a black head shot up on the further side of the hole, and a couple of strokes bringing it and its owner to the brink, he proceeded calmly to climb out, showing no sign of any undue strain upon his powers of endurance.

“Thou art indeed well named, Ivondwe,” I said. “We thought the snake had got thee.”

“Snake? I saw no snake,” he answered. “But I will go down again. There is still one part which I left unsearched.”

He sat for a moment, then picked up two stones as before. He walked round to an even higher point above the water, and this time dived obliquely.

“By Jove, he must have come to grief now,” said Falkner. “Why he’s been a much longer time down.”

As we waited and still Ivondwe did not reappear, the rest of us began to think that Falkner was right. It seemed incredible that any man could remain under so long unless artificially supplied with air. Then just as we had given him up Ivondwe rose to the surface as before.

This time he was panting somewhat, as well he might. “There is no one down there,” he began, as soon as he had recovered breath.

“No one?”

“No one. All round the bottom did I go – and there was no one. Au! it is fearsome down there in the gloom and the silence, and the great eels gliding about like snakes. But she whom you seek must be found elsewhere. Not under that water is she.”

Was he going on the native principle of telling you what you would most like to know? I wondered. Then Falkner began kicking off his boots.

“Here goes for a search on my own account,” he said. “Coming, Glanton? If there’s nothing to hurt him, there’s nothing to hurt us. We’ll try his dodge of holding a couple of stones. We’ll get down further that way.”

Ivondwe shook his head.

“You will not get down at all,” he said, in English.

“I’ll have a try at any rate. Come along, Glanton.”

I am at home in the water but not for any time under it. Half the time spent by Ivondwe down there would have been enough to drown me several times over. However I would make the attempt.

The result was even as I expected. With all the will in the world I had not the power, and so far from getting to the bottom, I was forced to return to the surface almost immediately. Falkner fared not much better.

“It must be an awful depth,” he said. “I couldn’t even touch bottom, and I’m no slouch in the diving line.”

“Where ought we to search, Ivondwe?” I said in the vernacular, “for so far there is no more trace than that left by a bird in the air? It will mean large reward to any who should help to find her – yes, many cattle.”

“Would that I might win such,” he answered. Then pointing with his stick, “Lo, the Amapolise.”

Our horses began to snort and neigh, as the police patrol rode up. I recognised my former acquaintance, Sergeant Simcox, but the inspector in command of the troop was along.

“I’ve just come from your house, Major Sewin,” he said after a few words of sympathy, “and I left a couple of men there, so you need be under no apprehension by reason of your ladies being alone. Now have you lighted upon any fresh clue?”

“Eh? What? Clue?” echoed the old man dazedly. “No.”

So I took up the parable, telling how I had found spoor leading to the waterhole and that here it had stopped. I pointed out where the ground had been smoothed over as though to erase the traces of a struggle.

“Now,” I concluded, “if you will come a little apart with me, I’ll tell you something that seems to bolster up my theory with a vengeance.”

He looked at me somewhat strangely, I thought. But he agreed, and I put him in possession of the facts about Ukozi in his relations with Major Sewin, and how Aïda had consulted me about them during my absence in Zululand, bringing the story down to that last startling scene here on this very spot three nights ago.

“Well you ought to know something about native superstitions, Mr Glanton,” he said. “Yet this seems a strange one, and utterly without motive to boot.”

“I know enough about native superstitions to know that I know nothing,” I answered. “I know this, that those exist which are not so much as suspected by white men, and produce actions which, as you say, seem utterly without motive.”

“If we could only lay claw on this witch doctor,” he said, thoughtfully.

“Yes indeed. But he’ll take uncommonly good care that we can’t.”

“Meanwhile I propose to arrest this boy on suspicion, for I find that he couldn’t have been very far from where Miss Sewin was last seen, at the time.”

“Ivondwe?”

“That’s his name. It may only be a coincidence mind – but you remember old Hensley’s disappearance?”

“Rather.”

“Well this Ivondwe was temporarily doing some cattle herding for Hensley at the time, filling another man’s place. It certainly is a coincidence that another mysterious disappearance should take place, and he right at hand again.”

“It certainly is,” I agreed. “But Ivondwe has been here for months, and I’ve known him for years. There isn’t a native I’ve a higher opinion of.”

“For all that I’m going to arrest him. It can do no harm and may do a great deal of good. But first I’ll ask him a few questions.”