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ANGEL, ESQUIRE, has a little office at Scotland Yard, which is partly fitted as a laboratory and partly as a tiny museum; here he keeps strange drugs and, in glass-stoppered vessels, curious withered-looking plants with uncanny properties. There is a faint spicy odour everlastingly present in Angel's office, which is something between the fragrance of freshly cut cedar wood and cloves.

When the King of Kantee came to England on his ceremonial visit he was lionized by London society, and being a man of some European education, speaking English with a peculiar intonation, he became remarkably popular. The popularity of King O'fwa had the natural result of making him rather insufferable. One day the officials at the Colonial Office, showing him the sights of London, brought him to Scotland Yard, and in due course he swaggered into the Colonial Department and favoured Angel with a patronizing nod.

"Ah, varry nace," said the King amiably.

"King," said Angel, speaking the peculiar drawl of the Kantee people, "there is that here which is not so pleasant."

The native's insolent eyes met Angel's, and he dropped them before the calm gaze of the white man.

"Shall I show you," said Angel, still speaking in the vernacular, "something that the Kings of the Kantee people see but seldom?"

He stretched out his hand and reached down a bottle; he carefully removed the stopper and drew forth a tiny pencil of cotton-wool, which he as carefully unrolled. Inside was what looked like a dried twig, and the King smiled contemptuously.

"Is it magic?" he asked, and held out his hand.

The dry twig lay on the King's palm, and he smiled again.

"This is wood—a twig," he said. Then he sprang back with a scream, his eyes wide with terror, and the little twig fluttered to the ground. Angel picked it up tenderly and wrapped it about with cotton-wool, the King all the while, with his back against the wall, shaking in abject fear.

"Is it good magic?" asked Angel carelessly; and the King's voice was hoarse when he answered:

"It is good—master!"

Later came a fussy official, sorely puzzled and inclined to be querulous.

"Look here!" he said—he was a Permanent Under-Secretary —"Mr.—er—Angel: about this nonsensical thing you showed his Majesty—we are inclined to think that you overstepped the mark, sir—overstepped the mark." He was a little pompous and a little ruffled, and wholly disagreeable.

Angel inclined his head respectfully, but said nothing.

"Mr. Secretary begs one to say," said the official impressively, "that it is against all our conception of the—er—system for a great department like Scotland Yard, or—er—for any of its officers, however important or unimportant they may be, to practise—er—trickery and chicanery of the kind you introduced to his Majesty, and—er—in fact, we think it extremely reprehensible, sir!" And he looked his disapproval.

"Mr. Masser," said Angel quietly, "you and I do not view 'his Majesty' with a common eye. The last time I met the King he was dining off a relative who had displeased him; the last time I addressed the King was through the twisty rifling of a point three-naught-three. The little twig I showed him was a gentle reminder of an obligation."

The official was still more puzzled.

"One of these fine days," Angel went on calmly, "there will come a man to the King carrying such a stick as I showed. It may be Meta, the Congo man, or it may be Abiboo, the Kano man, or it may be the boy, Jack Fish, from the Monrovian coast; but, whosoever it is, you may be sure that when they meet the King will surely die."

How Angel, Esquire, came to know of the blood brotherhood that was sworn on the Oil River in '84 I do not pretend to know, nor do I know how he came to possess the fetish-stick—which answered the purpose of the broken sixpence so dear to the lads and lassies of civilization who plight their troth. But the circumstances of the passing of the King of the Kantees is well known, and forms the subject of Blue Book (Africa—Kantee Protectorate) 7432-07. They found the King's body in the royal hut one morning; the knife was an N'Gombi knife, and the rope about his neck was Kano made, but the method of the killing was distinctly Monrovian, so the chances are that all three survivors of the blood-pact of '84 took part in the assassination.

The part the fetish-stick played in the fortunes of at least three unimaginative City men is now well known; they were three stout, comfortable underwriters, as far removed from mysticism as is Clapham Common from Bassam.

They do not come into this story. The outward and visible sign of their connection with the blind witch-doctor is the service of plate that adorns Angel's sideboard, but there were days when the man of Basaka held their suburban fortunes in the hollow of his hand.

In response to communications from Sir Peter Saintsbury, Angel travelled to Liverpool to see the millionaire controller of the Lagos Coastwise Line.

There is no need to describe Sir Peter. The story of his meteoric career is common property. A short, swarthy man with closely-cropped grey hair and black, piercing eyes, the years he lived on the Coast have tinted his face a dusky brown. There are people less charitable who ascribe another cause for his copper-coloured skin, people who point to his thick lips and the curious bluish tint of his fingernails.

Sir Peter plunged straight into the matter in hand.

"I have sent for you, Mr. Angel, because my board has decided that there is some other influence at work beside that which may be vaguely termed 'bad luck'."

Angel duly noticed the thickness of the voice, and went over to the side of the uncharitable.

"You are referring to the wreck of the Kinsassa?" said Angel.

"Yes; and the Noki and the Bolobo," said the great ship owner impatiently; "three ships in one year, three new ships, captained by some of my best men, and every one of them gone ashore in exactly the same spot."

The detective nodded gravely.

"The last was under the command of Ryatt, the most competent skipper in the mercantile marine—a young man who knows his business from A to Z. It was he who discovered the shoal passage into Sierra Leone that cuts off fifty miles of sea travel on the homeward voyage."

"The weather?" asked Angel.

"Here's the log," said Sir Peter. He took from a table a discoloured volume, and opened it. "Here you are: 'nine-fifteen —course W. by W.N.W.—sea smooth—wind light S.W.—no Fog'."

"Was that the correct course?" asked Angel.

"Yes. I have compared all logs and questioned the commodore, and, of course, the Board of Trade has verified it."

"And she went ashore at nine-thirty?"

"Yes; and, apparently, if you will look at the log again, there was no sign of the shore."

"H'm." said the detective. "You couldn't very easily miss it—high, upstanding cliffs and mountains, so far as I remember. Who was at the wheel?"

"A reliable quartermaster; the chief officer was on the bridge, and the captain himself was in his cabin, which is practically on the bridge. He had left word to be called at eleven o'clock, at which hour he intended changing the course a point or so west."

"And then?" questioned Angel.

"And then," said Sir Peter, with a despairing gesture, "before anybody seemed to realize the fact, the ship was close inshore—from what the chief officer said the mountains appeared as if by magic from the sea. The officer rang the engines astern, and put the helm over hard to port, but before the 'way' could get off the steamer, she was piled up. The captain was on the bridge in an instant and stopped the engines—in fact, put them ahead again, for he was afraid of backing off into deep water and foundering."

"And she is a total wreck?" queried Angel.

"Absolutely; hard and fast on the teeth of a bad reef, with a hole in her you could drive a coach through." The ship owner walked to his desk and took from one of the drawers an oblong box.

"This is the peculiar feature of all the wrecks," he said with a frown, and opened the box. What he took from it were three little crosses made of untrimmed wood and lashed across in their shapes by native grass string.

Angel's eyes lit as he saw them, and he stretched out his hand eagerly to take them.

"Whew!" he whistled, and handled them gingerly.

"On every wreck," said Sir Peter impressively, "we found one of these things roughly nailed to the foredeck."

Angel's face was grave as he carried the little emblem to the window; then:

"You had better let me investigate this matter on the spot," he said. "When does the next Coast boat leave Liverpool?"

"One left yesterday," said the ship owner; "another leaves in a fortnight."

"That will be too late," said the detective decisively. "I can get a Union-Castle boat to Teneriffe, and pick up your ship there; to make sure, cable your people to hold the boat for my arrival."

He stopped at the door.

"You know the Coast?" he asked.

The great ship owner frowned.

"Yes," he said slowly; "as a young man I lived on the Coast—I was not always a wealthy man."

Angel nodded.

"Have you offended any of these people in any way?"

Sir Peter shrugged his shoulders.

"There in no need to bring me personally into the matter," he said gruffly.

"I see," said Angel, Esquire.

A fortnight later he landed at Sierra Leone and transhipped to a coasting vessel en route for Bassam.