Читать книгу Tom Willoughby's Scouts - George Herbert Ely - Страница 5

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During the next two or three days Tom went about the plantation, watching the negroes at their work of picking and pulping the fruit. Reinecke left him in perfect freedom to go where he pleased, and see anything and everything. The natives worked industriously: there was no lack of talk and laughter among them, no indication of discontent or ill-treatment. Tom's misgiving was dissipated; he concluded that the overseers' whips were wands of office rather than instruments of correction. The negroes gazed at him with a certain curiosity and interest. Some smiled, in unconscious response to the charm of his expression, of which he was equally unconscious. One of them, he noticed, a lad apparently about seventeen, looked at him with a peculiar intentness. Once, when, in lighting his pipe, he dropped his box of matches, the young negro sprang forward, picked it up, and handed it to him with a sort of proud pleasure that so trifling a service hardly accounted for.

"Thanks," said Tom, and the lad's face beamed as, admonished by a severe look from the overseer with whom Tom had been talking, he went back to the bush which he had left.

"I hope you will pardon my leaving you so much to yourself," said Reinecke one day. "There is little to be learnt at this season, except what you can see with your own eyes. In seedtime, if you still favour me with your company, I shall have more opportunities of giving you definite instruction. And now what do you say to a little relaxation? Shall we go shooting to-morrow?"

"I shall be delighted."

"Very well. I will give orders that Mirambo and another man shall accompany us to-morrow. We shall find wild geese and snipe at the stream a few miles south; possibly a hippo, if, like most youngsters, you've a fancy for big game."

When they started next morning, Tom looked at the German's gunbearer with a good deal more attention than he had shown previously. It was strange that this humble negro had once been a chief. Mirambo was a well-built man past middle life, quick in his movements, and with large eyes of piercing brilliance. With him was a youth whom even a white man, not easily able to distinguish one negro from another, could hardly fail to recognise as his son. Reinecke gave them their instructions in their own tongue, and with a bullying manner that Tom secretly resented. They received them silently, with an utter lack of expression, displaying none of the interest or alacrity which an English gamekeeper would have shown in similar circumstances.

The party of four set off, the negroes leading. Their destination was one of the rare streams that traverse this part of the Plateau, and make their way in devious course and with many cascades to the great lake below. The morning was still young. By starting early, Reinecke had explained, they would make as large a bag as the men could carry before the midday heat became oppressive, and after a brief rest could stroll leisurely back to a late lunch. Tom reflected that this attitude evinced no great enthusiasm for sport, and concluded that Reinecke was really rather a good fellow in taking so much trouble for the sake of a guest.

It was not until they were well in the forest that Mirambo showed any animation. The instincts of the old hunter awoke. His keen eyes moved restlessly, alert to mark the spoor of beasts in the woods and on the open park-like spaces dotted with acacias, euphorbias, and the wild thick bushes known as scrub. At one spot he became excited, pointing to fresh marks in the soft soil.

"The tracks of a wart-hog," Reinecke explained. "The beast evidently went to his hole not long ago."

"I've never seen one," said Tom. "Couldn't we track him and have a shot?"

"We couldn't carry him home. We're out for birds. Still, I daresay the niggers could dispose of him. You can try your hand if you like."

To Tom's surprise, the negroes, instead of following the tracks in the direction in which the animal had apparently gone, went in the opposite direction.

"They're going away from him," he said.

"No, no," said Reinecke with a smile. "Speak low--or better not at all: he's close at hand."

He halted, bidding Tom stand by with his rifle ready cocked. The two negroes stole forward, and within about fifty yards posted themselves one on each side of a hole in the ground. Then together they began to stamp heavily with their feet, uttering no sound, and keeping their eyes fixed on the hole. Wondering at this strange performance, Tom looked inquiringly at Reinecke, who shook his head and signed to him to be on the alert. Presently there appeared in the hole the ugly tusked snout of a wart-hog. He grunted with annoyance at his slumbers having been disturbed by a shower of falling earth, heaved his ungainly body out, and began to trot away on his short legs directly across the white man's line of fire.

"Now!" murmured Reinecke. "Behind the ear."

Tom shouldered his rifle, took careful aim, and fired. But whether owing to excitement, or to the fact that the animal, through his protective colouring, was almost indistinguishable from the background of brownish bush, his shot missed the vital spot and inflicted only a gash in the shoulder. The infuriated animal wheeled round and charged across the open space. But he had covered only a few yards when a well-planted shot from Reinecke's rifle stretched him on the ground.

TOM TOOK CAREFUL AIM AND FIRED.

"Don't take it to heart," said the German, noticing Tom's crestfallen expression. "Everyone misses his first shot at a wart-hog. I remember a famous sportsman once having to dodge round a tree for a quarter of an hour to escape the tusks of a beast he had only wounded. Better luck next time."

"But why didn't he charge the negroes? He passed within a few inches of them."

"They stood a little way back from the hole, you noticed; and besides, the beast is very short-sighted. You were surprised that all the tracks apparently lead away from the hole instead of towards it. That's not cunning, as it was in the case of that cattle-stealer, wasn't it? in classical story who pulled oxen into a cave by the tails. It's sheer necessity. That hole was once the dwelling of an ant-bear; the wart-hog had appropriated it. But his head and shoulders are so much bigger than the rest of him that he has to go in tail first."

The negroes had rushed to the animal as soon as it fell, lifted the head slightly, and tied it to one of the hind legs with thongs of creeper. Then Mirambo tore a strip from his white loincloth and attached it to the wart-hog's horns.

"That's to scare vultures away until our return," said Reinecke. "In the rainy season myriads of flies would be at the carcase already, but in this dry weather it will probably not suffer much before the niggers get back to cut it up. Hyenas and other scavengers don't prowl till night. Now let us get on."

The negroes, whose pleasure is always rather in the quarry than in the chase, were delighted at having secured, without trouble to themselves, a quantity of fresh pork to carry home, and went on with alacrity to the stream a few miles away. Here, in the course of a couple of hours, the two white men had shot as many geese, quail, and guinea-fowl as the negroes could conveniently carry slung about their bodies, with the prospect of the addition of a good many pounds of hog's flesh later. Tom was disappointed of his half-cherished hope of bagging a hippo; but his morning's sport had been sufficiently exciting to form an interesting part of his next budget of news for his brother.

A negro carried the mail to Bismarckburg once a week, and Tom had already dispatched his first letter, giving a description of the plantation and a running account of his experiences so far. He had confined himself to statements of fact, saying nothing about the problems he found himself faced with--the character of Reinecke and the conditions of the negro labour. Until he should have arrived at definite conclusions on these matters he felt that it would be unwise to trouble his brother with them.

In his second letter he related further sporting expeditions, in some of which he had been accompanied by Reinecke, in others only by Mirambo and other natives. He had shot several hartebeeste and waterbuck, which Mirambo was accustomed to skin and cut up on the spot. On these occasions Tom was tempted sometimes to question the negro directly about the conditions of his employment; but he was held back by a sense of loyalty to Reinecke. Pending further light on the man himself, he would rely solely on his own observations.

It was at the end of the third week of his stay that the first really disquieting incident occurred. Reinecke had gone to Bismarckburg, and Tom, having time on his hands, had made up his mind to write a long letter home. Going to the desk to get some paper, he discovered that the drawer in which he had usually found it was empty, and he tried the drawer below. This, however, would not open fully: it stuck half way. He put his hand in, thinking that something had probably become wedged between the upper part of the drawer and the one above. It was as he had supposed. By pushing in the drawer a little, he was able to work out the obstruction, which turned out to be a paper, half folded and much creased. On the portion that was not folded down he saw a series of figures like the numbers on the vouchers which were kept on a file.

"An old voucher," he thought; and unfolded it to see if it were worth keeping. To his surprise it was dated Nov. 17, 1913, and evidently belonged to the series which he had examined in connection with the accounts of the past year. But that series had corresponded exactly with the entries in the stock book--or had he made a mistake? To reassure himself he got out the file, turned to the vouchers for November, and once more compared them with the book. There was no discrepancy. The book showed that on Nov. 17, 1913, a consignment of 1000 kilos was shipped on board the Hedwig von Wissmann, and there was a voucher corresponding. The voucher he had just found was for a consignment of 1000 kilos.

This was odd. The numbers on the two vouchers were consecutive: clearly they did not refer to the same consignment. Yet there was only one entry of that date in the book. If one had been a duplicate or a carbon copy of the other, the matter would have been easily explicable; but both were originals, and written in the same clerkly hand.

Troubled, for it was impossible to crush down a suspicion, Tom put the voucher into his pocket, and went out into the plantation.

"I'll write to Bob to-morrow," he said to himself. At the back of his mind there was the feeling that he might have more to say than he had expected.

Reinecke was in good spirits when he returned about sunset.

"I've just made an excellent contract with a dealer representing a new house," he said. "He'll take all next season's crop, at a good price. I hoped your visit would bring us good luck, and this is the best."

"Capital news," said Tom. The German's manner was so frank and cordial that he was almost ashamed of his suspicion. "By the way, I found this to-day: it was stuck between two drawers. Is it any good?"

He handed Reinecke the voucher, folded. The German opened it, and said instantly, with a smile--

"At last! I wondered what had become of it. It is a voucher I lost, and I got the shipping clerk to give me another. You found that on the file all right?"

"Yes."

"You don't know how I worried about that lost voucher. And you found it wedged between the drawers? Extraordinary way things have of disappearing! Well, we don't want it now. But I'm glad you found it."

He tore it across and threw the pieces into the waste-paper basket.

"Now for dinner," Reinecke went on. "I hope your appetite is as good as mine. And how have you put in your time to-day?"

The German's explanation was so natural and reasonable, so ready, his manner so free from embarrassment, that Tom was for the moment quite reassured, and chatted unconstrainedly until bedtime--and Reinecke appeared to take great pleasure in making him talk. But later, in the privacy of his room, some rather troublesome questions suggested themselves. Was it not unlike a shipping clerk to issue a duplicate without writing "duplicate" upon it? How was it that duplicate and original bore consecutive numbers, when at least two or three days must have elapsed between them? It was very odd that no consignment from another firm should have been shipped in the interim. And then suddenly Tom flushed. "By George!" he thought. "I'm hanged if the duplicate hasn't got the earlier number!"

Then he wondered whether he was not mistaken. Saying to himself, "I must find out for certain," he went back to the living-room to examine the fragments in the waste-paper basket. He passed the door of Reinecke's room, and heard his host splashing within.

The basket had been emptied.

The discoveries he had made kept Tom awake during a good part of the night. They were very disturbing. Reinecke's explanation had been plausible enough, and it was possible Tom was mistaken in his recollection of the numbers on the vouchers. But the German's haste in disposing of the contents of the basket bred an ugly suspicion. Were there other such "duplicates" in existence? Did the books account for only a part of the consignments? Had Reinecke, in fact, been systematically robbing his partners? Tom felt worried and perplexed. Here, thousands of miles from home, young and inexperienced, he was hardly in a position to deal with a clever rogue, if Reinecke was in truth a rogue; and he wished that he had some older person at hand, some one like blunt, rugged old Mr. Barkworth, to whom he could turn for advice. He was not likely to find any help among the Germans in Bismarckburg, and inquiries of the shipping clerk would probably be fruitless. Of course, he might question Reinecke's own clerk, but that course had very obvious disadvantages.

He concluded that he could do nothing at present except mention the matter in his next letter to his brother, and be more than ever alert in studying his host. To play the part of detective was abhorrent, but there seemed to be no help for it, and he writhed inwardly at the idea of living under the same roof with a man whom he distrusted but with whom he must try to keep up an appearance of friendship.

When the next mail day came, his feeling of mistrust prompted him to give his letter into the hand of the negro postman just as the latter was starting. Reinecke's correspondence was as usual placed in a padlocked bag. The man had gone about a mile on his way from the plantation when Reinecke overtook him, carrying two letters.

"I forgot these," he said. "Put down your bag."

He unlocked the bag, dropped his letters into it, and took up the voucher slip bearing the number of letters enclosed; this would be signed at the post office and brought back with the incoming mail.

"That letter of Mr. Willoughby's had better go in too," he said. "Give it to me."

The man took it from the folds of his loincloth, and Reinecke appeared to drop it into the bag. In reality he put it into his pocket. Having altered the figures on the slip, he relocked the bag and dismissed the man. Twelve hours later the postman returned and delivered his bag as usual into his master's hand.

Next day, in going about the plantation, Tom, as was natural enough, sought the negro, to ask him whether he had duly posted the letter entrusted to him in so unusual a manner. But he could not find the man, and on asking where he was, learnt that he had been sent on an errand to Bismarckburg. It was nearly a fortnight before he returned to the plantation, and by that time Tom was no longer in a position to make any inquiry of him.