Читать книгу A Certain Dr. Thorndyke - Richard Austin Freeman - Страница 5

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Larkom appeared to have that tolerance of alcohol that is often to be observed in the confirmed soaker. As he sat with his guest in the living-room, taking his early tea, although he looked frail and broken in health, there was nothing in his appearance to suggest that he had quite recently been very drunk. Nor, on the other hand, was his manner very different from that of the previous night, save that his articulation and his wits were both clearer.

“What made you pick out this particular health-resort for your little holiday?” he asked. “It isn’t what you would call a fashionable watering-place.”

“No,” replied Walker. “That was the attraction. I had heard about you from Hepburn—he is my brother-in-law, you know—and as it seemed, from what he said, that your abode was on the very outside edge of the world, I marked it down as a good place to disappear in.”

Larkom grinned. “You are not a bad judge, old chappie. Disappearing is our speciality. We are famous for it. Always have been. How does the old mariners’ ditty run? You remember it?

‘Oh, the Bight of Benin, the Bight of Benin,

One comes out where three go in.’

But perhaps that wasn’t exactly what was in your mind?”

“It wasn’t. I could have managed that sort of disappearance without coming so far. But look here, Larkom, let us have a clear understanding. I came here on spec, not having much time to make arrangements, on the chance that you might be willing to put me up and give me a job. But I haven’t come to fasten on to you. If my presence here will be in any way a hindrance to you, you’ve only got to say so and I will move on. And I shan’t take it as unfriendly. I quite understand that you have your principals to consider.”

“Principals be blowed!” said Larkom. “They don’t come into it; and as to me, I can assure you, J. W., that this is the first stroke of luck I’ve had for years. After vegetating in this God-forgotten hole with nobody but buck-niggers to speak to, you can imagine what it is to me to have a pukka white man—and a gentleman at that—under my roof. I feel like chanting ‘Domine, non sum dignus’; but if you can put up with me, stay as long as you care to, and understand that you are doing me a favour by staying.”

“It is very handsome of you, Larkom, to put it in that way,” said Walker, a little huskily. “Of course, I understand the position and I accept your offer gratefully. But we must put the arrangement on a business footing. I’m not going to sponge on you. I must pay my share of the expenses, and if I can give you any help in working the factory——”

“Don’t you be afraid, old chappie,” interrupted Larkom. “I’ll keep your nose on the grindstone; and as to sharing up, we can see to that later when we cast up the accounts. As soon as we have lapped up our tea, we will go out to the store and I will show you the ropes. They aren’t very complicated, though they are in a bit of a tangle just now. But that is where you will come in, dear boy.”

Larkom’s statement as to the “tangle” was certainly no exaggeration. The spectacle of muddle and disorder that the store presented filled Walker at once with joy and exasperation. After a brief tour of the premises, during which he listened in grim silence to Larkom’s explanations, he deliberately peeled off his jacket—which he folded up neatly and put in a place of safety—and fell to work on the shelves and lockers with a concentrated energy that reduced the native helper to gibbering astonishment and Larkom to indulgent sniggers.

“Don’t overdo it, old chap,” the latter admonished. “Remember the climate. And there’s no hurry. Plenty of spare time in these parts. Leave yourself a bit for to-morrow.” To all of which advice Walker paid no attention whatever, but slogged away at the confused raffle of stock-in-trade without a pause until close upon noon, when the cook came out to announce that “chop live for table.” And even this was but a temporary pause; for soon after breakfast—or tiffin, as the Anglo-Indian calls it—when Larkom showed a tendency to doze in his chair with a tumbler of gin toddy, he stole away to renew his onslaught while the native assistant attended to the “trade.”

During the next few days he was kept pretty fully occupied. Not that there was much business doing at the factory, but Larkom’s hand having become of late so tremulous that writing was impossible, the posting of books and answering of letters had automatically ceased.

“You’re a perfect godsend to me, old chappie,” said Larkom, when, by dint of two days’ continuous labour, the books had been brought up to date, and Walker attacked the arrears of correspondence. “The firm wouldn’t have stood it much longer. They’ve complained of my handwriting already. If you hadn’t come I should have got the order of the boot to a certainty. Now they’ll think I’ve got a native clerk from somewhere at my own expense.”

“How about the signature?” Walker asked. “Can you manage that?”

“That’s all right, dear boy,” said Larkom cheerfully. “You sign slowly while I kick the table. They’ll never twig the difference.”

By means of this novel aid to calligraphy the letter was completed and duly dispatched by a messenger to catch the land post at Quittah. Then Walker had leisure to look about him and study the methods of West Coast trade and the manners and customs of his host. Larkom sober was not very different from Larkom drunk—amiable, easy-going, irresponsible, and only a little less cheerful. Perhaps he was better drunk. At any rate, that was his own opinion, and he acted up to it consistently. What would have happened if there had been any appreciable trade at Adaffia it is impossible to guess. As it was, the traffic was never beyond the capacity of Larkom even at his drunkest. Once or twice during the day a party of bush natives would stroll into the compound with a demijohn of palm oil or a calabash full of kernels, or a man from a neighbouring village would bring in a bushel or so of copra, and then the premises would hum with business. The demijohn would be emptied into a puncheon or the kernels stowed in bags ready for shipment, and the vendors would receive their little dole of threepenny pieces—the ordinary currency of the coast. Then the vendors would change into purchasers. A length of baft or calico, a long flint-lock gun with red-painted stock, a keg of powder, or a case of gin would replace the produce they had brought; the threepenny pieces would drift back into the chest whence they had come, and the deal would be completed.

At these functions Walker, owing to his ignorance of the language, appeared chiefly in the rôle of onlooker, though he took a hand at the scales, when he was about, and helped to fill the canvas bags with kernels. But he found plenty of time to wander about the village and acknowledge the appreciative grins of the men whom he had hammered on the night of his arrival or the courteous salutations of the women. Frequently in the afternoons he would stroll out to sit on the dry sand at high-water mark and, as the feathery leaves of the sea-washed palms pattered above him in the breeze, would gaze wistfully across the blue and empty ocean. One day a homeward-bound steamer came into the bay to anchor in Quittah roads; and then his gaze grew more wistful and the stern face softened into sadness. Presently Larkom hove in sight under the palms, carolling huskily and filling a gaudy trade pipe. He came and sat down by Walker, and having struck some two dozen Swedish matches without producing a single spark, gazed solemnly at the steamer.

“Yellow funnel boat,” he observed; “that’ll be the Niger, old Rattray’s boat. She’s going home, dear boy, home to England, where hansom cabs and green peas and fair ladies and lamb chops——”

“Oh, shut up, Larkom!” exclaimed the other, gruffly.

“Right, dear boy. Mum’s the word,” was the bland reply, as Larkom resumed his fruitless attack on the matches. “But there’s one thing I’ve been going to say to you,” he continued after a pause, “and it’s this—confound these damstinkers; I’ve used up a whole box for nothing—I was going to say that you’d better not show yourself out on the beach unnecessarily. I don’t know what your little affair amounts to, but I should say that, if it was worth your while to cut away from home, it’s worth your while to stop away.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you are still within the jurisdiction of the English Courts; and if you should have been traced to the ship and you let yourself be seen, say, by any of the Germans who pass up and down from Quittah to Lomé or Bagidá, why, some fine day you may see an officer of the Gold Coast Constabulary bearing down on you with a file of Hausas, and then it would be ho! for England, home, and beauty. You sabby?”

“I must take that risk,” growled Walker. “I can’t stay skulking in the house, and I’m not going to.”

“As you please, dear boy,” said Larkom. “I only mentioned the matter. Verbum sap. No offence, I hope.”

“Of course not,” replied Walker.

“I don’t think you are in any immediate danger,” pursued Larkom. “Old chief Akolatchi looked in on me just now and he tells me that there are no white officers at Quittah. The doctor died of blackwater fever two days ago, and the commissioner is sick and is off to Madeira by this steamer. Still, you had better keep your weather eyelid lifting.”

“I mean to,” said Walker; and knocking out his pipe on the heel of his shoe, he rose and shook the sand from his clothes.

“If you’ll excuse my harping on a disagreeable topic, old chappie,” said Larkom, as they strolled homewards along the beach, “I think you would be wise to take some elementary precautions.”

“What sort?” asked Walker.

“Well, supposing you were traced to that barque, the Sappho, it would be easy to communicate with her skipper when she comes to her station at Half-Jack. Then they might ascertain that a gent named Johnny Walker with a golden beard and a Wellington nose had been put ashore at Adaffia. You’re a fairly easy chappie to describe, with that Romanesque boko, and fairly easy to recognize from a description.”

“But, damn it, Larkom! You’re not suggesting that I should cut off my nose, are you?”

“God forbid, dear boy! But you might cut off your beard and drop Johnny Walker. A clean shave and a new name would make a world of difference. No native would recognize you without your beard.”

“Perhaps not. But a white police officer would spot me all right. A clean shave and a different name wouldn’t deceive him.”

“Not if he really meant business. But the local officials here will be pretty willing to turn a blind eye. They are not keen on arresting a white man with a parcel of niggers looking on. Lowers the prestige of the race. If a constabulary officer came down here to arrest a bearded man named Walker and found only a clean-shaved covey of the name of Cook, he’d probably say that there was no one here answering the description and go back perfectly satisfied with his tongue in his cheek.”

“Do you think he really would?”

“I do. At any rate, you may as well give the authorities a chance; meet ’em half-way. Don’t you think so?”

“I suppose it is the reasonable thing to do. Very well, Larkom, I will take your advice and turn myself into a bald-faced stag—I noticed that you have some razors in the store. And as to the name, well, I will adopt your suggestion in that, too. ‘Cook’ will do as well as any other.”

“Better, old chap. Distinguished name. Great man, James Cook. Circumnavigator; all round my hat.”

“All the same,” said Walker, alias Cook, “I fancy you are a trifle over-optimistic. If an officer were sent down here with a warrant, I think he would have to execute it if he could. He would be running a biggish risk if he let himself be bamboozled.”

“Well, dear boy,” replied Larkom, “you do the transformation trick and trust in Providence. It’s quite likely that the local authorities will make no move; and if a G.C.C. officer should turn up and insist on mistaking James Cook for Johnny Walker, I daresay we could find some way of dealing with him.”

The other man smiled grimly. “Yes,” he agreed. “I don’t think he’d mistake James Cook for Mary’s little lamb.”

As they entered the compound a quarter of an hour later, a native rose from the kernel bag on which he had been seated, and disengaging from the folds of his cloth a soiled and crumpled letter, held it out to Larkom. The latter opened it with tremulous haste and, having glanced through it quickly, emitted a long, low whistle.

“Sacked, by jiggers!” he exclaimed, and handed the letter to his guest. It was a brief document and came to the point without circumlocution. The Adaffia factory was a financial failure, “whatever it might have been under other management,” and the firm hereby dispensed with Mr. Larkom’s services. “But,” the letter concluded, “as we are unwilling to leave a white man stranded on the Coast, we hereby make over to you, in lieu of notice, the factory and such stock as remains in it, the same to be your own property; and we hope that you will be able to carry on the trade to more advantage for yourself than you have for us.”

“Devilish liberal of them,” groaned Larkom, “for I’ve been a rotten bad servant to the firm. But I shall never make anything of it. I’m a regular waster, old chappie, and the sooner the land-crabs have me, the better it will be for everyone.” He lifted the lid of a gin-case and dejectedly hoisted out a high-shouldered, square-faced Dutch bottle.

“Stop this boozing, Larkom,” said Cook, late Walker. “Pull yourself together, man, and let us see if we can’t make a do of it.” He spoke gently enough, with his hand on the other man’s shoulder, for the thought of his own wrecked life had helped him to understand. It was not the mere loss of employment that had hit Larkom so hard. It was the realization, sudden and complete, of his utter futility; of his final irrevocable failure in the battle of life.

“It’s awfully good of you, old chap,” he said dismally; “but I tell you, I’m beyond redemption.” He paused irresolutely and then added: “However, we’ll stow the lush for the present and talk things over”; and he let the bottle slip back into its compartment and shut down the lid.

But he was in no mood for talking things over, at present. The sense of utter failure appeared to have overwhelmed him completely, and, though he made no further attempt upon the gin-case that evening, his spirits seemed to sink lower and lower until, about ten o’clock, he rose from his chair and silently tottered off to bed, looking pitiably frail and broken.

It was about two o’clock in the morning when Cook awoke to the consciousness of a very singular noise. He sat up in bed to listen. A strange, quick rattle, like the chatter of a jigsaw, came from the rickety bed on which Larkom slept, and with it was mingled a confused puffing that came and went in quick gusts.

“Anything the matter, Larkom?” he asked anxiously; and then, as a broken mumble and a loud chattering of teeth came in reply, he sprang from the bed and struck a match. A single glance made everything clear. The huddled body, shaking from head to foot, the white, pinched face, the bloodless hands with blue finger-nails, clutching the scanty bed-coverings to the trembling chin, presented a picture of African fever that even a new-comer could recognize. Hastily he lit a candle, and, gathering up every rag that he could lay hands on, from his own travelling-rug to the sitting-room table-cloth, piled them on to his shivering comrade until the sick man looked like a gigantic caddis-worm.

After an hour or so the violence of the shivering fit abated; gradually the colour returned to the white face until its late pallor gave place to a deep flush. The heaped coverings were thrown on the floor, the sufferer fidgeted restlessly about the bed, his breathing became hurried, and presently he began to babble at intervals. This state of affairs lasted for upwards of an hour. Then a few beads of perspiration appeared on the sick man’s forehead; the chatterings and mumblings and broken snatches of song died away, and, as the parched skin broke out into dewy moisture, a look of intelligence came back to the vacant face.

“Cover me up, old chappie,” said Larkom, turning over with a deep sigh. “Air strikes chilly. Thanks, old fellow; let’s have the table-cloth, too. That’s ripping. Now you turn in and get a bit of sleep. Sorry to have routed you up like this.” He closed his eyes and at once began to doze, and Cook, creeping back to bed, lay and watched him by the light of the flickering candle. Then he, too, fell asleep.

When he awoke it was broad daylight, and through the open door he could see Larkom standing by the table in the sitting-room, wrapped in the rug. The Fanti cook was seated at the table and the solitary Kroo boy, who formed the staff of the factory, stood by his supplementary chair, his eyes a-goggle with curiosity.

“Now, Kwaku,” Larkom was saying, “you see that pencil mark. Well, you take this pen and make a mark on top of it—so.” He handed the pen to the cook, who evidently followed the instructions, for his tongue protruded several inches, and he presently rose, wiping his brow. The Kroo boy took his place and the ceremony was repeated, after which the two natives retired grinning with pride.

“Gad, Larkom,” exclaimed Cook, when he came out and joined his host; “that dose of fever has taken the starch out of you. You oughtn’t to be up, surely?” He looked earnestly at his comrade, shocked at the aspect of the pitiful wreck before him and a little alarmed at the strange, greenish-yellow tint that showed through the waxen pallor of the face.

“Shan’t be up long, dear boy,” said Larkom. “Just setting things straight before I turn in for good. Now, just cast your eye over this document—devil of a scrawl, but I expect you can make it out.” He took up a sheet of paper and handed it to Cook. The writing was so tremulous as to be almost illegible, but with difficulty Cook deciphered it; and its purport filled him with astonishment. It read thus:

“This is the last will and testament of me John Larkom of Adaffia in the Gold Coast Colony, West Africa. I give and devise all my estate and effects, real and personal, which I may die possessed of or be entitled to, unto James Cook absolutely, and I appoint him the executor of this my will.

“Dated this thirteenth day of November one thousand eight hundred and ninety-seven.

“Signed by the testator in the presence of us, who thereupon made our marks in his and each other’s presence.

John Larkom.

Kwaku Mensah of Cape Coast.

His + mark.

Pea Soup of Half-Jack.

His + mark.”

“I’ve given you your new name, you see,” Larkom explained. “Take charge of this precious document and keep that letter from the firm. Burn all other papers.”

“But,” exclaimed Cook, “why are you talking as if you expected to snuff out? You’ve had fever before, I suppose?”

“Rather,” said Larkom. “But you’re a new-comer; you don’t sabby. I’m an old coaster, and I sabby proper. Look at that, dear boy. Do you know what that means?” He held out a shaking, lemon-coloured hand, and as his companion regarded it silently, he continued: “That means blackwater fever; and when a Johnny like me goes in for that luxury, it’s a job for the gardener. And talking of that, you’d better plant me in the corner of the compound where the empty casks are kept, by the prickly-pear hedge; I shall be out of the way of traffic there, though graves are a damned nuisance in business premises, anyhow.”

“Oh, dry up, Larkom, and get to bed,” growled Cook; “and, I say, aren’t there any doctors in this accursed place?”

Larkom grinned. “In the fossil state, dear boy, they are quite numerous. Otherwise scarce. The medico up at Quittah died three days ago, as I told you, and there are no others on tap just now. No good to me if they were. Remember what I’ve told you. Burn all papers and, when you’ve planted me, take over the factory and make things hum. There’s a living to be made here and you’ll make it. Leave the swizzle-stick alone, old chappie, and if ever you should chance to meet Hepburn again, give him my love and kick him—kick him hard. Now I’m going to turn in.”

Larkom’s forecast of the probable course of his illness bid fair to turn out correct. In the intervals of business—which, perversely enough, was unusually brisk on this day—Cook looked in on the invalid and at each visit found him visibly changed for the worse. The pale-lemon tint of his skin gave place to a horrible dusky yellow; his voice grew weaker and his mind more clouded, until at last he sank into a partial stupor from which it was almost impossible to rouse him. He wanted nothing, save an occasional sip of water, and nothing could be done to stay the march of the fell disease.

So the day passed on, a day of miserable suspense for Cook; the little caravans filed into the compound, the kernels and copra and knobs of rubber rolled out of the calabashes on to the ground, the oil gurgled softly into the puncheon, the bush people chattered vivaciously in the store and presently departed gleefully with their purchases; and still Larkom lay silent and apathetic and ever drawing nearer to the frontier between the known and the unknown. The evening fell, the store was locked up, the compound gate was shut, and Cook betook himself with a shaded lamp to sit by the sick man’s bed.

But presently the sight of that yellow face, grown suddenly so strangely small and pinched, the sharpened nose, and the sunken eyes with the yellow gleam of the half-seen eyeballs between the lids, was more than he could bear, and he stole softly through into the sitting-room, there to continue his vigil. So hour after weary hour passed. The village sank to rest (for it was a moonless night) and the sounds that came in through the open window were those of beast and bird and insect. Bats whistled out in the darkness, cicadas and crickets chirred and chirruped, the bark of the genet and the snuffling mutter of prowling civets came from without the compound, while far away the long-drawn, melancholy cry of a hyæna could be heard in the intervals of the booming surf.

And all the while the sick man slowly drew nearer to the dread frontier.

It wanted but an hour to dawn when a change came. The feeble babblings and mumblings, the little snatches of forgotten songs chanted in a weak, quavering treble, had ceased for some time, and now through the open door came a new sound—the sound of slow breathing mingled with a soft, moist rattling. The watcher rose from his chair and once again crept, lamp in hand, into the dimly-lighted room, there to stand looking down gloomily at the one friend that Fate had left him. Larkom was now unconscious and lay quite still, save for the heaving chest and the rise and fall of the chin at each breath.

Cook put down the lamp, and, sitting down, gently took the damp and chilly hand in his, while he listened, in agony at his own helplessness, to the monotonous, rattling murmur that went on and on, to and fro, like the escapement of some horrible clock.

By and by it stopped, and Cook fumbled at the tepid wrist; then, after a pause, it began again with an altered rhythm and presently paused again, and again went on; and so the weary, harrowing minutes passed, the pauses growing ever longer and the rattling murmur hoarser and more shallow. At last there came a pause so long that Cook leaned over the bed to listen. A little whispering sigh was borne to his ear, then all was still; and when, after waiting yet several minutes more, he had reverently drawn the gaudy table-cloth over the silent figure, he went back to his chair in the sitting-room, there to wait, with grim face and lonely heart, for the coming of the day.

The late afternoon sun was slanting eagerly over the palm-tops as he took his way to the far corner of the compound that faced towards the western beach. The empty barrels had been rolled away and, in the clear space, close to the low prickly-pear hedge, a smooth mound of yellow sand and a rough wooden cross marked the spot where Larkom, stitched up in sacking in lieu of a coffin, had been laid to rest. The cross had occupied most of Cook’s scanty leisure since the hurried burial in the morning (for trade was still perversely brisk, despite the ragged house-flag half-mast on the little flag-pole), and he was now going to put the finishing touches to it.

It was a rude enough memorial, the upright fashioned from a board from one of the long gun-crates, and the cross-piece formed by a new barrel stave cut to the requisite length; and the lack of paint left it naked and staring.

Cook laid down on the sand a box containing his materials—a set of zinc stencil plates, used for marking barrels and cases, a stencil brush, and a pot of thin black paint—and sketched out lightly in pencil the words of the inscription: