Sheena, Queen of the Jungle: Killers Kraal

III
SHE FROWNED over the saying. There were many words in Swahili speech that had no meaning for her, because the Abama dialect had no words to match them. "What is 'grace'?" she asked.
He was silent, balancing an answer in his mind. "It is ze minga," he decided. "A thing given, as when the Abama sacrifice for rain, and the rain comes."
"So? But I have given you nothing."
He gave her a long, steady look, then: "I think so. I am thinking of a certain night in the garden of Sleman bin Ali.
"I gave you a knife wound also!" she reminded him sharply. But under his steady gaze she felt the blood rise to her head and pulse in her ears. To hide her confusion she got to her feet, and as she did so a deep-toned voice shouted her name. She turned quickly to see Ekoti come running across the clearing, the tails of his leopard-skin kroos whipping about his black, muscular legs. He came to a stand before her, his great chest heaving as he fetched his breath. As Rick got to his feet the young chief's keen eyes came to focus on him. Stern disapproval was written on his face, and his greeting was coldly formal:
"I know you, Bwana!"
"I know you, Chieftain!" Rick returned.
"I did not think to find you still here," Ekoti said, but looked to Sheena for an answer.
"Kalundas attacked his camp," the Jungle Queen told him. "He was wounded in the fight and could not trek."
"Ah—so!" Ekot looked relieved, then: "I sent Leta to your dwelling place in the forest. She could not find you, and when she came back she said she was sure that the young Bwana had taken—"
"Your wives chatter like parrots!" the Jungle Queen, interposed sharply. "And if you wanted me why are your drums silent?"
Ekoti's eyes became uneasy. He looked up at the sky and then down at the ground. "I came to speak of this thing," he said at last. "Our drums are silent because the witchdoctors say that no drum must talk after sundown now."
"What witchdoctors? Who dares to silence my drums?" Sheena was furious, and Ekoti looked as if he expected the earth to open and swallow him.
"All the witchdoctors say so, Sheena," he rumbled. "Surely you have heard the drum?"
"I have heard it. What more?"
Ekoti looked grave. "There is much more and it is all bad, Sheena. When the drum first spoke the witchdoctors went to a secret meeting place, and when they came to their villages they told the people that the drum was the ghost-voice of Yamo Galagi. It was a great magic, they said, and that all the young warriors must make ready to trek into the Kalunda country."
"So? But you did not let the young men go, Ekoti?"
The chief took his time about answering, and that the worst had yet to come was made plain by his hesitation and the way he shifted from one foot to the other. "I tried to stop them," he said at last. "I called the Elders to council, and it was made taboo for any man to go more than a day's trek beyond his village. But the call of the drum was stronger than our taboo. When it spoke again a few young men stole away when all were sleeping. On the next night a few more. And so it has been every night. Aie truly, it was as if a ghost walked into the villages, touched each man on the shoulder as he lay on his bed, and said: 'Follow me!' Soon there will be no young men left to hunt and watch our cattle, and I have come to ask you what I should do about this thing."
"The witchdoctors lie!" the Jungle Queen flashed at him. "It cannot be the Galagi's drum. It was buried with him and no man knows where."
"It may be that they speak the truth, Sheena." Rick, who had been listening with keen attention, held out his hand.
"So!" she said caustically. "The white Bwana believes in ghosts also!"
"Let me see that knife again," he said quietly. She gave it to him, and he examined the ivory haft with a frown between his eyes. Then he nodded his head with a grunt of satisfaction and said: "Now I know the meaning of these carvings. They tell a story of bygone days. Listen—"
And then be gave her a full account of all he had learned of the Abamas at Benguela. At first Sheena could not understand how he could know so much about her people, never having lived among them. But as he got deeper into the story she was remembering certain things Ebid Ela had told her, so long ago that she had forgotten them until this moment. And once Ekoti, his eyes big with wonderment, broke in: "True, true I have heard the old ones speak of such days. It is said—"
Sheena silenced him with a quick gesture and Rick went on: "See, the carvings tell the story of Yamo Galagi's visit to the Portuguese king. It may be that the man who dropped it got it in trade," he concluded. "But I do not think so. No, the drum calls the Abama warriors to Massumba, I think."
Sheena was silent for a moment, turning it all over in her mind. Her keen brain was quick to grasp the significance of what Rick had told her.
"If this be so," she summed up. "the drum speaks of much evil that is brewing at Massumba. It must be silenced, Ekoti," she added, turning to the chief.
Ekoti looked down at his feet; then: "The Abamas will not help you, Sheena. The witchdoctors have frightened them, and I fear—"
"Have I asked for their help, Ekoti? If you are not afraid of ghosts, we two will go to Massumba—"
"We three," Rick put in quietly. And she turned to look him up and down with an amused smile.
"It will be a hard trek for you," she told him. "There will be no servants to carry Bwana's tent, to fetch his water and to cook his food." She saw a muscle tighten in his jaw; but in a moment his slow smile had relaxed the tension, and he said:
"Anywhere you go, I can follow."
Now, it flashed into her mind that, with the Abamas worked up, excited by the fetish-call of the big drum, she would not be able to get porters to take him to the coast. And there was a meaner thought—it might be well for him to learn that to trek with a safari was one thing, and to trek with Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, quite another thing. Truly, such a trek would put an end, once and for all, to any notion he might have of living in the jungle with her. She laughed softly and said:
"So be it, Bwana. Follow me, then!" She picked up her bow and quiver, gave him a dazzling smile, and then sped across the clearing without a backward glance.
Rick's lips rounded to an oath, and he would have started to run after her had not Ekoti caught his arm.
"You could not catch her, Bwana," the chief told him. "No man could. Always she will be in the trees ahead of. us. You and I, we will follow on the ground, as real people must."
Rick looked up the game trail, into the misty green of which Sheena had already vanished, rubbing the nape of his neck with his hand. He muttered something under his breath which would have made the Jungle Queen's ears burn had she heard it, then he turned to Ekoti and said gravely:
"It will be good to trek with the chief of the Abamas."
"It will be good to trek with the slayer of the Bearded One," Ekoti returned with a flash of white teeth. Then he looked down at Rick's empty holster and asked: "But where is the Father-of-Six?"
"Must be around somewhere," said Rick and started. to look around the clearing for his Colt. Ekoti soon spotted it, gleaming in the the grass where it had been knocked from Rick's hand. He picked it up and gave it to Rick.
"If I had such a gun, and could shoot as quickly and as straight as you do, I would fear no man," he said.
"There is such another in my tent," Rick told him. "When I was at the coast I thought of my friend Ekoti, and I bought the gun for him. I will teach him to shoot with it."
"Truly?" the young chief's eyes bulged.
"Truly," said Rick, and went to his tent to get the gun. But when he came back the Abama chief's face was set in stern lines. He said:
"There is a thing in my mind, Bwana. It will be good to speak of it before I take your gift I know what is in your heart. Sheena's skin is white, your skin is white. It would be good for you to mate with her, you think. It may be so. But I tell you now that if you try to take her to the coast with you this spear will drink your blood!"
For a time black and white, both perfect specimens of their race, looked deeply each into the other's eyes. Rick said:
"The Abama chief speaks plainly as a warrior should. I will speak as plainly. I will take Sheena to the coast with me, but only when she asks me to do so. Meanwhile, I wish to be your friend. Freely, I give you this gun, and I will teach you to shoot with it, even though the first bullet you fire finds my heart."
"Aie!" exclaimed the chief and his dark eyes came alight with a gleam of appreciation. "You are a man, Bwana, a fit mate for Sheena!" Then he added with a deep chuckle, "But if you wait for her to do the asking, as you say you will, I think we will be friends for a long time. Oh yes, we will be too old to fight then!"
"Maybe you're not far out at that!" Rick muttered with a wry grin, and then went to make up his pack.

IV
FROM a projecting point of rock which dominated a broad expanse of tumbled uplands that had known the rack and twist of volcanic convulsion, Sheena watched Rick and Ekoti weaving their way between huge boulders and clumps of thorny mimosa bush. They were deep in the Kalunda country now, but far off still the head of the Buffalo Mountain stood against the sky in lines of vapory blue. In the middle distance there were strange formations of crumbling sandstone, banded with the spectral white of quartz, queer piles designed by the gods in sardonic mood. To the north there was a great fault through which the river wiggled, its banks lined with thickets of thorny bamboo more inpenetrable than any barbed-wire entanglement. Beyond rose the banks of the ever-green jungle, tall resin trees linked by fantastic creepers or spiky rattans.
Only once before had Sheena ventured into this country. In this valley, she knew, lived the dwarf-people, the Kobi, wooly-haired and entirely naked. But they were meat-eaters, man-eaters, who hunted with tiny, poison-tipped arrows. She judged that the young men of the Abama clans, treking for Massumba would swing wide of this stretch of jungle on that account, and this meant that, by following the river, she could be at Massumba at least two marches ahead of them. But it would be necessary for Rick and Ekoti to camp here and build a light raft.
With this settled in her mind, the Jungle Queen's attention was drawn to Rick's battered topee bobbing above a patch of bush, and her eyes were clouded by a troubled look. Though, for the past two days, she had set a hard pace, her attempt to discourage him seemed to hold forth little hope of success. On the contrary, he had clung to her heels with the tenacity of a cheetah on the trail of a wounded buck, showing powers of endurance and a jungle-craft not inferior to her own. His persistence annoyed her, and yet she was not insensible to the high tribute this determined pursuit paid to her womanhood, nor to the faint stirring of pleasure that came with the thought.
"It was cruel to taunt him, little one," she murmured to Chim as he bounded to the rock beside her. "And it was foolish, because I cannot send him back alone now."
As the pair came into plain view she waved to them, indicating the trail she would take down to the river, and then made her way steeply through the pale green of the stunted mimosa. Following a game trail she came to an open sandy patch, glistening with mica in the sun. Here the river rippled over a pebbly bed and curved into the bank to form a large water-hole. Bamboo grew everywhere, their white-ringed, green stems protected by great shields of bark around the base. They arched gracefully over the pool, their leaves quivering in the air and veiling the light. Two elephants stood on the far side, a mother and her calf, flapping their ears and waving trunks and tails to keep off the flies. Here and there great, solid marula trees rose above the tangled mass of greenery. and some of their trunks, at her own height above the ground, were all scratched and furrowed with cruel rents; for these were the trees used by the big jungle cats to stretch their paws and to sharpen their merciless claws after their long sleep through the heat of the day.
The elephants went rumbling into the forest as soon as they got her wind, and black monkeys went running up the opposite bank with their tails straight up in the air as Chim came bounding into the glade, grimacing ferociously and snarling a challenge to all.
"Quiet, little one!" she chided. "You are very brave, I know. But it is bad to frighten such little folk."
She had a fire started, and the shadows were deepening when Rick and Ekoti came into the glade. Rick's face under his black beard, she noted as he eame down the steep bank, was blotchy and swollen with mosquito bites. His knees, exposed by his shorts, were like lumps of raw meat where he had scratched them. His shirt was torn and showed many scars, some fresh and bleeding, where the hook thorns had cruelly torn his flesh. She was conscious of a sudden twinge of remorse. What had made her treat him so badly? Truly, she must he posseseed by Nakoloshi, as the Abamas called the mischievous spirit who crept into the beds of their women and turned them into shrews overnight.
He rested his rifle against a tree, unslung his heavy pack, and turned to face her. Impulsive words, warm and full of contrition shaped themselves in her mind—and there it was again, that slow smile, tormenting, always challenging, always hinting at things that were best forgotten. She swallowed the words with a gulp of air, and merely nodded her head in return to his greeting.
Ekoti was moving down to the water hole to drink. She turned to speak to him, and just as he dropped to his knees she saw what had looked like a black stick suddenly coil and transform itself into hissing death. Even as her warning cry rang out the snake struck and plopped back.
Rick's Colt roared as Ekoti jumped to his feet. The heavy bullet slapped into the snake's coils, but did not kill it. Ekoti's eyes rolled, following the serpent's swift, slithering retreat into the bush, and then he looked down at his leg, and when he lifted his head to look at Sheena his face was that of a man doomed. There was a pleading look in his eyes, and she knew that he was thinking that she had the power, the magic to heal. She stared at him dumbly, her mind refusing to accept what she had seen. It could not happen—not to Ekoti who had been her playmate, her friend for as far back as she could remember. A queer sound came from her constricted throat. And then the Abama chief remembered his manhood. His back stiffened and his jaw snapped shut. Then he said:
"It is good for a warrior to die of a spear thrust. But it does not matter when or how he dies if he dies well." Then he moved to a tree and sat with his back to it, to await the inevitable with the calm dignity and fatalism of his breed.
With a cry of anguish on her lips Sheena snatched up a burning brand, ran across to him, and dropped to her knees. But before she could apply her lips to the two deadly little punctures in Ekoti's leg Rick's hand forced her head back. Anger welled up in her, and she would have struck at him, but he thrust the haft of a knife into her hand and said coolly:
"Heat the blade until it is red."
Then she saw that while she had been standing, helpless, he had unstrapped his pack, and that the box of medicine he always carried was open on the ground beside him. And then she remembered that it was his skill that had saved Aku, Ekoti's uncle, from a gunshot wound.
"Save him," she cried impulsively, "and then ask what you want of me!"
Rick nodded his head absently while he tightened a tourniquet above the affected part. That was a sheep-killer, one of the colubrines, he was thinking. Poison affecting the nerve centers and giving rise to paralysis. Antidote? Antitoxin and adrenalin to stimulate heart action and prevent collapse. Incise to promote bleeding, cauterize—yes it was all clear in his mind. One hundred percent effective in most cases. Further proof of the value of that course he'd taken at Benguela. Damn it, if he had to choose between a loaded rifle and a hypodermic loaded with antitoxin, it would be the hypodermic every time! The minor terrors of the jungle were the most deadly, a man never got a chance to draw a bead on them. Now, a little anesthetic—
While he worked Sheena watched his every move with keen concentration in her blue eyes. Ekoti braced himself as the red-hot knife blade came down on his flesh, and then his jaw sagged open, and he gasped:
"Bwana, my leg is already dead! I feel no more than the prick of a thorn."
"Soon you will wish you did not have a leg, warrior," Rick told him as he finished. "But when it starts to hurt I will make it sleep again."
"Truly, all white people are magicians!" said Ekoti, his voice dropping to the deep tones of absolute conviction.
Sheena followed Rick. to the fire. She watched him carefully cleanse his instruments, and refill the hypodermic from one of the many little bottles in his leather case.
"He will live?" she asked suddenly.
"Never doubt it," he assured her, and sat on his heels to strap his case. "His leg will swell, but in two days he will be able to walk."
There was a long pause, and then she asked almost inaudibly: "What do you want of me?"
Rick looked up at her, and his eyes clung to her surperb figure. Slow and easy—remember? He cautioned himself, and became absorbed in the lashings of his pack. He put his knee to it and jerked the straps tight before he answered: "Nothing—nothing at all."
"So?" murmured the Jungle Queen, and fell silent, a frown on her face.
Night came and the stars burned through the leafy roof overhead. Under his tree Ekoti was sleeping soundly, and Rick was flung out on the ground beside him. The Jungle Queen was more used to spending her nights in the trees, and she felt strangely uneasy, sitting over the fire, listening to the lascivious gruntings and snortings that came out of the forest. In the aisles, between the trees the fireflies wove fantastic patterns until the moon rose and dimmed their dancing, and spread a gauze of silver over the sandy glade. The shadows were in rhythm with the swaying bamboos, and the noise of the river was as insinuating as sleep, shutting out all other sounds. Sheena's golden head sank down to her arms folded across her knees.
She awoke with a start, every sense instantly alert. From the branches of a nearby tree came soft, persistent clucking sounds, and she knew that Chim had seen or sensed some danger. With the fluid, noiseless ease of an animal she rose and began to circle the fire; and like an animal she stood without moving at all, sniffing at the wind. Above the gurgling of the river she could hear no sound; but, borne on a sudden puff of wind, the unctuous scent of sweating bodies was very strong, and she had a fleeting mental picture of little men moving through the darkness all around her.
Her first impulse was to spring for the nearest branch. At any other time she would have been out of danger in an instant high in the protecting arms of the trees. But Instead she hesitated, then moved swiftly to Rick's side. He awoke at the first touch of her, hand, and she whispered:
"The Kobi attack us. Do not stand up. Crawl down to the river. We can cross before they rush upon us."
Rick rolled over onto his belly with a low word of assent. She stepped over his prone body, and just as she bent to touch Ekoti's shoulder a man dropped on her back from out of a tree. The sudden, overwhelming weight of him flattened her out on the ground, and the impact of his bony knee in the small of her back drove the air from her lungs in a gasping cry. Rick's gun exploded close to her ear, and for a moment she was utterly without strength.
She caught her breath in a painful gasp, and then her lithe body writhed and twisted as if in a convulsion, and like a jungle cat she fought with tooth and claw.
The man was on his knees, straddling her body, trying to pin her arms down. He was grunting with exertion, and he was very strong. No dwarf-man. She arched her back, lifting him, and then with a quick twist broke his grip upon her wrists.
He yelped and jerked his body backwards as her crooked fingers raked his face, and in the next moment he was on his back. Instantly steel flashed in the Jungle Queen's hand, and he died without a cry as her knife was driven downward under his left armpit.
She was on her feet in a flash. The glade was full of shouts, and moonbeams winked on brandished weapons. Shadowy figures, locked in combat swayed through a pool of moonlight, Rick was fighting there. And then she saw Ekoti, standing with his back to a tree, beating off the attack of four men with his long, leaf-bladed spear. He saw her and roared out the Abama war cry. She bounded toward him, but even as her knife flashed up in a deadly arc a thrown war-club struck her on the base of the skull. She fell, rolled over onto her back, saw a patch of starlit sky whirl and become a dazzling wheel of light, and nothing more.

To Be Continued...

Sheena, Queen of the Jungle: Killer's Krall Part 1

SHEENA dropped from the branches of a gigantic, spreading baobab and started to climb the rocky krantz, leaping lightly from boulder to boulder. She was so well balanced that she appeared to flow, without particularized motion, in whatever direction her energy proposed; and she moved with incredible swiftness, her bronzed limbs flashing in the sun, her golden hair streaming behind.
On the top of the hill she unslung her bow and quiver, looking around for a place to rest. She selected a spot where a mimosa grew out of a grassy cleft and, with feline grace, stretched out flat on her belly in the black pool of its shadow. With her chin cupped in her hand she looked toward the first bend in the river.
The jungle was the same, standing dark and endless across the river. The river was the same, sweeping its mass of reddish waters westward toward Sao Vincente and its final tryst with the Father-of-all-Rivers, as her people, the Abamas, called the Congo. Beyond the green expanse of the jungle Tula Mbogo, the Buffalo Mountain, lifted its horned peaks, and a cushion of white clouds made of it a seat for a lazy god. Truly, the jungle and the river were as they must have been for a thousand years. Only people changed, outwardly and inwardly, and these subtle changes made them see things differently, even act foolishly.
It must be so. If it were otherwise she would not be here, daydreaming beside the river. Why, when the drums had told her that Rick Thorne was on the river, had she come so far to meet him? Why had she not remained in her forest sanctuary and sent Ekoti, the Abama chief, to turn him back? Such had been her first impulse but she had not obeyed it. Why not?
Frowning, she communed with herself and soon found an answer less disturbing in its implications. She was here because she knew that he would not turn back at Ekoti's bidding. He was a reckless fool. He might even venture to set foot on the forbidden trail to her sanctuary, and pursue his folly to his death. Oh yes, it was because she felt sorry for him. It was a great pity that one so young and brave should waste his manhood in searching and straining for fruit beyond his reach. Somehow he had to be made to understand that, thought her skin was white, she belonged to the jungle and the Abamas; while he belonged to the mysterious world of white men which she had never seen, and had no wish to see. He must be made to understand that she was not for him. Her kiss was the kiss of death for any man who dared to defy the strong taboo of her foster-mother, Ebid Ela—a taboo made inviolate by a bristling boma of Abama spears.
So, here she was, listening to the drums—a pulsing now near and now far, but always articulate, incredibly accurate. But nothing now, just the gossip of the jungle. She let her mind idle. Her mood changed again, and her thoughts became less definite and merged with the blue haze. Across her line of vision birds flew with tails like a burst of flame; others, over-balanced by huge red beaks, flapped awkwardly from tree to tree. A tall, grey heron stood in the shallows and, when gorged, rose heavily to light on a bough above her head—only to rise again with a squawk of panic as Chim, her pet ape, sleeping on the bough, suddenly awoke to scold the intruder.
As the blue-toned view faded, and the sun melted into the clouds and brought them to a glow, the distance became more intimate, more revealing. She was vaguely aware of the tension building up within her.
It stirred up memories of her last meeting with Rick and suddenly she was re-living it all again, every work, every gesture as if it had happened yesterday. And with the vision came poignant yearnings which half expressed themselves to her awareness, and then were overwhelmed by the strong excitement which had been the core and magic of that hour.
And suddenly she was afraid. For her there was danger in this meeting. He would not listen to her. No! He would look at her with that disconcerting gleam in his eyes. He would smile that slow slow smile, and he would dare—. She would not stay! She would send Ekoti. She sprang to her feet.
And just then the booming notes of a drum broke the silence—"Boom-tack-tack-boom! Tack-tack-boom-tack—"
The Jungle Queen stood tense, listening, her expression changing rapidly from concentrated interest to annoyance, and finally to settle into one of profound puzzlement. She never failed to locate a drum by its tone, but the voice of this one was as elusive as the code was strange to her ears.
"Boom-tack-boom-tack-boom-tack—" The indecipherable message came from everywhere at once—far off, diffused, a rippling cascade of sound seeming to spill out of the clouds immediately above her head, and yet each note distinct.
And then silence, with not a twig or a leaf in motion. For at sundown the wind dies and a moment of absolute quiet comes to the jungle. The reed-buck stands spellbound beside a pool. The cruel claws of the leopard are sheathed, its spring arrested as if by magic. The song of the birds is hushed, and the melody of running water swells like an organ in fortissimo, and a paen rises to the high mountain-seats of pagan gods.
No village drum answered the mysterious call. It was as if the booming notes had filled the jungle with evil tidings, shocking all to awful silence. The effect of all this was so strong that the Jungle Queen stood utterly motionless, her gaze fixed upon the Buffalo Mountain, her sudden impulse to flight forgotten.
Slowly the sky lost its blood-red glow. A thunder-mutter rolled behind the mountains. A cool breeze came sliding down their slopes, and the tall reeds along the river banks whispered and quivered in sudden trepidation.. And it seemed to Sheena, as the area of shadows deepened, that the mountains became phantom shapes whose aspect took on something of aloof secretiveness, and something of menace.
A whimper from Chim broke the spell. She looked up and spoke softly to him, as was her habit:
"So, you do not like this strange voice in the jungle, little one?" Chim grimaced at her, and swung to a higher branch. But she clapped her hands, calling him down. "Come!" she called. "We must cross the river before dark."
A short distance below the krantz the river entered a gorge, roared for a mile between rocky pinnacles, and came out to spill, feather-white, over steep terraces of rock. A native tie-tie bridge, as delicate-looking as a spider's web, spanned the gorge at its narrowest point. Sheena knew that Rick would camp below the rapids. Also she knew that he would abandon his heavy dugout there and push on to the first Abama village above the gorge to trade for another canoe. It occured to her that she could block his further progress into Abama country by simply telling the villagers not to trade with him. And the more she thought of this new idea the better she liked it. She could avoid meeting him face to face, and yet, if he attempted to force a path through the jungle on foot, she could put all manner of obstacles in his way. Truly, she thought with an amused smile, such a trek would test the strength of his desire. Oh yes, he would soon come to cursing the day that he had set eyes upon Sheena, Golden Goddess of all the Jungles.
As sure footed as an ape she started across the lagging bridge. She was swaying fifty feet above the rapids, when, faintly above the roar of the water, she heard a shot, then another, and another. The echos were still bouncing from one side of the gorge to the other, when she reached the opposite shore, and went flashing down the steep trail like a golden streak.
Around the first limit of sight she saw the peak of a tent, gleaming white amid the low bush of a small clearing. Without pausing in her stride she leaped for the low branch of a tree. Then, with the effortless ease of a monkey, she went through the close-packed foliage which surrounded the clearing, sometimes leaping from the branch of one tree to another, sometimes swinging through the air on vines as thick as her wrist and as tough as a wire cable. She heard shouts as she came to stand on the gnarled limb of an ajap tree. Her lofty perch gave her a clear view of the camp, and her eyes took in the scene below in one swift, all-inclusive glance.
Rick Thorne was fighting for his life, beating off the attack of a half-dozen natives who kept circling around him and rushing at him, now one, now another, to thrust with a spear, or to strike with a heavy knobkerry. He was armed only with a club, which he evidently had wrested from one of his attackers, and he was fighting with the last-ditch ferocity of a wounded leopard. But they were slowly forcing him back to the high river bank. There were three tents in the clearing, but none of his servants were there to help him. Soon he would be driven over the bank to plunge to his death on the rocks below.
The Jungle Queen unslung her bow. But even as she notched the arrow she saw Rick go down under a terrific blow from a club that smashed through his pith-helmet with a dull, sickening sound. The striker, a squat, powerful-looking fellow with a queer headdress of turcan feathers, uttered a yell of triumph, and whirled his club around his head to strike again. And then Sheena's bow twanged, and the strange warrior fell across Rick's body with the arrow between his shoulders up to the feather. His companions, yelping and rushing in for the kill like wild dogs of the veldt, were suddenly silent and motionless, like wooden men holding weapons poised to strike. There was a moment of gaping wonderment, then the deadly twang of the bow again, and another of their number gasped, clutched at the shaft in his breast, staggered back and fell over the bank with a long-drawn shriek.
For a short time the others stood, half crouched, looking around with their mouths agape, their eyes roiling like white balls in their sockets. They could see no enemy; and, as winged death out of nowhere struck a third man, they made a frantic rush for the cover of the bush.
Wise in the ways of the forest people, Sheena did not come down at once. Long ago she had learned that when danger stalks in the jungle no creature is ever caught off guard twice. She waited until she saw a dugout shoot out from the river bank and go lurching dangerously downstream to the uneven paddle strokes of its panic-stricken occupants. Then she dropped to the ground and ran across the clearing to Rick. She dragged the dead native from his back with an amazing display of strength, then rolled Rick over and fell to her knees beside him.

2.

H
IS DARK curls were matted with blood, his breathing so faint that at first she was sure that he could not live for more than a few minutes. But when she put her ear to his breast and heard the strong beat of his heart, she knew that his helmet had absorbed the shock of the blow, and that his skull was not broken. She deemed it safe to move him, and soon had him under the mosquito netting on his canvas cot.
Leaving Chim to watch Rick she went to gather the leaves of the baobab, the root of the mebila and other herbs. Back in the camp, she made a paste of these as Ebid Ela had taught her to do, omitting only the incantations the old woman had been wont to mutter over her bubbling pots. Rick did not open his eyes as she cleansed and poulticed his wound. When she had finished it was dark, and she went out to look around the deserted camp.
The half-cooked food in the pots, and the fact that everything had been left behind, told her that Rick's servants had left in a great hurry, probably at the first sight of trouble; and, since they were sure to be men from one of the coast villages, that did not surprise her. She shared the Abamas' contempt for the cowardly coast people. Uppermost in her mind was the question: Who were these warriors who had dared to attack a safari on her side of the Kwango? Whence had they come? Certainly they were not neighbors of the Abamas. They had looked like Kalundas, a once powerful people who lived beyond the mountains, but whose stock was now debased by cross-breeding with the dwarf-people who ranged the jungles between the Kwango and the Buffalo Mountain. But she could not be sure of this, because only once had she ventured into the Kalunda and seen one of their villages, and that from a great distance. Their huts, she remembered, were not placed in a circle as was the style among the Bantu-speaking people, but in long, straight aisles, and it was said that they were maneaters, sometimes even eating their own dead. For this reason the Abamas would have nothing to do with them.
A snarl and a sudden flurry of sound out in the bush sent a tingle down her spine. Jackals, with the smell of the dead in their nostrils. She did not want them howling around the camp all night, and went to roll the bodies over the bank and into the river. She was moving back to Rick's tent when her eye was caught by the glint of steel amid the grass. She bent to pick up a knife which evidently had been dropped by one of the men who had attacked the camp. The blade was double-edged, curved, and twice the span of her hand in length. It had an ivory handle, most cunningly carved, and she took it over to the fire to examine it more closely.
Figures were carved on the handle, men dressed like Rick, but with funny, thin legs. And there was a strange, prancing buck, with a beard like a goat and a single horn sticking straight out from between its eyes. And something that looked like a canoe with tall trees growing out of it—strange trees, becatise all the branches grew across the trunks without a twist or a downward bend. She thought it was strange that one who could carve men with such skill should make such a poor likeness of a tree. Any child could do better. But it was a good knife.
She was sliding it into the band of leopard skin about her waist when Rick called her by name. But when she ran into the tent and bent over him, he did not know her. He kept shouting her name, and then tried to get up, and it took all her strength to hold him down. She spoke softly to him. Her voice seemed to reach into the darkened chambers of his mind; for he ceased to struggle and lay quiet again.
She did not know what else she could do to help him, and she rose and looked down on his handsome face with troubled eyes. Her foster-mother would have said that he was possessed of a devil, and she would have made a magic to cast it out. But long ago something deep in Sheena's nature had rebelled against the darker practices of her people. She had faith in their simple remedies, because she had seen them heal; but she had no faith in witchcraft, because too often she had seen it fail. And besides, Ebid Ela had taught her many a fraudulent trick.
On the following day at sundown, as before, she heard the drum again; but she was too concerned over Rick to be more than vaguely aware of it. It spoke again on the third day, and again the Abama villages gave ear in silence. No answering call, no clue to the message the great drum cried out to the rim of the horizon. And it flashed into her mind that the drummer must be using some fetish-code, known only to the witchdoctors.
Minutes later when she went into the tent it was to look deeply into the gray eyes of Rick. They were very bright, and it was not only the effects of his fever that made them so; for he lifted himself on his elbow, and the slow smile came to his lips.
"It's been a long trek—mbali sana, sana!" he said in Swahili. "But I did fight my way through all those black devils. I did get through to you."
"Truly," she said softly. "It was a hard fight, and now you must rest."
He passed his hand over his eyes. "A little dizzy yet," he muttered; then: "You did not send your Abamas against me, Sheena?"
"No—no!" She was startled into a too vehement denial.
"Ah" His eyes probed her. "But you knew I was coming, the drums would tell you that You came to meet me, Sheena!"
"I have not said so! And you must go back to the coast when you are well again."
He made as if to rise, then fell back with a sharp intake of breath. In a moment she was on her knees beside him. "Be still! Be still!" she pleaded. His hand wound her hair into a golden twist, and drew her lips down to his. His weakness was his strength. She dared not pull away for fear of hurting him, and it was neither unpleasant, nor dangerous to yield just for a moment when there was no strength in him.
"I came a long way for this," he said at last, and sank back on his pillow. She stayed with him until he fell asleep, a smile still on his lips, his breathing deep and regular.
On the following morning he ate all that she gave him, and begged for more. When he had eaten enough for two men he sat up on the cot, pressing his head between the palms of his hands.
"No pain," he announced with a grin. "Good solid bone clean through."
"You remember what happened now?"
He was silent for a moment, frowning slightly; then: "Yes," he said. "My boys, six Lobitos, were cooking the evening meal. I was on this cot, and a drum—a big drum—was talking somewhere back in the jungle. I was nearly asleep, and it was some time later when I became aware of the quiet. The boys were not jabbering as usual. I went out, and there was not a man in sight. I shouted. Got no answer, and so I fired a few shots into the air. And then those fellows jumped me from behind. My gun was knocked from my hand, and they were all around me. The next thing I remember is seeing you, and I thought—"
"They were Kalundas, I think," she interposed. "One of them left this behind him." She drew the knife from her waist band and handed it to him with an unflattering comment on the artist's ability to carve trees.
"They are not trees," he said, after turning the ivory handle in his hand for some time. "It is a very big canoe, perhaps big enough to hold all the warriors Ekoti could muster. And from these poles many dotis of cloth were hung so that when the wind was blowing it would move through the water. See, one of the men wears a crown, and this buck is called "unicorn" in the speech of my people.
And it tells us that this ivory was not carved by a Bantu craftsman. The knife is old, three times as old as I am, I think."
"Then the man must have traded for it at the coast," she said with quick comprehension," and it can tell us nothing about them."
"True," he agreed. Then he leaned toward her and asked: "What brought you here, so far from Ekoti's village, Sheena?"
She saw the tell-tale gleam in his eyes, and quickly stepped out of his reach. "I came," she told him coldly. "That is enough for you to know. And as I have said, you must go back to the coast."
"I like it here," he said.
The Jungle Queen was not used to defiance, and she sensed that there was much of that behind his slow smile, and a hint at something else, too. Doubtless, he was remembering the moment when she had yielded to his weakness—thinking, perhaps, that the weakness was hers, and that he could have his way with her again.
"There must be an end to this folly," she said angrily. "If you will not go willingly, then Ekoti will take you down river. I have spoken!" And with that, she left him.
Rick let her go without a word of protest. He was a wiser man than when he had first come up the Kwango, nearly eight months ago. And most of that time he'd spent searching the old records at Benguela in a vain attempt to lift the veil of mystery which shrouded this lovely girl whose intelligence was of the highest order, but whose knowledge of the world outside her jungles would scarcely equal that of a five-year-old white child. But, though his researches had yielded no clue as to Sheena's identity, he had uncovered much concerning the Abamas that had given him food for thought.
According to record, the Abamas had fled the terrors of Chaka's bloody rule nearly seventy years ago, and had trekked north under the leadership of Yamo Galagi. Unlike the Zulu, Dingaan, Moselekatse and other generals, this chief was accustomed to lead his impis in person, and his march along the higher reaches of the Zambesi had been an Odyssey of battles, privations and sudden changes of fortune. Nevertheless, he had finally succeeded in overcoming all opposition, and the capture of countless herds of cattle had enabled his people to resume their pastoral life on the lush veldt between the watershed of the Zambesi and the Congo.
Then, Yamo Galagi, a born leader of men and one of the strongest personalities in African history, turned his attention to the organization of his kingdom, and ultimately pushed its boundaries across the north-flowing tributaries of the Congo as far as the Cuanza.
His government had been despotic, ruthless and cruel, but strong and efficient. From his capital, Massumba, the Great Encampment, his caravans had worked their way down to the Portuguese port of Benguela. At the height of his power he had commanded no less than three thousand warriors armed with flint-lock muskets, and three times as many bowmen. Once he had visited the court of the Portuguese king at Lisbon; and, thereafter, the chronicles styled him, Dom Joao da Silva, Count of Lunda. But some obscure quarrel had brought the black nobleman to rebellion against his overlord. He swore that he would drive the Portuguese into the sea, and he might well have succeeded had not a bullet put an end to his bloody career before the wall of Sao Salvador.
Upon the death of its strong man the Lunda kingdom, essentially feudal in character, had quickly broken up into warring fractions. But Yamo Galagi had inaugurated a Golden Age, and the Bantu had not forgotten him. His name lived in tradition and fable. He was a truly admirable man, they said. A man So brave and of such infallible cruelty that a command beaten out on his great drum was speedily fulfilled. But the drum spoke no more now—for who should beat the drum of so great a man? Surely his hand would shrivel and become the hand of a dead man. And at the voice of the drum so many would remember and grieve. Or, perchance, their hearts would grow strong again, for did not the Old Ones whisper among themselves that when the drum was heard again it would be the ghost-voice of the Galagi calling his warriors to battle and the Bantu to greatness?
And to this day Portuguese governors kept their ears tuned to such talk. More than one of them had spent much treasure and not a little blood in vain attempts to get possession of Yamo Galagi's drum. Ever present in their minds was the fear that some aspiring chieftain, less superstitious than his fellows, might unearth the fabulous drum, or a working facsimile thereof, and fill the jungles with its seditious clamor.
And there was a feature of the constitution of the old, Lunda kingdom that held peculiar interest for Rick. It was the queen-consort, the Mateyenda. The odd part about this female ruler was that she was not the king's wife, but a member of the royal line possessing her own court and her own income. Moreover she had the power of deciding the election of a new Galagi, as the petty chiefs who now held all that was left of the Lunda kingdom were now called. It appeared that she was allowed to marry, but her husbands were called "wives", and, generally speaking, had no influence at all. Thus the kingdom had had two heads in existence at one time which had been neither mutually exclusive, nor in mutual hostility.
From what Sheena had told him of her past, Rick reasoned that Ebid Ela had at one time been Mateyenda of the Lunda kingdom, and that the old woman had bequeathed her high office to the white foster-child she had cared for from infancy. This would account for the extraordinary influence Sheena had over the Abama clans.
Thinking about it all, Rick had come to a better understanding of what he was up against in the lovely person of Sheena. But it had not had the effect of cooling his ardour, or of weakening his determination to take the girl back to the coast with him someday. He was merely willing to coneede that it would take longer than he had anticipated when the idea had first occured to him. Though usually he walked where the angels feared to tread he could be as timid as a dik-dik when caution was indicated, and he had lived among Africans long enough to know that it was wise to speak softly in the presence of their gods.
"Take it slow and easy, young feller, he counseled himself. "She is as wild as a cage full of cheetahs, and twice as dangerous. Just let her get used to seeing you around. It might take ten years but it'll be worth it."
There was no fresh meat in the camp, and before sunrise Sheena was ghosting along the game trails that threaded the forest, and by sunup she was hack in the camp with a fat bush-buck. The morning air was bland with the odor of roasting meat when Rick came out of the tent to sit on his heels on the other side of the fire. She gave him a sidelong look and asked:
"Your head is better now?"
"As good as new. And now it Is in my heart to say—"
"What is in your heart does not trouble me," she checked him quickly. "What is in your head does. Tomorrow I leave this place. When do you start downriver?"
"Too much for one man to carry," he said. "I have no porters."
"I have not forgotten that when a white Bwana treks he must have his servants to cut a path for him," she said with gentle derison. "You will have porters, never doubt it. And they will see to it that their Bwana does not mistake his direction."
"Sheena must he obeyed," he said with a faint smile. And she gave him a sharp look. Quiet submission was not what she had expected. It was not in his nature, and she felt uneasy. Then it flashed into her mind that he might not be as well as he said he was. She smiled and said:
"You would do well to rest here until the moon changes."
"Six day's grace, eh?" said he.
To Be Continued...

The Zayat Kiss

In honor of the announcement that a new Fu Manchu novel will be published later this year.
"The Zayat Kiss" by Sax Rohmer



"A GENTLEMAN TO SEE YOU, DOCTOR." From across the common a clock sounded the half hour. "Ten-thirty !" I said. "A late visitor. Show him up, if you please." I pushed my writing aside and tilted the lamp shade as footsteps sounded on the landing. The next moment I had jumped to my feet, for a tall, lean man, with his square-cut, clean-shaven face sun baked to the hue of coffee, entered and extended both hands with a cry: "Good old Petrie! Didn't expect me, I'll swear!" It was Nayland Smith, whom I had thought to be in Burma! "Smith," I said, and gripped his hands hard, "this is a delightful surprise! Whatever—however—" "Excuse me, Petrie!" he broke in. "Don't put it down to the sun!" And he put out the lamp, plunging the room into darkness. I was too surprised to speak. "No doubt you will think me mad," he continued, and dimly I could see him at the window, peering out into the road, but before you are many hours older you will know that I have good reason to be cautious. Ah, nothing suspicious! Perhaps I am first this time." And stepping back to the writing table, he relighted the lamp. "Mysterious enough for you?" he laughed, and glanced at my unfinished MS. "A story, eh? From which I gather that the district is beastly healthy—what, Petrie? Well, I can put some material in your way that, if sheer uncanny mystery is a marketable commodity, ought to make you independent of influenza and broken legs and shattered nerves and all the rest." I surveyed him doubtfully, but there was nothing in his appearance to justify me in supposing him to suffer from delusions. His eyes were too bright, certainly, and a hardness now had crept over his face. I got out the whisky and siphon, saying: "You have taken your leave early?" "I am not on leave," he replied, and slowly filled his pipe. "I am on duty." "On duty!" I exclaimed. "What, are you moved to London, or something?" "I have got a roving commission, Petrie, and it doesn't rest with me where I am to-day, nor where I shall be to-morrow." There was something ominous in the words, and putting down my glass, I faced round and looked him squarely in the eyes. "Out with it!" I said. "What is it all about?" Smith suddenly stood up and stripped off his coat. Rolling back his left shirt sleeve he revealed a wicked-looking wound in the fleshy part of the forearm. It was quite healed, but curiously striated for an inch or so around. "Ever seen one like it?" he asked. "Not exactly," I confessed. "It appears to have been deeply cauterized." "Right! Very deeply! A barb steeped in the venom of a hamadryad went in there!" A shudder I could not repress ran through me at mention of that most deadly of all the reptiles of the East. "There's only one treatment," he continued, rolling his sleeve down again, "and that's with a sharp knife, a match, and a broken cartridge. I lay on my back raving for three days afterward in a forest that stank with malaria, but I should have been lying there now if I had hesitated. Here's the point. It was not an accident!" "What do you mean?" "I mean that it was a deliberate attempt on my life, and I am hard upon the tracks of the man who extracted that venom—patiently, drop by drop—from the poison glands of the snake, who prepared the arrow, and who caused it to be shot at me." "What fiend is this?" "A fiend who, unless my calculations are at fault, is now in London, and who regularly wars with pleasant weapons of that kind. Petrie, I have traveled from Burma not in the interest of the British Government merely, but in the interests of the entire white race, and I honestly believe—though I pray I may be wrong—that its survival depends largely upon the success of my mission." To say that I was perplexed conveys no idea of the mental chaos created by these extraordinary statements, for into my humdrum suburban life Nayland Smith had brought fantasy of the wildest. I did not know what to think, what to believe. "I am wasting precious time!" he rapped decisively, and, draining his glass, he stood up. "I came straight to you because you are the only man I dare to trust. Except the big chief at headquarters, you are the only person in England, I hope, who knows that Nayland Smith has quitted Burma. I must have some one with me, Petrie, all the time—it's imperative! Can you put me up here, and spare a few days to the strangest business, I promise you, that ever was recorded in fact or fiction?" I agreed readily enough, for, unfortunately, my professional dudes were not onerous. "Good man!" he cried, wringing my hand in his impetuous way. "We start now." "What, to-night?" "To-night! I had thought of turning in, I must admit. I have not dared to sleep for forty-eight hours, except in fifteen-minute stretches. But there is one move that must be made to-night and immediately. I must warn Sir Crichton Davey." "Sir Crichton Davey—of the India—" "Petrie, he is a doomed man! Unless he follows my instructions without question, without hesitation—before Heaven, nothing can save him! I do not know when the blow will fall, how it will fall, nor from whence, but I know that my first duty is to warn him. Let us walk down to the corner of the common and get a taxi." * "What's this?" muttered my friend hoarsely. Constables were moving on a little crowd of carious idlers who pressed about the steps of Sir Crichton Davy's house and sought to peer in at the open door. Without waiting for the cab to draw up to the curb, Nayland Smith recklessly leaped out, and I followed closely at his heels. "What has happened?" he demanded breathlessly of a constable. The latter glanced at him doubtfully, but something in his voice and bearing commanded respect. "Sir Crichton Davey has been killed, sir." Smith lurched back as though he had received a physical blow, and clutched my shoulder convulsively. Beneath the heavy tan his face had blanched, and his eyes were set in a stare of horror. "My God!" he whispered. "Just too late!" * With clenched fists he turned and, pressing through the group of loungers, bounded up the steps. In the hall a man who unmistakably was a Scotland Yard official stood talking to a footman. Other members of the household were moving about, more or less aimlessly, and the chilly hand of, King Fear had touched one and all, for, as they came and went, they glanced ever over their shoulders, as if each shadow cloaked a menace, and listened, as it seemed, for some sound which they dreaded to hear. Smith strode up to the detective and showed him a card, upon glancing at which the Scotland Yard man said something in a low voice, and, nodding, touched his hat to Smith in a respectful manner. A few brief questions and answers, and, in gloomy silence, we followed the detective up the heavily carpeted stair, along a corridor lined with pictures and busts, and into a large library. A group of people were in this room, and one, in whom I recognized Chalmers Cleeve of Harley Street, was bending over a motionless form stretched upon a couch. Another door communicated with a small study, and through the opening I could see a man on all fours examining the carpet. The uncomfortable sense of hush, the group about the physician, the bizarre figure crawling, beetlelike, across the inner room, and the grim hub, around which all this ominous activity turned, made up a scene that etched itself indelibly on my mind. As we entered. Dr. Cleeve straightened himself, frowning thoughtfully. "Frankly, I do not care to venture any opinion at present regarding the immediate cause of death," he said. "Sir Crichton was addicted to cocaine, but there are indications which are not in accordance with cocaine poisoning. I fear that only a post-mortem can establish the facts—if," he added, "we ever arrive at them. A most mysterious case!" Smith stepping forward and engaging the famous pathologist in conversation, I seized the opportunity to examine Sir Crichton's body. The dead man was in evening dress, but wore an old smoking jacket. He had been of spare but hardy build, with thin, aquiline features, which now were oddly puffy, as were his clenched hands. I pushed back his sleeve and saw the marks of the hypodermic syringe upon his left arm. Quite mechanically I turned my attention to the right arm. It was unscarred, but on the back of the hand was a faint red mark, not unlike the imprint of painted lips. I examined it closely, and even tried to rub it off, but it evidently was caused by some morbid process of local inflammation if it were not a birthmark. Turning to a pale young man whom I had understood to be Sir Crichton's private secretary, I drew his attention to this mark and inquired if it were constitutional. "It is not, sir," answered Dr. Cleeve, overhearing my question. "I have already made that inquiry. Does it suggest anything to your mind? I must confess that it afforded me no assistance." "Nothing," I replied. "It is most curious." "Excuse me, Mr. Burboyne," said Smith, now turning to the secretary, "but Inspector Weymouth will tell you that I act with authority. I understand that Sir Crichton was—seized with illness in his study?" "Yes, at half-past ten. I was working here in the library and he inside, as was our custom." "The communicating door was kept closed?" "Yes, always. It was open for a minute or less about ten-twenty-five, when a message came for Sir Crichton. I took it in to him, and he then seemed in his usual health." "What was the message?" "I could not say. It was brought by a district messenger, and he placed it beside him on the table. It is there now, no doubt." "And at half-past ten?" "Sir Crichton suddenly burst open the door and threw himself, with a scream, into the library. I ran to him, but he waved me back. His eyes were glaring horribly. I had just reached his side when he fell, writhing, upon the floor. He seemed past speech, but as I raised him and laid him upon the couch he gasped something that sounded like 'The red hand!' Before I could get to the bell or telephone he was dead!" Mr. Burboyne's voice shook as he spoke the words, and Smith seemed to find this evidence confusing. "You do not think he referred to the mark on his hand?" "I think not. From the direction of his last glance I feel sure he referred to something in the study." "What did you do?" "Having summoned the servants, I ran into the study. But there was nothing unusual to be seen. The windows were closed and fastened. He worked with closed windows in the hottest weather. There is no other door, for the study occupies the end of a narrow wing, so that no one could possibly have gained access to it while I was in the library unseen by me. Had some one concealed himself in the study earlier in the evening—and I am convinced that it offers no hiding place—he could only have come out again by passing through here." Nayland Smith tugged at the lobe of his left ear, as was his habit when meditating. "You had been at work here in this way for some time?" "Yes. Sir Crichton was preparing an important book." "Had anything unusual occurred prior to this evening?" "Yes," said Mr. Burboyne with evident perplexity, "though I attached no importance to it at the time. Three nights ago Sir Crichton came out to me and appeared very nervous; but at times his nerves—you know? Well, on this occasion he asked me to search the study. He had an idea that something was concealed there." "Something or some one?" "'Something' was the word he used. I searched, but fruitlessly, and he seemed quite satisfied and returned to his work." "Thank you, Mr. Burboyne. My friend and I would like a few minutes private investigation in the study."(End Chapter 1) Sir Crichton Davey's study was a small one, and a glance sufficed to show that, as the secretary had said, it offered no hiding place. It was heavily carpeted, and overfull of Burmese and Chinese ornaments and curios, and upon the mantelpiece stood several framed photographs which showed this to be the sanctum of a wealthy bachelor who was no misogynist. A map of the Indian Empire occupied the larger part of one wall. The grate was empty, for the weather was extremely warm, and a green-shaded lamp on the littered writing table afforded the only light. The air was stale, for both windows were closed and fastened. Smith immediately pounced upon a large, square envelope that lay beside the blotting pad. Sir Crichton had not even troubled to open it, but my friend did so. It contained a blank sheet of paper! "Smell!" he directed, handing the letter to me. I raised it to my nostrils. It was scented with some pungent perfume. "What is it?" I asked. "It is a rather rare essential oil," was the reply, "which I have met with before, though never in Europe. I begin to understand, Petrie." He tilted the lamp shade and made a close examination of the scraps of paper, matches, and other debris that lay in the grate and on the hearth. I took up a copper vase from the mantelpiece, and was examining it curiously when he turned, a strange expression on his face. "Put that back, old man," he said quietly. Much surprised, I did as he directed. "Don't touch anything in the room. It may be dangerous." Something in the tone of his voice chilled me, and I hastily replaced the vase and stood by the door of the study, watching him search methodically every inch of the room—behind the books, in all the ornaments, in table drawers, in cupboards, on shelves. "That will do," he said at last. "There is nothing here and I have no time to search further." We returned to the library. "Inspector Weymouth," said my friend, "I have a particular reason for asking that Sir Crichton's body be removed from this room at once and the library locked. Let no one be admitted on any pretense whatever until you hear from me." It spoke volumes for the mysterious credentials borne by my friend that the man from Scotland Yard accepted his orders without demur, and, after a brief chat with Mr. Burboyne, Smith passed briskly downstairs. In the hall a man who looked like a groom out of livery was waiting. "Are you Wills?" asked Smith. "Yes, sir." "It was you who heard a cry of some kind at the rear of the house about the time of Sir Crichton's death?" "Yes, sir. I was locking the garage door, and, happening to look up at the window of Sir Crichton's study, I saw him jump out of his chair. Where he used to sit at his writing, sir, you could see his shadow on the blind. Next minute I heard a call out in the lane." "What kind of call?" The man whom the uncanny happening clearly had frightened seemed puzzled for a suitable description. "A sort of wail, sir," he said at last. "I never heard anything like it before and don't want to again." "Like this?" inquired Smith, and he littered a low, wailing cry, impossible to describe. "The same, sir, I think," Wills said, "but much louder." "That will do," said Smith, and I thought I detected a note of triumph in his voice. "But stay! Take us through to the back of the house." The man bowed and led the way, so that shortly we found ourselves in a small, paved courtyard. It was a perfect summer's night, and the deep blue vault above was jeweled with myriads of starry points. "Up yonder are the study windows, sir. Over that wall on your left is the back lane from which the cry came, and beyond is Regent's Park." "Are the study windows visible from there?" "Oh, yes, sir." "Who occupies the adjoining house?" "Major General Platt-Houston, sir, but the family is out of town." "Those iron stairs are a means of communication between the domestic offices and the servants' quarters, I take it?" "Yes, sir." "Then send some one to make my business known to the Major General's housekeeper; I want to examine those stairs." Singular though my friend's proceedings appeared to me, I had ceased to wonder at anything. Since Nayland Smith's arrival at my rooms I seemed to have been moving through the fitful phases of a nightmare. My friend's account of how he came by the wound in his arm; the scene on our arrival at the house of Sir Crichton Davey; the secretary's story of the dying man's cry. "The red hand!"; the hidden perils of the study; the wail in the lane—all were fitter incidents of delirium than of sane reality. So, when a white-faced butler made us known to a nervous old lady who proved to be the housekeeper of the next-door residence, I was not surprised at Smith's saying: "Lounge up and down outside, Petrie. Everyone has cleared off now. It is getting late. Keep your eyes open and be on your guard. I thought I had the start, but he is here before me, and, what is worse, he probably knows by now that I am here, too." With which he entered the house and left me out in the square, with leisure to think, to try to understand. The crowd which usually haunts the scene of a sensational crime had been cleared away, and it had been circulated that Sir Crichton had died from natural causes. The intense heat having driven most of the residents out of town, practically I had the square to myself, and I gave myself up to a brief consideration of the mystery in which I so suddenly had found myself involved. By what agency had Sir Crichton met his death? Did Nayland Smith know? I rather suspected that he did. What was the hidden significance of die perfumed envelope? Who was that mysterious personage whom Smith so evidently dreaded, who had attempted his life, who presumably had murdered Sir Crichton? Sir Crichton Davey, during the time that he had held office in India and during his long term of service at home, had earned the good will of all, British and native alike. Who was his secret enemy? Something touched me lightly on the shoulder. I turned, with my heart fluttering like a child's. This night's work had imposed a severe strain even upon my callous nerves. A girl wrapped in a hooded opera cloak stood at my elbow, and, as she glanced up at me, I thought that I never had seen a face so seductively lovely nor of so unusual a type. With the skin of a perfect blonde, she had eyes and lashes as black as a Creole's, which, together with her full red lips, told me that this beautiful stranger, whose touch had so startled me, was not a child of our northern shores. "Forgive me," she said, speaking with an odd, pretty accent, and laying a slim hand with jeweled fingers confidingly upon my arm, "if I startled you. But—is it true that Sir Crichton Davey has been murdered?" I looked into her big, questioning eyes, a harsh suspicion laboring in my mind, but could read nothing in their mysterious depths—only I wondered anew at my questioner's beauty. The grotesque idea momentarily possessed me that, were the bloom of her. red lips due to art and not to nature, their kiss would leave—though not indelibly—just such a mark as I had seen upon the dead man's hand. But I dismissed the fantastic notion as bred of the night's horrors, and worthy only of a medieval legend. No doubt she was some friend or acquaintance of Sir Crichton's who lived close by. "I cannot say that he has been murdered," I replied, acting upon the latter supposition and seeking to tell her what she asked as gently as possible. "But he is—" "Dead?" I nodded. She closed her eyes and uttered a low, moaning sound, swaying dizzily. Thinking she was about to swoon, I threw my arm round her shoulders to support her, but she smiled sadly and pushed me gently away. "I am quite well, thank you," she said. "You are certain? Let me walk with you until you feel quite sure of yourself." She shook her head, flashed a rapid glance at me with her beautiful eyes, and looked away in a sort of sorrowful embarrassment, for which I was entirely at a loss to account. Suddenly she resumed: "I cannot let my name be mentioned in this dreadful matter, but—1 think I have some information—for the police. Will you give this to—whomever you think proper?" She handed me a sealed envelope, again met my eyes with one of her dazzling glances, and hurried away. She had gone no more than ten or twelve yards, and I still was standing bewildered, watching her graceful, retreating figure, when she turned abruptly and came back. Without looking directly at me, but alternately glancing toward a distant corner of the square and toward the house of Major General Platt-Houston, she made the following extraordinary request: "If you would do me a very great service, for which I always would be grateful"—she glanced at me with passionate intentness—"when you have given my message to the proper person, leave him and do not go near him any more to-night!" Before I could find words to reply she gathered up her cloak and ran. Before I could determine whether or not to follow her (for her words had aroused anew all my worst suspicions she had disappeared! I heard the whirr of a restarted motor at no great distance, and in the instant that Nayland Smith came running down the steps I knew that I had nodded at my post. "Smith!" I cried as he joined me, "tell me what we must do!" And rapidly I acquainted him with the incident. My friend looked very grave; then a grim smile crept round his lips. "She was a big card to play," he said; "but he did not know that I held one to beat it." "What! You know this girl? Who is she?" "She is one of the finest weapons in the enemy's armory, Petrie. But a woman is a two-edged sword, and treacherous. To our great good fortune, she has formed a sudden predilection, characteristically Oriental, for yourself. Oh, you may smile, but it is evident. She was employed to get this letter placed in my hands. Give it to me." I did so. "She has succeeded. Smell." He held the envelope under my nose, and, with a sudden sense of nausea, I recognized the strange perfume. "You know what this presaged in Sir Crichton's case? Can you doubt any longer? She did not want you to share my fate, Petrie." "Smith," I said unsteadily, "I have followed your lead blindly in this horrible business and have not pressed for an explanation, but I must insist before I go one step farther upon knowing what it all means." "Just a few steps farther," he rejoined. "As far as a cab. We are hardly safe here. Oh, you need not fear shot or knives. The man whose servants are watching us now scorns to employ such clumsy tell-tale weapons." * "Pull up the window on your side, Petrie, and look oat behind. Good! We've started." The cab moved off with a metallic jerk, and I turned and looked back through the little window in the rear. "Some one has got into another cab. It is following ours, I think." Nayland Smith lay back and laughed unmirthfully. "Petrie," he said, "if I escape alive from this business I shall know that I bear a charmed life." I made no reply as he pulled out the dilapidated pouch and filled his pipe. "You have asked me to explain matters," he continued, "and I will do so to the best of my ability. You no doubt wonder why a servant of the British Government, lately stationed in Burma, suddenly appears in London in the character of a detective. I am here, Petrie—and I bear credentials from the very highest sources—because, quite by accident, I came upon a clue. Following it up in the ordinary course of routine, I obtained evidence of the existence and malignant activity of a certain man. At the present stage of the case I should not be justified in terming him the emissary of an Eastern power, but I may say that representations are shortly to be made to that power's ambassador in London." He paused and glanced back toward the pursuing cab. "There is little to fear until we arrive home," he said calmly. "Afterward there is much. To continue; This man, whether a fanatic or a duly appointed agent, is, unquestionably, the most malign and formidable personality existing in the known world to-day. He is a linguist who speaks with almost equal facility in any of the civilized languages and in most of the barbaric. He is an adept in all the arts and sciences which a great university could teach him. He also is an adept in certain obscure arts and sciences which no university of to-day can teach. He has the brains of any three men of genius. Petrie, he is a mental giant." "You amaze me!" I said. "As to his mission among men. Why did M. Jules Fumeaux fall dead in a Paris opera house? Because of heart failure? No! Because his last speech had shown that he held the key to the secret of Tongking. What became of the Grand Duke Stanislaus? Elopement? Suicide? Nothing of the kind. He alone was fully alive to Russia's growing peril. He alone knew the truth about Mongolia. Why was Sir Crichton Davey murdered? Because had the work he was engaged upon ever seen the light, it would have shown him to be die only living Englishman who understood the importance of the Tibetan frontiers. Is there a man who would arouse the West to a sense of the awakening of the East, that the millions only await their leader? He will die. And this is only one phase of the devilish campaign. The others I can merely surmise." "But, Smith, this is almost incredible! What perverted genius controls this awful secret movement?" "Imagine a person, tall, lean, and feline, high shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present. Imagine that awful being and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man."(End Chapter 2) I sank into an armchair in my rooms and gulped down a strong peg of brandy. "We have been followed here," I said. "Why did you make no attempt to throw the pursuers off the track, to have them intercepted?" Smith laughed. "Useless, in the first place. Wherever we went he would find us. And of what use to arrest his creatures? We could prove nothing against them. Further, it is evident that an attempt is to be made upon my life to-night—and by the same means that proved so successful in the case of poor Sir Crichton." His square jaw grew truculently prominent, and he leaped stormily to his feet, shaking his clenched fists toward the window. "The villain!" he cried. "The fiendishly clever villain! I suspected that Sir Crichton was next, and I was right. But I came too late, Petrie! That hits me hard, old man. To think that I knew and yet failed to save him!" He resumed his seat, smoking hard. "Fu-Manchu has made the blunder common to all men of unusual genius," he said. "He has underrated his adversary. He has not given me credit for perceiving the meaning of the scented messages. He has thrown away one powerful weapon—to get such a message into my hands—and he thinks that, once safe within doors, I shall sleep, unsuspecting, and die as Sir Crichton died. But without the indiscretion of your charming friend I should have known what to expect when I received her 'information,' which, by the way, consists of a blank sheet of paper." "Smith," I broke in, "who is she?" "She is either Fu-Manchu's daughter, his wife, or his slave. I am inclined to believe the latter, for she has no will but his will, except"—with a quizzical glance—"in a certain instance." "How can you jest with some awful thing—Heaven knows what—hanging over your head? What is the meaning of these perfumed envelopes? How did Sir Crichton die?" "He died of the Zayat Kiss. Ask me what that is and I reply 'I do not know.' The zayats are the Burmese caravansaries, or rest houses. Along a certain route—upon which I set eyes for the first and only time upon Dr. Fu-Manchu—travelers who use them sometimes die as Sir Crichton died, with nothing to show the cause of death but a little mark upon the neck, face, or limb, which has earned in those parts the title of the 'Zayat Kiss.' The rest houses along that route are shunned now. I have my theory, and I hope to prove it to-night if I live. This was my principal reason for not enlightening Dr. Cleeve. Even walls have ears where Fu-Manchu is concerned. I wanted an opportunity to study the Zayat Kiss in operation, and I shall have one." "But the scented envelopes?" "In the swampy forests of the district I have referred to a rare species of orchid, almost green and with a peculiar scent, is sometimes met with. I recognized the heavy perfume at once. I take it that the thing which kills the travelers is attracted by this orchid. You will notice that the perfume clings to whatever it touches. I doubt if it can be washed off in the ordinary way. After at least one unsuccessful attempt to kill Sir Crichton—you recall that he thought there was something concealed in his study on a previous occasion?—Fu-Manchu hit upon the perfumed envelopes. He may have a supply of these green orchids in his possession—possibly to feed the creature." "What creature? How could any creature have got into Sir Crichton's room to-night?" "You no doubt observed that I examined the grate of the study. I found a fair quantity of fallen soot. I at once assumed, since it appeared to be the only means of entrance, that something had been dropped down; and I took it for granted that the thing, whatever it was, must still be concealed either in the study or in the library. But when I had obtained the evidence of the groom. Wills, I perceived that the cry from the lane or from the park was a signal. I noted that the movements of anyone seated at the study table were visible, in shadow, on the blind, and that the study occupied the corner of a two-storied wing and, therefore, had a short chimney. What did the signal mean? That Sir Crichton had leaped up from his chair and either had received the Zayat Kiss or had seen the thing which some one on the roof had lowered down the straight chimney. It was the signal to withdraw that deadly thing. By means of the iron stairway at the rear of Major General Platt-Houston's I quite easily gained access to the roof above Sir Crichton's study—and I found this." Out from his pocket Nayland Smith drew a tangled piece of silk, mixed up with which were a brass ring and a number of unusually large-sized split shot, nipped on in the manner usual on a fishing line. "My theory proven," he resumed. "Not anticipating a search on the roof, they had been careless. This was to weight the line and to prevent the creature's clinging to the walls of the chimney. Directly it had dropped in the grate, however, by means of this ring I assume that the weighted line was withdrawn, and the thing was only held by a slender thread, which sufficed, though, to draw it back again when it had done its work. It might have got tangled, of coarse, but they reckoned on its making straight up the carved leg of the writing table for the prepared envelope. From there to the hand of Sir Crichton—which, from having touched the envelope, would also be scented with the perfume—was a certain move." "My God! How horrible!" I exclaimed, and glanced apprehensively into the dusky shadows of the room. "What is your theory respecting this creature—what shape, what color?" "It is something that moves rapidly and silently. I have observed that the rear of this house is ivy covered right up to and above your bedroom. Let us make ostentatious preparations to retire, and I think we may rely upon Fu-Manchu's servants to attempt my removal, at any rate—if not yours." "But, my dear fellow, it is a climb of thirty-five feet at the very least!" "You remember the cry in the back lane? It suggested something to me, and I tested my idea—successfully. It was the cry of a dacoit. Oh, dacoity, though quiescent, is by no means extinct. Fu-Manchu has dacoits in his train, and probably it is one who operates the Zayat Kiss, since it was a dacoit who watched the window of the study this evening. To such a man an ivy-covered wall is a grand staircase." * The clock across the common struck two. Having removed all traces of the scent of the orchid from our hands with a solution of ammonia. Smith and I had followed the program laid down. It was an easy matter to reach the rear of the house, by simply climbing a fence, and we did not doubt that, seeing the light go out in the front, our unseen watcher would proceed to the back. The room was a large one, and we had made up my camp bed at one end, stuffing odds and ends under the clothes to lend the appearance of a sleeper, which device we also had adopted in the case of the larger bed. The perfumed envelope lay upon a little coffee table in the center of the floor, and Smith, with an electric pocket lamp, a revolver, and a brassy beside him, sat on cushions in the shadow of the wardrobe. I occupied a post between the windows. The distant clock struck a quarter-past two. A slight breeze stirred the ivy. * Something rose, inch by inch, above the sill of the westerly window. I could see only its shadow, but a sharp, sibilant breath from Smith told me that he, from his post, could see the cause of the shadow. Every nerve in my body seemed to be strung tensely. I was icily cold, expectant, and prepared for whatever horror was upon us. The shadow became stationary. The dacoit was studying the interior of the room. Then it suddenly lengthened, and, craning my neck to the left, I saw a lithe, black-clad form, surmounted by a yellow face, sketchy in the moonlight, pressed against the window panes! One thin, brown hand appeared over the edge of the lowered sash, which it grasped, and then another. The man made absolutely no sound whatever. The second hand disappeared—and reappeared. It held a small square box. There was a very faint click. The dacoit swung himself below the window with the agility of an ape as, with a dull, sickening thud, something dropped upon the carpet! "Stand still, for your life!" came Smith's voice, high pitched. A beam of white light leaped out across the room and played fully upon the coffee table in the center. Prepared as I was for something horrible, I know that I paled at sight of the thing that was running round the edge of the envelope. It was an insect, full six inches long, and of a vivid, venomous red color! It had something of the appearance of a great ant, with its long, quivering antennae and its febrile, horrible vitality; but it was proportionately longer of body and smaller of head, and had numberless rapidly moving legs. In short, it was a giant centipede, apparently of the Scolopendra group, but of a form quite new to me. These things I realized in one breathless instant; in the next—Smith had dashed the thing's poisonous life out with one straight, true blow of the golf club! I leaped to the window and threw it widely open, feeling a silk thread brush my hand as I did so. A black shape was dropping with incredible agility from branch to branch of the ivy, and without once offering a mark for a revolver shot, it merged into the shadows beneath, the trees of the garden. As I turned and switched on the light Nayland Smith dropped limply into a chair, leaning his head upon his hands. Even that grim courage had been tried sorely. "Never mind the dacoit, Petrie," he said. "Nemesis will know where to find him. We know now what causes the mark of the Zayat Kiss. Therefore science is richer for our first brush with the enemy, and the enemy is poorer-—unless he has any more unclassified centipedes. I understand now something that has been puzzling me since I heard of it—Sir Crichton's stifled cry. When we remember that he was almost past speech, it is reasonable to suppose that his cry was not "The red hand!' but 'The red ant!' Petrie, to think that I failed by less than an hour to save him from such an end!"(End Chapter 3)
The body of a lascar, dressed in the manner usual on the P.& 0. boats, was recovered from the Thames off Tilbury by the river police at 6 a.m. this morning. It is supposed that the man met with an accident in leaving his ship.
Nayland Smith passed me the evening paper and pointed to the above paragraph. "For 'lascar' read 'dacoit,'" he said. "Our last night's visitor, fortunately for us, failed to follow his instructions. Also, he lost the centipede and left a clue behind him. Dr. Fu-Manchu does not overlook such lapses."

A Wasp in a Wig

okay, okay, so its not really pulp fiction, but I'm in a bit of a whimsical mood and don't feel like posting blood and thunder action (I'll be over it by tomorrow). this is notable in that it is the "lost chapter" of Through the Looking Glass, more on it here: http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/alice4.html
"A Wasp in a Wig" by Lewis Carroll

...and she was just going to spring over, when she heard a deep sigh, which seemed to come from the wood behind her.
"There’s somebody very unhappy there," she thought, looking anxiously back to see what was the matter. Something like a very old man (only that his face was more like a wasp) was sitting on the ground, leaning against a tree, all huddled up together, and shivering as if he were very cold.
"I don’t think I can be of any use to him," was Alice’s first thought, as she turned to spring over the brook: - "but I’ll just ask him what’s the matter," she added, checking herself on the very edge. "If I once jump over, everything will change, and then I can’t help him."
So she went back to the Wasp - rather unwillingly, for she was very anxious to be a queen.
"Oh, my old bones, my old bones!" he was grumbling as Alice came up to him.
"It’s rheumatism, I should think," Alice said to herself, and she stooped over him, and said very kindly, "I hope you’re not in much pain?"
The Wasp only shook his shoulders, and turned his head away. "Ah deary me!" he said to himself.
"Can I do anything for you?" Alice went on. "Aren’t you rather cold here?"
"How you go on!" the Wasp said in a peevish tone. "Worrity, Worrity! There never was such a child!"
Alice felt rather offended at this answer, and was very nearly walking on and leaving him, but she thought to herself "Perhaps it’s only pain that makes him so cross." So she tried once more.
"Won’t you let me help you round to the other side? You’ll be out of the cold wind there."
The Wasp took her arm, and let her help him round the tree, but when he got settled down again he only said, as before, "Worrity, worrity! Can’t you leave a body alone?"
"Would you like me to read you a bit of this?" Alice went on, as she picked up a newspaper which had been lying at his feet.
"You may read it if you’ve a mind to," the Wasp said, rather sulkily. "Nobody’s hindering you, that I know of."
So Alice sat down by him, and spread out the paper on her knees, and began. "Latest News. The Exploring Party have made another tour in the Pantry, and have found five new lumps of white sugar, large and in fine condition. In coming back - "
"Any brown sugar?" the Wasp interrupted.
Alice hastily ran her eyes down the paper and said "No. It says nothing about brown."
"No brown sugar!" grumbled the Wasp. "A nice exploring party!"
"In coming back," Alice went on reading, "they found a lake of treacle. The banks of the lake were blue and white, and looked like china. While tasting the treacle, they had a sad accident: two of their party were engulped - "
"Where what?" the Wasp asked in a very cross voice.
"En-gulph-ed," Alice repeated, dividing the word in syllables.
"There’s no such word in the language!" said the Wasp.
"It’s in the newspaper, though," Alice said a little timidly.
"Let’s stop it here!" said the Wasp, fretfully turning away his head.
Alice put down the newspaper. "I’m afraid you’re not well," she said in a soothing tone. "Can’t I do anything for you?"
"It’s all along of the wig," the Wasp said in a much gentler voice.
"Along of the wig?" Alice repeated, quite pleased to find that he was recovering his temper.
"You’d be cross too, if you’d a wig like mine," the Wasp went on. "They jokes, at one. And they worrits one. And then I gets cross. And I gets cold. And I gets under a tree. And I gets a yellow handkerchief. And I ties up my face - as at the present."
Alice looked pityingly at him. "Tying up the face is very good for the toothache," she said.
"And it’s very good for the conceit," added the Wasp.
Alice didn’t catch the word exactly. "Is that a kind of toothache?" she asked.
The Wasp considered a little. "Well, no," he said: "it’s when you hold up your head - so - without bending your neck."
"Oh, you mean stiff-neck," said Alice.
The Wasp said "That’s a new-fangled name. They called it conceit in my time."
"Conceit isn’t a disease at all," Alice remarked.
"It is, though," said the Wasp: "wait till you have it, and then you’ll know. And when you catches it, just try tying a yellow handkerchief round your face. It’ll cure you in no time!"
He untied the handkerchief as he spoke, and Alice looked at his wig in great surprise. It was bright yellow like the handkerchief, and all tangled and tumbled about like a heap of sea-weed. "You could make your wig much neater," she said, "if only you had a comb."
"What, you’re a Bee, are you?" the Wasp said, looking at her with more interest. "And you’ve got a comb. Much honey?"
"It isn’t that kind," Alice hastily explained. "It’s to comb hair with - your wig’s so very rough, you know."
"I’ll tell you how I came to wear it," the Wasp said. "When I was young, you know, my ringlets used to wave - "
A curious idea came into Alice’s head. Almost every one she had met had repeated poetry to her, and she thought she would try if the Wasp couldn’t do it too. "Would you mind saying it in rhyme?" she asked very politely.
"It aint what I’m used to," said the Wasp: "however I’ll try; wait a bit." He was silent for a few moments, and then began again - "When I was young, my ringlets waved And curled and crinkled on my head:And then they said ‘You should be shaved, And wear a yellow wig instead.’ But when I followed their advice, And they had noticed the effect,They said I did not look so niceAs they had ventured to expect. They said it did not fit, and soIt made me look extremely plain: But what was I to do, you know?My ringlets would not grow again. So now that I am old and grey,And all my hair is nearly gone, They take my wig from me and say‘How can you put such rubbish on?’ And still, whenever I appear,They hoot at me and call me ‘Pig!’ And that is why they do it, dear,Because I wear a yellow wig."
"I’m very sorry for you," Alice said heartily: "and I think if your wig fitted a little better, they wouldn’t tease you quite so much."
"Your wig fits very well," the Wasp murmured, looking at her with an expression of admiration: "it’s the shape of your head as does it. Your jaws aint well shaped, though - I should think you couldn’t bite well?"
Alice began with a little scream of laughing, which she turned into a cough as well as she could. At last she managed to say gravely, "I can bite anything I want,"
"Not with a mouth as small as that," the Wasp persisted. "If you was a-fighting, now - could you get hold of the other one by the back of the neck?"
"I’m afraid not," said Alice.
"Well, that’s because your jaws are too short," the Wasp went on: "but the top of your head is nice and round." He took off his own wig as he spoke, and stretched out one claw towards Alice, as if he wished to do the same for her, but she kept out of reach, and would not take the hint. So he went on with his criticisms.
"Then, your eyes - they’re too much in front, no doubt. One would have done as well as two, if you must have them so close - "
Alice did not like having so many personal remarks made on her, and as the Wasp had quite recovered his spirits, and was getting very talkative, she thought she might safely leave him. "I think I must be going on now," she said. "Good-bye."
"Good-bye, and thank-ye," said the Wasp, and Alice tripped down the hill again, quite pleased that she had gone back and given a few minutes to making the poor old creature comfortable.

The Flowering of the Strange Orchid

This time its "The Flowering of the Strange Orchid" by H. G. Wells

The buying of orchids always has in it a certain speculative flavour. You have before you the brown shrivelled lump of tissue, and for the rest you must trust your judgment, or the auctioneer, or your good luck, as your taste may incline. The plant may be moribund or dead, or it may be just a respectable purchase, fair value for your money, or perhaps--for the thing has happened again and again--there slowly unfolds before the delighted eyes of the happy purchaser, day after day, some new variety, some novel richness, a strange twist of the labellum, or some subtler colouration or unexpected mimicry. Pride, beauty, and profit blossom together on one delicate green spike, and, it may be, even immortality. For the new miracle of nature may stand in need of a new specific name, and what so convenient as that of its discoverer? "John-smithia"! There have been worse names.
It was perhaps the hope of some such happy discovery that made Winter Wedderburn such a frequent attendant at these sales--that hope, and also, maybe, the fact that he had nothing else of the slightest interest to do in the world. He was a shy, lonely, rather ineffectual man, provided with just enough income to keep off the spur of necessity, and not enough nervous energy to make him seek any exacting employments. He might have collected stamps or coins, or translated Horace, or bound books, or invented new species of diatoms. But, as it happened, he grew orchids, and had one ambitious little hothouse.
"I have a fancy," he said over his coffee, "that something is going to happen to me to-day." He spoke--as he moved and thought--slowly.
"Oh, don't say that!" said his housekeeper--who was also his remote cousin. For "something happening" was a euphemism that meant only one thing to her.
"You misunderstand me. I mean nothing unpleasant...though what I do mean I scarcely know.
"To-day," he continued, after a pause, "Peters' are going to sell a batch of plants from the Andamans and the Indies. I shall go up and see what they have. It may be I shall buy something good unawares. That may be it."
He passed his cup for his second cupful of coffee.
"Are these the things collected by that poor young fellow you told me of the other day?" asked his cousin, as she filled his cup.
"Yes," he said, and became meditative over a piece of toast.
"Nothing ever does happen to me," he remarked presently, beginning to think aloud. "I wonder why? Things enough happen to other people. There is Harvey. Only the other week; on Monday he picked up sixpence, on Wednesday his chicks all had the staggers, on Friday his cousin came home from Australia, and on Saturday he broke his ankle. What a whirl of excitement!--compared to me."
"I think I would rather be without so much excitement," said his housekeeper. "It can't be good for you."
"I suppose it's troublesome. Still ... you see, nothing ever happens to me. When I was a little boy I never had accidents. I never fell in love as I grew up. Never married... I wonder how it feels to have something happen to you, something really remarkable.
"That orchid-collector was only thirty-six--twenty years younger than myself--when he died. And he had been married twice and divorced once; he had had malarial fever four times, and once he broke his thigh. He killed a Malay once, and once he was wounded by a poisoned dart. And in the end he was killed by jungle-leeches. It must have all been very troublesome, but then it must have been very interesting, you know--except, perhaps, the leeches."
"I am sure it was not good for him," said the lady with conviction.
"Perhaps not." And then Wedderburn looked at his watch. "Twenty-three minutes past eight. I am going up by the quarter to twelve train, so that there is plenty of time. I think I shall wear my alpaca jacket--it is quite warm enough--and my grey felt hat and brown shoes. I suppose--"
He glanced out of the window at the serene sky and sunlit garden, and then nervously at his cousin's face.
"I think you had better take an umbrella if you are going to London," she said in a voice that admitted of no denial. "There's all between here and the station coming back."
When he returned he was in a state of mild excitement. He had made a purchase. It was rare that he could make up his mind quickly enough to buy, but this time he had done so.
"There are Vandas," he said, "and a Dendrobe and some Palaeonophis." He surveyed his purchases lovingly as he consumed his soup. They were laid out on the spotless tablecloth before him, and he was telling his cousin all about them as he slowly meandered through his dinner. It was his custom to live all his visits to London over again in the evening for her and his own entertainment.
"I knew something would happen to-day. And I have bought all these. Some of them--some of them--I feel sure, do you know, that some of them will be remarkable. I don't know how it is, but I feel just as sure as if some one had told me that some of these will turn out remarkable.
"That one "--he pointed to a shrivelled rhizome--"was not identified. It may be a Palaeonophis--or it may not. It may be a new species, or even a new genus. And it was the last that poor Batten ever collected."
"I don't like the look of it," said his housekeeper. "It's such an ugly shape."
"To me it scarcely seems to have a shape."
"I don't like those things that stick out," said his housekeeper.
"It shall be put away in a pot to-morrow."
"It looks," said the housekeeper, "like a spider shamming dead."
Wedderburn smiled and surveyed the root with his head on one side. "It is certainly not a pretty lump of stuff. But you can never judge of these things from their dry appearance. It may turn out to be a very beautiful orchid indeed. How busy I shall be to-morrow! I must see to-night just exactly what to do with these things, and to-morrow I shall set to work."
"They found poor Batten lying dead, or dying, in a mangrove swamp--I forget which," he began again presently, "with one of these very orchids crushed up under his body. He had been unwell for some days with some kind of native fever, and I suppose he fainted. These mangrove swamps are very unwholesome. Every drop of blood, they say, was taken out of him by the jungle-leeches. It may be that very plant that cost him his life to obtain."
"I think none the better of it for that."
"Men must work though women may weep," said Wedderburn with profound gravity.
"Fancy dying away from every comfort in a nasty swamp! Fancy being ill of fever with nothing to take but chlorodyne and quinine--if men were left to themselves they would live on chlorodyne and quinine--and no one round you but horrible natives! They say the Andaman islanders are most disgusting wretches--and, anyhow, they can scarcely make good nurses, not having the necessary training. And just for people in England to have orchids!"
"I don't suppose it was comfortable, but some men seem to enjoy that kind of thing," said Wedderburn. "Anyhow, the natives of his party were sufficiently civilised to take care of all his collection until his colleague, who was an ornithologist, came back again from the interior; though they could not tell the species of the orchid, and had let it wither. And it makes these things more interesting."
"It makes them disgusting. I should be afraid of some of the malaria clinging to them. And just think, there has been a dead body lying across that ugly thing! I never thought of that before. There! I declare I cannot eat another mouthful of dinner."
"I will take them off the table if you like, and put them in the window-seat. I can see them just as well there."
The next few days he was indeed singularly busy in his steamy little hothouse, fussing about with charcoal, lumps of teak, moss, and all the other mysteries of the orchid cultivator. He considered he was having a wonderfully eventful time. In the evening he would talk about these new orchids to his friends, and over and over again he reverted to his expectation of something strange.
Several of the Vandas and the Dendrobium died under his care, but presently the strange orchid began to show signs of life. He was delighted, and took his housekeeper right away from jam-making to see it at once, directly he made the discovery.
"That is a bud," he said, "and presently there will be a lot of leaves there, and those little things coming out here are aerial rootlets."
"They look to me like little white fingers poking out of the brown," said his housekeeper. "I don't like them."
"Why not?"
"I don't know. They look like fingers trying to get at you. I can't help my likes and dislikes."
"I don't know for certain, but I don't think there are any orchids I know that have aerial rootlets quite like that. It may be my fancy, of course. You see they are a little flattened at the ends."
"I don't like 'em," said his housekeeper, suddenly shivering and turning away. "I know it's very silly of me--and I'm very sorry, particularly as you like the thing so much. But I can't help thinking of that corpse."
"But it may not be that particular plant. That was merely a guess of mine."
His housekeeper shrugged her shoulders. "Anyhow I don't like it," she said.
Wedderburn felt a little hurt at her dislike to the plant. But that did not prevent his talking to her about orchids generally, and this orchid in particular, whenever he felt inclined.
"There are such queer things about orchids," he said one day; "such possibilities of surprises. You know, Darwin studied their fertilisation, and showed that the whole structure of an ordinary orchid flower was contrived in order that moths might carry the pollen from plant to plant. Well, it seems that there are lots of orchids known the flower of which cannot possibly be used for fertilisation in that way. Some of the Cypripediums, for instance; there are no insects known that can possibly fertilise them, and some of them have never been found with seed."
"But how do they form new plants?"
"By runners and tubers, and that kind of outgrowth. That is easily explained. The puzzle is, what are the flowers for?
"Very likely," he added, "my orchid may be something extraordinary in that way. If so I shall study it. I have often thought of making researches as Darwin did. But hitherto I have not found the time, or something else has happened to prevent it. The leaves are beginning to unfold now. I do wish you would come and see them!"
But she said that the orchid-house was so hot it gave her the headache. She had seen the plant once again, and the aerial rootlets, which were now some of them more than a foot long, had unfortunately reminded her of tentacles reaching out after something; and they got into her dreams, growing after her with incredible rapidity. So that she had settled to her entire satisfaction that she would not see that plant again, and Wedderburn had to admire its leaves alone. They were of the ordinary broad form, and a deep glossy green, with splashes and dots of deep red towards the base He knew of no other leaves quite like them. The plant was placed on a low bench near the thermometer, and close by was a simple arrangement by which a tap dripped on the hot-water pipes and kept the air steamy. And he spent his afternoons now with some regularity meditating on the approaching flowering of this strange plant.
And at last the great thing happened. Directly he entered the little glass house he knew that the spike had burst out, although his great Paloeonophis Lowii hid the corner where his new darling stood. There was a new odour in the air, a rich, intensely sweet scent, that overpowered every other in that crowded, steaming little greenhouse.
Directly he noticed this he hurried down to the strange orchid. And, behold! the trailing green spikes bore now three great splashes of blossom, from which this overpowering sweetness proceeded. He stopped before them in an ecstasy of admiration.
The flowers were white, with streaks of golden orange upon the petals; the heavy labellum was coiled into an intricate projection, and a wonderful bluish purple mingled there with the gold. He could see at once that the genus was altogether a new one. And the insufferable scent! How hot the place was! The blossoms swam before his eyes.
He would see if the temperature was right. He made a step towards the thermometer. Suddenly everything appeared unsteady. The bricks on the floor were dancing up and down. Then the white blossoms, the green leaves behind them, the whole greenhouse, seemed to sweep sideways, and then in a curve upward. * * * * *
At half-past four his cousin made the tea, according to their invariable custom. But Wedderburn did not come in for his tea.
"He is worshipping that horrid orchid," she told herself, and waited ten minutes. "His watch must have stopped. I will go and call him."
She went straight to the hothouse, and, opening the door, called his name. There was no reply. She noticed that the air was very close, and loaded with an intense perfume. Then she saw something lying on the bricks between the hot-water pipes.
For a minute, perhaps, she stood motionless.
He was lying, face upward, at the foot of the strange orchid. The tentacle-like aerial rootlets no longer swayed freely in the air, but were crowded together, a tangle of grey ropes, and stretched tight, with their ends closely applied to his chin and neck and hands.
She did not understand. Then she saw from under one of the exultant tentacles upon his cheek there trickled a little thread of blood.
With an inarticulate cry she ran towards him, and tried to pull him away from the leech-like suckers. She snapped two of these tentacles, and their sap dripped red.
Then the overpowering scent of the blossom began to make her head reel. How they clung to him! She tore at the tough ropes, and he and the white inflorescence swam about her. She felt she was fainting, knew she must not. She left him and hastily opened the nearest door, and, after she had panted for a moment in the fresh air, she had a brilliant inspiration. She caught up a flower-pot and smashed in the windows at the end of the greenhouse. Then she re-entered. She tugged now with renewed strength at Wedderburn's motionless body, and brought the strange orchid crashing to the floor. It still clung with the grimmest tenacity to its victim. In a frenzy, she lugged it and him into the open air.
Then she thought of tearing through the sucker rootlets one by one, and in another minute she had released him and was dragging him away from the horror.
He was white and bleeding from a dozen circular patches.
The odd-job man was coming up the garden, amazed at the smashing of glass, and saw her emerge, hauling the inanimate body with red-stained hands. For a moment he thought impossible things.
"Bring some water!" she cried, and her voice dispelled his fancies. When, with unnatural alacrity, he returned with the water, he found her weeping with excitement, and with Wedderburn's head upon her knee, wiping the blood from his face.
"What's the matter?" said Wedderburn, opening his eyes feebly, and closing them again at once.
"Go and tell Annie to come out here to me, and then go for Dr. Haddon at once," she said to the odd-job man so soon as he brought the water; and added, seeing he hesitated, "I will tell you all about it when you come back."
Presently Wedderburn opened his eyes again, and, seeing that he was troubled by the puzzle of his position, she explained to him, "You fainted in the hothouse."
"And the orchid?"
"I will see to that," she said.
Wedderburn had lost a good deal of blood, but beyond that he had suffered no very great injury. They gave him brandy mixed with some pink extract of meat, and carried him upstairs to bed. His housekeeper told her incredible story in fragments to Dr. Haddon. "Come to the orchid-house and see," she said.
The cold outer air was blowing in through the open door, and the sickly perfume was almost dispelled. Most of the torn aerial rootlets lay already withered amidst a number of dark stains upon the bricks. The stem of the inflorescence was broken by the fall of the plant, and the flowers were growing limp and brown at the edges of the petals. The doctor stooped towards it, then saw that one of the aerial rootlets still stirred feebly, and hesitated.
The next morning the strange orchid still lay there, black now and putrescent. The door banged intermittently in the morning breeze, and all the array of Wedderburn's orchids was shrivelled and prostrate. But Wedderburn himself was bright and garrulous upstairs in the glory of his strange adventure.
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