The Keepers of the King's Peace

Bones came blithely to breakfast, a dapper and a perfectly groomed figure. He received the news of the ominous happenings in the N'gombi country with that air of profound solemnity which so annoyed Hamilton.

"I wish you had called me in the night," he said gravely. "Dear old officer, I think it was due to me."

"Called you! Called you! Why—why–" spluttered Hamilton.

"In fact, we did call you Bones, but we could not wake you," smoothed Sanders.

A look of amazement spread over the youthful face of Lieutenant Tibbetts. "You called me?" he asked incredulously. "Called me?"

"You!" hissed Hamilton. "I not only called you, but I kicked you. I poured water on you, and I chucked you up to the roof of the hut and dropped you."

A faint but unbelieving smile from Bones. "Are you sure it was me, dear old officer?" he asked, and Hamilton choked. "I only ask," said Bones, turning blandly to the girl, "because I'm a notoriously light sleeper, dear old Miss Patricia. The slightest stir wakes me, and instantly I'm in possession of all my faculties. Bosambo calls me 'Eye-That-Never-Shuts–'"

"Bosambo is a notorious leg-puller," interrupted Hamilton irritably. "Really, Bones–"

"Often, dear old Sister," Bones went on impressively, "campin' out in the forest, an' sunk in the profound sleep which youth an' a good conscience brings, something has wakened me, an' I've jumped to my feet, a revolver in my hand, an' what do you think it was?"

"A herd of wild elephants walking on your chest?" suggested Hamilton.

"What do you think it was, dear old Patricia miss?" persisted Bones, and interrupted her ingenious speculation in his usual aggravating manner: "The sound of a footstep breakin' a twig a hundred yards away!"

"Wonderful!" sneered Hamilton, stirring his coffee. "Bones, if you could only spell, what a novelist you'd be!"

"The point is," said Sanders, with good-humoured patience, which brought, for some curious reason, a warm sense of intimacy to the girl, "you've got to go up and try your eye on the woman D'rona Gufuri."

Bones leant back in his chair and spoke with deliberation and importance, for he realized that he, and only he, could supply a solution to the difficulties of his superiors.

"The power of the human eye, when applied by a jolly old scientist to a heathen, is irresistible. You may expect me down with the prisoner in four days."

"She may be more trouble than you expect," said Sanders seriously. "The longer one lives in native lands, the less confident can one be. There have been remarkable cases of men possessing the power which this woman has–"

"And which I have, sir an' Excellency, to an extraordinary extent," interrupted Bones firmly. "Have no fear."

Thirty-six hours later Bones stood before the woman D'rona Gufuri.

"Lord," said the woman, "men speak evilly of me to Sandi, and now you have come to take me to the Village of Irons."

"That is true, D'rona," said Bones, and looked into her eyes.

"Lord," said the woman, speaking slowly, "you shall go back to Sandi and say, 'I have not seen the woman D'rona'—for, lord, is this not truth?"

"I'wa! I'wa!" muttered Bones thickly.

"You cannot see me Tibbetti, and I am not here," said the woman, and she spoke before the assembled villagers, who stood, knuckles to teeth, gazing awe-stricken upon the scene.

"I cannot see you," said Bones sleepily.

"And now you cannot hear me, lord?"

Bones did not reply.

The woman took him by the arm and led him through the patch of wood which fringes the river and separates beach from village. None followed them; even the two Houssas who formed the escort of Lieutenant Tibbetts stayed rooted to the spot.

Bones passed into the shadow of the trees, the woman's hand on his arm. Then suddenly from the undergrowth rose a lank figure, and D'rona of the Magic Eye felt a bony hand at her throat. She laughed.

"O man, whoever you be, look upon me in this light, and your strength shall melt."

She twisted round to meet her assailant's face, and shrieked aloud, for he was blind. And Bones stood by without moving, without seeing or hearing, whilst the strong hands of the blind witch-doctor, whose daughter she had slain, crushed the life from her body.

"Of course, sir," explained Bones, "you may think she mesmerized me. On the other hand, it is quite possible that she acted under my influence. It's a moot point, sir an' Excellency—jolly moot!"

CHAPTER XII

THE HOODED KING

There was a certain Portuguese governor—this was in the days when Colhemos was Colonial Minister—who had a small legitimate income and an extravagant wife. This good lady had a villa at Cintra, a box at the Real Theatre de São Carlos, and a motor-car, and gave five o'clocks at the Hotel Nunes to the aristocracy and gentry who inhabited that spot, of whom the ecstatic Spaniard said, "dejar a Cintra, y ver al mundo entero, es, con verdad caminar en capuchera."

Since her husband's salary was exactly $66.50 weekly and the upkeep of the villa alone was twice that amount, it is not difficult to understand that Senhor Bonaventura was a remarkable man.

Colhemos came over to the Foreign Office in the Praco de Commercio one day and saw Dr. Sarabesta, and Sarabesta, who was both a republican and a sinner, was also ambitious, or he had a Plan and an Ideal—two very dangerous possessions for a politician, since they lead inevitably to change, than which nothing is more fatal to political systems.

"Colhemos," said the doctor dramatically, "you are ruining me! You are bringing me to the dust and covering me with the hatred and mistrust of the Powers!"

He folded his arms and rose starkly from the chair, his beard all a-bristle, his deep little eyes glaring.

"What is wrong, Baptisa?" asked Colhemos.

The other flung out his arms in an extravagant gesture.

"Ruin!" he cried somewhat inadequately.

He opened the leather portfolio which lay on the table and extracted six sheets of foolscap paper.

"Read!" he said, and subsided into his padded armchair a picture of gloom.

The sheets of foolscap were surmounted by crests showing an emaciated lion and a small horse with a spiral horn in his forehead endeavouring to climb a chafing-dish which had been placed on edge for the purpose, and was suitably inscribed with another lion, two groups of leopards and a harp.

Colhemos did not stop to admire the menagerie, but proceeded at once to the literature. It was in French, and had to do with a certain condition of affairs in Portuguese Central Africa which "constituted a grave and increasing menace to the native subjects" of "Grande Bretagne." There were hints, "which His Majesty's Government would be sorry to believe, of raids and requisitions upon the native manhood" of this country which differed little from slave raids.

Further, "Mr. Commissioner Sanders of the Territories regretted to learn" that these labour requisitions resulted in a condition of affairs not far removed from slavery.

Colhemos read through the dispatch from start to finish, and put it down thoughtfully.

"Pinto has been overdoing it," he admitted. "I shall have to write to him."

"What you write to Pinto may be interesting enough to print," said Dr. Sarabesta violently, "but what shall I write to London? This Commissioner Sanders is a fairly reliable man, and his Government will act upon what he says."

Colhemos, who was really a great man (it was a distinct loss when he faced a firing platoon in the revolutionary days of '12), tapped his nose with a penholder.