Chapter Twenty Six.
Into Empty Air.
I had completed my purchase of the farm, and was well satisfied with my bargain. It was a nice place, and the homestead was in good repair and very picturesquely situated, commanding a beautiful view. Aïda would revel in it. The veldt was good, and so were the faculties for stocking water. Game too was plentiful, though the dark bushy kloofs intersecting a high rand on one side of the place gave promise of the more undesirable kind from the stock-raiser’s point of view—such as leopards and wild dogs and baboons. However it would be hard if I couldn’t manage to keep the numbers of these down, and if they took toll of a calf or two now and then, why one could take toll of them in the way of sport—so that the thing was as broad as it was long.
Yes, I was well satisfied, and as I rode homeward I fell castle building. The place would be a Paradise when I should take Aïda there. It was too marvellous. How could such a wealth of happiness come my way? There was no cloud to mar it. Even as the vivid, unbroken blue of the sky overhead so was this marvel of bliss which had come in upon my life. There was no cloud to mar it.
I was not rich but I had enough. I had done myself exceedingly well in the course of my ventures, and was beyond any anxiety or care for the future from a pecuniary point of view. I had always lived simply and had no expensive tastes. Now I was beginning to reap the benefit of that fortunate condition of things. I could afford the luxury of castle building as I cantered along mile after mile in the glorious sunlight.
I had not seen Aïda for three whole days, it was that time since the uncanny episode of the waterhole. Now I was treasuring up the anticipation of our meeting, the light of glad welcome that would come into her eyes, only a few hours hence, for I would call in at my own place to see that things were all right, and get a bit of dinner, and ride on immediately afterwards. So, mile upon mile went by and at last shortly after mid-day I walked my horse up the long acclivity that led to my trading store.
As I gained the latter I descried a horseman approaching from the other direction, and he was riding too—riding as if he didn’t want to use his horse again for at least a week. By Jove! it was Kendrew, I made out as he came nearer, but—what the devil was Kendrew in such a cast-iron, splitting hurry about?
My boy Tom came out as I dismounted. I hardly noticed that he hadn’t got on the usual broad grin of welcome.
“Where is Jan Boom?” I asked.
“He is out after the cattle, Nkose,” answered Tom, rather glumly I thought. But I paid no attention to this, because Tom had taken it into his head to be rather jealous of Jan Boom of late, as a newcomer and an alien who seemed to be rather more in his master’s confidence than he had any right to be—from Tom’s point of view.
“Well, wait a bit,” I said. “Here comes another Nkose, Nyamaki’s nephew. You can take his horse at the same time.”
Kendrew came racing up as if he were riding for his life.
“You back, Glanton?” he cried, as he flung himself off his panting, dripping steed. “Well, that’s a devilish good job. I say. What does this mean?”
“What does what mean?”
“Man! Haven’t you heard? They sent for me post-haste this morning. Knew you were away.”
“Quit jaw, Kendrew, and tell me what the devil’s the row,” I said roughly, for some horrible fear had suddenly beset me.
“Miss Sewin. She’s disappeared,” he jerked forth.
“What?”
I have an idea that I articulated the word, though speech stuck in my throat I felt myself go white and cold, and strong healthy man that I was, the surroundings danced before my eyes as though I were about to swoon. I remember too, that Kendrew ground his teeth with pain under the grip that I had fastened upon his shoulder.
“What do you say? Disappeared?” I gasped forth again. “How? When?”
I heard him as through a mist as he told me how the afternoon before she had gone for a walk alone with her dog. It was towards sundown. She had not returned, and a search had been instituted, with the result that her dog had been found dead not very far from the waterhole, but of her no trace remained. “My God, Glanton,” he ended up. “Buck up, man. Pull yourself together or you’ll go clean off your chump. Buck up, d’you hear!”
I daresay I had a look that way, for I noticed Tom staring at me as if he contemplated taking to his heels.
“I’m on my way down there now,” said Kendrew.
I nodded. I couldn’t speak just then somehow. I went into the house, slung on a heavy revolver, and crammed a handful of cartridges into my pocket. Then I remounted, Kendrew doing likewise, and so we took our way down that rocky bush path at a pace that was neither wise nor safe.
“Is that all they have to go upon?” I said presently, as soon as I had recovered my voice.
“That’s all—I gather from the old man’s note. I say, Glanton, what can be behind it all? It seems on all fours with my old uncle taking himself off. I’m beginning to think now there’s some infernal foul play going on among the niggers round us.”
I was thinking the same. At first a thought of Dolf Norbury had crossed my mind, but I dismissed it. Ukozi was behind this, somewhere. The proximity to the waterhole associated him in my mind with the outrage. His beastly performance with the snake!—was he training it to seize human beings, in the furtherance of some devilish form of native superstition? Oh, good Heavens no! That wouldn’t bear thinking about. But Aïda—my love—had disappeared—had disappeared even as Hensley had. He had never been found; the mystery of his disappearance had never been solved. And she! Had she been hideously and secretly done to death? Oh God! I shall go mad!
When we arrived, the Major and Falkner had just returned, and their horses were simply reeking. They had scoured the whole farm, but utterly without result. As for Mrs Sewin and Edith their grief was pitiable—would have been only it was nothing by the side of mine.
“How was the dog killed?” was my first question, ignoring all greeting. I had resolved to waste no time in grief. I had now pulled myself together, and was going to do all that man was capable of to find my loved one again.
“That’s the strange part of it,” said Falkner gruffly. “There’s no wound of any kind about the beast, and he hasn’t even been hit on the head, for his skull is quite smooth and unbroken. But, there he is—as dead as the traditional herring.”
“You didn’t move him, did you?”
“No. He’s there still.”
“Well let’s go there. I may light on a clue.”
“You’d better not come, uncle,” said Falkner. “You’re played out, for one thing, and there ought to be one man on the place with all this devilish mystery going about.”
“Played out be damned, sir,” retorted the Major fiercely. “I’d tire you any day. I’m going.”
The dead dog was lying right in the path, just beyond where we had found the lost coin on that memorable day. The first thing I looked for were traces of a struggle, but if there had been any they were now completely obliterated by hoof marks and footmarks made by Falkner and the Major when they first made the discovery.
“The dog died before sundown,” I said, after a momentary examination.
“How do you know that?” asked Falkner.
“Because the ground underneath him is perfectly dry. If he had been killed or died later it wouldn’t have been. It would have been damp with dew. Look—Ah!”
The last exclamation was evoked by a curious circumstance as I moved the body of the dead animal. A strange odour greeted my nostrils. It was as the odour of death, and yet not altogether, and—it was the same that poisoned the air on the occasion of my horse refusing to go forward on that night at Kendrew’s, and again here, almost on this very spot three nights ago when we had come away from witnessing Ukozi’s uncanny performance at the pool. Some dark villainy underlay this, and that the witch doctor was connected with it was borne in upon my mind without a doubt.
I examined the dead dog long and carefully, but could read no clue as to the manner of his death, unless he had been poisoned, but this I thought unlikely. One thing was certain. Never in life would he have allowed harm or violence to reach his mistress. Poor Arlo! At any other time I should have been moved to genuine grief for his loss; now that loss was not even felt.
Quickly, eagerly, I cast around for spoor, beyond the radius of the disturbed part of the ground. All in vain. No trace. No trampled grass or broken twig, or displaced leaf, absolutely nothing to afford a clue. The thing was incomprehensible. It was as if she had been caught up bodily into the air.
The ground here was a gentle declivity, moderately studded with bush. It was not rocky nor rugged, and was entirely devoid of holes or caves into which anyone might fall.
Suddenly every drop of blood within me was set tingling. I had found a trace. Where the ground was stony, just above the path I discovered an abrasion, as though a boot, with nail heads in the soles, had scraped it.
It was very faint, but still—there was no mistaking it. It was a genuine spoor. And it led on and on, utterly undiscernible to the Major or Falkner, hardly visible to Kendrew at times, but plain enough to me. And now hope beat high. We would find her. We had only to follow on this spoor which we had struck, and we would find her. Heaven knew how, but still! we would find her. She might have met with an accident and be sorely in need of help, but—still we would find her, and this—even this—after the blank, awful realisation of her loss, akin, as it was, to the disappearance of Hensley—contained relative comfort.
The others were watching me with mingled anxiety and curiosity as, bent low over the ground, I followed these faint indications. The latter were tolerably perceptible now to a practised eye, though to no other, and I kept upon them steadily. Then a ghastly fear smote me again upon the heart. The spoor was leading straight for the waterhole.
What did it mean? She would not have gone there—voluntarily. After the spectacle we had witnessed that night nothing on earth would have induced her to revisit the uncanny place alone, even by daylight. Yet the dreadful thought had already forced itself upon my mind, that there, if anywhere, would the mystery be solved.
In silence, eager, intensified, we pursued our way; for the others would not speak lest they should distract my mind from its concentration. Thus we came out upon the waterhole.
The spoor had led us straight to the high brow of cliff overhanging the pool—the spot upon which we had all stood that afternoon when we had first seen the mysterious monster which had disturbed the water. And—what was this?
All the soil here, where it was not solid rock, had been swept with branches. There was the pattern in the dust, even if stray leaves and twigs scattered about had not gone towards showing that, beyond a doubt. The object was manifest—to efface all traces of a struggle.
Heavens! my brain seemed to be turning to mud with the drear despair of each fresh discovery. The witch doctor’s promise to show the old man the mystery of the waterhole came back to my mind. I put together the words of sibongo to the snake I had heard him chanting. Ukozi had been preparing a way towards a sacrifice to his demon. He had accustomed the great python to seizing its victim as he brought it—and he had always brought it, so small, so insufficient, in the shape of the kid we had seen him give it, as to excite the appetite of the monster rather than to gratify it. He had been practising on Major Sewin’s curiosity, so that when the time should be ripe he would bring him to the edge of the pool, where all unsuspecting he would be seized by the monster and never be seen or heard of again. And now, and now—this unspeakably horrible and revolting fate, instead of overtaking the old man, had overtaken Aïda, my love, the sun and Paradise of my life, instead. She had been substituted for him, as the easier, possibly the more acceptable victim.
But, Ukozi! Whatever might happen to me I would capture and revenge myself upon him in a manner which should out-do the vengeance of the most vindictive and cruel of his own countrymen. I would spend days and nights gloating over his agony, and afterwards it should be talked about with fear and shuddering among the whole population of the border—ay, and beyond it I would do it; how I knew not, but, I would do it. All hell was seething in my brain just then—all hell, as I thought of my love, in her daintiness and grace; the very embodiment of a refinement and an elevating influence that was almost—no, entirely—divine, sacrificed horribly to the revolting superstitions of these savages, whom I had hitherto regarded as equalling in manly virtues those who could boast of centuries of so-called civilisation at their backs. And yet—revenge—could it bring back to me my love—my sweet lost love?