“Chakula tayari, Bwana,” announced Bakunjala timidly.
“I don’t want any chakula,” said zu Pfeiffer. “Wait. Bring some here.”
“Bwana!”
Bakunjala fled, to reappear almost instantly with a covered plate, which he placed on the table as bidden and vanished. Zu Pfeiffer regarded distastefully his favourite dish of curried eggs. Then he bawled irritably:
“Lights, animal!”
“Bwana!” gasped Bakunjala appearing in the doorway with the lamp.
But zu Pfeiffer pushed the plate away to stare at the photograph of Lucille. The stare turned to a glare, and then as if mutinying against his god, as Kawa Kendi had done when summoning rain, he suddenly snatched at the frame and flung it upon the floor with an oath, grabbed up a fountain pen and began to write.
Indeed zu Pfeiffer was half insane with anger which he was disposed to vent upon Lucille by proxy as the source of yet another trouble and possibly official disgrace. He had not had a notion that Birnier could have survived the gentle hands of the corporal until without warning came that ivory disc with “Amantes—Amentes!” scribbled upon it, which not only inferred that Birnier had escaped, but that he was near to him and intended to champion these native dogs against the Imperial Government in the person of himself.
The message had been made the more insulting by the note of exclamation at the end implying derisive laughter. It had, as Birnier had calculated that it would, struck zu Pfeiffer upon the most tender spot in his mental anatomy, evoking a homicidal mania which dominated his consciousness. To be cheated, to be swindled, to be sworn at, cursed, even to be beaten was sufferable to a degree, but to be laughed at—zu Pfeiffer’s haughty soul exploded like a bomb at an impact. For a time he had been absolutely incoherent with rage. His one impulse had been to rush out and tear Birnier limb from limb. Well might the listening natives believe in the mighty [pg 280] magic of the new King-God, that it should make the Son-of-the-Earthquake to trumpet like a wounded cow elephant!
Then out of the dissolving acrid smoke of wounded pride begin to loom arbitrary points. First, that Birnier would have complained, as he once had threatened to do, to Washington, which would infuriate the authorities in Berlin; and secondly, that he would have written to Lucille revealing the attempt he had made upon the life of her husband as well as the things he had said. How Birnier had escaped was immaterial, but the particular fate that awaited Corporal Inyira was decided but futilely; for the bold son of Banyala and his merry men were footing it to the south of lake Tanganika, scared by day lest the long arm of the Eater-of-Men should overtake them and haunted by the terror of seeing another illuminated ghost by night.