“I see you, miss,” he said, turning the fixed eyes of opal-like stone, bloodshot with little rubies, upon Barbara, “I see you, though you no see me, for these eyes made very cunning. But listen, you hear me,” and suddenly from the mask, produced by some contrivance set within it, there proceeded an awful, howling sound that made her shiver.
“Take that thing off, Jeekie,” said Alan, “we don’t want any banshees here.”
“Banshees? Not know him, he poor English fetish p’raps,” said Jeekie, as he removed the mask. “This real African god, howl banshee and all that sort into middle of next week. This Little Bonsa and no mistake, ten thousand years old and more, eat up lives, so many that no one can count them, and go on eating for ever, yes unto the third and fourth generation, as Ten Commandments lay it down for benefit of Christian man, like me. Look at her again, Miss Barbara.”
Miss Barbara took the hateful, ancient thing in her hands and studied it. No one could doubt its antiquity, for the gold plate of which it was made was literally worn away wherever it had touched the foreheads of the high priests or priestesses who donned it upon festive occasions or days of sacrifice, showing that hundreds and hundreds of them must have used it thus in succession. So was the vocal apparatus within the mouth, and so were the little toad-like feet upon which it was stood up. Also the substance of the gold itself was here and there pitted as though with acid or salts, though what those salts were she did not inquire. And yet, so consummate was the art with which it had originally been fashioned, that the battered beautiful face of Little Bonsa still peered at them with the same devilish smile that it had worn when it left the hands of its maker, perhaps before Mohammed preached his holy war, or even earlier.
“What is all that writing on the back of it?” asked Barbara, pointing to the long lines of rune-like characters which were inscribed within it.
“Not know, miss, think they dead tongue cut in the beginning when black men could write. But Asiki priests swear they remember every one of them, and that why no one can copy Little Bonsa, for they look inside and see if marks all right. They say they names of those who died for Little Bonsa, and when they all done, Little Bonsa begin again, for Little Bonsa never die. But p’raps priests lie.”
“I daresay,” said Barbara, “but take Little Bonsa away, for however lucky she may be, she makes me feel sick.”
“Where I put her, Major?” asked Jeekie of Alan. “In box in library where she used to live, or in plate-safe with spoons? Or under your bed where she always keep eye on you?”
“Oh! put her with the spoons,” said Alan angrily, and Jeekie departed with his treasure.
“I think, dear,” remarked Barbara as the door closed behind him, “that if I come to lunch here any more, I shall bring my own christening present with me, for I can’t eat off silver that has been shut up with that thing. Now let us get to business—show me the diary and the map.”