[#] "Come, my men, quick! Here is the enemy, quick!"
Willowby, longing to shoot and kill, yet letting I dare not wait upon I would, disquieted that none of his Ruga-ruga obey his frantic whistling, decides to make a bolt of it and rally them and the Nyasaland soldiers, and so make a prompt end of Roger and the Somali traitors. (These men had arrived at his station in Namanga, hangers-on of the large and heterogeneous British force which was seeking a way across the little-known region between Meru and the Happy Valley. They told Patterne they had once been employed in Iraku on the Concession and offered to help him to show the way. Believing they might be useful for his own purposes in laying hands on the things he sought for, he had taken them on; and here they were, saluting his rival and enemy like a demi-god ... If he only got a chance to get hold of them! He'd cut the life out of them with a kiboko!....)
Whilst he hesitated whether to walk down the steps in a dignified way or jump from the rails of the verandah into the flower-beds, his indecision was terminated abruptly. Behind him a woman shrieked, and he felt himself propelled by a vigorous push of stout arms down the stone steps and almost on to the group of Roger, Omari and the two Somalis. These might have laid hold of him, but a German lady, Frau Hildebrandt, impeded their action. She unceremoniously pushed Patterne into a parterre of petunias, whilst she too clasped Roger's hands in a frenzied appeal, a rapturous greeting. "It is Herr Brentham! Ach lieber Gott! Er wird verstehen. He will be our salvation. Ach mein Mann! Ach meine kinder! Hilf! Hilf!"
Patterne rose to his feet, ran over flower-beds, through or over dracæna hedges (since Roger's men blocked the garden gate), out of a tangle of gardens and outhouses, across the green, to the public square and market-place. Here he found groups of bewildered, sulky King's African Rifles, and his own Ruga-ruga. He had been given an escort of fifty Negro riflemen when, three days before, he had been detailed—at his own request, having finished his job as guide—to "clear up" Iraku and the European settlement of Wilhelmshöhe, professing to know every inch of the ground. He had been told, of course, that unless resistance was offered there was to be no looting; that any German women or children were to be allowed to remain in their homes until they could be officially dealt with, and all German men surrendering to be treated humanely as prisoners of war, and marched under escort to the nearest British camp. These instructions he had chosen to interpret in his own way by killing Dr. Wiese and terrorizing Frau Hildebrandt into finding him the information of which he was in search. He intended, of course, to make himself master of the Concession, in the hope that he might be recognized as owner after the War. There would certainly be several years of confusion in which he might rule here and perhaps acquire all the wealth he wanted.....
But the arrival—the resurrection almost—of Roger Brentham had so queered his plans that he saw red. He would assemble all the men he could get hold of and make a sudden rush on Magara House, and shoot, shoot, shoot before Roger's party could put themselves in a position of defence. He would declare Roger to be a traitor and a German Spy. Provided he killed him, the fait accompli would not be followed with much of an inquiry at this very critical time....
But his Ruga-ruga were slow to respond, having recognized Roger as a redoubtable warrior. And the Nyasaland regulars flatly refused to march to the attack. Patterne was not one of their regular officers, and they insisted that an English Colonel having taken possession of this country they should all rejoin the main army and lay the case before their commanding officer. So Patterne, gathered his loads together, awoke his weary porters (who had taken advantage of the halt to gorge themselves with food after their severe privations) and departed down the Valley in the direction of the rapidly advancing armies. He felt he could not halt or eat or sleep till he had taken vengeance on the man who had so persistently baulked him; he would denounce him as a spy, as a traitor ... perhaps—oh joy!—get him court-martialled and shot; at any rate, collared and marched out of East Africa.
But he never even reached the head-quarters of the army now entering Irangi. Roger, anticipating his intentions, had rapidly written an account of his actions in turning Patterne out of Magara House, had explained who he was, the route he had followed, and his intention to remain in charge of the Concession till he was ordered to leave it by the proper authority. The Somalis travelling twice as quickly as Patterne's safari, and travelling with as much secrecy as speed, delivered the letter to the nearest British officer in high command. Some say that on the return journey they took a pot shot at Patterne as he was halting to whip some of his laggard porters; others that Patterne was speared in Ufiome by Masai camp-followers of the main army, who had suffered by some of his raids in the past, or who transferred to the "Little Terror" the vendetta they had carried on with his ally, the Big Terror of the Red Crater. In any case, "he perished miserably," as they used to write in pre-Wells histories. He never was heard of again, after he left the Happy Valley. His escort of Nyasaland soldiers quietly rejoined their regiment, then in the thick of fighting at Kondoa-Irangi; and no one cared enough about Sir Willowby Patterne to put any questions. His Ruga-ruga dispersed as plunderers on their own account, till they were rounded up sharply and a few of them shot for looting. The "Little Terror" ceased all at once to terrify, and the baronetcy, after a year's delay and presumption of death, passed to a distant relative, who was the reverend headmaster of a public school.
Roger, meantime, gradually restored the Happy Valley to something of its former peace and quietness. He harboured the Catholic missionaries and the German women and children there till provision could be made for their withdrawal. His proceedings were approved and sanctioned by a Boer General commanding a wing of the British invading army, who by one of those coincidences so common in this incredible war, not only played a great part in conquering German East Africa for the Empire he himself had steadily fought against for three years, but turned out to be the very identical van Rensselaer who had picked up Roger as a prisoner and saved his life in 1900.
As soon as the Happy Valley was brought into telegraphic communication with the coast and with England, Roger cabled to his sister his whereabouts and his intentions to remain in the Happy Valley till its political fate was decided. In return he learnt of the death of his two sons, and the fact that his two daughters had felt impelled to marry—Maud ("Fatima"), Lord Silchester, and Sibyl ("Goosey") a wounded officer—without waiting to hear from a father presumably lost in Central Africa.
So Colonel Roger Brentham at the end of the war decided that the England of the Armistice and the Peace and the Reconstruction period was no country for him to live in, with its coal strikes, railway strikes, engineer strikes, police strikes, taxi-drivers' strikes, dockers' strikes, bakers' strikes, stage-hands' strikes and electricians' strikes; its Irish atrocities and reprisals; its futurist art; its paper-strewn highways and byways and beauty-spots; its bottle-throwing chars-à-bancs; man-slaughtering motors; Albert Hall Victory Balls; jazz dances; betting scandals; high prices; and low standards of political morality. Preferable, far, was the Happy Valley, where relations between black, white, and brown were well adjusted, where great wealth was being quietly produced to the proportionate profit of all concerned in the production; where protection was not only accorded to all human beings, but also to all beasts and birds not directly harmful to human interests.