Alicia gave me water. "He has my pistol," she whispered despairingly as she bent over me.
Full consciousness returned with a jerk. Evan had shot me. Evan had snarled at me as he fired. Evan—why Evan must have killed Arthur! He grinned approvingly as he saw me straighten in an instinctive effort to break my bonds.
"Ah, feeling better," he commented. "I'm sorry you caught me. I'd have liked to take you back to Ticao and hear you tell the tale of this week's work of ours. You always were a great one for telling tales, Murray."
He puffed luxuriously at his cigarette and looked at the gathering darkness outside.
"You're a connoisseur of tales, Murray, so I think I'll tell you one. I'm going off to get in touch with my natives in a little while, as soon as it's dark, but I've a few minutes to spare and might as well be pleasant during that little while. I'm afraid I'll have to be unpleasant later on, you know."
"I didn't know."
I have never found that losing one's head is an advantage under any circumstances, so I prepared to make an effort to keep mine. Evan waved his hand airily.
"Oh, I'm going to be put to the unpleasant necessity of disposing of you and Mrs. Braymore. No one could regret it more than I do, but the necessity is there. You see, I was the gorilla." He indicated the gorilla mask. "And it wouldn't do for you to tell that story about."
"I can believe it," I admitted. My head was spinning, but I tried to follow what he was saying in the hope of finding something therein to my own advantage.
"You understand, of course," said Evan cheerfully, "that I don't mean that I was the beast whose mate Arthur so inconsiderately shot, or the one who followed his caravan all the way here from the Kongo. That was another gorilla altogether. I simply happen to be the one that hung about the house here. Arthur shot the other one two weeks before you came. It got away, but he must have wounded it fatally. Otherwise it would have turned up long before. I'll admit that I was a little nervous about the animal at first, but I soon realized that it must be dead. I saw to it that Arthur was not similarly convinced, however. I had already made more or less of a plan. You know about my slaves?"