“ ‘Go speak your so-so witch doctor Buhu. Tell him Big Boss Markley come, mebbe so two days. Juju big mouf he come, too, mebbe so, mebbe not. He big juju fo’ sure. Eta come ’long big boss. By an’ by, my juju he win, Eta stay along me. By an’ by, Buhu win, Tolo take Eta and have dash, too. Palaver set.’
“As soon as the messenger had departed Markley set about preparations for the trip. In his half-delirious mind, it became a huge joke, reality being all mixed up with the whisky phantoms which peopled his brain. He wouldn’t listen when I told him that there was probably danger in the undertaking, but proceeded to pack all the radio apparatus in a big case. Then calling Eta, he produced a bright crimson shawl, a pair of dancing pumps of the same color and a brilliant bandanna, which he had ordered from Forcados on the last boat, and presented them to her, declaring that she must be decently dressed when visiting a cousin. After that he took a long drink and declared himself ready to start.
“That was a queer trip. I had wanted to stay at the station, but Markley wouldn’t hear of it. Said there was no danger at Maraban—that the big show would come at Mobungo, one of Chief Tolo’s villages, and he might need me there. We locked the bungalow and store, placed things in charge of the most trusted negroes—a poor policy, but the best I could do, and started upriver in the station’s motor launch.
“I steered. Markley sat in the middle where he watched the engine. Eta sat near the bow, staring steadily upriver. She was a weird creature, that girl. Light on her feet as a shadow and about as quick. She never said a word to anybody except Markley, though even with him she seemed to hold aloof. She was always obedient and met all of his sometimes eccentric demands upon her without complaint, but her sloe-black eyes, slanting here and there in an almost Oriental fashion, sometimes gave me the creeps.
“Strangely enough, Markley brought only a quart of whisky with him, and used that very sparingly. ‘Dickie,’ he explained to me, ‘I fear I must pass up the nectar for a time. But there’s plenty of it back at the station, or will be if those damned negroes don’t run off with it. When we get back, I’ll celebrate. Maybe you’ll condescend to take a few, too.’ That’s the way he rambled on, but I could see a new sparkle in his bloodshot eyes, and began to wonder if maybe there wasn’t something in him besides his vicious habits after all. I suppose he was the type who lives on excitement, though why he came to Africa to find it I never could understand.
“We reached Mobungo after a two-day run. The usual gaping crowd met us, but before we were ashore, Tolo himself, with a military escort, plowed through the jam and greeted us. Have you ever seen Tolo, captain?”
“Not since he was the prince charming of the Niger, years ago,” Todd chuckled in the darkness.
“He’s still about the same. Wears flowers in his wool and all that, but he’s getting older and fatter, and dreaming of empire instead of fair women. He’ll get into serious trouble sometime soon. However he treated us civilly enough, giving us a hut in which to clean up a bit.
“That evening we met him at the imperial palace, such as it was, for an audience. The room was furnished in Afro-American style, with a phonograph, a player piano and a nickel and white barber chair serving as a throne. Tolo was there, tricked out in his royal robes. Beside him squatted Buhu. The latter wasn’t all that I expected—just a lean, hungry-looking, rather young and rather shiny individual who did nothing but teeter back and forth on his toes and scowl at us.
“The meeting began in one of those duels of silence—the man who speaks first being considered the weaker character—but Markley wasn’t up to the strain of it and almost immediately broke silence by demanding why the devil Tolo had sent him a note like that.