search."
"You mean the Sultan wants to hire me to hunt for ivory for him?" Will asked, and the Arab made a gesture of impatience. At that Lady Saffren Waldon cut in, very vinegary once more.
"You two men are prisoners! Show much more sense! Come to terms or take the consequences! Listen! Tippoo Tib buried the ivory. The Sultan of Zanzibar claims it. The German government, for reasons of its own, backs the Sultan's claim; ivory found in German East Africa will be handed over to him in support of his claim to all the rest of it. If you—Lord Montdidier and the rest of you—care to sign an agreement with the Sultan of Zanzibar you can have facilities. You shall be supplied with guides who can lead you to the right place to start your search from—"
"Thought you wanted Lord Montdidier to say in London that you know where it all is," Will objected.
She colored slightly, and glared.
"Perhaps I am one of the guides," she said darkly. "I know more than I need tell for the sake of this argument! The point is, you can have facilities if you sign an agreement with the Sultan. Otherwise, you will be dogged wherever you go! Whatever you should find would be claimed! Every difficulty will be made for you—every treachery conceivable practised on you. Lord Montdidier can get influential backing, but not influence among the natives! He can not get good men and true information by pulling wires in London. The British government once offered ten per cent. of the value of the ivory found. The Sultan of Zanzibar offers twenty per cent.—"
"Twenty-five per cent.," corrected Hamed Ibrahim.
"Yes, but I should want five per cent. for my commission!"
"This sounds like a different yarn to the one you told on the stairs this afternoon," said Will. "See Monty and tell it to him."
"It is for you to tell Lord Montdidier. He runs away from me!"
"I refuse to tell him a word!" said Will, with a laugh like that of a boy about to plunge into a swimming pool—sort of "Here goes!"
"You are extremely ill advised!"
"Do your worst! Monty'll be hunting for us two in about a minute.
We're prisoners, are we? Suit yourself!"
"You are prisoners while I choose! You could be killed in this room, removed in sacks, thrown to the sharks in the roadstead, and nobody the wiser! But I have no intention of killing you. As it happens, that would not suit my purpose!"
We both glanced behind us involuntarily. It may be that we both heard a footstep, but it is always difficult to say certainly after the event. At any rate, while in the act of turning our heads, two of the three Arabs, who had previously left the room, threw nooses over them and bound our arms to our sides with the jiffy-swiftness only sailors know. The third man put the finishing touches, and presently adjusted gags with a neatness and solicitude worthy of the Inquisition.
"Throw them!" she ordered, and in a second our heels were struck from under us and I was half stunned by the impact of my head against the solid floor (for all the floors of that great place were built to resist eternity).
"Now!" she said. "Show them knives!"
We were shown forthwith the ugliest, most suggestive weapons I have ever seen—long sliver-thin blades sharper than razors. The Arabs knelt on our chests (their knees were harder and more merciless than wooden clubs) and laid the blades, edge-upward, on the skin of our throats.
"Let them feel!" she ordered.
I felt a sharp cut, and the warm blood trickled down over my jugular to the floor. I knew it was only a skin-cut, but did not pretend to myself I was enjoying the ordeal.
"Now!" she said.
The Arabs stepped away and she came and stood between us, looking down at one and then the other.
"There isn't a place in Africa," she said, "that you can hide in where the Sultan's men can't find you! There isn't a British officer in Africa who would believe you if you told what has happened in this room tonight! Yet Lord Montdidier will believe you—he knows you presumably, and certainly he knows me! So tell Lord Montdidier exactly what has happened! Assure him with my compliments that his throat and yours shall be cut as surely as you dare set out after that ivory without signing my agreement first. Tell Lord Montdidier he may be friends with me if he cares to. As his friend I will help make him rich for life! As his enemy, I will make Africa too hot and dangerous to hold him! Let him choose!"
She stepped back and, without troubling to turn away, put powder on her nose and chin.
"Now let them up!" she said.
The Arabs lifted us to our feet.
"Loose them!"
The expert of the three slipped the knots like a wizard doing parlor tricks; but I noticed that the other two held their knives extremely cautiously. We should have been dead men if we had made a pugnacious motion.
"Now you may go! Unless Lord Montdidier agrees with me, the only safety for any of you is away from Africa! Go and tell him! Go!"
"I'll give you your answer now!" said Will.
"No, you don't!" said I, remembering Monty's urgent admonition to tell her nothing and ask no questions. "Come away, Will! There's nothing to be gained by talking back!"
"Right you are!" he said, laughing like a boy again—this time like a boy whose fight has been broken off without his seeking or consent. Like me, he pulled out a handkerchief and wiped blood from his neck. The sight of his own blood—even such a little trickle as that—has peculiar effect an a man.
"By Jiminy, she has scratched the wrong dog's ear!" he growled to me as we went to the door together.
"They're all in there!" I said excitedly, when the door slammed shut behind us. "Hurry down and get me a gun! I'll hold the door while you run for police and have 'em arrested!"
"Piffle!" he said. "Come on! Three Sultan's witnesses and two lone white women against us two—come away! Come away!"
Monty and Fred were still out, so we went to our own room.
"I'm wondering," I said, "what Monty will say."
"I'm not!" said Will. "I'm not troubling, either! I'm not going to tell Monty a blessed word! See here—she thinks she knows where some o' that ivory is. Maybe the government of German East Africa is in on the deal, and maybe not; that makes no present difference. She thinks she's wise. And she has fixed up with the Sultan to have him claim it when found, so's she'll get a fat slice of the melon. There's a scheme on to get the stuff, when who should come on the scene but our little party, and that makes 'em all nervous, 'cause Monty's a bad man to be up against. Remember: she claimed that she knows Monty and he knows her. She means by that that he knows she's a desperado, and she thinks he'll draw the line at a trip that promises murder and blackmail and such like dirty work. So she puts a scare into us with a view to our throwing a scare into him. If I scare any one, it's going to be that dame herself. I'll not tell Monty a thing!"
"How about Coutlass the Greek?" said I. "D'you suppose he's her accomplice?"
"Maybe! One of her dupes perhaps! I suspect she'll suck him dry of information and cast him off like a lemon rind. I dare bet she's using him. She can't use me! Shall you tell Monty?"
"No," I said. "Not unless we both agreed."
He nodded. "You and I weren't born to what they call the purple.
We're no diplomatists; but we get each other's meaning."
"Here come Monty and Fred," said I. "Is my neck still bloody? No, yours doesn't show."
We met them at the stairhead, and Monty did not seem to notice anything.
"Fred has composed a song to the moonlight on Zanzibar roadstead while you fellows were merely after-dinner mundane. D'you suppose the landlord 'ud make trouble if we let him sing it?"
"Let's hope so!" said