III
THE TOMTOM CLUE
I had just settled down for a comfortable evening over the fire in asaddle-bag chair drawn up as close to the hearth as the fender wouldallow, with a plentiful supply of literature and whisky, and pipe andtobacco, when the telephone bell rang loudly and insistently. With asigh I rose and took up the receiver.
"That you?" said a voice I recognised as that of Jack Bridges. "Can Icome round and see you at once? It's most important. No, I can't tellyou now. I'll be with you in a few minutes."
I hung the receiver up again, wondering what business could fetch JackBridges round at that time of the evening to see me. We had been thegreatest of pals at school and at the 'Varsity, and had kept thefriendship up ever since, despite my intermittent wanderings over theface of the globe. But during the last few days or so Jack had becomeengaged to Miss Glanville, the daughter of old Glanville, of SouthAfrican fame, and as a love-sick swain I naturally expected to see verylittle of him, until after the wedding at any rate.
At this time of the evening, according to my ideas of engaged couples,he should be sitting in the stalls at some theatre, and not runninground to see bachelor friends with cynical views on matrimony.
I had not arrived at a satisfactory solution when the door opened andJack walked in. One glance at his face told me that he was in trouble,and without a word I pushed him into my chair and handed him a drink.Then I sat down on the opposite side of the fire and waited for him tobegin, for a man in need of sympathy does not want to be worried byquestions.
He gulped down half his whisky and sat for a moment gazing into thefire.
"Jim, old man," he said at length, "I've had awful news."
"Not connected with Miss Glanville?" I asked.
"In a way, yes. It's broken off, but there's worse than that--far worse.I can hardly realise it; I feel numbed at present; it's too horrible.You remember that when you and I were at Winchester together my fatherwas killed during the Matabele War?"
I nodded.
"Well," continued Jack, "I heard to-day that he was not killed by theMatabele, but was hanged in Bulawayo for murder. In other words, I amthe son of a murderer."
"Hanged for murder!" I exclaimed in horror. "Surely there's somemistake?"
"No," groaned Jack, "it's true enough. I've seen the newspaper cuttingof the time, and I'm the son of a murderer, who was also a forger, athief, and a card-sharper. Old Glanville told me this evening. It wasthen that our engagement was broken off."
"Your mother?" I asked. "Have you seen her?"
Jack nodded.
"Poor little woman!" he groaned. "She has known all along, and her oneaim and object in life has been to keep the awful truth from me. Thatwas why I was told he died an honourable death during the war. I'veoften wondered why the little mother was always so sad, and so weigheddown by trouble. Now I know. Good God, what her life must have been!"
He rose from his chair and paced up and down the room for a minute; thenhe stopped and stood in front of me, his face working with emotion.
"But I don't believe it, Jim," he said, and there was a ring in hisvoice. "I don't believe it, and neither does the little mother. It'simpossible to reconcile the big, bluff man with the heart of a child,that I remember as my father, with murder, forgery, or any other crime.And yet, according to Glanville and the old newspapers he showed me,Richard Bridges was one of the most unscrupulous ruffians in SouthAfrica. In my heart of hearts I know he didn't do it, and though on theface of it there's no doubt, I'm going to try and clear his name. I amsailing for South Africa on Friday."
"Sailing for South Africa!" I exclaimed. "What about your work?"
"My work can go hang!" replied Jack heatedly. "I want to wipe away thestain from my father's name, and I mean to do it somehow. That's whyI've run round to see you, old pal, for I want you to come with me.Knowing Rhodesia as you do, you're just the man to help me. Say you'llcome?" he pleaded.
It seemed quite the forlornest hope I had ever heard of, but Jack'sdistress was so acute that I hadn't the heart to refuse.
"All right, Jack," I said, "I'm with you. But don't foster any vainhopes. Remember, it's twenty years ago. It will be a pretty tough job toprove anything after all these years."
During the voyage out we had ample time to go through the small amountof information about the long-forgotten case that Jack had been able tocollect from the family solicitors.
In the year 1893, Richard Bridges, who was a mining engineer of somestanding, had made a trip to Rhodesia with a view to gold and diamondprospecting. He had been accompanied by a friend, Thomas Symes, who, sofar as we could ascertain, was an ex-naval officer; and the two, after ashort stay at Bulawayo, had gone northward across the Guai river intowhat was in those days a practically unknown land. In a little over ayear's time Bridges had returned alone--his companion having been, so hestated, killed by the Matabele, and for six months or so he led adissolute life in Bulawayo and the district, which ended ultimately inhis execution for murder. There was no doubt whatever about the murder,or the various thefts and forgeries that he was accused of, as he hadmade a confession at his trial, and we seemed to be on a wild-goosechase of the worst variety so far as I could see; but Jack, confident ofhis father's innocence, would not hear of failure.
"It's impossible to make surmises at this stage," he said. "On the faceof it there appears to be little room for doubt, but no one who knew myfather could possibly connect him with any sort of crime. Somehow orother, Jim, I've got to clear his name."
My memory went back to a tall, sunburnt man with a kindly manner who hadcome down to the school one day and put up a glorious feed at the tuckshop to Jack and his friends. Afterwards, at his son's urgent request,he had bared his chest to show us his tattooing of which Jack had,boy-like, often boasted to us. I recalled how we had gazed admiringly atthe skilfully worked picture of Nelson with his empty sleeve and closedeye and the inscription underneath: "England expects that every man thisday will do his duty." Jack had explained with considerable pride thatthis did not constitute all, as on his father's back was a wonderfulrepresentation of the _Victory_, and on other parts of his body a lion,a snake, and other _fauna_, but Richard Bridges had protested laughinglyand refused to undress further for our delectation.
We reached Bulawayo, but no one in the city appeared to recall the caseat all; indeed, Bulawayo had grown out of all recognition since RichardBridges had passed through it on his prospecting trip. It was difficultto know where to start. Even the police could not help, and had noknowledge of where the murderer had been buried. No one but an oldsaloon-keeper and a couple of miners could recollect the execution even,and they, so far as they could remember, had never met Richard Bridgesin the flesh, though his unsavoury reputation was well known to them.
In despair, Jack suggested a trek up country towards Barotseland, whichwas the district that Bridges and Symes had proposed to prospect,though, according to all accounts, Symes had been murdered by theMatabele before they reached the Guai river.
For the next month we trekked steadily northwards, having very fairsport; but, as I expected, extracting no information whatever from thenatives about the two prospectors who had passed that way years before.At length, Jack became more or less reconciled to failure, and realisingthe futility of further search suggested a return to Bulawayo. As ourdonkey caravan was beginning to suffer severely from the fly, Iconcurred, and we started to travel slowly back to Bulawayo, shooting bythe way.
One night after a particularly hard trek we inspanned at an old _kraal_,the painted walls of which told that at one time it had served as aroyal residence, and as I had shot an eland cow that afternoon, whichprovided far more meat than we could consume, we invited the induna andhis tribe to the feast. Not to be outdone in hospitality, the old chiefproduced the kaffir beer of the country, a liquid which has nothing torecommend it beyond the fact that it intoxicates rapidly.
A meat feast and a beer drink is a great event in the average kaffir'slife, an
d as the evening wore on a general jollification started to thethump of tomtoms and the squeak of kaffir fiddles. There was one verydrunk old Barotse, who sat close to me, and, accompanying himself withthumps on his tomtom, sang in one droning key a song about a man whokept snakes and lions inside him, and from whose chest the evil eyelooked out. At least, so far as I could gather that was roughly the gistof the song; but as his tomtom was particularly large and most obnoxiousI politely took it away from him, and Jack and I used it as a table forour gourds of kaffir beer, which we were pretending to consume in largequantities.
A gourd, however, is a top-heavy sort of drinking vessel, and in a veryshort time I had succeeded in spilling half a pint or so of my drink onthe parchment of the drum. Not wishing to spoil the old gentleman'splaything, which he evidently valued above all things, I mopped up thebeer with my handkerchief, and in doing so removed from the parchment aportion of the accumulated filth of ages.
"Hullo!" said Jack, taking the instrument from me and holding it up tothe firelight. "There's a picture of some sort here. It looks like a manin a cocked hat."
He rubbed it hard with his pocket handkerchief, and the polishingbrought more of the picture to light, till, plain enough in places andfaded in others, there stood out, the portrait of a man in anold-fashioned naval uniform with stars on his breast, and underneathsome letters in the form of a scroll.
"That's not native work," I exclaimed. "These are English letters," forI could distinctly make out the word "man" followed by a "t" and an "h.""Rub it hard, Jack."
The grease on the parchment refused to give way to further polishing,however, and remembering a bottle of ammonia I kept for insect bites, Imixed some with kaffir beer and poured it on the head of the tomtom. Onetouch of the handkerchief was sufficient once the strong alkali got towork, and out came the grand old face of Nelson and underneath hismotto:
"England expects that every man this day will do his duty."
Jack dropped the drum as if it had bitten him.
"What does it mean?" he gasped. "My father had this on his chest. Iremember it well!"
I was, however, too busy with the reverse end of the drum to heed him.On the other side the ammonia brought out a picture of the _Victory_,with the head of a roaring lion below it.
"Good God!" exclaimed Jack. "My father had that on his back. Quick, Jim,rub hard! There should be the family crest to the right--an eagle with asnake in its talons and R. B. underneath."
I rubbed in the spot indicated, and out came the crest and initialsexactly as Jack had described them. There was something horribly uncannyand gruesome in finding the tattoo marks of the dead man on theparchment of a Barotse tomtom two hundred miles north of the Zambesi,and for a moment I was too overcome with astonishment to grasp exactlywhat it meant. Then it came to my mind in a flash that the parchment wasnothing else than human skin, and Richard Bridges' skin at that. I putit down with sudden reverence, and, beckoning to its owner, demanded itsfull history. At first he showed signs of fear, but promising him awaist length of cloth if he told the truth, he squatted on his hamsbefore us and began.
"Many, many moons ago, before the white men came to trade across the BigWater as they do now, two white baases came into this country to lookfor white stones and gold. One baas was bigger than the other, and onhis chest and on his body were pictures of birds, and beasts, andstrange things. On his chest was a great inkoos with one eye covered,and on his back a hut with trees growing straight up into the air fromit. On his loins was a lion of great fierceness, and coiled round hiswaist was a hissing mamba (snake). We were sore afraid, for the whitebaas told us he was bewitched, and that if harm came to either he woulduncover the closed eye of the great inkoos upon his chest, which was theEvil Eye, and command him to blast the Barotse and their land for ever.
"So the white men were suffered to come and go in peace, for we dreadedthe Evil Eye of the great inkoos. They toiled, these white baases,digging in the hillside and searching the riverbed; and then one day itcame to pass that they quarrelled and fought, and the baas with thepictures was slain. We knew then that his medicine was bad medicine,otherwise the white baas without the pictures could not have killed him.So we were wroth and made to slay the other baas, but he shot us downwith a fire stick and returned to his own country in haste. Then did Itake the skin from the dead baas, for I loved him for his pictures, andI made them into a tomtom. I have spoken."
"Good heavens!" exclaimed Jack when I had translated the story. "Then myfather was killed here in Barotseland, and it was Symes, his murderer,who went back to Bulawayo. It was that fiend Symes, also, who took myfather's name, probably to draw any money that might have been leftbehind, and who, as Richard Bridges, was hanged for murder. Poor olddad," he added brokenly, "murdered, and his body mutilated by savages!But how glad I am to know that he died an honest man!"
With the evidence at hand it was easy to prove the identity of themurderer of twenty years ago, and, having settled the mattersatisfactorily and cleared the dead man's name, Jack and I returned toEngland, where a few weeks later I had to purchase wedding garments inorder that I might play the part of best man at Jack's wedding.