The Peculiar Exploits of Brigadier Ffellowes (4 page)

             
"We all obeyed, none moving. We needed no telling. Suddenly a man stood before us, on the uphill side of the circle, the side we had all faced the first time. His hands were up in the air and empty.

             
"He was a tall chap, a white man, light-haired and distinguished looking in a way. His garments were torn, stained and filthy—ripped almost to shreds in fact—but his boots were still good. He had several days' growth of pale beard and his light blue eyes were glassy with what looked like fatigue. He stumbled forward and fell gasping at
Krock's
, who happened to be closest, feet.

             
" 'Good God, it's Bruckheller,' said Sizenby crisply. 'Well, that's one problem solved. More wood on the fire, Sergeant. Drag it from the pile right there. We'll keep you covered.' The ineffectual little colonial farmer had disappeared. I could see that Sizenby might have been very useful to Smuts' army in the East African war of long ago. This was a tough frontiersman talking and I was frankly delighted he was in charge. I'm no chicken, but I was out of my depth.

             
"Asoto dragged some more logs over, watched closely by all of us, and with more fuel the fire blazed up and widened the circle of light, driving back the dank wall of fog.

             
" 'Good,' said Sizenby. 'Now, I want the hunters in the middle, next to the fire, Sergeant, because they have no guns. Detail four men for permanent fixed watch, kneeling, rifles at ready position, one at each compass point. They are to fire at anything moving unless I say to the contrary. The hunters will keep the fire going at this level, covered by you, Mr. Krock, and the remaining private. Captain Ffellowes and I will see to this man. That is the arrangement.'

             
"With this new battle formation, we all felt better, and you could see the men respond to the firm orders. And I can tell you, / felt better. This show was a goodish bit more than I'd bargained for.

             
"We both knelt by the Italian's head and I lifted him until he was resting against my knee. He was not unconscious, but simply exhausted, to all appearances, and his eyes were wide open in an almost fixed glare.

             
" 'You are quite safe, Dr. Bruckheller,' I said, 'as well as being under arrest. Just relax and tell us what happened.'

             
"For a second the strange eyes just stared at me and then the man laughed, weakly but clearly. He proved too, that he was able to speak.

             
" 'Safe?' he said, in excellent English. He turned his head and looked at Sizenby on the other side, then briefly out at the silent fog-shrouded dark before turning back to me.

             
" 'Do you know what is out there? I have told Sizenby here some of my theories, but not all and you are unknown to me. Who are you?'

             
"I identified myself but he didn't seem very interested.

             
" 'Of course, an intelligence officer. An intelligent officer, a brilliant officer, is what I need. A second Lawrence, a Flinders Petrie, a Schliemann!'

             
"He took hold of my arm and shook it. 'Listen, Captain, and you too, Sizenby! I have made a discovery so fabulous that it will rock the world of science. I know why the Egyptians first came to Egypt! Yes, I know that, and all about their gods, too, where they got them. Because to begin, they had only one, you understand, only one!'

             
"Over his head I looked at Sizenby. It was clear that some tropical fever, heightened by exposure, hunger and fear had driven the fellow out of his head. This raving was utterly meaningless.

             
"In the silence, as Bruckheller gasped for fresh breath, we all heard a stick break. The clear sound was very close, somewhere beyond the firelight, but impossible to pin down as to direction. All of us tensed and I reached with one hand for the rifle I had laid down.

             
" 'Steady,' came
Sizenby's
voice. 'Steady now. It's just a noise. Don't give way!'

             
" 'No, don't give way,' mumbled Bruckheller. 'We are all dead men, but don't give way. You English are marvelous. None of us will live until morning! But don't give way! His cackling laugh was a nasty parody of the real thing, and there was a note of hysteria or worse running through it.

             
"He plucked my sleeve. 'Listen, Captain, listen, Sizenby. I must tell you something. We are walking dead men, but I have to tell you. Someone should know what I have found, even if they don't live long.'

             
" 'AH right, old chap, we're listening,' said Sizenby soothingly. His eyes nevertheless continued to watch the swirling mist which surrounded us and from which came an aura of silent menace, of malign observation. So did mine and the others.

             
"As the silence grew and the fog seemed to form sinister shadow shapes, Bruckheller talked on and on, his voice low and grating, somehow hard to understand. I don't remember half what he said, but it went something like this:

             
"Many thousands of years earlier, a tribe of brown-skinned people, hunters and crude agriculturalists, had lived in this very area. But every effort they had made in their rise to higher levels of culture had been crushed and blocked. Their foe was not neighboring tribes but a malevolent species of creature unlike anything known elsewhere on the Earth, a bloodthirsty monster, or race of monsters, which preyed upon them ceaselessly. No weapons succeeding in killing the creatures, no prayers averted their wrath. Indeed, the hapless folk even made them (or it; the number was not clear) the tribal gods, but all in vain, for no sacrifice, human or animal, was sufficient.

             
"At last, despairing and decimated, the remnants of the people simply fled. Pursued by
their awful oppressors, they somehow struggled north until at
last
in the great swamps of the White Nile the pursuing creatures were left behind. And the people, freed at last from a thousand years of nightmare, went on to become the ancestors of the ancient Egyptians.

             
"Mind you, it didn't sound then, as wild as it no doubt appears to you chaps here in the well-lit room of a building in a great city," said Ffellowes. "Please recollect that out there, in that cold mist, barely held off by the fire, knowing that
something
had got the missing
askari
(soldier), and moreover got him from out of our very midst, it was a very different matter. So that although we, Sizenby and me, were only giving Bruckheller half our attention as it were, we were still impressed.

             
" 'The clues are all there,' he kept repeating in that very odd voice, 'if only one takes the trouble to read them, they are all there, in the hieroglyphics, in the religion, everywhere. But only I, of all those who have seen them, realized what they actually said.'

             
"Just then, any doubts we might have been entertaining about nocturnal visitors were abruptly dispelled. The mist had parted a little in front of the
K.A.R
. soldier on my left, the one doing sentry duty on one knee at this point. Two immense yellow eyes were reflected by the firelight, eyes with slit pupils, but nothing at all like a cat's, being long and pointed at the corners. They only appeared for a half-second, but they were unpleasantly close to us. The soldier never fired but
Krock's
reflexes were better and he shot almost over my head, momentarily deafening me and filling the quiet night with the crash of his Winchester.

             
"In reply there came the most hideous cry I have ever heard. It was a coughing howl of volcanic rage, rising to a crescendo of sound and yet with a fearful shriek running quavering through it. It lasted for a moment and seemed to leave the very air tingling.

             
" 'That's no death cry,' said Sizenby grimly. 'That was simply annoyance. A wounded brute would have sounded quite different.'

             
" Yah,' agreed Krock, 'I know when I hit anyway. That one, he moves plenty quick, I can tell you.'

             
" 'You cannot hurt them,' rasped Bruckheller from my knee, where he still lay. He seemed to have gotten his wind back and he sounded almost amused. 'They are just as clever as you, you must realize, and they know very well what guns can do. They have lived here since the dawn of time and never yet has anyone actually seen them and escaped.'

             
" 'Did you see one yourself?' Sizenby quickly asked, dropping to one knee beside me. 'Did you actually
see
them?'

             
"Bruckheller appeared disconcerted, as if his word had been challenged and seemed at a loss for speech. He gobbled something unintelligible and then muttered, 'I hardly got a look. They took my hunters and I had two: one by one, they took them. I saw only a dark mass as they took the last one.'

             
" 'When was that and how did they let you get here, get to us? Come on, Man, speak up!' Sizenby seemed to be following a thought and his voice was fierce. I had no idea what he wanted, but he was clearly in charge so I shut up.

             
" 'How do I know?' snarled the Italian. 'Sometime yesterday afternoon, I think. I have been running and hiding, running and hiding. When I heard the shots I tried to get close, but always I would hear things moving. Why do you ask me all this?' His voice had taken on an unpleasant, grating whine, like that of a spoilt child who wishes to make excuses for a fault, but in some indefinable way it was even nastier.

             
" 'Just wondered, that's all,' said Sizenby in an absent tone. He was once again standing and watching the misty perimeter of visibility.

             
"Since that dreadful scream, no sound had come from out in the night. But now the far silence and the patter of drops of water from the bamboos were again broken. And once again it was the sound of running feet. Never very close and never very far away, the pad,' pad of the runner came through the chill silence. First on one side of the circle then on the other. We had learned our lesson though and we watched all sides.

             
"The sounds would cease at intervals, then commence again. The noises, indeed any sound in the bamboo forest, had a curious echoing quality, so that at times we seemed encompassed by legions of stealthy, padding feet, running on urgent and malignant errands. Yet at others there seemed only the one creature, running in the night, driven by some ancient and evil compulsion as if in search of a phantom prey.

             
"Somehow the night passed. As the grey dawn slowly widened our circle of vision, the invisible feet ceased. One moment they were active, the next gone and a few birds began a desultory chirping deep in the ranks of the bamboo tufts.

             
"At length the area one could see clearly had widened to almost a hundred feet and a hot circle in the eastern fog banks indicated the struggle of the sun to break through. We all relaxed a little and looked at one another for the first time.

             
" 'I sat up for the
Tsavo
maneaters
,' said Sizenby, passing his hand over his eyes, 'and at least once I heard them feeding on a Hindu railroad coolie twenty feet away from my tree. But it wasn't like this, I can tell you.' He looked grey and shriveled. Krock looked like the wrath of God too, and I could feel every nerve in my body aching from the constant strain of watching and waiting. The Negroes, Somali, Kikuyu and
Wanderobo
were silent, a bad sign if one knew them. Only Sergeant Asoto spoke, stepping forward to point at my feet.

             
" 'Sirs, is this the man we hunt? He looks bad to me.'

             
"This simple remark made me and the others remember our quarry, the reason for all this incredible strain and the nevus of our search, almost forgotten due to the night's stealthy evil.