Chapter XXIV Strong sprints and gains a Lap
Jack was at my side in a moment.
“Quick,” he whispered “let’s mount and be after him; I shall never be happy again until I have kicked that fellow within an inch of his grave!”
We dashed into the wood for our horses—they were not where we had left them. Of course they were not; the man would have been a fool to leave us our horses—we might have raced into Vryburg before him, and got him arrested! Strong was about as perfect an example of a scoundrel as you would find in Africa or any other continent, but no fool!
We stood and stamped and murdered our native language, diving to the lowest depths of our vocabularies for expressions of hatred and rage and of abuse, and the promise of future dire vengeance. We still stood and raged, when suddenly Strong came riding back.
“You have disobeyed orders,” he said; “don’t blame me for enforcing discipline. Go back to your place, you—Henderson, or whatever your name is!—hands up, you other!”
“I shall have it out of you, one day, for this, you infernal scoundrel,” said Jack, whose temper was now beyond his control. “Get down and fight me on the ground—you may have your revolver, I’ll use my fists.”
“You fool!” rejoined Strong with an oath; “a man does not ask a leopard to spit out his teeth before attacking him. Go back to your place, I tell you, or I fire!”
Jack did not move.
“You are a murderer already,” he said, “and you know it. What have you done with Clutterbuck and his money, you scoundrel? That’s his pistol you hold; do you think I don’t know it? Never fear, you shall hang one day, my friend!”
For answer James Strong fired his revolver straight at Jack’s head. I do not think he had intended from the beginning to murder us. Either he had calculated that his plans would work out without the need of killing us; or he had reflected that his own skin would be the safer, when in England, if he spared ours; for inquiries would certainly be set on foot if Henderson disappeared though few would know or care whether poor I disappeared or not.
But when Jack accused him of murdering Clutterbuck, his comrade—a crime which in all probability he had actually committed, though Jack only drew his bow at a venture—Strong changed his mind and suddenly determined that it would be the safer plan to shoot us both down. Accordingly, he first fired at Jack and missed him clean. Then he fired another shot and missed again, and swore, and turned his pistol on me and fired three shots at me; at the third I fell, feeling a sharp pain in my shin-bone—my leg would not support me.
Jack had drawn a log from the fire and was about to hurl it at Strong when he fired his last shot, at Jack this time, and rode away into the grey of the early morning, before the last named could launch his clumsy missile at him. The shooting of the six shots did not occupy altogether more than ten seconds.
Jack sprang to my side, white and terrified.
“For Heaven’s sake, Peter, where are you hurt?” he gasped. “Can you speak? Are you dying? Where is the pain?”
“My leg,” I said, writhing, for the pain was very severe. “It’s only a broken leg—but it’ll lose us the race!”
As a matter of fact, my leg was not broken, as the term is generally understood—there was no bone setting required; but the bullet had carried away a splinter of my shin-bone, having all but missed me, but taking, as it were, a little bite out of me as it passed.
Nevertheless, trivial as the wound was, this misfortune delayed us three weeks at Vryburg; for though Jack doctored me with all the devotion and skill that he could command, the weather was hot, and I suppose there were some wretched little bacilli about of the kind “to play old gooseberry with open wounds,” as Jack learnedly expressed it; for my shin became very painful and inflamed before we reached Vryburg, and I was obliged to take to my bed at the hotel there and remain in it for a tantalising spell of three weeks.
As for our journey to Vryburg, I performed it in the waggon. Jack carried me, or half carried me, back to a village on the highroad which we had passed through on the previous evening without stopping, and there we awaited the arrival of the waggon, sleeping in a native hut and collecting, I suppose, the bacilli that were destined to play the part with my wound which Jack described as “old gooseberry.” Had we stayed in that village on the previous evening we should have learned that a white man had been living in the place for a month, waiting for friends to come down from Bulawayo, and that he was living there still. This was, of course, our friend Strong, who had deliberately waited a month for us, in ambush, and had sallied after us when we passed through, and caught us napping, as described, over our camp fire.
But we learned another significant fact bearing upon this matter. When the white man originally came to the village a month ago, he was, we were told, accompanied by a friend who lived with him in a hut which the white men made for themselves. But after about a week the little white man disappeared, and the big white man explained that he had gone on to Cape Town, being tired of waiting.
But after another week—that is, a fortnight ago—Umgubi, who was a kind of village herdsman, and looked after the cattle belonging to the chief men of the place, came upon the body of the little white man in a nullah with steep banks two miles or so off the road. Then the big white man said that the little one must have gone astray and fallen down into the nullah, or else an eland or some other big animal had attacked him and pushed him down; and all the natives of the village said that he must have terribly offended his gods for so great a misfortune to have happened to him, and that doubtless an eland had pushed him over into the nullah, or else he had fallen over by himself without the eland.
Only, if that was the case, said our informant innocently, why was there a bullet-hole in the back of his head!
It was when M’ngulu and the nigger had arrived with our waggon and translated the tale for us that we heard the details of this story of Strong’s villainy; and I may honestly say that, though shocked to hear of poor Clutterbuck’s end, I was not altogether surprised. It was a comfort to think that we had done our best for him by furnishing him with a pistol, while Strong was left quite unarmed. If Clutterbuck, with so great an advantage, was unable to retain the upper hand, there could be, after all, no one to blame but himself.
How Strong dispossessed him of the revolver; by what stratagem or plausible arguments or threats he succeeded in persuading Clutterbuck to part with all that stood between himself and his murderous companion; and how, when he had obtained the weapon, he used it for his fell purpose, will, I suppose, never be known. Perhaps the dark tale of deceit and murder will be revealed at the last tribunal of all; but it is certain that the tragedy must remain one of the mysteries in this life.
Meanwhile, where was the murderer? Half-way towards Hogland and my hundred thousand pounds?
As for ourselves, we determined to collect what evidence we could in order to bring the miscreant before the judges at Cape Town, if we could catch him there; but events proved that the fox was not to be so easily run to earth as we had hoped.
To this end we telegraphed from Vryburg, just a week after our own interview with James Strong, explaining that we had evidence of his connection with a murder, and giving his name and appearance.
But when, three weeks later, we reached Cape Town, we found to our disappointment that the police had utterly failed to find Strong. No person of that name, or answering to the description, had either been seen or had taken passage by any of the late steamers bound for home. The nearest approach to our description of the man “wanted” was of one Julius Stavenhagen, who had sailed in the Conway Castle before our telegram was delivered.
Jack and I looked at one another on receiving this information. If this were Strong himself—and we had a firm conviction that such was the case—then he had not only escaped just chastisement for his crime, but he had also obtained a three weeks’ start of us in the race for Clutterbuck’s Treasure.