Part 13

Deschamps and his French volunteers would not interrupt him, but I was impatient. "How did your cousin get at the diamond?" I asked.

"He did not get at it." The whitebeard roused up amiably and resumed his tale:

"And yet he did not part with it. For six weeks the Kaffir improved in the Bloemfontein hospital. Then the day came when the surgeons told my cousin they could learn nothing more of the lovely case from outside. I do not know whether they really meant to vivisect the Kaffir, but Vassell was sure of it, for he had that diamond on the brain. He longed to have the Kaffir live out his allotted span--at Swartzdorp.

"'Surely I must be with Matakit at his ending,' said Vassell to me.

"Now Matakit had been told how Vassell had mercifully saved him, and he wished for nothing better than to be Vassell's man. So, in the night, after my cousin had whispered to the Kaffir that the surgeons meant to cut him open, Matakit jumped out of the hospital window and hurried to Vassell's horse-wagon waiting on the Modder road.

"My friends, to tell you all the sad experience of my cousin with that Kaffir I should need to be with you for a week. Our time for talk together is too short--indeed, I seem to hear it going in the hackthorn tops. But still I can give you a little more.

"Consider, then, that Vassell's family already thought him demented for bringing the wild black from the Wolwe. Trekking with him to Bloemfontein was worse, and carrying him back appeared complete lunacy. But Vassell was the head of a Boer family and must be obeyed by his household, from Tante Anna, his wife, to the smallest Kaffir baby bred on his farm.

"He told no one but me of the battle in his soul. It was this: the more he longed to knife the diamond out, the more his conscience was warned with that text the Lord had sent him. He had now a fixed idea that he would somehow lose the diamond unless he was merciful to Matakit.

"Out of sight of the Kaffir my cousin could not be easy, he feared so much the black would run away. To prevent that, Vassell at first carried a loaded rifle all day long. At night he locked the Kaffir in the room partitioned from his own. Its windows he barred with iron bars. This was to save Matakit from the Christian Kaffirs on the farm. At first they were likely to kill him in the dark, such was their jealousy of the wild man honored by a bed in the house of the baas, while their own Christian bones had to rest in the huts and the sheds.

"But their jealousy changed to deadly fear of Matakit. They imagined that he had bewitched the baas. Matakit, being no fool, soon smelled out that fear. As a witch doctor he lorded it over them. He began to roll in fat, for they brought to his teeth the best of their food. As for their women!

"At last Tante Anna looked into this thing. Then the blood of her mother of the Great Trek ran hot in her. I happened to be visiting there at the time. She herself went at the pagan with the sjambok. Vassell turned his back, for he approved the lashing, but the Kaffir so groveled and howled under the whip that my cousin's conscience rose up untimely. It told him that he would be guilty, for the diamond's sake, of complicity in the killing if he did not interfere. Whereupon he took the sjambok from Tante Anna's hands, and ordered her to deal kindly with the Kaffir, as before.

"'Kindly! The black beast is destroying Christianity on our farm!' she wailed. 'I will slay him with my own hands. And I hope I have done it already!!'

"'Alas! no, Anna,' said Vassell. 'He will live. You have given him a reason to run away.'

"'Run away? I wish to the Lord he would run away!'

"'No, no, my woman,' Vassell whispered. 'You do not understand. Tell it to nobody--but the Kaffir is worth twelve thousand English pounds to me!'

"She turned to me laughing. 'Twelve thousand pounds. My poor demented man!'

"'When he dies I will prove it,' said Vassell.

"'What! A dead Kaffir worth a fortune?' She was all contempt for Vassell's folly.

"Of course he wished to explain to her. But he had an opinion that Matakit's days might be few if Tante Anna came to understand the meaning of the lump on Matakit's black back. Vassell's uncontrollable conscience required her to be no more unmerciful to Matakit. If Anna's sjambok cut out the stone, it might be lost in the litter of the yard.

"Well, my friends, the word went up and down the Orange Free State, and far into the Colony, and away across the Vaal, that Burgher Vassell Swartz was crazy with kindness for a wild Kaffir! Of course I denied it, and that carried weight, but the mystery grew, for I could not explain the case, so strong was Vassell in holding me to secrecy. To get my cousin out of his trouble I advised him to lend Matakit to me, but he would not agree. Possibly he suspected me of wishing to dig for the diamond.

"Ten years this sorrow lasted, and all the time Matakit grew fatter, till he could scarcely walk. He was the most overbearing black in all South Africa. What he suspected I do not know, but when he became sure Vassell would not let him be hurt much he wantonly abused the patience of even his devoted baas. Poor Vassell! Sometimes, to ease his sorrows, he used the sjambok on Matakit, but always too gently. Often he raised his gun to end it all; indeed, he got into a way of thinking that the devil was continually instigating him to kill the Kaffir. And every dopper knows that to yield consciously to the devil is the unforgivable sin."

The ancient burgher paused once more. And again we, whose senses were trained but to the narrow spaces between Canadian woodlands, heard nothing but a sudden louder tumult of gathered horses, the hoofs of the vedettes, and the tinkle of the spruit. I could not guess why old Emanuel looked so well pleased. He loomed taller, it seemed, as he squatted. It was as if with new vivacity that he spoke on:

"The strange things my poor cousin did! I will tell you of at least one more. Five years of Matakit went by, and never again had Vassell gone hunting afar, for he could not leave the fat Kaffir behind, and he feared Matakit would run away if he got near the country of his tribe. But in the sixth year a new inspiration came to Vassell. The Lord might send a lion if he took Matakit where lions might be convenient for sending. Doppers always regard lions as dispensations of Providence when they kill pagan Kaffirs. So he brought Matakit afar to the Lion Veldt. There Vassell would not let his men make a laager--he slept in a wagon himself. And the Lord did send a lion in the night. The blacks lay by the fire. And when it fell low that lion bore a man away out into the darkness at two leaps.

"'Baas! baas!' Vassell heard his Kaffirs shout. 'Baas! The lion has taken Matakit!' For they had been dozing, and now missed the fat black.

"The Lord had sent the lion, but the devil was carrying away the diamond. Vassell must be in at the ending, as he had planned. So out with his rifle he sprang, seized a brand, and ran, whirling it into flame, on the dragged body's spoor.

"'Come back! Oh, baas, come back! The veldt is full of lions!' So the Kaffirs shrieked. But twelve thousand pounds is not forsaken by a Boer hunter for fear of lions. On Vassell ran. He would beat off the lion with the torch. Happy would be his rich life without Matakit! Plainly the Lord would be merciful to him because he had been merciful as commanded by the text.

"But from the wagons came now a bawl: 'Baas! Baas! I am here, I, Matakit! I was in a wagon.' He had sneaked away from the fire. 'It is but Impugan that the lion has taken.'

"Back went Vassell in rage. Now he would finish the Kaffir! For what would his other Kaffirs, the Christians he had bred, his best hunters, too--what would they think but that he valued the accursed pagan above brave old Impugan and all the rest of them? Yet he only beat out his torch on Matakit's head before the diseased conscience stayed his hand once more."

Again the white-beard burgher paused. The picketed horses were now still. The moon was gone, and the spruit chattered in starlit darkness. There was no sound of the vedettes, but that was not strange. Yet uneasiness came over me. My comrades shared it. We all stared at the gigantic prisoner with some suspicion that I could not define. He seemed uncanny. From an old man, and especially an old Boer, sneers seemed unnatural. Some diabolical amusement seemed to animate him. As he jeered his cousin he seemed to jeer us. At first I had liked his genial tone. Now he gave me a sense of repulsion. For this I was trying to account when the old burgher stooped and freshened the fire with mealie cobs. The sparks flew high. In that momentary light he resumed his story:

"My cousin Vassell was of my Swartzdorp commando when this war began, but he is now a prisoner in St. Helena. Before he left home with his boys he instructed his wife about Matakit.

"'Be as good to him as you can,' Vassell ordered. 'But if he should come to his end before I return,' then be careful to bury him deeper than jackals or hyenas dig. Bury him carefully by'--no matter where; Vassell showed Tante Anna precisely the place.

"The woman wept and fell on her husband's neck, and cried: 'Farewell, and fight well; and God bring you and the boys back to me, Vassell, my old heart. You need have no fear but I will carefully bury the Kaffir!'

"_Gentlemen!_" We all sprang up at the change in the old voice. "_Gentlemen_--you are my prisoners." The burgher rose up, very hard of face.

Deschamps drew his pistol. I thrust mine almost into the burgher's face. But he spoke firmly:

"What! Shoot your prisoner, with his commando surrounding you. Fifty Mausers are levelled on you. Pooh! No! It would be the end of you all. Lieutenant, your horses are seized. Your vedettes are prisoners. They were knocked off their saddles long ago, when you heard nothing but the horses stamping. There was a Boer among them then. He provoked that stamping. It was the signal to strike down your vedettes. Fifty burghers are listening to my voice now. Here, men!" And at the word the Boer surprise came on. "Oom Emanuel! Oh, Oom Emanuel!" was the cry.

"I truly grieve for you, gentlemen," said the old burgher ten minutes later. "You were such good listeners--you had ears for nothing but my story. And because of that I leave you food for a whole day. It will be sufficient, if you march well on foot, to take you to my old friend General Pole. I beg you to give him my compliments. But he will not be in good humour to-morrow. Every one of his patrols within twenty miles has been captured to-night, unless something has gone wrong with De Wet, which is unlikely. Do not be cast down, lieutenant. You were not to blame. Your ears were not trained to the veldt. Good-bye. I invite you to visit me, lieutenant, after this war ends, at my Swartzdorp farm. Then I will tell you the rest of the diamond story."

"But that is not fair, sir," said Deschamps, whimsically. "I have interest in de story, and I want to know how she end."

"It has no end yet." The old burgher smiled broadly. "I was on my way to end it when you stopped me. I hoped to get through more easily without my burghers' aid, but I told them to follow if they saw me stopped. You missed us in searching the spruit this morning.

"I have really private business at Swartzdorp. Word was brought to me three days ago that Tante Anna dutifully buried Matakit months ago. Vassell was the Kaffir's life; I will be his resurrection. A great diamond of the first water is very salable, and the treasury of the republic is running low."

"But it may not be a diamond of the first water," said I.

"It must be," said the patriarch. "Anything less would be too shabby a mercy to Vassell."

*BOSS OF THE WORLD*

About one-tenth of the people in Boston are British Canadians, mostly from the Maritime Provinces, an acquisitive prudent folk who see naught to be gained by correcting casual acquaintances who mistake them for down-east Yankees. Often, indeed, they are descendants of Hezekiahs and Priscillas who, having been Royalists during the War of Independence, found subsequent emigration to a British country incumbent on their Puritan consciences. These Americans, returned to the ancestral New England after four or five generations of absence, commonly find Boston ways surprisingly congenial, though they continue to cherish pride in British origin, and a decent warmth of regard for fellow natives of the Maritime Provinces. Hence a known Canadian is frequently addressed by an unsuspected one with, "I am from Canada, too." Having learned this from ten years' experience, I was little surprised when old Adam Bemis, meeting me on the corner of Tremont and Boylston Streets, in May, 1915, stopped and stealthily whispered, "I am from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia."

"Really! I have always taken you for one of the prevalent minority, a man from the State of Maine."

"Most folks do. It doesn't vex me any more. But I've wanted to tell you any time the last ten years."

"Then, why didn't you?"

"It's not my way to hurry. You will understand that well when I explain. I'm needing friendly advice."

He had ever worn the air of preoccupation during our twelve years' acquaintance, but that seemed proper to an inventor burdened with the task of devising and selecting novelties for the Annual Announcement by which Miss Minnely's Prize Package Department furthers the popularity of her famous Family Blessing. The happy possessor of five new subscription certificates, on remitting them to Adam's Department, receives by mail, prepaid, Number 1 Prize Package. Number 2 falls to the collector of ten such certificates; and so on, in gradations of Miss Minnely's shrewd beneficence. The magnifico of one thousand certificates obtains choice between a gasoline auto-buggy and a New England farm. To be ever adding to or choosing from the world's changing assortment of moral mechanical toys, celluloid table ornaments, reversible albums, watches warranted gold filled, books combining thrill with edification, and more or less similar "premiums" to no calculable end, might well account for Old Adam's aspect, at once solemn and unsettled.

"What is your trouble?" I enquired.

"The Odistor. My greatest discovery!" he whispered.

"Indeed! For your Department?"

"We will see about that. It is something mighty wonderful--I don't know but I should say almighty."

"Goodness! What is its nature?"

"I won't say--not here. You couldn't believe me without seeing it work--I wouldn't have believed it myself on anybody's word. I will bring it on to your lodgings--that's a good place for the exhibition. No--I won't even try to explain here--we might be overheard." He glanced up and down Tremont Street, then across--"Sh--there she is herself!" He dodged into a drug store opposite the Touraine.

Miss Mehitable Minnely, sole proprietor of The Family Blessing, was moving imposingly from the Boylston Street front of the hotel toward her auto-brougham. At the top step she halted and turned her cordial, broad, dominant countenance in both directions as if to beam on streets crowded with potential prize-package takers. She then spoke the permitting word to two uniformed deferential attendants, who proceeded to stay her carefully by the elbows, in her descent of the stone steps. Foot passengers massed quickly on both sides of her course, watching her large, slow progress respectfully. When the porters had conveyed her across the pavement, and with deferential, persistent boosting made of her an ample lading for the "auto," the chauffeur touched his wide-peaked cap, and slowly rolled her away towards Brimstone Corner _en route_ to the Blessing Building. Adam came out of the drug store looking relieved.

"She doesn't like to see any of us on the street, office hours," he explained with lips close to my ear. "Not that I ought to care one mite." He smiled somewhat defiantly and added, "To see me dodging the old lady's eye you'd never guess I'm _her_ boss. But I am." He eyed my wonder exultantly and repeated, "It's so. She doesn't know it. Nobody knows, except me. But I _am_ her boss. Just whenever I please."

On my continued aspect of perturbation he remarked, coolly:--"Naturally you think my head is on wrong. But you will know better this evening. I'm the World's boss whenever I choose to take the responsibility. If I don't choose, _she_ goes on being my boss, and, of course, I'll want to hold down my job. Well, good-day for the present. Or, say--I forgot--will it suit you if I come about half-past-five? I can't get there _much_ earlier. She's not too well pleased if any of us leave before Park Street clock strikes five."

"Very well, Mr. Bemis--half past. I shall expect you."

"Expect a surprise, too."

He walked circumspectly across Boylston Street through the contrary processions of vehicles, to the edging pavement of the Common, on his way toward the new Old State House, and Miss Minnely's no less immense Family Blessing Building.

It was precisely twenty-six minutes past five when Adam entered my private office in the rear room of the ground floor of a sky-scraper which overlooks that reach of Charles River lying between the Union Boat Club House and the long, puritanic, impressive simplicity of Harvard Bridge. He did not greet me, being preoccupied with the brown paper-covered package under his left arm. With a certain eagerness in his manner, he placed this not heavy burden on the floor, so that it was hidden by the broad table-desk at which I sat. He stooped. I could hear him carefully untie the string and open the clattering paper.

He then placed on the green baize desk-cover a bulbous object of some heavy metal resembling burnished steel. It was not unlike a large white Bermuda onion with a protuberant stem or nozzle one inch long, half-an-inch in diameter, and covered by a metal cap. Obviously; the bulb was of two equal parts, screwed together on a plane at right angles to the perpendicular nozzle. An inch of the upper edge of the lower or basic part was graduated finely as a vernier scale. The whole lower edge of the upper half was divided, apparently into three hundred and sixty degrees, as is the horizontal circle of a theodolite. The parts were fitted with a clamp and tangent screw, by which the vernier could be moved with minutest precision along the graduated circle.

"I was four years experimenting before I found out how to confine it," said Adam.

"What? A high explosive!"

"No--nothing to be nervous about. But what it is I can't exactly say."

"A scientific mystery, eh?"

"It might be called so, seeing as I don't myself know the real nature of the force any more than electricians know what electricity is. They understand how to generate and employ it, that's all. Did you ever see a whirlwind start?"

"No."

"Think again. Not even a little one?"

"Of course I have often seen little whirlwinds on the street carrying up dust and scraps of paper, sometimes dropping them instantly, sometimes whirling them away."

"On calm days?"

"Really I can't remember. But I think not. It doesn't stand to reason."

"That's where you are mistaken. It is in the strongest kind of sunshine on dead calm days that those little whirlwinds do start. What do you suppose starts them?"

"I never gave it a thought."

"Few do. I've given it years of close thinking. You have read of ships on tropic seas in dead calm having top-sails torn to rags by whirlwinds starting 'way up there, deck and sea quiet as this room?"

"I've read of that. But I don't believe all the wonderful items I read in the papers."

"There are more wonders than the papers print. I saw that happen twice in the Indian Ocean, when I was a young man. I have been studying more or less on it ever since. Now I will show you the remainder of my Odistor. I call it that because folks when I was young used to talk of a mysterious Odic force."

To the desk he lifted a black leather grip-sack, as narrow, as low, and about twice as long as one of those in which surgeons carry their implements. From this he extracted a simple-seeming apparatus which I still suppose to have been of the nature of an electric machine. Externally it resembled a rectangular umbrella box of metal similar to that of the bulb. It was about four feet in length and four inches in height and in breadth. That end which he placed nearest the window was grooved to receive one-half the bulb accurately. Clamped longitudinally to the top of the box was a copper tube half-an-inch in exterior diameter, and closed, except for a pinhole sight, at the end farthest from the window. The other, or open end, was divided evenly by a perpendicular filament apparently of platinum.

Adam placed this sighted box on the green baize, its longer axis pointing across the Charles River to Cambridge, through the window. He carefully propped up the wire-net sash. Stooping at the desk he looked through the pin-hole sight and shifted the box to his satisfaction.

"Squint along the line of sight," he said, giving place to me. I stooped and complied.

"You see Memorial Hall tower right in the line?"

"Precisely."

"But what is nearest on the Cambridge shore?"

"The stone revetment wall."

"I mean next beyond that."

"The long shed with the big sign 'Builders' in black letters."

"All right. Sit here and watch that shed. No matter if it blows away. They were going to tear it down anyway." He placed my chair directly behind the sighted tube.

With an access of eagerness in his countenance, and something of tremor apparent in his clutching fingers, he lifted the bulb, unscrewed its metal cap and worked the tangent screw while watching the vernier intently. He was evidently screwing the basal half closer to the nozzle-bearing upper portion.

From a minute orifice in the nozzle or stem something exuded that appeared first as a tiny, shimmering, sunbright, revolving globule. At that instant he placed the bulb on its base in its niche or groove at the outer or window end of the sighted box. Thus the strange revolving globule was rising directly in the line of sight.

"Watch that shed," Adam ordered hoarsely.

I could not wholly take my eyes off the singular sphere, which resembled nothing that I have elsewhere seen so much as a focus of sun rays from a burning glass. But this intensely bright spot or mass--for it appeared to have substance even as the incandescent carbon of an Edison lamp seems to possess substance exterior to the carbon--rose expanding in an increasing spiral within an iridescent translucent film that clung by a tough stem to the orifice of the nozzle, somewhat as a soap-bubble clings to the pipe whence it is blown. Yet this brilliant, this enlarging, this magic globule was plainly whirling on its perpendicular axis as a waterspout does, and that with speed terrific. The mere friction of its enclosing film on the air stirred such wind in the room as might come from an eighteen-inch electric fan. In shape the infernal thing rapidly became an inverted cone with spiral convolutions. It hummed like a distant, idly-running circular saw, a great top, or the far-off, mysterious forewarning of a typhoon.

"Now!" Adam touched a button on the top of the metal box.

The gleaming, whirling, humming, prismatic spiral was then about eighteen inches high. It vanished without sound or spark, as if the film had been totally destroyed and the contained incandescence quenched on liberation. For one instant I experienced a sense of suffocation, as if all the air had been drawn out of the room. The inner shutters clashed, the holland sunshade clattered, the door behind me snicked open, air from the corridor rushed in.