Sherlock Holmes--The Devil's Dust Page 11

  Umslopogaas seemed to expect more from me than that, as though I should reel off a litany of descriptors as he had.

  “John H. Watson, M.D.,” I said, “graduate of the University of London and Netley Hospital, late of the Army Medical Service, my regiment being the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, a veteran of the Second Afghan War, now a general practitioner and… and companion of Mr Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective of Baker Street, he whose business is to know what other people do not know and who uses the knowledge which he possesses in order to ensure that justice be done.”

  The Zulu gave a quick, gratified grin. “Now we know each other better, as men should who are strangers.”

  “Umslopogaas, I am going to have to remove the bullet from Quatermain’s arm,” I said. “It cannot be left there to fester. Ideally this should take place at a hospital or in my consulting rooms, but he has already lost a lot of blood and moving him from here would only cause him to lose more.”

  “Agreed. You must make do.”

  “It is handy that Quatermain has anaesthetised himself, as that renders the job somewhat more straightforward. However, the pain of the operation may yet rouse him from his state of stupefaction. If he begins to become agitated and to writhe, I shall require you, as his friend, to soothe him and if necessary to hold him down. Can you manage that?”

  “Of course, koos.”

  I produced the portable medical kit I was wont to carry with me in case of emergency. Not much larger than a cigarette case, it contained scalpel, tweezers, needle, scissors, a loop of surgical thread and a small phial of rubbing alcohol for disinfecting. Then I unwound the bandage from Quatermain’s arm and inspected the injury.

  The bullet had gone deep. My probing little finger sank in up to the second knuckle before its tip touched metal. Quatermain, in his drug-fuelled slumber, softly moaned.

  “This will not be pretty,” I predicted, and it was not. I had to dig around with the tweezers for nearly quarter of an hour, taking the utmost care to preserve the integrity of the surrounding flesh, before I felt the bullet start to come loose. Prying it out from its berth took another ten minutes, during which time Quatermain’s eyelids began fluttering and he let out increasingly voluble noises of complaint. Towards the end of the procedure he was almost fully awake and Umslopogaas was obliged to secure his shoulders with both hands and bear down so that he did not thrash about too much. All the while the Zulu murmured to the patient in his own tongue, which rippled across its soft consonants with the rising-and-falling cadences of a song.

  At last I levered the little flattened nugget of lead free. I swabbed off the blood that coated my hands and set to work with the needle and thread. It was not the neatest specimen of suturing that I have ever done, but under the circumstances it could have been worse. Quatermain would have an ugly scar upon his arm for the rest of his days and perhaps some slight stiffness in the limb, although somehow I could not foresee either troubling him greatly.

  I sat back, exhausted after concentrating so hard for so long. Quatermain was gradually lapsing back into unconsciousness. His features looked more composed than before, and already less heat was radiating from his brow.

  “A miracle worker!” Umslopogaas declared, clapping me on the back. “A true healer! Dr John H. Watson, M.D., graduate of the University of London and Netley Hospital, I commend you on your medical magnificence. You are mighty with knife and with thread. You are a prince of cuts and stitches. Forever now shall I hail you as a remover of bullets and a sealer-up of wounds without rival, and more importantly as he who saved the life of Macumazahn. I shall dare to call you friend, you who have kept the spirit of my friend safely tethered to his body.”

  “It was nothing really.”

  “It was everything,” Umslopogaas contradicted.

  “Umslopogaas,” Quatermain piped up in a faint, feeble voice. His eyes were half opened. “You are embarrassing the man. He is unfamiliar with the Zulu practice of bongering. He thinks, as a true-born Englishman, that you are going overboard with all this praise.”

  Nodding, Umslopogaas fell silent.

  “More Taduki,” Quatermain said. It was barely a croak.

  The Zulu fell to preparing a pipe full of the herb, which came in a leather pouch and looked not unlike ordinary tobacco, albeit with a greenish tinge. When lit, the smell of it was sweet, floral, but also ever so slightly rotten, reminiscent of tropical plants in a hot-house.

  “Hate the stuff as a rule,” Quatermain confided, “but it has its uses.”

  A few puff s of Taduki smoke, and he began to drift off again.

  “Before you forsake us altogether for the Land of Nod, Quatermain,” said Holmes, “there are things we must discuss.”

  “I would counsel letting him sleep,” I said. “He has been through an ordeal. Later, when he has rested, he should be clearer-headed and perhaps more amenable.”

  “At the very least tell me about Fanthorpe,” Holmes said to Quatermain. “Who is he?”

  Quatermain shook his head slowly, although whether in refusal or perplexity, it was difficult to tell. His hand went to his pocket, whence he fetched out a small chased-silver locket. His thumb triggered the clasp, and the locket sprang open to reveal two tiny photographs within, one of a woman, the other of a young man. Quatermain studied both with a rueful air, before his eyelids closed firmly and his breathing deepened to that of someone sunk in the profoundest of slumbers.

  “Damn him, the fellow is elusive even when stationary,” said Holmes. He turned to Umslopogaas. “Well then, sir, it falls to you to help us fill in the blanks here.”

  “I do not feel at liberty to do so,” said the Zulu, with a wary glance at Quatermain.

  “We might start with why you and Quatermain have established yourselves in a little camp in the park rather than, say, at a hotel.”

  “Oh, as to that, the answer is easy. It is to ‘keep a low profile’, as Macumazahn says. He does not wish it known that he is at large in London, and because I am with him he would be more conspicuous than usual. There are black-skinned men like me in this city, I know, but not many, and each of us is readily noticed. Besides, Macumazahn is more comfortable in conditions such as this, on a hard bed under a soft roof, than on a soft bed under a hard roof. He has lately bought a house in a part of England called Yorkshire. I assume you have heard of it.”

  “Yorkshire?” said Holmes with a twinkle in his eye. “Yes. A wild land where the indigenous tribesmen are not always friendly and speak a dialect of their own which few outsiders understand.”

  “You are mocking. I have been there myself and it is not at all as you say. Macumazahn himself speaks fondly of the region’s hills and of ‘the Moors’ and ‘the Dales’. However, for him nothing can compare with the bush of the Okavango or the elephanthunting grounds beyond Bamangwato. In those places and their ilk does he find his true self, more so than he ever could in a big Yorkshire house or in any building. In wide-open spaces, under the sky, is where Macumazahn thrives. Especially when he is stalking prey.”

  “And who is his prey in London?”

  Again, Umslopogaas made a show of reticence.

  “In that case, let me tell you what I think,” said Holmes. “The locket which Quatermain took out just now, the one still in his hand, seems more than germane. The two subjects depicted therein are of importance to him. That much is obvious, else why would they be memorialised in the locket and why would he choose to gaze upon them so, the last thing he sees as his consciousness fades? One of the photographs, that of the woman, is of considerably greater vintage than the other, being a daguerreotype. Furthermore, the woman’s hairstyle dates back some two or three decades. I am no expert in feminine fashions, that most mutable and ineffable of phenomena, but the centre parting and the ‘wings’ over the ears are suggestive of that era. Given Quatermain’s age, the logical inference is that the lady is his wife.”

  Umslopogaas canted his head to one side, a gesture which could as well ha
ve signified denial as acknowledgement. He was more than shrewd, this Zulu.

  “Another logical inference,” Holmes continued, “is that the lady herself is long dead. Otherwise Quatermain would in the intervening years have replaced the picture with another more up-to-date. Here in the locket his wife is as she was and always will be in his memory. Am I correct so far?”

  Umslopogaas paused, then said, “Stella. Her name was Stella, and she was Macumazahn’s second wife and mother of his only son. She perished giving birth to the boy.”

  “Said son being the occupant of the other half of the locket, for his physiognomic resemblances to both the woman adjacent and to Quatermain himself are marked. I am going to chance my arm and state that he too is dead. My reasons for making the deduction are as follows. The picture of him is recent, showing clear evidence of the advance in photographic techniques since the other was taken.

  “In addition,” Holmes continued, “the picture has been clipped out from a larger print and inserted into the locket, and the clipping was not done competently. Scissor marks can be discerned around its perimeter, and those marks, in their visible roughness, tell a story not of the steady hand of a professional photographer but the unsteady hand of an amateur. Not only that but the picture has been inserted into the locket atop another picture, whose edges show through from behind.

  “Now, why would Quatermain cut out a picture of his son to supplant another picture in the locket unless he sought a handy souvenir of how the lad looked in near-adulthood? I would wager that the picture beneath it is of the same young man as a child, but I shall not be so impertinent as to disentangle the locket from Quatermain’s grasp in order to verify that theory.”

  “Harry,” said Umslopogaas. “His name was Harry.”

  “‘Was’. So I am right and he is deceased. Recently deceased, moreover.”

  Umslopogaas bowed his head.

  “Yes, I thought as much,” my friend said, pleased with himself. “Hence the clumsiness of the cutting-out, indicative of a state of some mental upheaval.”

  “Holmes,” I said, “a little tact would not go amiss. Can you not see that the subject is upsetting to Umslopogaas?”

  “I apologise, Umslopogaas,” said Holmes. “I get carried away sometimes. You knew Harry Quatermain, I take it.”

  “Not intimately but well enough,” came the reply, “and because I am Macumazahn’s brother-in-battle, I share with him in all things, including grief. Also, I am the one whom he charged with safeguarding the young man from harm, and wretched soul that I am, I failed in that duty. Failed dismally!”

  Tears sprang to the Zulu’s eyes, and I was moved to place an arm around his shoulders as he cried.

  At last he was able to speak again. “I am resolved to tell you as much as I know. Macumazahn might not desire me to, but you have shown yourselves – you especially, Dr John H. Watson – to be men of good standing. I am going to unburden myself of a story, but take note: it is a solemn and tragic one.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE SIREN CALL OF EXCITEMENT AND DERRING-DO

  The Zulu commenced his tale.

  “Macumazahn’s son aspired to become a doctor, like you, Dr John H. Watson,” said he. “There can be few nobler callings than the curing of the sick.”

  I shrugged as if to say he would get no disagreement from me on that front.

  “He was studying here in London, as did you, perhaps at the selfsame place of education as you,” Umslopogaas continued. “However, Harry wished to take what he learned and apply it amongst the peoples of Africa. For he shared Macumazahn’s love for the continent and perhaps felt it all the more strongly than his father for having been born there. Hot sun and dry plains and the roar of the lion and the whisper of the tall tambookie grass – you might say these were in Harry’s blood, and no amount of time spent in England might erase them. He would return to Africa when he could, not least on that occasion some years ago when, as a boy on the cusp of manhood, he accompanied Macumazahn prospecting for gold in the Transvaal, at a place called Pilgrim’s Rest.

  “This summer just past, when Harry was a year away from gaining his qualification, the lure of Africa once again proved too strong and he took a temporary leave of absence and boarded a ship bound for Durban. His plan was to visit remote villages and outposts, bringing what aid he could to those there who were ailing.

  “It so happened that a disease had lately broken out in the region. Amongst us Zulus it is known as the plague of blisters and also, more often, the lizard sickness, for the bodies of any who contract it become covered in bubbling, weeping sores, their skin looking like that of a reptile. Many it kills. Those who survive are scarred for life and may be left blind.”

  “Sounds to me like smallpox,” I said.

  “Such is the white man’s name for it,” said Umslopogaas. “When Harry learned that an epidemic of the lizard sickness had struck, up near Vryheid, just north of Natal, he did not hesitate. He put together a caravan of four wagons and some twenty men with a view to travelling thither.

  “I did my best to stop him. Before Harry’s arrival in Africa, Macumazahn had sent word to me that I was to greet the lad when his ship put in and look after him from thereon until his return to England. In the discharging of that duty I accompanied him wherever he went. I had Groan-Maker ready.” He indicated the fearsome axe. “It was with me at all times, so that I might defend him from danger. I would willingly have given my life to protect the life of Macumazahn’s son and thought it a small price to pay.

  “So when Harry told me of his intentions, I spoke to him strongly and sternly, much as his own father might. I said he was making a grave error of judgement. What could he do for those afflicted with the lizard sickness? He could at best offer them solace as they died, and perhaps ease their suffering somewhat, but he could not prevent the disease running its course. Their lives were in the gods’ hands, not any man’s.

  “But Harry Quatermain was not to be deterred. He wished to do good. I believe him to have been spurred, too, by the same restless urge to journey into the unknown and to seek adventure that drives his father. Not for Harry the quiet life, tending flowers in a garden, making polite conversation over teacups. For him there was only the siren call of excitement and derring-do, which was his destiny.”

  I must confess that I had never heard “derring-do” used in conversation before. It had always seemed to me a word reserved for prose only, especially the prose of a certain kind of lowbrow novel. I was, nonetheless, finding Umslopogaas’s florid, literate English quite enchanting and could have listened to him talk all day long.

  “My protests,” Umslopogaas continued, “fell upon deaf ears, so I had no alternative but to go with Harry on his foray northward. My vow to Macumazahn could not be forsworn. I would have died of shame had I not honoured it. I insisted to Harry that I would be coming along and that I would impale myself upon Groan-Maker’s blade there and then if he refused. He saw then how adamant I was, and could not deny me. He even pronounced himself glad that he would have my company upon the journey.

  “We trekked for some fifteen days. Our caravan was well provisioned, our horses steady as we rode them, our oxen strong as they pulled the wagons. Naught could have waylaid us, or so I thought. Ha! How the gods laugh at him who grows complacent! How they love to cut the legs out from under him!

  “We were in the foothills of the mountains called by white men the Drakensberg Range and, by us Zulus, uKhahlamba, and we were making good headway, until came rain. Such rain. You English may not comprehend what real rainfall is, here in a country where a few meagre droplets scatter down from time to time like a sprinkling of blossom loosened by the breeze. Rain where I am from is a monster. It rages for days on end. It batters one’s head like a mallet and turns slow rivers to foaming torrents and solid ground to liquid. It descends from clouds that tower higher than mountains and is the laughter of demons.

  “What choice had we when the rain started but to hal
t our caravan, erect shelter and wait? To carry on would have been foolishness. The tracks we were following were turning to deep mud, and there was a danger of rockslides in the mountain passes.

  “We abided under canvas for a week, and a miserable time we had of it. The rain did not once let up. Water seeped into our beds. It extinguished our cooking fires. It made our feet go grey. Harry Quatermain did his utmost to remain resolute. Again and again he proclaimed that the rain would not dissuade him from his objective. As soon as it ceased, he would move on.

  “And then it did cease, and the sun showed his bright face once more, and the land steamed and dried and hardened. But alas! Such woe! For I had taken ill. I, who have survived so much in my long life. I, who know hardship as well as I know my own shadow. I, who bear the cicatrices of countless battles, here upon my body…”

  Umslopogaas tugged open his shirt to reveal an expanse of chest, criss-crossed with scar tissue, the legacy of laceration by knife, sword, arrow and who knows what else.

  “And here too upon my head.”

  Now he pointed to the triangular depression upon his brow.

  “A nasty injury,” I said.

  “Oh, yes indeed, Doctor! Brains flowed out when I was struck there by my foe. Believe you me, grey matter gushed, and I swooned and became like as to one dead. Yet, even as I slipped into insensibility, I had at least the satisfaction of knowing that he who had smote me thus – Faku, the captain of King Dingaan’s army – was dead too, for I had already dealt him a mortal blow with Groan-Maker. Faku’s retaliation – hurling his own axe at me with the last of his strength – was the final low act of a thoroughgoing villain. This happened during the war between Zulu and Boer, and this was also the time I lost forever my love Nada, she who was known as Nada the Lily and was the most beauteous of all Zulu women. I have not been the same since. The scar, in its way, reminds me of her. It is a physical manifestation of the absence she left in my soul.

  “But back to my story. Illness had seized me. It held me in its remorseless claws. An enfeeblement of the lungs, brought on by the bad weather, and its name was pneumonia. I was laid low. I, Umslopogaas, the great Slaughterer; I who have made one hundred and three kills as a warrior and put a notch for each in the rhinoceros-horn handle of my axe – I was reduced to a quivering, cough-wracked wretch by an enemy I could neither see nor fight. But then I am old, I know it, and with age comes vulnerability to such maladies.