“Perhaps, but the author makes it seem possible. Then a white girl, American, of course, and her family and associates, among whom is the youth who inherited the title of Greystoke...”
“Please speak in shorter sentences, Watson. And back up in your story a little.”
“The girl’s father had spent his life savings and borrowed heavily to purchase an old map showing where treasure was buried on an island off the African coast. His daughter went with him. They also happened to run into the true Greystoke’s cousin in England, and he went along with them because he was in love with the girl.”
“Quite a coincidence,” said Holmes.
“And then the crew of their ship mutinied and set them down at the exact spot at which the real Greystoke’s parents had been landed...”
“This Yank seems to rely heavily on coincidences,” Holmes said, chuckling. “I could never understand, Watson, why you wasted your time on penny-dreadfuls.”
“It’s better than taking cocaine,” I said.
“I fail to see why,” he said. “But please get on with it.”
“The real Greystoke, the jungle-born man, fell in love with the girl and rescued her a number of times.”
“Naturally. And she, of course, fell in love with this inarticulate youth smelling of ape excrement...”
“It wasn’t that way at all!” I cried. “Will you allow me to tell this, or should I just drop the subject?”
“My apology, Watson. I will restrain myself from making observations which are irrelevant.”
“The real Greystoke’s father had written a diary, in French, which the young Greystoke could not read, of course. It seemed that before the parents died, the baby had accidentally placed his ink-smeared fingers on a page of the diary. Years later, when the real Greystoke was in France, taken there by the young Frenchman who had become his friend, the diary was turned over to a fingerprint expert. Meanwhile, Greystoke followed the girl to America, only to learn that his cousin had proposed marriage and she had accepted. A short time later he received notice that his fingerprints proved that he was the real Lord Greystoke. But knowing that if the truth were revealed, his cousin would be stripped of titles and fortune, and the girl would be destitute, he nobly kept silence.”
“In the finest tradition of housemaids’ literature,” Holmes said.
“Sneer if you like, Holmes,” I said. “I thought it was very moving.”
“What has all this claptrap fiction to do with our peer?”
“Why, it’s as obvious as the nose on your face!”
“What’s the matter with it?” Holmes said.
“It’s a handsome nose,” I said. “Perhaps the most famous in England since the first Duke of Wellington died. What I am saying is that the Yank must have heard something from somebody and that perhaps there is more truth in his fiction than anybody knows. He may have talked to someone who knew the true story of the Greystokes and based his novel on his inside information.”
“Nonsense,” Holmes said. “What happened is that the American read some newspaper or magazine accounts of how Lord Greystoke, a prime example of English eccentricity, or of madness, had abandoned his heritage, for all practical purposes, and settled down in Africa. To make matters worse, he’d gone native. No, worse than native, since no native would be caught dead living as he does, alone in the jungle, killing lions with a knife, eating meat raw, consorting with chimpanzees and gorillas. So, this Yank sees a highly sensational novel in all this and formulates a plot and characters which are bound to appeal to the public.”
“Perhaps,” I said. “Allow me to tell you what transpired in the sequel which the Yankee wrote.”
I proceeded to do so, after which I waited for Holmes to comment. He sat leaning against a tree trunk, his brows knit, much as I have seen him sit for an entire night while he considered a case. After several minutes he burst out, “God! How I miss my pipe, Watson! Nicotine is more than an aid to thought, it is a necessity! It’s a wonder that anything was done in the sciences or the arts before the discovery of America!”
Absently, he reached out and picked up a stick off the ground. He put it in his mouth, no doubt intending to suck on it as a substitute, however unsatisfactory, for the desiderated pipe. The next moment he leaped up with a yell that startled me. I cried, “What have you found, Holmes? What is it?”
“That, curse it!” he shouted and pointed at the stick. It was travelling at a fast rate on a number of thin legs toward a refuge under a log.
“Great Scott!” I said. “It’s an insect, a mimetic!”
“How observant of you,” he said, snarling. But the next moment he was down on his knees and groping after the creature.
“What on earth are you doing?” I said.
“It does taste like tobacco,” he said. “Expediency is the mark of a...”
I never heard the rest. An uproar broke out in the jungle nearby, the shouts of men mortally wounded.
“What is it?” I said. “Could Greystoke have found the Germans?”
Then I fell silent and clutched him, as he clutched me, while a yell pierced the forest, a yell that ululated and froze our blood and hushed the wild things.
Eight
Holmes unfroze and started in the direction of the sound. I said, “Wait, Holmes! Greystoke ordered us not to leave this place! He must have his reasons for that!”
“Duke or not, he isn’t going to order me around!” Holmes said. Nevertheless, he halted. It was not a change of mind about the command; it was the crashing of men thrusting through the jungle toward us. We turned and plunged into the bush in the opposite direction while a cry behind us told us that we had been seen. A moment later, heavy hands fell upon us and dragged us down. Someone gave an order in a language unknown to me, and we were jerked roughly to our feet.
Our captors were four tall men of a dark Caucasian race with features somewhat like those of the ancient Persians. They wore thick quilted helmets of some cloth, thin sleeveless shirts, short kilts, and knee-high leather boots. They were armed with small round steel shields, short heavy two-edged swords, heavy two-headed steel axes with long wooden shafts, and bows and arrows.
They said something to us. We looked blank. Then they turned as a weak cry came from the other side of the clearing. One of their own staggered out from the bush only to fall flat on his face and lie there unmoving. An arrow, which I recognised as Greystoke’s, projected from his back.
Seeing this, the men became alarmed, though I suppose they had been alarmed all along. One ran out, examined the man, shook his head, and raced back. We were half-lifted, half-dragged along with them in a mad dash through vegetation that tore and ripped our clothes and us. Evidently they had run up against Greystoke, which was not a thing to be recommended at any time. I didn’t know why they burdened themselves with two exhausted old men, but I surmised that it was for no beneficent purpose.
I will not recount in detail that terrible journey. Suffice it to say that we were four days and nights in the jungle, walking all day, trying to sleep at night. We were scratched, bitten, and torn, tormented with itches that wouldn’t stop and sometimes sick from insect bites. We went through almost impenetrable jungle and waded waist-deep in swamps which held hordes of blood-sucking leeches. Half of the time, however, we progressed fairly swiftly along paths whose ease of access convinced me that they must be kept open by regular work parties.
The third day we started up a small mountain. The fourth day we went down it by being let down in a bamboo cage suspended by ropes from a bamboo boom. Below us lay the end of a lake that wound out of sight among the precipices that surrounded it. We were moved along at a fast pace toward a canyon into which the arm of the lake ran. Our captors pulled two dugouts out of concealment and we were paddled into the fjord. After rounding a corner, we saw before us a shore that sloped gently upward to a precipice several miles beyond it. A village of bamboo huts with thatched roofs spread along the shore and some distance inland.