Sir Richard paused, took a cigarette from a box and lit it. Every one looked at him enquiringly.
“I sometimes think,” he concluded, “that I am too deeply embued with the vice of my profession—I talk too much.”
Hartopp was easily persuaded to stay on and dine. As though by common consent, however, the conversation did not once touch upon the afternoon’s discovery or upon the tragedy whose shadow still hung over the household. Félice was a little graver than her usual self but she was still a charming and tactful hostess. Curiously enough, it was Haslam, generally the most silent, who contributed the largest share to the conversation. A famous disciple of the occult had just died, and some of his theories had been held up almost to derision in the Press, even by those earlier admirers who had once freely admitted his exceptional psychic powers. Haslam began to talk of the tribes in West Africa farthest removed from civilisation, of their steady and consistent distaste of any association with the white men, their self-sufficiency, their secret and sometimes amazing rites. He gave them all a fascinating description of a month he had spent in the cave dwelling of one of the priests, when they had been shut off from the world by a terrible flood, and had been fed only by a few tribesmen who reached them with supplies along paths no white men could have trodden. Hartopp, who was a profound sceptic, listened to some of Haslam’s statements with an air of obvious and immense disbelief.
“Tell us,” he invited, “one thing that your friend did which was not capable of explanation, which seemed to you in any way supernatural.”
“I will tell you certainly,” was the calm reply. “You may not believe it—it is the gift of some men not to believe—but this is what happened. We had received our usual food and supplies, and no more were due for five days. In the night I had an accident. I left the stopper out of the leather water bottle, and it was all spilt. We were there without water for five days.”
“Well?”
“The nearest huts from where we were, which had survived the flood, were between twenty-five and thirty miles away—more than that, I should say, but certainly thirty. This is what my companion did. He sat at the mouth of our cave and he faced the mountain and further range of hills over which these messengers would have to cross. For an hour he sat in absolute silence. I watched him, and although sometimes I fancied his lips moved, no sound came. Then later, as the night drew on, he began to make a curious humming sound, as though one were blowing into bowls of wood, out of which some of these people fashion musical instruments. You might have believed that it could have been heard say fifty yards off, by a person with good hearing. The settlement, as I think I told you, was thirty miles away. By nightfall of the next day, two of the tribesmen arrived with fresh supplies of water.”
“Did they give any explanation as to why they came?” Hartopp asked, after a moment’s silence.
“At that time I didn’t understand the language very well, but I did gather as much as this. The elder one said, ‘We heard, we obeyed.’ I asked the priest point-blank, which was a wicked and irreligious thing to do, how he communicated with them, and at first he only smiled. Then he said, ‘The heathen’—meaning us—‘have built cities in which they live, and they have the law of cities, which they have filled with their own witchery. To us it is given to bend the winds and airs and stars to our will, so that they carry our messages.”
There was another brief silence. Hartopp fidgeted uneasily in his place.
“All rot, of course,” he muttered. “They faked the thing somehow.”
“Nevertheless,” Haslam maintained quietly, “we got the water. I—” he went on, a moment or two later, “when I first went out there, was a sceptic. When I had been out there ten or twelve years, I realised that scepticism was the most culpable form of ignorance.”
Félice, who had been listening with dilated eyes, leaned a little towards him.
“Tell us,” she begged, “did your priest teach you any of his gifts at all?”
Haslam shook his head.
“Very few. To us those men are savages,” he continued. “They themselves pretend that they have something of Godship in their priestcraft. That may be. They seem to inherit a particular gift of focussing their brains and their will power upon any one object for an incredible space of time. They produce images in their brains which are perfectly amazing. They go on, and these images seem touched at last with something which might well be real life. One night—the night, poor fellow, when he felt that he was going to die—my man talked to me more than ever before, because by then I had learned the secret language which only the priests and a few others spoke. He told me, speaking of justice, that in his tribe no man was ever punished without deserts, whether the punishment was slight or of death. When I asked him how he could be sure of that, this was his answer: ‘Because,’ he told me, ‘those of us who have attained the priesthood—alas, our members grow fewer—have attained to the divine gift of knowing and seeing truth. Some white men,’ he went on, ‘come near the gift. Perhaps in time I could give it to you, Chief Haslam.’”
“And did he?” Félice whispered.
“I sometimes think that he did,” was the quiet but curiously convincing reply. “If ever a time has come when there has arisen a question as to the guilt or innocence of a certain person with regard to a certain deed, I have known the truth—and I have never been wrong.”
Every one was looking at him, from all round the table. Something about his voice and whole manner seemed different that night, and the immediate significance of his words suddenly dawned upon every one. Félice grasped his wrist. The fingers of her other hand pointed upwards towards her bedchamber.
“You know,” she cried?“you know who fired that shot?”
“Yes,” he answered. “I know.”
CHAPTER XXI
They were trifles which snapped the tension, brought back a sense of the ordinary into the atmosphere of drama which Haslam seemed somehow or other, quietly and without effort, to have created. Parkins entered with more champagne, the remainder of the servants with other courses. Félice dropped her bag. Hartopp demanded a cigarette. The party was normal again. Suddenly Sir Richard leaned across and gripped his host by the arm.
“Look at Haslam,” he whispered.
Haslam was sitting quite still in his chair; his eyes seemed to have grown larger and yet to have become suddenly void of all expression. His lips were a little parted. He appeared perfectly rigid. Félice, noticing something unusual, addressed some casual remark to him. There was no reply.
“Is he ill?” Andrew exclaimed softly.
Doctor Meadows, who was seated on the other side of Lady Susan, intervened.
“Don’t take any notice,” he enjoined. “Go on talking. I saw this once before. It will either pass off immediately or he will be like that for days. Leave him alone. Let him come to naturally or not at all.”
They talked—no one knew exactly what about. The butler filled Haslam’s glass with the others. Suddenly every one was surprised. He raised it to his lips and made some remark in natural fashion to the young barrister by his side.
“You were bringing those tall ones down very well, Grindells,” he observed.
The young man gasped.
“You weren’t doing so badly yourself, sir,” he found presence of mind enough to reply. “They didn’t look so high at your corner, but they had a nasty swerve on.”
“I missed a good many I ought to have killed,” Haslam reflected.
Every one talked shooting at a great pace. Presently Haslam leaned