Talbot Mundy

“ Presently Fred came over and joined us, dancing across the wide red floor with the skirts of his gown outspread like a ballet dancer’s—ridiculous and perfectly aware of it.
“Monty, you’re rich! We’re all made men! We’re all rich! Let’s spend money! Let’s send for catalogues and order things!”
Monty declined to take fire. It was I, latest to join the partnership and much the least affluent, who bit.
“If you love the Lord, explain!” said I.
“This old one-eyed lazaretto attendant is an ex-slave, ex-accomplice of Tippoo Tib!” ”

“ Didn’t One-eye say Tippoo Tib is alive and in Zanzibar? The old rascal! Many a slave he’s done to death! Many a man be’s tortured! I propose we catch Tippoo Tib, hide him, and pull out his toe-nails one by one until be blows the gaff!”
(To hear Fred talk when there is nothing to do but talk a stranger might arrive at many false conclusions.)
“If there’s any truth in the story at all,” said Monty, “government will have done everything within the bounds of decency to coax the facts from Tippoo Tib. I suspect we’d have to take our chance and simply hunt. But let’s hear Juma’s story.” ”

“ But there remains the fun of listening to all the rumors borne by sea. “Play on the flute in Zanzibar and Africa as far as the lakes will dance!” the Arabs say, and the gentry who once drove slaves or traded ivory refuse to believe that the day of lawlessness is gone forever. One rumor then is worth ten facts. Four white men singing behind the bars of the lazaretto, desiring to speak with Hassan, “‘nephew” of Tippoo Tib, and offering money for the introduction, were enough to send whispers sizzling up and down all the mazy streets. ”

“ If Zanzibar may be said to possess main thoroughfares, that window of ours commanded as much of one as the tree and wall permitted; and music—even of a concertina—is the key to the heart of all people whose hair is crisp and kinky. Perhaps rather owing to the generosity of their slave law, and Koran teachings, more than to racial depravity, there are not very many Arabs left in that part of the world with true Semitic features and straight hair, nor many woolly-headed folk who are quite all-Bantu. ”

“ Fred sprang from his chair. “It’s better than all King Solomon’s mines, El Dorado, Golconda, and Sinbad the Sailor’s treasure lands—rolled in one! It’s an obviously good thing! All we need is a bit of luck and the ivory’s ours!”
“I’ll sell you my share now for a thousand dollars—come—come across!” grinned Yerkes.
There was a rough-house after that. He and Fred nearly pulled the old attendant in two, each claiming the right to torture him first and learn the secret. They ended up without a whole rag between them, and had to send Juma to headquarters for new blue dressing-gowns. ”

“ One-eye says it never paid to carry a tusk weighing less than sixty pounds. Some tusks weigh two hundred—some even more—took four men to carry some of ’em! Call it an average weight of one hundred pounds and be on the safe side.”
“Yes, let’s play safe,” agreed Monty seriously.
“One hundred million pounds of ivory!” said Fred, with a smack of his lips and the air of a man who could see the whole of it. “The present market price of new ivory is over ten shillings a pound on the spot. That’ll all be very old stuff, worth at least double. ”

“ Tippoo Tib is here—in Zanzibar—to all intents and purposes a prisoner on parole—old as the hills—getting ready to die—and proud as the very ace of hell. So says One-eye!”
“So we’re all rich?” suggested Monty.
“Of course we are! Listen! The British government took Tippoo’s slaves away and busted his business. Made him come and live in this place, go to church on Sundays, and be good. Then they asked him what he’d done with his ivory. Asked him politely after putting him through that mill! One-eye here says Tippoo had a million tusks—a million!—safely buried! Government offered him ten per cent. ”

“ So was Fred.
“Get a move on, Didums, for God’s sake!” he growled.
“Well,” said Monty, “there seems something in this ivory business. Our chance ought to be as good as anybody’s. But there are one or two stiff hurdles. In the first place, the story is common property. Every one knows it—Arabs—Swahili—Greeks—Germans—English. To be suspected of looking for it would spell failure, for the simple reason that every adventurer on the coast would trail us, and if we did find it we shouldn’t be able to keep the secret for five minutes. ”

“ These dusky gents sometimes exaggerate of course—”
“Now and then,” admitted Monty.
“But where there’s smoke you mean there’s prob’ly some one smoking hams?” suggested Yerkes.
“I mean, let’s find that ivory!” said Fred.
“We might do worse than make an inquiry or two,” Monty assented cautiously.
“Didums, you damned fool, you’re growing old! You’re wasting time! You’re trying to damp enthusiasm! You’re—you’re—”
“Interested, Fred. I’m interested. Let’s—”
“Let’s find that ivory and to hell with caution! Why, man alive, it’s the chance of a million lifetimes!” ”

“ Ours—I mean our government’s—is to give hatred a chance to die down. If our papers got hold of the Bundesrath story they’d make a deuce of a noise, of course.”
“If your government’s so sure Germany is planning war,” objected Yerkes, “why on earth not force war, and feed them full of it before they’re ready”
“Counsel of perfection,” laughed Monty. “Government’s responsible to the Common—Commons to the people—people want peace and plenty. No. Your guess was good. We are in here while the government at home squares the newspaper men.” ”

“ A man with a shovel beard—stout—thick-set—talks Kiswahili and Arabic and half a dozen other languages better than the natives do themselves. Has money—outfit like a prince’s—everything imaginable—rifles—microscopes—cigars—wine. He didn’t make himself agreeable here—except to the Arabs. ”

“ As it is, our only chance of shaking all of them would be to go round by sea and enter the Congo from the other side; but that would destroy our chance of picking up the trail in German East Africa. So I’ll go to Brussels, and get back to British East as fast as possible. Fred must go to British East and watch Schillingschen. You two fellows may as well go by way of British East Africa to Muanza on Victoria Nyanza, and on from there to the Congo border by way of Ujiji. Yerkes is an American, and they’ll suspect him less than any of us (they’d nail me, of course, in a minute!) ”

“ Monty departed to call on British officialdom (one advantage of traveling with a nobleman being that he has to do the stilted social stuff) . Yerkes went to call on the United States Consul, the same being presumably a part of his religion, for he always does it, and almost always abuses his government afterward. So Fred and I were left to repel boarders, and it came about that we two received Hassan. ”

“ A woman can’t go to Paradise without special intercession, mainly vicarious. I found a mullah—that’s a Mohammedan priest—who’d do anything for half of nothing. They most of them will. I gave him fifty dibs, and promised him more if the trick worked. Then I told the old woman she was going to die, but that if she’d tell me the secret of Tippoo Tib’s ivory I had a mullah handy who would pass her into Paradise ahead of her old man. What did she do? She called Tippoo Tib, and he turned me out of the house. ”

“ That is the worst of America, there is no genuine liberty. You have to steal for the man higher up. If you keep more than ten per cent., he squeals. He has to pass most of it on again to some one else, and so on, and they all land in jail in course of time! Give me a country where a man can keep what he finds! There was talk about congressional inquiries. Then a friend of mine—a Greek—who had been out here told me of Tippoo Tib’s ivory, and it looked all right to me to change scenes for a while. I had citizenship papers—U.S., and English, and a Greek passport in case of accident. ”

“ But be hates the men who broke him far too bitterly to enrich them on any terms! If any man wins the secret from him it’ll be a foreigner. They tell me a German had a hard try once. One of Karl Peters’ men.”
“That’ll be Carpets!” said Monty. “Somebody belonging to Carpets—Karl Peters.”
“The man’s serving a life sentence in the jail for torturing our friend Juma here.”
“Then Juma knows the secret?”
“So they say. But Juma, too, hopes to go to Paradise and wait on Tippoo Tib.” ”

“ While his older brother lived, Monty had continued in his element, a cavalry officer, his combined income and pay ample for all that the Bombay side of India might require of an English gentleman. They say that a finer polo player, a steadier shot on foot at a tiger, or a bolder squadron leader never lived. ”

“ Government ’ud hog the lot, but has hunted high and low and can’t find it. So the offer stands ten per cent. to any one who does—ten per cent. of fifty million—lowest reckoning, mind you!—five million pounds! Half for Monty—two and a half million. A million for Yerkes, a million for me, and a half a million for you all according to contract! ”

“ They’re planning war, twenty years from now perhaps, that shall give them all our colonies as well as India and Egypt. They’re so keen on it they can’t keep from bragging. Great Britain, on the other hand, hasn’t the slightest intention of fighting if war can be avoided ”

“ He has taken to discarding ancient prejudices—doesn’t drink or anything like that, but treats his harem almost humanly. Lets ’em have anything that costs him nothing. Even sends for a medico when they’re sick! ”