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AT FIRST IT WAS A SMALL, INSISTENT SCRAPING, like the brushing of a windy branch against the windowpane. N’Daria lay rigid under blankets and pretended to be asleep. Then the scraping became a hammering of knuckles, rapid and rhythmic like the beat of a tiny drum. This, too, she tried to ignore, but the pulse never slackened and the noise seemed to multiply in the hollow pipes of the bamboo walls until it filled the whole room and vibrated in every nerve of her body.
She could bear it no longer. She threw back the covers and looked up. Kumo was staring at her through the window. His eyes were twin coals; his lips were drawn back in a snarling grin that showed his red-stained teeth; his face was distorted into a monstrous mask by pressure against the glass.
She fought down a scream and tried to turn away her eyes from the terrifying vision, but the eyes of Kumo held her petrified. She stared and stared until it seemed that the horror would stifle her. Kumo gestured to her to open the door. Mechanically, like one in a hypnotic trance, she walked through to the laboratory, unlocked the door and let him in.
The night was still and airless, but the impact of his entry was like the rushing of great wind that robbed her of breath and thrust her back and back, until she felt the hard wood of the bench press into her thighs, and her spine arched backwards in a last futile effort to escape him. He towered over her, tall and menacing, his painted face hideous, his plumes tossing, the skin of his breast shining with sweat and oil.
If he had touched her, she would have crumpled at his feet. Instead, he stood there, grinning like a tusked beast, his eyes commanding her so that she could not look away but must stare and stare until his face swelled and swelled like a bladder, blotting out the room, blotting out the stars that shone through the open doorway, until there was nothing left but the pair of fiery eyes full of gloating accusation. Then, as if from a great distance, she heard his voice.
“This is N’Daria, who stole my life to give it to the white man.”
She tried to answer him, but her throat was full of mossy vapour and no sound came. She tried to struggle, but her limbs refused their functions. Her breast and her belly were pressed down as if by a great stone.
“This is N’Daria, who thought the magic of the white man was greater than the magic of Kumo. The white man is sleeping, N’Daria. He is weary from his journey over the mountains. He will not come to you until the morning.”
She heard him laugh and the sound was an enveloping thunder. His eyes held hers, immovable in the terror of it.
“The white man holds my life, but he cannot touch me while he sleeps. Now we shall make proof of the magic of Kumo. Feel it, N’Daria! There is an arrow in your belly! Feel it!”
He made no movement. He did not touch her even with a fingertip; but she writhed and twisted in agony, clutching at her middle, her face distorted in a soundless scream.
Kumo watched her, grinning with pleasure. Then with the sound of his voice the pain left her and she was still again, stiff and motionless as a cataleptic. His fiery eyes were a mockery, his voice was a bubbling chuckle.
“There is more, N’Daria. There is more. Your mouth is full of thorns and your throat is choked with pebbles. Feel them!”
Her eyes bulged, her cheeks puffed out. The arteries of her throat swelled and her diaphragm was sucked in under the rib cage. She was in the final agony of suffocation before he released her again and watched her retching with relief, her face grey and streaming with sweat.
So, in the timeless seconds of the hypnotic syncope, he led her through one agony after another. He made her flesh crawl with stinging bull ants. He set a fire in her brain and a gnawing animal in her stomach. He made her joints crack as if distended on a rack. He made her feel the lash of canes and the mutilation of stone knives. And still he did not touch her.
The whole performance lasted only a few minutes, but before he released her she had run the gamut of torment, endured a lifetime of affliction. Then she stood before him, trembling and broken, the tears streaming down her cheeks, her mouth slobbering open, her nerves twitching uncontrollably.
Kumo licked his lips, savouring the salt tang of vengeance. Then he took from his armband the same bamboo capsule with which he had killed Max Lansing.
N’Daria gasped with the impact of this final terror, but she had no strength to withdraw from it.
“You know what this is, N’Daria?”
“Yes.” It was a stifled whisper.
“You took my life, N’Daria. You took my life and gave it to the white man. Now I shall take yours and give it to the spotted snake, and the white man will never know.”
She could not move. She could not cry out. She could only stand and wait as he brought the tube closer and closer to her body, so that when the snake was released, it would erupt like a spring and fasten on the tight skin of her breast. Wide-eyed, she saw Kumo’s fingers tighten on the cap. She smelt the foulness of his breath and felt his trembling eagerness in this moment of triumph.
Then, as sharp and sudden as a cracking stick, came the voice of Père Louis.
“Drop it, Kumo. Drop it!”
The bamboo capsule fell, bounced once and rolled into the shadows against the wall. N’Daria crumpled to the floor in a dead faint. Kumo and the priest faced each other.
The sorcerer towered over the old man like a grotesque carven idol. His painted face was twisted with fury, and in his eyes was the naked evil of all the centuries. Père Louis’ blood ran like ice in his veins; his old flesh crawled with horror. This was Satan made manifest. This was the true biblical phenomenon of diabolic possession, in the presence of which even prayer was stifled and faith rocked for one perilous moment on the razor-edge of despair.
But only for a moment.
Père Louis’ hand closed over the rosary in his pocket. With a sharp commanding gesture he thrust the small wooden crucifix full in the face of the sorcerer. His voice was sharp as a sword blade in the old and terrible command:
“Retro me Sathanas! Get thee behind me, Satan!”
Kumo’s body was wrenched with a sudden convulsive tremor. He yelped like an animal, and a small yellow foam spilled from the comers of his mouth. Then he turned and ran from the hut, and Père Louis stood rocking on his feet and listening to the thudding flight of the cassowary man under the dark drooping of the tangket trees.
Down in the Kiap house, Lee Curtis woke with a start to find Père Louis bending over him.
“Get up. Dress yourself. Light the lamp. I want to talk to you.”
“What the devil!” Curtis rubbed his eyes and tried to orient himself. By rights the old priest should have been in his village, miles away. His presence on the plantation was the final straw in the day’s burden of irritations and mysteries. “What’s the trouble? What are you doing here ?”
“Keep your voice down. Do as I say. I will talk to you when you are awake.”
Stumbling and cursing softly, Lee Curtis dressed himself and lit the lamp, while Nelson, awakened by their voices, sat bolt upright on his bedroll and fumbled for his spectacles. Then, when they were settled in the small circle of light, Curtis said bluntly, “All right, Father, let’s have it.”
“First,” said Père Louis, “I want to show you how Lansing was killed.”
He held the bamboo tube up for their inspection.
“God Almighty!” stuttered Nelson. “Not another one.”
Curtis leant forward to take the tube from his hand, but Père Louis drew it back sharply.
“Careful. This one is dangerous. Look!”
He tilted it under the lamp so they could see the small circle of air holes punched in the pithy cap.
“Now listen.”
He shook the tube and held it first to Curtis’s ear, then to Nelson’s. They heard a tiny movement and friction against the walls of the barrel.
“What’s that?” It was Nelson who put the question. Curtis was tight-lipped and thoughtful.
“Snake sorcery,” said Père Louis simply. “Inside that tube is a small and deadly snake. The sorcerers catch them and imprison them in these tubes, sometimes with a fragment of the clothing of those they wish to murder. They irritate the snake with noise and movement and hunger, so that when it is released it will attack the first object on which it alights.”
“Where did you get it?” Lee Curtis’s voice was grim.
“From Kumo. Not ten minutes ago he tried to murder N’Daria in the laboratory up there. Fortunately I had heard him coming and was ready for him.”
“He—he gave it to you?” Nelson was stammering with excitement and fear.
“Not exactly. I—I commanded him in the name of God. He fled from me and left the tube behind.”
“Just like that,” said Curtis softly.
“As you say, just like that.”
“And the girl ?”
“I left her in the hut. She is badly frightened but unharmed. But you see”—Père Louis leant forward and gestured emphatically—“we now have the picture complete. Nelson will have told you that Sonderfeld has in his possession the life juices of Kumo.”
Curtis nodded.
“Through Kumo he murdered Lansing.”
“And tried to murder the girl.”
The old priest shook his head.
“No, that was a private matter—vengeance against the woman who had betrayed him. The rest is clear. Through Kumo, Sonderfeld can dominate the tribes. I am guessing at this, but I think that Sonderfeld will use the pig festival to have himself proclaimed by Kumo as the incarnation of the Red Spirit.”
“Lansing thought the same thing. That’s why he was killed.”
“Of course.”
Nelson burst in excitedly. “Then you’ve got all you want. Arrest Sonderfeld. Arrest Kumo. You’ve broken the trouble before it starts.”
Curtis shook his head.
“It won’t work, Nelson.”
“Why not, for God’s sake ?”
“Evidence. I’ve got no evidence against Sonderfeld. I’ve got nothing against Kumo except attempted murder, and to make that one stick I’ve got to tip my hand to Sonderfeld.”
“But you just can’t sit here and—”
“Look, Nelson!” The boyish face was tired and lined with anxiety. “Look! When you’re up here, you feel as though you’re ten thousand years behind the times. You are, too, in a way. But just fifty miles over those hills is Goroka: civilization, the law, the twentieth century—and the United Nations. They’ve got a long reach; and whatever I think myself, whatever I’d like to do, I’m still amenable to them. Sonderfeld’s the man I want. I can’t get him until I stand him in a dock and produce evidence that a judge and jury will accept. At this moment I’ve got nothing—nothing at al.”
“You’ve got Kumo.”
“I want Sonderfeld.”
Père Louis wagged his beard like a wise old goat and said gravely, “Curtis is right. Destroy Sonderfeld and there will be no more trouble in the valleys. But you cannot destroy him without evidence—and, I tell you, you will get no more than you have now.”
“There’s the girl. If she would talk … ?”
“After what she has endured tonight, she will not talk. I tell you that now. You could take her a hundred miles from here and she would not talk because she would still live in dread of the sorcerers.”
“Time!” said Curtis suddenly. “Time is the problem. Whatever we do must be done before the pig festival. If not, we’re going to have the biggest blowup for twenty years—punitive expeditions, the lot! Time, time, time!”
He beat his fist angrily into his palm in frustration and puzzlement.
“When is the pig festival?” asked Nelson.
“That’s the trouble. We don’t know. It’s not a matter of dates, you see. The tribes are moving into the Lahgi Valley, the outer ones first, then the nearer. These folk down here could move tomorrow or the next day. Once they’re all assembled, the elders and the sorcerers set the day for the big show—the rest is all preparation and buildup. After what’s happened, I think Kumo and Sonderfeld will see that the big ceremony starts almost immediately. That’s my problem, don’t you see? I can’t leave the place. I’d like to discuss it with my people at Goroka, but I can’t.”
“If I might make a suggestion?” said Père Louis mildly.
“Go ahead, Father. We’re in a jam. I’ll listen to anything that will help us out of it.”
“Good!” The old man’s voice was eager and sharp with authority. “This is what you will do. You will write a report now. I will help you do it to save time. Then you will send your best most reliable runner over the mountains to Goroka. You will send him before dawn so that Sonderfeld will not know. It will take him—how long?”
“A day and a half—say forty hours. It’s a long haul even for a good man.”
“Very well. Who will deal with the matter at Goroka?”
“Oliver, I should think, George Oliver. He’s the A.D.O. in charge of this territory. He was the man who opened it up.”
“So! While you are waiting for Oliver, you will go about your duties in the normal fashion. You, Nelson, will concern yourself with the plantation and with nothing else. I shall return to my village and I shall say nothing about what has happened tonight. The girl will say nothing either I have seen to that. Nothing will happen till the pig festival.”
Curtis frowned in dissatisfaction.
“But that’s the whole point. It’s two days down and two days up—four days at the very best. What happens if Oliver doesn’t get here in time?”
It was a long moment before Père Louis answered.
“Then, my friend, you will take your police boys and go up to the Lahgi Valley. To get there, you will have to pass through my village. I shall be waiting and I shall go up with you.”
“And then?”
“Then,” said Père Louis with a wry grin, “we shall trust in the power of God and a small stratagem of my own. I confess I am not happy about using it, but at the worst I shall do so.”
“Do you mind telling me what it is?”
“I should prefer not to tell you … yet. But if your senior officer arrives in time, I shall tell him.”
Curtis was irritated by this apparent reflection on his capacity. He challenged the little priest.
“Why tell Oliver and not me?”
“Because, my son,” said Père Louis soberly, “you are a young man who is bearing with some courage a big responsibility. I do not wish to add to that responsibility the burden of a grave decision.”
“What sort of decision?”
“The life or death of a man.”
“But you’d let Oliver make it?” He was still fidgeting under the slight.
“Oh, yes,” said Père Louis simply, “I would let Oliver make it. I know him, you see—he knows me. And both of us know the tribes. Now I suggest we write this report and send your messenger on his way.”
Forty minutes later a fuzzy-headed police boy was trotting southward over the switchback trails that led to Goroka. He carried no rifle. His bayonet was strapped between his shoulders, and in his shining bandolier he carried the reports of Lee Curtis and Père Louis on the situation in the high valleys. His eyes rolled in his head and he licked his lips as he padded up the ridges and down into the black hollows of the defiles. He was a coastal boy from Madang. This country was strange and frightening to him. Its speech was strange to him and he had no talisman against its magic.
He was so scared that he did the fifty miles to Goroka in thirty-three hours.