The Peculiar Exploits of Brigadier Ffellowes (5 page)

             
"Bruckheller had been sitting crouched at my feet and as the Sergeant spoke, he looked up
and I saw at once what the Sergeant's rather basic English meant. I had thought he meant that Bruckheller was ill when he said 'looked bad.' But it was obvious that the words were meant absolutely literally. The Italian's face seemed to have suffered some indefinable change. The man's jaws appeared
prolongued
into a snout, almost as if he were thrusting his lower face forward, like an angry monkey's. And his eyes were narrowed in what looked like a damned vicious glare. He did indeed 'look bad.' He looked evil, if ever a man did and as his eyes wandered over us, it was as though he were cataloguing us for some peculiar vengeance.

             
"Further, there was something markedly unpleasant about his posture. He was squatting but somehow gave the impression of a dangerous animal crouching to spring, rather than a human being seated or resting. I stepped back almost involuntarily and Krock and Sizenby both raised their guns.

             
" 'Stand away from him, Ffellowes,' said Sizenby sharply.
'I
was afraid of this. It's one of the legends of the Kerit.'

             
" 'By God, you said it!' said Krock. 'Just look at him!'

             
" 'What's this?' I asked, as I turned around, baffled by the menace in their voices. All the blacks, faces set like flint, were leveling rifles and spears at the silent Italian.

             
" 'Why, it's got to him,' said Sizenby. 'Look at him, Ffellowes! He's not a man any longer. Can't you see that?'

             
" 'Are you completely daft?' I shouted. 'This man is my prisoner. What the hell do you mean, not a man? Put those guns down! That's an order, damn it!'

             
"At this point Bruckheller sprang. I say 'Bruckheller,' but I doubt the name was deserved any longer. In the light of what I next saw and heard, our companion of the night was frankly no longer anything that could be called human. The creature on the ground leapt with a snarl on my back and with a strength I wouldn't have believed possible seized me and held me as a shield between itself and the leveled rifles of the rest of the party. Helpless to move, I was neatly interposed against any bullets as my captor backed rapidly away toward the nearest point of bamboo jutting into the rapidly clearing glade.

             
"I could not move, but I could hear, see and speak. What I heard was a noise made by the thing clutching my neck in an iron grip, a rumbling, chuckling growl. It was pleased with itself, like a circus animal which has somehow downed the trainer.

             
"What I saw were the agonized faces of all of our party, white and black, as they tried to get a point of aim from which to shoot, or throw in the
Wanderobo's
case, without hitting me. Some appeared frozen, others were moving but slowly, as one seems to in a nightmare.

             
"That is not all I saw. The mist was thinning, but in swirls and twists, not all at once. And behind the men, in a patch of clarity for one second, I saw something appear.

             
"Reddish, matted fur, upright posture, great gnarled,
hunched
shoulders and surmounting them, I saw—Anubis!

             
"In one blinding instant I saw the great, pointed head, like a giant jackal's, the razor fangs bared in a snarl and I realized the truth of
Bruckheller's
story, the hidden horror behind the beast-headed statues of ancient
Egypt
.

             
" 'For God's sake—behind you.' I managed to scream. It was Krock who caught my meaning fastest and he whirled and fired in one motion, one arm cradling the rifle against his side and doing the firing as well. He could shoot, could Krock.

             
"Again from out of the mist we all heard that awful cry, like a coughing shriek which ran up the scale until it actually hurt one's ear. But this time there was a dreadful note of pain, so that the cry was half a wail. We all heard it. The second time, the Boer had hit his target.

             
"My own captor lost his head. What ghastly metamorphosis was working in him I will never know, but it was clear that a bond of some sort, psychic, spiritual perhaps, somehow connected him with that demon visage I had seen.

             
"At any rate, he hurled me on to the ground and throwing back his head (I was told this, I did not see it), he answered that horrible call with a perfect copy of it, slightly weakened but otherwise accurate. It was the last noise he ever made. Face down in the muck of that mountain meadow, I heard every rifle in our party explode simultaneously, some fired three or four times. Then, there was a great, ringing silence. I didn't move or even try to until I felt hands under my armpits and was hauled up to face the rest of the group.

             
"I turned then to look down at the late
Dottore
Guido Bruckheller. It was not a pleasant sight, since every bullet appeared to have hit, as well as two lion spears, but I felt then and still feel most strongly indeed that we had done the man an immense favor. It is not, I think, wise to speculate upon what he seemed well on the road to becoming. Whatever it was had no place in polite, or indeed human, society.

             
"Krock, Sizenby and I held a brief conference with Sergeant Asoto. The vote was unanimous. The men dug a rude grave, and, after I searched the body, unpleasant but necessary, and found nothing, we buried it. Then Asoto addressed the troops in Swahili, briefly, forcefully and, to me, unintelligibly. At the end of his speech he asked a question. I could catch the inflection as well as the answer,
'
Asente
',
which rang out.

             
" 'That means 'yes,' does it not?' I asked the two whites.

             
" 'Quite so,' said Sizenby. 'They shot the foreign
bwana
because he was shooting at them. End of story. What they'll say in their own villages doesn't matter. It was made plain that all this had best be forgotten.'

             
" 'Yah,' added Krock, 'and a good thing too. Listen, I hear of an English sea captain once who sees the sea serpent, the
groot
Meerschlang
,
and goes to his cabin and tells the mate to log him
as having been sick. He don't want people to think he's crazy. Neither do we and neither do you, eh, Captain?'

             
"I looked around at the sunlit glade. The mist had vanished and a green
touraco
bird fluttered on the stalk of bamboo over the mound where Bruckheller lay. My report would be the same, in essence, as the others. We came, he ran, he shot, we
shot, finis.
And there it rests to this day. You chaps are the first to ever hear the real story."

             
There was a long silence as we digested what we had heard. Then someone, not Williams—he was still numb—but another man, said hesitantly, "I guess it really is like the great sea serpent, isn't it, just too much to expect the world to believe?"

             
Ffellowes stared at him coldly, his blue eyes like ice. "Great sea serpent, indeed, my dear man? You don't know what you're talking about! That's a totally, I mean to say,
totally
different matter altogether. Why, there's nothing in the least unbelievable about the great sea serpent, as I myself can attest. Nothing like it whatsoever, nothing!"

             
I felt good at once. The great sea serpent! Well, well, well.

-

             
I don't remember how magic came into the conversation at the club, but it had, somehow.

             
"Magic means rather different things to different people. To me ..." Brigadier Donald Ffellowes, late of Her Majesty's forces, had suddenly begun talking. He generally sat, ruddy, very British and rather tired looking, on the edge of any circle. Occasionally he would add a date, a name, or simply nod, if he felt like backing up someone else's story. His own stories came at odd intervals and to many of us, frankly verged on the incredible, if not downright impossible. A retired artilleryman, Ffellowes now lived in New York, but his service had been all over the world, and in almost every branch of military life, including what seemed to be police or espionage work. That's really all there is to be said about either his stories or him, except that once he started one, no one ever interrupted him.

             
"I was attached to the embassy in Berlin in '38, and I went to Sweden for a vacation. Very quiet and sunny, because it was summer, and I stayed in
Smaaland
, on the coast, at a little inn. For a bachelor who wanted a rest, it was ideal, swimming every day, good food, and no newspapers, parades, crises or Nazis.

             
"I had a letter from a Swedish pal I knew in Berlin to a Swedish nobleman, a local landowner, a sort of squire in those parts. I was so absolutely happy and relaxed I quite forgot about going to see the man until the second week of my vacation, and when I did, I found he wasn't at home in any case.

             
"He owned a largish, old house about three miles from the inn, also on the coast road, and I decided to cycle over one day after lunch. The inn had a bike. It was a bright, still afternoon, and I wore my bathing trunks under my clothes, thinking I might get a swim either at the house or on the way back.

             
"I found the place easily enough, a huge, dark-timbered house with peaked roofs, which would look very odd over here, and even at home. But it looked fine there, surrounded by enormous old pine trees, on a low bluff over the sea. There was a lovely lawn, close cut, spread under the trees. A big lorry—you'd say a moving van—was at the door, and two men were carrying stuff out as I arrived. A middle-aged woman, rather smartly dressed, was directing the movers, with her back to me so that I had a minute or two to see what they were moving. One of them had just manhandled a largish black chair, rather archaic in appearance, into the lorry and then had started to lift a long, carved wooden chest, with a padlock on it, in after the chair. The second man, who must have been the boss mover, was arguing with the lady. I didn't speak too much Swedish, although I'm fair at German, but the two items I saw lifted into the van were apparently the cause of the argument, and I got the gist of it, you know.

             
" 'But Madame,' the mover kept on saying, 'Are you sure these pieces should be
destroyed!
They look very old.'

             
" 'You have been paid,' she kept saying, in a stilted way. 'Now get rid of it any way you like. Only take it away, now, at once.'

             
"Then she turned and saw me, and believe it or not, blushed bright red. The blush went away quickly, though, and she asked me pretty sharply what I wanted.

             
"I answered in English that I had a letter to Baron Nyderstrom. She switched to English, which she spoke pretty well, and appeared a bit less nervous. I showed her the letter, which was a simple note of introduction, and she read it and actually smiled at me. She wasn't a bad-looking woman—about 45 to 48, somewhere in there, anyway—but she was dressed to the nines, and her hair was dyed an odd shade of metallic brown. Also, she had a really hard mouth and eyes.

             
" 'Em so sorry,' she said, 'but the baron, who is my nephew, is away for a week and a half. I know he would have been glad to entertain an English officer friend of Mr.—' here she looked at the letter '—of Mr.
Sorendson
, but I'm afraid he is not around, while as you see, I am occupied. Perhaps another time?' She smiled brightly, and also rather nastily, I thought. 'Be off with you,' but polite.

             
"Well, really there was nothing to do except bow, and I got back on my bike and went wheeling off down the driveway.