He beamed from one to the other: he was almost paternal.
“I’d like to have shown you folks a worse-than-mamba,” he said regretfully, “but carrying round snakes in your pocket is just hot dog: it’s like a millionaire wearin’ diamond earrings just to show he can afford ’em. I liked that little fellow; I’m mighty sorry he’s dead, but if any man tells you that a snake bit him, go right up to him, hit him on the nose, and say ‘Liar!’ ”
“You will have some coffee?” Manfred had rung the bell.
“Sure I will: never have got used to this tea-drinking habit. I’m on the wagon too: got scared up there in the backlands of Angola—”
“What were you doing there?” asked Leon.
“Snakes,” said the other briefly. “I represent an organization that supplies specimens to zoos and museums. I was looking for a flying snake—there ain’t such a thing, though the natives say there is. I got a new kinder cobra—viperidae crotalinae—and yet not!”
He scratched his head, bringing his scientific perplexity into the room. Leon’s heart went out to him.
He had met Barberton by accident. Without shame he confessed that he had gone to a village in the interior for a real solitary jag, and returning to such degree of civilization as Mossamedes represented, he found a group of Portuguese breeds squatting about a fire at which the man’s feet were toasting.
“I don’t know what he was—a prospector, I guess. He was one of those what-is-its you meet along that coast. I’ve met his kind most everywhere—as far south as Port Nottosh. In Angola there are scores: they go native at the end.”
“You can tell us nothing about Barberton?”
Mr. Elijah Washington shook his head.
“No, sir: I know him same as I might know you. It got me curious when I found out the why of the torturing: he wouldn’t tell where it was.”
“Where what was?” asked Manfred quickly, and Mr. Washington was surprised.
“Why, the writing they wanted to get. I thought maybe he’d told you. He said he was coming right along to spill all that part of it. It was a letter he’d found in a tin box—that was all he’d say.”
They looked at one another.
“I know no more about it than that,” Mr. Washington added, when he saw Gonsalez’ lips move. “It was just a letter. Who it was from, why, what it was about, he never told me. My first idea was that he’d been flirting round about here, but divorce laws are mighty generous and they wouldn’t trouble to get evidence that way. A man doesn’t want any documents to get rid of his wife. I dare say you folks wonder why I’ve come along.” Mr. Washington raised his steaming cup of coffee, which must have been nearly boiling, and drank it at one gulp. “That’s fine,” he said, “the nearest to coffee I’ve had since I left home.”
He wiped his lips with a large and vivid silk handkerchief.
“I’ve come along, gentlemen, because I’ve got a pretty good idea that I’d be useful to anybody who’s snake-hunting in this little dorp.”
“It’s rather a dangerous occupation, isn’t it?” said Manfred quietly.
Washington nodded.
“To you, but not to me,” he said. “I am snake-proof.”
He pulled up his sleeve: the forearm was scarred and pitted with old wounds.
“Snakes,” he said briefly. “That’s cobra.” He pointed proudly. “When that snake struck, my boys didn’t wait for anything, they started dividing my kit. Sort of appointed themselves a board of executors and joint heirs of the family estate.”
“But you were very ill?” said Gonsalez.
Mr. Washington shook his head.
“No, sir, not more than if a bee bit me, and not so much as if a wasp had got in first punch. Some people can eat arsenic, some people can make a meal of enough morphia to decimate a province. I’m snake-proof—been bitten ever since I was five.”
He bent over towards them, and his jolly face went suddenly serious. “I’m the man you want,” he said.
“I think you are,” said Manfred slowly.
“Because this old snake ain’t finished biting. There’s a graft in it somewhere, and I want to find it. But first I want to vindicate the snake. Anybody who says a snake’s naturally vicious doesn’t understand. Snakes are timid, quiet, respectful things, and don’t want no trouble with nobody. If a snake sees you coming, he naturally lights out for home. When momma snake’s running around with her family, she’s naturally touchy for fear you’d tread on any of her boys and girls, but she’s a lady, and if you give her time she’ll Maggie ’um and get ’um into the parlour where the foot of white man never trod.”
Leon was looking at him with a speculative eye.
“It is queer to think,” he said, speaking half to himself, “that you may be the only one of us who will be alive this day week!”
Meadows, not easily shocked, felt a cold shiver run down his spine.
XIII
Mirabelle Goes Home
The prediction that Leon Gonsalez had made was not wholly fulfilled, though he himself had helped to prevent the supreme distress he prophesied. When Mirabelle Leicester awoke in the morning, her head was thick and dull, and for a long time she lay between sleeping and waking, trying to bring order to the confusion of her thoughts, her eyes on the ceiling towards a gnarled oak beam which she had seen before somewhere; and when at last she summoned sufficient energy to raise herself on her elbow, she looked upon the very familiar surroundings of her own pretty little room.
Heavytree Farm! What a curious dream she had had! A dream filled with fleeting visions of old men with elongated
