The Ivory Trail Part 2

But he was not in the least squeamish about telling us that Tippoo Tib had surely buried huge quant.i.ties of ivory, and had caused to be slain afterward every one who shared the secret.

"How long ago?" asked Monty. But natives of that part of the earth are poor hands at reckoning time.

"Long time," he a.s.sured us. He might have meant six years, or sixty.

It would have been all the same to him.

"No. Me not liking Tippoo Tib. One time his slave. That bad. Byumby set free. That good. Now working here. This very good."

"Where do you think the ivory is?" (This from Yerkes.)

But the old man shook his head.

"As I understand it," said Monty, "slaves came mostly from the Congo side of Lake Victoria Nyanza. Slave and elephant country were approximately the same as regards general direction, and there were two routes from the Congo--the southern by way of Ujiji on Tanganyika to Bagamoyo on what is now the German coast, and the other to the north of Victoria Nyanza ending at Mombasa. Ask him, Fred, which way the ivory used to come."

"Both ways," announced Juma without waiting for Fred to interpret. He had an uncanny trick of following conversation, his intelligence seeming to work by fits and starts.

"That gives us about half Africa for hunting-ground, and a job for life!" laughed Yerkes.

"Might have a worse!" Fred answered, resentful of cold water thrown on his discovery.

"Were you Tippoo Tib's slave when he buried the ivory?" demanded Monty, and the old man nodded.

"Where were you at the time?"

Juma made a gesture intended to suggest immeasurable distances toward the West, and the name of the place he mentioned was one we had never heard of.

"Can you take us to Tippoo Tib when we leave this place?" I asked, and he nodded again.

"How much ivory do you suppose there was?" asked Yerkes.

"Teli, teli!" he answered, shaking his head.

"Too much!" Fred translated.

"Pretty fair to middling vague," said Yerkes, "but"--judicially--"almost worth investigating!"

"Investigating?" Fred sprang from his chair. "It's better than all King Solomon's mines, El Dorado, Golconda, and Sindbad 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 head-quarters for new blue dressing-gowns. The doctor came himself--a fat good-natured party with an eye-gla.s.s and a c.o.c.ktail appet.i.te, acting loc.u.m-tenens for the real official who was home on leave. He brought the ingredients for c.o.c.ktails with him.

"Yes," he said, shaking the mixer with a sort of deft solicitude.

"There's more than something in the tale. I've had a try myself to get details. Tippoo Tib believes in up-to-date physic, and when the old rascal's sick he sends for me. I offered to mix him an elixir of life that would make him out-live Methuselah if he'd give me as much as a hint of the general direction of his cache."

"He ought to have fallen for that," said Yerkes, but the doctor shook his head.

"He's an Arab. They're Shiah Muhammedans. Their Paradise is a pleasant place from all accounts. He advised me to drink my own elixir, and have lots and lots of years in which to find the ivory, without being beholden to him for help. Wily old scaramouch! But I had a better card up my sleeve. 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! Getting lax in his old age!

Sent for me a while ago to attend his favorite wife--sixty years old if she's a day, and as proud of him as if he were the king of Jerusalem.

Well--I looked her over, judged she was likely to keep her bed, and did some thinking."

"You know their religious law? A woman can't go to Paradise without special intercession, mainly vicarious. I found a mullah--that's a Muhammedan 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 pa.s.s her into Paradise ahead of her old man. What did she do?

She called Tippoo Tib, and he turned me out of the house. So I'm fifty out of pocket, and what's worse, the old girl didn't die--got right up out of bed and stayed up! My rep's all smashed to pieces among the Arabs!"

"D'you suppose the old woman knew the secret?" I asked.

"Not she! If she'd known it she'd have split! The one ambition she has left is to be with Tippoo Tib in Paradise. But he can intercede for her and get her in--provided he feels that way; so she rounded on me in the hope of winning his special favor! But the old ruffian knows better! He'll no more pray for her than tell me where the ivory is!

The Koran tells him there are much better houris in Paradise, so why trouble to take along a toothless favorite from this world?"

"Has the government any official information?" asked Monty.

"Quite a bit, I'm told. Official records of vain searches. Between you and me and these four walls, about the only reason why they didn't hang the old slave-driving murderer was that they've always hoped he'd divulge the secret some day. But he 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."

"He told us just now that he dislikes Tippoo Tib," I objected.

"So he does, but that makes no difference. Tippoo Tib is a big chief--sultani kubwa--take any one he fancies to Heaven with him!"

We all looked at Juma with a new respect.

"I got Juma his job in here," said the doctor. "I've rather the notion of getting my ten per cent. on the value of that ivory some day!"

"Are there any people after it just now?" asked Monty.

"I don't know, I'm sure. There was a German named Schillingschen, who spent a month in Zanzibar and talked a lot with Tippoo Tib. The old rascal might tell his secret to any one he thought was England's really dangerous enemy. Schillingschen crossed over to British East if I remember rightly. He might be on the track of it."

"Tell us more about Schillingschen," said Monty.

"He's one of those orientalists, who profess to know more about Islam than Christianity--more about Africa and Arabia than Europe--more about the occult than what's in the open. 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. Didn't call at the Residency.

Some of us asked him to dinner one evening, but he pleaded a headache.

We were glad, because afterward we saw him eat at the hotel--has ways of using his fingers at table, picked up I suppose from the people he has lived among."

"Are you nearly ready to let us out of here?" asked Monty.

"Your quarantine's up," said the doctor. "I'm only waiting for word from the office."

We drank three rounds of c.o.c.ktails with him, after which he grew darkly friendly and proposed we should all set out together in search of the h.o.a.rd.

"I've no money," he a.s.sured us. "Nothing but a knowledge of the natives and a priceless thirst. I'd have to throw up my practise here.

Of course I'd need some sort of guarantee from you chaps."