The Judgment House Part 44

"This is not the Vaal, it is Englan'," answered Krool, huskily. "The Law--here!"

"Zo you stink ze law of England would help you--eh?" asked Sobieski, with a cruel leer, relapsing into his natural vernacular.

"I mean what I say, Krool," interposed Barry Whalen, fiercely, motioning Sobieski to silence. "I will sjambok you till you can't move, here in England, here in this house, if you shrug your shoulders again, or lift an eyebrow, or do one d.a.m.ned impudent thing."

He got up and rang a bell. A footman appeared. "There is a rhinoceros-hide whip, on the wall of Mr. Byng's study. Bring it here,"

he said, quietly, but with suppressed pa.s.sion.

"Don't be crazy, Whalen," said Wallstein, but with no great force, for he would richly have enjoyed seeing the spy and traitor under the whip.

Stafford regarded the scene with detached, yet deep and melancholy interest.

While they waited, Krool seemed to shrink a little; but as he watched like some animal at bay, Stafford noticed that his face became venomous and paler, and some sinister intention showed in his eyes.

The whip was brought and laid upon the table beside Barry Whalen, and the footman disappeared, looking curiously at the group and at Krool.

Barry Whalen's fingers closed on the whip, and now a look of fear crept over Krool's face. If there was one thing calculated to stir with fear the Hottentot blood in him, it was the sight of the sjambok. He had native tendencies and predispositions out of proportion to the native blood in him--maybe because he had ever been treated more like a native than a white man by his Boer masters in the past.

As Stafford viewed the scene, it suddenly came home to him how strange was this occurrence in Park Lane. It was medieval, it belonged to some land unslaked of barbarism. He realized all at once how little these men around him represented the land in which they were living, and how much they were part of the far-off land which was now in the throes of war.

To these men this was in one sense an alien country. Through the dulled noises of London there came to their ears the click of the wheels of a cape-wagon, the crack of the Kaffir's whip, the creak of the disselboom. They followed the spoor of a company of elephants in the East country, they watched through the November mist the blesbok flying across the veld, a herd of quaggas taking cover with the rheebok, or a cloud of locusts sailing out of the sun to devastate the green lands.

Through the smoky smell of London there came to them the scent of the wattle, the stinging odour of ten thousand cattle, the reek of a native kraal, the sharp sweetness of orange groves, the aromatic air of the karoo, laden with the breath of a thousand wild herbs. Through the drizzle of the autumn rain they heard the wild thunderbolt tear the trees from earthly moorings. In their eyes was the livid lightning that searched in spasms of anger for its prey, while there swept over the brown, aching veld the flood which filled the spruits, which made the rivers seas, and ploughed fresh channels through the soil. The luxury of this room, with its s.h.i.+ning mahogany tables, its tapestried walls, its rare fireplace and ma.s.sive overmantel brought from Italy, its exquisite stained-gla.s.s windows, was only part of a play they were acting; it was not their real life.

And now there was not one of them that saw anything incongruous in the whip of rhinoceros-hide lying on the table, or clinched in Barry Whalen's hand. On the contrary, it gave them a sense of supreme naturalness. They had lived in a land where the sjambok was the symbol of progress. It represented the forward movement of civilization in the wilderness. It was the vierkleur of the pioneer, without which the long train of capewagons, with the oxen in longer coils of effort, would never have advanced; without which the Kaffir and the Hottentot would have sacrificed every act of civilization. It prevented crime, it punished crime, it took the place of the bowie-knife and the derringer of that other civilization beyond the Mississippi; it was the lock to the door in the wild places, the open sesame to the territories where native chiefs ruled communal tribes by playing tyrant to the commune.

It was the rod of Aaron staying the plague of barbarism. It was the sceptre of the veldt. It drew blood, it ate human flesh, it secured order where there was no law, and it did the work of prison and penitentiary. It was the symbol of authority in the wilderness.

It was race.

Stafford was the only man present who saw anything incongruous in the scene, and yet his travels in the East his year in Persia, Tibet and Afghanistan, had made him understand things not revealed to the wise and prudent of European domains. With Krool before them, who was of the veld and the karoo, whose natural habitat was but a cross between a krall and the stoep of a dopper's home, these men were instantly transported to the land where their hearts were in spite of all, though the flesh-pots of the West End of London had turned them into by-paths for a while. The skin had been scratched by Krool's insolence and the knowledge of his treachery, and the Tartar showed--the sjambok his scimitar.

In spite of himself, Stafford was affected by it all. He understood.

This was not London; the scene had s.h.i.+fted to Potchefstroom or Middleburg, and Krool was transformed too. The sjambok had, like a wizard's wand, as it were, lifted him away from England to s.p.a.ces where he watched from the grey rock of a kopje for the glint of an a.s.segai or the red of a Rooinek's tunic: and he had done both in his day.

"We've got you at last, Krool," said Wallstein. "We have been some time at it, but it's a long lane that has no turning, and we have you--"

"Like that--like that, jackal!" interjected Barry Whalen, opening and shutting his lean fingers with a gesture of savage possession.

"What?" asked Krool, with a malevolent thrust forward of his head.

"What?"

"You betrayed us to Kruger," answered Wallstein, holding the papers.

"We have here the proof at last."

"You betrayed England and her secrets, and yet you think that the English law would protect you against this," said Barry Whalen, harshly, handling the sjambok.

"What I betray?" Krool asked again. "What I tell?"

With great deliberation Wallstein explained.

"Where proof?" Krool asked, doggedly.

"We have just enough to hang you," said Wallstein, grimly, and lifted and showed the papers Barry Whalen had brought.

An insolent smile crossed Krool's face.

"You find out too late. That Fellowes is dead. So much you get, but the work is done. It not matter now. It is all done--altogether. Oom Paul speaks now, and everything is his--from the Cape to the Zambesi, everything his. It is too late. What can to do?" Suddenly ferocity showed in his face. "It come at last. It is the end of the English both sides the Vaal. They will go down like wild hogs into the sea with Joubert and Botha behind them. It is the day of Oom Paul and Christ.

The G.o.d of Israel gives to his own the tents of the Rooineks."

In spite of the fierce pa.s.sion of the man, who had suddenly disclosed a side of his nature hitherto hidden--the savage piety of the copper Boer impregnated with stereotyped missionary phrasing, Ian Stafford almost laughed outright. In the presence of Jews like Sobieski it seemed so droll that this half-caste should talk about the G.o.d of Israel, and link Oom Paul's name with that of Christ the great liberator as partners in triumph.

In all the years Krool had been in England he had never been inside a place of wors.h.i.+p or given any sign of that fanaticism which, all at once, he made manifest. He had seemed a pagan to all of his cla.s.s, had acted as a pagan.

Barry Whalen, as well as Ian Stafford, saw the humour of the situation, while they were both confounded by the courageous malice of the traitor. It came to Barry's mind at the moment, as it came to Ian Stafford's, that Krool had some card to play which would, to his mind, serve him well; and, by instinct, both found the right clue. Barry's anger became uneasiness, and Stafford's interest turned to anxiety.

There was an instant's pause after Krool's words, and then Wolff the silent, gone wild, caught the sjambok from the hands of Barry Whalen.

He made a movement towards Krool, who again suddenly shrank, as he would not have shrunk from a weapon of steel.

"Wait a minute," cried Fleming, seizing the arm of his friend. "One minute. There's something more." Turning to Wallstein, he said, "If Krool consents to leave England at once for South Africa, let him go.

Is it agreed? He must either be dealt with adequately, or get out. Is it agreed?"

"I do what I like," said Krool, with a snarl, in which his teeth showed gla.s.sily against his drawn lips. "No one make me do what I not want."

"The Baas--you have forgotten him," said Wallstein.

A look combined of cunning, fear and servility crossed Krool's face, but he said, morosely:

"The Baas--I will do what I like."

There was a singular defiance and meaning in his tone, and the moment seemed critical, for Barry Whalen's face was distorted with fury.

Stafford suddenly stooped and whispered a word in Wallstein's ear, and then said:

"Gentlemen, if you will allow me, I should like a few words with Krool before Mr. Byng comes. I think perhaps Krool will see the best course to pursue when we have talked together. In one sense it is none of my business, in another sense it is everybody's business. A few minutes, if you please, gentlemen." There was something almost authoritative in his tone.

"For Byng's sake--his wife--you understand," was all Stafford had said under his breath, but it was an illumination to Wallstein, who whispered to Stafford.

"Yes, that's it. Krool holds some card, and he'll play it now."

By his glance and by his word of a.s.sent, Wallstein set the cue for the rest, and they all got up and went slowly into the other room. Barry Whalen was about to take the sjambok, but Stafford laid his hand upon it, and Barry and he exchanged a look of understanding.

"Stafford's a little bit of us in a way," said Barry in a whisper to Wallstein as they left the room. "He knows, too, what a sjambok's worth in Krool's eyes."

When the two were left alone, Stafford slowly seated himself, and his fingers played idly with the sjambok.

"You say you will do what you like, in spite of the Baas?" he asked, in a low, even tone.

"If the Baas hurt me, I will hurt. If anybody hurt me, I will hurt."

"You will hurt the Baas, eh? I thought he saved your life on the Limpopo."