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- Herausgeber: Al-Mashreq eBookstore
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
The Adventures of Drenton Denn, Special Commissioner by Fred M. White is an exhilarating journey through high-stakes investigations and daring escapades. Drenton Denn, a sharp-witted and fearless Special Commissioner, faces a series of complex and dangerous cases that test his intellect and bravery. Each adventure plunges him deeper into a world of intrigue, from dark conspiracies to unexpected betrayals. With each turn of the page, Denn's sharp deductions and unyielding courage shine as he battles criminals and uncovers secrets that could change the course of history. Dive into this thrilling collection and follow Denn as he confronts peril head-on, proving that justice always prevails.
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Table of Contents
The Adventures of Drenton Denn, Special Commissioner
The Red Speck
The Yellow Moth
Dust
The Fire Bugs
The Great White Moth
Landmarks
Table of Contents
Cover
The Adventures of Drenton Denn, Special Commissioner
The Red Speck
BEING AN ADVENTURE OF DRENTON DENN, SPECIAL COMMISSIONER
Published in Cassell's Magazine, August 1899
Also appeared in The Argus, Melbourne, Australia, 4 Oct 1899
§ I
WITH a lean brown hand limp as a rag, Drenton Denn helped himself to quinine enough to blow the roof off the head of an ordinary man.
"A blight upon the man who lured me to Madagascar!" he said, with his teeth clenched "You get me here as a war correspondent when there is no war to speak of and no facilities for getting my 'copy' away in any case. And how that I am down with the fever you calmly tell me that you have orders to send me back to the seaboard!"
Captain Le Boeuf quivered uneasily. He it was who had lured Drenton Denn from Paris with specious promises of what might happen in the way of graphic things to describe at Tamatave.
"It is only a hundred miles," Le Boeuf said, tentatively.
"But what a hundred miles!" Drenton groaned, "Even if I get over this fever I shall be good for nothing for days to come. It is impossible for me to return the way we came. And how a handful of Kanaka boys are going to get me down to Tara I can't understand!"
"But, my dear Denn, you can't stay here."
"Of course I can't. I must do my best to get back to the coast, and that right through an unfriendly tribe. Is there any truth in the rumour that the Hamas are led by a woman who wears Paris gowns and imports her own champagne?"
Le Boeuf showed his teeth in a dazzling smile.
"There is something in it," he said. "Do you remember that magnificent Hama girl—Sabina, they called her—who performed those marvellous snake and bird tricks at the Moulin Rouge two years ago?"
Denn nodded. He recollected the girl perfectly well and the sensation she had created at the him. The handsome chieftainess had taken to Denn somewhat, and quite a Platonic friendship had sprung up between them. Denn flushed slightly as he called this to his mind. He had touched the heart of the dusky Hama, and he had deemed it best to retire gracefully from Paris before anything foolish transpired.
"You think she is close here?" Denn asked.
"I am certain of it," said Le Boeuf. "Sabina quitted Paris directly trouble was threatened here to return to her own people. I shouldn't wonder if she gave you assistance in getting to Tara."
The next day Denn set out on his perilous journey. His escort consisted of eight Kanaka boys—lusty fellows, black as coal, and quite devoted to the service of a man who paid them liberally. Their rate of progress was exasperatingly slow, for they had to make a track through the virgin forest, and such implements as they possessed were from traders' stores.
At the end of the fourth day even Denn begin to despair. They had certainly not progressed more than eight miles, the dried fish and rice were getting low, and the water-bags looked crinkled and flabby. There was danger, terrible danger, of death from starvation and thirst in that primitive forest. The Kanakas could only trust then own instincts and steer in a blundering rule o' thumb kind of way.
With a grim face Denn watched the last grains of rice shaken out for the evening meal.
"To-morrow," he muttered, "we shall starve. What a fool I was to believe that yarn about Sabina!"
But to-morrow brought better things. The interlaced gloom of the forest grew less dense, and the sun shone golden through the network of boughs in front. Then the little caravan emerged into an open plain. A small river rolled along the valley, and on the slope or clearing, opposite a cluster of bamboo and matting, huts were gathered.
"Hamas," the head Kanaka boy, muttered. "If they are friendly—".
But there was going to be no 'if' about it so far as Denn was concerned. He rolled out of his litter and waded across the shallow stream. The earth seemed to move under him like a ribbon, for the nausea of his illness was still strong upon him.
From the largest of the huts a girl emerged, and stood contemplating the stranger with eyes as dark as those of a deer. Then, as Denn literally staggered up to her, she gave vent to a queer, frightened cry.
"It is my lord Denn!" she exclaimed. "Go back. Quick! Better anything than that she should see you."
All this in the queerest French from a girl dressed in a long linen robe with a gold band round her waist, and nothing more. Her hair was piled high upon her head, and skewered with silver bodkins.
"I'm off my head!" Denn muttered. "I've fribbled my brain up with too much quinine. What, is it really you, Zara?"
The girl so addressed quivered behind a smile. The last time Denn had seen her was in the guise of Sabina's maid in Paris.
"Why did you come here?" the girl moaned. "You were good to me, and I would save you if I could. Go—go before it is too late. Our queen.."
"Meaning Sabina, of course?"
"Yes, yes. She has it in her head that you played her false. Don't you know that she came to love you? And when a Hama loves..."
Zara threw up her hands to express a passion or a jealousy outside the span of mere words. Her eyes were full of terror.
"Flattering, if slightly embarrassing." Denn muttered. "But it seems to be too late to fall back upon one's base."
It was. Half a score of Hamas had gathered around the strangely assorted pair. Their attitude was one of armed neutrality. Take them all in all, they were not inviting to a man on a peace footing. Attracted by their clamour, a woman emerged from the largest hut there. She was a magnificent looking creature, tall and sinuous, in the full flush of her powers, and strikingly handsome.
The brightness of her eyes somewhat detracted from the passionate sensuousness of her full crimson lips. As she caught sight of Denn she started back, and a scream of joy escaped her. But the expression of her face seemed to prick Denn's spine like a red-hot needle. Behind the glad smile was the hungry look of vengeance deferred.
Then, as suddenly, Sabina's manner changed as she came forward. She took Denn's flabby palm in her own, and carried it to her lips.
"I knew you would come back to me," she murmured.
Sabina had become all smiles again. Nor had she forgotten much of the artificiality two years in Paris had given her. But the leopard cannot change its spots—Hama was still there.
"This is a meeting the most extraordinary," she said.
"Isn't it?" was Denn's banal reply. "I was with the French force towards Tamatave, and they sent me back. I was trying to get down to the coast this way. Will you try and get me down there?"
"Oh, Yes," said Sabina. "Oh, yes. Dead or alive, you shall be got to the coast. Yes, yes. To the coast alive or—dead."
Denn murmured his thanks. He did not care for this insistence in case of his premature demolition.
He suffered himself to be conducted inside the hut which Sabina made her own, and then, with what appetite he could, he despatched stewed goat and rice, washed down with native wine.
"I suppose my men are being looked after?" he asked.
"Your men had fled back to the woods," said Sabina. "It is my misfortune that I have a bad reputation in these parts. But they do not know that I have had advantage of what you call civilisation. And now, dear fly, how do you like the web of your spider?"
Again Denn felt the hot pain crawl along his spine.
"I know nothing of spiders," he said.
"Not yet, not yet, dear friend. But you will soon. To-night I show you something you do not deem of. The birds and snakes? Bah!"
§ II
DRENTON DENN sat with a huge native cigar in his mouth, and what content he could on his keen, angular features. He was by no means a handsome man, but at the present moment he found himself wishing that nature had been still more niggardly physically.
By his side sat the woman whose wayward heart he had won. It pleased Sabina to be alternately passionate and disdainful.
And though Denn had dined, and dined well, no feeling of content embalmed him. The fever had been burned and blistered by the quinine out of his system, and his brain was once more clear, alert, and vigorous.
Denn sat in a kind of gallery looking upon a courtyard in which a circular wooden building had been erected. The sides of the building were wooden bars, and the roof was made of some kind of white cloth, or, rather, coarse matting. And above the netting was a thatch of straw.
Inside the building half-a-dozen sullen-looking Kanaka prisoners had been placed.
That some kind of punishment awaited them they seemed to know perfectly well.
In most forms these men had little fear of death but they knew the character of their captors, and from certain uneasy glances at the straw thatch they seemed to have a hazy kind of idea what was going to take place.
"What are you going to do?" Denn asked.
"That in a minute you shall know," Sabina laughed. It was not the kind of laugh that added to the gaiety of nations. "You used to admire my performance in Paris; you said you could not imagine anything more calculated to make your blood run cold. But you were wrong—and you are going to see that with your own eyes."
Sabina clapped her hands, and a Hama warrior crossed to the thatched cage, bearing a long-handled mop in his hand. With this he worried away at the thatch of the cage. Then the warrior retreated to a little distance and sat down.
The effect of this apparently simple manoeuvre was appalling. The prisoners jumped to their feet with the most heart-rending cries. In their frenzy of some unseen horror they beat their heads and breasts against the bars. Terror seemed to have robbed them of all sense of pain. There were sounds of blows upon flesh, and the cracking of bones. One poor wretch with a fractured knee literally danced in utter ignorance of his bodily torture. They might have been turned to raving lunatics by some fatal poison.
A sudden nausea came over Denn. "I don't understand it," he said.
"No, but they do," Sabina said, with a strange, glittering smile.
"And so will you only too well—presently. Now, watch carefully."
There was no need to give any such warning. Drenton Denn knew only too well that he was witnessing a rehearsal of the unspeakable horrors which were presently to be thrust upon him.
Presently the Kanakas grew quieter. On some of them had fallen the sullen apathy of despair. Other lead-coloured faces showed the fighting spirit. But all, all, kept their intent gaze turned upwards.
"Do you see anything now?" Sabina asked Denn.
He was too hideously fascinated to reply. He saw that the coarse white matting had become alive with little red specks no larger than grains of wheat. They might have been ants suddenly disturbed and angry with the intruders upon their suburban solitude.
But presently one or two of the tiny red specks dropped down a foot or two, and seemed to be suspended in the amber air. And by this same token Denn knew that he was watching the antics and gyrations of a large family of red spiders.
Presently there were some hundreds of them held up by shining needles of web from the floor. Then suddenly the air outside seemed to be alive with a cloud of purple humming-birds. From the way they feathered around the bars of the cage, they were evidently bent upon a raid upon the bloated scarlet spiders. A couple of Kanakas, armed with a long net, sufficed to scare the birds away.
By this time there were hundreds of spiders suspended from the thatch. They looked like scarlet peas or beans upon a thread. And the unhappy Kanakas watched them with starting eyes.
"In heaven's name," Denn cried, "what does it mean?"
Again Sabina smiled. Her eyes were like points of electric flame. Her face was as that of an avenging fury.
"All in good time," she whispered, "all in good time."
Presently the spiders began to drop like crimson hail. Like so many marionettes the wretched Kanakas danced round the cage. They tore at their arms and their shoulders; they shook themselves like wet dogs. Anything, anything seemed better than to come in contact with the bloated spiders.
Presently one prisoner gave a louder yell than the rest, and collapsed upon the floor.
