Part 28 (1/2)
”In a kind of white robe cut rather loith her hair loose hanging to her waist, but carefully combed and held outspread by what appeared to be a bent piece of ivory about a foot and a half long, to which it was fastened by a thread of gold”
”Is that all?”
”No Upon her breast was that necklace of red stones with the little iave her and she alore”
”Anything more?”
”Yes In her arms she carried what looked like a veiled child It was so still that I think it must have been dead”
”Well What happened?”
”I was so overco atmore beautiful than I can tell you She never stirred, and her lips never moved--that I will swear And yet both of us heard her say, very low but quite clearly: 'The e! Don't desert me Seek me on the mountain, my dear,up and she was gone That's all”
”Now tell e”
”What his lordshi+p saw and heard, Mr Quatermain, neitherhad one of h the door”
”Through the door! Was it open then?”
”No, sir, it was shut and bolted She just cah it as if it wasn't there Then I called to his lordshi+p after she had been looking at him for half a minute or so, for I couldn't speak at first There's one , or rather two On her head was a little cap that looked as though it had beenup in front, which snake was the first thing I caught sight of, as of course it would be, sir Also the dress she as so thin that through it I could see her shape and the sandals on her feet, which were fastened at the instep with studs of gold”
”I saw no feather cap or snake,” said Ragnall
”Then that's the oddest part of the whole business,” I remarked ”Go back to your roo s over”
They went, in a bewildered sort of fashi+on, and I called Hans and spoke with hi to him the little that he had not understood of our talk, for as I have said, although he never spoke it, Hans knew a great deal of English
”Now, Hans,” I said to him, ”what is the use of you? You are no better than a fraud You pretend to be the best watchdog in Africa, and yet a worey of the , and you do not see her Where is your reputation, Hans?”
The old fello alnation, then he spluttered his answer:
”It was not a woman, Baas, but a spook Who ah they were thieves or rats? As it happens I ide awake half an hour before the dawn and lay with ht It never opened, Baas; an I have been to look at it
During the night a spider has made its web from door-post to door-post, and that web is unbroken If you do not believe me, coh the doorway and therefore through the spider's web Oh! Baas, what is the use of wasting thought upon the ways of spooks which, like the wind, coo as they will, especially in this haunted land froet away”
I went and examined the door for myself, for by now my sciatica, or whatever it may have been, was so much better that I could walk a little What Hans said was true There was the spider's ith the spider sitting in the middle Also some of the threads of the ere fixed from post to post, so that it was impossible that the door could have been opened or, if opened, that anyone could have passed through the doorithout breaking theh one of the little -places, which was alround, or dropped from the smoke-hole in the roof, or had been shut into the place when the door was closed on the previous night, I could not see how she had arrived there And if any one of these incredible suppositions was correct, then how did she get out again with twoher?
There were only two solutions to the problem--namely, that the whole occurrence was hallucination, or that, in fact, Ragnall and Savage had seen so unnatural and uncanny If the latter were correct I only wished that I had shared the experience, as I have always longed to see a ghost A real, indisputable ghost would be a great support to our doubting minds, that is if we _knew_ its owner to be dead
But--this was another thought--if by any chance Lady Ragnall were still alive and a prisoner upon that host, but a shadow or _si person projected consciously or unconsciously by that person for some unknown purpose
What could the purpose be? As it chanced the ansas not difficult, and to it the words she was reported to have uttered gave a cue Only a few hours ago, just before we turned in indeed, as I have said, we had been discussing matters What I have not said is that in the end we arrived at the conclusion that our quest here ild and useless and that we should do well to try to escape from the place before we became involved in a war of extermination between two branches of an obscure tribe, one of which was quite and the other se back a little, it had been arranged that I should try to purchase ca which ht be less suspicious, and that we should attempt such an escape under cover of an expedition to kill the elephant Jana