~ 93 ~
the terrible, bitter rage of one betrayed. "Does he think I suspect him? Does he plan to kill me
now?"
And then the reason came, cold and clear. There was
a power of justice in life, and that
power had made Barton bring him, so that he, Anderson, could take the law in his own hands,
and the guilty would be punished instead of the innocent.
At once his mind was made up, and he had never known his thinking to be so clear
and direct. He would kill Barton while he slept – they shared the same tent. And he would go
to
bed now and pretend sleeping, so that he would not have to speak to Barton.
It was already late in the afternoon. Anderson uneasily walked into the tent. But he did
not have to play a role, for as soon as he touched the bed he fell into the heavy sleep of
increasing malaria.
It was bright moonlight outside the tent when he awoke. He could hear Barton's
regular, rhythmic breathing in the darkness near him. He dressed quickly and noiselessly,
turned the safety catch of his revolver and bent above Barton. But a sudden shock of revulsion
came over him.
He put the revolver down carefully on the table near his bed. Then he was outside the
tent and trying to run, to get away from that accusing voice that cried within him, again and
again, "Murderer!"
He did not know where he was until his hand touched something cold and hard – a
steel bar of the cage. God, it knew steel bars, that hand. He closed his eyes against the
thought, and took a few steps forward. Then a noise behind him made him turn around. The
steel door of the cage had dropped! He had walked into the cage, closing the automatic door!
"Where you should be," cried the accusing voice, “where murderers ought to be, in a
cage!”
Anderson sobbed hysterically. Then he fell and the flames of his fever licked him.
Anderson opened his
eyes with great effort, and saw above him the face of the friendly
planter who lived some miles from the camp.
"You'll be all right now," the man said, "the fever's over. But how did you get into the
cage?"
Anderson tried to explain, but he didn't have strength enough to speak. He knew where
he was, in a bed in the planter's house. And gradually he became aware that there was another
white man in the room, one he had never seen before.
"He was lucky," the planter was saying to this strange man. "If he hadn't been safe in
that cage, the gorillas would have got him as they did Barton and those pygmies."
"Do you feel able to talk now?" the stranger asked "I expect you're wondering who I
am. I am Barton's lawyer, I flew down from New York to take charge of Barton's affairs as
soon as I got the news. You've been delirious three weeks, you know."
The lawyer sat down beside Anderson's bed. “As you know, my late client was a
superstitious man, and a great gambler”, he said. “You two, as young men, started your
careers together. And on the very day that he received the capital that gave him his chance,
you were sentenced to prison on a charge of embezzling the identical' sum – fifty thousand
dollars. Barton took the coincidence as an act of fate”.
“He made a kind of bet with fate," the lawyer went on. "If he were allowed to succeed,
he promised to do something good for you. And he kept the bet, he remembered you in his
will'. I thought you'd like to know why”.
"I know why all right," said Anderson. A little word called "conscience'", he thought.
"I happened to know all about it," the lawyer added, "Because I was the executor of
the will of Barton's aunt. She hadn't liked him, and he'd expected nothing from her. So that
fifty thousand was like money falling from the skies."
NOTES:
embezzlement – pacтрата