I told my helpers to show up at noon for their severance pay, but then I got to thinking about the story of Job and decided that a little hardship and disappointment was probably just the kind of strengthening and hardening their spirits needed, so I turned in early and made up my mind to leave town a bit before daybreak. I was snoring away in my hotel room, minding my own business and not bothering no one, when I was awakened by the sound of a door opening.
I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and saw as pretty a little lady as I had ever experienced standing in my doorway. She was dressed all in blue silks and veils that didn't hide half as much as she thought they did, and she had the strangest headdress topping her yellow hair.
“Have you got it?” she whispered, walking into the room and closing the door behind her.
“Ma'am,” I said with a smile, “I've got
it
, and to spare. To what do I owe the distinct pleasure of this here nocturnal visitation?”
“The Malaloki armband,” she said. “Where is it?”
“Probably in Malaloki, wherever that may be,” I answered. “However, you're welcome to search every inch of me, which I'm sure you'll agree is a pretty generous offer to make to a total stranger.”
“But you
must
have it!” she hissed.
“I don't know what you're talking about,” I answered.
“You
are
Lucifer Jones, are you not?”
“The Right Reverend Lucifer Jones at your service,” I said. “You
sure
you don't want to search me for this here armband?”
“This is not a matter for levity,” she said sternly.
“Neither is breaking and entering,” I pointed out. “Though,” I added, “the Lord does teach us to forgive our brother's trespasses. Of course, He don't say much about our sister's trespasses, but I'm sure you and me can work something out if we just put our heads together.”
“I will ask you one more time: Where is it?”
“I don't know,” I said with a shrug. “On the other hand, I sure am glad that you've asked me for the last time. What would you like to talk about now?”
She looked at me, frowned, and opened the door, and before I knew it two big white guys dressed in leopardskin robes had burst into the room and were threatening me with spears. They both had on the same kind of headdresses as the girl, kind of feathery with a couple of little jewels right at the front hanging down over their foreheads, but somehow the headdresses didn't look as good on them, or maybe it was just that they kept jabbing me in the short ribs with the points of their weapons.
“I must have that armband, Mister Jones,” said the girl.
“
Doctor
Jones,” I corrected her, sucking in my stomach as far as I could as the spears kept pressing against it.
“Make no mistake about it, Doctor Jones,” she said. “Two men have already died this evening.”
“I hope it wasn't nothin’ catching,” I said with as much compassion as I could muster, which truth to tell wasn't near as much as I might have had under other circumstances.
“They died because of the Malaloki armband,” she said meaningfully.
“What is it—some kind of wrestling hold?” I asked.
“An ancient and sacred ornament of the Malaloki, which may be worn only by one of our gods.”
“Well, I hate to disappoint a lovable little lady like yourself,” I said, “but despite my handsome and clean-cut good looks, I ain't no god.”
“The Malaloki armband was stolen two moons past by a disloyal subject,” she continued impassively. “We traced it to Germiston, and here we lost it—until tonight. The man who had stolen it had traded it for food and other worldly goods, the storekeeper had sold it to a Boer, the Boer had given it to a black house servant, and the servant lost it to you in a game of chance. You have it, and now you must give it to us or your life shall be forfeit.”
“But I ain't seen any armbands!” I said as they began prodding me a little harder with their spear tips. “Not gold nor silver nor brass nor any kind.”
“
Wait!
” she commanded, holding her hand imperiously above her head, and suddenly the two guys with the weapons backed off a bit. “Possibly you do not as yet know the shape and texture of that about which I speak. The Malaloki armband has no commercial value, but is made of shells joined together in a mystic design of overwhelming power and import.”
“Well, why didn't you say so in the first place?” I said. “I took in what I thought was a little ankle bracelet made of strung-together shells.”
“The
armband
!” she exclaimed, finally showing some emotion, even if not the kind I would have preferred to see from a blonde in a see-through blue wraparound.
“I think it's worthless, you think it's priceless,” I said. “How's about we split the difference and I trade it to you for a couple of them jewels off your headdresses, unless they got some special religious significance too?”
“Doctor Jones,” she said, “we will trade you your life for the armband. That should constitute a considerable profit for you.”
“Considering the alternative, I suppose I could do a mite worse,” I admitted begrudgingly.
“Where is it?”
“I've got a whole bag of junk—begging your pardon—over at my tent. Wait'll I get my clothes on, and I'll take you there.”
Which I did, though we must have made a funny-looking sight stalking through the narrow streets of Germiston at three in the morning. I couldn't see much sense returning to the hotel just to wake the desk clerk, so I slipped a deck of cards into my pocket and made up my mind to head right off for Nairobi once our business was done.
When we got to the tent it turned out that none of us had any matches, so I just started walking around, kind of feeling blindly for the bag. After a couple of minutes I stepped on something that made a pretty loud crunching sound, and I knew that I had found the trinket.
The girl ran over and started pulling stuff out of the bag, and a couple of seconds later she gave out a shriek that would have woke such dead as weren't otherwise occupied at the time.
“What seems to be the problem, ma'am?” I asked out of an innate sense of courtesy.
“It's broken!” she cried, holding up a bunch of busted shells that were hanging together by a few torn threads.
“That's a shame,” I said sympathetically. “Maybe you could hunt up some clams or oysters or something and stitch up a replacement.”
“You do not understand what this means,” she wept.
“Maybe even lobster shells,” I added thoughtfully. “There's a pretty good seafood shop over in Johannesburg, and...”
“Silence!” roared one of the two men, pointing his spear at me.
I didn't see much sense in making helpful suggestions if that was the way they had been taught to respond to an act of Christian goodwill, so I just stood there while the three of them went into a little pow-wow. Finally they broke it up and the girl walked over to me.
“You will come with us,” she announced.
“I really had other plans,” I said, and started telling her about how I aimed to build the Tabernacle of Saint Luke. I got about three sentences into my story when one of the men started jabbing me with his spear again.
“You will come with us,” she repeated. “You will speak to our gods and tell them how the armband came to be broken, and possibly they will spare our lives.”
I took another close look at all their various jewels, which sure seemed pretty common and unimportant to them, and made up my mind on the spot. “I'll be happy to come along with you,” I said with a great big smile. “You may not know it, but speaking to gods is one of the very best things I do, me being a man of the cloth and all.”
We stepped out of the tent and began walking to the north. After we had gotten a couple of miles out of town, the girl turned to me again.
“I hope you understand, Doctor Jones,” she said, “that any attempt to escape while we make our way to Malaloki will be dealt with severely.”
“I give you my word as a Christian and a gentleman that such a thought ain't never crossed my mind,” I said truthfully, naturally assuming that such a verbal contract expired once we got to wherever they kept their jewels.
Well, we walked and we walked and then we walked some more. I kept assuming that Cairo or Marrakech would pop into view any second, but she assured me that we were still in South Africa, and that we weren't heading no farther than Nyasaland, which I hadn't never heard of before, and which I now began picturing as a great huge field of grass with a bunch of baby nyasas hopping around on it.
During our trek I learned that her name was Melora, and that she had learned her English from some missionaries, which was kind of surprising because it seemed like everyone I had met in Africa had learned their English from missionaries and yet I was the only bonafide missionary that I knew of wandering around in the bush. She surprised me still further by saying that her native tongue wasn't French or German or Portugese or anything like that, but was the Malaloki dialect, which was the first time I learned that they invented languages as well as armbands.
We were about ten days into our little journey when we crossed into Nyasaland. The landscape started changing, and pretty soon the bushland turned into a kind of gently rolling forest filled with gently rolling rhinos and leopards and other fearsome beasts that looked like they wanted nothing more than a little snack made of Christian missionary and maybe a little bit of blonde Malaloki for dessert, but our two big spearmen managed to bluff all the animals away, which was undoubtedly for the best since I couldn't see how they could reload a spear if their first fling missed, and we passed through the forest unscathed except for tick bites and mosquito bites and fly bites and being bothered by some rude maribou storks they kept flying overhead right after they'd had lunch, and finally we came to a great big volcanic crater stuck right in the middle of a long plateau.
I figured that we were going to hike around it, but Melora walked straight ahead and started following a narrow little path up the side of it. I grabbed hold of her arm and explained that while the top of the crater was undoubtedly a good sight closer to God and Heaven, she didn't have to do this on my account, as I was perfectly content to worship Him from afar, or at least ground level, for a few more years, and besides the path disappeared a couple of hundred yards ahead of us.
For a woman with a short little nose, she sure made a production of looking down it at me. Finally she yanked her arm loose and started climbing again. I called ahead to her that I was going to start back down to the base of the volcano and would meet her on the other side, but no sooner were the words out of my mouth than the two big guys started jabbing me with their spears again, so I didn't have no choice but to follow her.
I did so for maybe a hundred yards when suddenly she just upped and vanished. I mean, one second I was following that beautiful round bottom up the path, which in truth was all that kept me going, and the next second she was gone, beautiful bottom and all. I stopped, scratched my head, and looked around, but couldn't see hide nor hair of her, which was a considerable amount of hide and hair to vanish from the earth all at once. Then I felt a hand on my arm, and I was dragged off the path into a narrow little tunnel.
“Where are we?” I whispered.
“Just follow me,” said Melora.
“Follow you?” I repeated. “I can't even
see
you.”
“Grab my hand,” she said.
I reached out for it.
“
That
, Doctor Jones, is
not
my hand.”
I apologized, and after a little more groping around I finally got ahold of what I was supposed to get ahold of, and pretty soon we were wending our way through this damp, winding tunnel. After about ten minutes of walking into walls and into Melora, who may have been softer than the walls but wasn't a whole lot friendlier or more understanding, we emerged onto a large ledge overlooking a village on the grassy floor of the dead volcano.
“Malaloki?” I asked.
She nodded.
A little river wended its way amongst the thatched huts, then went out through a hole it had carved out of one of the walls. This crater didn't hold a candle to some of the larger ones I was aware of, like for instance the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanganyika, but on the other hand the Ngorongoro Crater wasn't awash in jewels and blonde women, so I didn't feel no great disappointment with my current surroundings.
Melora waited until the two big guys had joined us, then led the way down another winding trail to the base of the wall.
A bunch of white women wearing even less than Melora raced up and jabbered at her in some foreign tongue. She talked right back at them, just as quick and incomprehensible, and took me by the hand and led me through the village until we came to the biggest hut, which was located smack-dab in the center. Then she bowed and backed away.
In front of the hut were two grass hammocks, and in each hammock was a grubby-looking white man with a bushy beard. One of them must have been close to seven feet tall, and the other couldn't have been more than an inch or two over five feet. Both of them were wearing khaki pants that had been cut off above the knees, and they each had a batch of necklaces made out of emeralds and sapphires and rubies and other colorful baubles.
“Well, look what we got here, brother,” said the big one.
“Sure as hell don't look like no Malaloki I ever seen,” said the little one.
“What's your name, stranger?” asked the big one.
“The Honorable Right Reverend Doctor Lucifer Jones at your service,” I said, stooping over in a courtly bow. “Begging your pardon, but you gents sure don't sound like Malalokis from what little I've heard you speak.”
“Neither do you,” said the little one.
“No reason why I should,” I said. “I'm an American.”
“So are we,” said the big one.
“Of course,” added the little one, “we're also gods, but around these here parts the two ain't necessarily incompatible.”
“In fact,” continued the big one, “along with being gods and Americans, we're also brothers. I'm Frothingham Schmidt and he's Oglethorpe Schmidt, but them who would consider themselves our friends, or at least express an interest in ever seeing another sunrise, call us Long Schmidt and Short Schmidt.”