The Peculiar Exploits of Brigadier Ffellowes (2 page)

             
"The whole place, I mean Nairobi, was such a hotbed of gossip that half the town must have been in on our mission. One chap buttonholed Sizenby in the Mithaiga Club the night before we left and said, rather incoherently, 'Now do look out, Size. The
Kerit
is out in the Aberdares. My boys tell me it took four cattle and a grown man last week."

             
" 'What on earth was that, Major?' I asked Sizenby when we were outside in the street.

             
" 'Oh, nothing,' he mumbled. 'Lot of fiddle. Supposed to be some animal, quite dangerous up that way, but no one's ever really seen it. Chap was drunk.'

             
"I stopped still for a moment. You know, I'd never thought of
animals
at all. We were after a man, who might or might not be dangerous, but there was a largish war on and that was normal. But animals now! 'Look here,' I said, 'what animal is this? Surely not a lion? a leopard? What did that chap say?'

             
"Sizenby chewed a ratty grey mustache for a bit. He was an undersized creature in an ill-fitting uniform with a vague blue eye. Frankly, he looked pretty hopeless but he and the Boer were all I could get and he was supposed to know the country.

             
" 'It had several native names,' he said slowly.
'Chimiset
is one,
Kerit
another. Now and again it makes the papers. Then it usually gets called the Nandi Bear.

             
"The Nandi Bear! Well, you know, even I had heard of that. It was supposed to be the mystery beast of East Africa and made the Sunday supplements regularly along with the Lost Valley of the Nahanni, the Loch Ness monster and supposed living dinosaurs.

             
" 'That's a lot of
hooh
-hah, isn't it?' I said.
'I
mean really, I thought it was all rot and old settlers' tales. Do you think there is such a creature? I mean actually?'

             
"He looked at the ground and mumbled again. It was quite obvious he did think there was something to the story, and that he didn't like it at all. I was both intrigued and annoyed. Just then, however, along came the General commanding the Colony forces and I found out he knew all about my mission and had some ideas of his own. In the ensuing, and I may add, pointless, discussion, I quite forgot the Kerit, sometimes called Nandi Bear.

-

             
"We all left at dawn the next day in an Army truck for Nyeri, our jumping-off point. I was formally introduced to the other ranks, that is the
K.A.R
. boys and forgot all their names except Sergeant Asoto's at once. Two were Somalis, the rest Kikuyu; that's all I remember, except that they were all good, brave men.

             
"Now a road of sorts, really a baddish dirt track, barely usable for sturdy vehicles, ran west across the south end of the Aberdare range, going from Nyeri to Naivasha. This we took at once after checking for more news in Nyeri, where there was none. We went up and up in our truck, crashing into pot holes and large rocks until the air actually began to get quite chilly.

             
" 'Now,' said Krock, reaching me a heavy sweater, 'you see why we bring all this stuff. It gets colder yet, I tell you.' Everyone, including the troops, bundled up, and we all needed it.

             
"Toward evening, we broke out on to the open plateau, first from the dense rain forest which covered the slopes to about ten thousand feet, and then from a belt of bamboo. Up here, in the light of the setting sun, it looked most unlike my idea of Africa. If I'd had a chance later I'd have traded even for the bamboo.

             
"Before us stretched a cheerless-looking moor, with here and there an outcropping of rock or a plant like a monstrous cabbage on a stalk, or simply a great vegetable spike, raising its head above the
tussocky
grass. It was absolutely weird looking and the setting sun made it resemble a patch of
Dartmoor
crossed with a bad dream. A cold wind blew fitfully across it from the heights above and I shivered.

             
"The truck ground to a halt. Sizenby and Krock hopped out and began chatting up the local gossip and the Sergeant and his six whirled into galvanized activity. In ten minutes two tents were up, a small one for us three and a large one for them; two fires were crackling and the smell of food and
woodsmoke
was in the air. I had nothing to do at all, so wandered over to listen absently to Krock and Sizenby, speculating to myself meanwhile on what Bruckheller was doing and why. During a pause in the conversation I interrupted to pose the same question aloud. Perhaps these two might have some fresh ideas, since I had none.

             
" 'Oh, I know why he's here,' said Sizenby, quite matter-of
-
fact. 'I knew him, you know; not a bad chap but a bit daft. He's up here because of Egypt.' Just like that! And after I'd been racking my brains for two days!

             
" 'Now look, Major,' I said, 'what on earth are you talking about?' We had moved to our fire and were standing grouped about it. It was quite dark now, and a white ground mist had formed
and lay thick about the camp. There was no moon.

             
" 'What is this?' I repeated. 'Why haven't you mentioned knowing this man before? No one else in Nairobi seems to have even talked with him.'

             
" 'Well, you never asked me and it didn't seem important,' he said quietly.
'I
rather liked the man. We're both curious chaps and we found some of the same things interesting. At any rate,
Bruckheller's
quite dotty on the subject of Egyptology. I know he's a zoologist not an archeologist, but like most of us he has a hobby horse. His happens to be ancient Egypt. He was always at me about it. Had I ever seen any Egyptian ruins in these parts, heard of any rock paintings that might be Egyptian looking and so on? For some reason he's convinced that the early Pharaohs went north from around here. He was following his theory down from Ethiopia.'

             
"I thought for a moment. It all sounded completely mad, but then people's interests frequently
are
mad. Still it wouldn't wash.

             
" 'I gather you think that in the middle of a war, knowing that aliens, even neutrals, are subject to arrest for moving in unauthorized areas, this fellow, who is supposed, mind you, to be a trained secret agent, wandered up here to look for Egyptian ruins?'

             
" 'Yes,' said Sizenby,
'I
rather think he did. He was that sort of chap. And I think he'd heard something,
d'you
see, something that set him off, some recent news from this part of the colony. And perhaps he felt he wouldn't get another chance to see whatever it was.'

             
"I mulled this over, holding my hands to the fire. The next question was obvious.

             
" '
Neen
,' said Krock, who had simply been listening up to now. 'Nothing new comes from here in the last year, I tell you. I hear all the news, Man, you bet. Only the—,' his voice lowered and he looked over his shoulder at the group of
K.A.R
. around the other fire, 'the
Gadet
,
the Kerit being out up here, that's new.'

             
"Sizenby looked at me attentively, but I remembered the conversation outside the Mithaiga Club with no trouble.

             
" 'I doubt the Nandi Bear, or ancient Egypt either, has much to do with this,' I said sourly. 'Obviously the man received certain orders and followed them. All this
bumph
and Egypt and—'

             
" 'Better lower your voice, Captain,' Sizenby cut in, speaking softly. 'The men don't like to hear about the Kerit, and there's no point in upsetting them needlessly.'

             
" 'Yah, that's so,' chimed in the Boer. 'We don't talk about it around them.'

             
"The one-armed South African and the little settler were oddly impressive up here in the cold mountain air. Sizenby had lost the vagueness I'd noted earlier and seemed both tougher and more self-assured. He was telling me to shut up in a very firm way and I got quite irritated.

             
" 'What on earth is all this?' I said heatedly. 'You two can't really expect me to believe in all this hogwash—mystery animals and Egyptian ruins? Suppose you simply tell me how to find the chap and leave the abstruse speculation to me, eh?"

             
"Sizenby stared at me a minute and then called over to the other fire. 'Sergeant Asoto, come over here a moment, will you?'

             
"In a second, Asoto's squat, immaculately-uniformed bulk stood immobile before us, hand at the rigid salute. Sizenby and I returned it, Krock being a '
civvie
.'

             
" 'Sergeant,' said Sizenby slowly, 'the
Ingrezi
captain thinks we're having a bit of fun with him. I want you to tell him about the Kerit. I know you and your men all know it's out again. Say nothing to the men about my asking this, but simply tell everything you know.'

             
"The broad dark face which turned to me was certainly not that of any frightened child: the brown eyes were calm, and the deep voice controlled.

             
" 'The Kerit is very bad, Captain,' he said, in quite fair English. 'No one sees it until it kills. In certain places no one ever lives, because sooner or later it comes there. It takes strong men as easily as children, cattle as easily as goats. Nothing can stand against it. Now, we hear, all of us, that one or two are out and walking around in these mountains somewhere. It is nothing to laugh about. It is too serious a matter. Only those who live very far off joke about it. We must be careful, I do say so.' He stopped, apparently feeling he had said enough on the subject.

             
"I must say, I was impressed in spite of myself. One had to be, you know.

             
" 'Is it a real animal, Sergeant,' I said, after a moment's thought, 'or could it be human, an evil man or men?'

             
" 'I have seen its tracks many years ago,' was the deep-throated answer. 'They are a little bit like an old lion with his claws out, but much more long and more big too. No man could make such a track. But in its cunning it is like no animal. No one sees it and lives.'

             
"Well, that seemed to be that. I thanked him and he saluted and went back to his other ranks' fire. Then I apologized to Sizenby and Krock. To tell the truth, I didn't know what to think. I had either encountered a case of mass hallucination or something even stranger.

             
"We turned in shortly thereafter and I got very little sleep, being cold, damp and nervous. The next morning I awoke to more dense fog and a cold breakfast of
biltong,
or dried antelope meat. Since the others didn't complain, I could hardly do so, but I was getting a bit fed up with the Dark Continent, I may say. Not at all like the moving pictures.

             
"We all piled into our truck and drove off into the moorlands before the sun had burnt the mist off and the ride was miserable indeed on that rotten excuse for a road. By noon, we had crossed the spine of one hilly range and were going down again, to the west. And by the middle of the afternoon we were in a giant bamboo belt again. Here, for no reason that I could discern, we all
piled off. I was damned if I'd ask questions and I was so stiff from that infernal truck ride that I went for a quick run in a circle around the truck, just to limber up.

             
"The second time I circled the truck I saw to my amazement that our
party
had been augmented. Three tall, lean Negroes, with fringes of ringlets over aquiline faces, long spears and almost no clothes had appeared out of nowhere, and were talking in low tones to Sizenby and the Boer. Occasionally they would gesture and several times the chief spokesman shook his head violently. Sizenby pointed to the
K.A.R
. lads who were standing watching and said something emphatic. The three looked gloomily at each other but finally they nodded. Krock slapped one on the back and walked them over to Asoto and the others, while Sizenby came over to me.