12 Stories They Wouldn't Let Me Do on TV Read Online Free PDF Page B

him. Etcham sat there apologetic and deferential, like a fourth-form schoolboy before a head master. Van Rieten wound up.
        "I am after pigmies, at the risk of my life. After pigmies I go."
        "Perhaps, then, these will interest you," said Etcham, very quietly.
        He took two objects out of the sidepocket of his blouse, and handed them to Van Rieten. They were round, bigger than big plums, and smaller than small peaches, about the right size to enclose in an average hand. They were black, and at first I did not see what they were.
        "Pigmies!" Van Rieten exclaimed. "Pigmies, indeed! Why, they wouldn't be two feet high! Do you mean to claim that these are adult heads?"
        "I claim nothing," Etcham answered evenly. "You can see for yourself."
        Van Rieten passed one of the heads to me. The sun was just setting and I examined it closely. A dried head it was, perfectly preserved, and the flesh as hard as Argentine jerked beef. A bit of a vertebra stuck out where the muscles of the vanished neck had shriveled into folds. The puny chin was sharp on a projecting jaw, the minute teeth white and even between the retracted lips, the tiny nose was flat, the little forehead retreating, there were inconsiderable clumps of stunted wool on the Lilliputian cranium. There was nothing babyish, childish or youthful about the head; rather it was mature to senility.
        "Where did these come from?" Van Rieten enquired.
        "I do not know," Etcham replied precisely. "I found them among Stone's effects while rummaging for medicines or drugs or anything that could help me to help him. I do not know where he got them. But I'll swear he did not have them when we entered this district."
        "Are you sure?" Van Rieten queried, his eyes big and fixed on Etcham's.
        "Ve'y sure," lisped Etcham.
        "But how could he have come by them without your knowledge?" Van Rieten demurred.
        "Sometimes we were apart ten days at a time hunting," said Etcham. "Stone is not a talking man. He gave me no account of his doings, and Hamed Burghash keeps a still tongue and a tight hold on the men."
        "You have examined these heads?" Van Rieten asked.
        "Minutely," said Etcham.
        Van Rieten took out his notebook. He was a methodical chap. He tore out a leaf, folded it and divided it equally into three pieces. He gave one to me and one to Etcham.
        "Just for a test of my impressions," he said, "I want each of us to write separately just what he is most reminded of by these heads. Then I want to compare the writings."
        I handed Etcham a pencil and he wrote. Then he handed the pencil back to me and I wrote.
        "Read the three," said Van Rieten, handing me his piece.
        Van Rieten had written:
        "An old Balunda witch-doctor."
        Etcham had written:
        "An old Mang-Battu fetish-man."
        I had written:
        "An old Katongo magician."
        "There!" Van Rieten exclaimed. "Look at that! There is nothing Wagabi or Batwa or Wambuttu or Wabotu about these heads. Nor anything pigmy either."
        "I thought as much," said Etcham.
        "And you say he did not have them before?"
        "To a certainty he did not," Etcham asserted.
        "It is worth following up," said Van Rieten. "I'll go with you. And first of all, I'll do my best to save Stone."
        He put out his hand and Etcham clasped it silently. He was grateful all over.
        
CHAPTER IV
        
        Nothing but Etcham's fever of solicitude could have taken him in five days over the track. It took him eight days to retrace with full knowledge of it and our party to help. We could not have done it in seven, and Etcham urged us on, in a repressed fury of anxiety, no mere fever of duty to his chief, but a real ardor of devotion, a glow of personal adoration for Stone which blazed under his dry conventional exterior and showed in spite of him.
        We