Luana Read Online Free PDF Page B

shoulders, where you’d taken the spear and the darts.”
    “Yeah, I know about those darts,” Barrett grinned.
    “You should. You’ve got a pair of small scars on your right shoulder that aren’t going to disappear.” Barrett pushed his shirt aside to look while Mkristo continued.
    “I’d say they’re cheap at the price. The natives who found you,” and the doctor’s expression displayed an unprofessional urge to kill, “managed to lose, shred, and otherwise do away with all of the poultice working on your wounds. I could cheerfully strangle every one of them. Now we’ll never find out what it was that undoubtedly saved your life.”
    “Don’t expect me to tell you,” said Barrett, buttoning a sleeve. “I don’t remember anything about any poul—” His brow wrinkled. “Mpala. They found me near Mpala? Why that’s—”
    Mkristo nodded solemnly. “Quite a ways from where you and your men were reported to have entered the wild zone. Like to know how you arrived at that village?”
    Barrett just stared at him. How the hell had he gotten that far, in his condition?
    “It seems that a local farmer was tending his field, right at the edge of the forest. It’s quite primitive there, as you doubtlessly know. He turned around and suddenly found himself standing less than a meter from the biggest lion he’d ever seen. As you might expect, the poor chap simply froze on the spot.
    “Well, this lion turned away from him and went back to the edge of the forest, just into the trees. Then he came back, dragging a limp shape in his jaws. Guess what that limp shape was, Barrett?”
    “Me,” he mused wonderingly. “Then it was real. Some of it, at least.”
    The doctor continued. “The lion then disappeared into the jungle. About an hour later the poor farmer pulled himself together enough to run like blazes for the village. The people found you, got in touch with the police in Mpala, and you eventually wound up here.
    “By the way, you’ve got another interesting souvenir.”
    “Oh?” Barrett responded, resisting the urge to feel his body for bumps and ridges.
    “Feel the back of your shirt collar.”
    Barrett did so. There were holes there, and lumps of loose thread. This being uninstructive, he looked questioningly at the doctor, who smiled back.
    “I didn’t have them sewn up. Holes from the lion’s teeth . . . though why he didn’t put them in your neck I swear I can’t imagine.”
    “Neither can I, doc.” Shrugging, he went to the door.
    Mkristo jumped off the bed and looked expectantly at him. His voice was higher now, less professional, a little more human.
    “Barrett, for heaven’s sake, by reason you’re a dead man! What the hell happened back there? What’s the meaning of all this nonsense about giant panthers and apes and silver cobras? And a girl? You and your case are driving half the staff here out of their minds, not to mention the Tanzanian police!”
    Barrett gave him a lopsided smile. “That’s all there is to it, Mkristo. Nonsense, just nonsense.” He shrugged.
    “Look, I’m alive. I learned early never to look a gift hippo in the mouth. You might get swallowed. You explain it.” He started down the hall. Mkristo paused in the doorway and looked after him.
    “Where are you going?”
    “To put together my business, see some friends, and then to Sandy’s—if you know where that is!”
    “I know, I know!” shouted Mkristo. The distance between them was growing.
    “But do me a favor as patient to physician, huh?” His voice rose to a shout. “You just left one coma . . . don’t be in such a hurry to fall into another one!”

Chapter III
    Sandy’s was not an establishment frequented by tourists, American or otherwise. The place was adjudged by local guides as inhospitable to that necessary but odd species of homo sapiens. Not that the clientele which descended upon Sandy’s was especially sapient.
    Sandy’s lies in the poor business district of Nairobi, south of