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.“Sorry to keep jumping about like this, Dawson, but I’m trying to tell the thing more or less chronologically.Let’s see now—yes, we’d best go back to Maurice Jamieson in England.“The doctor lived with his wife, Muriel, in a cottage just outside Brentwood where he had his practice; but within four days of his return it became plain that his recently contracted affliction was affecting his efficient control of that practice.The pounding headache—remarkably reminiscent in its sustained and regular throb, throb, throb of the drums across Lake Ngami—had worsened until its pain was so great it seemed to Jamieson that his head was slowly being crushed in a great vise.The next day he took to his bed, so terrible had the agony in his head become, and on the following morning he called in a fellow doctor to examine him.And yet, that same day, as mysteriously as it had waxed, Jamieson’s headache waned and quickly disappeared.Altogether the thing had lasted two weeks.“The next eight days passed uneventfully, and Maurice Jamieson had almost forgotten about the monstrous pains he had known in his head (which, I might add, he had been sure would be the death of him), when a heavily stamped parcel arrived airmail from Salisbury.The thing came with the morning mail, and Jamieson unwrapped it wonderingly to find a long, explanatory letter from his brother—and Darghud’s doll.”“A doll?” I cried, breaking in on Crow’s narrative.“Did you say Darghud’s doll?”“Yes, and I’ll get on to that in a minute,” Crow continued, ignoring my rude outburst, “but first a word about the parcel.“Now that package was most odd; more like an entomologist’s specimen-box than a parcel proper, with little ventilation holes—you know what I mean? And within the inner container, wrapped most carefully in cotton-wool and with only its head free, was the baked clay and straw doll; with slivers of blue glass for its eyes and with the top of its head painted red.I should mention here that Maurice Jamieson had red hair, and that his eyes were blue…“The letter accompanying this outré object was no less extraordinary, explaining in detail all that David Jamieson had done since learning of his brother’s confrontation with the witch-doctor.He had set out in his canoe three days after Maurice’s departure, and it had taken him another three days to find the nomadic M’bulus; in the end the drums had led him to them.There in the marshlands he had treated the sick chief, bringing him back ‘miraculously’ to renewed health in only a day or two.They’re incredibly tough people, those marsh-dwellers.“It was only then that the outpost doctor dared bring up the question of Darghud and the devil-drums and what they meant.Shamefacedly, Notka told him that Darghud was ‘killing’ the other white Mganga for refusing his request for help—but the chief was also quick to agree that the ritual could now be satisfactorily ended with no harm done.Darghud, disappointed and angry, was made to produce the doll—into the clay body of which he had ground the beetle containing the white Mganga’s ‘aura’ or essence—and also to call a halt to the drumming.Just how he had managed to ‘magic’ the beetle out of the resin is something I don’t suppose anyone will ever know.“A cord had been twined about the doll’s painted head, with two flat wooden discs the size of pennies attached at the temples.Every day Darghud had been turning the discs, tightening the cord, until eventually the head would have been quite squashed! Of course, Jamieson carefully removed the discs and cord immediately—and the point I make is this: that at exactly the same time he freed the doll’s head, five thousand miles away in England his brother’s headache began to lift!”“Coincidence,” I said, feeling more than a little disappointed.It was, after all, a common enough tale.“Coincidence? Perhaps—but there’s more to come…“Of course, being a stoic sort of chap, Dr.Maurice Jamieson came to the same conclusion as yourself, Dawson—nothing personal intended, you understand.He gave the doll to his wife and thought no more about it.Muriel, however, was an entirely different kettle of fish.She was a superstitious soul, and even if she did fancy that all this was just a bit too much like mumbo-jumbo—well, what harm in taking precautions?“She’d got this idea right from the start, you see—from the moment she saw Darghud’s doll and learned the story behind it—for she simply didn’t consider the little effigy of her husband to be strong enough! The doll was too frail; it wouldn’t last a lifetime.And what if the thing really was, well, linked to Maurice in some way? What, she morbidly wondered, would be happening to her husband while Darghud’s doll slowly disintegrated?“Which was why, one night a short while later, she did what she did…And that was the end of that!” Crow snapped his fingers in sharp definition of finality.I waited a moment and then said: “Well, go on, Titus, finish it off.What did Muriel Jamieson do?”Crow gazed at me a few seconds longer, sighed, and then continued: “I thought you might have guessed it, Dawson…” He swirled the brandy round in the bottom of his glass.“Well?” I prompted him.He sighed again.“Well, one hour after Muriel Jamieson attended to the doll, when she went to her husband’s study with a cup of coffee, she found him dead at his desk.His face was blue, his eyes were bulging, and his tongue was lolling out.”“Eh?” I jumped at his abrupt delivery, staring in unquiet fascination across the space between us [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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