“Well, Holly,” he greeted me, “I guess my days are numbered. I knew the thing would get me in time—I knew it when I left the shores of the Benuwe with that image of the goddess Wanaôs for a keepsake… There are dreadful things in Africa, Holly… malignant lust, and corruption, and poison, and sorcery… things that are deadlier than death itself—at least, deadlier than death in any form that we know. Don’t ever go there… if you have any care for the safety of body and soul.”
I tried to reassure him, without paying ostensible heed to the more cryptic references, the more oracular hints in his utterance.
“There is some low African fever in your system.” I said. “You should see a doctor—should, in fact, have seen one weeks or months ago. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t get rid of the trouble, whatever it is, now that you are back in America. But of course you need expert medical attention: you can’t afford to neglect anything so insidious and obscure.”
Marsden smiled—if the ghastly contortion of his lips could be called a smile. “It’s no use, old man. I know my malady better than any doctor could know it. Of course, it may be that I have a little fever—that wouldn’t be surprising; but the fever isn’t one that has ever been classified in medical lore. And there’s no cure for it in any pharmacopoeia.” With the last word, his countenance assumed a horrible grimace of pain, and seemed to shrivel before me like a sheet of paper that turns ashen with fire. He no longer appeared to notice my presence, and began to mutter brokenly, in tones of a peculiar huskiness, in a harsh, grating whisper, as if the very cords of his throat were involved in the same shrinking that affected his face. I caught most, if not all, of the words:
“She is dying, too… as I am… even though she is a living goddess…. Mybaloë, why did you drink the palm-wine?… You, too, will shrivel up, and suffer these gnawing, clawing tortures… Your beautiful body… how perfect, how magnificent it was!… You will shrivel up in a few weeks, like a little old woman… you will suffer the torments of hell-fire… Mybaloë! Mybaloë!”… His speech became an indistinct moaning, in which portions of words were now and then audible. He had all the aspect of a dying man: his whole body seemed to contract, as if all the muscles, all the nerves, even the very bones, were dwindling in size, were tightening to a locked rigidity; and his lips were drawn in a horrible rictus, showing a thin white line of teeth.
I ran to Marsden’s dining-room, where I knew that a decanter full of old Scotch usually stood on the sideboard, and filled a sherry-glass with the liquor. Hastening back, I succeeded, though with extreme difficulty, in forcing some of the strong spirit between his teeth. The effect was almost immediate: he revived into full consciousness, his facial muscles relaxed, and he no longer wore the look of tetanic agony that had possessed his whole body.
“I’m sorry to have been such a bother,” he said. “But the crisis is past for today… Tomorrow, though… that’ll be another matter.” He shuddered, and his eyes were dark with the haunting of some incombatable horror.
I made him drink the remainder of the whisky, and going to the telephone, took the liberty of summoning a doctor whose abilities were personally known to both of us. My friend smiled a little, in grateful recognition of my solicitude, but shook his head.
“The end won’t be so very far off now,” he said. “I know the symptoms; it’s a matter of a fortnight, or little more, when matters reach the point that they have reached today.”
“But what is it?” I cried. The query was prompted by horror and solicitude, more than curiosity.
“You will learn soon enough,” he replied, pointing to the library table with a forefinger of skeleton thinness. “Do you see that manuscript?”
Following his direction, I perceived on the table, close to the wooden statuette, a pile of written sheets, which, in my natural concern regarding Marsden’s illness, I had not before noticed.
“You are my oldest friend,” he went on, “and I have been aware for quite a while past that I owe you an explanation of certain things that have puzzled you. But the matters involved are so strange, and so peculiarly intimate, that I have been unable to bring myself to a frank confession face to face. So I have written for you a full narration of the final two months of my stay in Africa, concerning which I have spoken so little heretofore. You are to take it home with you when you leave; but I must beg you not to read the manuscript till after my death. I am sure I can trust you to respect my wishes in this regard. When you read it, you will learn the cause of my illness, and the story of the black figurine which has tantalized your curiosity so much.”
A few minutes later, there came a knock on the door, and I went to answer it. As I expected, it was Dr. Pelton, who lived only a few blocks away, and who had left home immediately in reply to my summons. He was a brisk and confident type of person, with the air of habitual reassurance, of professional good cheer, that goes so far in building up a doctor’s reputation for proficiency. But I could see beneath his manner an undertone of doubt, of real bafflement, as he examined Marsden.
“I’m not altogether sure what is wrong,” he admitted, “but I think the trouble is mainly digestive and nervous. Doubtless the African climate, and the food, must have upset you quite radically. You will need a nurse, if there is any recurrence of the attack you have had today.” He wrote a prescription, and left shortly after. Since I had a pressing engagement, I was obliged to follow him in about half an hour, taking with me the manuscript that Marsden had indicated. But before going I called a nurse by telephone, with Marsden’s authority, and left her in charge, promising to return as soon as possible.
Of the fortnight that followed, with the frightful protracted agonies, the brief and illusory shifts for the better, the ghastly relapses that characterized my friend’s condition, I cannot bear to write a full account. I spent with him all the time I could spare, for my presence seemed to comfort him a little, except during the awful daily crises, when he was beyond all consciousness of his surroundings. Toward the last, there were lengthening intervals of delirium, when he muttered wildly, or screamed aloud in terror of things or persons visible only to himself. To be with him, to watch him, was an ordeal without parallel; and to me, the most dreadful thing about it all was the progressive shriveling, the perpetual diminution of Marsden’s head and body, and the lessening of his very stature, which went on hour by hour and day by day with paroxysmal accompaniments of a suffering not to be borne by human flesh without lapsing into madness or oblivion… But I cannot enter into details, or describe the final stages; and I hardly dare even hint the condition in which he died and in which his body went to the undertaker. I can only say that in their extreme, their more than infantile dwarfage and devolution of form, the remains bore no likeness to anything that it would be permissible to name; also, that the task of the undertaker and the pall-bearers was phenomenally light… When the end came, I gave thanks to God for the belated mercy of my friend’s death. I was completely worn out, and it was not until after the funeral that I summoned enough energy and resolution for a perusal of Marsden’s manuscript.
The account was clearly written, in a fine, feline script, though the handwriting bore evidence of stress and agitation toward the end. I transcribe the narrative hereunder, with no liberties of abridgment or amplification:
I, Julius Marsden, have experienced all my life the ineffable nostalgia of the far-off and the unknown. I have loved the very names of remote places, of antipodean seas and continents and isles. But I have never found in any other word even a tithe of the untellable charm that has lain inherent for me ever since childhood in the three syllables of the word Africa. They have conjured up for me, as by some necromantic spell, the very quintessence of all mystery, of all romance, and no woman’s name could have been dearer to me, or more eloquent of delight and allure, than the name of this obscure continent. By a happy dispensation, which, alas! does not invariably attend the fulfillment of our dreams, my twenty-two months of sojourning in Morocco, Tunis, Egypt, Zanzibar, Senegal, Dahomey and Nigeria had in no way disappointed me, for the reality was astoundingly like my vision. In the hot and heavy azure of the skies, the great levels of desert sand or of rampant jungles, the long and mighty rivers winding through landscapes of unbelievable diversity, I found something that was deeply congenial to my spirit. It was a realm in which my rarest dreams could dwell and expand with a sense of freedom never achievable elsewhere.