Outside the cafe Matadi lay smothered and
sweltering in a black, living darkness, and, save for the rush of the
river, in a silence that continued unbroken across a jungle as wide as
Europe. Inside the dominoes clicked, the glasses rang on the iron
tables, the oil lamps glared upon the pallid, sweating faces of clerks,
upon the tanned, sweating skins of officers; and the Italian doctor and
the Belgian lieutenant, each with murder in his heart, laughed,
shrugged, gesticulated, waiting for the moment to strike.
"But why doesn't some one _do_ something?" demanded Everett. "Arrest
them, or reason with them. Everybody knows about it. It seems a pity not
to _do_ something."
Upsher nodded his head. Dimly he recognized a language with which he
once had been familiar. "I know what you mean," he agreed. "Bind 'em
over to keep the peace. And a good job, too! But who?" he demanded
vaguely. "That's what I say! Who?" From the confusion into which
Everett's appeal to forgotten memories had thrown it, his mind suddenly
emerged. "But what's the use!" he demanded. "Don't you see," he
explained triumphantly, "if those two crazy men were fit to listen to
_sense_, they'd have sense enough not to kill each other!"
Each succeeding evening Everett watched the two potential murderers with
lessening interest.
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