Mr. Prentiss's Gambit

They had been on safari near Lake Victoria for two days. Miss Evans-Ryder, in a plaid tailored jacket and skirt, had assumed she would be hot, but was quite comfortable. Dr. Macaulay’s wife, hot, fanned herself constantly and tried to enlist the fanning aid of the impassive Bantu manservant.

“He will not help me, Rose, he thinks I am weak,” Mrs. Macaulay whined as they sat on camp chairs under an acacia. “Perhaps Mr. Prentiss would assist him in amending his duties.” This last Mrs. Macaulay said as Mr. Prentiss walked toward them, which made Miss Evans-Ryder flush with embarrassment.

“Mr. Prentiss cannot compel the man to do something out of his range,” she muttered.

Mr. Prentiss took off his slouch hat, wiped his forehead, thrust a ladle into the water urn, drank, and seemed utterly unconcerned with the women’s conversation.

“We will approach Kendu Bay and make camp out of town for the night,” he said, looking off into the distance with narrowed eyes. “That will set us back from seeing the crocodiles for half a day.”

“Mr. Prentiss,” hastened Miss Evans-Ryder, “we were under the impression that we would see the crocodiles this afternoon and be on our way to Kisumu by daybreak.”

“Change in plans, I’m afraid, Miss. You’ll understand, I hope, if we require further reconnaissance.”

He donned his hat and, with a nod, loped back to the other men in the party.

“What does he mean by that? What have we to reconnoiter?” said Miss Evans-Ryder. Mrs. Macaulay, her face besheened with perspiration, looked at her blandly.

*

The savanna around Kendu Bay was rife with mosquitoes. Miss Evans-Ryder had carefully doubled her mosquito netting before giving it to the manservant to hang around her cot. He did this slowly and deliberatively, as though the task’s success were of the highest importance. When he was finished, the manservant placed a lank bouquet of blood lilies into a jar of water on Miss Evans-Ryder’s camp table, bowed slightly, and made his way out into the pitch darkness.

Notwithstanding her preparations for bed, Miss Evans-Ryder could not imagine falling asleep. All through the trek toward Kendu Bay, she watched Mr. Prentiss repeatedly check his watch and look through his field glasses at the terrain ahead. It was as if he were expecting some ill fate to befall them or some conflagration to erupt over a hillock.

When the camp grew quiet, Miss Evans-Ryder put out her lamp and crouched at the tent flap. As she waited, she pulled more mosquito netting over her wide-brimmed hat, placed it on her head, and affixed the netting in a delicately fashionable way around her neck. Then, she peeled the flap back so she could survey the encirclement of tents. Surely enough, Mr. Prentiss emerged from his tent at a quarter past eleven and scuttled away into the dark beyond the tent line, whereupon he illuminated an electric torch. Miss Evans-Ryder, her heart fluttering, dashed out of her tent and into the dark.

As her eyes grew accustomed to the abyss of blackness, the night sky – a salt-scattering of stars and galaxies – shone on Miss Evans-Ryder’s path through what had appeared at first to be snakes writhing together, but was revealed to be phalanxes of whistling thorn, some entwined so thickly that Miss Evans-Ryder had to jump over them to keep pace with Mr. Prentiss.

After a quarter of an hour, Kendu Bay began to poke up out of the bush. Corrugated iron shacks and cement buildings alike delimited streets, and here and there a dog would wander, nearly silently, from one corner to another.

Mr. Prentiss slowed. Miss Evans-Ryder watched from behind a telegraph pole as he flattened himself against a cement wall and slid toward an open window. He drew a dark tube from within his bush jacket. He then lit a match, which cast the whole miserable street into many rich hues of taupe and tan; pressed the lit match to one end of the tube, upon which it fizzed; and cast the tube through the open window with the same vigor as he now ran in Miss Evans-Ryder’s direction.

The window where Mr. Prentiss had been erupted in an orange bubble of flame before a massive BOOM! knocked Miss Evans-Ryder off her feet. Particles, chunks of wood and cement, crockery, and soft, wet pieces struck and dropped down on her as she shook her head.

“Miss Evans-Ryder! God Almighty!” came a strangled voice. She looked up and saw Mr. Prentiss reaching down for her. She felt her body being swept up by his hands and arms, and then felt her own feet fumbling feebly, before Mr. Prentiss bore her up and back into the abyss of the bush.

*

“A stupid risk!” spat Mr. Prentiss in a whisper as he daubed mercurochrome on Miss Evans-Ryder’s forehead. “You could have been killed, you silly, stupid—”

“Mr. Prentiss!” hissed Miss Evans-Ryder, quieting him. “Were there people in that building?”

Mr. Prentiss, silent, opened and closed his mouth like a deprived fish. “Yes, one.”

“Mr. Prentiss!”

“Miss Evans-Ryder—”

“And when I return to Kisumu, I aim to report you to the authorities for this – this murderous, this callous—”

“Miss Evans-Ryder,” Mr. Prentiss said again, drawing from his pocket and opening up a rectangle of leather with a smartly golden badge inside that proclaimed SPECIAL BRANCH under the royal coat of arms.

“The man in that building who I—” Mr. Prentiss broke off, regrouped. “He was a Dutch sisal trader who has been drawing a far larger salary than a trader of his sort ought.” Mr. Prentiss put a sticking plaster on Miss Evans-Ryder’s forehead. “It had been reported that his conversations with German nationals in the area have been, shall we say, of a broadly helpful nature.”

“A spy!” Now Miss Evans-Ryder’s mouth flopped open. “A spy?”

Mr. Prentiss rose and walked to the tent flap. He said, with his back to her, “Your discretion will be much appreciated by His Majesty.”

And then he was gone.