Salvation Colony

Chapter Twenty-Nine

173 Salvation Colony: Sequel to No Way to Die Chapter Twenty-Nine Cosmas Mfetebeunu I telephoned from the vicinity of The Colony. I had no other reason than that I wanted to talk to Mr. Dennis. We received no answer. As we were to learn later, Shrapnell had ordered the line to be cut off. I therefore decided that we write a brief note to Mr. Dennis informing him that we had come to tell him something of extreme importance. In our mind we knew that we were bringing the kind of news that would bring peace to The Colony and save everybody from embarrassment. And, above all, such information was bound to finally convince Mr. Dennis to leave the place and rejoin his wife and children. In the morning of that day, having put all the pieces of our investigations together I was so excited that I could not help telephoning my sister. I had reassured her that we had in our hands information, the disclosure of which would send Mr. Dennis packing out of The Colony. What shocked me was the fact that my sister received the news with very little excitement. She sounded in my ears as though she did not want to meet her husband. It looked like I was the one who stood to gain by having him out of there, and not herself. I seemed to be weeping more than the bereaved. When the note was delivered to Mr. Dennis he left to meet us. without informing anybody. From the small window in his apartment through which Shrapnell usually spied on those who came in and went out, he saw Mr. Dennis leave. 174 Linus T. Asong But, even though he had become extremely paranoid and very distrustful of everybody, he had nothing against Mr. Dennis to the extent of stopping him from leaving The Colony. Besides, had he wanted to, it would have been hard because the mounting pressure on him to resign had robbed him of all his strength of purpose. The conflicting emotions, to conceal his guilt without looking aggressive or behaving so, virtually paralysed him. Some force, that will power that had caused him to inspire people to move mountains, had suddenly gone out of him. *** “We would like to advise you to withdraw from this organization, this night,” I began. “Why this night?” “You have read the papers about this your God...” “I read some. Others I did not read,” Mr. Dennis said, “mainly because we have all concluded that you are just fabricating lies to tarnish the image of Our Father.” Mr. Dennis took his time before talking. “Moyo, Mr. Dennis,” I called, “are you aware that Reverend Shrapnell assisted occasionally in the ALL FOR LOVE CLINIC in town?” “Once in a while, yes. I know that Dr. Valdas Chopawuf is his friend of old, from what he told me personally,” he added. “What you may not know is that he was the one who attended to Sister O’Reilly, that Roman Catholic Reverend Sister whose pregnancy has brought so much embarrassment to the entire Christian Church in Africa.” Mr. Dennis tilted his head in disbelief and stared at me with a mixture of dismay and fresh concern. “You mean who attended to the sister? We are talking of two persons here.” 175 Salvation Colony: Sequel to No Way to Die “I mean Pastor Shrapnell.” “What can this mean?” he asked. “Perhaps this other bit will throw more light on that. Reverend Shrapnell once ran a dental clinic in Kansas state in the U.S. He was accused of having sex with two patients he had put in a state of anaesthesia.” Mr. Dennis raised his eye brows in a surprise that almost amounted to horror, and then nodded grimly, smacked his lips and shook his head. There was only one person who knew that Pastor Shrapnell had once been a surgeon. That one person was Dr. Valdas Chopawuf. And even Dr. Chopawuf did not know precisely why Shrapnell no longer practised. All he knew was that Shrapnell “had decided to cure the souls and not the flesh,” as he himself often said. Pastor Shrapnell had once shown him a copy of his professional certificate and, on the strength of that Chopawuf who was himself a dental nurse who passed for a dental doctor, had sought Shrapnell’s advice on several occasions in complicated cases of...