female by the hand. Men are very wonderful.
He gave us food to eat, and hot coffee, and
got our clothes dried for us whilst we rolled
ourselves in Manchester blankets of gaudy
hue. In the tiny back room of the hut we were
safe from observation whilst he departed to
make judicious inquiries as to what had
become of Sir Eustace's party, and whether
any of them were still at the hotel.
It was then that I informed Harry that
nothing would induce me to go to Beira. I
never meant to, anyway, but now all reason
for such proceedings had vanished. The point
316
of the plan had been that my enemies
believed me dead. Now that they knew I
wasn't dead, my going to Beira would do no
good whatever. They could easily follow me
there and murder me quietly. I should have
no one to protect me. It was finally arranged
that I should join Suzanne, wherever she was,
and devote all my energies to taking care of
myself. On no account was I to seek
adventures or endeavour to checkmate the
"Colonel."
I was to remain quietly with her and await
instructions from Harry. The diamonds were
to be deposited in the Bank at Kimberley
under the name of Parker.
"There's one thing," I said thoughtfully,
"we ought to have a code of some kind. We
don't want to be hoodwinked again by
messages purporting to come from one to the
other."
"That's easy enough. Any message that
comes genuinely from me will have the word
'and' crossed out in it."
"Without trade-mark, none genuine," I
murmured. "What about wires?"
"Any wires from me will be signed
'Andy'."
'Train will be in before long. Harry," said
317
«•
Ned, putting his head in, and withdrawing it
immediately.
I stood up.
"And shall I marry a nice steady man if I
find one?" I asked demurely.
Harry came close to me.
"My God! Anne, if you ever marry anyone
else but me, I'll wring his neck. And as for
you——"
"Yes," I said, pleasurably excited.
"I shall carry you away and beat you black
and blue!"
"What a delightful husband I have
chosen!" I said satirically. "And doesn't he
change his mind overnight!"
318
28
(Extract from the diary of Sir Eustace Pedler)
A I remarked once before, I am essentially
a man of peace. I yearn for a
quiet life--and that's just the one
thing I don't seem able to have. I am always
in the middle of storms and alarms. The relief
of getting away from Pagett with his
incessant nosing out of intrigues was enormous,
and Miss Pettigrew is certainly a useful
creature. Although there is nothing of the
houri about her, one or two of her accomplishments
are invaluable. It is true that I had
a touch of liver at Bulawayo and behaved like
a bear in consequence, but I had had a
disturbed night in the train. At 3 a.m. an
exquisitely dressed young man looking like a
musical-comedy hero of the Wild West
entered my compartment and asked where I
was going. Disregarding my first murmur of
"Tea--and for God's sake don't put sugar in
it, he repeated his question, laying stress on
the fact that he was not a waiter but an
Immigration officer. I finally succeeded in
319
satisfying him that I was suffering from no
infectious disease, that I was visiting
Rhodesia from the purest of motives, and
further gratified him with my full Christian
names and my place of birth. I then
endeavoured to snatch a little sleep, but some
officious ass aroused me at 5.30 with a cup of
liquid sugar which he called tea. I don't think
I threw it at him, but I know that that was
what I wanted to do. He brought me
unsugared tea, stone cold, at 6, and I then fell
asleep utterly exhausted, to awaken just
outside Bulawayo and be landed with a
beastly wooden giraffe, all legs and neck!
But for these small contretemps, all had
been going smoothly. And then fresh
calamity befell.
It was the night of our arrival at the Falls. I
was dictating to Miss Pettigrew in my sittingroom,
when suddenly Mrs. Blair burst in
without a word of excuse and wearing most
compromising attire.
"Where's Anne?" she cried.
A nice question to ask. As though I were
responsible for the girl. What did she expect
Miss Pettigrew to think? That I was in the
habit of producing Anne Beddingfield from
320
my pocket at midnight or thereabouts? Very
compromising for a man in my position. <
her bed."
I cleared my throat and glanced at Miss
Pettigrew, to show that I was ready to resume
dictating. I hoped Mrs. Blair would take the
hint. She did nothing of the kind. Instead she
sank into a chair, and waved a slippered foot
in an agitated manner.
"She's not in her room. I've been there, I
had a dream--a terrible dream--that she was
in some awful danger, and I got up and went
to her room, just to reassure myself, you
know. She wasn't there and her bed hadn't
been slept in."
She looked at me appealingly.
"What shall I do. Sir Eustace?"
Repressing the desire to reply, "Go to bed, and don't worry over nothing. An ablebodied
young woman like Anne Beddingfield
is perfectly well able to take care of herself." I
frowned judicially.
"What does Race say about it?"
Why should Race have it all his own way?
Let him have some of the disadvantages as
well as the advantages of female society.
"I can't find him anywhere."
321
She was evidently making a night of it. I
sighed, and sat down in a chair.
"I don't quite see the reason for your
agitation," I said patiently.
"My dream——"
"That curry we had for dinner!"
"Oh, Sir Eustace!"
The woman was quite indignant. And yet
everybody knows that nightmares are a direct
result of injudicious eating.
"After all," I continued persuasively, "why
shouldn't Anne Beddingfield and Race go out
for a little stroll without having the hotel
aroused about it?"
"You think they've just gone out for a stroll
together? But it's after midnight?"
"One does these foolish things when one is
young," I murmured, "though Race is
certainly old enough to know better."
"Do you really think so?"
"I dare say they've run away to make a
&nb
sp; match of it," I continued soothingly, though
fully aware that I was making an idiotic
suggestion. For, after all, at a place like this,
where is there to run away to?
I don't know how much longer I should
have gone on making feeble remarks, but at
that moment Race himself walked in upon us.
322
At any rate, I had been partly right—he had
been out for a stroll, but he hadn't taken
Anne with him. However, I had been quite
wrong in my way of dealing with the
situation. I was soon shown that. Race had
the whole hotel turned upside-down in three
minutes. I've never seen a man more upset.
The thing is very extraordinary. Where did
the girl go? She walked out of the hotel, fully
dressed, about ten minutes past eleven, and
she was never seen again. The idea of suicide
seems impossible. She was one of those
energetic young women who are in love with
life, and have not the faintest intention of
quitting it. There was no train either way
until midday on the morrow, so she can't
have left the place. Then where the devil is
she?
Race is almost beside himself, poor fellow.
He has left no stone unturned. All the D.C.'s,
or whatever they call themselves, for
hundreds of miles round have been pressed
into the service. The native trackers have run
about on all fours. Everything that can be
done is being done—but no sign of Anne
Beddingfield. The accepted theory is that she
walked in her sleep. There are signs on the
path near the bridge which seem to show that
323
the girl walked deliberately off the edge. If so,
of course, she must have been dashed to
pieces on the rocks below. Unfortunately,
most of the footprints were obliterated by a
party of tourists who chose to walk that way
early on the Monday morning.
I don't know that it's a very satisfactory
theory. In my young days, I was always told
that sleep-walkers couldn't hurt themselves—
that their own sixth sense took care of them. I
don't think the theory satisfies Mrs. Blair
either.
I can't make that woman out. Her whole
attitude towards Race has changed. She
watches him now like a cat a mouse, and she
makes obvious efforts to bring herself to be
civil to him. And they used to be such
friends. Altogether she is unlike herself,
nervous, hysterical, starting and jumping at
the least sound. I am beginning to think that
it is high time I went to Jo'burg.
A rumour came along yesterday of a
mysterious island somewhere up the river,
with a man and a girl on it. Race got very
excited. It turned out to be all a mare's nest,
however. The man had been there for years,
and is well known to the manager of the
hotel. He takes parties up and down the river
324
in the season and points out crocodiles and a
stray hippopotamus or so to them. I believe
that he keeps a tame one which is trained to
bite pieces out of the boat on occasions. Then
he fends it off with a boathook, and the party
feel they have really got to the back of beyond
at last. How long the girl has been there is not
definitely known, but it seems pretty clear
that she can't be Anne, and there is a certain
delicacy in interfering in other people's
affairs. If I were this young fellow, I should
certainly kick Race off the island if he came
asking questions about my love affairs.
Later.
It is definitely settled that I go to Jo'burg
to-morrow. Race urges me to do so. Things
are getting unpleasant there, by all I hear, but
I might as well go before they get worse. I
dare say I shall be shot by a striker, anyway.
Mrs. Blair was to have accompanied me, but
at the last minute she changed her mind and
decided to stay on at the Falls. It seems as
though she couldn't bear to take her eyes off
Race. She came to me to-night, and said, with
some hesitation, that she had a favour to ask.
Would I take charge other souvenirs for her?
"Not the animals?" I asked, in lively alarm.
325
I always felt that I should get stuck with those
beastly animals sooner or later.
In the end, we effected a compromise. I
took charge of two small wooden boxes for
her which contained fragile articles. The
animals are to be packed by the local store in
vast crates and sent to Cape Town by rail, where Pagett will see to their being stored.
The people who are packing them say that
they are of a particularly awkward shape (I), and that special cases will have to be made. I pointed out to Mrs. Blair that by the time she
has got them home those animals will have
cost her easily a pound apiece!
Pagett is straining at the leash to rejoin me
in Jo'burg. I shall make an excuse of Mrs.
Blair's cases to keep him in Cape Town. I
have written him that he must receive the
cases and see to their safe disposal, as they
contain rare curios of immense value.
So all is settled, and I and Miss Pettigrew
go off into the blue together. And anyone
who has seen Miss Pettigrew will admit that
it is perfectly respectable.
326
29
johannesburg, March 6th.
THERE is something about the state of
things here that is not at all healthy.
To use the well-known phrase that I
have so often read, we are all living on the
edge of a volcano. Bands of strikers, or socalled
strikers, patrol the streets and scowl at
one in a murderous fashion. They are picking
out the bloated capitalists ready for when the
massacres begin, I suppose. You can't ride in
a taxi—if you do, strikers pull you out again.
And the hotels hint pleasantly that when the
food gives out they will fling you out on the
mat!
I met Reeves, my labour friend of the
Kilmorden, last night. He has cold feet worse
than any man I ever saw. He's like all the rest
of these people, they make inflammatory
speeches of enormous length, solely for
political purposes, and then wish they hadn't.
He's busy now going about and saying he
didn't really do it. When I met him, he was
)ust off to Cape Town, where he meditates
327
making a three days* speech in Dutch,
vindicating himself, and pointing out that the
things he said really meant something
entirely different. I am thankful that I do not
have to sit in the Legislative Assembly of
South Africa. The House of Commons is bad
enough, but at least we have only one
language, and some slight restriction as to
length of speeches. When I went
to the
Assembly before leaving Cape Town, I
listened to a grey-haired gentleman with a
drooping moustache who looked exactly like
the Mock Turtle in Alice in Wonderland. He
dropped out his words one by one in a
particularly melancholy fashion. Every now
and then he galvanized himself to further
efforts by ejaculating something that sounded
like "Platt Skeet," uttered fortissimo and in
marked contrast to the rest of his delivery.
When he did this, half his audience yelled
"Whoof, whoof!" which is possibly Dutch
for "Hear, hear," and the other half woke up
with a start from the pleasant nap they had
been having. I was given to understand that
the gentleman had been speaking for at least
three days. They must have a lot of patience
in South Africa.
I have invented endless jobs to keep Pagett
328
in Cape Town, but at last the fertility of my
imagination has given out, and he joins me
to-morrow in the spirit of the faithful dog
who comes to die by his master's side. And I
was getting on so well with my Reminiscences
too! I had invented some extraordinarily
witty things that the strike leaders
said to me and I said to the strike leaders.
This morning I was interviewed by a
Government official. He was urbane, persuasive
and mysterious in turn. To begin with, he alluded to my exalted position and
importance, and suggested that I should
remove myself, or be removed by him, to
Pretoria.
"You expect trouble, then?" I asked.
His reply was so worded as to have no
meaning whatsoever, so I gathered that they
were expecting serious trouble. I suggested to
him that his Government were letting things
go rather far.
"There is such a thing as giving a man
enough rope, and letting him hang himself, Sir Eustace."
"Oh, quite so, quite so."
"It is not the strikers themselves who are
causing the trouble. There is some organization
at work behind them. Arms and
329
explosives have been pouring in, and we have
made a haul of certain documents which
throw a good deal of light on the methods
adopted to import them. There is a regular
code. Potatoes mean 'detonators,' cauliflower,
'rifles,' other vegetables stand for
various explosives."
"That's very interesting," I commented.
"More than that. Sir Eustace, we have
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