AgathaChristie-TheManInTheBrownSuit

by The Man In The Brown Suit (lit)

  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

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  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

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  «•

  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

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  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

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  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."

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  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.

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  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

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  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

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  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.

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  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

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  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

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  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