The Man in the Brown Suit

particularly unpleasant place to visit in about a week’s time. I don’t want to study
conditions in the midst of a raging revolution.”
Race smiled in a rather superior manner.
“I think your fears are exaggerated, Sir Eustace. There will be no great danger in
Jo’burg.”
The women immediately looked at him in the “What a brave hero you are” manner. It
annoyed me intensely. I am every bit as brave as Race—but I lack the figure. These long,
lean, brown men have it all their own way.

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“I suppose you’ll be there,” I said coldly.
“Very possibly. We might travel together.”
“I’m not sure that I shan’t stay on at the Falls a bit,” I answered noncommittally. Why
is Race so anxious that I should go to Jo’burg? He’s got his eye on Anne, I believe.
“What are your plans, Miss Anne?”
“That depends,” she replied demurely, copying me.
“I thought you were my secretary,” I objected.
“Oh, but I’ve been cut out. You’ve been holding Miss Pettigrew’s hand all the
afternoon.”
“Whatever I’ve been doing, I can swear I’ve not been doing that,” I assured her.
Thursday night.
We have just left Kimberley. Race was made to tell the story of the diamond robbery all
over again. Why are women so excited by anything to do with diamonds?
At last Anne Beddingfeld has shed her veil of mystery. It seems that she’s a newspaper
correspondent. She sent an immense cable from De Aar this morning. To judge by the
jabbering that went on nearly all night in Mrs. Blair’s cabin she must have been reading
aloud all her special articles for years to come.
It seems that all along she’s been on the track of “The Man in the Brown Suit.”
Apparently she didn’t spot him on the 
Kilmorden
—in fact, she hardly had the chance, but
she’s now very busy cabling home: “How I journeyed out with the Murderer,” and
inventing highly fictitious stories of “What he said to me,” etc. I know how these things
are done. I do them myself, in my Reminiscences when Pagett will let me. And of course
one of Nasby’s efficient staff will brighten up the details still more, so that when it
appears in the 
Daily Budget
 Rayburn won’t recognize himself.
The girl’s clever, though. All on her own, apparently, she’s ferreted out the identity of
the woman who was killed in my house. She was a Russian dancer called Nadina. I asked
Anne Beddingfeld if she was sure of this. She replied that it was merely a deduction—
quite in the Sherlock Holmes manner. However, I gather that she had cabled it home to
Nasby as a proved fact. Women have these intuitions—I’ve no doubt that Anne
Beddingfeld is perfectly right in her guess—but to call it a deduction is absurd.
How she ever got on the staff of the 
Daily Budget
 is more than I can imagine. But she is
the kind of young woman who does these things. Impossible to withstand her. She is full
of coaxing ways that mask an invincible determination. Look how she has got into my
private car!
I am beginning to have an inkling why. Race said something about the police

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suspecting that Rayburn would make for Rhodesia. He might just have got off by
Monday’s train. They telegraphed all along the line, I presume, and no one of his
description was found, but that says little. He’s an astute young man and he knows
Africa. He’s probably exquisitely disguised as an old Kafir woman—and the simple
police continue to look for a handsome young man with a scar, dressed in the height of
European fashion. I never did quite swallow that scar.
Anyway, Anne Beddingfeld is on his track. She wants the glory of discovering him for
herself and the 
Daily Budget.
 Young women are very cold-blooded nowadays. I hinted to
her that it was an unwomanly action. She laughed at me. She assured me that did she run
him to earth her fortune was made. Race doesn’t like it, either, I can see. Perhaps
Rayburn is on this train. If so, we may all be murdered in our beds. I said so to Mrs.
Blair—but she seemed quite to welcome the idea, and remarked that if I were murdered it
would be really a terrific scoop for Anne! A scoop for Anne, indeed!
Tomorrow we shall be going through Bechuanaland. The dust will be atrocious. Also
at every station little Kafir children come and sell you quaint wooden animals that they
carve themselves. Also mealie bowls and baskets. I am rather afraid that Mrs. Blair may
run amok. There is a primitive charm about these toys that I feel will appeal to her.
Friday evening.
As I feared. Mrs. Blair and Anne have bought forty-nine wooden animals!

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