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when a man coming out of the shop cannoned into me. To my surprise it turned out to be
Race.
I can’t flatter myself that he looked pleased to see me. As a matter of fact, he looked
distinctly annoyed, but I insisted on his accompanying me back to the hotel. I get tired of
having no one but Miss Pettigrew to talk to.
“I had no idea you were in Jo’burg,” I said chattily. “When did you arrive?”
“Last night.”
“Where are you staying?”
“With friends.”
He was disposed to be extraordinarily taciturn, and seemed to be embarrassed by my
questions.
“I hope they keep poultry,” I remarked. “A diet of new-laid eggs, and the occasional
slaughtering of an old cock, will be decidedly agreeable soon, from all I hear.”
“By the way,” I said, when we were back in the hotel, “have you heard that Miss
Beddingfeld is alive and kicking?”
He nodded.
“She gave us quite a fright,” I said airily. “Where the devil did she go to that night,
that’s what I’d like to know.”
“She was on the island all the time.”
“Which island? Not the one with the young man on it?”
“Yes.”
“How very improper,” I said. “Pagett will be quite shocked. He always did disapprove
of Anne Beddingfeld. I suppose that was the young man she originally intended to meet in
Durban?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Don’t tell me anything if you don’t want to,” I said, by way of encouraging him.
“I fancy that this is a young man we should all be very glad to lay our hands on.”
“Not—?” I cried, in rising excitement.
He nodded.
“Harry Rayburn,
alias
Harry Lucas—that’s his real name, you know. He’s given us all
the slip once more, but we’re bound to rope him in soon.”
“Dear me, dear me,” I murmured.
“We don’t suspect the girl of complicity in any case. On her side it’s—just a love
affair.”
I always did think Race was in love with Anne. The way he said those last words made
me feel sure of it.
“She’s gone to Beira,” he continued rather hastily.
“Indeed,” I said, staring. “How do you know?”
“She wrote to me from Bulawayo, telling me she was going home that way. The best
thing she can do, poor child.”
“Somehow, I don’t fancy she is in Beira,” I said meditatively.
“She was just starting when she wrote.”
I was puzzled. Somebody was clearly lying. Without stopping to reflect that Anne might
have excellent reasons for her misleading statements, I gave myself up to the pleasure of
scoring off Race. He is always so cocksure. I took the telegram from my pocket and
handed it to him.
“Then how do you explain this?” I asked nonchalantly.
He seemed dumbfounded. “She said she was just starting for Beira,” he said, in a
dazed voice.
I know that Race is supposed to be clever. He is, in my opinion, rather a stupid man. It
never seemed to occur to him that girls do not always tell the truth.
“Kimberley too. What are they doing there?” he muttered.
“Yes, that surprised me. I should have thought Miss Anne would have been in the thick
of it here, gathering copy for the
Daily Budget.
”
“Kimberley,” he said again. The place seemed to upset him. “There’s nothing to see
there—the pits aren’t being worked.”
“You know what women are,” I said vaguely.
He shook his head and went off. I have evidently given him something to think about.
No sooner had he departed than my Government official reappeared.
“I hope you will forgive me for troubling you again, Sir Eustace,” he apologized. “But
there are one or two questions I should like to ask you.”
“Certainly, my dear fellow,” I said cheerfully. “Ask away.”
“It concerns your secretary—”
“I know nothing about him,” I said hastily. “He foisted himself upon me in London,
robbed me of valuable papers—for which I shall be hauled over the coals—and
disappeared like a conjuring trick at Cape Town. It’s true that I was at the Falls at the
same time as he was, but I was at the hotel, and he was on an island. I can assure you
that I never set eyes upon him the whole time that I was there.”
I paused for breath.
“You misunderstand me. It was of your other secretary that I spoke.”
“What? Pagett?” I cried, in lively astonishment. “He’s been with me eight years—a
most trustworthy fellow.”
My interlocutor smiled.
“We are still at cross-purposes. I refer to the lady.”
“Miss Pettigrew?” I exclaimed.
“Yes. She has been seen coming out of Agrasato’s Native Curio shop.”
“God bless my soul!” I interrupted. “I was going into that place myself this afternoon.
You might have caught me coming out!”
There doesn’t seem to be any innocent thing that one can do in Jo’burg without being
suspected for it.
“Ah! but she has been seen there more than once—and in rather doubtful
circumstances. I may as well tell you—in confidence, Sir Eustace—that the place is
suspected of being a well-known rendezvous used by the secret organization behind this
revolution. That is why I should be glad to hear all that you can tell me about this lady.
Where and how did you come to engage her?”
“She was lent to me,” I replied coldly, “by your own Government.”
He collapsed utterly.
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