With Edged Tools Part 26

In all there was that subtle sense of unreality--that utter lack of permanency which touches the heart of the white exile in tropic lands, and lets life slip away without allowing the reality of it to be felt.

The girl sat there with the name before her--written on the little slip of paper--the only memento he had left her.

CHAPTER XIX. IVORY

'Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus, Another thing to fall.

One of the peculiarities of Africa yet to be explained is the almost supernatural rapidity with which rumour travels. Across the whole breadth of this darkest continent a mere bit of gossip has made its way in a month. A man may divulge a secret, say, at St. Paul de Loanda, take s.h.i.+p to Zanzibar, and there his own secret will be told to him.

Rumour met Maurice Gordon almost at the outset of his journey northward.

"Small-pox is raging on the Ogowe River," they told him. "The English expedition is stricken down with it. The three leaders are dead."

Maurice Gordon had not lived four years on the West African coast in vain. He took this for what it was worth. But if he had acquired scepticism, he had lost his nerve. He put about and sailed back to Loango.

"I wonder," he muttered, as he walked up from the beach to his office that same afternoon--"I wonder if Durnovo is among them?"

And he was conscious of a ray of hope in his mind. He was a kind-hearted man, in his way, this Maurice Gordon of Loango; but he could not disguise from himself the simple fact that the death of Victor Durnovo would be a distinct convenience and a most desirable relief. Even the best of us--that is to say, the present writer and his reader--have these inconvenient little feelings. There are people who have done us no particular injury, to whom we wish no particular harm, but we feel that it would be very expedient and considerate of them to die.

Thinking these thoughts, Maurice Gordon arrived at the factory and went straight to his own office, where he found the object of them--Victor Durnovo--sitting in consumption of the office sherry.

Gordon saw at once that the rumour was true. There was a hunted unwholesome look in Durnovo's eyes. He looked shaken, and failed to convey a suggestion of personal dignity.

"Hulloa!" exclaimed the proprietor of the decanter. "You look a bit chippy. I have been told there is small-pox up at Msala."

"So have I. I've just heard it from Meredith."

"Just heard it--is Meredith down here too?"

"Yes, and the fool wants to go back to-night. I have to meet him on the beach at four o'clock."

Maurice Gordon sat down, poured out for himself a gla.s.s of sherry, and drank it thoughtfully.

"Do you know, Durnovo," he said emphatically, "I have my doubts about Meredith being a fool."

"Indeed!" with a derisive laugh.

"Yes."

Maurice Gordon looked over his shoulder to see that the door was shut.

"You'll have to be very careful," he said. "The least slip might let it all out. Meredith has a quiet way of looking at one which disquiets me.

He might find out."

"Not he," replied Durnovo confidently, "especially if we succeed; and we shall succeed--by G.o.d we shall!"

Maurice Gordon made a little movement of the shoulders, as indicating a certain uneasiness, but he said nothing.

There was a pause of considerable duration, at the end of which Durnovo produced a paper from his pocket and threw it down.

"That's good business," he said.

"Two thousand tusks," murmured Maurice Gordon. "Yes, that's good.

Through Akmed, I suppose?"

"Yes. We can outdo these Arabs at their own trade."

An evil smile lighted up Durnovo's sallow face. When he smiled, his dropping, curtain-like moustache projected in a way that made keen observers of the human face wonder what his mouth was like.

Gordon, who had been handling the paper with the tips of his finger, as if it were something unclean, threw it down on the table again.

"Ye--es," he said slowly; "but it does not seem to dirty black hands as it does white. They know no better."

"Lord!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Durnovo. "Don't let us begin the old arguments all over again. I thought we settled that the trade was there; we couldn't prevent it, and therefore the best thing is to make hay while the sun s.h.i.+nes, and then clear out of the country."

"But suppose Meredith finds out?" reiterated Maurice Gordon, with a lamentable hesitation that precedes loss.

"If Meredith finds out, it will be the worse for him."

A certain concentration of tone aroused Maurice Gordon's attention, and he glanced uneasily at his companion.

"No one knows what goes on in the heart of Africa," said Durnovo darkly.

"But we will not trouble about that; Meredith won't find out."

"Where is he now?"

"With your sister, at the bungalow. A lady's man--that is what he is."

Victor Durnovo was smarting under a sense of injury which was annoyingly indefinite. It was true that Jack Meredith had come at a very unpropitious moment; but it was equally clear that the intrusion could only have been the result of accident. It was really a case of the third person who is no company, with aggravated symptoms. Durnovo had vaguely felt in the presence of either a subtle possibility of sympathy between Jocelyn Gordon and Jack Meredith. When he saw them together, for only a few minutes as it happened, the sympathy rose up and buffeted him in the face, and he hated Jack Meredith for it. He hated him for a certain reposeful sense of capability which he had at first set down as conceit, and later on had learnt to value as something innate in blood and education which was not conceit. He hated him because his gentlemanliness was so obvious that it showed up the flaws in other men, as the masterpiece upon the wall shows up the weaknesses of the surrounding pictures. But most of all he hated him because Jocelyn Gordon seemed to have something in common with the son of Sir John Meredith--a world above the head of even the most successful trader on the coast--a world in which he, Victor Durnovo, could never live and move at ease.

Beyond this, Victor Durnovo cherished the hatred of the Found Out. He felt instinctively that behind the courteous demeanour of Jack Meredith there was an opinion--a cool, unbia.s.sed criticism--of himself, which Meredith had no intention of divulging.

On hearing that Jack was at the bungalow with Jocelyn, Maurice Gordon glanced at the clock and wondered how he could get away from his present visitor. The atmosphere of Jack Meredith's presence was preferable to that diffused by Victor Durnovo. There was a feeling of personal safety and dignity in the very sound of his voice which set a weak and easily-led man upon his feet.

But Victor Durnovo had something to say to Gordon which circ.u.mstances had brought to a crisis.

"Look here," he said, leaning forward and throwing away the cigarette he had been smoking. "This Simiacine scheme is going to be the biggest thing that has ever been run on this coast."

"Yes," said Gordon, with the indifference that comes from non-partic.i.p.ation.

"And I'm the only business man in it," significantly.

Gordon nodded his head, awaiting further developments.

"Which means that I could work another man into it. I might find out that we could not get on without him."