With Edged Tools Part 35

Jocelyn greeted him with a little inarticulate cry of joy.

"I did not think that you could possibly be here so soon," she said.

"What news have you?" he asked, without pausing to explain. He was one of those men who are silenced by an unlimited capacity for prompt action.

"That," she replied, handing him the note written by Jack Meredith to Marie at Msala.

Guy Oscard read it carefully.

"Dated seven weeks last Monday--nearly two months ago," he muttered, half to himself.

He raised his head and looked out of the window. There were lines of anxiety round his eyes. Jocelyn never took her glance from his face.

"Nearly two months ago," he repeated.

"But you will go?" she said--and something in her voice startled him.

"Of course I will go," he replied. He looked down into her face with a vague question in his quiet eyes; and who knows what he saw there?

Perhaps she was off her guard. Perhaps she read this man aright and did not care.

With a certain slow hesitation he laid his hand on her arm. There was something almost paternal in his manner which was in keeping with his stature.

"Moreover," he went on, "I will get there in time. I have an immense respect for Meredith. If he said that he could hold out for four months, I should say that he could hold out for six. There is no one like Meredith, once he makes up his mind to take things seriously."

It was not very well done, and she probably saw through it. She probably knew that he was as anxious as she was herself. But his very presence was full of comfort. It somehow brought a change to the moral atmosphere--a sense of purposeful direct simplicity which was new to the West African Coast.

"I will send over to the factory for Maurice," said the girl. "He has been hard at work getting together your men. If your telegram had not come he was going up to the Plateau himself."

Oscard looked slightly surprised. That did not sound like Maurice Gordon.

"I believe you are almost capable of going yourself," said the big man with a slow smile.

"If I had been a man I should have been half-way there by this time."

"Where is Durnovo?" he asked suddenly.

"I believe he is in Loango. He has not been to this house for more than a fortnight; but Maurice has heard that he is still somewhere in Loango."

Jocelyn paused. There was an expression on Guy Oscard's face which she rather liked, while it alarmed her.

"It is not likely," she went on, "that he will come here. I--I rather lost my temper with him, and said things which I imagine hurt his feelings."

Oscard nodded gravely.

"I'm rather afraid of doing that myself," he said; "only it will not be his feelings."

"I do not think," she replied, "that it would be at all expedient to say or do anything at present. He must go with you to the Plateau.

Afterwards--perhaps."

Oscard laughed quietly.

"Ah," he said, "that sounds like one of Meredith's propositions. But he does not mean it any more than you do."

"I do mean it," replied Jocelyn quietly. There is no hatred so complete, so merciless, as the hatred of a woman for one who has wronged the man she loves. At such times women do not pause to give fair play. They make no allowance.

Jocelyn Gordon found a sort of fearful joy in the anger of this self-contained Englishman. It was an unfathomed mine of possible punishment over which she could in thought hold Victor Durnovo.

"Nothing," she went on, "could be too mean--nothing could be mean enough--to mete out to him in payment of his own treachery and cowardice."

She went to a drawer in her writing-table and took from it an almanac.

"The letter you have in your hand," she said, "was handed to Mr. Durnovo exactly a month ago by the woman at Msala. From that time to this he has done nothing. He has simply abandoned Mr. Meredith."

"He is in Loango?" inquired Oscard, with a premonitory sense of enjoyment in his voice.

"Yes."

"Does he know that you have sent for me?"

"No," replied Jocelyn.

Guy Oscard smiled.

"I think I will go and look for him," he said.

At dusk that same evening there was a singular incident in the bar-room of the only hotel in Loango.

Victor Durnovo was there, surrounded by a few friends of antecedents and blood similar to his own. They were having a convivial time of it, and the consumption of whisky was greater than might be deemed discreet in such a climate as that of Loango.

Durnovo was in the act of raising his gla.s.s to his lips when the open doorway was darkened, and Guy Oscard stood before him. The half-breed's jaw dropped; the gla.s.s was set down again rather unsteadily on the zinc-covered counter.

"I want you," said Oscard.

There was a little pause, an ominous silence, and Victor Durnovo slowly followed Oscard out of the room, leaving that ominous silence behind.

"I leave for Msala to-night," said Oscard, when they were outside, "and you are coming with me."

"I'll see you d.a.m.ned first!" replied Durnovo, with a courage born of Irish whisky.

Guy Oscard said nothing, but he stretched out his right hand suddenly.

His fingers closed in the collar of Victor Durnovo's coat, and that parti-coloured scion of two races found himself feebly trotting through the one street of Loango.

"Le' go!" he gasped.

But the hand at his neck neither relinquished nor contracted. When they reached the beach the embarkation of the little army was going forward under Maurice Gordon's supervision. Victor looked at Gordon. He reflected over the trump card held in his hand, but he was too skilful to play it then.

CHAPTER XXV. TO THE RESCUE