A Frontier Mystery. Mitford Bertram

Glanton,” he explained, presumably detecting a surprised look on my face, called there by the exceedingly light way in which he was taking things. “You see it isn’t as if we had had a lot to do with each other. Of course I don’t for a moment hope that the poor old boy has come to grief, in fact I can’t help feeling that he may turn up any moment and want to know what the devil I’ve taken up my quarters at his place for, in this free and easy way.”

      After a good dinner, washed down with a glass or so of grog, we went to look at the place where the missing man had slept. This didn’t help towards any theory. If there had been foul play, whoever had been concerned in it had removed all traces long ago.

      “A good hound, requisitioned at first, would have done something towards clearing up the mystery,” I said.

      “Yes, but you might as well have requisitioned a good elephant, for all you’d get either round here,” laughed Kendrew. “Well, I shall just give it up as a bad job and leave it to Simcox. That’s what he draws his pay for. I’ll just sit tight and boss up things so long. That’s my job.”

      “I’d like to have a word or two with the boy who saw him last,” I said. “Alone I mean.”

      “Think you can get him to talk, eh? Well perhaps you may – I’ve heard of you, Glanton, and what a chap you are for managing Kafirs. All right, stop on till this evening, the boy’s out herding now. Then you can indaba him to your heart’s content after supper. You’ll stay the night of course.”

      But I urged that such was not in my programme, and in fact I had some business to attend to next day irrespective of mere retail trade in the store. So we compromised by my consenting to remain till evening. There was sufficient moon for me to ride home by even if it rose somewhat late. I suggested that we should ride out into the veldt in the afternoon and I could interview the boy there. He would talk more freely that way, and Kendrew agreed.

      The boy was a quiet, decent looking youngster, and was herding his flock in most exemplary fashion. I asked him his name.

      “Pecamane, ’Nkose!”

      “Have I seen you before?”

      “More than once, Nkose. At Isipanga, at the store. Then again, when we danced and ate beef.”

      “Ah. You were there then? Who is your chief?”

      “Tyingoza, Nkose.”

      Kendrew had ridden on, leaving me alone with the boy.

      “Well then,” I said, “if Tyingoza is your chief you will be safe in telling me the story of your master’s ‘who is no longer here.’”

      “Ou! Nkose. The only story I have to tell is what I told to the Amapolise, and he who now sits here” – meaning Kendrew. “But it is no story.”