“One loses oneself,” he confessed, “but I will tell you one more thing. My friend the priest there and I were talking one night during the last stage of his illness. I said to him then— ‘Are you not afraid that some day I shall go back and tell my white brothers all these wonderful things?’ And he smiled. ‘You will not go very far, Chief Haslam,’ he assured me. ‘The veil will drop over your eyes.’ Anyhow, the fellow told the truth,” Haslam went on carelessly, “in so far that I always break off in the middle, when I do feel disposed to talk, and I don’t remember much afterwards. One thing I do remember,” he added, looking down the table towards his host, “is this 1911 Cliquot. Do you recollect, Andrew, I was with you when you bought it? You were for having twenty dozen at first. Then the man pressed you and got it up to fifty dozen. Eventually I think you bought the lot.”
“Jove, you’re right!” Andrew exclaimed. “Seventy-one dozen, and I never bought better wine in my life. What a memory you’ve got, Rodney.”
“Ten years ago it was,” the latter remarked. “You had just succeeded. I was beginning to feel the real fascination of Africa in those days and to realise that I would never be happy anywhere else. Yet we had a good time. I remember coming to the conclusion, after seeing Andrew pass through his first season without even a touch, that he was a bachelor for life.”
“So I should have been,” Andrew declared, “if I hadn’t found Félice.”
She laughed happily as they all raised their glasses.
“I think,” she said, “after that very charming speech, I remind myself of your English custom. I take myself away to think how nice six grown-up men can be to one poor little woman.”
Haslam moved across the floor, his usual cold, distinguished self, held open the door and smiled quietly down upon his hostess.
“So long as you do not desert us for the whole evening.”
Félice shook her head.
“You are all far too nice.”
With their port upon the table and the servants out of the room, conversation drifted almost inevitably back to the afternoon’s find. Two people only withdrew from the discussion—Sir Richard and Haslam. The former, with his glass in his hand, moved to the other side of the table, and took the vacant chair next to Haslam.
“I will join you if I may,” he suggested.
“Delighted,” the other murmured.
“A propos of this revolver find,” he continued, “it is curious how the British mind—perhaps I should say the mind of the British jury—is always fascinated by anything in the nature of circumstantial evidence. Any one in my profession knows that circumstantial evidence needs very careful linking up or it may fall to pieces quicker than any other.” Haslam nodded assent.
“Evidence is sometimes very misleading,” he said. “To my mind a lawyer should never waste too much time sweeping up the crumbs. It is through his psychological studies that he will attain the truth, and when he has the truth it is much easier to work backwards.”
“You’d have made a decent criminal lawyer yourself, Haslam,” Sir Richard smiled.
“As a matter of fact,” the other replied, “if it doesn’t sound too egotistic, I may tell you that I have a great reputation in my own district as a judge. No one ever disputes my verdicts. I sometimes think that if I were to make a slip and pronounce an innocent man guilty, he would believe that he had been deceived and accept his fate quite quietly. The semi-savage mind is primitive but amazingly apprehensive.”
“When do you retire?” Sir Richard enquired.
“Not until my limit has been reached. And I doubt whether I shall come home then.”
“A confirmed bachelor?”
Sir Richard was never sure whether it was his fancy or whether Haslam’s eyes really rested for a moment upon that empty chair at the bottom of the table.
“I shall never marry,” he said simply. “There is no form of life here which would content me, and certainly the life I lead in Africa would appeal to very few women. I have lost touch, you know, Sir Richard. These visits of mine to England, pleasant though they are, are like cameos, like Wedgwood plates upon the panels of life. I always feel a sense of relief when I step on to the dock at Southampton, and a still greater one when I pass up the gangplank on to the steamer on my way home. Just at first perhaps I don’t appreciate what is going to happen to me, because I find the bustle of the steamer annoying. It is when we come in sight of the low flat stretches, the cramped trees, the rising country beyond, when we near Africa—that is perhaps my happiest day.”
“Any sport?” Sir Richard asked.
“Heaps,” Haslam assented. “I talked a little strangely to-night, I believe. I do sometimes. It’s the effect of living so much alone amongst a very superstitious, and yet in a way naturally educated people, that makes one like that. I enjoy just the same things as other people out there. I’m very keen on my shooting. The Governor very nearly complained of me last year for taking two months’ leave instead of six weeks. They didn’t know that I was hunting down a man as well as my big game. Then there are some quite decent chaps out there. We foregather once in a while. And those long trips of mine into the interior don’t occur so often now. I have a great half-yearly court, about two hundred miles in the bush, and I make the people come to me. I don’t have a sheriff and a coachman with a wig, and a glass-windowed coach and outriders, or that sort of thing, but I have the equivalent. Form appeals to the African mind—form and sentiment. They haven’t learned yet to place reason upon the throne and worship nothing else. They still have to be convinced through their senses.”
Parkins had entered the room and stood by Major Hartopp’s side. During a momentary silence every word of his message was heard.
“I beg your pardon, sir; Colonel Woodward has telephoned from Winchester Jail. He wishes to speak to you urgently.”
With a word of apology, the Chief Constable quitted his place and departed. Andrew presently rose to his feet.
“Can’t suggest like Barrie that we ‘join the Ladies,’” he observed, “but I daresay Félice would be glad to see us.”
They trooped towards the door. On their way they met Hartopp returning.
“A little loving message from our friend Drayton, eh?” Andrew remarked.
Hartopp shook his head.
“It seems Drayton has been taken ill,” he said. “They got hold of the news of the finding of the revolver in Winchester this afternoon, and some ass must have told him. Governor wants my authority for his removal to the infirmary.”
“You consented, of course?” Andrew asked.
Hartopp nodded.
“Can’t go against the doctors,” he replied.
CHAPTER XXII
At about eleven o’clock on the following morning, a faded looking yellow taxicab, running on three cylinders, hobbled up the stately drive of Glenlitten. The drizzling rain made its progress all the time more difficult; sheets of grey mist swept across the park; even the deer had found some hiding place and were invisible. Steadily, and still more steadily, the rain fell. Parkins, who answered the bell when at last the vehicle drew up with a snort in front of the door, hurried out in mild surprise, an umbrella in his hand. He looked at the woman who was the solitary passenger with misgiving. There was nothing about her appearance which suggested that by day or night she would be a welcome visitor.
“You wish to see any one here?” he