I may state, however, that the clue enabled me in after years to learn an episode in this man’s life which had brought about his ruin. There is no need to repeat it or to say more than that gambling and an evil use of his medical knowledge to provide the money to pay his debts, were the cause of his fall. The strange thing is that he should have kept the book which had probably been given to him by the prison chaplain. Still everybody makes mistakes sometimes. Or it may have had associations for him, and of course he had never seen this stamp upon an unread page, which happened to leap to my eye.
Now I was able to make a shrewd guess at his later career. After his trouble he had emigrated and began to practise in South Africa. Somehow his identity had been discovered; his past was dragged up against him, possibly by rivals jealous of his skill; his business went and he found it advisable to retire to the Transvaal before the Annexation, at that time the home of sundry people of broken repute. Even there he did not stop in a town, but hid himself upon the edge of savagery. Here he foregathered with another man of queer character, Marnham, and in his company entered upon some doubtful but lucrative form of trade while still indulging his love of medicine by doctoring and operating upon natives, over whom he would in this way acquire great influence. Indeed, as I discovered before the day was over, he had quite a little hospital at the back of the house in which were four or five beds occupied by Kaffirs and served by two male native nurses whom he had trained. Also numbers of out-patients visited him, some of whom travelled from great distances, and occasionally, but not often, he attended white people who chanced to be in the neighbourhood.
The three of us breakfasted in a really charming room from the window of which could be studied a view as beautiful as any I know. The Kaffirs who waited were well trained and dressed in neat linen uniforms. The cooking was good; there was real silver on the table, then a strange sight in that part of Africa, and amongst engravings and other pictures upon the walls, hung an oil portrait of a very beautiful young woman with dark hair and eyes.
“Is that your daughter, Mr. Marnham?” I asked.
“No,” he replied rather shortly, “it is her mother.”
Immediately afterwards he was called from the room to speak to some one, whereon the doctor said—
“A foreigner as you see, a Hungarian; the Hungarian women are very good looking and very charming.”
“So I have understood,” I answered, “but does this lady live here?”
“Oh, no. She is dead, or I believe that she is dead. I am not sure, because I make it a rule never to pry into people’s private affairs. All I know about her is that she was a beauty whom Marnham married late in life upon the Continent when she was but eighteen. As is common in such cases he was very jealous of her, but it didn’t last long, as she died, or I understand that she died, within a year of her daughter’s birth. The loss affected him so much that he emigrated to South Africa with the child and began life anew. I do not think that they correspond with Hungary, and he never speaks of her even to his daughter, which suggests that she is dead.”
I reflected that all these circumstances might equally well suggest several other things, but said nothing, thinking it wisest not to pursue the subject. Presently Marnham returned and informed me that a native had just brought him word that the Basutos had made off homeward with our cattle, but had left the wagon and its contents quite untouched, not even stealing the spare guns and ammunition.
“That’s luck,” I said, astonished, “but extremely strange. How do you explain it, Mr. Marnham?”
He shrugged his shoulders and answered—
“As every one knows, you are a much greater expert in native habits and customs than I am, Mr. Quatermain.”
“There are only two things that I can think of,” I said. “One is that for some reason or other they thought the wagon tagati, bewitched you know, and that it would bring evil on them to touch it, though this did not apply to the oxen. The other is that they supposed it, but not the oxen, to belong to some friend of their own whose property they did not wish to injure.”
He looked at me sharply but said nothing, and I went on to tell them the details of the attack that had been made upon us, adding—
“The odd part of the affair is that one of those Basutos called out to us that some infernal scoundrel of a white had warned Sekukuni of our coming and that he had ordered them to take our guns and cattle. This Basuto, who was wounded and praying for mercy, was drowned before he could tell me who the white man was.”
“A Boer, I expect,” said Marnham quietly. “As you know they are not particularly well affected towards us English just now. Also I happen to be aware that some of them are intriguing with Sekukuni against the British through Makurupiji, his ‘Mouth’ or prime-minister, a very clever old scamp who likes to have two stools to sit on.”
“And doubtless will end by falling between them. Well, you see, now that I think of it, the wounded Kaffir only said that they were ordered to take our guns and oxen, and incidentally our lives. The wagon was not mentioned.”
“Quite so, Mr. Quatermain. I will send some of our boys to help your servants to bring everything it contains up here.”
“Can’t you lend me a team of oxen,” I asked, “to drag it to the house?”
“No, we have nothing but young cattle left. Both red-water and lung-sickness have been so bad this season that all the horned stock have been swept out of the country. I doubt whether you could beg, borrow or steal a team of oxen this side of Pretoria, except from some of the Dutchmen who won’t part.”
“That’s awkward. I hoped to be able to trek in a day or two.”
“Your friend won’t be able to trek for a good many days at the best,” broke in the doctor, who had been listening unconcernedly, “but of course you could get away on the horse after it has rested.”
“You told me you left a span of oxen at Pretoria,” said Marnham. “Why not go and fetch them here, or if you don’t like to leave Mr. Anscombe, send your driver and the boys.”
“Thanks for the idea. I will think it over,” I answered.
That morning after Footsack and the voorlooper had been sent with some of the servants from the Temple to fetch up the contents of the wagon, for I was too tired to accompany them, having found that Anscombe was still asleep, I determined to follow his example. Finding a long chair on the stoep, I sat down and slumbered in it sweetly for hours. I dreamt of all sorts of things, then through my dreams it seemed to me that I heard two voices talking, those of our Marnham and Rodd, not on the stoep, but at a distance from it. As a matter of fact they were talking, but so far away that in my ordinary waking state I could never have heard them. My own belief is that the senses, and I may add the semi-spiritual part of us, are much more acute when we lie half bound in the bonds of sleep, than when we are what is called wide awake. Doubtless when we are quite bound they attain the limits of their power and, I think, sail at times to the uttermost ends of being. But unhappily of their experiences we remember nothing when we awake. In half sleep it is different; then we do retain some recollection.
In this curious condition of mind it seemed to me that Rodd said to Marnham—
“Why have you brought these men here?”
“I did not bring them here,” he answered. “Luck, Fate, Fortune, God or the Devil, call it what you will, brought them here, though if you had your wish, it is true they would never have come. Still, as they have come, I am glad. It is something to me, living in this hell, to get a chance of talking to English gentlemen again before I die.”
“English gentlemen,”