Anyway, Anne Beddingfeld is on his track. She wants the glory of discovering him for herself and the Daily Budget. Young women are very cold-blooded nowadays. I hinted to her that it was an unwomanly action. She laughed at me. She assured me that did she run him to earth her fortune was made. Race doesn’t like it, either, I can see. Perhaps Rayburn is on this train. If so, we may all be murdered in our beds. I said so to Mrs. Blair—but she seemed quite to welcome the idea, and remarked that if I were murdered it would be really a terrific scoop for Anne! A scoop for Anne indeed!
Tomorrow we shall be going through Bechuanaland. The dust will be atrocious. Also at every station, little Kafir children come and sell you quaint wooden animals that they carve themselves. Also mealie bowls and baskets. I am rather afraid that Mrs. Blair may run amok. There is a primitive charm about these toys that I feel will appeal to her.
Friday evening.
As I feared. Mrs. Blair and Anne have bought forty-nine wooden animals!
XXIII
(Anne’s narrative resumed)
I thoroughly enjoyed the journey up to Rhodesia.
There was something new and exciting to see every day. First the wonderful scenery of the Hex River valley, then the desolate grandeur of the Karoo, and finally that wonderful straight stretch of line in Bechuanaland, and the perfectly adorable toys the natives brought to sell. Suzanne and I were nearly left behind at each station—if you could call them stations. It seemed to me that the train just stopped whenever it felt like it, and no sooner had it done so than a horde of natives materialized out of the empty landscape, holding up mealie bowls and sugar canes and fur karosses and adorable carved wooden animals. Suzanne began at once to make a collection of the latter. I imitated her example—most of them cost a “tiki” (threepence) and each was different. There were giraffes and tigers and snakes and a melancholy looking eland and absurd little black warriors. We enjoyed ourselves enormously.
Sir Eustace tried to restrain us—but in vain. I still think it was a miracle we were not left behind at some oasis of the line. South African trains don’t hoot or get excited when they are going to start off again. They just glide quietly away, and you look up from your bargaining and run for your life.
Suzanne’s amazement at seeing me climb upon the train at Cape Town can be imagined. We held an exhaustive survey of the situation on the first evening out. We talked half the night.
It had become clear to me that defensive tactics must be adopted as well as aggressive ones. Travelling with Sir Eustace Pedler and his party, I was fairly safe. Both he and Colonel Race were powerful protectors, and I judged that my enemies would not wish to stir up a hornet’s nest about my ears. Also, as long as I was near Sir Eustace, I was more or less in touch with Guy Pagett—and Guy Pagett was the heart of the mystery. I asked Suzanne whether in her opinion it was possible that Pagett himself was the mysterious Colonel. His subordinate position was, of course, against the assumption, but it had struck me once or twice that, for all his autocratic ways, Sir Eustace was really very much influenced by his secretary. He was an easygoing man, and one whom an adroit secretary might be able to twist round his little finger. The comparative obscurity of his position might in reality be useful to him, since he would be anxious to be well out of the limelight.
Suzanne, however, negatived these ideas very strongly. She refused to believe that Guy Pagett was the ruling spirit. The real head—the Colonel—was somewhere in the background and had probably been already in Africa at the time of our arrival.
I agreed that there was much to be said for her view, but I was not entirely satisfied. For in each suspicious instance Pagett had been shown as the directing genius. It was true that his personality seemed to lack the assurance and decision that one would expect from a master criminal—but after all, according to Colonel Race, it was brain work only that this mysterious leader supplied, and creative genius is often allied to a weak and timorous physical constitution.
“There speaks the professor’s daughter,” interrupted Suzanne, when I had got to this point in my argument.
“It’s true, all the same. On the other hand, Pagett may be the Grand Vizier, so to speak, of the All Highest.” I was silent for a minute or two, and then went on musingly: “I wish I knew how Sir Eustace made his money!”
“Suspecting him again?”
“Suzanne, I’ve got into that state that I can’t help suspecting somebody! I don’t really suspect him—but, after all, he is Pagett’s employer, and he did own the Mill House.”
“I’ve always heard that he made his money in some way he isn’t anxious to talk about,” said Suzanne thoughtfully. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean crime—it might be tin tacks or hair restorer!”
I agreed ruefully.
“I suppose,” said Suzanne doubtfully, “that we’re not barking up the wrong tree? Being led completely astray, I mean, by assuming Pagett’s complicity? Supposing that, after all, he is a perfectly honest man?”
I considered that for a minute or two, then I shook my head.
“I can’t believe that.”
“After all, he
