Few knew Mr. Manfred’s butler, a dark-browed foreigner, rather stout and somewhat saturnine. He was a man who talked very little even to the cook and the two housemaids who came every morning at eight and left the house punctually at six, for Mr. Manfred dined out most nights.
He advertised only in the more exclusive newspapers, and not in his own name; no interviews were granted except by appointment, so that the arrival of Mr. Sam Barberton was in every sense an irregularity.
He knocked at the door just as the maids were leaving, and since they knew little about Manfred and his ways except that he liked poached eggs and spinach for breakfast, the stranger was allowed to drift into the hall, and here the taciturn butler, hastily summoned from his room, found him.
The visitor was a stubby, thickset man with a brick-red face and a head that was both grey and bald. His dress and his speech were equally rough. The butler saw that he was no ordinary artisan because his boots were of a kind known as veldtschoons. They were of undressed leather, patchily bleached by the sun.
“I want to see the boss of this Triangle,” he said in a loud voice, and, diving into his waistcoat pocket, brought out a soiled newspaper cutting.
The butler took it from him without a word. It was the Cape Times—he would have known by the type and the spacing even if on the back there had not been printed the bisected notice of a church bazaar at Wynberg. The butler studied such things.
“I am afraid that you cannot see Mr. Manfred without an appointment,” he said. His voice and manner were most unexpectedly gentle in such a forbidding man.
“I’ve got to see him, if I sit here all night,” said the man stubbornly, and symbolized his immovability by squatting down in the hall chair.
Not a muscle of the servant’s face moved. It was impossible to tell whether he was angry or amused.
“I got this cutting out of a paper I found on the Benguella—she docked at Tilbury this afternoon—and I came straight here. I should never have dreamt of coming at all, only I want fair play for all concerned. That Portuguese feller with a name like a cigar—Villa, that’s it!—he said, ‘What’s the good of going to London when we can settle everything on board ship?’ But half-breed Portuguese! My God, I’d rather deal with bushmen! Bushmen are civilized—look here.”
Before the butler realized what the man was doing, he had slipped off one of his ugly shoes. He wore no sock or stocking underneath, and he upturned the sole of his bare foot for inspection. The flesh was seamed and puckered into red weals, and the butler knew the cause.
“Portuguese,” said the visitor tersely as he resumed his shoe. “Not niggers—Portugooses—half-bred, I’ll admit. They burnt me to make me talk, and they’d have killed me only one of those hellfire American traders came along—full of fight and firewater. He brought me into the town.”
“Where was this?” asked the butler.
“Mosamades: I went ashore to look round, like a fool. I was on a Woerman boat that was going up to Boma. The skipper was a Hun, but white—he warned me.”
“And what did they want to know from you?”
The caller shot a suspicious glance at his interrogator.
“Are you the boss?” he demanded.
“No—I’m Mr. Manfred’s butler. What name shall I tell him?”
“Barberton—Mister Samuel Barberton. Tell him I want certain things found out. The address of a young lady by the name of Miss Mirabelle Leicester. And I’ll tell your governor something too. This Portugoose got drunk one night, and spilled it about the fort they’ve got in England. Looks like a house but it’s a fort: he went there. …”
No, he was not drunk; stooping to pick up an imaginary match-stalk, the butler’s head had come near the visitor; there was a strong aroma of tobacco but not of drink.
“Would you very kindly wait?” he asked, and disappeared up the stairs.
He was not gone long before he returned to the first landing and beckoned Mr. Barberton to come. The visitor was ushered into a room at the front of the house, a small room, which was made smaller by the long grey velvet curtains that hung behind the empire desk where Manfred was standing.
“This is Mr. Barberton, sir,” said the butler, bowed, and went out, closing the door.
“Sit down, Mr. Barberton.” He indicated a chair and seated himself. “My butler tells me you have quite an exciting story to tell me—you are from the Cape?”
“No, I’m not,” said Mr. Barberton. “I’ve never been at the Cape in my life.”
The man behind the desk nodded.
“Now, if you will tell me—”
“I’m not going to tell you much,” was the surprisingly blunt reply. “It’s not likely that I’m going to tell a stranger what I wouldn’t even tell Elijah Washington—and he saved my life!”
Manfred betrayed no resentment at this cautious attitude. In that room he had met many clients who had shown the same reluctance to accept him as their confidant. Yet he had at the back of his mind the feeling that this man, unlike the rest, might remain adamant to the end: he was curious to discover the real object of the visit.
Barberton drew his chair nearer the writing-table and rested his elbows on the edge.
“It’s like this, Mr. What’s-your-name. There’s a certain secret which doesn’t belong to me, and yet does in a way. It is worth a lot of money. Mr. Elijah Washington knew that and tried to pump me, and Villa got a gang of Kroomen to
