When Jocelyn looked up, dry-lipped, breathless, Nâla was standing before her, beaming with self-importance.
“Who gave you this?”
“Marie at Msala.”
“Who is she?”
“Oh—Mr. Durnovo’s woman at Msala. She keeps his house.”
“But this letter is for Mr. Durnovo,” cried Jocelyn, whose fear made her unreasonably angry. “Why has he not had it?”
Nâla came nearer, with upraised forefinger and explanatory palm.
“Marie tell me,” he said, “that Mr. Meredith send two letters. Marie give Mr. Durnovo one. This—other letter.”
There was a strange glitter in the girl’s blue eyes—something steely and unpleasant.
“You are sure of that? You are quite sure that Mr. Durnovo has had a letter like this?” she asked slowly and carefully, so that there could be no mistake.
“That is true,” answered the man.
“Have you any more news from Msala?”
Nâla looked slightly hurt. He evidently thought that he had brought as much news as one man could be expected to carry.
“Marie has heard,” he said, “that there is much fighting up in the country.”
“She has heard no particulars—nothing more than that?”
“No; nothing.”
Jocelyn Gordon rose to this occasion also.
“Can you go,” she said, after a moment’s thought, “to St. Paul de Loanda for me?”
The man laughed.
“Yes,” he answered simply.
“At once—now?”
“Oh, yes,” with a sigh.
Already Jocelyn was writing something on a sheet of paper.
“Take this,” she said, “to the telegraph office at St. Paul de Loanda, and send it off at once. Here is money. You understand? I will pay you when you bring back the receipt. If you have been very quick, I will pay you well.”
That same evening a second messenger started northward after Maurice Gordon with a letter telling him to come back at once to Loango.
XXIV
Nemesis
Take heed of still waters.
Despite his assertion to Lady Cantourne, Guy Oscard stayed on in the gloomy house in Russell Square. He had naturally gone thither on his return from Africa, and during the months that followed he did not find time to think much of his own affairs. Millicent Chyne occupied all his thoughts—all his waking moments. It is marvellous how busily employed an active-minded young lady can keep a man.
In the ill-lighted study rendered famous by the great history which had emanated in the manuscript therefrom, Guy Oscard had interviewed sundry great commercial experts, and a cheque for forty-eight thousand pounds had been handed to him across the table polished bright by his father’s studious elbow. The Simiacine was sold, and the first portion of it spent went to buy a diamond aigrette for the dainty head of Miss Millicent Chyne.
Guy Oscard was in the midst of the London season. His wealth and a certain restricted renown had soon made him popular. He had only to choose his society, and the selection was not difficult. Wherever Millicent Chyne went he went also, and to the lady’s credit it must be recorded that no one beyond herself and Guy Oscard had hitherto noticed this fact. Millicent was nothing if not discreet. It was more or less generally known that she was engaged to Jack Meredith, who, although absent on some vaguely romantic quest of a fortune, was not yet forgotten. No word, however, was popularly whispered connecting her name with that of any other swain nearer home. Miss Chyne was too much of a woman of the world to allow that. But, in the meantime, she rather liked diamond aigrettes and the suppressed devotion of Guy Oscard.
It was the evening of a great ball, and Guy Oscard, having received his orders and instructions, was dining alone in Russell Square, when a telegram was handed to him. He opened it and spread the thin paper out upon the tablecloth. A word from that far, wild country, which seemed so much fitter a background to his simple bulk and strength than the cramped ways of London society—a message from the very heart of the dark continent—to him:
Meredith surrounded and in danger. Durnovo false. Come at once. —Jocelyn Gordon.
Guy Oscard pushed back his chair and rose at once, as if there were somebody waiting in the hall to see him.
“I do not want any more dinner,” he said, “I am going to Africa. Come and help me to pack my things.”
He studied Bradshaw and wrote a note to Millicent Chyne. To her he said the same as he had said to the butler, “I am going to Africa.”
There was something refreshingly direct and simple about this man. He did not enter into long explanations. He simply bore on in the line he had marked out. He rose from the table and never looked back. His attitude seemed to say, “I am going to Africa; kindly get out of my way.”
At three minutes to nine—that is to say, in one hour and a half—Guy Oscard took his seat in the Plymouth express. He had ascertained that a Madeira boat was timed to sail from Dartmouth at eight o’clock that evening. He was preceded by a telegram to Lloyd’s agent at Plymouth:
Have fastest craft available, steam up, ready to put to sea to catch the Banyan, African steamer, four o’clock tomorrow morning. Expense not to be considered.
As the train crept out into the night, the butler of the gloomy house in Russell Square, who had finished the port, and was beginning to feel resigned, received a second shock. This came in the form of a carriage and pair, followed by a ring at the bell.
The man opened the door, and his fellow servitor of an eccentric class and generation stepped back on the doorstep to let a young lady pass into the hall.
“Mr. Oscard?” she said curtly.
“Left ’ome, miss,” replied the butler, stiffly conscious of walnut-peel on his waistcoat.
“How long ago?”
“A matter of half an hour, miss.”
Millicent Chyne, whose face was drawn and white,
