Part 8 (1/2)

'But I don't think you are a fool You h Other kinds are strung up with a rope Of that we shall know ood iven a chance to serve Gere asincerity in his voice that i out froht I saw before roiss chalet There was a kind of archith a sham portcullis, and a terrace with battlements which looked as if they were made of stucco We drew up at a Gothic front door, where a thin

As we ood look at our host He was very lean and broith the stoop in the shoulder that one gets frorizzled hair and a ragged beard, and a pair of pleasant, short-sighted brown eyes

'Welcome, my Colonel,' he said 'Is this the friend you spoke of?'

'This is the Dutchman,' said Stumm 'His name is Brandt Brandt, you see before you Herr Gaudian'

I knew the name, of course; there weren't est railway engineers in the world, the hdad and Syrian railways, and the new lines in Ger authority on tropical construction He knew the East and he knew Africa; clearly I had been brought down for hih my paces

A blonde maidservant took me to my room, which had a bare polished floor, a stove, and s that, unlike most of the German kind I had sampled, seemed made to open When I had washed I descended to the hall, which was hung round with trophies of travel, like Dervish jibbahs and Masai shi+elds and one or two good buffalo heads Presently a bell was rung Stumm appeared with his host, and ent in to supper

I was jolly hungry and would havemy wits The other two talked in German, and when a question was put toI had to do was to pretend I didn't know Ger The second was to miss not a word, for there lay my chance The third was to be ready to answer questions at anythat I had not followed the previous conversation Likewise, I must not prove myself a fool in these answers, for I had to convince the, and I felt like a witness in the box under a stiff cross-exaa Gaudian the gist of ineer shook his head

'Too late,' he said 'It should have been done at the beginning We neglected Africa You know the reason why'

Stuhed 'The von Einelanced towards e salad 'I have ht in one thing Uganda is a vital spot for the English, and a blow there will make their whole fabric shi+ver But how can we strike? They have still the coast, and our supplies grow daily smaller'

'We can send no reinforcements, but have we used all the local resources? That is what I cannot satisfy myself about Zimmerman says we have, but Tressler thinks differently, and noe have this fellow co out of the void with a story which confirms my doubt He seems to know his job You try hi h and no h, but I think I came out with credit You see I have a capacious memory, and in my time I had met scores of hunters and pioneers and listened to their yarns, so I could pretend to knowledge of a place even when I hadn't been there Besides, I had once been on the point of undertaking a job up Tanganyika way, and I had got up that country-side pretty accurately

'You say that with our help you can make trouble for the British on the three borders?' Gaudian asked at length

'I can spread the fire if some one else will kindle it,' I said

'But there are thousands of tribes with no affinities'

'They are all African You can bear o lish know this well enough'

'Where would you start the fire?' he asked

'Where the fuel is dryest Up in the North a the Mussul about Islaather that you do'

'Why?' he asked

'Because of what you have done already,' I answered

Stuiven the sense of my words very fairly But with ave was: 'Because the Dutch with the Mosle his eyebrows, he said solance of apprehension at me 'We had better continue our talk in private, Herr Colonel,' he said 'If Herr Brandt will forgive us, ill leave hiar-box towards ot up and left the room

I pulled my chair up to the stove, and would have liked to drop off to sleep The tension of the talk at supper had made me very tired I was accepted by these ht suspecta rascal, but it was a Dutch rascal But all the sa on thin ice I could not sink ood out of being there I had to keepall the time, and join the appearance and manners of a backveld Boer with the ence-officer Any ht clash and I would be faced with the most alert and deadly suspicion