A Secret of the Lebombo Part 10

This had not been given to Warren by its original. Only one had been given by her to anybody, and it we have seen before. Neither had he stolen it. But a considerable bribe to the photographer's a.s.sistant, himself in difficulties--Warren was nowhere if he failed to take advantage of other people's difficulties--had procured him this, and another copy, which, he kept at his own house. And as the photographer drove his trade at Cape Town, some hundreds of miles distant from Gydisdorp, why that rendered the transaction all the safer.

"Out he goes," he murmured mechanically, his glance riveted on the portrait. "Out he goes--and then--I come in. Only--do I?"

The crack of a waggon whip and the harsh yell of the driver, from the street outside; the clear, deep-toned voices of a group of Kafirs pa.s.sing along the footway, rising and falling in cadenced modulation, the barking of a cur, these were the sounds--everyday sounds--that smote upon his ear in the drowsy afternoon heat. Then rose another, and hearing it he quickly put the photograph face downwards, drawing over it a litter of papers. The sound was that of steps, ascending the wooden staircase--for Warren chose to have his own office off the ground floor, contrary to usual custom in Gydisdorp, so as to ensure greater privacy.

"Come in."

There entered the same clerk, having barely had time to knock.

"Mr Wyvern would like to see you, sir."

"Wyvern? Certainly. In a minute or two. I'll ring."

The clerk retired. The "minute or two" was spent by Warren in carefully wrapping up the photograph again and replacing it in the drawer. Which done he banged the spring handbell on his table and waited.

"Why, Wyvern, my dear old chap, how are you? Glad to see you again-- only wish I could be of more use to you though."

He was wringing the other's hand, and his tone was of the most cordial Warren knew how to play on the cordiality stop in a way to soothe the most suspicious, and Wyvern was not suspicious.

"Oh, I'm all right," said the other, with a careless laugh, not altogether free from a note of despondency.

"By Jove! You look it too," said Warren, taking in the tall, fine figure, and the clear-cut face with its hall-mark of breeding stamped large. The clear blue eyes, too, were those of a man in the pink of condition, and taking it all in he realised that with his own powers of attraction, which were undoubted, he himself would be nowhere beside this one, or, at any rate, not where he wanted to be--and the rest didn't matter. "Well, now, what are the latest developments? They are going to foreclose, aren't they?"

"Yes. It doesn't matter much in the long run. I've got another scheme on hand now. I'm going to sell out and clear."

"Eh? The deuce you are?" cried Warren, surprised out of his normal and impa.s.sive att.i.tude. "Have a drink, old chap--then we can talk things over snugly. What'll you have? Whisky or _dop_?"

"_Dop_, thanks. It's a Heaven-sent liquor for this climate."

Warren took the opportunity while getting out the said refreshment to pull himself together. The other's news had come just in the nick of time. He need not now take over the mortgage on Seven Kloofs. Its owner was going to dear out anyhow; and he himself would be saved a sure and certain loss.

"Here you are now," he said, "help yourself. Have a weed, too," taking a cigar out of a box, and shoving the latter across to Wyvern. "So you're going to clear, are you? Well, I shall miss you, old chap, so will someone else, I expect--eh? Of course, as acting for Keeling, I've been in a sort of way a professional enemy, but I haven't really, for I've more than once kept him from putting the screw on you."

"I know you have, Warren, and it's devilish good of you."

"Oh, that's all right. You see, we can't refuse business unless it's downright shady, so I couldn't chuck this because you and I are pals.

Besides, I've done you far more good by taking it. If I hadn't, Shafto would have got it, and I don't think, somehow, you'd have found him any improvement. Eh?"

"No, indeed," laughed Wyvern, who didn't like Shafto, and whom Shafto didn't like.

"You'll find it a bit of a wrench parting with your place, Wyvern?"

"Rather. I love every stick and stone on it, although I've only had it such a short time. Besides--it has a.s.sociations."

"Of course," laughed the other, significantly. "One of them being that it has ruined you."

"Well, yes. But even that has carried its compensations."

"What are you going to launch out in next? I know you're a reticent chap, Wyvern, but we're old pals, and if there's any sort of way in which I can ever give you a leg up, you know you can rely upon me. I don't ask with any notion of poking my nose into your private affairs, you know."

"Well, first of all I'm going to Natal to look up a former friend of mine. We served together in the Zulu War; in fact, we raced neck to neck off that infernal Hlobane Mountain, through thousands of raging devils, and made rather more than a nodding acquaintance with grim old Death that day."

"By Jove! I should think so. Who is he, by the way?"

"He's trading in Zululand. He thinks I might join him with advantage."

"I see," said Warren, secretly foiled in that he had not got the name.

But he was nothing if not cautious. He could get at that later, while not seeming too curious. "Well, I hope you'll have luck--and return triumphant. By the way, didn't you have a bit of a breeze with old Le Sage the other day?"

"Now how the devil did you get hold of that for a yarn, Warren? I haven't opened my head about it to any living soul--not even a n.i.g.g.e.r."

The other smiled knowingly.

"There's very little I don't get hold of, old chap. What if Le Sage told me himself?"

"Did he?"

"Yes. He abused you so infernally that I had to tell him to stop-- reminding him you were a pal of mine. Then he abused me, but that I didn't mind. We do a lot of business together. You can stand a good deal from anybody on those terms."

"I suppose so. I like Le Sage and don't bear any grudge against him, though for a day or two after I did feel rather sore. He lost his temper a bit, and I felt sorry for him, because losing one's temper takes it out of one so. I know it does out of me when I lose mine."

Warren roared.

"When you lose yours! Why, you never do."

"Don't I? But it's a most infernal weakness. You are sure to come out bottom dog if you do."

"That's about it. Have another drink? No? Sure? Well, then, old man, come out with me to my place for the night. What do you say? We can have a good old yarn, and we shan't have many more of them if you're trekking."

"All right. I will."

"That's good. Now look here. I've got about an hour's business to tackle, then you romp back here, and we'll ride out together. No. I won't ask you to take a cut in at _ecarte_. I know you hate the sight of a pack of cards as dourly as any Covenanting Presbyterian 'meenister.'"

"Well, I do," laughed Wyvern, "but not for the same reason. The evening isn't the time for mathematical calculation. It's the time for yarning and pipes, and conviviality in general. All right. In an hour, then.

So long."

Warren ran a bachelor establishment some seven miles out of Gydisdorp.

It was, in fact a fine farm, but he was interested in it mainly as a game preserve; the fanning department he turned over to an overseer "on the halves." Not that he was ignorant on that side either, for he exacted his full share of what was yielded by the capabilities of the place. Here he was wont to entertain his friends, and comparatively high play was frequently the order of the evening; indeed it was whispered that it const.i.tuted a material addition to his store, both in currency and landed estate. He did neither at Wyvern's expense, however, for the latter declared, once and for all, that he had nothing to lose, and in the next place the whole thing bored him beyond words.

So when Wyvern returned an hour later the two men rode out together, and pa.s.sed an exceedingly pleasant and convivial evening. Wherein Warren was a paradox. He had a real liking for the other, and would have done anything in the world to do him a good turn, under all other circ.u.mstances. Here, however, Wyvern must be sacrificed, for mere friendship was but a featherweight beside Warren's overmastering but as yet secret pa.s.sion for Lalante Le Sage, and have we not said that the sum of Warren's _credo_ was Number 1!

And of the two portraits, one in Warren's office, the other in his home, Wyvern, of course, knew nothing.

CHAPTER TEN.

IN THE THIRD KLOOF.