A Secret of the Lebombo Part 35

"But there are no shops."

"Don't tease. Oh, but--" and her eyes grew soft--"if you only knew how he appreciated what you did, I mean that offer you made him. He says it was the saving of him."

"In the words I used to him on a somewhat similar occasion--'shut up',"

rejoins Wyvern, stopping her mouth with a kiss. "Here's a yarn from Fleetwood! Now we'll each see what each says."

"Joe's news is good," he goes on, glancing down the sheet. "He's working the oracle fine about the plunder, but he says that nearly six months of England, and that mostly London, is about enough for any self-respecting up-country man, and wants to go back again when we do."

"Why of course," absently and not immediately. Then with a start. "How dreadful! Oh how dreadful!"

"What is?"

"Mr Warren's dead!"

"No! Poor chap. What did he die of?"

"He committed suicide. Look. You read it out. I can't," and Lalante looked very pale and distressed as she handed over her father's letter.

"You'll probably have seen about poor Warren's death in the English papers--" it went on--"but in case you haven't, he was found in his sitting room, shot through the heart three weeks ago. All the evidence went to show that it was a case of suicide, even if he hadn't left a letter to say so. But it gave no reason, and at the adjourned enquiry--held the day before yesterday--nothing could be discovered to throw any light on the matter. All his affairs were in perfect order, in fact he turns out to be a great deal better off than was supposed, and that means a good deal. And the medical evidence proved him to be absolutely strong and healthy. So the thing remains and will remain a complete mystery. Poor chap! One would have thought him the last man in the world to have done such a thing. I send you a cutting with a report of the adjourned enquiry."

"Your father's about right, dear," said Wyvern handing back the letter.

"Warren is absolutely the last man I should have suspected of suicidal tendency. Why he had everything under the sun to make life attractive.

And yet--I don't know. Life is such a deuced rum thing, and every donkey knows where his own saddle galls him. Poor Warren may have had something upon his mind."

Did some shadow of a suspicion cross that of Lalante as to the real state of the case? If so it was not a thing that she cared to put into words. But she was very shocked at Warren's sad end. She tried to forget the instinct which had led to her cold suspicions of him of late, and remembered his intrepid courage in rescuing her small brother from the raging waters of the flooded Kunaga.

"Let's see what the newspaper says about it. It's the _Gydisdorp Herald_!" went on Wyvern running his eye down the cutting. "It's all pretty much the same as what your father says--By Jove! here's something though. Listen to this:--

"It will be remembered that one of the last services our lamented fellow-townsman was able to render to society at large, is that he was instrumental in procuring the arrest and conviction of that atrocious scoundrel Jonathan Baldock, who was hanged at Beaufort West, only a week before Mr Warren's sad end. This Baldock or Bexley, or Rawson-- he had several aliases--it will be remembered, was convicted of the murder of a Dutch farmer and his wife under circ.u.mstances of great barbarity, and for some years had managed to escape detection. But if the feet of Justice are sometimes slow they are nearly always sure.

His whereabouts became known to Mr Warren by the merest accident, and that model citizen caused him to be lured from the wild border of Northern Zululand--where his business, we may be sure was of no lawful nature--and his arrest and conviction promptly followed, once he set foot within the confines of British civilisation."

"Well, Lalante, that is a startler," said Wyvern, when he had concluded.

"Why this is no other than that unmitigated ruffian who gave us such a lot of trouble up there. When we saw no more of him after finding the stuff, Joe and I of course took for granted the Usutus had managed to get hold of him again. Well I thoroughly agree with the Gydisdorp rag-- if ever a scoundrel richly deserved hanging it was our old acquaintance Bully Rawson."

"I should think so from what you've told me of him alone," a.s.sented Lalante. "But it is very sad about poor Mr Warren. Come dear, let's get through the letters and go out again. The evening is going to be perfectly divine."

There is an element of self about most phases of happiness, and notably about that called Love. They wandered forth, these two, and in the joys and glories of the radiant evening, outer misfortune soon became dimmed in the all absorbing happiness of being together again and together for all time. But they had gone through much.

The End.