Chapter Twenty Two.
Bluff—And Counterbluff.
When they reached home they found a visitor awaiting them, in the shape of Harry Stride. Ben Halse, for all his hospitable instincts, secretly and within himself wished him at the devil. Verna would rather he had not come—just then; but Denham, of the trio, was the least concerned. So secure was he in his own happiness that he could not but be sorry for the man who had failed to draw his at the same source. But as far as any outward manifestation of lack of welcome was concerned the new arrival had no cause of complaint.
During the evening they talked generalities, the state of the country, the day’s visit to Sapazani, and so forth. But Stride, while not manifesting the former instinctive hostility towards Denham, did not fail to notice, with jealous eyes, the perfect understanding which seemed to prevail between him and Verna. Were they engaged? he wondered. They must be, judging from a look which, more than once, he saw pass between them. Well, he had a card up his sleeve, but he would not throw it until the morning. So he went on chatting about things in general, and Verna was especially kind to him. Denham too, with ready tact, refrained from anything that might be construed into bordering on an air of proprietorship! out of consideration for the poor fellow’s feelings; and when Verna went out with Stride for a quarter of an hour or so to look at the night, he remained chatting with Ben Halse.
“You won’t be shooting each other in the night, will you, Denham?” said the latter drily. The point of the joke was that, accommodation being somewhat limited, the two men would have to share the same room.
“I’ll try not to return the fire; but, on the whole, perhaps I’d better stick a dummy in the bed, and slip outside. Poor chap! Nobody could be more sorry for him than myself.”
“I’m sure of that. Well, every man must take his chance, and Harry’s young yet. He’s a good sort of boy, but I don’t believe he’ll ever do much for himself.”
“Perhaps he’s never had a show.”
“That’s the worst of it. A lot of these young fellows come drifting up to this country knowing nothing about it, and think they’re going to pick up gold under every stone. That prospecting business is just foolery. They’d much better settle down to some steady job. And yet, and yet—where’d I have been myself if I hadn’t let out and chanced it? Well, it’s a world of pitch and toss, after all.”
Stride was the first to turn in, and when his companion followed he had rolled himself in his blanket as though asleep. But he was wide awake enough in reality. He hated that other so intensely that he could not trust himself to speak now that they were alone together. Some people had all the advantages of life and others none; and here this stranger, solely because he was a rich man, or was reputed to be, must have a free walk over; must come here and rob him of all that made life worth living—hope, to wit. Well, to-morrow he would fire the first shell. And he did.
Just after breakfast, but before they got up from table, Stride produced a square envelope.
“I took a few snapshots down in the Makanya the other day,” he said, drawing out some prints. “What d’you think of that, Mr Denham?” handing one across the table to him.
Denham took it, and it was all he could do not to let it drop. The ghastly face staring at him from the glazed paper, hideous and bloated through immersion and decomposition, was that of the head which Sergeant Dickinson had been at such pains, and trouble, and risk to photograph. There was a frightful fascination about it, and he continued to gaze, aware the while that Stride was fixing his face with a pitiless glance.
“Well, what d’you think of it?” said the latter, growing impatient.
“Think? Why, that it’s a good study of a dissecting-room subject, but a beastly thing to spring upon any one just after breakfast. Where did you get it?” handing it back.
“It was taken below the Bobi drift. A head was found sticking in the bushes, also some clothes, with things in the pockets. I, before that, found a saddle with a bullet hole through the flap.”
“Yes; you told us that at the club the other night, I remember. So they’ve found more?”
Stride was puzzled. He thought to have knocked the enemy all of a heap, but the said enemy had never wilted, beyond what a man might naturally do who had an unusually ghastly and repulsive picture suddenly sprung upon him, as Denham had said, just after breakfast.
“But isn’t it our turn to be let into the mystery?” suggested Verna sweetly.
“Oh, I don’t know. No; I won’t show it to you,” answered Stride. “It is rather nasty, isn’t it, Mr Halse?” handing it on to him.
“Looks so. Ugly-looking Jew, I should say. Wonder what the devil he was doing down there. I suppose they shot him for plunder. Zulus are not what they were. Time was when a white man was perfectly safe in any part of this country. Who took the photo, by the way?”
“Dickinson, at Makanya.”
“Oh yes, the police sergeant. Well, have they investigated?”
“Rather. They’ve got at his identity, too. He was a Jo’burg Jew named Hyam Golding. The next thing is to find out what induced him to travel that way at all. It doesn’t lead anywhere in particular.”
“Let me see it,” said Verna. “I’m not of the hysterical, ‘fainting-female’ order, am I? Thanks,” as it was handed to her. “What a horrid-looking man he must have been. I mean apart from the conditions under which this was taken. Let’s see some of the others.”
He complied. One he kept out, and handed it to Denham.
“Do you recognise it?” he asked. “You came through it, I think you said.”
“Did I? I think not, considering I didn’t know one drift from the other. However, it’s just possible I may have; but one drift is very like another, especially in photography.”
“It’s the Bobi.”
Somehow Verna’s instincts were instantly on the alert. There was more than a subtle something in Stride’s manner and remarks, a sort of “making a dead set” smack about them. She became cold and hostile towards him at once. He saw this, and realised he had make a mistake. So he left the subject of the head, and drew attention to the other prints.
His plan had failed. He had thought to induce Denham to give himself away before the others, and that completely. But he had reckoned without the cool nerves of Denham. Well, the next card to play was bluff.
An opportunity was not easy to find. Most of the morning they sat in the shade, and smoked and chatted. But later, when Verna was busy indoors, and something had taken Ben Halse away, Stride said—
“I’ve got something to tell you. How about taking a bit of a stroll, where no one’ll hear us?”
“All right. Let’s.”
They strolled off together a little way. Suddenly Stride said—
“Rum thing this murder down in the Makanya, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know enough about it to say. But I suppose there’s no doubt about it being a murder?”
“Not a particle. Dickinson has worked the thing up in first-rate style. There’s hardly a link missing from the chain.”
“Not, eh? There’s a saying, though, that a chain is no stronger than its weakest link; but if the link is not merely weak but missing altogether, what’s the use of that chain?”
“The link can be supplied,” said Stride meaningly. “Dickinson could put his hand on the right man at any minute.”
“Then why the devil doesn’t he?”
The straightness of this query rather nonplussed Stride. But he remembered that men in desperate straits had many a time been known to save the situation by consummate bluff.
“Perhaps he isn’t quite sure where he is at this moment,” he answered. “I could help him.”
“Then why the devil don’t you?”
“Look here. Let’s quit beating around the bush,” said the other, speaking quickly. “Will you take a piece of advice?”
“Can’t say until I hear it. But I’ll promise to consider its burden when I do.”
Denham was getting rather sick of all this mysterious hinting. He was also getting a bit “short.”
“I’ll give it you in one word, then,” was the answer. “Skip.”
“Don’t see the joke. Explain.”
“Don’t see it, eh?”
“Not even a little bit.”
“Well, bluff’s a good dog sometimes,” sneered the other, who thought he would enjoy a different situation directly. “Still, you take my tip and skip, with the smallest loss of time you can manage. I don’t suppose they’ll bother to follow up the thing very keenly once you’re clean out of the country. And if you’re wise you mighty soon will be. Get out through Swaziland and into German territory if you can, or at any rate keep dark. Halse will be able to help you.”
All this while Denham had been looking at the speaker with a kind of amused curiosity. At the close of the above remark he said—
“What’s the matter with you?”
“What d’you mean?” snarled Stride, who was fast losing his temper.
“Mean? Why, that I’m wondering why you asked me to come out with you to listen to all the nonsense you have just been talking. You’re not drunk, any fool can see that, and yet you fire off some yarn about some Jew found drowned, or murdered, or something, down in the Makanya; and talk about chains and missing links and all sorts of foolishness, and on the strength of it all invite me to ‘skip.’ Really the joke strikes me as an uncommonly thin one.”
“It’ll take the form of an uncommonly thick one,” snarled the other, “and that a rope, dangling over a certain trap-door in Ezulwini gaol. Well, I thought to do you a good turn, came up here mostly to do it, and that’s how you take it. Well, you may swing, and be damned to you.”
Denham lit a fresh cigar. He offered his case to his companion, but it was promptly refused.
“Now let’s prick this bubble,” he said, looking the other fair and straight in the eyes. “From a remark you made in the club the other evening I gathered you wanted to insinuate that I had murdered some one. That, of course, I didn’t take seriously.”
“There may have been others who did, though,” interrupted Stride.
“No matter. Then you roll up here, and suggest that I am wanted as the murderer of some unknown Jew, whose top end appears to have been found in the Makanya bush. You know, if I were less good-natured, you might get into serious trouble over such a thing as that. You insinuated it in the presence of the Halses, too.”
“Meaning an action for slander, I suppose. Go ahead. I defy you to bring it. Do you hear? I defy you to bring it.”
“It isn’t worth while. Still, if you go on spreading these stories all over the country I may be compelled to. It’s one thing to make accusations, but quite another to prove them. To prove them,” he repeated emphatically, with his eyes full upon the other’s, and a sudden hard ring coming into his tone with the last words.
Inwardly Stride was conscious of his first misgiving in the matter. He was as certain in his own mind that the man before him had, for some reason or other, killed the one, part of whose remains had been found, as that the sun shone. But between certainty and proof was a far cry. He was not lawyer enough to know that in such a case as this any evidence that could be got together would be of the circumstantial kind, and not necessarily conclusive, and he had come here with the express object of frightening Denham out of the country altogether. Instead he had found that Denham was not the sort of man to be frightened at all.
“Oh, the proof’ll come right enough,” he answered, with an easiness that was more than half affected. Then seriously, “Look here, you know I’ve no reason exactly to belove you?”
Instantly Denham’s tone softened.
“I think I can guess,” he said, “and cannot but be sorry. But that is all in the fair chances of life. How can I help it?”
“Help it? Damn ‘helping it,’” was the furious reply. “But now, look here. I—with others—am going to make it the business of life to bring this thing home to you. We shall hunt up every scrap and particle of evidence of your movements since you first landed, your every movement. There’s one chance for you and it the last. Clear out—now, at once.”
“Now, really, you make me laugh. Is it in the least likely?”
“What is in the least likely?”
Both started. Verna had come up behind them, but though she had coughed more than once, in the tension of their discussion they had failed to hear her. She had foreseen a quarrel when she saw them go off alone together, and had made up her mind as to the best means of preventing it. And it was perhaps just as well that she had.