"Well, there are possibly some shillings to be had if the service is good enough. I do not know. But I cannot deal in the dark. What sort of a service is it?"
"Ah!"
Peiffer hitched his chair nearer.
"It is a question of rifles--rifles for over there," and, looking out through the window, he nodded towards Gibel Musa and the coast of Morocco.
Slingsby did not so much as flinch. I almost groaned aloud. We were to be treated to the stock legend of the ports, the new edition of the Spanish prisoner story. I, the mere tourist in search of health, could have gone on with Peiffer's story myself, even to the exact number of the rifles.
"It was a great plan," Peiffer continued. "Fifty thousand rifles, no less." There always were fifty-thousand rifles. "They are buried--near the sea." They always were buried either near the sea or on the frontier of Portugal. "With ammunition. They are to be landed outside Melilla, where I have been about this very affair, and distributed amongst the Moors in the unsubdued country on the edge of the French zone."
"So?" exclaimed Slingsby with the most admirable imitation of consternation.
"Yes, but you need not fear. You shall have the rifles--when I know exactly where they are buried."
"Ah!" said Slingsby.
He had listened to the familiar rigmarole, certain that behind it there was something real and sinister which he did not know--something which he was desperately anxious to find out.