"No, a man of the Kabbabish tribe."
"Abou Fatma?" Willoughby repeated, as though for the first time he had heard the name. "No, I never came across him;" and then he stopped. It occurred to Durrance that it was not a natural place at which to stop; Willoughby might have been expected to add, "Why do you ask me?" or some question of the kind. But he kept silent. As a matter of fact, he was wondering how in the world Durrance had ever come to hear of Abou Fatma, whose name he himself had heard for the first and last time a year ago upon the verandah of the Palace at Suakin. For he had spoken the truth. He never had come across Abou Fatma, although Feversham had spoken of him.
"That makes me still more curious," Durrance continued. "Mather and I were together on the last reconnaissance in '84, and we found Abou Fatma hiding in the bushes by the Sinkat fort. He told us about the Gordon letters which he had hidden in Berber. Ah! you remember his name now."
"I was merely getting my pipe out of my pocket," said Willoughby. "But I do remember the name now that you mention the letters."
"They were brought to you in Suakin fifteen months or so back. Mather showed me the paragraph in the Evening Standard. And I am curious as to whether Abou Fatma returned to Berber and recovered them. But since you have never come across him, it follows that he was not the man."
Captain Willoughby began to feel sorry that he had been in such haste to deny all acquaintance with Abou Fatma of the Kabbabish tribe.
"No; it was not Abou Fatma," he said, with an awkward sort of hesitation. He dreaded the next question which Durrance would put to him. He filled his pipe, pondering what answer he should make to it. But Durrance put no question at all for the moment.
"I wondered," he said slowly. "I thought that Abou Fatma would hardly return to Berber. For, indeed, whoever undertook the job undertook it at the risk of his life, and, since Gordon was dead, for no very obvious reason."
"Quite so," said Willoughby, in a voice of relief. It seemed that Durrance's curiosity was satisfied with the knowledge that Abou Fatma had not recovered the letters. "Quite so. Since Gordon was dead, for no reason."
"For no obvious reason, I think I said," Durrance remarked imperturbably. Willoughby turned and glanced suspiciously at his companion, wondering whether, after all, Durrance knew of his visit to Kingsbridge and its motive. Durrance, however, smoked his cigar, leaning back in his chair with his face tilted up towards the ceiling. He seemed, now that his curiosity was satisfied, to have lost interest in the history of the Gordon letters. At all events, he put no more questions upon that subject to embarrass Captain Willoughby, and indeed there was no need that he should. Thinking over the possible way by which Harry Feversham might have redeemed himself in Willoughby's eyes from the charge of cowardice, Durrance could only hit upon this recovery of the letters from the ruined wall in Berber. There had been no personal danger to the inhabitants of Suakin since the days of that last reconnaissance. The great troop-ships had steamed between the coral reefs towards Suez, and no cry for help had ever summoned them back. Willoughby risked only his health in that white palace on the Red Sea. There could not have been a moment when Feversham was in a position to say, "Your life was forfeit but for me, whom you call coward." And Durrance, turning over in his mind all the news and gossip which had come to him at Wadi Halfa or during his furloughs, had been brought to conjecture whether that fugitive from Khartum, who had told him his story in the glacis of the silent ruined fort of Sinkat during one drowsy afternoon of May, had not told it again at Suakin within Feversham's hearing. He was convinced now that his conjecture was correct.