“Where ought we to search, Ivondwe?” I said in the vernacular, “for so far there is no more trace than that left by a bird in the air? It will mean large reward to any who should help to find her—yes, many cattle.”
“Would that I might win such,” he answered. Then pointing with his stick, “Lo, the Amapolise.”
Our horses began to snort and neigh, as the police patrol rode up. I recognised my former acquaintance, Sergeant Simcox, but the inspector in command of the troop was along.
“I’ve just come from your house, Major Sewin,” he said after a few words of sympathy, “and I left a couple of men there, so you need be under no apprehension by reason of your ladies being alone. Now have you lighted upon any fresh clue?”
“Eh? What? Clue?” echoed the old man dazedly. “No.”
So I took up the parable, telling how I had found spoor leading to the waterhole and that here it had stopped. I pointed out where the ground had been smoothed over as though to erase the traces of a struggle.
“Now,” I concluded, “if you will come a little apart with me, I’ll tell you something that seems to bolster up my theory with a vengeance.”
He looked at me somewhat strangely, I thought. But he agreed, and I put him in possession of the facts about Ukozi in his relations with Major Sewin, and how Aïda had consulted me about them during my absence in Zululand, bringing the story down to that last startling scene here on this very spot three nights ago.
“Well you ought to know something about native superstitions, Mr Glanton,” he said. “Yet this seems a strange one, and utterly without motive to boot.”
“I know enough about native superstitions to know that I know nothing,” I answered. “I know this, that those exist which are not so much as suspected by white men, and produce actions which, as you say, seem utterly without motive.”