“Now that you’ve done you may go—and be hanged,” he said at last, when the other had stopped exhausted.
“Yes, but I’ll be hanged for something, hell take me if I don’t,” he roared. “I’ll send you there first, you blasted, snivelling, white-livered liar.”
Warren found himself gazing at the muzzle of a wicked-looking six-shooter, and that in the hand of a desperate and exasperated ruffian. But he did not move, nor did his face change colour in the slightest degree.
“Put up that thing,” he said, coolly. “And stop kicking up that infernal row, unless you want everyone else to know what no one knows at present but me.”
The hard, cold eyes of the lawyer held the savage, bloodshot ones of the border desperado, and triumphed.
“I’m sorry, Mr Warren,” said the latter, shamefacedly, replacing the weapon in his pocket. “My temper’s a bit short these days. I sort of forgot myself.”
“I should rather think you did. Well, as you have the decency to own it here’s something to go on with. Only because you’re hard up, mind, not on account of anything you may or may not have done for me,” and he opened a drawer, and taking out some notes chucked them across to the other. “Well Jim Bexley, you can go now. Keep me up to where you’re to be found in case I want you, and, above all, keep sober. So long.”
He banged the handbell and the same clerk came up; and Bully Rawson found himself shown out, while wondering if he had done the right thing, and whether there was anything more to be got out of Warren, also whether the latter had been really as cool as he seemed or whether his coolness was forced “side.” As to this Warren was thinking the same thing himself; and came to the conclusion that he had been for one moment in desperate peril. Then he ceased to give the matter another thought.
For some time after his visitor’s departure he sat thinking. How would Lalanté take the news? This was the worst side of it. Who was to break it to her? Not he himself—with all his nerve and self-possession this was a task from which Warren shrank. Who better qualified for it than her own father. Le Sage must be the man. He would write to Le Sage, giving the facts.
The facts? A sudden and unaccountable misgiving leaped into his mind, striking him as it were, between the eyes. What if Rawson had invented the story, or had simply escaped and left the other two in the lurch? In that case the chances were ten to one that they turned up again, since the Zulus were only fighting among themselves and not against the whites. How could he have pinned his faith to the word of an utterly irredeemable scoundrel such as Bully Rawson? Thinking now of his former jubilation Warren felt perfectly sick at the thought that it might have been wholly premature. However he would put the matter beyond all doubt. He would wire his agents in Natal to leave no stone unturned; to spare no trouble or expense; to hire a whole army of native spies, if necessary, to collect every scrap of information throughout the whole of the disturbed country. This need arouse no curiosity; his friendship with Wyvern would account for it.