“Yes. I was going to yesterday but left it till now. Business matters are best talked about in the morning.”
Thus Le Sage, as the two met over their early coffee. Lalanté had not yet appeared.
“All right,” assented Wyvern, who had a pretty straight inkling of what was coming. “Where shall we hold our council of war?”
“Out in the open. Nothing like the open veldt if you want to talk over anything important. If you do it in a room ten to one a word or two gets overheard, and a word or two is often quite enough to give away the whole show.”
“There I entirely agree. Well—lead on.”
Le Sage did so. Hardly a word was exchanged between the two as they walked for about half a mile, first along a bush path, then over the veldt. One was turning over in his mind how he should put the case to the other. The other, anticipating their bearing, had already made up his as to how he should meet the arguments advanced.
Le Sage came to a halt. They had reached the brink of a krantz, of no great height and railing away now in slabs, now in aloe-grown boulders, to the Kunaga River, the swirl and babble of whose turgid waters they could hear, as it coursed between its willow grown banks—could hear but not see, for a morning mist hung over the land, shutting out everything beyond a radius of twenty yards.
“We shall be all right here,” said Le Sage, seating himself upon a stone. Then he relapsed into silence, and proceeded to fill his pipe. Wyvern did the same. Decidedly the situation was awkward. When two men who have been friends are about to embark on a discussion which the chances are fifty to one will leave them enemies—in short, is bound to culminate in a quarrel, and that a bitter one—why the preliminaries are sure to be awkward. Wyvern was the one to force the situation.
“Look here, Le Sage. We didn’t come here to smoke the pipe of silent meditation, did we? You said something about business matters you wanted to talk over with me. Now—drive ahead.”
“Yes. How are you getting on?”