Roden Musgrave was seated in his quarters, alone.
It was a dark, rainy night, and rather a cold one. A snug wood fire burned in the grate, and this he was loath to leave, although it was midnight. Yet the one more pipe which he had humbugged conscience into allowing would prove the necessary sedative, was smoked out; nor was there any further excuse for delaying bed. But just as he had risen to carry out that intent, there came a knock at the back door.
The house, we have said, was a very small one—two rooms in front, which its occupant used as bedroom and sitting-room, and two at the back, a storeroom and kitchen, which latter he did not use, save for stowing away lumber. There was no hall, the front and back doors opening into the sitting-room and kitchen respectively. Towards the latter Roden now made his way, wondering the while; for the knock had been a stealthy one—unmistakably so—and of as faint a nature as was compatible with audibility at all. As he paused to listen, Roden laughed grimly to himself, deeming he could guess at its meaning, and was just turning away to leave it unanswered when it was renewed, and with it, his ear caught the bass whisper of a Kaffir voice. This put another light on the case. A matter of duty might be involved.
“What do you want?” he said, suddenly throwing open the door. The light he carried fell upon the form of a single Kaffir, who grinned.
“Why, it’s Tom,” went on Roden, holding the lantern to the man’s face, and recognising a particularly civil and good-humoured store-boy, in the employ of the abominable Sonnenberg. “Well, Tom, what the deuce do you want with me at this time of night? If it’s another complaint against your baas, you’ll have to wait till to-morrow, my boy.”
This, in allusion to a past case of disputed wages, wherein Tom had summoned his Hebraic employer before Mr Van Stolz, and had won. Yet Sonnenberg had still kept him in his service. Now the Kaffir grinned and shook his head. It was no case of the kind, he declared, and his manner was mysterious. Would the baas let him come in for a little while and talk, and above all things shut the door? He had something very important to discuss. Roden, impressed by the mysteriousness of his manner, complied without hesitation. Yet, in all probability, it was some commonplace trifle. Natives were prone to blow out a frog into an ox.
Seen in the light of the room, this mysterious midnight visitor was a sturdy, thick-set Kaffir, of medium height, with a peculiarly open and honest countenance. He was dressed in the ordinary slop clothes of a store or stable-boy, more or less tattered, and more or less ingeniously repaired with twine or bits of reimpje. He was a Tembu from Umfanta’s location, and knowing this, Roden was prepared for some revelation of a possibly startling character—if true, that is—for there were extensive Tembu locations in the district, which, though peaceful on the whole, were not impervious to the wave of restlessness contingent upon hostilities in the Transkei, and radiating among the tribes within the Colonial borders.
No revelation of a dark and bloody plot, however, no intelligence of a secret midnight rising, was destined to fall upon Roden’s official ears; for speaking in Boer Dutch with a little indifferent English, his knowledge of both tongues being too limited to admit of the vast amount of parable and circumlocution wherewith he would have approached the subject in the fluency of his native language, the Kaffir readily came to the point.
The Baas had a gun, not the beautiful new one which he took out to shoot bucks with, explained Tom, with avidity, but an old one which loaded in the old-fashioned way. The Baas wanted to sell that gun, yet no one would buy it. He, Tom, had seen it more than once on Baas Tasker’s auction sale, but nobody would bid so much as a pound for it.
Now, all this was perfectly true. Roden did own such a piece, a heavy, old-fashioned muzzle-loader, double-barrelled, an excellent gun of its day, and shooting true as true could be with rifled or shot-barrel. But its day had gone by. While there was a brisk demand in Doppersdorp at that time for firearms, such must be breech-loading weapons; at muzzle-loaders nobody would so much as look.