“You may find a difficulty in getting away. In any case, you’ll be shadowed at every step.”
Greenoak laughed drily as he toyed with the spaniels’ ears.
“I don’t want to brag,” he said, “but we’ve known each other a long time. Did you ever know me ‘shadowed’ to any purpose by any one I didn’t intend should shadow me?”
“No, I can’t say I did. I don’t believe any one ever did.”
“Well, it happened once—not long ago either. And who the dickens do you think succeeded in doing it?”
“Who?”
“Our young friend, Dick Selmes. No more, no less.” And he told the other, briefly, of his enterprise in Slaang Kloof.
“Well, that doesn’t count, for of course he guessed where you were bound for, and the distance and surroundings were so trifling that there was no opportunity of throwing him off the scent. Here, of course, it’s different. You’re a wonderful fellow, Greenoak, but I don’t know why your glass has been standing empty so long. Here. Fill up.”
Several glasses already used, and a large but more than half-emptied decanter on the table—item a good deal of tobacco ash, pointed to the fact that some of the Police officers and an outside friend or two had been spending the evening with the Commandant. The latter now charged his glass, and pushed the excellent Boer brandy—whisky was hardly known on the frontier in those days—over to Greenoak.
“We’ll drink success, at any rate,” he said, “to the ‘secret service’ department.” Then, after a pause, “Upon my word, Greenoak, I wish you’d throw up this undertaking.”