“Certainly. But it’s only fair to warn you that I doubt if it’s particularly sound from a legal point of view. It isn’t witnessed, for one thing.”
“Legal point of view be damned. Didn’t I tell you you don’t look like a liar—and I know men? It’ll be good enough if you sign it.”
“Thanks,” said Wagram pleasantly. “You won’t find yourself far out in that deduction.”
“Got a wife perhaps, who’s anxious about you, eh?”
“No; I haven’t got a wife—not now.”
“Ah! had, then. Family you want to get back to?”
“Only one son—a boy at school. But he won’t have heard of the wreck, and if he did wouldn’t connect it with me fortunately. I took passage in the Baleka at the last moment, and didn’t even cable it home. By the way, some of these amiable people have relieved me of my pocket-book, and there were some notes in it. I don’t know whether they can be persuaded to disgorge.”
“Perhaps. But if we start from here to-morrow there’ll hardly be time.”
“No; I suppose not. Never mind, then,” was the easy answer, for the starting to-morrow had a soothing ring, beside which the loss was a mere trifle. But the speaker little thought how his listener had already made up his mind to have those notes in his own possession before the dawning of another day—incidentally, it might be, at the cost of a life or two.
The smoky rays of the sinking tropical sun shot in through the open doorway, illumining the gloomy interior. The stranger had brought a pen and ink with him—strange accessories of civilisation in that remote haunt of barbarous man-eaters. A wooden native stool did duty as a desk, and Wagram, squatted on the floor, proceeded to affix his signature: “Wagram Gerard Wagram.”