“Oh yes, quantities.”
“Please to try some of this curried egg, Herr Professor. It is excellent, I assure you. I thank you.… And rubber, is there much rubber there?”
“Yes, I believe so.”
“Now I wonder if you noticed whether it was tree or vine?”
“I really couldn’t say.” Birnier smiled thinly. “I am not interested in such things.”
Zu Pfeiffer glanced at him keenly and changed the subject. When they had finished the best boned chicken that Birnier had ever tasted in Africa, zu Pfeiffer rose.
“Let us go to my study, Herr Professor, if you so permit, for some coffee and a little good port—and I will have the pleasure to show you my little library.”
“I should be delighted,” assented Birnier willingly.
Around the white walls of the cool room which was zu Pfeiffer’s study, ran low bookshelves made of native wood, containing some hundreds of volumes which had been carried five hundred miles on the heads of porters. Grass mats and leopard skins were upon the floor. In the centre, upon a heavy table, was a green shaded lamp set in a silver-mounted elephant’s foot. Upon the bookcases were various odd curios, and a coffee service in copper; and from opposite sides, marbles of Bismarck and Voltaire stared into each other’s eyes. On the south wall was a large oil of Kaiser Wilhelm II; and in the centre of the other wall a photograph of a woman set in an ivory frame made from a section of a tusk.
Zu Pfeiffer strove to be more agreeable than ever. They talked mythology and folklore. With the port, zu Pfeiffer rose, an erect martial figure above the glow of the lamp.