"How?" said Edward. "What do you mean?"
"As yet," said Crouch, "I know nothing. I merely suspect. Mark my words, it'll not be safe to go to sleep. One of us must keep watch."
"What makes you suspicious?" asked Max. Throughout this conversation they talked in whispers. Crouch had intimated that they must not be overheard.
"A thousand things," said Crouch. "In the first place, I don't like the look of Arabs. There's an old saying on the Niger, 'Where there's an Arab, there's mischief.' Also, he's got something he doesn't wish us to see. That's why he won't let us outside the stockade. Besides, remember what the natives told us. The tribes the whole country round stand in mortal fear of this fellow, and they don't do that for nothing. The Fans are a brave race, and so are the Pambala. And do you remember, they told us that every evening there's thunder in the valley which shakes the earth? No, he's up to no good, and I shall make it my business to find out what his game is."
"Then you don't believe that he's an ivory trader?" asked Max.
"Not a word of it!" said Crouch. "Where's the ivory? He talks of this store of tusks, but where does he keep it? He says he's been here for two years. In two years, by the wholesale manner in which he has been killing elephants, according to his own account, he should have a pile of ivory ten feet high at least. And where is it? Not in a hut; not one of them is big enough. I suppose he'll ask us to believe that he keeps it somewhere outside the stockade."
"I never thought of that," said Harden, tugging the ends of his moustache. "I wonder what he's here for."
"So do I," said Crouch.
Soon after that, at Crouch's request, Harden and Max lay down upon their blankets, and were soon fast asleep. As for the captain, he also lay down, and for more than an hour breathed heavily, as if in sleep. Then, without a sound, he began to move forward on hands and knees across the floor of the hut.
When he reached the door he came into the moonlight, and had there been any one there to see, they would have noticed that he carried a revolver, and there was a knife between his teeth.