“Well, you see, Halton’s the drag on the wheel, and Gregory’s the wheel itself. Gregory’s a man who is always sent into a tight place, but unless they brigade him with a drag, he’d make it an absolute monarchy—he’s a born slave ruler. So they put Halton in to enquire, and Gregory to act on the enquiry. See?”
“Oh!” Chum’s whole thought was concentrated into the word. “And does that succeed?”
“Don’t much know—and it don’t matter either in such a beastly little corner as this. Can’t think why we bother about the place at all. Let France have it.”
“But we want it for a coaling-station, don’t we; and it’s the key of the Mozambique Channel!”
“You’re thinking of the name—but Key’land takes its name as much from its shape as anything, or so they say. Besides, who cares about the Mozambique Channel? I don’t know what Government is up to, of course—don’t mind either, so long as I get out of this pretty quick. We’ve been here six months, and we’re all dead nuts on getting away. May I have some dances, Mrs. Lewin?” His tone had brightened.
Chum looked at him curiously as he wrote his name on her programme, and in her own mind contrasted him with Ally, and found him vastly inferior. He could not even take an intelligent interest in his surroundings, and she attributed it to a certain curious formation in the back of his head. It was flattened on the top, but curved out from the neck too much to Mrs. Lewin’s critical inspection. Ally, with a superior skull, would of course be more intelligent; but she did not realise that she intended him to be so by her own motive power.
“Would you like to know Halton? He’s a very decent chap,” Bristow Nugent said simply. “This is quite an unofficial affair, y’know. No need for ceremony. I’ll bring him over.”
He swung in and out of the thickening crowd towards the band, but the dancing had begun, and Mrs. Lewin’s programme had filled with the men she had known on the troop-ship, and others who followed in their wake. The evening was half over before Captain Nugent fulfilled his promise and brought the Commissioner up to her.
He was a very quiet man in appearance, with that instinctive colouring which in an Englishman is always called fair, but his eyes were a dark-brown, rather opaque, and had a trick of half closing while he talked. He looked about forty, and the lines of his clean-shaven face appealed to Chum as suggesting humour.
“I suppose you have not had time to report yourselves yet,” he said quizzically; “and as a fact you are not due until to-morrow, so to-night’s appearance must be regarded as a kind of provision of good things.”