“It is a little unfortunate all round,” said the Commissioner. “Or perhaps inconvenient is the better word.”
“As far as it affects you, you are better off than if you were going to Port Cecil. This may not be anything—we may cool down and tide over, and you will catch this mail. She does not leave until Thursday.”
The Administrator was sitting at his own writing-table, with his back to Halton, who had also been at work, as the scattered papers testified. The room was one of many in Government House that had no especial use, and had been given up to the work of the enquiry. The third chair and littered writing-table was at the moment unoccupied, and belonged to Captain Lewin. Over Halton’s head ranged a portly array of shelves on which the old papers and accounts of the British African Island Co., Ltd., were dustily stored, and attracted the mosquitoes, as well as a water-tank, for though he cannot breed in them the mosquito loves a book-shelf that is not often disturbed, and creeps along the volumes’ edges and hides behind their bulk.
“Hardly!” said the Commissioner, with a slight shrug. “She has nearly finished discharging her cargo already, and will not take two days to coal.” He reached up over his head, and took down one of the dusty volumes a little curiously, as if he had not observed it before. There were some books of reference among the old ledgers, and this, to judge from its appearance, was one, rather than an account book.
“You will get the next boat, then,” said Gregory, off-handedly. His back being towards his coadjutator as he thus dismissed the subject of his convenience, he did not see Halton’s eyes as he slowly raised them from the old book and looked at him. It seemed he had found the passage he wanted, for he kept his finger on a yellowed leaf while he spoke.
“I see of course the expediency of remaining here at the moment, as you have decided on the necessity of such a stringent measure as burning the hemp-crop.” His voice was formal, and so perfectly controlled that it contained neither anger nor disapprobation nor argument. The Administrator’s busy pen stopped. He lifted his head slightly as though listening, and came within the radius of the shaded electric light. But the shorn reddish hair betrayed nothing unless it were the fact that he was growing very grey towards the temples. His overhanging brow and secretive mouth were not visible to the Commissioner, whose level voice ran on quietly.
“Before closing this matter, however, I should like for principle’s sake to enter a protest, though it is merely a matter of form. I do not consider Captain Lewin a fit man to send to East Africa on this business. I believe him to be absolutely incapable of the anxious work before him, and if he does not make a hash of the whole business it will be a miracle. The power of course lies in your hands; the decision is with you. I am not here to advise you in this, but, unofficially, I should be doing an unfriendly thing if I did not warn you of my opinion as to his incompetence.”
For a minute there was silence, while the last words hung in the air like a menace. They meant more than the private counsel of one man to another—they might also be translated as warning Gregory that his ally’s opinion of Lewin’s incapacity would find voice in high places. It was perhaps a gauge thrown down, and if so it was taken up very quietly in the next few words, that the Administrator uttered as naturally as if it were the inevitable reply to Halton’s argument.
“I am writing to Melton Hanney to do his best to give Captain Lewin every assistance in his power. He knows Port Cecil well. Had the Government been advised by me they would have put the matter in his hands, instead of which they have insisted on my sending some one from here. There is only my A.D.C. to send.”
“I see.” Halton’s hand was still on the noted passage. His eyes followed the slight shrug of Gregory’s mighty shoulders, while he felt with savage impotence that one might turn a tiger from its prey, sooner than this man from his purpose. Halton would not have dared to do the thing that he saw as plainly as its perpetrator; and because he knew he dared not, he hated the man who could and would with a hate born of self-knowledge.