“Are you coming my way?” he asked, turning to the Englishman. But Carew shook his head.
“I’ve an appointment in the Casbar this evening,” he said, shuffling some papers together and slipping them into his breast pocket.
Sanois laughed grimly and looked up from the sword-belt he was buckling with a suspicion of eagerness in his keen eyes. “It would be indiscreet to ask with whom, I presume? You know more about the Casbar than I do,” he said, almost grudgingly. “You’ve friends everywhere, Carew. Some of them I’d like to lay my hands on,” he added meaningly.
Carew smiled faintly. “Possibly,” he said coolly, “but my ‘friends’ are useful. And until they let me down I can’t very well help you to any information you may want concerning them. That was agreed,” he added, his voice hardening slightly.
“Word of an Englishman, eh?” said the General with another grim laugh, and stalked off.
The Governor looked at the closing door with his smiling features puckered up disapprovingly. “An excellent fellow, but blood thirsty—very blood thirsty,” he murmured, with the least little touch of regret in his voice as if he deprecated an attitude with which in reality he thoroughly concurred.
But Carew’s thoughts were not concerned with the man who had just left the room.
Crossing to the open window he stood for some time without speaking, his hands plunged deep in his jacket pockets, scowling at the palms in the garden beneath. And accustomed to his frequent and protracted silences his host, pleasantly somnolent with the beat and tired with the excitement of the day, made no attempt to force conversation. Stretched comfortably in a capacious armchair he toyed idly with a cigarette and sipped the vermouth his guest had declined, thoroughly content with himself and the world at large, until Carew’s voice broke in suddenly on thoughts that were lightly alternating between the happy results of the afternoon’s interview and the gastronomic delights of the coming dinner.
“There is a compatriot of mine, a certain Viscount Geradine, who has de Granier’s villa this winter—can you tell me anything about him?”
The cherubic little Governor looked vaguely embarrassed. “Nothing of very much good, I am afraid,” he said slowly, “he is not, unfortunately, an ornament to your usually so distinguished aristocracy. I personally know very little of him. But one hears things—one hears things,” he repeated uncomfortably.