“He died,” Trent answered shortly. “I took over the lot by arrangement.”
“A very nice arrangement,” Da Souza drawled with a devilish smile. “He is old and weak. You were with him up at Bekwando where there are no white men—no one to watch you. You gave him brandy to drink—you watch the fever come, and you write on the concession if one should die all goes to the survivor. And you gave him brandy in the bush where the fever is, and—behold you return alone! When people know this they will say, 'Oh yes, it is the way millionaires are made.'”
He stopped, out of breath, for the veins were standing out upon his forehead, and he remembered what the English doctor at Cape Coast Castle had told him. So he was silent for a moment, wiping the perspiration away and struggling against the fear which was turning the blood to ice in his veins. For Trent's face was not pleasant to look upon.
“Anything else?”
Da Souza pulled himself together. “Yes,” he said; “what I have said is as nothing. It is scandalous, and it would make talk, but it is nothing. There is something else.”
“Well?”
“You had a partner whom you deserted.”
“It is a lie! I carried him on my back for twenty hours with a pack of yelling niggers behind. We were lost, and I myself was nigh upon a dead man. Who would have cumbered himself with a corpse? Curse you and your vile hints, you mongrel, you hanger-on, you scurrilous beast! Out, and spread your stories, before my fingers get on your throat! Out!”
Da Souza slunk away before the fire in Trent's eyes, but he had no idea of going. He stood in safety near the door, and as he leaned forward, speaking now in a hoarse whisper, he reminded Trent momentarily of one of those hideous fetish gods in the sacred grove at Bekwando.
“Your partner was no corpse when you left him,” he hissed out. “You were a fool and a bungler not to make sure of it. The natives from Bekwando found him and carried him bound to the King, and your English explorer, Captain Francis, rescued him. He's alive now!”