"Holy mother!" he spluttered apoplectically, "this is ruin!"
With trembling hands he wrote a telegram. Translated in its sense it was to this effect—
"Recall de Sagosta without fail or there will be nothing doing on pay day."
He saw this dispatched on its way, and returned to his bureau. He picked up the duc's letter and read it again: then he saw there was a postscript.
"P.S.—In regard to the strangers who visited the king, the man they carried away on a closed litter was very sick indeed, according to the accounts of woodmen who met the party. He was raving at the top of his voice, but the white man was singing very loudly.
"P.SS.—I have just heard, Illustrious and Excellent Senhor, that the Hooded King (as his people call him) has sent off all his richest treasures and many others which he has taken from the huts of his deported relatives to one Bosambo, who is a chief of the Ochori in British Territory, and is distantly related to Senhor Sanders, the Commissioner of that Territory."
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[1]This was evidently the Sanga River.