“You will have some coffee?” Manfred had rung the bell.
“Sure I will: never have got used to this tea-drinking habit. I’m on the wagon too: got scared up there in the backlands of Angola——”
“What were you doing there?” asked Leon.
“Snakes,” said the other briefly. “I represent an organization that supplies specimens to zoos and museums. I was looking for a flying snake—there ain’t such a thing, though the natives say there is. I got a new kinder cobra—viperidæ crotalinæ—and yet not!”
He scratched his head, bringing his scientific perplexity into the room. Leon’s heart went out to him.
He had met Barberton by accident. Without shame he confessed that he had gone to a village in the interior for a real solitary jag, and returning to such degree of civilization as Mossamedes represented, he found a group of Portuguese breeds squatting about a fire at which the man’s feet were toasting.
“I don’t know what he was—a prospector, I guess. He was one of those what-is-its you meet along that coast. I’ve met his kind most everywhere—as far south as Port Nottosh. In Angola there are scores: they go native at the end.”
“You can tell us nothing about Barberton?”
Mr. Elijah Washington shook his head.
“No, sir: I know him same as I might know you. It got me curious when I found out the why of the torturing: he wouldn’t tell where it was.”