“All right.” Honor preceded him down the steps. “I am going in search of my lost temper,” she announced over her shoulder.
Freidja looked after the two figures disappearing in the obscurity of the shadowy garden, and her face hardened as the sound of a laugh was borne bade to their ears on the motionless air.
“I think it is well that Mr Matheson leaves to-morrow,” she said, and turned in sullen protest towards her mother.
Mrs Krige, looking deep into the shadows, answered nothing.
Chapter Eighteen.
No opportunity for talking with Krige offered itself to Matheson that night; he left him still earnestly conferring with Oom Koos when he went to bed. Honor assured him that they would probably remain so until the day broke. They did. He heard Mynheer Marais going heavily to bed in the dawn; heard later Mynheer Marais’ loud snoring which sounded so plainly through the thin wall that he was prevented from getting further sleep.
He rose early, and dressed to the accompaniment of Oom Koos’ trumpeting, and went quietly out by the window and along the stoep. The window of the living-room remained open, as it had been left overnight, in despite of which the fumes of Mynheer Marais’ pipe hung about the room even as Mrs Krige had described, a coarse heavy smell of stale tobacco.
Matheson halted at the window and thrust his head inside and sensed the atmosphere. Then he stepped within. On the floor beneath the table, where presumably it had fallen and been overlooked, lay the letter Holman had written to Andreas Krige. He recognised the neat legible handwriting without difficulty; he had studied it to some purpose coming along in the train, and he knew the greyish-blue tint of the paper. The letter was not in its envelope, nor could he see the envelope anywhere in the room.