“What about the railway?” I asked with beating heart.
“Oh, no native dare put a load like that on the railway. It would be stopped and examined at once.”
I saw clearly for the first time how essential I had been for the working out of Captain Welfare’s plan, and I could not but admire the soundness of his dispositions. I thought they showed that combination of imaginative power and attention to detail which is said to distinguish great commanders. I remembered my first impressions of Welfare, and how I had instinctively thought of him as taking a lead in his line of life, whatever it might be. Yet he had come to seem small in his ways, and paltry in his aims. I wondered which was the real man, how much the Welfare I knew was but the product of untoward circumstance.
“What will you do about the Ast—the ship?”
I had almost called her the Astarte, and shuddered at the thought of the consequences of such a slip. To be found out now! unmasked as another “renegade Englishman,” a member of the gang!
“I can’t touch her at present. I’ve no evidence yet. I must wait till I get this damned Arab.”
“Supposing she sails?”
“She won’t sail at present. They’re waiting till they get their stuff safely here. If they went it would only be to pick up another load at some place on the Greek coast, and I should take jolly good care to get them on the way back. Nothing would suit me better.”
We were back in the city now, and presently we pulled up at Brogden’s club.
Here we lunched very comfortably, and I met many of his friends and brother officials.