"I did not; I've had enough," said Kit and added anxiously: "D'you think he'll get the African boat?"
The other looked at his watch. "If he runs over nothing before he makes the port, it's possible. A West-coast trader, I expect?"
"No," said Kit. "He's the governor of a jail. An old soldier, I understand."
His companion smiled. "The British Colonial office uses some curious tools, but if he sweated for you in India, their plan's perhaps as good as handing out a job to a political boss."
"Then, you're not English?"
"I'm an American. I don't know if it's important, but since you'd had enough of the fellow, why did you bother?"
"For one thing, I wanted to get rid of him," Kit said naïvely. "Then, of course, since he is English, I felt I had to see him out."
The other nodded. "A pretty good rule, but if you stick to it at Las Palmas, I reckon you'll be occupied! Which way do you go?"
"To the Fonda Malagueña," said Kit.
His companion indicated a shady street and left him at the top, and when Kit loafed in the patio after his six o'clock dinner, he pondered. Las Palmas was not at all the romantic city he had thought, and the men he had met going south on board the steamer were a new type. They were business men, holding posts at African factories, but they were not the business men he knew at Liverpool. He could not picture them punctual, careful about small things, or remarkably sober. They had a touch of rashness he distrusted but rather liked. Yet he understood some occupied important posts. In fact, it looked as if the Liverpool small clerk's rules did not apply everywhere; in the south men used others. Although Kit was puzzled his horizon was widening.