Jack Meredith nodded. He looked rather pale beneath the light of the gas.
“Joseph is all right,” he said. “Go on.”
“It was Joseph who found it out,” continued Oscard, “up at the Plateau. I paraded the whole crowd, told them what I had found out, and chucked up the whole concern in your name and mine. Next morning I abandoned the Plateau with such men as cared to come. Nearly half of them stayed with Durnovo. I thought it was in order that they might share in the Simiacine—I told them they could have the whole confounded lot of the stuff. But it was not that; they tricked Durnovo there. They wanted to get him to themselves. In going down the river we had an accident with two of the boats, which necessitated staying at Msala. While we were waiting there, one night after ten o'clock the poor devil came, alone, in a canoe. They had simply cut him in slices—a most beastly sight. I wake up sometimes even now dreaming of it, and I am not a fanciful sort of fellow. Joseph went into his room and was simply sick; I didn't know that you could be made sick by anything you saw. The sleeping sickness was on Durnovo then; he had brought it with him from the Plateau. He died before morning.”
Oscard ceased speaking and returned to his pipe. Jack Meredith, looking haggard and worn, was leaning back in his chair.
“Poor devil!” he exclaimed. “There was always something tragic about Durnovo. I did hate that man, Oscard. I hated him and all his works.”
“Well, he's gone to his account now.”
“Yes, but that does not make him any better a man while he was alive. Don't let us cant about him now. The man was an unmitigated scoundrel—perhaps he deserved all he got.”
“Perhaps he did. He was Marie's husband.”
“The devil he was!”
Meredith fell into a long reverie. He was thinking of Jocelyn and her dislike for Durnovo, of the scene in the drawing-room of the bungalow at Loango; of a thousand incidents all connected with Jocelyn.