“My dear Jimmie, have I changed so much, then, since last we played snooker together in the club?”
“Well, I’m blessed!” muttered Colville, or to be candid, he used the subaltern’s variant of the phrase.
“You soon will be if you don’t do as I tell you,” came the emphatic assurance. “But before I go, for I must give the people at Ibi a chance—though it is a thousand to one I shall be too late—who is the lady your friend inquired about?”
Colville wanted to say so much that he found but few words. He could only gasp:
“My dear Warden—didn’t you hear?”
“I heard her name, of course, but it cannot be a lady of the same name in whom I was once interested. Still, it is an odd thing it should be mentioned to–night, and in this place. Who is she?”
“Oh, d——n it all!” groaned Colville, “how could any poor devil guess he was in for this sort of stew when he started from Ibi yesterday!”
“I assure you we are wasting precious time, Jimmie. Perhaps it is my fault, but the question was a natural one under the circumstances. Tell your men it is all right, or they may want to prevent my departure; they understand those drums, you know. My only hope of success in case I am stopped at the bend is to keep up the pretense that I am a special envoy from the emirs in the interior. Some day, if we win through this business, I shall have a fine yarn for you. Good–by!”
“But look here, old chap, I can’t let you slip away like that. Confound it! I don’t know what to say, but the plain truth is best, perhaps. The girl you were engaged to, Miss Evelyn Dane, is inside the mission–house now, this minute, and the man I brought from Ibi is the Earl of Fairholme. He told me all about you on the way up. He’s a decent sort, and he is wild over Miss Dane. But it is only fair to add——”
A series of blood–curdling yells and a volley of musketry that lit the bush with spurts of flame put an abrupt end to Colville’s qualifying sentence. He was so taken aback by the extraordinary coincidence that Warden should arrive at Kadana almost at the same instant as the man who had come there with the avowed intent of taking Evelyn Dane home to England as his wife, that for one bemused second he failed to grasp the imminence or extent of the native onslaught.