It was unutterably annoying to hear that Figuero had seen him in Evelyn Dane’s company, and he deduced a Machiavellian plot from the visit subsequently paid by the Portuguese to the Sans Souci. The journey to Milford indirectly suggested by the Under Secretary’s inquiry anent the appearance of the yacht now became a fixed purpose from which nothing would divert him. It seemed to be impossible that Mr. Baumgartner could fail to recognize the girl’s description, since comparison with Rosamund Laing had shown him that Evelyn was by far the most beautiful creature in England! He was sure that her life would be made miserable by suspicion, if, indeed, she had not already received a curt notification that her services were not required.
Peter’s afternoon with the negroes was evidently Gargantuan in its chief occupation—the consumption of ardent spirits.
“I never did see any crowd ‘oo could shift liquor like them,” mused the skipper of the Nancy. “It was ‘Dash me one bottole, Peter,’ every five minutes if I’d run to it. I stood ‘em three, just in your interests, captain, an’ then I turned a pocket inside out, sayin’ ‘No more ‘oof, savvy?’ They savvied right enough. Out goes one chap they called Wanger——”
“Do you mean to tell me that one of those three men was named M’Wanga?” broke in Warden, and in the darkness Peter could not see the blank amazement on his employer’s face.
“That’s it, sir—funny sort o’ click they gev’ in front of it. Sink me, but you do it a treat! Well, ‘is nibs comes back with two bottles, an’ we finished the lot afore I began to wonder if I was quite sartin which of my legs was the wooden one. But, bless yer ‘eart, there’s no ‘arm in them three niggers. I could live among ‘em twenty year an’ never ‘ave a wrong word wi’ one of em.
“Could you gather any inkling of their business from their talk?”
Peter tamped some half–burned tobacco into the bowl of his pipe with the head of a nail before replying.
“There was just one thing that struck me as a bit pecooliar, sir,” he said, after a meditative pause. “A joker ‘oo tole me ‘is name was Pana seems to be sort o’ friendly with a serving–maid in the Lord Nelson. She brought in the bottles I ordered, an’ each time Pana tried to catch ‘old of ‘er. The third time he grabbed her for fair, an’ sez: ‘You lib for Benin country w’en I king?’ At that one of ‘is pals jabbered some double Dutch, an’ they all looked ‘ard at me, but I was gazin’ into the bottom of a glass at the time an’ they thought I wasn’t listenin’. It never occurred to ‘em that I don’t swaller with me ears.”
“Were you present when Figuero returned?”
“Yes, sir, an’ a nasty cur he can be w’en he likes. He called ‘em all the different sorts o’ drunken swine he could think of, an’ tole me I was wuss, to go leadin’ pore ignorant blacks astray. My godfather! Five bottles of Ole Tom among three of ‘em, an’ me, ‘oo ‘ates the smell o’ gin, tryin’ to doctor my poison wi’ water! If you’ll believe me, sir, at supper–time I couldn’t bring myself to touch the nicest bit o’ steak that ever sizzled on the Nancy’s grid.”