On getting more in touch with civilisation and its ways he had tried to find out the name of the man who was responsible for the death of his supposed father. It was not an easy task. George Barclay had left Gambia five years before Raoul Le Breton set about his investigations. There had been a succession of men since Barclay's time, and the shooting of a native malefactor was not a matter of great note in the annals of a Government.
However, eventually Le Breton managed to establish the identity of the man he looked upon as his father's murderer.
But to trace George Barclay in England proved an even more difficult task than tracing him in Africa.
The Englishman had not stopped long in his country. In search of forgetfulness, he had gone from one place to another, holding posts in various parts of the Empire.
The Sultan Casim Ammeh was twenty-five when he heard that Barclay was in the Malay Straits.
The news came to him in Paris just when he was setting out for an evening's amusement in company with Dr. Edouard. The letter was brought to him as he stood in dress-suit, opera hat in hand, in his own private sitting-room at the palatial hotel he always patronised when in Paris.
On perusing it he turned to his companion, and said, with an air of savage triumph:
"Well, Edouard, I've managed to trace my man at last."
The doctor knew who the man in question was, for he, Edouard, was the Sultan Casim's one confidant. Rather uneasily he glanced at his patron. He wished the young man would be content with money and the many joys and pleasures it could buy—for Casim Ammeh was no longer a strict Mohammedan—and would not be always hankering after vengeance, a vengeance that might embroil him with England and bring his wild and brilliant career to an abrupt close.
"Where is George Barclay?" Edouard asked uneasily.