"Indeed? Step this way, Mr. Brooker."
Brooker, soothed by the courteous affability of the reception, his sense of importance magnified by being led aside, apart from the others, into the official privacy of the stoep-corner, began to be eloquent. He knew, he said, that the story he had to relate would appear almost incredible, but a soldier, a diplomat, a master of strategy, such as the personage to whom he now addressed himself, would understand—none better—how to unravel the tangled web, and follow up the clue to its ending in a den of secret, black, and midnight conspiracy. A blob of foam appeared upon his under-lip. He waved his hands, thick, short-fingered, clammy members....
"My story is as follows, sir...."
"I shall have pleasure in listening to it, Mr. Brooker, on condition that you will do me first the favour of listening to a story of mine?"
Deferred Brooker protested willingness.
"Last night, Mr. Brooker, at about eleven-thirty to a quarter to twelve, I was returning from a little tour of inspection"—the slight riding sjambok the Chief carried pointed over the veld to the northward—"out there, when, passing the south angle of the enclosure of the Convent, where, by my special orders, a double sentry of the Town Guard had been posted, I heard a sound that I will endeavour to reproduce:
"Gr'rumph! Honk'k! Gr'rumph!"
Brooker bounded in his Oxford shoes.
The face upon which he glued his bulging eyes was grave to sternness. He stuttered, interrogated by the judicial glance:
"It—it sounds something like a snore."