'If you're wanting to see him yourself,' he ended, 'you've only got to step round to the post office. He said he must send a wire to Kigoma about the Mimi—you'll find him with Hume.'
But I did not. He had gone, said Hume, in the direction of the D.C.'s office. Hume too remarked how ill he looked. Fever, he diagnosed, and a bad go at that, although Sinclair had insisted that nothing was wrong.
Besides his mail—several weeks' accumulation of letters and newspapers—there had been a cable for him.
'You'd have thought it was bad news,' said Hume, 'the way he read it. As a matter of fact—I oughtn't to tell you, only I know it won't go any further—it was an Elizabethville cable confirming the purchase of Captain Sinclair's whole herd, at a big price too.'
But Archie had stared at the message, said Hume, as if it did not make sense. Then he'd laughed 'an odd kind of laugh' and torn the form to little bits. The pieces lay there still.
As I followed Archie to the Boma, I could not help wondering what had happened to this self-possessed Scot. I could hardly guess that in full Byronic blast that morning he had breasted the hill to Abercorn with the pride of Manfred or Cain in his heart. And now the well-kept roads, the grip of Mackenzie's industrious hand, the news of the great golf scandal—all this shouted at him that, in the well-padded hold of civilisation, Cain becomes Crippen.
I knocked at the door of the D.C.'s office. Joseph, the native clerk, immaculate in white duck and a black tarboosh, admitted me. The office was as spotless as its sole occupant—bundles of documents tied with tape, trays full of letters, rows of files, all the paraphernalia of administration.
The Bwana, said Joseph, had gone away after hearing that Bwana La-va-ta was on ulendo and that Bwana Jo-ne-si (Jones was the name of the Native Commissioner) had gone to England.
As I left the block of offices, I saw Foster, the A.N.C., with a crowd of black men on his verandah. His position in a deck chair, flanked by blue and red clad messengers and surrounded by an irregular circle of silent natives, indicated that a lawsuit was in progress. He appeared to ask a question and a native in the front of the circle, without moving his body or head, loosed a spate of words.
I listened, waiting my chance to ask Foster which road Archie had taken. A cause célèbre seemed to be in process. Tungati, an obese elder of Malekani's village, had followed King David's example in taking a third wife to comfort his age. The experiment had been a success, until a stranger from Kachilikila's ... A pause in the evidence enabled me to ask my question.