By the time I returned with the bottle, I fancy she had decided to consult me.
The words came jostling each other—Archie was delirious; the doctor was away from Abercorn; the Kasama man would take a week to get here; and anyhow ... She did not complete the sentence. He had never been so bad as this; but the strain of the last week—was it blackwater, did I think? And ... and they had come from the sleeping sickness belt, could it be...?
She refused food, and when I had given my medicine chest to my fundi to carry, we set out along a native path in the direction she had come. Her obvious gratitude to me for coming was surprising. So pretty a woman is rarely grateful. Men are too ready to help without.
To cut short her thanks, I inquired about Archie's symptoms and was able to assure her that the fever was not blackwater. And certainly not a forerunner of sleeping sickness. I was prepared to notice that my words brought little relief. A husband delirious in the bush might send a woman wild with anxiety, might drive her to the brink of panic, it would not explain the hopelessness in Norah's eyes and mouth.
I felt a wave of pity. She was too slim a little thing for this burden, whatever it was. In violence to my principles I asked if I could help.
'I don't think anything can help now,' she whispered, and so low that I had to read her lips. 'Archie has killed ... some one.'"
"I was not particularly shocked," said Ross. "All this feeling against straightforward assassination is quite modern.
You must discriminate, of course, between honest killing and surreptitious murder. There has always been a prejudice against that. The Borgias, for instance, have found critics in every century, and until recent, sentimental years we burnt wives who poisoned their husbands. But an honourable assassination, under guises which varied from the ceremonial of mediæval tournament to the violence of renaissance vendetta, and on to the more polished formulæ of the duel, has lasted almost to our day.
With the duel passed the power to punish certain private injuries for which the law furnishes no redress. And in fault of any regular outlet, the man with strong feelings and a literal mind has to fall back on murder."
Ross spoke with vehemence. Did his earnestness, I wondered, throw any light on his own mysterious past? As if he read some shadow of the suspicion on my face, he came back abruptly to the Sinclairs.