“Hello, yourself,” Johnny was on his feet. “Wait. The coffee’s still hot. There are mince pies, the turnover sort you can hold in your hands. I’ll be back in a flash.” He was.
“Pant,” Johnny leaned forward eagerly as his strange visitor finished his last bite of pie. “Last time I saw you, you were telling me of a beautiful valley in Ethiopia and something about a girl, perhaps a white girl, you didn’t seem to know. You said—”
“Yes,” Pant gave forth a low, hollow chuckle. “Yes, Johnny, that was strange and—and exciting too.
“You see,” he settled back in his chair, his unusual eyes half closed. “That girl was watching a small herd of cattle. They don’t have fences in Ethiopia, at least, not in most places. So there was the girl and her cattle, the green pasture like a magnificent oriental carpet, and the small house set among the palms.
“It was warm, midafternoon. I sat down on a fallen tree to rest myself and to just—well sort of enjoy that beautiful picture.
“I must have fallen asleep—” suddenly Pant’s eyes opened very wide. He went through the preliminary motions of springing to his feet. “Yes, I MUST have fallen asleep for, of a sudden, I heard a most unearthly scream.
“I sprang to my feet just in time to see a huge, dark-faced man leap into the brush. And, Johnny,” Pant drew in a long breath, “he was carrying something on his back, carrying it like a sack of oats. He was carrying that girl.”
“Oh-oo,” Johnny exclaimed.
“It’s quite common, that sort of thing there in Ethiopia,” Pant went on more quietly. “You see, Johnny, they still have slaves in Ethiopia, perhaps a million or two, no one seems to know exactly. And if you’re to sell slaves, you must steal them. That’s what this fellow was doing. Probably he was a Mohammedan, most of them are, a pretty low-lived lot.”
“And you—” Johnny began eagerly.