"What in hell's keeping you, man? Here's Monty getting up a tourist party to his damned ancestral nest and you're delaying the whole shebang! Good lord alive! Have you fallen in love with a woman, or taken the belly-ache, or fallen down a well, or gone to sleep again, or all of them, or what?"
"Coming, Fred!" I shouted. "Coming!"
"You'd better!"
He began playing cat-calls on his concertina—imitation bugle-calls, and fragments of serenades. For a second Maga looked reckless—then suspicious—then, as it began to dawn on her from studying my face that I, too, was afraid of Fred, relieved.
"Does he know anything?" I asked her.
"He? That Fred? No! No, no, no! An' you no tell 'im. You 'ear me? You no tell 'im! You go now—go to 'im, or else 'e is get suspicious—understan'? My men—they go an' get that woman. When they finish getting that woman, then I send for you an' you come quick—understan'?"
I nodded.
"Listen! If you tell your frien's—if you tell that Frrred, or those others—then I not only keel you, but my men put out your eyes first an' then pull off your toes an' fingers—understan'?"
I shrugged my shoulders, suggesting an attempt to seem at ease.
"Besides—I warn you! You tell Kagig anything against me an' Kagig is at once your enemy!"