“I’m not deaf; neither am I blind.”
“Then why the devil don’t you answer me? Where’s the old nigger?”
“Mightn’t he be lying dead in a sluit where you and Koos Bester left him last week?”
“Look here, none of your blasted conundrums. I didn’t pull you out of a Whitechapel gutter and bring you here to get lip from you.”
Max went on with his occupation of tidying the goods upon the shelves, without making any reply. Nathan, furious, strode round the counter and gripped him by the arm. Max turned and gazed steadily into his eyes.
“You bastard Christian dog, if you don’t answer my question I’ll make pork sausages of you!”
Max seized Nathan by the throat and flung him backwards. The latter’s foot caught against the corner of a box and he fell sprawling under the counter. As he picked himself up Max strode towards him. Nathan recoiled in alarm; he had not expected such treatment from the shy, silent, diffident lad whom he had been in the habit of cuffing and cursing at whenever he felt in a bad temper and wanted to relieve his feelings.
“Where is he?” shouted Max in a voice strident with rage. “He is where you will never be—in an honest man’s grave. He lived long enough to let me know that you and Koos Bester are murderers. I only regret that he did not let me know enough to hang you both.”
Nathan quailed; he wondered how much Gemsbok had told. Then he cast up the column of possibilities in his mind. No, he was all right. There might be suspicion, but there could be no proof that he had been accessory to the crime. However, it would be just as well not to provoke Max any further at present. He walked out of the shop and Max closed the door behind him.
The Desert twilight was quickly fading. Nathan wished to be alone, so he strolled past the camps without calling at any of them, and then back along the road he had just previously travelled.