‘Yes,’ he answered, letting out his breath in a sigh as though some thought in him had arrested his respiration for a bit.
‘How do you know?’
‘I arrived an hour ago from Southampton,’ he replied, ‘and have got all the information I require.’
‘There cannot be much to add to what the letter contains,’ said I, ‘It is the completest imaginable story of the devilish business.’
He looked at me oddly, and then said, ‘Ay, it tells what has happened. But that did not satisfy me. I have gone beyond that, and know the place they are making for.’
‘It will be six thousand miles distant, anyhow,’ said I.
‘Quite. The villain reasoned with a pair of compasses in his hand. It is Cape Town—the other side of the world; when ’tis ice and northern blasts with us, it is the fragrance of the moon-lily and a warm heaven of quiet stars with them.’
He struck the table, smothering some wild curse or other behind his set teeth, next leaped from his chair and fell to pacing the room, now and again muttering to himself with an occasional flourish of his arm. I watched him in silence. Presently he returned to the table and mixed another glass of liquor. He sat lost in thought for a little, then, with a slow lifting of his eyes, till his gaze lay steadfast on me, he said: ‘Charlie, I am going to follow them to Cape Town.’
‘In some South African trader?’
‘In my yacht. You know her?’