"Sailed for England 15th April, 1879; left France for Madagascar about
September same year."
Eagerly seizing his message, the detective hurriedly mastered its
contents, and with an emphatic grunt of satisfaction started off
instantly for the lawyer's office, and an hour later yet another message
was flashed across the seas--
"To Drelincourt, London.
"Secured; starts immediately."
To which Mr Driffield was considerably astonished to receive the prompt
reply--
"To Driffield, Port Natal.
"Let him wait my arrival. Sail _Tartar_ to-morrow, bringing all needful
equipment.--Drelincourt."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
His lordship arrived in due course, and the lawyer was inexpressibly
shocked at the change which had taken place in the appearance of his
client. The man looked twenty years older, but was nevertheless strong,
vigorous, and stern, and the detective noted with secret joy the
hard-set lines in his patron's face, and felt that here at least there
would be no faltering or shrinking, no quarter given and none required,
when the bitter end came; for bitter did this astute man-hunter already
feel certain that the end would prove to be.
The two men were fast friends in a very short time, and one of his
lordship's earliest instructions to Kenyon and the lawyer was to conceal
his identity as far as possible by addressing him simply under his
family name of Leigh, by which he had been known when a younger son,
and, in all human probability, the reverse of likely to become a peer of
the realm.
Months later, Leigh and Kenyon, with their full complement of native
bearers, bade a long farewell to the shores of the mighty lake of
Victoria Nyanza, and struck out boldly into central Africa, steering
hard and fast by the equatorial line.
Leigh, as we shall continue to call Lord Drelincourt, was naturally
curious to know why the detective, who held the compass and took all the
observations, should be so extremely particular about his latitude, but
that worthy either could or would give no explanation, and Leigh had
already acquired such implicit confidence in every action of his
self-constituted guide, that he let himself be led blindly whithersoever
the American chose to take him, feeling that the man was either working
confidently upon "information received," or that his faculty of instinct
was so finely developed that he was unlikely to make any very serious
mistakes.
As a matter of fact Leigh was right to a certain extent, for starting
with a theory of his own, which had the rooted belief of Zero's
complicity in the disappearance of Grenville for its point of departure,
the American, whilst waiting the arrival of his patron from England, had
worked up several slender clues, and had afterwards elaborated them in a
manner calculated to have made his yet far-distant foe feel the reverse
of comfortable, had he been conscious of the very tender interest taken
by an outsider in the most trifling actions performed by him during the
past, both distant and relatively near.
By careful watching, and by shadowing in a variety of inimitable
disguises, Kenyon, who was an infinitely better actor than many a man
who makes his living "on the boards," had soon unearthed, become
intimate with, and pretty well "weighed up"--to use his own expression--
the gentleman who had exhibited such unequivocal signs of dismay when
unexpectedly confronted with the advertisement concerning Grenville, and
the detective had satisfied himself that this fellow, Crewdson Walworth
by name, was a man with a history, could he but find it out--a history,
moreover, which instinct assured him would prove to be of the greatest
service to the Grenville search party at the present juncture. More, he
also knew for a fact that his friend Crewdson corresponded in cypher
with someone at Zanzibar, but even the cunning of Stanforth Kenyon had
totally failed to ascertain who that someone was, or by what name he or
she was designated, or, indeed, to get out of Master Crewdson Walworth
anything else at all worth knowing.
The detective, however, had put two and two together, and had built up a
theory in his usual cautious fashion, and every step of the ladder,
though most rigidly and thoroughly tested, had thus far proved to be
absolutely correct, and his deductions to be altogether justified by the
course of events.