"Rum thing this murder down in the Makanya, isn't it?"
"I don't know enough about it to say. But I suppose there's no doubt
about it being a murder?"
"Not a particle. Dickinson has worked the thing up in first-rate style.
There's hardly a link missing from the chain."
"Not, eh? There's a saying, though, that a chain is no stronger than
its weakest link; but if the link is not merely weak but missing
altogether, what's the use of that chain?"
"The link can be supplied," said Stride meaningly. "Dickinson could put
his hand on the right man at any minute."
"Then why the devil doesn't he?"
The straightness of this query rather nonplussed Stride. But he
remembered that men in desperate straits had many a time been known to
save the situation by consummate bluff.
"Perhaps he isn't quite sure where he is at this moment," he answered.
"I could help him."
"Then why the devil don't you?"
"Look here. Let's quit beating around the bush," said the other,
speaking quickly. "Will you take a piece of advice?"
"Can't say until I hear it. But I'll promise to consider its burden
when I do."
Denham was getting rather sick of all this mysterious hinting. He was
also getting a bit "short."
"I'll give it you in one word, then," was the answer. "Skip."
"Don't see the joke. Explain."
"Don't see it, eh?"
"Not even a little bit."
"Well, bluff's a good dog sometimes," sneered the other, who thought he
would enjoy a different situation directly. "Still, you take my tip and
skip, with the smallest loss of time you can manage. I don't suppose
they'll bother to follow up the thing very keenly once you're clean out
of the country. And if you're wise you mighty soon will be. Get out
through Swaziland and into German territory if you can, or at any rate
keep dark. Halse will be able to help you."
All this while Denham had been looking at the speaker with a kind of
amused curiosity. At the close of the above remark he said--
"What's the matter with you?"
"What d'you mean?" snarled Stride, who was fast losing his temper.
"Mean? Why, that I'm wondering why you asked me to come out with you to
listen to all the nonsense you have just been talking. You're not
drunk, any fool can see that, and yet you fire off some yarn about some
Jew found drowned, or murdered, or something, down in the Makanya; and
talk about chains and missing links and all sorts of foolishness, and on
the strength of it all invite _me_ to `skip.' Really the joke strikes
me as an uncommonly thin one."
"It'll take the form of an uncommonly thick one," snarled the other,
"and that a rope, dangling over a certain trap-door in Ezulwini gaol.
Well, I thought to do you a good turn, came up here mostly to do it, and
that's how you take it. Well, you may swing, and be damned to you."
Denham lit a fresh cigar. He offered his case to his companion, but it
was promptly refused.
"Now let's prick this bubble," he said, looking the other fair and
straight in the eyes. "From a remark you made in the club the other
evening I gathered you wanted to insinuate that I had murdered some one.
That, of course, I didn't take seriously."
"There may have been others who did, though," interrupted Stride.
"No matter. Then you roll up here, and suggest that I am wanted as the
murderer of some unknown Jew, whose top end appears to have been found
in the Makanya bush. You know, if I were less good-natured, you might
get into serious trouble over such a thing as that. You insinuated it
in the presence of the Halses, too."
"Meaning an action for slander, I suppose. Go ahead. I defy you to
bring it. Do you hear? I defy you to bring it."
"It isn't worth while. Still, if you go on spreading these stories all
over the country I may be compelled to. It's one thing to make
accusations, but quite another to prove them. To prove them," he
repeated emphatically, with his eyes full upon the other's, and a sudden
hard ring coming into his tone with the last words.
Inwardly Stride was conscious of his first misgiving in the matter. He
was as certain in his own mind that the man before him had, for some
reason or other, killed the one, part of whose remains had been found,
as that the sun shone. But between certainty and proof was a far cry.
He was not lawyer enough to know that in such a case as this any
evidence that could be got together would be of the circumstantial kind,
and not necessarily conclusive, and he had come here with the express
object of frightening Denham out of the country altogether. Instead he
had found that Denham was not the sort of man to be frightened at all.
"Oh, the proof'll come right enough," he answered, with an easiness that
was more than half affected. Then seriously, "Look here, you know I've
no reason exactly to belove you?"
Instantly Denham's tone softened.
"I think I can guess," he said, "and cannot but be sorry. But that is
all in the fair chances of life. How can I help it?"
"Help it? Damn `helping it,'" was the furious reply. "But now, look
here. I--with others--am going to make it the business of life to bring
this thing home to you. We shall hunt up every scrap and particle of
evidence of your movements since you first landed, your every movement.
There's one chance for you and it the last. Clear out--now, at once."
"Now, really, you make me laugh. Is it in the least likely?"
"What is in the least likely?"
Both started. Verna had come up behind them, but though she had coughed
more than once, in the tension of their discussion they had failed to
hear her. She had foreseen a quarrel when she saw them go off alone
together, and had made up her mind as to the best means of preventing
it. And it was perhaps just as well that she had.