(Extract from the diary of Sir Eustace Pedler) Mount Nelson Hotel,
Cape Town.
It is really the greatest relief to get off the Kilmorden.
The whole time that I was on board I was conscious of being surrounded by a network of intrigue. To put the lid on everything, Guy Pagett must needs engage in a drunken brawl the last night. It is all very well to explain it away, but that is what it actually amounts to. What else would you think if a man comes to you with a lump the size of an egg on the side of his head and an eye coloured all the tints of the rainbow?
Of course Pagett would insist on trying to be mysterious about the whole thing. According to him, you would think his black eye was the direct result of his devotion to my interests. His story was extraordinarily vague and rambling, and it was a long time before I could make head or tail of it.
To begin with, it appears he caught sight of a man behaving suspiciously. Those are Pagett’s words. He has taken them straight from the pages of a German Spy Story. What he means by a man behaving suspiciously he doesn’t know himself. I said so to him.
“He was slinking along in a very furtive manner, and it was the middle of the night, Sir Eustace.”
“Well, what were you doing yourself? Why weren’t you in bed and asleep like a good Christian?” I demanded irritably.
“I had been coding those cables of yours, Sir Eustace, and typing the diary up to date.”
Trust Pagett to be always in the right and a martyr over it!
“Well?”
“I just thought I would have a look around before turning in, Sir Eustace. The man was coming down the passage from your cabin. I thought at once there was something wrong by the way he looked about him. He slunk up the stairs by the saloon. I followed him.
“My dear Pagett,” I said, “why shouldn’t the poor chap go on deck without having his footsteps dogged? Lots of people even sleep on deck—very uncomfortable, I’ve always thought. The sailors wash you down with the rest of the deck at five in the morning.” I shuddered at the idea.
“Anyway,” I continued, “if you went worrying some poor devil who was suffering from insomnia, I don’t wonder he landed you one.”
Pagett looked patient.
“If you would hear me out, Sir Eustace. I was convinced the man had been prowling about near your cabin where he had no business to be. The only two cabins down that passage are yours and Colonel Race’s.”
“Race,” I said, lighting a cigar carefully, “can look after himself without your assistance, Pagett.” I added as an afterthought: “So can I.”
Pagett came nearer and breathed heavily as he always does before imparting a secret.
“You see, Sir Eustace, I fancied—and now indeed I am sure—it was Rayburn.”
“Rayburn?”
“Yes, Sir Eustace.”
I shook my head.
“Rayburn has far too much sense to attempt to wake me up in the middle of the night.”
“Quite so, Sir Eustace. I think it was Colonel Race he went to see. A secret meeting—for orders!”
“Don’t hiss at me, Pagett,” I said, drawing back a little, “and do control your breathing. Your idea is absurd. Why should they want to have a secret meeting in the middle of the night? If they’d anything to say to each other, they could hob-nob over beef-tea in a perfectly casual and natural manner.”
I could see that Pagett was not in the least convinced.
“Something was going on last night, Sir Eustace,” he urged, “or why should Rayburn assault me so brutally.”
“You’re quite sure it was Rayburn?”
Pagett appeared to be perfectly convinced of that. It was the only part of the story that he wasn’t vague about.
“There’s something very queer about all this,” he said. “To begin with, where is Rayburn?”
It’s perfectly true that we haven’t seen the fellow since we came on shore. He did not come up to the hotel with us. I decline to believe that he is afraid of Pagett, however.
Altogether the whole thing is very annoying. One of my secretaries has vanished into the blue, and the other looks like a disreputable prize-fighter. I can’t take him about with me in his present condition. I shall be the laughing-stock of Cape Town. I have an appointment later in the day to deliver old Milray’s billet-doux, but I shall not take Pagett with me. Confound the fellow and his prowling ways.
Altogether I am decidedly out of temper. I had poisonous breakfast with poisonous people. Dutch waitresses with thick ankles who took half an hour to bring me a bad bit of fish. And this farce of getting ............