raised my eyebrows question- back to undress the helpless ingly. figure that lay sprawled on the bed. "Going home," said he succinctly, and waiting only until he was clear of the place, we followed him out. By the light of the moon I could see him staggering slowly up the sandy road ahead of us, and presently, from one of the shacks that edged the road, a dark figure detached itself and immediately took possession of him. I started forward, thinking it was one of the notorious characters who infested that area, but Roper drew me back. "It's all right," he said quickly. "It's only the Chink. He waits for him every night like this. It's just one more evidence of the plentifulness of his money. That Chink makes a good thing out of him. Coming in?" he asked a moment later, as we drew abreast of the house. With a shrug I agreed, and pushing open the rickety door, Roper preceded me into a tiny room the walls of which were plain, unpainted, galvanised iron. A hurricane lamp stood upon a table in the centre of the room, and as we entered a figure drew back sharply from a bed which stood in the far corner. "It's all right, John," explained Roper, and in the dim light I saw that it was the Chinaman to whom he spoke. "Put him to bed." "So!" agreed the Celestial in his amazing pidgin-English. "Allee velly ploper. No velly dlunk-night," and he went I looked round the room. It seemed terrible to think of the finicky Arthur Buchanan existing in this kennel-for the place was little better than a kennel, if as good! In one corner stood what might once conceivably have passed muster as a dressing-table, but which now, with its broken leg supported on a wooden box, and the one fragment of mirror still clinging pathetically pathetically to its original position in the frame, was hardly to be recognised as such. The legs of the wooden bedstead were placed in battered cigarette tins, filled with water, to keep the white ants from encroaching on the bundle of clothes that served as blankets, while another cigarette tin, placed upside down beneath one of the legs of the table, served at once to correct its shortness and render the top somewhere approaching the horizontal. "Where do you sleep?" I asked, for there was only one bed in the room.. Roper grinned indifferently. "Oh, up in the corner there," he explained. "I've got my valise and blankets," and glancing to where he pointed, I noticed a neatly rolled valise of Willesden canvas standing against the wall. It was at that moment that I realised for the first time the depth of their strange partnership. Not many men would have submitted to the indignity of this appalling room for the sake of a defaulting partner, self, or the Portuguese authori and such a partner as Buchanan had turned out to be. I suddenly felt a liking for Edward Roper. There was a lot of the right stuff hidden away under his rather brusque exterior. Contrasting his lot with mine, I am not at all sure that I would have stuck things as he did, for he was a perfectly free agent and could depart at any moment for the cleanliness and comparative dignity of the great bush. "You know," said he, breaking in upon my thoughts, "I'm dashed if I feel like leaving him, even now. He seems such a such a woman, somehow, doesn't he?" And even as he spoke he was tucking the blankets tighter round Buchanan's insensate form with all the care, and a good deal of the skill, of those same women whom he was decrying. ties have any complaint to make about him, I can do nothing. My sphere of activities does not include the post of moral mentor to down-andouters," he remarked. "So long as he doesn't die down there, or get on the beach, it doesn't matter so much," said I. "But he's a standing disgrace to the British colony as he is." The consul smiled grimly. "I've only done duty along this coast for the last ten years," he observed, "but that has been quite long enough to convince me that the British colonies you speak of, either here or at Laurenço Marques or Port Amelia, will be quite able to live through any little peccadilloes such as those of Mr Buchanan. They leave me," he added, he added, "entirely unmoved." What Buchanan did with I said nothing, for it is never himself after Roper left I don't wise to interfere between a know, for the simple reason man and his partner, but I did that I did not go down to see. form the opinion that Roper All my sympathies were with would not fulfil his intention Roper, and the memory of that of departing on the morrow. Chinese house, whenever I However, as things fell out, thought of it, absolutely nauI was wrong in this, for towards seated me. There were plenty mid-day a boy brought me a of people in the town who note to the hotel, and tearing were ready to condemn him, it open, I read that Roper had but, for my part, I held that irrevocably made up his mind he had played the hero. and had pulled out that morn- was not as though Buchanan ing, heading north for the had been drinking whisky. Zambesi River. Straightway There is hope for a whisky I went to my friend the consul, man-he has his lucid moand reported this latest develop- ments-but for the absinthe ment, but he had no sugges- fiend there is no hope but tion to offer with regard to himself, and then only by Buchanan. very slow and excruciatingly "Unless he misbehaves him- painful phases. The curse of It man had retired, and I sat sipping my whisky-and-soda. absinthe is the extraordinary where?" he asked when the coma it induces, and the unbearable suicidal depression which follows any lessening of the dose. I trembled for Arthur Buchanan if, and when, his money ran out. Towards the end of my stay in Beira I suddenly felt desire to see how things were going on with him, and after a short struggle with my own insatiable curiosity I found myself, rather late one evening, crossing the Pungwe Bridge en route to the city of galvanised iron. The moment I entered the private room of the café I sensed a difference, for instead of being halfsprawled across the table, Arthur Buchanan was standing with his back against the mantelpiece in exactly the same position as had Roper upon my last visit. You could have knocked me down with the proverbial feather, and I had no time to recover myself before he saw me and spoke. "Hullo!" he said, and though his words were clear, there was a strange, dull flatness to his voice. "Have a drink? I felt in need of a drink at that moment, and I ordered a whisky. Buchanan, with trembling fingers, dripped the lambent absinthe through the eternal sugar. I was at a loss for words, for although it was obvious that the man was pulling round, he was still in that hazy, comatose condition that renders any conversation next to impossible. 66 "He's gone into the bush," I said, after a moment's pause. Buchanan appeared to think this over for some little while, and then, thinking that he had not heard, I repeated it. "Gone into the bush," he repeated vaguely. "What's he gone there for, then? Make a living, I expect," I hazarded. Buchanan nodded sagely. "Make a living, I expect," he repeated, and for some time afterwards continued to shake his head and repeat, at intervals, "Make a living, I expect.' The whole thing was rather pitiful, and I was glad when he at last rose to go. I walked with him as far as his room, and saw him carefully taken in charge by his host, the Chinaman. "Alley velly nice," proclaimed that individual, as he gave Buchanan a swift look over. And muttering something in his own appalling language, he ushered the decrepit figure into the house. That night, as I sat in the lounge of the hotel, the consul came in. I saw him glance round the room as though in search of some one, and when his eye at last alighted upon me, he at once came over. "News," said he abruptly, hardly returning my greeting. "What d'you think?" I glanced at him speculatively. Consuls are always full Seen Roper about any- of news. Give it up," said I. a night's rest might have made Roper's been snaffled by a difference to his powers of a lion." "No!" "It's true. I've just heard it. Up in the Morogoro Forest. We're sending a man out right away." "That's terrible," I exclaimed, after a long pause. "Horrible! Is he badly damaged?" reception. This time I passed all the denizens of the district on the way to their labours, and a more hopeless-looking lot of desperadoes it has never been my bad fortune to encounter. The Chinaman opened the door to me, and in reply to my question informed me that the Baas was in bed, but awake, and in another second I was in the room. Buchanan was surprised to see me, and sitting on the bedside I poured out the story of Roper, without any preamble. "I don't know. But he had the sense to cauterise it, at least so the boy says. He told me that the Bwana straightway had a big fire built, and when it was blazing high, the Bwana took out a white-hot piece of wood and pressed it on his leg.' I shivered, and moved my going." own legs restlessly. 'Good old Roper," I breathed admiringly. "He's the right stuff all right.” "True!" seconded the consul. "And I've sent out the best man we've got. I hope he gets through. How's the other man? "Curiously enough, I've only just come from there. I believe he's on the mend." "Splendid!" he ejaculated. "I'll see that he gets the news of Roper. It may help." "Don't do that," I begged. "I'll go down and tell him myself first thing in the morning." "As you like," agreed the consul. "You never know. It might help." With the first signs of day I was off across the bridge into tin-town, hoping to catch Buchanan in bed. I thought that "But why did he go?” asked Buchanan Buchanan plaintively. "He never told me he was This was sense, and from the look in his eye I knew he had understood the news. Quickly I outlined the story of their partnership, as far as I knew it, and bore heavily upon the loyal way in which Roper had stuck to him, even down to sleeping upon the floor of that priceless shack for over two months, so that he, Buchanan, should not be left alone. "But-but, good God, man! We're partners, then!" he exclaimed, and there was something very like pain in his voice. "I don't know. I don't know how long it took the boy to come in, but we heard last night." "Then why didn't you come down?" "I did, but you were dazed -drunk if you like!" I added brutally. "You wouldn't have been able to understand." "Oh, God!" he cried, and this time there was no mistaking the agony in his voice. The next moment he was on his feet, and from the head of the bed dragged out a bottle. "Don't!" I begged, springing forward to stop him. "Be a man for once. Leave it alone." 'Don't be a fool!" he grated savagely, snatching the bottle from my grasp. "I know what's best," and the next moment he had poured himself a drink and swallowed it at a gulp. The change was remarkable. He seemed altogether stronger as the potent liquid fled through his veins. For a moment he glanced round the room, and then "John!" he called loudly. From somewhere at the back came a shuffling step, and the next moment the Chinaman entered the room. To my amazement Buchanan rattled off something in the man's own language, to which he answered briefly, and the next instant was gone. "Now then, where is Roper lying" he asked, turning to me. 66 "Where's Roper lying," I panted. Buchanan's taken it badly, and I believe is going to follow up." "Good Lord!" he ejaculated. "Well, Roper is lying two or three miles east of the village of Inhaminga, or at least SO his note said, I think" "That'll do," I replied, and at the same pace as I had come raced back to my destination. The door was open when I arrived, and some dozen boys were sitting round the doorstep. I entered and stood stock still in amazement. Rifles, cooking-pots, valises, a tent, a chop-box, all the litter of a well-found safari was lying about the room. In the centre stood Buchanan, in khaki shirt and shorts, critically examining the bore of a rifle. "Where is he?" he burst |