“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 hobnob 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 prizefighter. I can’t take him about with me in his present condition. I shall be the laughingstock 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 up at 5 a.m. on arrival at the port to see a blinking doctor and hold your hands above your head simply makes me tired.

Later.