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Updated: June 9, 2025
The Company is wealthy, is it not?" Da Souza changed the bag into his other hand and thrust his arm through his companion's. "You haven't seen the papers lately, have you?" "No! I've just landed to-day from Africa!" "Then I'm sorry to say there's some bad news for you," Da Souza said. "The Bekwando Land and Gold Company has gone into liquidation smashed up altogether.
Well, in a sense you were right. I distrusted and disliked you from the moment I first met you in Bekwando village with poor old Monty for a partner, and read the agreement you had drawn up and the clause about the death of either making the survivor sole legatee. In a regular fever swamp Monty was drinking poison like water and you were watching. That may have seemed all right to you.
Trent hesitated no longer, but shot him deliberately through the heart. He jumped into the air and fell forward upon his face with a death-cry which seemed to find an echo from every hut and from behind every tree of Bekwando.
Da Souza was gorgeous in frock coat and silk hat, a carnation in his buttonhole, a diamond in his black satin tie, yet he was not altogether happy. This little man hobbling along in front represented fate to him. On the platform at Waterloo he had heard him timidly ask a bystander the way to the offices of the Bekwando Land and Gold Exploration Company, Limited.
Now do you want to hear some news?" She nodded. "Of course." "It's about Dick seems rather a coincidence too. He was at the Cape, you know, with a firm of surveyors, and he's been offered a post on the Gold Coast." "The Gold Coast! How odd! Anywhere near ?" "The offer came from the Bekwando Company!" "Is he going?" "Yes." She was full of eager interest. "How extraordinary!
Certainly, at the time, he never stopped to consider that he was helping back to life the man who in all the world was most likely to do him ill. "Better?" he asked presently. "Much. What luck to find you. What are you after gold?" Trent shook his head. "Not at present. We're planning out the new road from Attra to Bekwando." Francis looked up with surprise.
A thousand men are working upon his road and sinking shafts upon the Bekwando hills. Gold is already coming down, nuggets of it, and he is opening a depot to buy all the mahogany and ivory in the country. He spends money like water, he never rests, what he says must be done is done! The authorities are afraid of him, but day by day they become more civil!
Who were these white men to march so boldly into the presence of the King without even the formality of sending an envoy ahead? For the King of Bekwando, drunk or sober, was a stickler for etiquette. It pleased him to keep white men waiting.
I hate him, for he has spoilt much trade for me, and he treats me as though I were the dirt under his feet, but never a man before who has set foot upon the Coast could have done what he has done. Without soldiers he has beaten the Bekwando natives, and made them even work for him. He has stirred the whole place here into a state of fever!
The natives from Bekwando found him and carried him bound to the King, and your English explorer, Captain Francis, rescued him. He's alive now!" Trent stood for a moment like a man turned to stone. Alive! Monty alive! The impossibility of the thing came like a flash of relief to him. The man was surely on the threshold of death when he had left him, and the age of miracles was past.
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