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No. 2 was the photograph of an oblong card. On it was written in ink, in the same bold hand: "Mr. HENDRYK VAN BUSCH, "C/o Mr. W. Bough, "Transport Agent, "Haargrond Plaats, "Near Matambani, "Transvaal." There was a silence in the consulting-room, only broken by street noises filtered thin by walls and curtains, and the ticking of the Sheraton grandfather clock, and the breathing of two people.
His commanding officer nods, with the muscle in his lean cheek twitching. "Certainly. Aloud, if you'll be so good." Bingo reads, with haltings on the way, for the tissue sheets stick to his large fingers, which are damp with suppressed agitation: "HAARGROND PLAATS, "NEAR TWEIPANS, "October 30th. "To the Colonel Commanding Her Majesty's Forces in Gueldersdorp.
And verily he reaped his reward, in an officially countersigned railway pass, which would enable the patriot to render some further services to British arms, and a great many more to Van Busch, of Johannesburg. He had his knavish headquarters still at the Border homestead known as Haargrond Plaats. Something drew him back to the place, and kept on drawing him.
Photo No. 3 is a reproduction of an autograph and address that's written on the inside cover of the ledger posted up in thieves' cipher that was in the cashbox found at Haargrond Plaats." He waited, screwing painfully at the stiff, waxed ends of the scrubby moustache. Saxham took the photographs in their order.
The Major drew out a very large pink cambric pocket-handkerchief, and performed behind its shelter an elaborate but unconvincing sneeze: " When she shot the moon with Nixey's mare and spider, it was by private arrangement with this oily, lying blackguard, who had given her an address a farm on the Transvaal Border, known as Haargrond Plaats where she might communicate with him through another scoundrel in the Transport Agency line, supposin' she chose to do a little business on her own in Secret Intelligence "
I shall not take my maid, as she wishes for her own reasons to remain behind. Please have the mare and spider here by mid-day coffee-time. We can drive north towards Haargrond and double back when we're beyond the lines, as the coursed hare would do." Van Busch's red mouth gleamed, curved back from his tobacco-stained teeth. He said with meaning: "Boers shoot hares not run them."
Didn't I drive her and the other woman over from Haargrond, with Bough's little beast pulling in a cart of my own? Call the other woman, and she will tell you it was as I say." Lady Hannah, supremely disdainful, turned her back upon the liar.... "So, then, you are not willing to go back in a veld waggon?" demanded the bullying voice.
She would evacuate it, when he could manage to get hold of Nixey's mouse-coloured trotter and the spider, left in the care of Van Busch's good friend Bough, at Haargrond Plaats. A dash for freedom then. "Speshul. Hextry Speshul!"
Pay Blinders the other five hundred pounds before kerk-time. If you haven't got the cash about you, he and young Schenk Eybel shall ride with you to Haargrond, where lives your friend Bough. They can bring back the money and the mare and spider, too.
For if a mare and spider there had been, you might perhaps have kept them for your trouble " "Now I come to think of it, Myjnheer Commandant," said Van Busch in a hurry, "perhaps the woman was not lying, after all. Bough has a mouse-coloured trotter in the stables at Haargrond Plaats, and a spider stands under the waggon-shed in the yard.
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