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Updated: June 6, 2025
Suddenly the legs twitched up, and his boots appeared above the counter. Japp had invited him to his bedroom, and the game was now to be played beyond my ken. This was more than I could stand, so I stole out at the back door and took to the thickest bush on the hillside.
The execution of the work under this contract will be described fully by the Resident Engineers. The plant assembled by the contractors is believed to be the most extensive ever placed on a single piece of work, and will be described in detail by their Managing Engineer, Henry Japp, M. Am. Soc.
I asked his business, and was told that he always gave Japp a call in when he was passing. 'Do you take every man that calls into your bedroom, and shut the door? I asked. Japp lost colour and his lip trembled. 'I swear to God, Mr Crawfurd, I've been doing nothing wrong. I've kept the promise I gave you like an oath to my mother.
Japp they liked the tale as chapter by chapter was read aloud, and it was offered to a penny periodical for boys. A much better market might easily have been found; indeed, Stevenson "wasted his mercies."
I promised, and in the sweet-smelling dust crossed the road to the store. Japp was still sleeping, so I got a bowl of mealie porridge from Zeeta and went to bed. Japp was sober next morning and made me some kind of apology. He had chronic lumbago, he said, and 'to go on the bust' now and then was the best cure for it.
Japp went up to the huts and hired a slattern to mind his house, and then drank heavily for three days to console himself. That night I sat smoking with Mr Wardlaw in his sitting-room, where a welcome fire burned, for the nights on the Berg were chilly. I remember the occasion well for the queer turn the conversation took.
It was a real comfort to me to put out a hand in the darkness and feel Colin's shaggy coat. Japp was drunk for the next day or two, and I had the business of the store to myself. I was glad of this, for it gave me leisure to reflect upon the various perplexities of my situation. As I have said, I was really scared, more out of a sense of impotence than from dread of actual danger.
I told him I was as healthy as I ever was, and he laughed in his dirty Portugoose way. "Yes, Mr Japp," he says, "but the country is not so healthy." I wonder what the chap meant. He'll be dead of blackwater before many months, to judge by his eyes. This talk satisfied me about Japp, who was clearly in desperate fear of offending me, and disinclined to return for the present to his old ways.
I looked to see that Japp had not suffocated himself, then shut up the store, and went back to my room to think out this new mystification. The thing had come from Colles, for it was the private notepaper of the Durban office, and there was Colles' signature. But the pencilling was in a different hand.
The low tones went on for a little, both men talking in Kaffir, and then Japp lifted up one of the little objects between finger and thumb. It was a small roundish stone about the size of a bean, but even in that half light there was a dull lustre in it. At that I shoved the door open and went in. Both men started as if they had been shot. Japp went as white as his mottled face permitted.
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