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The big pink officer recognised the object of his search, and strode down the platform bellowing a welcome. As Lady Hannah waved in reply, the Johannesburger made a long arm from the window, and thrust a pencil-scrawled card into the tiny gloved hand. "S's'h!
Bingo little dreamed of the definite plan seething under his little wife's transformation coiffure. It had matured since her meeting on the railway-journey from Cape Town with an interesting personality. A big, brown-bearded Johannesburger, with light queer eyes, who had been reticent at first, but more interesting after his confidence had been gained. Van Busch he had named himself.
"Many thanks, and don't give me away if you should happen to meet me in a different skin one of these fine days, Mr. Van Busch." "Sure, no; not I," said the burly Johannesburger, with an effusion of what looked like genuine admiration. "By thunder! when it comes to playing the risky game there's no daring to beat a woman's. Give me a petticoat, say I, for a partner every time." "Bravo!"
He presented himself, and she accepted him at his own valuation, as a British Johannesburger, and influential member of the Chamber of Mines, possessing vast interests among the tall chimneys and white dumping-heaps of the Rand. Van Busch called his efforts to be ingratiating "sucking up to" the lady.
He was squatting in the shadow of the Commandant's living-waggon, polishing off the last of a panful, when Van Busch came along. English being an unpopular language, the big Johannesburger and the little Free Stater exchanged greetings in the Taal. "Ging oop, and leave your woman's work there, and walk a piece with me," said Van Busch.
Her foray in quest of Secret Information had had its hardships, as its alarms and excursions, but she plumed herself on having accomplished something of what she had set out to do. Van Busch, not counting a week of days when she had found reason to suspect his entire good faith, had behaved like a staunch Johannesburger of British blood and Imperial sympathies.
The Major coughed, and went on: "My wife came across that man at Tweipans under curious circumstances, which I'm here to put before you as plainly as may be.... She'd met him before the Siege, travelling up from Cape Town. He scraped acquaintance, called himself a loyal Johannesburger, and an Agent of the British South African War-Intelligence-Bureau. Not that there ever was such a Bureau."
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