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A little later perhaps," answered Barry, with a glance round the group, who eyed him curiously. At a word the footman withdrew. As the door closed, little black, oily Sobieski dit Melville said with an attempt at a joke, "Is 'Mr. Krool to be called into consultation?" "Don't be so damned funny, Melville," answered Barry. "I didn't ask the question for nothing."
Again Krool nodded. "And for yourself how much?" "Nothing for myself; no money, Baas." "Only Oom Paul's love!" Krool nodded again. "But Oom Paul flayed you at Vleifontein; tied you up and skinned you with a sjambok.... That didn't matter, eh? And you went on loving him. I never touched you in all the years. I gave you your life twice. I gave you good money.
They all might have been wooden men, and Krool but a wooden servitor, so mechanical and concentrated were his actions. He seemed to look at nobody; but some of them shrank a little as he leaned over and poured the brown, steaming liquid and the hot milk into the bowls. Only once did the factotum look at anybody directly, and that was at Byng just as he was about to leave the room.
That did not happen." "The Baas is going to South Africa." "And Mr. Fellowes?" "He went like I expec'." "He died heart failure, eh?" A look of contempt, malevolence, and secret reflection came into Krool's face. "He was kill," he said. "Who killed him?" Krool was about to shrug his shoulders, but his glance fell on the sjambok, and he made an ugly gesture with his lean fingers.
Baas!" Krool said with livid face, and then he crept painfully away along the street wall. A policeman crossed the road with a questioning frown and the apparent purpose of causing trouble, but Barry Whalen whispered in his ear, and told him to call that evening and he would hear all about it. Meanwhile a five-pound note in a quick palm was a guarantee of good faith.
"Krool why, yes, it was he I saw being helped into a cab by a policeman just down there in Piccadilly. You don't mean that Rudyard " She pushed the sjambok away from her. "Yes terribly." "Then I suppose the insolence was terrible enough to justify it." "Quite, I think." Jasmine's voice was calm. "But of course it is not usual in these parts." "Rudyard is not usual in these parts, or Krool either.
"Lor'! what a turn you give me, Mr. Krool, spookin' about where there's no call for you to be," she had said to him, and below stairs she had enlarged upon his enormities greatly. "And Mrs. Byng, she not like him better as we do," was the comment of Lablanche, the lady's maid. "A snake in the grass that is what Madame think." Slowly the night passed for Krool.
"I was hurt. They take me hospital, but the Baas, he send for me." "They let you come without a guard?" "No not. They are outside" Krool jerked a finger towards the rear of the house "with the biltong and the dop." "You are a liar, Krool. There may be biltong, but there is no dop." "What matters!" Krool's face had a leer.
It's the way to make you straight and true, my sweet Krool." Still keeping his eyes fixed on Krool's eyes, his hand reached out and slowly took the sjambok from the table. He ran the cruel thing through his fingers as does a prison expert the cat-o'-nine-tails before laying on the lashes of penalty.
In the presence of Jews like Sobieski it seemed so droll that this half-caste should talk about the God of Israel, and link Oom Paul's name with that of Christ the great liberator as partners in triumph. In all the years Krool had been in England he had never been inside a place of worship or given any sign of that fanaticism which, all at once, he made manifest.
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