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There the strange gentleman would join him, to put his hand on his shoulder, soothe him in a low voice. Then one morning Mr. Teck's rooms were empty; and the hotel clerk handed Parr an envelope containing some banknotes and the scrawl, "Good-by. God bless you. Remember, keep quiet." "Here it is, ma'am."
He had "drifted about," a reproach, perhaps, to a certain human callousness engendered by the tropics, till finally an old friend of Lawrence Teck's had appeared from Mozambique, found him sitting in tatters on the steps of a grogshop, and paid his passage home. "You should have let me know," she said remorsefully. He hung his head.
"Why, when you come down to it, I suppose perhaps he is when he is at home," said the man. "He's a jolly good sort, though. He's the Earl of Craycourt." "And who is the chap beside my cousin?" asked Velo, steadying his voice with difficulty. "The Prince of Teck's second son," answered the writer. Velo's curiosity rather disgusted him. "Anybody else you would like to know about?"
We have never conquered the Mambava; they are a ferocious people, and the man who enters their country does so at his own risk. Had it not been that Mr. Teck's venture, because of his peculiar relationship to King Muene-Motapa, might end in winning over the Mambava to peaceful labor and trade, we should never have given permission. As for you, madam, such a journey is not to be thought of.
"I know him," he said. "His name is John Smith." The doctor was working rapidly with restoratives. "John Smith?" he repeated. "This is the Prince of Teck's oldest son, and his brother was killed an hour ago. We must keep this fellow alive," he went on, doggedly. "First time I met him he was just an hour old. He won't go out of this world yet if I can help it!"
To one of the little fires came softly Lawrence Teck's tent boy, a turbaned Persian, lemon-hued, with the beak of a parrot and the mouth of a cruel woman. He sat down close beside a Swahili gun bearer, who was frying a mess of white ants. "Our Bwana has fallen asleep," he uttered in a voice that would have been inaudible to white men. "The other Bwana is sitting by the bed."
Then, with a sickening leap of her heart, she realized that this was Parr, who had been Lawrence Teck's valet. He had thought she would want to receive from him, promptly on his return, a first-hand report on that African tragedy. "But where have you been all this time?" He had been a long while recovering from the wound that had crippled him, and from the black-water fever.
"Have you telephoned to the Brassfields?" "Yes," she said, with a wan smile, "and caused quite a sensation." A small, wiry, middle-aged man, with an honest, lantern-jawed face, entered the living room bearing a breakfast tray. After one glance, keeping his eyes cast down, he bowed respectfully. He was Parr, Lawrence Teck's valet in America and right-hand man in Africa.
He stared in stupefaction at Lawrence Teck's stony countenance, then suddenly burst into sobs. "See how I love him!" he moaned, "and yet he hates me; and I shall never be great." The prisoner thought to himself, "Now, if ever, is the time." He laid his hands on the shoulders of the king with a movement at once commanding and compassionate.
The languor of those recumbent figures was abruptly disturbed, at the apparition of a woman clad in snowy linen, who advanced between a tall, young Zanzibar Arab and a small, limping white man, with the step of a convalescent, but with eyes that were filled with an extraordinary resolution. That evening, at the club house, one brought word to the rest that she was Lawrence Teck's wife.
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