go to Brussels--stay with us!"

"Nothing of the sort, Fred. But you three keep together. They're
going to watch you. You watch them. Watch Schillingschen particularly
closely, if you find him. The closer they watch you, the more likely
they are to lose sight of me. I'll take care to have several red
herrings drawn across my trail after I reach London. Perhaps I'll
return down the west coast and travel up the Congo River. At any rate,
when I do come, and whichever way I come, I'll have everything legal,
in writing. Let your game be to seem mysterious. Seem to know more
than you do, but don't tell anybody anything. Above all, listen!"

Fred leaned back in his chair and laughed.

"Didums!" he said. "This is the idioticest wild goose chase we ever
started on! I admit I nosed it. I gave tongue first. But think of
it--here we are--four sensible men--hitherto sensible--off after ivory
that nobody can really prove exists, said to be buried somewhere in a
tract of half-explored country more than a thousand miles each way--and
the German government, and half the criminals in Africa already on our
idiotic heels!"

"Yet the German government and the crooks seem convinced, too, that
there's something worth looking for!" laughed Monty. And none of us
could answer that.

For that matter, none of us would have been willing to withdraw from
the search, however dim the prospect of success might seem in the
intervals when cold reason shed its comfortless rays on us. Intuition,
or whatever it is that has proved superior so often to worldly wisdom
(temptation, Fred calls it!) outweighed reason, and Fred himself would
have been last to agree to forego the search.

The voyage is short between Zanzibar and Mombasa, but there was
incident. We were spied on after very thorough fashion, Lady Saffren
Waldon's title and gracious bearing (when that suited her) being
practical weapons. The purser was Goanese--beside himself with the
fumes of flattery. He had a pass-key, so the Syrian maid went through
our cabins and searched thoroughly everything except the wallet of
important papers that Monty kept under his shirt. The first and second
officers were rather young, unmarried men possessed of limitless
ignorance of the wiles of such as Lady Waldon. It was they who signed
a paper recommending Coutlass to the B. I. agents and a lot of other
reputable people in Mombasa and elsewhere, thus offsetting the
possibility that the a