"Would you be surprised to hear that I obtain a good deal of astonishingly accurate information through the same source, Sewin?" I answered. "In fact there is more than one person to whom it relates, who would be more than a little uncomfortable did they guess how much I knew about them." "Oh, then you run a nigger gossip shop as well as a nigger trading shop," he retorted, nastily. "But what a very unpleasant thing," hastily struck in his aunt, anxious to cover his rudeness. "Does that sort of thing happen here often?" "I never heard of a case before." "Probably the niggers murdered him and stowed him away somewhere," pronounced the irrepressible Falkner. "Even `niggers' don't do that sort of thing without a motive, and here there was none. Less by a long way than had it been your case," I was tempted to add, but didn't. "No, I own it puzzles me. I shall take a ride over there in a day or two, and make a few enquiries on the spot, just as a matter of curiosity." "All the same it looks dashed fishy," said the Major. "D'you know, Glanton, I'm inclined to think Falkner may have hit it." "Nothing's absolutely impossible," I answered. "Still, I don't think that's the solution." "But the police--what do they think of it?" "So far they are stumped utterly and completely--nor can their native detectives rout out anything." "How very dreadful," said Mrs Sewin. "Really it makes one feel quite uncomfortable." "He lived alone, remember, Mrs Sewin, and there are plenty of you," I laughed, meaning to be reassuring. But I could see that a decidedly uncomfortable feeling had taken hold upon her mind, and tried to turn the conversation, blaming myself for a fool in having started such a subject at all on the top of the alarm the ladies had already been subjected to that morning. But they say there are compensations for everything, and mine came when just as they were preparing to start Mrs Sewin said to me: "I have a very great favour to ask you, Mr Glanton, and I hardly like doing so after all your kindness to us since yesterday and what has come of it. But--would you mind riding home with us this afternoon. After what has just happened we should feel so much safer if you would." I tried to put all the sincerity I could into my reassurances that no one would interfere with them, but apart from my own inclinations a certain anxious look on Aida Sewin's face as they waited for my answer decided me. "Why of course I will if it will be any help to you, Mrs Sewin," I said, and then again a quick grateful look from the same quarter caused me to tread on air, as I went round to see to the saddling up of the horses--my own among them.