“Yes, we’re pretty average swine, even the best of us, when we’re up against it, and I lay no claims to be a plaster saint. But Fate had decreed that Jimmy Mainwaring was to find the end which he craved for quicker than he had anticipated. Moreover—and that’s what I’ve always been glad about—it had decreed that he was to find it before drink had rotted that iron constitution of his; while his boots still shone and his silk shirts remained spotless. It had decreed that he was to find it in the way of all others that he would have chosen, had such a wild improbability ever suggested itself. Which is going ahead a bit fast with the yarn—but no matter. “It was after I’d been there about three months that the incident happened which was destined to be the indirect cause of his death. I told you, didn’t I, that there were several Dago traders who lived up in the foot-hills, and on the night in question three of them had come down to Nwambi on business of some sort—amongst them one Pedro Salvas, who was as unpleasant a specimen of humanity as I have ever met. A crafty, orange-skinned brute, who indulged, according to common knowledge, in every known form of vice, and a good many unknown ones too. The three of them were sitting at a table near the door when Mainwaring lounged in—and McAndrew’s words came back to me. The Dagos had been drinking; Jimmy looked in his most uncompromising mood. He paused at the door, and stared at each of them in turn through his eyeglass; then he turned his back on them and came over to me. “I glanced over his shoulder at the three men, and realised there was trouble coming. They’d been whispering and muttering together the whole evening, though at the time I had paid no attention. But now Pedro Salvas, with an ugly flush on his ugly face, had risen and was coming towards the bar. “‘If one so utterly unworthy as I,’ he snarled, ‘may venture to speak to the so very exclusive Englishman, I would suggest that he does not throw pictures of his lady-loves about the streets.’ “He was holding something in his hand, and Jimmy swung round like a panther. His hand went to his breast pocket; then I saw what the Dago was holding out. It was the miniature of a girl. And after that I didn’t see much more; I didn’t even have time to take cover. It seemed to me that the lightning movement of Jimmy’s left hand as he grabbed the miniature, and the terrific upper-cut with his right, were simultaneous. Anyway, the next second he was putting the picture back in his breast pocket, and the Dago, snarling like a mad dog, was picking himself out of a medley of broken bottles. That was phase one. Phase two was equally rapid, and left me blinking. There was the crack of a revolver, and at the same moment a knife stuck out quivering in the wall behind my head. Then there was a silence, and I collected my scattered wits.