Ellams made a sign of agreement, and gave Wyndham an apologetic glance. "You see what this implies?" "I think I see. My uncle was getting native habits; he was getting an influence----" "He stopped away from the factory longer. Men with tattoo marks I didn't know came down and talked to him, and sometimes brought no trade. I thought he ran risks and warned him, but he laughed. It went on, and we were getting rich when the change began. Our trade did not fall off much, but one felt a difference----" Ellams paused, and looked thoughtful when he resumed: "I can't altogether make things plain; there was a feeling of insecurity, and Wyndham's moodiness got worse. He did not go away so much, and locked his room door at night. I think he did not sleep and took some draught; not drugs white men use, but stuff the negroes make. When he did sleep, he was strangely hard to rouse. He was cool and as nearly fearless as any man I knew, but he began to look haggard and start at unexpected sounds. One morning I could not wake him and went round to the veranda window. Wyndham was fast asleep and a gun lay across his bed. He was a good shot with a pistol, but this was a heavy duck-gun that threw an ounce and a quarter of shot. Well, I was getting nervy, and the factory boys would not stop--it looked as if they knew something was wrong. I began to wonder how long Wyndham could keep it up." The others were quiet when Ellams reached for the cocktail jug and finding it empty filled his pipe. Marston had spent some weeks on the African coast and sympathized with the agent. When one had seen the country and breathed the foul miasma that saps the white man's strength, one could understand the strain Ellams talked about. It was a daunting country and the gloom of its steamy forests was the shadow of death. "After all," said Ellams, "there was no theatrical climax. One day a launch brought us a cablegram. Wyndham was wanted at home, the ebb tide was running and a mailboat was due to call at Takana lagoon. In an hour _Columbine_ dropped down stream and my notion is it was a relief to Wyndham the cablegram arrived. If it had not arrived, he would have stayed. He was that kind of man." "Had you trouble afterwards?" Marston asked. "I had not. It was as if a shadow had melted. The strain had gone." "Then it looks as if my uncle, alone, were threatened." Wyndham remarked. Ellams nodded. "Yes. I think it was, so to speak, a personal thing. For all that, our trade got slack and has not since touched the mark it reached in your uncle's time. Well, I think that's all, and perhaps I have talked too much." "If you'll mix another cocktail, we'll go to bed," Wyndham replied and when, a few minutes afterwards, he went to his room stopped at the door. "This is where Rupert Wyndham slept with the gun beside him, I suppose?" he said. "I wonder what he dreamed about!"