The Man in the Brown Suit - Agatha Christie [33]
This was received by a roar of applause. I drank some champagne.
‘On another occasion,’ I remarked, ‘this friend of mine had a second curious experience. He was trekking across country, and being anxious to arrive at his destination before the heat of the day he ordered his boys to inspan whilst it was still dark. They had some trouble in doing so, as the mules were very restive, but at last they managed it, and a start was made. The mules raced along like the wind, and when daylight came they saw why. In the darkness, the boys had inspanned a lion as the near wheeler.’
This, too, was well received, a ripple of merriment going round the table, but I am not sure that the greatest tribute did not come from my friend the Labour Member, who remained pale and serious.
‘My God!’ he said anxiously. ‘Who un’ arnessed them?’
‘I must go to Rhodesia,’ said Mrs Blair. ‘After what you have told us, Colonel Race, I simply must. It’s a horrible journey though, five days in the train.’
‘You must join me in my private car,’ I said gallantly.
‘Oh, Sir Eustace, how sweet of you! Do you really mean it?’
‘Do I mean it!’ I exclaimed reproachfully, and drank another glass of champagne.
‘Just about another week, and we shall be in South Africa,’ sighed Mrs Blair.
‘Ah, South Africa,’ I said sentimentally, and began to quote from a recent speech of mine at the Colonial Institute. ‘What has South Africa to show the world? What indeed? Her fruit and her farms, her wool and her wattles, her herds and her hides, her gold mines and her diamonds–’
I was hurrying on, because I knew that as soon as I paused Reeves would butt in and inform me that the hides were worthless because the animals hung themselves up on barbed wire or something of that sort, would crab everything else, and end up with the hardships of the miners on the Rand. And I was not in the mood to be abused as a Capitalist. However, the interruption came from another source at the magic word diamonds.
‘Diamonds!’ said Mrs Blair ecstatically.
‘Diamonds!’ breathed Miss Beddingfeld.
They both addressed Colonel Race.
‘I suppose you’ve been to Kimberley?’
I had been to Kimberley too, but I didn’t manage to say so in time. Race was being inundated with questions. What were mines like? Was it true that the natives were kept shut up in compounds? And so on.
Race answered their questions and showed a good knowledge of his subject. He described the methods of housing the natives, the searches instituted, and the various precautions that De Beers took.
‘Then it’s practically impossible to steal any diamonds?’ asked Mrs Blair with as keen an air of disappointment as though she had been journeying there for the express purpose.
‘Nothing’s impossible, Mrs Blair. Thefts do occur–like the case I told you of where the Kafir hid the stone in his wound.’
‘Yes, but on a large scale?’
‘Once, in recent years. Just before the War, in fact. You must remember the case, Pedler. You were in South Africa at the time?’
I nodded.
‘Tell us,’ cried Miss Beddingfeld. ‘Oh, do tell us!’
Race smiled.
‘Very well, you shall have the story. I suppose most of you have heard of Sir Laurence Eardsley, the great South African mining magnate? His mines were gold mines, but he comes into the story through his son. You may remember that just before the War rumours were afield of a new potential Kimberley hidden somewhere in the rocky floor of the British Guiana jungles. Two young explorers, so it was reported, had returned from that part of South America bringing with them a remarkable collection of rough diamonds, some of them of considerable size. Diamonds of small size had been found before in the neighbourhood of the Essequibo and Mazaruni rivers, but these two young men, John Eardsley and his friend Lucas, claimed to have discovered beds of great carbon deposits at the common head of two streams. The diamonds were of every colour, pink, blue, yellow, green, black,