“Won’t it be dangerous?” asked a voice from the doorway, and they turned to find Niellsen standing there. So engrossed had all inside the tent been that they had failed to note his approach.
He put down his motion picture camera and pulling a camp chair toward him sank into it with a sigh of weariness.
“I gathered enough to understand a trip to some place which might become hot for us is under discussion,” he said. “What about it?”
Mr. Hampton explained, adding: “Like you, I’m afraid it may be too dangerous to undertake. At least, that is,” he added hastily to forestall the remonstrances which all three boys looked prepared to make, “we can go part of the way. Certainly, into the volcanic region. But whether we push on amongst the disturbed tribes where this medicine man, The Prophet, is supposed to be operating will have to depend on circumstances.”
The faces of the three boys grew bright again. “Oh, of course,” agreed Jack, quickly.
“But what I can’t understand,” added Bob, harking back to the question he had earlier propounded to Frank, “is why this chap Ransome is going in. Does he have plenty of money and time to go running around like this? And why did he call us and ask us to go along? Why has he been waiting at Entebbe for a week, trying to get us, instead of setting out?”
Mr. Hampton knew more than he was prepared to state. Had the boys but known, which they did not, they would have suspected as much from the fact that at Kisumu he had been in closest conversation for more than an hour with Ransome, the ostensible invalid trader, in a locked room at the Club. But of that conference they were unaware. This much, however, he did state:
“I believe him to be a secret agent of the British government, fellows. And, although the Mountains of the Moon lie in Belgian territory, yet Great Britain is vitally interested in anything which may tend to upset conditions amongst the natives. As to his reasons for wishing us to accompany him, it is possible that Mr. Ransome wants us to act as a cloak for him.”
“I see,” said Frank. “You mean that if we go in to take motion picture records of events, he can go along as a member of the expedition without arousing suspicion as to his real status?”