"That is the mystery," he agreed. "I did little enough, but I was going to be thanked--till I disclosed my name. Then," he shrugged his shoulders, "you saw."
He meditated a minute. Then he burst out laughing.
"I was not allowed even to hold him, and I am not at all sure that I am not his guardian!" he said suddenly.
Rattier's surprise was evident, but he managed to concentrate it in a monosyllable.
"I was coming home from China at the time of the marriage of my cousin Landon with this child's mother. I broke my journey in New York specially to attend it. And Landon, merely as a form, asked me as his kinsman to be a party to his settlement. In certain circumstances, including his death, I was to be one of the trustees for his children."
"No, my friend. Merely divorced. Where do I come in--where?"
"Suppose we sit down long enough to smoke a cigarette," suggested Aylmer. "Perhaps the thump I received just now has had a disastrous effect upon my limited intelligence, but I confess that Miss Van Arlen's deportment remains a matter of mystery. What have I done?"
Despard laughed gently. He had strolled back from the camp to meet his friends and had found them superintending the obsequies of the boar. These were performed by a Spaniard, one of the human jetsam cast up everywhere along the North African coast by tides of hazard and adventure which set from every quarter of the Mediterranean. The true son of Islam will not touch the _haloof_, the unclean jungle pig. And so Señor Bernardo Albareda, penniless derelict and strongly suspected of being a fugitive from the Spanish convict establishment at Melilla, was extracting the tusks. He held them up with a dramatic gesture of admiration.
"Twice the length of my central finger, which is not a short one!" he remarked airily, and used the occasion to exhibit the elegances of a hand which had patently not occupied itself lately with manual toil. One or two of his compatriots, who had been among the beaters, were given the task of disposing of the flesh and bristles, and departed under his escort, carrying their burdens dependent from a couple of poles, the Arabs hastening to avoid even the shadow of contamination which they cast, and spitting with undisguised disfavor as they passed. Despard accepted his comrade's invitation and joined the other two upon the seat which they had made of a fallen mimosa stump in the shadow of the olive.