The fact that the foreigner in question appeared to be giving him full attention did not abate Major Porter's prejudice in the slightest.

"She can't be more than about twenty-five," he went on. "And a widow for the second time. Or at any rate - that's what she thinks..."

He paused, hoping for curiosity - for comment. Not getting it, he nevertheless went doggedly on:

"Matter of fact I've got my own ideas about that. Queer business. As I told you, I knew her first husband, Underhay. Nice fellow - district commissioner in Nigeria at one time. Absolutely dead keen on his job - first-class chap. He married this girl in Capetown. She was out there with some touring company. Very down on her luck, and pretty and helpless and all that. Listened to poor old Underhay raving about his district and the great wide open spaces - and breathed out, 'Wasn't it wonderful?' and how she wanted 'to get away from everything.' Well, she married him and got away from it. He was very much in love, poor fellow - but the thing didn't tick over from the first. She hated the bush and was terrified of the natives and was bored to death. Her idea of life was to go round to the local and meet the theatrical crowd and talk shop. Solitude a deux in the jungle wasn't at all her cup of tea. Mind you, I never met her myself - I heard all this from poor old Underhay. It hit him pretty hard. He did the decent thing, sent her home and agreed to give her a divorce. It was just after that that I met him. He was all on edge and in the mood when a man's got to talk. He was a funny old- fashioned kind of chap in some ways - an R.Q., and he didn't care for divorce. He said to me, 'There are other ways of giving a woman her freedom.' 'Now, look here, old boy,' I said, 'don't go doing anything foolish. No woman in the world is worth putting a bullet through your head.'

"He said that that wasn't his idea at all. 'But I'm a lonely man,' he said.

'Got no relations to bother about me. If a report of my death gets back, that will make Rosaleen a widow, which is what she wants.' 'And what about you?' I said. 'Well,' he said, 'maybe a Mr Enoch Arden will turn up somewhere a thousand miles or so away and start life anew.' 'Might be awkward for her some day,' I warned him. 'Oh, no,' he says, 'I'd play the game. Robert Underhay would be dead all right.'

"Well, I didn't think any more of it, but six months later I heard that Underhay had died of fever up in the bush somewhere. His natives were a trustworthy lot and they came back with a good circumstantial tale and a few last words scrawled in Underhay's writing saying they'd done all they could for him, and he was afraid he was pegging out, and praising up his headman. That man was devoted to him and so were all the others. Whatever he told them to swear to, they would swear to. So there it is... Maybe Underhay's buried up country in the midst of equatorial Africa but maybe he isn't - and if he isn't Mrs Gordon Cloade may get a shock one day. And serve her right, I say. I never met her, but I know the sound of a little gold digger! She broke up poor old Underhay all right. It's an interesting story."