"Why, yes, Mr. Pons. Which reminds me, I am afraid I inadvertently forgot it when I left your chambers."
"It is quite safe, Colonel. Allow me to pass it to you. You are certainly not infirm, so I assume you do a great deal of walking."
Colonel d'Arcy nodded, taking the glass of pink gin from me with a grunt of satisfaction. He looked approvingly at both of us over the rim as he gave us a silent toast. I poured whiskey for myself and Pons and resumed my seat by the fire. The dog Toto crawled toward the fender and looked at his master with unwinking yellow eyes. Pons could not resist a little glance of triumph at me.
The colonel put down his glass with a satisfied air.
"I do a great deal of walking, it's true. And I treasure this stick."
"A gift, I see," said Pons. "I took the liberty of reading the inscription."
Colonel d'Arcy nodded.
"From West Africa. I was in the colonial service there. Retired a year ago."
"At the age of fifty-five, I would venture," said Pons, a malicious glint in his eye.
"Why, yes, Mr. Pons, though I do not see how you could possibly know that"
"Just a guess, Colonel. You were an administrator?"
"District commissioner at Urundi. My friends in the Planters' Club gave me the stick."
"Which Toto, as I observed, is in the habit of carrying"
Our visitor looked at Pons once more in amazement and then burst into a short laugh.
"That is true, Mr. Pons, though how on earth you know these things…"
"Oh, I was just indulging in a little exercise in deductive analysis from your stick, with Parker here, before you arrived, Colonel. It was not without its amusing aspects. Parker had you down as an elderly invalid who had retired from an urban council.
"Come, Pons," I protested. "That is unfair. I was only making a tentative shot at the facts, at your invitation."
"Life is unfair, Parker," said Solar Pons, leaning back in his chair and favoring me with a reassuring smile. "Have the satisfaction of knowing that you have done no worse in the matter and certainly better than most. But we are forgetting your problem, Colonel, in these little speculations. You do have a problem, or you would not have come to consult me?"
Our visitor nodded. He passed his hand across his thick black beard, and his face had assumed a serious aspect.
"I have indeed, Mr. Pons. It is something quite outside my normal experience."
Solar Pons rubbed his thin fingers together.
"That is what this agency exists for. Please continue."
The colonel took another sip of his pink gin and rested the glass in his big, capable hands as his somber eyes probed the glowing depths of the wood fire before him. At that moment I seemed to see him in faraway places in Africa; he must have sat many times like that in the bush, by the warmth of a campfire, with the strange night noises of Africa sounding through the jungle. Then he appeared to recollect himself with a slight start.
"You must forgive me, Mr. Pons, but this business has rattled me a little, I can tell you. As you gathered, I retired last year from the colonial service at the age of fifty-five. I had come into some money from a relative who had died and left me a considerable property in England. I was a bachelor, in good health, and I decided that it would be pleasant to return to the U.K. to live in some comfort and to see what life had still to offer. I had missed a good deal of a domestic nature in my years in the wild. Though I am in middle-age, I am a vigorous person and not too ugly, as you see."
Colonel d'Arcy paused and gave Pons a brief smile.
"You had hoped, as do so many returning expatriates, to find a suitable lady who would join her destiny to yours in matrimony," said Solar Pons, returning the smile. "I trust you have been successful."
Our visitor's face glowed.
"Mr. Pons, if you could only meet the young lady in question. Miss Mortimer is the most charming, the most…"
"I am sure that is so," said Pons, interrupting the colonel's flow. "But I must ask you to keep to the nature of the problem before us."
The colonel shrugged wryly.
"I do get rather carried away by Miss Mortimer, Mr. Pons," he said. "You do right to recall me to the point, though the lady's position has some bearing on the matter."
He shifted his posture in the chair and looked curiously at Pons's old slipper on the fender, from which an ounce packet of shag projected.
"My uncle, Silas Renfrew, was an eccentric, Mr. Pons. His estate would have passed to his son, my cousin, but he died while I was still in Africa. Instead, my uncle chose to leave the property to me. It is a big old rambling place in Essex, with a considerable acreage of grounds and woodland."
Pons sat with his fingers tented before him, his eyes lidded, every aspect of his body denoting his alertness.
"The legacy was a considerable one also, Colonel d'Arcy?"
Our visitor nodded, bending to affectionately cuff the massive head of the dog stretched in contentment in front of him.
"It was totally unexpected, as I think I mentioned, Mr. Pons. I had saved a good deal on my own account and of course my colonial pension left me well provided for."
Solar Pons leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes tightly.
"I am afraid I must ask you to be more specific, Colonel. It is the legacy I am concerned with."
The colonel hesitated a short moment.
It was in excess of a hundred thousand pounds, Mr. Pons. In addition I am advised by my uncle's lawyer that the estate itself is worth almost as much again."
Solar Pons opened his eyes and looked at our visitor intently.
"A considerable fortune, Colonel. It was as well to establish that at the outset."
Pons ignored the startled look the colonel gave him and waited for him to go on.
"Well, sir, I settled in at The Briars, as the estate is called. It is in a lonely spot on the Essex marshes, some miles from Tolleshunt D'Arcy with which my family has a distant connection, I believe. There is a largish village nearby, and some sizable country houses; otherwise it is fairly wild and lonely country, Mr. Pons. I had been there some months when I met Miss Claire Mortimer, a neighboring landowner's daughter, who has now consented to become my wife. She is a lady of some thirty-three years and I am a good deal older than she, though she thinks that of no account"
Colonel d'Arcy cleared his throat and drained his glass. I hastened to refill it for him, and our visitor resumed his discourse.
"The Briars is a pretty old house, Mr. Pons, though not as old as some in those parts. It was about this time last year that I settled in with my traps, and various trophies. I bought some new furniture and made a few changes, but I kept on the housekeeper and the three or four other members of the existing staff.
"It was from the housekeeper, Mrs. Karswell, that I heard the stories about my uncle, Mr. Pons. He had had some connection with West Africa too, strangely enough, and had an interest in tribal matters. But toward the end of his life he had an abiding fear of something which he felt might be coming for him. As I said, he settled his money on my cousin, Adrian Renfrew."
"The young man who died?"
"Under mysterious circumstances, Mr. Pons. Some weeks before, my uncle had occasion to go into his library one evening. He found a small carved idol on his desk, which threw him into a fearful state. It was a crude, primitively constructed thing with tribal markings. The Ipi, I believe, an obscure sect in Africa, who practice devil worship."
"He could not find out where the thing had come from?"
Colonel d'Arcy shook his head.
"No one knew anything about it, Mr. Pons. Or no one would say, which came to the same thing so far as my uncle was concerned. The housekeeper told me all this, you understand. But he evidently took it as some sort of frightful warning and had the grounds locked and the house bolted and barred at night. There were some who said he made money at the slave trade. I don't know how true that is, Mr. Pons. But apparently the warning, if warning it was, was not intended for him, because something struck at his son.