Then there was what Colles had told me about the place being queer, how nobody would stay long either in the store or the schoolhouse.

Then there was my talk with Aitken at Lourenco Marques, and his story of a great wizard in the neighbourhood to whom all Kaffirs made pilgrimages, and the suspicion of a diamond pipe.

Last and most important, there was this perpetual spying on myself.

It was as clear as daylight that the place held some secret, and I wondered if old Japp knew.

I was fool enough one day to ask him about diamonds.
He met me with contemptuous laughter.