While here there are letters, and there's
an office, and there's a desk in the office and everything he loathes
and can't do with. You'll see Durrance will turn up right enough, though
he won't hurry about it."
"He is three weeks overdue," objected the colonel, "and he's methodical
after a fashion. I am afraid."
Major Walters pointed out his arm to the white empty desert across the
river.
"If he had travelled that way, westward, I might agree," he said. "But
Durrance went east through the mountain country toward Berenice and the
Red Sea. The tribes he went to visit were quiet, even in the worst
times, when Osman Digna lay before Suakin."
The colonel, however, took no comfort from Walters's confidence. He
tugged at his moustache and repeated, "He is three weeks overdue."
Lieutenant Calder knocked the ashes from his pipe and refilled it. He
leaned forward in his chair as he pressed the tobacco down with his
thumb, and he said slowly:--
"I wonder. It is just possible that some sort of trap was laid for
Durrance. I am not sure. I never mentioned before what I knew, because
until lately I did not suspect that it could have anything to do with
his delay.
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