But now I begin to wonder. You remember the night before he
started?"
"Yes," said Dawson, and he hitched his chair a little nearer. Calder was
the one man in Wadi Halfa who could claim something like intimacy with
Durrance. Despite their difference in rank there was no great disparity
in age between the two men, and from the first when Calder had come
inexperienced and fresh from England, but with a great ardour to acquire
a comprehensive experience, Durrance in his reticent way had been at
pains to show the newcomer considerable friendship. Calder, therefore,
might be likely to know.
"I too remember that night," said Walters. "Durrance dined at the mess
and went away early to prepare for his journey."
"His preparations were made already," said Calder. "He went away early,
as you say. But he did not go to his quarters. He walked along the
river-bank to Tewfikieh."
Wadi Halfa was the military station, Tewfikieh a little frontier town to
the north separated from Halfa by a mile of river-bank. A few Greeks
kept stores there, a few bare and dirty cafes faced the street between
native cook-shops and tobacconists'; a noisy little town where the negro
from the Dinka country jolted the fellah from the Delta, and the air was
torn with many dialects; a thronged little town, which yet lacked to
European ears one distinctive element of a throng.
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