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    course,” Vachell said, “but if I use a microscope on everybody’s kit it isn’t likely to do any good. If the thief has any sense he buried the stuff a foot deep in the bush an hour after he took it. If he left any prints on the safe, which isn’t likely, they’re all mussed up by now. Will you help me out, Lady Baradale? Do you have any suspicions?”
    Lady Baradale kept her attention fixed on her nails. The mask was still without expression, but her nostrils and the muscles of her mouth
    contracted slightly.
    “None that I can substantiate — yet,” she said.
    “I’d prefer that you use your own judgement. I’d like to make one thing quite clear. I want my jewels back, whoever took them. If your inquiries lead you to some — well, distasteful results, go right ahead and don’t spare any feelings.”
    “The police aren’t very squeamish over feelings,”
    Vachell said.
    He said goodnight and walked thoughtfully
    back across the grass, the clinging scent of Chanel No. 5 still in his nostrils. One thing, at any rate, he thought, was clear. Lady Baradale had made her own guess as to who had stolen her jewels; and she was reluctant to admit the truth of her suspicions.
    41

CHAPTER
FIVE
    Kimotho, a smiling, sturdily built native with the usual close-cropped woolly head, flat nose, and prognathous lips of his kind, brought his master’s tea at five o’clock next morning. Through the triangle formed by the end of his tent Vachell could see night and stars and a faint thinning of the blackness that meant that dawn was spreading behind the hills.
    “It is very early,” Kimotho remarked in
    Kiswahili. He spoke with feeling. “But you told me to wake you when the other bwana was called.
    He has had his tea, and now his boy is packing his bed. Why does he want to leave before the lions go to sleep?”
    Vachell extricated himself from his mosquitonet and gulped his steaming tea. He slipped into a shirt and shorts, pulled on a couple of woolly sweaters, and stepped out of the tent. The sky was oyster-grey behind the towering hills to the right.
    Shapes of trees began to loom mysteriously in the 42
    half-light. There was a heavy dew and the grass felt chilly through the soles of his shoes. The air was sharp and cold in his lungs.
    He found Englebrecht loading the last of his
    possessions into one of the Plymouths by the light of a safari lamp. Vachell explained the situation briefly. The hunter’s face was invisible in the darkness, but his surprise at the news of the jewel theft seemed to be genuine. He raised objections, however, when he heard that his luggage, his person, and the car would have to be searched.
    “It will take too long,” he protested. “I am no thief.”
    “What’s the hurry? You haven’t a train to
    catch,” Vachell observed.
    Englebrecht shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, well, all right,” he said. “You’d better be satisfied.”
    He stood by, scowling, while Kimotho held up
    a lamp and Vachell opened bags, gun-cases,
    bedding, and boxes and spread every item on the ground. The hunter’s armoury consisted of a
    Westley-Richards .318, a 9.3 mm. MannlicherSchonnauer, and a shot-gun. Vachell asked him,
    casually, why he hadn’t a heavy rifle.
    “I’ve got a .470 like yours,” Englebrecht
    answered. “I’ve lent it to Rutley, though. The clients on this safari are so mean they never let him do any shooting, and he hasn’t got a rifle of his own, so he borrowed mine. I’m not sorry to be leaving.”
    The bright stars faded and the dark night paled 43
    to a rich blue as the hunt proceeded. Vachell took his time, searched carefully, and found nothing.
    Inspection of the car and of the hunter’s clothes yielded no more. Englebrecht grew more and
    more impatient.
    “Okay,” Vachell said at last . “You’ve nothing to declare. Hope I haven’t made you late for an appointment.”
    Englebrecht only grunted in reply. He and the driver, who was going to Malabeya to return the