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‘I must go to the mountain. There is something there for me.’ Her whisper was so soft he might have imagined it. ‘He will never take me. You must.’ There was the slightest check in her voice, and then she said, ‘Please, Badger.’ The heartfelt plea and the new pet name with which she had dubbed him made him catch his breath.

‘What is the matter, Courtney?’ Graf Otto called. Always alert, he had sensed something.

‘I am angry that the clasp was locked. It might have been dangerous for Fräulein von Wellberg.’ Leon drew out his knife and used the blade to prise open the clasp. ‘It will be all right now,’ he assured Eva. They were still screened by the mare, so he dared to stroke the back of the hand that lay on the saddle. She did not pull it away.

‘Mount up! We must ride on,’ Graf Otto ordered. ‘We have wasted enough time here. I wish to fly back to Nairobi today. We must reach the airstrip while there is still sufficient daylight for the flight.’ They rode hard, but the sun was lying red and bleeding on the horizon, like a dying morani on his shield, when at last they scrambled up the ladder into the cockpit of the Butterfly. Inexperienced as he was, even Leon knew that Graf Otto had cut the take-off beyond the limits of safety. At this season of the year twilight would be short-lived: it would be dark in less than an hour.

When they crossed the wall of the Rift Valley they were flying just high enough to catch the last rays of the sun, but the earth below was already shrouded in impenetrable purple shadow. Suddenly the sun was gone, snuffed out like a candle, and there was no afterglow.

They flew on in darkness, until Leon picked out the tiny cluster of lights far ahead that marked the town, insignificant as fireflies in the dark immensity of the land. It was completely dark when at last they were over the polo ground. Graf Otto repeatedly revved, then throttled back on the engines as he circled. Suddenly the headlights of the two Meerbach trucks lit up below them, at opposite ends of the landing field, shining down the grassy runway. Gustav Kilmer had heard the Butterfly’s engines and hurried to the rescue of his beloved master.

Guided by the lights Graf Otto put the Butterfly down on the turf as gently as a broody hen settling on a clutch of eggs.

Leon believed that the flying visit to Percy’s Camp down in the Rift Valley and the wild buffalo hunt in the thorn signalled the commencement of the safari in earnest. He thought that the Graf was at last ready to head out into the blue. His assumption was incorrect.

The second morning after their return from Percy’s Camp and the nocturnal landing at the polo ground, Graf Otto sat at the head of the breakfast table at Tandala Camp with a dozen envelopes stacked in front of him. Every one was a response to the official letters from the German Foreign Office in Berlin that Max Rosenthal had distributed to all the dignitaries of British East Africa.

Graf Otto translated excerpts from each missive to Eva, who was sitting opposite him nibbling daintily on slices of fruit. It seemed that all of Nairobi society was agog to have in their midst a man like Graf Otto von Meerbach. Like any other frontier town, Nairobi needed little excuse for a party, and he was the best excuse they had been presented with since the opening of the Muthaiga Country Club three years previously. Every letter contained an invitation.

The governor of the colony was hosting a special dinner at Government House in his honour. Lord Delamere was holding a formal ball at his new Norfolk Hotel to welcome him and Fräulein von Wellberg to the territory. The committee of the Muthaiga Country Club had voted Graf Otto an honorary member and, not to be outdone by Delamere, were also throwing a ball to initiate him into club membership. The officer commanding His Britannic Majesty’s armed forces in East Africa, Brigadier General Penrod Ballantyne’s invitation was to a banquet at the regimental mess. Lord Charlie Warboys had invited the couple to a four-day pigsticking party on his fifty-thousand-acre estate on the edge of the Rift Valley. The Nairobi Polo Club had voted Graf Otto full membership, and asked him to play on their first team in a challenge match against the King’s African Rifles on the first Saturday of the coming month.

Graf Otto was delighted by the furore he had stirred up. Listening to him discuss each invitation with Eva, Leon realized that their departure from Nairobi had receded to some time in the remote future. Graf Otto accepted every one of the invitations, and in return issued his own to spectacular dinners, banquets and balls that he would host at the Norfolk, the Muthaiga or out at Tandala Camp. Leon now understood why he had sent out such enormous supplies of food and drink on the SS Silbervogel.