lined. In dignified silence they gathered about the taller, younger
figure clad in a dark western-style suit and they moved forward into
the cool gloom of the warehouse.
Lij Mikhael was well over six feet in height, with a slight scholarly
stoop to his shoulders. His skin was the colour of dark honey and his
hair and beard were a thick. curly halo about the finely boned face,
with dark thoughtful eyes and the narrow nose with its
Semitic beak. Despite the stoop, he walked with the grace of a
swordsman and his teeth when he smiled were glisteningly white against
the dark skin.
"By Jove," said the Lij, in the drawling accent that echoed
Gareth's with surprising accuracy. "It is Forty swales isn't it?"
Major Gareth Swales's composure seemed to fall away, leaving him
tottering mentally at the use of a nickname he had last heard twenty
years before. He had been so branded when his unexpected attack of
flatus had clapped and echoed from the vaulted ceiling and stone walls
of College Chapel. He had hoped never to hear it spoken again, and now
its use took him back to that moment when he had stood in the cold
stone chapel and the waves of suppressed laughter had broken over his
head like physical blows.
The Prince laughed now, and touched the knot of his necktie. For the
first time Jake realized that the diagonal stripes were identical to
those that Gareth Swales wore at his own throat.
"Eton 1915 Waynflete's. I was Captain of the House. I gave you six
for smoking in the bogs don't you remember?"
"My God," gasped
Gareth. "Toffee Sagud. My God. I just don't know what to say."
"Try him with the old sign language, then," murmured Jake helpfully.
"Shut up, damn you," hissed Gareth, and then with a conscious effort he
resurrected the smile that lit the gloomy warehouse like the rising of
the sun.
"Your Excellency Toffee my dear fellow." He hurried forward with hand
outstretched. "What a great and unexpected pleasure." They shook
hands laughing, and the solemn dark faces of the elderly advisers
lightened with sympathetic merriment.
"Let me introduce my partner, Mr. Jake Barton of Texas.
Mr. Barton is a brilliant engineer and financier Jake, this is
His Excellency Lij Mikhael Wasan Sagud, Deputy Governor of Shoo and an
old and dear friend of mine." The Prince's hand was narrow-boned, cool
and firm. His gaze was quick and penetrating before he turned back
to
Gareth.
"When were you expelled? Summer of 1915 wasn't it?
Caught boffing one of the maids, as I recall."
"Good Lord, no!"
Gareth was horrified. "Never the hired help. Actually, it was the
house master's daughter."
"That's right. I remember now. You were famous went out in a blaze of
glory. Talk about your feat lasted for months. They said you went to
France with the Duke's, and did jolly well for yourself." Gareth made
a deprecating gesture, and Lij Mikhael asked, "Since then what have you
been doing, old chap?" Which was a thoroughly embarrassing question
for Gareth. He made a few airy gestures with his cheroot.
This and that, you know. One thing and another.
Business, you understand. Importing, exporting, buying and selling."
"Which brings us to the present business, does it not?" the
Prince asked gently.
"Indeed, it does," agreed Gareth and took the Prince's arm. "Now that
I realize who is buying, it only increases my pleasure in managing to
assemble a package of such high quality." The wooden crates were
stacked neatly along one wall of the warehouse.
"A .
"Fourteen Vickers machine guns, most of them straight from the factory
hardly a shot through the barrels-" They passed slowly down the array
of merchandise to where one of the machine guns had been uncrated and
set up on its tripod.
"As YOU can see, all first-class stuff." The five Ethiopians were all
warriors, from a long warlike line, and they had the true warrior's
love of and delight in the weapons of war. They crowded eagerly around
the gun.
Gareth winked at Jake, and went on, "One hundred and forty-four
Lee-Enfield service rifles, still in the grease-" Half a dozen of the
rifles had been cleaned and laid out on display.
No. 4 Warehouse was an Aladdin's Cave for them. The elderly courtiers
forgot their dignity, and fell upon the weapons like a flock of crows,
cackling in Amharic as they fondled the cold oiled steel.
They hoisted up the skirts of their shammas to crouch behind the
demonstration machine gun and traversed it happily, making the staccato
schoolboy imitations of automatic fire as they mowed down imaginary
hordes of their enemies.
Even Lij Mikhael forsook his Etonian manners and joined in the
delighted examination of the hoard, pushing aside an old greybeard of
seventy to take his place at the Vickers gun and triggering off a noisy
squabble amongst the others in which Gareth diplomatically
intervened.
"I say, Toffee, old chap. This isn't all I have for you. Not by a
long chalk. I've kept the plums for the last." And Jake helped him to
gather up the robed and bearded group of excited old men and herd them
gently away from the display of weapons and down the warehouse to the
