CHAPTER II

Sydney could not disguise from himself the fact that the situation was rather serious. The escapade would probably mean a sentence of a stiff bout of imprisonment, or a heavy fine, and, as he was penniless, it would perforce have to be the former.

"Hang that little Yiddisher!" he growled, as he sucked at his empty pipe; "wish I'd let him get out of his trouble himself. No! I couldn't have done that. He's a plucky little beggar, and I suppose he's as bad off as myself now his pocket-book's gone. Still, I suppose something'll turn up."

His optimism was justified, for about ten o'clock the following morning he was liberated without more ado, and outside the gaol he found the little Hebrew who had been the cause of all the trouble.

"I squared 'em," explained the little man, with a grin; "sent a note along to a pal of mine who knows the ropes, and he soon got us out. Better come along and have some grub!"

"Look here," said Dick, "I'd better let you know right away that I'm dead-broke."

"Never mind," said the other; "come along and feed, and then we'll yap."

A good meal, and a good smoke after it, and the little Jew said abruptly, "Now then, Mr. Sydney, I've found out a bit about you this morning, and if you want a job, I think I can get one for you. We want a straight man for something that's on, and I think you'll do."

"I'm game," said Dick, "if it's a straight deal."

"Straight as a die," replied Solstein or "Solly," as he liked to be called. "Let's get along the beach, we can talk there!"

Pacing along the sands, with no one to hear them but the sea-gulls, and with his old briar again charged with some real God-fearing cake tobacco, Sydney heard what it was that was required of him; and there and then Solly's offer was accepted.

Two days later an expedition, outfitted regardless of expense in Johannesburg, left Luderitzbucht to carry out a systematic testing of certain distant diamond-fields recently discovered and acquired by a local syndicate, and reported to be fabulously rich, so rich that an extremely large company talked of acquiring them in turn, and those in the know hinted at a huge flotation.

Money was therefore no object, and the party was both large and well- equipped. It consisted of a diamond expert acting on behalf of the Syndicate; another expert acting on behalf of the would-be purchasers, and, incidentally, to watch the other chap; a financial representative of either side to watch proceedings; two prospectors, presumably to watch each other; a learned professor of geology to give an unbiased report of the fields; and, lastly, Dick Sydney, ostensibly in charge of the transport, but in reality to watch the whole caboodle of them.

Striking north-east, the expedition almost immediately entered a practically untraversed desert of barren sand-dunes, waterless, and both difficult and dangerous to traverse; and their animals drank nothing for the first two days. On the third, however, guided by the discovering syndicate's prospector Grosman, and by two stunted little Bushmen in his employ, they came to a deep water-hole, where the precious fluid, though "brak" (alkaline) and stagnant, was still plentiful and drinkable, and within working distance of which the newly-discovered "fields" were located. Here the dunes were interspersed with long narrow "aars," covered with fine gravel and loose stones, and here and there covered with scrubby vegetation.

Within a few days Sydney had to acknowledge that his first conclusion that there was not a single honest man in the party besides himself, was an unjust one, for the harmless and most necessary professor of geology was a notable exception.

Absorbed in his science, he passed most of his time in his tent poring over a microscope, taking very little heed, apparently, of what was going on, and he was obviously without guile and likely to be easily gulled by even the most transparent roguery. And that the others were rogues Dick grew more and more convinced, and it would have been hard to say which of the party he detested the more; Gilderman, the suave Johannesburg expert, glib, well-dressed and fastidious; Jelder, the syndicate's expert from the same locality, a rough-voiced, domineering mining engineer; Zweiter and Spattboom, the "financial" men; or Junes and Grosman, the two prospectors. On the whole, he thought, were he a free agent, he would have picked a quarrel with each and all of them for the sake of giving them individually a thrashing, and in that case the immaculate Gilderman would have been his first choice.

Each and all of them spoke English, and professed that nationality, but Dick soon decided that, with the possible exception of Junes, what wasn't German of the party was certainly Jew!

But still to all appearance everything was fair and above-board. The prospectors would point out the most likely spots to try for diamonds, the Ovampo boys would be set to work, and almost invariably they found diamonds. Occasionally one or other of the "experts" would suggest a different spot, and usually these sapient individuals would justify their reputation by finding diamonds also in these spots.

The syndicate's expert was jubilant, the company's expert apparently well satisfied, and the professor beamed upon the stones as they came from the sieve, talked learnedly of their origin and the peculiarities of the deposit they were found in, and passed a great deal of time in abstruse calculations as to the probable yield of the fields, based upon the rich finds they were making, and the genuineness of which he, obviously, never doubted.

Sydney picked up several small stones himself. The experts were always finding them, so were the financial agents; yet Dick, though for a time he could find out nothing to confirm his opinion, was convinced that the whole thing meant a gigantic swindle. A few words in French between the experts which they did not expect the "man in charge of the transport" to understand a word here, and a look there, strengthened this conviction into certainty, but still he had no proof.

Now Dick had heard of, and suffered from, more than one case of "salting" since he first came to Luderitzbucht, and the quantity of illicit diamonds in the hands of unscrupulous people made such salting a comparatively easy matter, but if it were being done in this case, it was certainly being done very thoroughly and artistically and when?

The whole party moved from place to place practically together in fact, they kept in sight of each other ostentatiously.

It must be done after dark, if at all, and Dick resolved to watch at night, as soon as he came to that conclusion. That same night, from his tiny patrol tent, he watched the lights go out one by one, until the camp lay silent, and apparently every one was asleep. And as time passed he was nodding himself, when suddenly a shadow stole silently from the tent occupied by the two prospectors, crossed to the experts' tent, and disappeared inside. Dick saw the momentary gleam of an electric torch and heard the tinkle of a bunch of keys, then the form reappeared, and, with a glance round, passed silently and rapidly out of sight across the sand-dunes.

Dick followed, the pale light from a waning moon, occasionally peeping from behind the clouds, making the pursuit an easy one.

After half an hour of rapid walking the man disappeared over a gigantic dune that Dick had noticed in the distance the previous evening, and which he had heard marked the position of the next field to be examined.

More cautiously now, and keeping well away from the man's actual spoor, Dick crept up the slope, and peered over the crest down the farther side.

The moon at that moment shone out clearly, and there, not fifty yards away from him, Dick could see the figure of Grosman the prospector. He was walking slowly up and down, now and then throwing his arm out with the action of a sower, and the seeds he sowed sparkled like dewdrops in the moonlight.

For he was sowing diamonds--salting!