All day long you may see, towering above the wall close to the little wooden door, the long necks and slim heads of giraffes looking towards the city and wondering what in the world is the matter with the men to-day, and why they don’t come along with the buns and sugar.  Once within the zareba, once you have pushed your way between the giraffes and got their noses out of your jacket-pockets, you have really only to be wary of the ostrich.  He, mincing delicately around you with his little wicked red eye blinking like a camera shutter, may try with an ill-assumed air of indifference to slip up unnoticed close behind you.  If he succeeds he will land you one.  And one is enough.

Into this zareba Harry Luttrell led Martin Hillyard on the next morning.  Luttrell had an hour free, and the zareba was the one spectacle in Senga.  He kicked the honey-badger’s tub in his little reed-house and brought out that angry animal to the length of his strong chain and to within an inch of his own calves.

“Charming little beast, isn’t he?  See the buffalo in the middle?  The little elephant came in a week ago from just south of the Khor Galagu.  You had something private to say to me?  Now’s your time.  Mind the ostrich, that’s all.  He looks a little ruffled.”

They were quite alone in the zareba.  The giraffes had fallen in behind and were following them, and level with them, on Hillyard’s side, the ostrich stepped like a delicate lady in a muddy street.  Hillyard found it a little difficult to concentrate his thoughts on Stella Croyle’s message.  But he would have delivered it awkwardly in any case.  He had seen enough of Harry Luttrell last night to understand that an ocean now rolled between those two.

“On the first night of my play, ‘The Dark Tower,’” he began, and suddenly faced around as the ostrich fell back.

“Yes!” said Luttrell, and he eyed the ostrich indifferently.  “That animal’s a brute, isn’t he?”

He took a threatening step towards it, and the ostrich sidled away as if it really didn’t matter to him where he took his morning walk.

“Yes?” Luttrell repeated.

“I went to a supper-party given by Sir Charles Hardiman.”

“Oh?”

Luttrell’s voice was careless enough.  But his eyes went watchfully to Hillyard’s face, and he seemed to shut suddenly all expression out of his own.

“Hardiman introduced me to a friend of yours.”

Luttrell nodded.

“Mrs. Croyle?”

“Yes.”

“She was well?”

“In health, yes!”

“I am very glad.”  Unexpectedly some feeling of relief had made itself audible in Luttrell’s voice.  “It would have troubled me if you had brought me any other news of her.  Yes, that would have troubled me very much.  I should not have been able to forget it,” he said slowly.

“But she is unhappy.”

Luttrell walked on in silence.  His forehead contracted, a look of trouble came into his face.  Yet he had an eye all the while for the movements of the animals in the zareba.  At last he halted, struck out at the ostrich with his stick, and turned to Hillyard with a gesture of helplessness.