So Krool, estranged, lonely, even in the heart of friendly, pushing, jostling London, still was haunted by presences which whispered to him, not with the old clearness of bygone days, but with confused utterances and clouded meaning; and yet sufficient in dark suggestion for him to know that ill happenings were at hand, and that he would be in the midst of them, an instrument of Fate.  All night strange shapes trooped past his clouded eyes, and more than once, in a half-dream, he called out to his master to help him as he was helped long ago when that master rescued him from death.

Long before the rest of the house was stirring, Krool wandered hither and thither through the luxurious rooms, vainly endeavouring to occupy himself with his master’s clothes, boots, and belongings.  At last he stole into Byng’s room and, stooping, laid something on the floor; then reclaiming the two cables which Rudyard had read, crumpled up, and thrown away, he crept stealthily from the room.  His face had a sombre and forbidding pleasure as he read by the early morning light the discarded messages with their thunderous warnings—­“To-morrow . . .  Prepare!”

He knew their meaning well enough.  “To-morrow” was here, and it would bring the challenge from Oom Paul to try the might of England against the iron courage of those to whom the Vierkleur was the symbol of sovereignty from sea to sea and the ruin of the Rooinek.

“Prepare!” He knew vastly more than those responsible men in position or in high office, who should know a thousand times as much more.  He knew so much that was useful—­to Oom Paul; but what he knew he did not himself convey, though it reached those who welcomed it eagerly and grimly.  All that he knew, another also near to the Baas also knew, and knew it before Krool; and reaped the reward of knowing.

Krool did not himself need to betray the Baas direct; and, with the reasoning of the native in him, he found it possible to let another be the means and the messenger of betrayal.  So he soothed his conscience.

A little time before they had all gone to Glencader, however, he had discovered something concerning this agent of Paul Kruger in the heart of the Outlander camp, whom he employed, which had roused in him the worst passions of an outcast mind.  Since then there had been no trafficking with the traitor—­the double traitor, whom he was now plotting to destroy, not because he was a traitor to his country, but because he was a traitor to the Baas.  In his evil way, he loved his master as a Caliban might love an Apollo.  That his devotion took forms abnormal and savage in their nature was due to his origin and his blood.  That he plotted to secure the betrayal of the Baas’ country and the Outlander interest, while he would have given his life for the Baas, was but the twisted sense of a perverted soul.

He had one obsession now—­to destroy Adrian Fellowes, his agent for Paul Kruger in the secret places of British policy and in the house of the Partners, as it were.  But how should it be done?  What should be the means?  On the very day in which Oom Paul would send his ultimatum, the means came to his hand.