“No, or by Jiminy, I wouldn’t be here!  If I’d found it I’d have settled down with a wife in Greece long ago.  I’d be keeping an inn, and growing wine, and living like a gentleman!  But I found out enough to know there’s a system that goes with the ivory Tippoo Tib buried.  If you found one lot, that would lead you to the next, and so on.  I got a suspicion where one lot is, although I couldn’t prove it.  And I made up my mind that the German government knows darned well where a lot of it is!”

“Then why don’t the Germans dig it up?” demanded Fred.

“Aha!” laughed Coutlass.  “If I know, why should I tell!  If they know, why should they tell?  Suppose that some of it were in Congo territory, and some in British East Africa?  Suppose they should want to get the lot?  What then?  If they uncovered their bit in German East Africa mightn’t that put the Congo and the British on the trail?”

“If they know where it is,” said I, “they’ll certainly guard it.”

“Which of you is the lord?” demanded Coutlass earnestly.

“What do you suppose Hassan is doing, then, here in Zanzibar?” asked Fred.

“Rum and eggs!  I know what he is doing!  When I snapped my thumb under his fat nose and told him about the habits of his female ancestors be went to the Germans and informed against me!  The sneak-thief!  The turn-coat!  The maggot!  I shall not forget!  I, Georges Coutlass, forget nothing!  He informed against me, and they set askaris* on my trail who prevented me from making further search.  I had to sit idle in Usumbura or Ujiji, or else come away; and idleness ill suits my blood!  I came here, and Hassan followed me.  The Germans made a regular, salaried spy of him—­the semi-Arab rat!  The one-tenth Arab, nine-tenths mud-rat!  Here he stays in Zanzibar and spies on Tippoo Tib, on me, on the British government, and on every stranger who comes here.  His information goes to the Germans.  I know, for I intercepted some of it!  He writes it out in Arabic, and provided no woman goes through the folds of his clothes or feels under that silken belly-piece be wears, the Germans get it.  But if a woman does, and she’s a friend of mine, that’s different!  Are you the lord, sir?”

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* Askari, native soldier.
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“What do you propose?” asked Fred.

“Help me find that ivory!” said Coutlass.  “I have very little money left, but I have guns, and courage!  I know where to look, and I am not afraid!  No German can scare me!  I am English-American-Greek!—­better than any hundred Germans!  Let us find the ivory, and share it!  Let us get it out through British territory, or the Congo, so that no German sausage can interfere with us or take away one tusk!  Gee-rusalem, how I hate the swine.  Let us put one over on them!  Let us get the ivory to Europe, and then flaunt the deed under their noses!  Let us send one little tip of a female tusk to the Kaiser for a souvenir—­female in proof it is all illegitimate, illegal, outlawed!  Let us send him a piece of ivory and a letter telling him all about it, and what we think of him and his swine-officials!  His lieutenants and his captains!  Let us smuggle the ivory out through the Congo—­it can be done!  It can be done!  I, Georges Coutlass, will find the ivory, and find the way!”