“True.  Juma told us.  Juma probably told them that we told him.  Natives often put the cart before the horse without the slightest intention of lying.”

“All the same, why should they believe him?”

“Why not?  Zanzibar’s agog with the story—­after all these years.  The ivory must have been buried more than a quarter of a century ago.  Some one’s been stirring the mud.  We arrive, unexpectedly from nowhere, ask questions about the ivory, make plans for British East Africa—­and there you are!  The people who were merely determined to get the stuff jump to the false conclusion that we really know where it is.’’

“Q.  E. D.!” said Fred, finishing his drink.

“Not at all,” said Monty.  “There are two things yet to be demonstrated.  They’re true, but not proven.  The German government is after the staff.  And the German government has very special reasons for secrecy and tricks.”

“We four against the German government looks like longish odds,” said I.

“Remains to be seen,” said Monty.  “If the German government’s very special reasons were legal or righteous they’d be announced with a fanfare of trumpets.”

“Where’s all this leading us?” demanded Fred.

“To a slight change of plan,” said Monty.

“Thank the lord!  That means you don’t go to Brussels—­stay with us!”

“Nothing of the sort, Fred. But you three keep together.  They’re going to watch you.  You watch them.  Watch Schillingschen particularly closely, if you find him.  The closer they watch you, the more likely they are to lose sight of me.  I’ll take care to have several red herrings drawn across my trail after I reach London.  Perhaps I’ll return down the west coast and travel up the Congo River.  At any rate, when I do come, and whichever way I come, I’ll have everything legal, in writing.  Let your game be to seem mysterious.  Seem to know more than you do, but don’t tell anybody anything.  Above all, listen!”

Fred leaned back in his chair and laughed.

“Didums!” he said.  “This is the idioticest wild goose chase we ever started on!  I admit I nosed it.  I gave tongue first.  But think of it —­here we are—­four sensible men—­hitherto sensible—­off after ivory that nobody can really prove exists, said to be buried somewhere in a tract of half-explored country more than a thousand miles each way—­and the German government, and half the criminals in Africa already on our idiotic heels!”

“Yet the German government and the crooks seem convinced, too, that there’s something worth looking for!” laughed Monty.  And none of us could answer that.

For that matter, none of us would have been willing to withdraw from the search, however dim the prospect of sucess might seem in the intervals when cold reason shed its comfortless rays on us.  Intuition, or whatever it is that has proved superior so often to worldly wisdom (temptation, Fred calls it!) outweighed reason, and Fred himself would have been last to agree to forego the search.