“Besides,” he added, “you’ll get nothing more until you reach Nairobi tomorrow noon!”

That turned out to be not quite true, but as an argument it worked.  We swallowed, like the lined-up merchant seamen taking lime-juice under the skipper’s eye.

The guard grew impatient and went into the kitchen, but had scarcely got through the door when a scream came from the direction of the train that brought him back on the run.  No black woman ever screams in just that way, and in a land of black and worse-than-black men imagination leaps at a white woman’s call for help.

There was a stampede for the door by every one except the Greeks and Goanese and the railway man. (He had to guard the money.) We poured through the screen doors, the guard fighting to burst between us, and, because with a self-preserving instinct that I have never thought quite creditable to the human race, everybody ran toward his own compartment, it happened that we three and the two officials and the guard came first on the scene of trouble.

Brown of Lumbwa was still drunk-affectionate, it seemed, by that time.

“You’ve no call to be ’fraid of me, li’l sweetheart!” The door was open.  Within the compartment all was dark, but every sound emerged.  There came a stifled scream.

“Li’l stoopid!  What d’you come in for, if you’re ‘fraid o’ poor ole Brown?  I won’t hurt you.”

The guard passed between us and went up the step.  He listened, looked, disappeared through the open door, and there came a sound of struggling.

“Whassis?” shouted Brown.  “An interloper?  No you don’t!  This is my li’l sweetheart!  She came in to see me—­didn’t you, Matilda Ann?”

The woman apparently broke free.  The guard yelled for help.  Fred and one of the government officials were nearest and as they entered they passed the woman coming out.  I recognized Lady Saffren Waldon’s Syrian maid, with the big railway key in her fist that the guard had left with her.  By that time there was a considerable crowd about our car, unable to see much because it stood in the way of the station lamp-light.  She slipped through—­to the right—­not toward Lady Isobel’s compartment, and I lost sight of her behind some men.  I ran after her, but she was gone among the shadows, and although I hunted up and down and in and out I could find her nowhere.

When I returned to our car Brown of Lumbwa was out on the platform with his hair all tousled and a wild eye.  The guard was wiping a bloody nose and everybody was inventing an account of what nobody had seen.

“Scrag him!” advised some expert on etiquette.

“What the hell right has anybody got,” demanded Brown with querulous ferocity, “to interfere between me and a lady?  Eh?  Whose compartment was she in?  Me in hers or her in mine?  Eh?  Me.  I’m sleeping.  Hasn’t a gent a right to sleep?  Next thing I know she’s fingerin’ my whiskers.  How should I know she’s not balmy on red beards an’ makin’ love to me?  What right’s she got in my compartment anyhow?  Who let her in?  Who asked her?  What if I did frighten her?  What then?”