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So much more unwieldy than
    pheasants or rabbits. Why do they poach the poor dears?”
    “For aphrodisiacs,” de Mare replied.
    “Good heavens!” Catchpole exclaimed. “I
    should never have thought that a rhino would have that effect. Of course, they are primitive looking things.”
    “You don’t look at them,” de Mare explained.
    “The Timburu sell the horns to Somali traders, who smuggle them down to the coast, and they —
    the horns, I mean — finally get shipped to China and made into a powder.”
    “What a sAame!” Catchpole said. “To think of
    those poor prehistoric dears laying down their lives to stimulate the jaded appetites of the teeming millions of China! Could they know that they were being sacrificed on the altar of Venus, would they die more gladly, I wonder?”
    “I doubt it,” de Mare replied.
    “You ought to try it, some time,” Cara Baradale said. Her voice was low and husky, with an undertone of exasperation. “In small doses, not too
    strong.”
    35
    “There’s nothing I should love more. But I
    think you would be better without it, don’t you, my sweet?”
    Cara didn’t answer, and Lord Baradale quickly switched the conversation back to the Timuru. He asked de Mare a string of questions about their methods of hunting. They used poisoned spears, mostly, de Mare explained; rhino’s hide was
    generally too thick for arrows. They were young warriors, as a rule, newly circumcised and anxious to obtain trophies of their own prowess, and
    money to exchange for camels and cattle with
    which to buy wives. Three or four would stalk the rhino to within fifteen or twenty yards and then hurl their spears simultaneously into its side. It was real murder, de Mare said; rhinos were easy game, and sometimes the poachers would get six or seven in a week.
    Liqueurs were served with coffee, and afterwards the party sat out under the tree and watched
    the starlight on the river and the mysterious misty veldt beyond, where a thousand invisible forms crept and stalked, fed and mated, listened and sniffed for smells, in the busy darkeness. A slight breeze stirred the acacia branches and cooled the faces of those who sat, replete and rather sleepy, beneath it.
    Lady Baradale was the first to say goodnight.
    When she had gone, de Mare leant over the back of Vachell’s chair and said, in a low voice: “She wants to see you in her tent.” A little later Vachell 36
    pleaded fatigue and walked off with his lamp to his tent. He” left the lamp inside and made his way cautiously across the grass to obey the summons.
    Lady Baradale was waiting for him, seated at
    her dressing table. She wore deep green velvet dinner pyjamas that glowed like creme dementhe in candlelight. The scent of perfume mingled with the smell of sun-bleached canvas. Vachell sniffed with interest, and diagnosed Chanel No. 5. The tent was a large one, with a veranda at one end and a bathroom partitioned off by a canvas flap at the other. To the right was a camp-bed with
    mosquitonet, to the left a green-and-white check curtain that concealed a row of hanging skirts and dresses. The dressingtable, with a three-piece jointed mirror, was between the entrance and the bed. An electric bulb dangled from the ridge pole above it, and a reading-lamp stood beside the bed.
    A small leather travelling-clock on the dressingtable told him that it was a few minutes past
    eleven.
    “Please sit down,” she said. He pulled up a
    campchair and obeyed. She kept her profile
    towards him and smoothed her silvery waves with a skinny hand. “I guess Danny de Mare has talked with you about the burglary. There’s one hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of jewels
    missing, Mr Vachell, and I want to get them
    back.”
    “Where were the jewels kept?” Vachell asked.
    She pointed to a small square safe standing on 37
    the ground beneath the table at which she sat.
    “In there. It weighs heavier than it looks, and it has a burglar-proof lock. The safe