"Oh, I found myself in comfortable quarters, and I couldn't make up my mind to move on and try more likely country elsewhere. So I stayed and talked rubber-palaver with the headman. One had to do something for amusement. Besides they'd a tree of alligator pears in the village that were exactly ripe, and it would have been a crime to leave them to benighted Africans. By the way, very rude of me not to ask before, but what have you done since you left the Coast?"
"Got into a very ugly hole," said Swizzle-Stick Smith shortly, "and wriggled out of it by the skin of my teeth."
"Oh, sorry for inquiring. I thought that was what you came up for?"
"So it was, and I started off from the Coast with a full intention of carrying out O'Neill and Craven's business. But I got led off on an old trail."
"Ah," said Slade thoughtfully. "I believe I could guess."
"Guessing's dangerous. But I may as well own up to you frankly that I've been seeing the King of Okky."
"Well, you've a nerve. I shouldn't have cared for that job myself."
"It wasn't pleasant. Okky City jars one's sense of decency rather badly just now. Old Kallee's been going it extra strong on human sacrifices, you know. His private crucifixion tree is a thing you don't like to think about."
"I see. And you got onto your old game of the pre-Smith days and tried to get him to put the Okky country and his royal self under the formal protectorate of the British Empire? I thought you dropped all that tommyrot when you got kicked--I mean when you turned trader and became known to fame as Mr. Smith. Sink the past, of course, sink the past, but you started it."
"I couldn't help going. I got news of a French expedition in Okky City. Of course I've been damnably treated by the British Foreign Office in days gone by, but the old fires will relight sometimes. Frenchmen in Okky City, I'll trouble you, Slade, and of course with the usual accompaniment. _Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes_. So I couldn't resist trying my own hand with the Kallee, even though I hadn't anything at all up to his weight as an introductory dash."
"Half a dozen cases of Heidsieck is the nearest way to his royal ear, though I hear that lately he's developed a taste for the better years of Krug."