Mr. Justice Maxell
9781465633729
281 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
IT was two hours after the muezzin had called to evening prayer, and night had canopied Tangier with a million stars. In the little Sok, the bread-sellers sat cross-legged behind their wares, their candles burning steadily, for there was not so much as the whisper of a wind blowing. The monotonous strumming of a guitar from a Moorish café, the agonised barlak! of a belated donkey-driver bringing his charge down the steep streets which lead to the big bazaar, the shuffle of bare feet on Tangier’s cobbles, and the distant hush-hush of the rollers breaking upon the amber shore—these were the only sounds which the night held. John Maxell sat outside the Continental Café, in the condition of bodily content which a good dinner induces. Mental content should have accompanied such a condition, but even the memory of a perfect dinner could not wholly obliterate a certain uneasiness of mind. He had been uneasy when he came to Tangier, and his journey through France and Spain had been accompanied by certain apprehensions and doubts which Cartwright had by no means dispelled. Rather, by his jovial evasions, his cheery optimism, and at times his little irritable outbreaks of temper, he had given the eminent King’s Counsel further cause for disquiet. Cartwright sat at the other side of the table, and was unusually quiet. This was a circumstance which was by no means displeasing to Maxell, for the night was not conducive to talk. There are in Northern Africa many nights like this, when one wishes to sit in dead silence and let thought take its own course, unchecked and untrammelled. In Morocco such nights are common and, anyway, Maxell had always found it difficult to discuss business matters after dinner. Cartwright had no temperament and his quiet was due to other causes. It was he who broke the silence, knocking out his pipe on the iron-topped table with a clang which jarred his more sensitive companion to the very spine. “I’d stake my life and my soul on there being a reef,” he said with a suddenness which was almost as jarring. “Why, you’ve seen the outcrop for yourself, and isn’t it exactly the same formation as you see on the Rand?” Maxell nodded. Though a common-law man, he had been associated in mining cases and had made a very careful study of the whole problem of gold extraction. “It looks right enough to me,” he said, “but as against that we have the fact that some clever engineers have spent a great deal of time and money trying to locate the reef. That there is gold in Morocco everybody knows, and I should say, Cartwright, that you are right. But where is the reef? It would cost a fortune to bore, even though we had the other borings to guide us.”
