It was on the tip of my tongue to say “At Zanzibar,” but, as that might have started him on a string of questions as to how I came to that place and whom I knew there, I temporized.

“Oh, I bought it from a man.”

“That is no answer!” he retorted.

If I had been possessed of much inclination to play deep games and match wits with big rascals I suppose I would have answered him civilly and there and then learned more of his purpose.  But I was not prepossessed by his charms or respectful of his claim to superiority.  The German type super-education never did impress me as compatible with good breeding or good sense, and it annoyed me to have to lie to him.

“It’s all the answer you’ll get!” I said.

“Where is your license for it?” he growled.

The game began to amuse me.

“None of your business!” I answered.

“How long have you been in the country!”

“Since I came,” I said.

“And you have no license!  You have been out shooting.  A lucky thing you came to my camp and not to some other man’s!  The game laws are very strict!”

He spoke then to a boy who was standing behind me, giving him very careful directions in a language of which I did not know one word.  The boy went away.

“The last man who went shooting near Nairobi without a license,” he said, “tried to excuse himself before the magistrate by claiming ignorance of the law.  He was fined a thousand rupees and sentenced to six months in jail!”

“Very severe!” I said.

“They are altogether too severe,” he answered.  “I hope you have killed nothing.  It is good you came first to me.  You would better stand that rifle over here in the corner of my tent.  To walk back to the hotel with it over your shoulder would be dangerous.”

“I’ve taken bigger chances than that,” said I.

“If you have shot nothing, then it is not so serious,” he said, disappearing behind a curtain into the recesses of his tent.

He stayed in there for about ten minutes.  I had about made up my mind to walk away when four of his boys approached the tent from behind, and one of them cried “Hodi!” The boy to whom he had given directions across my shoulder was not among them.

They threw the buck down near my feet, and he came out from the gloomy interior and stared at it.  He asked them questions rapidly in the native tongue, and they answered, pointing at me.

“They say you shot it,” he told me, stroking his great beard alternately with either hand.

“Then they lie!” I answered.

“Let me see that rifle!” he said, reaching out an enormous freckled fist to take it.

I saw through his game at last.  It would have been the easiest thing in the world to extract a cartridge from the clip in the magazine and claim afterward that I had fired it away.  Evidently he proposed to get me in his power, though for just what reason he was so determined to make use of me rather than any one else was not so clear.