d to the crowd at large as Piet Plessis, was
a high official in not the least important department of the Transvaal
Civil Service.

Born in the Free State, and educated--well educated--in Holland, he
combined the _slim_ qualities of the Boer with the shrewd, technical,
worldly-wisdom of the Hollander. He was now of middle age and somewhat
portly of person, and withal a jolly, genial Dutchman, whose ringing
laugh and jovial manner conveyed the idea of open-hearted frankness to
the last degree. Those who ran away with that impression had their
education in character-studying to complete. For all his apparent
open-heartedness, Piet Plessis was never known by word or wink to "give
away" anything. And he could have given away some "things" of a very
strange and startling nature had he so chosen.

Did a transport rider bringing up loads of Government goods from the
Swaziland border succumb to the indiscretion of peeping into certain of
the cases, and subsequently babble thereon in his cups, it was not
strange that he should be murdered by his own Kafirs on the return
journey, because that sort of thing does happen sometimes, though not
often. Was the dead body of a mysterious foreigner found one morning in
the Grand Stand on the racecourse at Johannesburg, the hand grasping a
revolver pointed at the heart, through which was a neatly drilled
bullet-hole, with no burn of powder about the clothing? This was not
strange, for does not everybody know that the hand of a dead person will
sometimes grasp an object tightly for hours after death--though not
often? And doctors will sometimes disagree, though not often? Did a
prominent member of the Upper Raad, who owned a chattering wife, make an
over-protracted sojourn in the Cape Peninsula for the benefit of the
lady's health? That too was not strange, for it happens sometimes. And
if Piet Plessis' private office had very thick walls and double doors--
padded--this was not strange either, for is not the climate of the
Transvaal fairly bleak during quite half the year? On many an incident,
strange, suspicious, or startling--or all three, had his acquaintance
striven to pump Piet Plessis--in club, or bar, or society drawing-room;
but they might as well have expected to dig sovereigns out of the
billiard cues in the one or real ten-year-old out of the "special
Scotch" bottles in the other, or the precise ages of any three ladies of
a middle time of life in the third. Tact and