THE AXTON LETTERS
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tion or make some comment, but checked himself, and hastily laying aside this letter he picked up the next one, which bore a Cape Town date line:
"My affair with my mysterious visitor came almost to a conclusion last night, for except for a careless mistake of my own I should have bagged him. Isn't it mystifying, bewildering—yes, and a little terrifying—he made his appearance here last night in Cape Town, thousands of miles away from the two other places I had encountered him; and he seemed to have no more difficulty in entering the house of a Cape Town correspondent, Mr. Arthur Emsley, where we are guests, than he had before in entering public hotels, and when discovered he disappeared as mysteriously as ever. This time, however, he took some precautions. He had moved my night lamp so that, with his body in shadow, he could still see the contents of my desk; but I could hear his shoulders rubbing on the wall and located him exactly. I slipped my hand noiselessly for my revolver, but it was gone. The slight noise I made in searching for it alarmed him, and he ran. I rushed out into the hall after him. Mr. Emsley and Lawler, awakened by the breaking of the glass, had come out of their rooms. They had not seen him, and though we searched the house he had disappeared as inexplicably as the two other times. But I have learned one thing: It is not a turban he wears, it is his coat, which he takes off and wraps around his head to hide his face. An odd disguise; and the possession of a coat of that sort makes it probable he is a European. I know of only two Europeans who have been in Cairo, Calcutta and Cape Town at the same time we were—both travelers like ourselves; a guttural young German named Schultz, a freight agent for the Nord Deutscher Lloyd, and a nasal American named Walcott, who travels for the Seric Medicine Co of New York. I shall keep an eye on both of them. For, in my mind at least, this affair has come to be a personal and bitter contest between the unknown and myself. I am determined not only to
