Mr Justice Maxell

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 cafe, 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 Cafe, 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
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 North 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 bang 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."