120 JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

appeared in a sinister melodramatic way from behind
some curtains dressed in a scarlet fez and a long
native robe; his heavy black Victorian side-whiskers,
his thick grey skin, his voluptuous mouth were just
part of the Paris revue. But somebody turned the
gramophone off upstairs, and we were removed at
once from the dour company of Mr. Reeves by a
smart miniature black officer with glittering gaiters.
He said, "Won't you come upstairs? The President
will see you in a moment."

It was quite unexpected. I hadn't asked to see the
President, I had believed that the President was in
another part of the country, and I was a little taken
aback. I was in a shirt and shorts with a water-bottle
at my side; I was very conscious of the dust I had
collected on the way, and I remembered all the
stories I had heard of the Liberian rulers, how they
liked to keep a white man waiting and demanded that
he should always be suitably clothed for an interview.

We sat down in a tiny upper room and a soldier
with a revolver holster changed .the record. Miss
Edith Olivier's Dwarfs Blood lay on the table. The
black officer was very neat, very gentle, very
attentive; he was like a china figure which has been
kept carefully dusted. Presently a young woman
came in; she wore European dress: she looked more
Chinese than African. She had slanting eyes and a
quality of deep repose. She didn't speak a word,
though the officer presented her as "one of the
President's entourage",, but sitting down beside the
gramophone she took up a pack of cards and began
to ^shuffle them. Her father, I learnt later, had been
made a justice of the supreme court: there is a dis-