Shadows of Ecstasy by Charles Williams — Read

Philip was down the next morning before his father or his godfather, urged by a very strong anxiety to see the papers. Trouble in Africa, as it happened, was possibly going to affect not merely high national and political affairs but his own personal arrangements. Africa, of course, was a large place, and the Christian missions had been established he had gathered, somewhere in the centre; he wasn't much disturbed over them. But what his father had called "the pressure on Egypt" was another matter. Philip's own job was engineering, and he had not long before come to an arrangement with a business company known as "The North African Rivers Development Syndicate, " by which he was to go out to whatever North African Rivers were to be developed as assistant constructing engineer. His chief, a man named Munro, was already out there, somewhere in Nigeria, and in a couple of months Philip was to join him. Meanwhile he was putting in some time at the London offices of the Syndicate, which was run by two brothers named Stuyvesant. But though these were the official heads it was generally understood in the City that the real force behind the company was a much richer man, a certain Simon Rosenberg, who, among his interests in railways and periodicals and fisheries and dyeworks, in South African diamonds and Persian oils and Chinese silks, in textiles and cereals and patent-medicines, rubber and coffee and wool, among all these had cast a careless eye on African rivers. In that side of the business Philip wasn't very interested. Sir Bernard had satisfied himself that the company was as sound as could reasonably be expected, and a year's work--or perhaps even two years--would give Philip a start in his profession. Then he would, all being well, come home and marry Rosamond, and see what jobs were going at home. Munro was a fairly big man and if Munro gave him a good word.

It was consequently something of a shock to him, when he opened the paper, to find two huge headlines competing. On the left a three-column space announced "Multi-millionaire Found Dead; Rosenberg Shot"; "Terrible Discovery in Rich Man's Library." On the right a similar space was filled with: "Africans Still Advancing"; "Hordes in Nile Valley"; "Rumours of Trouble in South Africa"; "French Defeat in Tangier." Philip goggled at the thick type, and instinctively tried to read both accounts at once. He was still immersed when Caithness came in, just preceding Sir Bernard.