One and the other, she challenged them.
"You think not; you wilful imp?" she roared. "I tell you it shall be so!... And you, Bibi-Ri—you grin in that sickly fashion? Wait, my gar: I'm not done with you yet! Thousand thunders!—in another minute you will be crawling at the crook of my finger.... Attend!"
And looming on us there, gigantic in the firelight like some ancient fury, she launched her climax.
"You recall that tale I started for your benefit? Well: there is more of it. I told you my sister knew all the story of 'the wickedest man'? Well: there was one thing she did not know and would have given much to hook up—like many another blackmailer, then and since.... Note!... From the murderous purpose with which that fiend pursued all in his power—wife, family, associates—it appears he spared a single victim. The creature, indeed, in whom he centered his whole affection—to call it so—his hateful pride, at least. A single one he set aside. But only to be the instrument of a last defiance.
"Brought to exposure, his course run out: what do you suppose he did? Why he took measures to conceal that remaining heir of his house beyond recovery.... He put away that son. He lost him! Completely. In space: in the world: in the crowd and the gutter. Where none should ever find him again—as none ever did, for all the rewards and all the police.
"Such cleverness—eh? Such logic. For observe....They dared pass no death sentence while there appeared any chance of extracting his secret. A vast estate was waiting on the person of that child—one of the finest fortunes in France: the heritage of a golden line. He kept it waiting. At a stroke he saved himself before the judges: he hid away the only treasure he loved: he prolonged his own evil destiny through this unknown seed of his planted somewhere in the mud!"
Her regard flamed on Bibi-Ri.
"Unknown—my little dears. Unknown ever since!... Though it is said Heaven itself had set its seal on that race for a warning and a symbol: though the child himself was marked from birth: was marked about the neck—so the legend goes—with a thin red line like the print of a noose or the trace of strangling fingers!"
Bibi-Ri had propped himself by the table, one hand clutching the close collar of his jacket.
"How—how could you guess...!"
"Ah-ah! Now will you try to throw us over? Not so easily—eh? Now don't you think you still have need of us? Until the depositions are made, at least?... Sac à papier! The very instant you showed me that old miniature and the initial it bears—I knew you, my boy! I could have read you your whole fortune then: only I saved the best of it for a wedding present! And for sure, I never expected you to try a bolt. A droll of an idea—that! To run away from your chief witness?... Why, stupid one!" She broke off to drop him a little mocking curtsey. "Monsieur the Duke!... It was my own sister had had the honor to be Your Grace's nurse!"
He was trembling. "Tell me the name of that family!"
"But certainly, my lad.... After you are married!""Don't torture me! Tell me the name of that man!"
"But certainly, my love.... It is M. de Nou!"
Strange how like a sinister refrain that title—that word—ran and recurred throughout the affair. But this time it had an impact as never before. Credit me! This time it came home to Bibi-Ri: and my little joker absolutely reeled under it.
"Eh?" cried Mother Carron. "Eh? How is your sacred ambition now? Is there any manhood to you? And what are you going to do about it?"
What indeed! She had reduced him to a rag. For this she had played upon a febrile nature, you understand: had battered it, dazzled it, wrung it of emotions: confirming his wildest beliefs: destroying his dearest illusions: tossing his hopes to the stars and smirching them in the mire with the same sweep:—that he might have no other will at the end.... And therein appeared the triumph of her masterful certitude. For presently raising his miserable and hunted eyes he looked at her: he looked for me in the shadow: he did not look at Zelie again—but he looked toward the door....
How easy it might have seemed, after all! Actually in his pocket he carried his release ticket, ready dated. His ship lay in harbor. His sentence expired some few days off. A step would take him into the night. He had simply to keep safe within police limits until the hour of sailing and march himself freely on board. And then ... he had won! You see? By his theory the world would open before him the most radiant of welcomes. By his faith he would have his life-long arrears to collect: his gorgeous dreams to realize. One must have been a felon—one must have eaten his heart in prison cells—and even in this widest and farthest of prison cells with its wall of painted horizons none the less alien and inexorable—to feel what those dreams meant to him.
Now again, as before, he had only to get himself off stage: he needed only the boldness to break once for all with the thief's part—as he himself had said: the selfishness to stand to his game—as Mother Carron put it!
And in truth what was hindering him? No actual compulsion: none he need fear. Only impalpable things. Shame. Uncertainty, timidity, regret. The pressures of personality. The qualms of a poor juggler with life: fearful of missing—fearful of not seizing it featly.... Cobwebs all!
What he would have done about it the good God can tell. I have asked myself often enough. But he hesitated a bit too long: that little fool of fortune with his face of a rubber puppet squeezed by fate. Next moment the cue had been taken from him, for across the pause ran a thin, keen whistle. Mother Carron spun around. And as if dispatched on that breath—through the key-hole, perhaps—there blew in suddenly among us from the back of the house somewhere a tiny, gray-faced, white-haired wraith of a man.
"Well—idiot?... What's up now?"
From her greeting, as from the blurred effacement of the apparition himself, one divined without trouble the person of that former redoubtable housebreaker: Carron. In a voice scarcely above the singing of the kettle he made his announcement.
"There are two coming by the road."
"Hey?" she bawled. "What two?"
"A priest and another."
Mother Carron smiled the only smile to pass upon her wintry front that night: she spread her hands before us.
"Enfin! What did I tell you? And in great good time, my word!... You hear that—you others?...Go and welcome Father Anselm, fool! And fetch out the wine, if you are able to stir your pins!"
The shadow sighed.
"It is not Father Anselm."
"Not Father Anselm?... Imbecile! Of course it is!"
"It is not Father Anselm."
"Who then—vaurien?"
"It is the fat priest from La Foa."
Impossible to doubt his steadfast whispering.
"La Foa!" she echoed, stricken. "You say? Not truly!... La Foa?"
"I saw him."
"And another? What other?"
"We think he is Bombiste."
I can swear that wretched individual never in his black past had handled a bomb with half the effect his mere nickname produced among us there.
"Bombiste! The executioner's assistant?... From Ile de Nou?... Here?"
"They are at the gate."
"Thunder of God!... And above all, at this time!" She caught his arm. "Delay that priest! Any way and anyhow: hold him!... Confess to him, if nothing else will do—Heaven knows you need it!... And let the other through at once. Be quick!"
She banished him like a puff of smoke and we waited in drawn suspense—we four—our eyes on the archway through which this visitant must now appear.
"What can he want?" demanded Mother Carron. "That blood-stained basket robber!"
And Zelie answered her very quietly.
"I suppose he brings me my message from M. de Nou."
You will remember in all my term at Nouméa I had seen but once before this ignoble under-servant of the guillotine. I could have preferred never tosee him again. He did not improve on closer view.
He was one of those creatures somehow resembling insects: like the ciliate and noxious things that run about when you lift a damp rock. You know?... Very black. Very hairy, with hair overlaid in fringes curiously soft and glistening. With eyes very small, round and quick as beads. In person he was misshapen: bandy-legged: but with all that a powerful ruffian, whose long, crooked arms might have ended in nippers like a scorpion's.
There you have the fellow Bombiste, who presently slid in at the doorway and stood blinking through the light.
We regarded this type: and he us. Did I tell you he called himself a Pole? I cannot say. But certainly his speech was hardly to be comprehended. He spat something that could have passed equally for a greeting or a curse. And so far he had the advantage of us: for any reply of ours would have been only the half of that.
To do her justice Mother Carron kept a bold front to him. But she was handling here a very different sort of brute—not to be reached by that singular influence she exerted on the convict community at large: himself an outcast among convicts: sharing the isolation of his detested master on Ile de Nou. When she demanded to know his affair—
"Official!" he snarled back, with his slit grin.
Indeed it must have been a rare errand for him: a rare jest. He affected in his manner a gratified swagger of contempt: natural enough for a man with whom the vilest felon would never willingly speak, you understand: natural enough for one whose only dealing with his fellows was to valet their shorn bodies on the scaffold and to gather their last poor trifles of property for the executioner's wage—"robbing the basket," as we say.
"What are you after?" persisted Mother Carron.
"Not you, old woman!" he retorted. "Not any of you," he added with brutal assurance as his glance shifted past Bibi-Ri and myself. "But I come to see ... Mam'zelle here. And Mam'zelle alone!"
Well, we had had warning, to be sure. From this welter of evil portents some actual horror was due. And my faith, he wasted little time about it! He passed us over as if we had been less than nothing. He removed his ragged straw hat to twirl on his finger. He scraped low before the calm-faced girl who still waited impassive on the stairs. And then and there he delivered himself of the message he had been taught. All at once. Even glibly. With a kind of damnable sputtering eloquence.
"Mam'zelle Zelie—at your service—I bring you this word from my master: best respects and affections. He bids me say the civil ceremony will be for to-morrow, as planned. But he mistrusts your clever aunt—who might indeed try tricks to interfere. And so ... you see ... to-night: straightway: will be the wedding, Mam'zelle!
"The priest is here. In me behold one happy witness! For the other—" He grinned. "Perhaps Madame Carron will do." He thrust a thumb at Bibi-Ri. "Or that young buck yonder. The master himself only delays his impatience a few moments formally to arrive when all is ready. Safely escorted, you can believe, in this place of so bad a reputation—from which, moreover, he promises to remove you at once."
To see the rascal strut, and what airs he took!
"Meantime, Mam'zelle—in attending—please will you put on your best frock and prepare yourself," he concluded. "And as your wedding gift ... the master has pleasure to send you herewith the precious chains and jewels in this box and asks you to wear them for his sake!"
Throughout this stupefying recital none of the rest of us stirred, you will conceive. And when he had done we could still only stare. A picture, if you like! Zelie, the unfortunate child: and there, distorting himself in gallant gesture, offering tribute, that foul ambassador! The glow of fallen embers in the fire smudged him with infernal fantasy—it lent her the softest flush, making her young beauty to quicken and to kindle. As if a guilty angel should stoop from the lower step of heaven to take a bribe of hell. For she assented: make no mistake.... She was going to assent. He tendered her a small black box of leather: she had a hand outstretched to it—when a word dropped sheer and arresting in the silence as a pebble in a well.
It was not Mother Carron who spoke: our crafty hostess was far too burdened just then under the collapse of all her craftiness. Decidedly it was not me. Remained only Bibi-Ri. And in truth, he it was: though the fact appeared as one of those momentary incredibilities of intercourse.
"Zelie!"
Now I cannot pretend to know, what lay in the mind of that young girl. Who could plumb such a depth? She had kept herself inscrutable. How she actually felt toward Bibi-Ri I had no guess. She had seen him pared like a carrot—humiliated as few could be—his little human folly and weakness exposed, his grand hopes and aspirations made sordid and slimy. Even his one effort, his scheme of shuffling her away into a convent which must have seemed the sorriest cowardice, had surprised no motion from her. But how she regarded him now was plain. In the slow lift of her head, the heavy glitter of her eyes—plain to read.
"Zelie," he said. "You can't go on with it."
"No?" she inquired.... "No?"
Some way or other he had taken up position betweenthe door and the stairs.... Oh, not with any sort of flash heroism—understand me. I am not giving you a feuilleton of melodrama. But there he put himself and there he stayed.
Of course that brute Bombiste had bristled at the first interruption. With a sign Zelie checked him short.... She was ready for Bibi-Ri. She had been waiting for Bibi-Ri. One knew it. One knew this to be their real meeting, and finally one knew who was and who had been his real opponent. Here the issue was joined. Between the dream and the girl—as you might say—here stood the Red Mark.
"You can't go on with it," he repeated in a voice, after all emotions, that had become almost matter of fact. "It is unthinkable. You will not touch those presents."
"I wonder if I won't," she answered.
"They were stolen from dead men—"
"Not so wicked as stealing heart and faith," she said.
"For this crime: worse than murder—"
"Not so bad as killing a soul given into your hand," she said.
"By a man the lowest of assassins!"
"Not so low," she said, "but that you claim his name, his blood and his fortune for your own!"
Ah, they were striking at each other's naked breasts, those two. With naked weapons. And neither of them shirked it. Not the girl, who sent back as good as she got—not Bibi-Ri, who took even that last terrible thrust.
"Such things do not happen." You would have thought he was putting a form of statement. "All else aside—" he said, "all else aside, this does not happen."
"What can you do or say to prevent?" she asked, leading him by so much.
"Anything you want of me."
"I want nothing: it would only be false."
"Anything you want me to say."
"I want to hear nothing: it would only be lies."
"Zelie," he offered, "will you marry me?"
That must have been the test, you know. In the covert, unproclaimed struggle which had brought them both to this pass, that must have been the gauge. Whatever thrill of satisfied passionate resentment she could have wished must have been hers there and then.
"Will you wed with me, Zelie?"
An exultant throb escaped her.
"Too late!" she said.
But he was beyond flinching.
"Let me be sure," he begged. "I was wrong, Zelie. I was blind and mad and heartless. I say so. But I give it up—I give up all that foolish gilded fancy of mine, for I see what true treasure it cost me.... Or look—petite—I give it up to you and we go seek the future together. Heaven knows if it could ever be any worth to us after—after to-night. But it's all I have. Zelie ... take it for my wedding gift!"
She looked him up and she looked him down, long and steadily.
"Comedian!" she said....
Well—it was rather hard. What? To twit that poor player at life with his poor playing. At his last and best not to believe him. At his supreme attempt to throw in his teeth that supreme mockery. Rather hard. In effect!
It left him dumb—and again across the pause, from somewhere outside, cut a shrill, thin whistle. Again came floating in among us, from nowhere at all, the spectral guardian of the gates: Carron. Again from a voice like a piping wind at a key-hole, we heard the news.
"Father Anselm has arrived. He is in the basse-cour, with the other priest. Also two sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny, who came with him."
"Father Anselm!" echoed Mother Carron, dully, in a sort of groan. "So much for my plan.... And the sisters?... So much for Bibi's! We're all finely cooked, the lot of us!" But even in disaster she could keep the uses of habit. "Sacred pig, you take your own time!" she scolded. "Was that your signal?"
"Not for them," sighed Carron. "We gave no signal for them, seeing who they were. But a carriole is climbing by the road—"
In fact through the heavy tropic night and the open doorway there reached our ears as we hearkened a grind of wheels, the muffled jolting of a cart.
"Two militaires on the driver's seat," continued Carron, unhurried, unvarying. "And inside—another man: a man in a black coat. The runner who brought word is not quite sure, but he thinks—"
"Eh?"
"It is M. de Nou!"
So once more, to clinch the tragedy, there befell that phrase so often repeated: and this time like the summons of fate, this time invoking the very presence of the monster himself, soon to descend upon us. Bombiste gave an obscene chuckle. He had been wriggling and scowling these last few tense moments in a furious temper at the neglect of himself and his black box. But I think no one else in the room drew breath until Mother Carron, with a remnant of vigor, summed the whole desperate business and spread it in a sweep to Bibi-Ri and cried, as she had cried before—
"What are you going to do about it now?"
Bibi-Ri fell back three paces to the archway. He drew the door shut. He swung into place the bar. Then he walked over toward the foot of the stairs.
It had been my share, if you have followed me, tosee many curious changes wrought upon my luckless friend during some few hours. It was my fortune at the end to see him himself. Simply. The proper spirit of a man rising to a situation no longer tolerable. Figure to yourself this eager little chap: high-keyed, timid, fervid: something of a buffoon, always a victim of his perceptions. Do you remember that cry of his when he spoke of his coming release? "Able to taste it," he had said. What do you suppose he must have been tasting at this crisis? Such a perceptive, whimsical poor devil!... But yet capable of an ultimate gesture as far above bitterness as above rage or despair.
"Why," he said, with his wry smile that I knew so well and from all his little height, "why—since I can't play any other it seems, I have one part left in my repertoire.... I can still play the gentleman!"
Deliberately, giving no other warning, he struck from the hand of Bombiste the black leather box—dashed it far away into the fireplace. With an inhuman scream the Pole jumped for his throat. They locked. And the rest was convulsion.
How long it took I cannot tell. Nor yet exactly how it was done. A darkness seemed to descend about them. They fought as it might have been through a gap in time and space: I watched them reeling in a dim immensity. At some point I was aware of a thundering and a hammering from the outer limits.... At another I had some idiotic impulse to plunge into the fray myself, to aid my friend. But one glimpse of his face, caught as a blink through the whirl of things, was quite enough to throw me back out of that.
Himself, he had no fury. I mean none of the heedlessness of a man merely berserk. While they revolved in their course together like a many-limbed polyp, the Pole ravened with ceaseless and bestial ululation. Bibi-Ri never uttered a sound. Little aid he needed! I swear to you he was still smiling. He kept on smilingwith a set and implacable and dreadful pleasantry.
And good reason he had to smile, since that was his humor. For just then by a masterly wrench of wrist over neck he had sent Bombiste's knife spinning from his grip like a red-winged dragonfly.... Soon afterward I heard a bone snap.... I had forgotten, you see, that while he might be the Red Mark he was not called Bibi-Ri for nothing. I had forgotten that while he might establish his claim to the belated title of a gentleman, for some twenty-odd years of his life he had been acquiring the recondite arts of the Parisian apache!
To say the less of it: by those lights he accomplished the job. In the manner of the voyou and the garroter. In a merciful obscurity. Between his hands. Between his fingers. With precision and dispatch. He broke that creature Bombiste the way you would break a bread-straw. Until their last smashing fall when the Pole was somehow horribly twisted downward underneath, when his clamor shut off suddenly like a stream at the tap, when he rolled on the floor an inert bundle.
And we were back in the smoky kitchen....
Voices were crying: figures shifting. The barred door seemed ready to crack under assault. One fat and snuffy priest had come chattering like a parrot. One gaunt and iron priest had gone sweeping forward to kneel by the dead and his duty. Two sad-robed sisters looked on with the placidity of canvas saints. Mother Carron was roaring. Carron himself flitted about with a lantern like a will o' the wisp whose tremulous flare shot the firelight with pallid citrine. It served at least to show the singular tableau at the foot of the stairs where Bibi-Ri had picked himself up.
A gladiator in the arena might have turned to Cæsar as he turned to the girl on her pedestal. He was stripped to the waist, his jacket in shreds, his compact torso white and gleaming. And there we couldsee—any one might have seen who knew and was minded—the curious scarlet line of the birthmark about his neck which had shaped his destiny for him to this very moment: the Red Mark.
"Do you believe me now?" asked Bibi-Ri.
Wide-eyed, she stood at gaze.
"Will you believe me now?" asked Bibi-Ri.
As the child in the fairy tale when the ice fell away from about her heart: so with Zelie. The steeled, unnatural restraint dropped from her. The generous, quivering pulse sprang in her veins. She groped: she swayed toward him.
"Bibi—what have you done? Your chance!... Fly while you can!"
"Too late," he said, in his turn.
"But the heritage—your great future! Your riches! Your happiness! Nothing counts but that!... Name of God, you've lost it!"
"I find this better: to have you think kindly of it once—and of me."
"What else should I think of?" And oh, the impassioned miracle of her voice! "... It is your right. You should have it—you must have it, yourself, in freedom, without hindrance! For that I would have given anything—everything. For that I tried to drive you away!"
"Zelie!" he cried, in wonder. "Is this true? Did you feel so?... It was for my sake!"
"What else?... Though it tore me: though I died for it! I was not fit for you, but you should have your desire and I could help—a little, however little—to set you on the road. I could free you from danger of Maman—her blackmailing. For always. It was my own hope. But now—!... Oh Bibi!... Bibi!..."
She must have fallen if he had not caught her. And that was the way of it at long end. She loved him.They loved. The convict and the daughter of convicts: lovers of New Caledonia. With what somber consummation!
"But you must escape!" she gasped. The knocking at the door was like to splinter the panels. "There may yet be time.... The militaires are coming! Be quick!"
He shook his head.
"It will not do, little one," he answered. "Useless. I should only be run down by black trackers. No. For me, it is finished.... But I am quite content."
"If you are taken it means death! ... And mine!"
"No. Not that either. You owe me, perhaps, one promise."
"Anything you want of me!"
"I bind you to it!"
"Anything you want me to say!"
"Then you will not die: and you will save yourself from worse than death the only way still open.... These good sisters are waiting here for you. Do you understand?"
"I understand!" she sobbed, through her weeping. "I am yours.... I promise!... Only kiss me once!"
It was Mother Carron who recovered some sort of sanity first among us. It was Mother Carron who gathered the fainting girl and passed her over to the charge of the nuns; Mother Carron who had forethought to snatch one of Carron's jackets from a hook; Mother Carron, finally, who slipped that jacket onto Bibi-Ri and buttoned it carefully to the chin before she would order the door unbarred.
"Well, well—so we land her in the church after all," observed that remarkable woman briskly, at the last. "Chouette, alors! It is honest, at least.... And now, stupid, open up and admit the happy bridegroom and let him see what he can see!"
He saw, right enough. He saw as much as was needful. When the door thrust inward, when his two rogue friends of military surveillants rushed through, when that tall devil in long black redingote and high hat, with his flaming yellow eyes and raging front—when M. de Nou himself, I say, confronted us—there we were properly ranged as the actors in a perfectly obvious police case of brawl and murder: prisoner, witnesses, corpus delicti and the succoring clergy: complete.
"What does this mean?" he demanded.
Bibi-Ri faced him—a strange meeting, in truth!
"Me," he said, with his old trick of whimsy. "Only me. Convict 2232. I've been developing my capabilities a little.... That's all!"
So they guillotined Bibi-Ri. In due course, by due process, he passed before the Marine Tribunal, before the Commandant and the Procurator General and the Director and the rest of our salaried philanthropists. They dealt with him faithfully and of a gray early morning they led him from the little door of the condemned cell. They marched him out with his legs hobbled and his hands tied behind his back; with the chaplain tottering at his side and the bayonets of the guard shining martially file and file: with some of the chiefest of these judges to receive him and some hundreds of us convicts drawn up below to do him honor.
Such was the method of his elevation, you will perceive: such the means by which he attained his ambitions, his uplifted position in the world—when he climbed the scaffold in the courtyard of the central prison on Ile de Nou and took his final look on life.
I was there. For my complicity at Mother Carron's that night and my refusal to testify at the trialthey had shipped me back to the Collective. I stood in the front row. I was among those felons whose special privilege is their compulsory attendance at executions. I could miss nothing. Not a word nor a movement. Not the hurried mumbling of the death sentence. Not the ruffling of the drums that covered the fatal preparations.... Not even the icy chill to the marrow when we sank there in our ranks on the damp flagstones.
"Convicts: on your knees! Hats off!"
Just as well for me I was allowed to kneel, perhaps.... Never mind.... It does not bear talking of. Except one thing. One thing I recall to comfort me, as I saw it through a mist of tears, wrung with pity and with awe. And that was Bibi-Ri's last salute to my address before they lashed him on the bascule, under the knife.... He smiled at me, the little fellow. Even gayly. Bidding me note as plain as words how he held fast his good courage, how he had kept his counsel and his great secret in prison and would keep them to the end. How he apprehended and viewed clear-eyed the inconceivable grim jest of the family party there on the scaffold: himself and the executioner!
Then he looked away across the harbor, toward the anchorage, and he did not shift his gaze again from that goal of Nouméa. Taking his farewell, Monsieur. Taking his farewell in spirit and quite content, as he had said, I do believe. For this was the day, this the very morning, when the steamer left Nouméa bearing his beloved Zelie for home....
And one other thing I can tell you, crisp and clear. Do you remember when I began I said I had evened the score against M. de Nou? Evened it for always until that fiend shall be dragged to the nethermost level of hell and earn his reward? Evened it the only way it could be evened on this side of the grave?...And so I did. Never was such an evening! Listen:
Ask me not how it was done, by aid of what obscure pressure, through what underground channels. But the miniature—the miniature of Bibi-Ri! You recollect? Somehow. Monsieur—somehow, I say—it found its way into the panier with the head of Bibi-Ri. Somehow the new assistant, Bombiste's successor, discovered it when he "robbed the basket"—when he stooped to gather the little perquisites of office for his master. And somehow and finally it was laid straightway in the palm of M. de Nou....
He glanced at it. I saw him start. I saw him stare. I saw him stand and stand and still stare. I saw him lose bit by bit that shell of damnable pride, that prop of untouched and unrelenting hatred and contempt which was and which had been through all his years, his evil support.... He gave a movement, of horror, of growing terror. He stepped over. And he looked into the basket at his handiwork still lying there. He looked and he looked. But he could not know. He cannot know. He can never, never know, Monsieur.... For the red mark about that severed neck was all one red mark—do you see?—and the Red Mark remains a mystery forever!
Few persons ever attain any precise knowledge of the immemorial East, its ways or its meanings; its wickedness or its mystery. But Tunstal was a young man with a cherubic smile and a plethoric letter of credit, and he had traveled far and wide to Honolulu, to Yokohama, to Macao, and even to Singapore, which is very far indeed, besides being extremely wicked. By the time he had taken passage on theLombockfor a tour of the archipelago his education seemed complete. He had just learned to play fan-tan with much the same skill he was wont to display at poker in more familiar climes.
Tunstal had fallen in with other traveled men on board theLombock, which covers a beat among the lesser ports of Netherlands India. These were simple planters, merchants and traders for the most part, largely Dutch in flavor as well as speed. He thought them pretty dull, but they proved to be good listeners. So he had been instructing them all around, charming their ears with tales of Sago Lane and the Jalan Sultan, of Gay Street and Number Nine and the dances at Kapiolani, the while he banked a bowl of chinking cash as long as any would sit up with him.
That was how he came to find himself alone in the smoking room one breathless hot morning some days out from Singapore, amid the dead cheroots and the empty glasses, with a pile of ill-gotten profits before him, a very dry throat, and a great call for swifter action and yet newer worlds. It was all too easy. This globe-trotting thing threatened to become monotonous....
"And not even a drink on tap," he complained, for the virtuous steward—also Dutch—had retired long ago beyond the troubling of a bell push. "A fellow might just as well be back home with the lid down."
He stumbled out on deck in the dawn that came pouring up from behind the earth like a cloud of luminous, pearly smoke. TheLombockhad made harbor some time during the night and now lay anchored in a river mouth off the fringe of a toy town—one of those island cities apparently built of matches and cigar boxes that have a thousand years of history behind them and no sense of dignity and not so much as a brick block to support the same.
The water front was a tangle of crazy jetties, of string-tied fishing boats and bird-cage houses, some on stilts and some on floating shingles, to rise and fall with the tide. There stood the inevitable ancient fort, clad in creepers, and there were the usual rows of godowns, lime-washed and naked. A little mosque sprouted from a nest of palms, like a moldy turnip trying to grow the wrong way. Up along the wooded rise nestled a few solid dwellings, with garden walls and tended terraces. But Tunstal discovered no wonders—nothing to claim a star in any guidebook—and he looked indifferently at that age-old land with its great green, jungled slopes shouldering back and back until they faded in dim blue.
The early stir of little brown men, the raffle of small craft propelled by pictorial pirates in kilted sarongs, the amphibious urchin who paddled a log and besought a chance to dive for coppers; the mounting heat, the lifting river mists, the first saffron tinting of the sun, and even the complex and curious odor that wafted overstream, of jasmine and mud flats and ripe fish, of swamps and hearths and the indescribable exhalation of the human forcing house—he had observed these things before in places quite similar.
Wherefore he yawned in the face of the immemorial East and moved toward the lowered gangway to meet the first mate, a lean and leathery mariner, whom he hailed with boisterous outcry.
"Hello chief—you're the very chap I need."
The mate paused to turn his patient, almost mournful regard that seemed never to focus short of the horizon.
"I'm going ashore," announced Mr. Tunstal, "for a taste of local ginger."
"Ginger?" inquired Nivin.
"Some kind of tropic spice."
"Spice?"
"I didn't come all this way," explained Tunstal, "to waste my opportunities with a lot of fat koopmans who talk of nothing but calicoes and the rate of exchange. I'm a humble seeker after truth, right enough, but I want it fresh and snappy. I've got the price and, believe me, chief, I've got the appetite.... What port is this?"
Nivin told him. The name does not matter. It might have been one or another about that coast. It meant little to Tunstal beyond the fact that they would lie there till midnight.
"And plenty long enough, by the looks. I'll just collect three thrills and a shock and be back for tiffin. All I want from you, chief, is the wise tip. Tell me, chief, tell me. Is there anything—you know—anything specially worth seeing hereabouts?"
Thus spake and thus queried Alfred Poynter Tunstal, and Nivin examined the figure he made there under the dawn. Quite a pleasing figure. His suit of cream-colored silk fitted sleekly upon his well-fed person and his tie was a dainty scrap. He carried a dove-gray sun helmet with not more than three yards of bright peacock puggree. His buckskin shoes were fleckless. Also he wore a smile, which requires to be noted. It began in dimples and circled chubbily. Acaptious eye might have marked it as somewhat lacking—somewhat too round and ready, like the ripple on a pan of water. But it was brisk, forward, and perfectly assured.
"Anything worth seeing?" repeated Nivin, considering that smile.
The mate had sailed with globe-trotters before, though possibly with none quite duplicating Mr. Tunstal. This man Nivin was one of a type not so rare in outlying lanes and obscure corners as might be thought, into which something of the sun and the air of warm seas has penetrated. A bit of a dreamer, perhaps, mellowed by service under softer skies, among softer races. To such an officer any passenger is apt to become an object of real concern, aside from the strictly professional value thereof. He had overheard Mr. Tunstal's hectic memoirs in the smoking room and simply, laboriously, he went about to convey a certain warning....
"I should hardly think so—for a gentleman of your experience. The fact is, sir, you're off the traveled track here, so to speak. A town like this has no use for tourists and provides no class to fatten off the likes. Music, dances—all the giddy frolic made up for a show—they don't lower theirselves to that cut o' business."
"Why, they're only natives, aren't they?" asked Tunstal, and the whole philosophy of his kind was rolled in the phrase.
"Only natives, as you say, sir," returned Nivin slowly—"which is Malay and poor to jest with, besides frequently carrying a creese. They're a sober-minded breed, sir. Quite superior and fit for respect in their way."
But Tunstal had been leaning to watch the river traffic, and here he prodded the other to look. Justpassing them at the moment came a clumsy proa that had worked upchannel on the last of the tide under sweeps—a singular blot of color. Alow and aloft, from her tub cutwater and forward-sloping rail to her languid wings of matting, she was grimed an earthy, angry red. Her sailors were smeared with the same stain, their head rags and kilts and their bare arms and knotted fingers at the oars, so that she and they seemed to swim in a sullen, an infernal conflagration, and the sunrise slanting across the river reaches picked spar and rope and savage-dyed group with dabs of ruby and vermilion and dull citrine.
"It's a cinnabar boat," said Nivin as they stared down at that silent crew of ensanguined devils.
"From the mines. I know," nodded Tunstal. "Up the river—what? I heard about those mines. Van Goor, that pop-eyed little chap—an agent for some mining company, I believe—he was telling us last night around fourth-drink time. It appears these mercury miners are imported Kwangsi coolies. About as low a race as crawls, with peculiar customs of their own. They trade with the country people for supplies, and they drive some queer trades. Did you ever happen to hear yourself, chief?"
"There's no lack of tales."
"Maybe, but this is the only real one I got a smell of—pity Van Goor wasn't a bit thirstier. He said a famine has been raging in some coast district or other and the villagers are keen to sell. At the same time the commodity naturally loses weight, through starvation, and the coolie gangs buy by the pound. So a canny village will pool its food to fatten up a few—Ah!"
The ore boat had drawn level with them, so near they might have tossed a biscuit to the rude decks. And there under the break of the poop they saw three women, scarcely more than girls, crouched against the bulkhead. One raised her face for an instant, a facestruck out like a pallid, sharp-carven cameo from its ruddy setting—struck out with the poignant, mute intimacy that sometimes springs between craft and craft across a widening gulf. A vivid and unforgettable face!
The head boatman snarled, and the ragged creatures huddled from sight like nestlings under shadow of a hawk, while the proa swept in toward an upper jetty.
"Couldn't ever be proved," muttered Nivin at last.
"Of course not," agreed Tunstal genially. "Who wants to prove it? And anyway the commodity is still in transit—coming in from those coast villages, very likely."
"What would they be doing here?"
"Oh, they probably have a local clearing house for the trade," said Tunstal, learned in wickedness.
"Why should you think so?"
"Well, observe the commodity again. It hasn't been delivered, has it? You'll notice it shows no stain of cinnabar—yet!"...
The mate's face was stony as he stood gripping the rail, but Tunstal only smiled with the proper cynical detachment of the globe-trotter. From a silver case he drew a fat and sophisticated cigar to adorn that smile.
"And so much for your superior Malay. Chief, I'm surprised at you, trying to string me. Fancy a native how you like, but don't put it on grounds of respect—because I know 'em. I've seen 'em pretty much, and I've no more respect for any coffee-shaded tribe using two legs instead of four than I have for so many monkeys. Monkeys—that's what they are. Apes!
"Play with 'em? Sure. It's all they're fit for—cute little rascals sometimes too. But they simply have no moral sense. I take 'em as I find 'em; always ready for any of their cunning little games, youunderstand. Now here's this burg. I don't expect a complete Arabian Night's Dream, but I'm dead sure of finding a joint of some kind, and I mean to look it over—the place where the monkeys perform for you."
"I can't help you," said Nivin, tight-lipped. "You may be right—and yet I'd swear these people have never been spoiled. There's so few whites come here. You see, sir, you're pretty far East—"
"Too far for a 'sailor's rest'?" laughed Tunstal. "Pshaw! Come now; are you going to turn me loose on my own or will you steer me up to the local tropic drink, at least?"
Nivin might have been seen to wince a trifle, as one sorely tried, and his melancholy gaze sought the shore. Was there or was there not the beginning of a twinkle in the gray depths? He would have denied it—he afterward did deny it.
"A drink?" he murmured. "A drink? Oh, aye, I could name a drink if that would fill your need. Look over yonder on the slope beyond the Government House, that purple blaze. It's a big bachang tree in bloom, and if you should take the path that climbs beside it you might find such entertainment as perhaps you're seeking. Local I believe it is and quite tropic. Keep always to the left till you reach a pair o' green gates—three turns, or it may be four—and mind your footing as you go, sir—"
So this was the way Mr. Tunstal won his wish in the early morning when he came to the garden of Lol Raman, up from terrace to terrace above that far, that very far Eastern town.
He met his first thrill where Ezekiel met his in the vision, within the threshold of the gate. The high wall he had been following gave suddenly under an arch. There were the double green doors, standing open, and he entered a sort of open-air conservatory. At least he had no better word for the place socrammed with color and scent, and no word at all for the strange flowers and improbable trees that clustered along the walks. Down by the farther end of the inclosure stood a low house almost lost in shrubbery. An arbor with some chairs and tables seemed to invite the passer-by. And just before him, in Buddhistic meditation under a palm, squatted the reception committee of one—a monstrous orang-utan, the true red-haired jungle man, with a face like a hideous black caricature of Death.
Things happened. At sight of a visitor the huge beast reared himself, and sprang abruptly into vehement life, bouncing on bent knuckles. He started out to the limit of his chain until the bright steel links snicked ominously behind him and the leather harness drew taut about his shoulders, pumping and roaring in the great cavern of his chest to top a gale of his own forests. He scurried around the trunk and snatched at something—a packet of leaves. He ran around the other way and retrieved a little lacquer box. Crouching over these treasures with every appearance of the most frantic rage, he began, swiftly and incredibly—to roll cigarettes!
And meanwhile, impassive as a wax manikin, a white-jacketed, white-saronged servitor glided from space somewhere to prepare a table and to offer a chair in the arbor, to set out a square-faced bottle, to pour a glass of golden yellow liquor, and to collect the tiny, fresh cylinders of tobacco which the earnest ape was shedding about him in a shower—all with the gesture of conjuring.
Tunstal sat down hard. He succeeded in lighting one of the cigarettes. Exquisite. He gulped the glass of liquor. Delicious....
"I seem," said Tunstal, mopping his brow—"I seem to have landed as per invoice."
And yet these portents were valid enough too, asNivin could have told him—the customary welcome at Lol Raman's. For even among the byways a resort must have its features, though it boast no café chantant and hang no battery of conscientious nudes. In the warm, clammy evenings when the fog crept up from the river marshes it was nothing unusual for Lol Raman—whoever or whatever he might be—to entertain as many as a dozen patrons in his garden on the hill. They gathered about his tables and admired his pet orang-utan, they smoked his cigarettes and more particularly they fortified themselves with his private stock, which was arrack. A very potent safeguard against the seasonal fever is arrack, being country spirit of a golden tint and undisciplined taste. But Lol Raman's owned a private recipe, and hither came the initiated—traders, wanderers, officials of the island government, officers of passing tramps. Here they came, and here they often remained until their friends bore them away again, thoroughly safeguarded to the point of petrifaction.
Nivin might have explained these matters, but he had omitted so to do, and Tunstal's was the sheer delight of discovery.
"Stengah," he observed, reaching for the bottle. "Manti dooloo!"
The waxen gentleman looked a trifle more intelligent than an eggplant. Evidently his island Malay was not up to the classical standard. Tunstal tried him in fragmentary Dutch to the same effect and with the same result.
"Damn it—I say I want more and never mind taking that bottle away!"
The manikin's face opened.
"Oh, sure. Three dolla' hap'."
On being paid in Singapore silver he vanished into space once more while Tunstal philosophized.
"Too bad about the simple native that has no use for a tourist!"
The garden had fallen to a drowsy hush. Within its four walls only the great red ape stayed to do the honors, and he had subsided, applying himself seriously now to the cigarette industry. He sat cross-legged, workmanlike, with a bobbing of his ugly head and a ridiculous curling tongue above the delicate task. Selecting a leaf of the natural weed and adding a pinch for filler, he would somehow twist the spill and nip under the ends with flying fingers. Curious fingers he had—long and black and muscular—sinister talons that yet were nimble enough to trick the eye. It was amazing to watch him. As if a fiend from the pit had been trained to do featherstitch!
Tunstal watched for a time and drank for a time and chuckled like a parrot over sugar. The adventure suited him; it developed well. There was promise in it of something different, something quite local and tropic indeed.
A smooth exhilaration began to crawl through his veins, a heightened sense of power and perception. He found a special charm in each detail about him, each to be separately savored. The sunlight, he noted, was singularly rich and fluid. The yellow lights in his glass seemed to wink with recondite confidences. A tender spray of vanna showered its tribute of orange stars upon him; some glorious rose-pink rhododendrons drooped seductively toward his shoulder. He reached to reap them, and at that moment—the leaves parted and he saw the girl....
If the event had only transpired a trifle later, as the bard so nearly says, it would never have transpired at all. Two glasses more of the golden arrack, one glass even, and the subsequent proceedings could hardly have interested Mr. Tunstal or anybody else, exceptpossibly Nivin—Nivin, who had laid his innocent plot to that end. So narrow is the margin of trouble! He should have blinked at the lovely vision and slept peacefully safeguarded beside the square-faced bottle until carried thence aboard the steamer and gone on to tell another globe-trotting yarn. But he was just a snifter short on that potent and undisciplined drink. And here was the girl.... "By jing!" breathed Mr. Tunstal.
Truly by any standard East or West, she was very fair. Of her face he marked only the oval, the delicate bisque-tinted skin that shames mere white, and the straight brows, not too broad for a tight-drawn casque of hair. A striped sarong clipped her waist below the jutting front of her little green jacket, and he saw the soft swell at her throat and the fine, free swing of lines as she leaned forward, startled, downward-looking. An alluring and timely apparition!
Tunstal thought so—to call it thinking. "You pippin," he remarked as he pulled himself to his feet by the table. He fumbled at his helmet with some confused notion of beginning gallantly, but it fell from his fingers, and he stood flushed and staring. "You pippin!" he said again.
She belonged in this garden, in the checker of light and shadow and exotic color, slender like a young bamboo and rounded as a purple passion fruit. She belonged with the whole affair. She was just the thing he had been waiting for. He took an unsteady step, and another. She made no move. She still regarded him as he stayed, swaying. Through the play of sun-threaded foliage she seemed even to smile, provocative, as if to mock him for hesitating on his cue; and at that he lost his head altogether—what was left him. Thrusting aside shrubs and creepers, he reached for her as he had reached to pluck the rhododendron.
"D'you—d'you come seeking me, m'dear?" hestammered fatuously. "Come right along, then, you beauty—and gie's a kiss, won't you?"
He did not do it well—in fact by the time he arrived at the gesture he did it very badly.
Smoking-room audiences that had hung upon the fervid tales of Tunstal, globe-trotter; his fellow passengers, instructed in speed by the same—they must have felt somehow cheated if they could have seen him then. They must have suspected the sad, sad dog, a wolf for theory but a pug for practice, whose snap and dash in outlandish parts had been harmless enough after all. There is a technique to such affairs. Even arrack cannot supply the deficiencies of the amateur—as Tunstal was, and as he presently knew himself to be....
He recognized her. His arms were about the lithe figure, drawing her close when he became aware of the clean-carven cameo face so near him. She was the girl of the cinnabar boat, the girl that had glanced upward from the evil decks. Yet the shock of discovery was not his chief reaction, neither amazement at her presence in the garden and her changed attire. He was looking into her eyes.
They were wide and brown, deep as grotto pools, and strange, with a hint of obliquity alien to him by untold centuries. But he could read—as they blazed into his own—he could read their language. Terror was there and bewilderment. But pride too—pride of soul like the chill purity of mountain peaks. And from that height she feared and loathed him, the brutish creature of another race who dared to lay his defiling and incomprehensible touch upon her.
These things he saw while he stooped, while his lips pressed her bud of a mouth. For he kissed her. After a fashion he did kiss her—though the fume was clearing from his brain as haze lifts on the channel, thoughhe understood how abhorrent was this caress unknown to Orientals—beginning to feel pretty much ashamed of himself.... But a bit too late.
The same instant she broke away from his hold, spurning him, and as he reeled a bunch of hairy great fingers closed on the back of his neck.
He screamed once and clutched a stout, hanging creeper and clung there while his cry throttled down to a gasp. Behind him he could hear the click of steel links; before him the sunlight swam. Helpless as a kitten nipped by the scruff, he fought for life.
Because the chain was fastened high and because the beast was yoked between the shoulders he had come within the grip of only one murderous paw, which was mere luck. But through a long moment while his blood beat thick and his eyeballs started from their sockets he knew the agony of those that die by the garrote. A claw tough as a metal ring dug into his flesh, working for a firmer span, gathering the cords and muscles, tightening slowly. He could only stare at vacancy and dance upon the air and clench the creeper that brought down around him a little snowstorm of flower petals from the quaking branches overhead.
The creeper held. So did not his collar when the eager fingers shifted and found a purchase whereby the half of his coat was stripped like a husk of corn. At the sudden release he lost footing....
He was like one overtaken in a nightmare, too faint and clogged to will an effective movement for escape. With safety a matter of inches he floundered on the verge, entangled by vines and grasses, tugging madly at his hip. And the nightmare was very close, a horror not to be faced, a red fury with gigantic arms that came flailing and picking at him and tearing his clothes to ribbons as he groveled!
It lasted until the ape took a trick from the man,swung up on a liana, and from the vantage caught him about the body with his feet. Then Tunstal's revolver came free. Crushed in that dreadful embrace, he began to shoot!
When he stood up above the quivering heap and looked about him he was alone. After the frenzy of his struggle the silence dropped in upon him like a ram. The walks were empty, the thickets were quiet, the house at the end of the inclosure seemed deserted. He turned to the spot where he had seen the girl. She was gone. He turned toward the gates. They had been closed. He ran stumbling and flung against them and found they had been locked as well. No one came, no one called. And the garden drowsed in the warmth of a forenoon brilliant, heavy-scented, tropical!...
The last Tunstal remembered was raving back and forth within those four walls with a useless gun in his fist and the pitiless sun beating upon his head.
There is no tradition of the mercantile marine that provides for following the fortunes of travelers who step ashore to enjoy the scenery or other benefits. But a traveler who carries an important letter of credit and a through passage ticket may present something of an exception. In the early evening of theLombock'sstay at the port by the river mouth her first mate found time and occasion for a cryptic word with her captain. And the captain was exceeding wroth, for theLombockwould finish her landing on the ebb and he had no mind to miss a tide.
"Who d'y'say? Him? Not back yet, d'y'say? Well, what's that to me? Have I got to drynurse every glorified pup of a globe-trotter that takes a sanctified notion to soak hisself?"
Nivin explained at some length.
"To hell with all passengers!" wished the captain then, a man of strictly professional temper. "Here'sthis little rat Van Goor been devilin' me all day about the grub we fed his blessed coolies in the 'tween-decks. He says he'll lose a week's labor off the lot before they're fit for work.... Well, go on, go on. If your blighter's such a fool as you say, you better go get him. But I'll not wait past midnight—mind that. And I wish you joy of the job."
So Nivin came ashore at dusk to wander through the same streets and alleys to which he had directed another's erring steps at dawn.
He sought a handsome young stranger in a suit of cream-colored silk and a dove-gray helmet with peacock puggree. Drunk, probably. Even very drunk. Possibly violent and uproarious—this was Nivin's fear. More likely to be fever-proofed and solidified—this was Nivin's hope. Had any seen such a wonder? None had, though a boatman remembered landing the white tuan from theLombock, and there was plain testimony that he had purchased a bottle of arrack for three dollars and a half Singapore silver. Beyond that point the trail evaporated. Apparently the person of Alfred Poynter Tunstal had dissolved in local liquor.
It was the hour of lamp lighting when the mate arrived at Government House to lay his quest before a genial and elephantine official in white ducks who was by way of being an acquaintance and who beamed upon him from the step. "You los' somebody? Here? My dear fallow, do you sink you are in Calcutta or Kowloon? Nosing happens here to sailormen or whoever. Why, zis is not even semicivilize', wizout one coffee shop!... Unless, of course, he actually injuries ze people."
"Ah," said Nivin.
"In zeir pride," added De Haan reflectively.
"And if he did?"
De Haan smoothed a glossy beard with a deliberatehand the size of a spade. He was controller in a district of some tens of thousands of brown population and long had been, and his father before him.
"If he did—I cannot say," he answered. "In such affairs we always remember zese folk haf been alife in ze land a few years before us. Who shall say? But it would be somesing fitting—mos' fitting and op-propriate. Zere was once a man came to steal liddle stone pictures from old temples in ze hills. He wanted ze heads for souvenirs, you see?" He rocked complacently. "I haf seen his head, nicely smoked. Which was alzo a souvenir."
But he met Nivin's melancholy gaze and his tone changed.
"You tell me you los' your frien' at Lol Raman's? Haf you been to look?"
"Three times. There's no trace. I found a servant who sold the lad drink; no more."
"Come wit' me, zen," said the controller. "And do not half such trouble at heart. We will find him. He is only schleeping off zat fever cure."
They searched high and low, among the terraces and through the water front where De Haan questioned all manner of natives: stolid, self-possessed little men who looked him between the eyes at answering—but they found no nook wherein Tunstal might be slumbering, nor any clue, and Nivin's lean jaw lengthened.
"Your fren' was come alone?" asked De Haan, puzzled.
"Alone and early. There wouldn't likely be any other customer at that time. No witnesses."
"It is all right now—do not be tragic. Nosing of ze kind could be. We will see ze garden again."...
But all they saw was no aid to the case. They entered the garden of Lol Raman to find it disposed as usual, inviting the evening trade. Paper lanternsswung among the trees like phosphorescent fruits and drew a myriad fluttering moths. As if the glow had drawn them too, a few visitors lounged at ease about the tables, sipping and murmuring languidly. Some of theLombock'spassengers were there, notably a smallish man with shiny skin and bulbous eyes, glittering and predatory, who bowed effusively to De Haan and received a cool nod. Gliding here and yon, and jiggling a tray to serve the general need, went a waxen-faced manikin. Glasses shone and sparkled. White garments showed fresh and span. And farther back, amid the shadows under the big palm, could be seen the vague figure of the presiding genius of the place, the huge red ape, huddled in the attitude of meditation.
"All ze same, hey?" said De Haan. "Still we remain a liddle. Perhaps we hear somesing. And you, my dear fallow, drink zis."
He chose a table in the arbor near a magnificent rhododendron and poured a measure of golden yellow liquid from a ready bottle, and the mate had need of the same. Nivin was paying the penalty just then for unprofessional weakness and the mellower streak of his nature, as those of his type have often to pay here below. He remembered that he alone had guided Tunstal. He could not acquit himself for whatever ill had befallen. And he remembered something else—another evil he had done nothing to check that day—the passage of the cinnabar boat with her ruddy devils and suspected errand....
"What is ze matter wit' zat beast?" rumbled De Haan, frowning over his shoulder. "He don' yell good to-night. He acts like sick. And alzo he haf no roll' us yet one single cigarette. Yet here is plenty tobacco too—"
With his foot he pushed within the circle of the chain a little lacquer box and a packet of leaves, butwhen he turned again the kindly official saw that his attempt to set up a diversion had failed. Nivin looked leaner and more leathery than ever, and his eyes had lighted with an almost fanatic gleam which was only partly due to arrack—that potential drink. "It's no use, Mister Controller," he said. "And I thank you for meaning well. But you can't keep from me that something awful has happened to the boy I sent from theLombockso free and careless."
De Haan squirmed through all his thick bulk. "Don' speak so wit' a pain, my dear fallow," he urged. "I do not admit it. We haf yet to see."
"I can see. You try to tell me certain crimes are spared you here. I take it you mean such deviltry as grows where foreigners have rotted a native country?"
"Yes," said De Haan.
"And that's true; they do rot it. I always thought this place was clean, just as you claim, because so few whites pass through—a plain, decent, wholesome race that keeps its self-respect and harms none till trod upon."
"Yes."
Nivin leaned across at him. "But the rotters are in. They're at their slimy work, grubbin' for profit through muck. And after that what's to be trusted?"
"What do you mean?" demanded De Haan.
"Such people as that rat Van Goor over there—" He jerked a thumb toward the bulbous-eyed man.
"We watch zem. Zat is what we are here for. Meanwhile zey bring development. If zey misbehave, we sling zem out quick."
"And the coolies they bring—scum of the earth. Do you watch them?"
"Of course."
"And you never caught them yet at their slavetrade planted right in the heart of your people?"
De Haan stiffened in his chair. "What are you trying to say? Zis is fool talk of ze river."
"Native women sold into slavery to the cinnabar mines to hell and death. Soul traffic, the fine flower of civilization. Here in these lovely islands!"
"I tell you it can't be!"
"The boats, man. The cinnabar boats. Can you answer for their trade up and down and about—transporting commodities to supply the gangs?"
"We inspect every one of zem here, at ze water front. Zere is nosing nor anywhere to hide such doings. You, zat speak to the shame of our people—prove it if you can!"
"What if I could?" cried Nivin.
"What if you could?" De Haan doubled his hands before him, the kind of big, white, capable hands that deliberately and quietly have molded the most successful and the least troublesome colonial empire in the world. "What if you could? By Godd, we would take ze man who did it and break him in liddle pieces! Can you prove it? Speak now and let me hear your proof. By Godd, I tell you zis is my gountry—our gountry, our people! Not dirt, but men and women. Not chattels, not slaves; not—not—"
There broke a sharp click and rattle of steel links. They turned at the sound. Under the big palm the red-haired ape had started into vehement life, bouncing at his leash....
Nivin had fallen back into his chair again, silenced, baffled, for he had no proof to give. De Haan still held the pose of challenge, glancing over his shoulder. Both of them watched the ungainly creature reeling in the shadows; both of them observed the gestures by which he seemed to solicit their attention.
He had taken a leaf of the raw tobacco and addinga pinch for filler was trying to twist the spill. And he could not. It became evident to them that he could not. The fingers moved painfully, trembling.... Curious fingers he had, stumpy and thick and clumsy as if covered with ragged gloves, wholly unequal to the delicate task.
Slowly Nivin levered his lank frame out of the chair and moved a pace like a somnambulist and stood staring at those fingers. He straightened and transfixed De Haan. "Where's your police?" he whispered. "Guns—soldiers—something—!"
"What? What is it?"
Nivin stood braced like a man at the edge of a precipice.
"To hold this place."
De Haan looked around over the patch of lighted garden into the banks of shrubbery and further dim tree shapes.
"I hold zis place," he said simply, bulking big and broad. "I am here. None of my people will harm us now, whatever zey may haf done, whatever you may mean. And zen—?"
Without a word Nivin stepped into the circle about the palm, stepped up to the crouching, sinister captive, flung an arm about him and seemed to wrestle. A knife wrought swiftly in his hand with little flashes.
"N-n-not—not—not monkeys!" burst a broken voice, sobbing with eagerness to top the phrase.
And in the fantastic glow of paper lanterns stood Alfred Poynter Tunstal, surely the strangest figure to which a dapper and sophisticated seeker after truth was ever reduced, with a face blackened and unrecognizable like a hideous caricature and slashed across by the raw wound of his recent gag, clad, head to heel, in the plastered red hide of a monstrous orang-utan, the true jungle man!
So he stood to give testimony and make atonement for various things.