VICTORY: AN ISLAND TALE

By Joseph Conrad

NOTE TO THE FIRST EDITION

The last word of this novel was written on 29 May 1914. And that lastword was the single word of the title. 

Those were the times of peace. Now that the moment of publicationapproaches I have been considering the discretion of altering thetitle-page. The word "Victory" the shining and tragic goal of nobleeffort, appeared too great, too august, to stand at the head of a merenovel. There was also the possibility of falling under the suspicion ofcommercial astuteness deceiving the public into the belief that the bookhad something to do with war. 

Of that, however, I was not afraid very much. What influenced mydecision most were the obscure promptings of that pagan residuum ofawe and wonder which lurks still at the bottom of our old humanity. "Victory" was the last word I had written in peace-time. It was the lastliterary thought which had occurred to me before the doors of the Templeof Janus flying open with a crash shook the minds, the hearts, theconsciences of men all over the world. Such coincidence could not betreated lightly. And I made up my mind to let the word stand, in thesame hopeful spirit in which some simple citizen of Old Rome would have"accepted the Omen. "

The second point on which I wish to offer a remark is the existence (inthe novel) of a person named Schomberg. 

That I believe him to be true goes without saying. I am not likely tooffer pinchbeck wares to my public consciously. Schomberg is an oldmember of my company. A very subordinate personage in Lord Jim as farback as the year 1899, he became notably active in a certain short storyof mine published in 1902. Here he appears in a still larger part, trueto life (I hope), but also true to himself. Only, in this instance, hisdeeper passions come into play, and thus his grotesque psychology iscompleted at last. 

I don't pretend to say that this is the entire Teutonic psychology; butit is indubitably the psychology of a Teuton. My object in mentioninghim here is to bring out the fact that, far from being the incarnationof recent animosities, he is the creature of my old deep-seated, and, asit were, impartial conviction. 

J. C. 

AUTHOR'S NOTE

On approaching the task of writing this Note for Victory, the firstthing I am conscious of is the actual nearness of the book, its nearnessto me personally, to the vanished mood in which it was written, and tothe mixed feelings aroused by the critical notices the book obtainedwhen first published almost exactly a year after the beginning of thewar. The writing of it was finished in 1914 long before the murder of anAustrian Archduke sounded the first note of warning for a world alreadyfull of doubts and fears. 

The contemporaneous very short Author's Note which is preserved in thisedition bears sufficient witness to the feelings with which I consentedto the publication of the book. The fact of the book having beenpublished in the United States early in the year made it difficultto delay its appearance in England any longer. It came out in thethirteenth month of the war, and my conscience was troubled by the awfulincongruity of throwing this bit of imagined drama into the welterof reality, tragic enough in all conscience, but even more cruel thantragic and more inspiring than cruel. It seemed awfully presumptuous tothink there would be eyes to spare for those pages in a community whichin the crash of the big guns and in the din of brave words expressingthe truth of an indomitable faith could not but feel the edge of a sharpknife at its throat. 

The unchanging Man of history is wonderfully adaptable both by his powerof endurance and in his capacity for detachment. The fact seems tobe that the play of his destiny is too great for his fears and toomysterious for his understanding. Were the trump of the Last Judgementto sound suddenly on a working day the musician at his piano would go onwith his performance of Beethoven's sonata and the cobbler at hisstall stick to his last in undisturbed confidence in the virtues of theleather. And with perfect propriety. For what are we to let ourselves bedisturbed by an angel's vengeful music too mighty our ears and too awfulfor our terrors? Thus it happens to us to be struck suddenly by thelightning of wrath. The reader will go on reading if the book pleaseshim and the critic will go on criticizing with that faculty ofdetachment born perhaps from a sense of infinite littleness and which isyet the only faculty that seems to assimilate man to the immortal gods. 

It is only when the catastrophe matches the natural obscurity of ourfate that even the best representative of the race is liable to lose hisdetachment. It is very obvious that on the arrival of the gentlemanlyMr. Jones, the single-minded Ricardo, and the faithful Pedro, Heyst, theman of universal detachment, loses his mental self-possession, that fineattitude before the universally irremediable which wears the name ofstoicism. It is all a matter of proportion. There should have been aremedy for that sort of thing. And yet there is no remedy. Behind thisminute instance of life's hazards Heyst sees the power of blind destiny. Besides, Heyst in his fine detachment had lost the habit assertinghimself. I don't mean the courage of self-assertion, either moral orphysical, but the mere way of it, the trick of the thing, the readinessof mind and the turn of the hand that come without reflection and leadthe man to excellence in life, in art, in crime, in virtue, and, for thematter of that, even in love. Thinking is the great enemy of perfection. The habit of profound reflection, I am compelled to say, is the mostpernicious of all the habits formed by the civilized man. 

But I wouldn't be suspected even remotely of making fun of Axel Heyst. Ihave always liked him. The flesh-and-blood individual who standsbehind the infinitely more familiar figure of the book I remember as amysterious Swede right enough. Whether he was a baron, too, I am not socertain. He himself never laid claim to that distinction. His detachmentwas too great to make any claims, big or small, on one's credulity. Iwill not say where I met him because I fear to give my readers awrong impression, since a marked incongruity between a man and hissurroundings is often a very misleading circumstance. We became veryfriendly for a time, and I would not like to expose him to unpleasantsuspicions though, personally, I am sure he would have been indifferentto suspicions as he was indifferent to all the other disadvantages oflife. He was not the whole Heyst of course; he is only the physical andmoral foundation of my Heyst laid on the ground of a short acquaintance. That it was short was certainly not my fault for he had charmed me bythe mere amenity of his detachment which, in this case, I cannot helpthinking he had carried to excess. He went away from his rooms withoutleaving a trace. I wondered where he had gone to--but now I know. He vanished from my ken only to drift into this adventure that, unavoidable, waited for him in a world which he persisted in lookingupon as a malevolent shadow spinning in the sunlight. Often in thecourse of years an expressed sentiment, the particular sense of a phraseheard casually, would recall him to my mind so that I have fastened onto him many words heard on other men's lips and belonging to other men'sless perfect, less pathetic moods. 

The same observation will apply mutatis mutandis to Mr. Jones, who isbuilt on a much slenderer connection. Mr. Jones (or whatever his namewas) did not drift away from me. He turned his back on me and walked outof the room. It was in a little hotel in the island of St. Thomas inthe West Indies (in the year '75) where we found him one hot afternoonextended on three chairs, all alone in the loud buzzing of flies towhich his immobility and his cadaverous aspect gave a most gruesomesignificance. Our invasion must have displeased him because he got offthe chairs brusquely and walked out, leaving with me an indelibly weirdimpression of his thin shanks. One of the men with me said that thefellow was the most desperate gambler he had ever come across. I said:"A professional sharper?" and got for an answer: "He's a terror; but Imust say that up to a certain point he will play fair. . . . " I wonderwhat the point was. I never saw him again because I believe he wentstraight on board a mail-boat which left within the hour for otherports of call in the direction of Aspinall. Mr. Jones's characteristicinsolence belongs to another man of a quite different type. I will saynothing as to the origins of his mentality because I don't intend tomake any damaging admissions. 

It so happened that the very same year Ricardo--the physicalRicardo--was a fellow passenger of mine on board an extremely small andextremely dirty little schooner, during a four days' passage between twoplaces in the Gulf of Mexico whose names don't matter. For the most parthe lay on deck aft as it were at my feet, and raising himself from timeto time on his elbow would talk about himself and go on talking, notexactly to me or even at me (he would not even look up but kept hiseyes fixed on the deck) but more as if communing in a low voice withhis familiar devil. Now and then he would give me a glance and make thehairs of his stiff little moustache stir quaintly. His eyes were greenand every cat I see to this day reminds me of the exact contour of hisface. What he was travelling for or what was his business in life henever confided to me. Truth to say, the only passenger on board thatschooner who could have talked openly about his activities and purposeswas a very snuffy and conversationally delightful friar, the superiorof a convent, attended by a very young lay brother, of a particularlyferocious countenance. We had with us also, lying prostrate in the darkand unspeakable cuddy of that schooner, an old Spanish gentleman, ownerof much luggage and, as Ricardo assured me, very ill indeed. Ricardoseemed to be either a servant or the confidant of that aged anddistinguished-looking invalid, who early on the passage held a longmurmured conversation with the friar, and after that did nothing butgroan feebly, smoke cigarettes, and now and then call for Martin in avoice full of pain. Then he who had become Ricardo in the book would gobelow into that beastly and noisome hole, remain there mysteriously, and coming up on deck again with a face on which nothing could be read, would as likely as not resume for my edification the exposition of hismoral attitude towards life illustrated by striking particular instancesof the most atrocious complexion. Did he mean to frighten me? Or seduceme? Or astonish me? Or arouse my admiration? All he did was to arouse myamused incredulity. As scoundrels go he was far from being a bore. For the rest my innocence was so great then that I could not take hisphilosophy seriously. All the time he kept one ear turned to the cuddyin the manner of a devoted servant, but I had the idea that in some wayor other he had imposed the connection on the invalid for some end ofhis own. The reader, therefore, won't be surprised to hear that onemorning I was told without any particular emotion by the padrone of theschooner that the "rich man" down there was dead: He had died in thenight. I don't remember ever being so moved by the desolate end of acomplete stranger. I looked down the skylight, and there was the devotedMartin busy cording cowhide trunks belonging to the deceased whose whitebeard and hooked nose were the only parts I could make out in the darkdepths of a horrible stuffy bunk. 

As it fell calm in the course of the afternoon and continued calm duringall that night and the terrible, flaming day, the late "rich man" hadto be thrown overboard at sunset, though as a matter of fact we were insight of the low pestilential mangrove-lined coast of our destination. The excellent Father Superior mentioned to me with an air of immensecommiseration: "The poor man has left a young daughter. " Who was to lookafter her I don't know, but I saw the devoted Martin taking the trunksashore with great care just before I landed myself. I would perhaps havetracked the ways of that man of immense sincerity for a little while, but I had some of my own very pressing business to attend to, which inthe end got mixed up with an earthquake and so I had no time to giveto Ricardo. The reader need not be told that I have not forgotten him, though. 

My contact with the faithful Pedro was much shorter and my observationof him was less complete but incomparably more anxious. It ended in asudden inspiration to get out of his way. It was in a hovel of sticksand mats by the side of a path. As I went in there only to ask for abottle of lemonade I have not to this day the slightest idea what inmy appearance or actions could have roused his terrible ire. It becamemanifest to me less than two minutes after I had set eyes on him for thefirst time, and though immensely surprised of course I didn't stopto think it out I took the nearest short cut--through the wall. Thisbestial apparition and a certain enormous buck nigger encountered inHaiti only a couple of months afterwards, have fixed my conception ofblind, furious, unreasoning rage, as manifested in the human animal, tothe end of my days. Of the nigger I used to dream for years afterwards. Of Pedro never. The impression was less vivid. I got away from him tooquickly. 

It seems to me but natural that those three buried in a corner of mymemory should suddenly get out into the light of the world--so naturalthat I offer no excuse for their existence, They were there, they had tocome out; and this is a sufficient excuse for a writer of tales who hadtaken to his trade without preparation, or premeditation, and withoutany moral intention but that which pervades the whole scheme of thisworld of senses. 

Since this Note is mostly concerned with personal contacts and theorigins of the persons in the tale, I am bound also to speak of Lena, because if I were to leave her out it would look like a slight; andnothing would be further from my thoughts than putting a slight on Lena. If of all the personages involved in the "mystery of Samburan" I havelived longest with Heyst (or with him I call Heyst) it was at her, whomI call Lena, that I have looked the longest and with a most sustainedattention. This attention originated in idleness for which I have anatural talent. One evening I wandered into a cafe, in a town not of thetropics but of the South of France. It was filled with tobacco smoke, the hum of voices, the rattling of dominoes, and the sounds of stridentmusic. The orchestra was rather smaller than the one that performedat Schomberg's hotel, had the air more of a family party than of anenlisted band, and, I must confess, seemed rather more respectable thanthe Zangiacomo musical enterprise. It was less pretentious also, morehomely and familiar, so to speak, insomuch that in the intervals whenall the performers left the platform one of them went amongst themarble tables collecting offerings of sous and francs in a batteredtin receptacle recalling the shape of a sauceboat. It was a girl. Her detachment from her task seems to me now to have equalled or evensurpassed Heyst's aloofness from all the mental degradations to whicha man's intelligence is exposed in its way through life. Silent andwide-eyed she went from table to table with the air of a sleep-walkerand with no other sound but the slight rattle of the coins to attractattention. It was long after the sea-chapter of my life had been closedbut it is difficult to discard completely the characteristics of halfa lifetime, and it was in something of the Jack-ashore spirit thatI dropped a five-franc piece into the sauceboat; whereupon thesleep-walker turned her head to gaze at me and said "Merci, Monsieur"in a tone in which there was no gratitude but only surprise. I must havebeen idle indeed to take the trouble to remark on such slight evidencethat the voice was very charming and when the performers resumedtheir seats I shifted my position slightly in order not to have thatparticular performer hidden from me by the little man with the beard whoconducted, and who might for all I know have been her father, but whosereal mission in life was to be a model for the Zangiacomo of Victory. Having got a clear line of sight I naturally (being idle) continued tolook at the girl through all the second part of the programme. The shapeof her dark head inclined over the violin was fascinating, and, whileresting between the pieces of that interminable programme she was, inher white dress and with her brown hands reposing in her lap, the veryimage of dreamy innocence. The mature, bad-tempered woman at thepiano might have been her mother, though there was not the slightestresemblance between them. All I am certain of in their personal relationto each other is that cruel pinch on the upper part of the arm. That Iam sure I have seen! There could be no mistake. I was in too idle a moodto imagine such a gratuitous barbarity. It may have been playfulness, yet the girl jumped up as if she had been stung by a wasp. It may havebeen playfulness. Yet I saw plainly poor "dreamy innocence" rub gentlythe affected place as she filed off with the other performers down themiddle aisle between the marble tables in the uproar of voices, therattling of dominoes through a blue atmosphere of tobacco smoke. Ibelieve that those people left the town next day. 

Or perhaps they had only migrated to the other big cafe, on the otherside of the Place de la Comedie. It is very possible. I did not goacross to find out. It was my perfect idleness that had invested thegirl with a peculiar charm, and I did not want to destroy it byany superfluous exertion. The receptivity of my indolence made theimpression so permanent that when the moment came for her meeting withHeyst I felt that she would be heroically equal to every demand of therisky and uncertain future. I was so convinced of it that I let her gowith Heyst, I won't say without a pang but certainly without misgivings. And in view of her triumphant end what more could I have done for herrehabilitation and her happiness?

1920. J. C. 

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

There is, as every schoolboy knows in this scientific age, a veryclose chemical relation between coal and diamonds. It is the reason, Ibelieve, why some people allude to coal as "black diamonds. " Both thesecommodities represent wealth; but coal is a much less portable formof property. There is, from that point of view, a deplorable lack ofconcentration in coal. Now, if a coal-mine could be put into one'swaistcoat pocket--but it can't! At the same time, there is a fascinationin coal, the supreme commodity of the age in which we are camped likebewildered travellers in a garish, unrestful hotel. And I supposethose two considerations, the practical and the mystical, preventedHeyst--Axel Heyst--from going away. 

The Tropical Belt Coal Company went into liquidation. The world offinance is a mysterious world in which, incredible as the fact mayappear, evaporation precedes liquidation. First the capital evaporates, and then the company goes into liquidation. These are very unnaturalphysics, but they account for the persistent inertia of Heyst, at whichwe "out there" used to laugh among ourselves--but not inimically. Aninert body can do no harm to anyone, provokes no hostility, is scarcelyworth derision. It may, indeed, be in the way sometimes; but this couldnot be said of Axel Heyst. He was out of everybody's way, as if hewere perched on the highest peak of the Himalayas, and in a sense asconspicuous. Everyone in that part of the world knew of him, dwelling onhis little island. An island is but the top of a mountain. Axel Heyst, perched on it immovably, was surrounded, instead of the imponderablestormy and transparent ocean of air merging into infinity, by a tepid, shallow sea; a passionless offshoot of the great waters which embracethe continents of this globe. His most frequent visitors were shadows, the shadows of clouds, relieving the monotony of the inanimate, broodingsunshine of the tropics. His nearest neighbour--I am speaking now ofthings showing some sort of animation--was an indolent volcano whichsmoked faintly all day with its head just above the northern horizon, and at night levelled at him, from amongst the clear stars, a dull redglow, expanding and collapsing spasmodically like the end of a giganticcigar puffed at intermittently in the dark. Axel Heyst was also asmoker; and when he lounged out on his veranda with his cheroot, thelast thing before going to bed, he made in the night the same sort ofglow and of the same size as that other one so many miles away. 

In a sense, the volcano was company to him in the shades of thenight--which were often too thick, one would think, to let a breath ofair through. There was seldom enough wind to blow a feather along. Onmost evenings of the year Heyst could have sat outside with a nakedcandle to read one of the books left him by his late father. It was nota mean store. But he never did that. Afraid of mosquitoes, very likely. Neither was he ever tempted by the silence to address any casual remarksto the companion glow of the volcano. He was not mad. Queer chap--yes, that may have been said, and in fact was said; but there is a tremendousdifference between the two, you will allow. 

On the nights of full moon the silence around Samburan--the "RoundIsland" of the charts--was dazzling; and in the flood of cold lightHeyst could see his immediate surroundings, which had the aspect ofan abandoned settlement invaded by the jungle: vague roofs above lowvegetation, broken shadows of bamboo fences in the sheen of long grass, something like an overgrown bit of road slanting among ragged thicketstowards the shore only a couple of hundred yards away, with a blackjetty and a mound of some sort, quite inky on its unlighted side. Butthe most conspicuous object was a gigantic blackboard raised on twoposts and presenting to Heyst, when the moon got over that side, thewhite letters "T. B. C. Co. " in a row at least two feet high. These werethe initials of the Tropical Belt Coal Company, his employers--his lateemployers, to be precise. 

According to the unnatural mysteries of the financial world, the T. B. C. Company's capital having evaporated in the course of two years, thecompany went into liquidation--forced, I believe, not voluntary. Therewas nothing forcible in the process, however. It was slow; and while theliquidation--in London and Amsterdam--pursued its languid course, AxelHeyst, styled in the prospectus "manager in the tropics, " remained athis post on Samburan, the No. 1 coaling-station of the company. 

And it was not merely a coaling-station. There was a coal-mine there, with an outcrop in the hillside less than five hundred yards from therickety wharf and the imposing blackboard. The company's object had beento get hold of all the outcrops on tropical islands and exploit themlocally. And, Lord knows, there were any amount of outcrops. It wasHeyst who had located most of them in this part of the tropical beltduring his rather aimless wanderings, and being a ready letter-writerhad written pages and pages about them to his friends in Europe. Atleast, so it was said. 

We doubted whether he had any visions of wealth--for himself, at anyrate. What he seemed mostly concerned for was the "stride forward, "as he expressed it, in the general organization of the universe, apparently. He was heard by more than a hundred persons in the islandstalking of a "great stride forward for these regions. " The convincedwave of the hand which accompanied the phrase suggested tropicaldistances being impelled onward. In connection with the finishedcourtesy of his manner, it was persuasive, or at any rate silencing--fora time, at least. Nobody cared to argue with him when he talked in thisstrain. His earnestness could do no harm to anybody. There was no dangerof anyone taking seriously his dream of tropical coal, so what was theuse of hurting his feelings?

Thus reasoned men in reputable business offices where he had his entreeas a person who came out East with letters of introduction--and modestletters of credit, too--some years before these coal-outcrops began tocrop up in his playfully courteous talk. From the first there wassome difficulty in making him out. He was not a traveller. A travellerarrives and departs, goes on somewhere. Heyst did not depart. I met aman once--the manager of the branch of the Oriental Banking Corporationin Malacca--to whom Heyst exclaimed, in no connection with anything inparticular (it was in the billiard-room of the club):

"I am enchanted with these islands!"

He shot it out suddenly, a propos des bottes, as the French say, andwhile chalking his cue. And perhaps it was some sort of enchantment. There are more spells than your commonplace magicians ever dreamed of. 

Roughly speaking, a circle with a radius of eight hundred miles drawnround a point in North Borneo was in Heyst's case a magic circle. Itjust touched Manila, and he had been seen there. It just touched Saigon, and he was likewise seen there once. Perhaps these were his attempts tobreak out. If so, they were failures. The enchantment must have beenan unbreakable one. The manager--the man who heard the exclamation--hadbeen so impressed by the tone, fervour, rapture, what you will, orperhaps by the incongruity of it that he had related the experience tomore than one person. 

"Queer chap, that Swede, " was his only comment; but this is the originof the name "Enchanted Heyst" which some fellows fastened on our man. 

He also had other names. In his early years, long before he got sobecomingly bald on the top, he went to present a letter of introductionto Mr. Tesman of Tesman Brothers, a Sourabaya firm--tip-top house. Well, Mr. Tesman was a kindly, benevolent old gentleman. He did not know whatto make of that caller. After telling him that they wished to render hisstay among the islands as pleasant as possible, and that they wereready to assist him in his plans, and so on, and after receiving Heyst'sthanks--you know the usual kind of conversation--he proceeded to queryin a slow, paternal tone:

"And you are interested in--?"

"Facts, " broke in Heyst in his courtly voice. "There's nothing worthknowing but facts. Hard facts! Facts alone, Mr. Tesman. "

I don't know if old Tesman agreed with him or not, but he must havespoken about it, because, for a time, our man got the name of "HardFacts. " He had the singular good fortune that his sayings stuck to himand became part of his name. Thereafter he mooned about the Java Sea insome of the Tesmans' trading schooners, and then vanished, on board anArab ship, in the direction of New Guinea. He remained so long in thatoutlying part of his enchanted circle that he was nearly forgottenbefore he swam into view again in a native proa full of Goram vagabonds, burnt black by the sun, very lean, his hair much thinned, and aportfolio of sketches under his arm. He showed these willingly, butwas very reserved as to anything else. He had had an "amusing time, " hesaid. A man who will go to New Guinea for fun--well!

Later, years afterwards, when the last vestiges of youth had gone offhis face and all the hair off the top of his head, and his red-goldpair of horizontal moustaches had grown to really noble proportions, a certain disreputable white man fastened upon him an epithet. Puttingdown with a shaking hand a long glass emptied of its contents--paidfor by Heyst--he said, with that deliberate sagacity which no merewater-drinker ever attained:

"Heyst's a puffect g'n'lman. Puffect! But he's a ut-uto-utopist. "

Heyst had just gone out of the place of public refreshment where thispronouncement was voiced. Utopist, eh? Upon my word, the only thingI heard him say which might have had a bearing on the point was hisinvitation to old McNab himself. Turning with that finished courtesy ofattitude, movement voice, which was his obvious characteristic, he hadsaid with delicate playfulness:

"Come along and quench your thirst with us, Mr. McNab!"

Perhaps that was it. A man who could propose, even playfully, to quenchold McNab's thirst must have been a utopist, a pursuer of chimeras; forof downright irony Heyst was not prodigal. And, may be, this was thereason why he was generally liked. At that epoch in his life, in thefulness of his physical development, of a broad, martial presence, withhis bald head and long moustaches, he resembled the portraits of CharlesXII. , of adventurous memory. However, there was no reason to think thatHeyst was in any way a fighting man. 

CHAPTER TWO

It was about this time that Heyst became associated with Morrison onterms about which people were in doubt. Some said he was a partner, others said he was a sort of paying guest, but the real truth of thematter was more complex. One day Heyst turned up in Timor. Why in Timor, of all places in the world, no one knows. Well, he was mooning aboutDelli, that highly pestilential place, possibly in search of someundiscovered facts, when he came in the street upon Morrison, who, inhis way, was also an "enchanted" man. When you spoke to Morrison ofgoing home--he was from Dorsetshire--he shuddered. He said it was darkand wet there; that it was like living with your head and shoulders ina moist gunny-bag. That was only his exaggerated style of talking. Morrison was "one of us. " He was owner and master of the Capricorn, trading brig, and was understood to be doing well with her, except forthe drawback of too much altruism. He was the dearly beloved friend of aquantity of God-forsaken villages up dark creeks and obscure bays, wherehe traded for produce. He would often sail, through awfully dangerouschannels up to some miserable settlement, only to find a very hungrypopulation clamorous for rice, and without so much "produce" betweenthem as would have filled Morrison's suitcase. Amid general rejoicings, he would land the rice all the same, explain to the people that it wasan advance, that they were in debt to him now; would preach to themenergy and industry, and make an elaborate note in a pocket-diary whichhe always carried; and this would be the end of that transaction. I don't know if Morrison thought so, but the villagers had no doubtwhatever about it. Whenever a coast village sighted the brig it wouldbegin to beat all its gongs and hoist all its streamers, and all itsgirls would put flowers in their hair and the crowd would line the riverbank, and Morrison would beam and glitter at all this excitement throughhis single eyeglass with an air of intense gratification. He was talland lantern-jawed, and clean-shaven, and looked like a barrister who hadthrown his wig to the dogs. 

We used to remonstrate with him:

"You will never see any of your advances if you go on like this, Morrison. "

He would put on a knowing air. 

"I shall squeeze them yet some day--never you fear. And that remindsme"--pulling out his inseparable pocketbook--"there's that So-and-Sovillage. They are pretty well off again; I may just as well squeeze themto begin with. "

He would make a ferocious entry in the pocketbook. 

Memo: Squeeze the So-and-So village at the first time of calling. 

Then he would stick the pencil back and snap the elastic on withinflexible finality; but he never began the squeezing. Some men grumbledat him. He was spoiling the trade. Well, perhaps to a certain extent;not much. Most of the places he traded with were unknown not only togeography but also to the traders' special lore which is transmitted byword of mouth, without ostentation, and forms the stock of mysteriouslocal knowledge. It was hinted also that Morrison had a wife in each andevery one of them, but the majority of us repulsed these innuendoeswith indignation. He was a true humanitarian and rather ascetic thanotherwise. 

When Heyst met him in Delli, Morrison was walking along the street, his eyeglass tossed over his shoulder, his head down, with the hopelessaspect of those hardened tramps one sees on our roads trudging fromworkhouse to workhouse. Being hailed on the street he looked up with awild worried expression. He was really in trouble. He had come the weekbefore into Delli and the Portuguese authorities, on some pretenceof irregularity in his papers, had inflicted a fine upon him and hadarrested his brig. 

Morrison never had any spare cash in hand. With his system of tradingit would have been strange if he had; and all these debts entered inthe pocketbook weren't good enough to raise a millrei on--let alone ashilling. The Portuguese officials begged him not to distress himself. They gave him a week's grace, and then proposed to sell the brig atauction. This meant ruin for Morrison; and when Heyst hailed him acrossthe street in his usual courtly tone, the week was nearly out. 

Heyst crossed over, and said with a slight bow, and in the manner of aprince addressing another prince on a private occasion:

"What an unexpected pleasure. Would you have any objection to drinksomething with me in that infamous wine-shop over there? The sun isreally too strong to talk in the street. "

The haggard Morrison followed obediently into a sombre, cool hovel whichhe would have distained to enter at any other time. He was distracted. He did not know what he was doing. You could have led him over the edgeof a precipice just as easily as into that wine-shop. He sat down likean automaton. He was speechless, but he saw a glass full of rough redwine before him, and emptied it. Heyst meantime, politely watchful, hadtaken a seat opposite. 

"You are in for a bout of fever, I fear, " he said sympathetically. 

Poor Morrison's tongue was loosened at that. 

"Fever!" he cried. "Give me fever. Give me plague. They are diseases. One gets over them. But I am being murdered. I am being murdered by thePortuguese. The gang here downed me at last among them. I am to have mythroat cut the day after tomorrow. "

In the face of this passion Heyst made, with his eyebrows, aslight motion of surprise which would not have been misplaced in adrawing-room. Morrison's despairing reserve had broken down. He had beenwandering with a dry throat all over that miserable town of mud hovels, silent, with no soul to turn to in his distress, and positivelymaddened by his thoughts; and suddenly he had stumbled on a white man, figuratively and actually white--for Morrison refused to accept theracial whiteness of the Portuguese officials. He let himself go for themere relief of violent speech, his elbows planted on the table, hiseyes blood-shot, his voice nearly gone, the brim of his round pith hatshading an unshaven, livid face. His white clothes, which he had nottaken off for three days, were dingy. He had already gone to the bad, past redemption. The sight was shocking to Heyst; but he let nothingof it appear in his hearing, concealing his impression under thatconsummate good-society manner of his. Polite attention, what's due fromone gentleman listening to another, was what he showed; and, as usual, it was catching; so that Morrison pulled himself together and finishedhis narrative in a conversational tone, with a man-of-the-world air. 

"It's a villainous plot. Unluckily, one is helpless. That scoundrelCousinho--Andreas, you know--has been coveting the brig for years. Naturally, I would never sell. She is not only my livelihood; she's mylife. So he has hatched this pretty little plot with the chief of thecustoms. The sale, of course, will be a farce. There's no one here tobid. He will get the brig for a song--no, not even that--a line of asong. You have been some years now in the islands, Heyst. You know usall; you have seen how we live. Now you shall have the opportunityto see how some of us end; for it is the end, for me. I can't deceivemyself any longer. You see it--don't your?"

Morrison had pulled himself together, but one felt the snapping strainon his recovered self-possession. Heyst was beginning to say thathe "could very well see all the bearings of this unfortunate--" whenMorrison interrupted him jerkily. 

"Upon my word, I don't know why I have been telling you all this. Isuppose seeing a thoroughly white man made it impossible to keep mytrouble to myself. Words can't do it justice; but since I've told you somuch I may as well tell you more. Listen. This morning on board, in mycabin I went down on my knees and prayed for help. I went down on myknees!"

"You are a believer, Morrison?" asked Heyst with a distinct note ofrespect. 

"Surely I am not an infidel. "

Morrison was swiftly reproachful in his answer, and there came a pause, Morrison perhaps interrogating his conscience, and Heyst preserving amien of unperturbed, polite interest. 

"I prayed like a child, of course. I believe in children praying--well, women, too, but I rather think God expects men to be more self-reliant. I don't hold with a man everlastingly bothering the Almighty with hissilly troubles. It seems such cheek. Anyhow, this morning I--I havenever done any harm to any God's creature knowingly--I prayed. A suddenimpulse--I went flop on my knees; so you may judge--"

They were gazing earnestly into each other's eyes. Poor Morrison added, as a discouraging afterthought:

"Only this is such a God-forsaken spot. "

Heyst inquired with a delicate intonation whether he might know theamount for which the brig was seized. 

Morrison suppressed an oath, and named curtly a sum which was in itselfso insignificant that any other person than Heyst would have exclaimedat it. And even Heyst could hardly keep incredulity out of his politelymodulated voice as he asked if it was a fact that Morrison had not thatamount in hand. 

Morrison hadn't. He had only a little English gold, a few sovereigns, onboard. He had left all his spare cash with the Tesmans, in Samarang, tomeet certain bills which would fall due while he was away on his cruise. Anyhow, that money would not have been any more good to him than if ithad been in the innermost depths of the infernal regions. He said allthis brusquely. He looked with sudden disfavour at that noble forehead, at those great martial moustaches, at the tired eyes of the man sittingopposite him. Who the devil was he? What was he, Morrison, doing there, talking like this? Morrison knew no more of Heyst than the rest of ustrading in the Archipelago did. Had the Swede suddenly risen and hithim on the nose, he could not have been taken more aback than when thisstranger, this nondescript wanderer, said with a little bow across thetable:

"Oh! If that's the case I would be very happy if you'd allow me to be ofuse!"

Morrison didn't understand. This was one of those things that don'thappen--unheard of things. He had no real inkling of what it meant, tillHeyst said definitely:

"I can lend you the amount. "

"You have the money?" whispered Morrison. "Do you mean here, in yourpocket?"

"Yes, on me. Glad to be of use. "

Morrison, staring open-mouthed, groped over his shoulder for the cord ofthe eyeglass hanging down his back. When he found it, he stuck it in hiseye hastily. It was as if he expected Heyst's usual white suit of thetropics to change into a shining garment, flowing down to his toes, and a pair of great dazzling wings to sprout out on the Swede'sshoulders--and didn't want to miss a single detail of thetransformation. But if Heyst was an angle from on high, sent in answerto prayer, he did not betray his heavenly origin by outward signs. So, instead of going on his knees, as he felt inclined to do, Morrisonstretched out his hand, which Heyst grasped with formal alacrity and apolite murmur in which "Trifle--delighted--of service, " could just bedistinguished. 

"Miracles do happen, " thought the awestruck Morrison. To him, as toall of us in the Islands, this wandering Heyst, who didn't toil or spinvisibly, seemed the very last person to be the agent of Providence inan affair concerned with money. The fact of his turning up in Timor oranywhere else was no more wonderful than the settling of a sparrow onone's window-sill at any given moment. But that he should carry a sum ofmoney in his pocket seemed somehow inconceivable. 

So inconceivable that as they were trudging together through the sandof the roadway to the custom-house--another mud hovel--to pay thefine, Morrison broke into a cold sweat, stopped short, and exclaimed infaltering accents:

"I say! You aren't joking, Heyst?"

"Joking!" Heyst's blue eyes went hard as he turned them on thediscomposed Morrison. "In what way, may I ask?" he continued withaustere politeness. 

Morrison was abashed. 

"Forgive me, Heyst. You must have been sent by God in answer to myprayer. But I have been nearly off my chump for three days with worry;and it suddenly struck me: 'What if it's the Devil who has sent him?'"

"I have no connection with the supernatural, " said Heyst graciously, moving on. "Nobody has sent me. I just happened along. "

"I know better, " contradicted Morrison. "I may be unworthy, but I havebeen heard. I know it. I feel it. For why should you offer--"

Heyst inclined his head, as from respect for a conviction in which hecould not share. But he stuck to his point by muttering that in thepresence of an odious fact like this, it was natural--

Later in the day, the fine paid, and the two of them on board the brig, from which the guard had been removed, Morrison who, besides, being agentleman was also an honest fellow began to talk about repayment. Heknew very well his inability to lay by any sum of money. It was partlythe fault of circumstances and partly of his temperament; and it wouldhave been very difficult to apportion the responsibility between thetwo. Even Morrison himself could not say, while confessing to the fact. With a worried air he ascribed it to fatality:

"I don't know how it is that I've never been able to save. It's somesort of curse. There's always a bill or two to meet. "

He plunged his hand into his pocket for the famous notebook so wellknown in the islands, the fetish of his hopes, and fluttered the pagesfeverishly. 

"And yet--look, " he went on. "There it is--more than five thousanddollars owing. Surely that's something. "

He ceased suddenly. Heyst, who had been all the time trying to lookas unconcerned as he could, made reassuring noises in his throat. But Morrison was not only honest. He was honourable, too; and on thisstressful day, before this amazing emissary of Providence and in therevulsion of his feelings, he made his great renunciation. He cast offthe abiding illusion of his existence. 

"No. No. They are not good. I'll never be able to squeeze them. Never. I've been saying for years I would, but I give it up. I never reallybelieved I could. Don't reckon on that, Heyst. I have robbed you. "

Poor Morrison actually laid his head on the cabin table, and remainedin that crushed attitude while Heyst talked to him soothingly with theutmost courtesy. The Swede was as much distressed as Morrison; for heunderstood the other's feelings perfectly. No decent feeling was everscorned by Heyst. But he was incapable of outward cordiality of manner, and he felt acutely his defect. Consummate politeness is not the righttonic for an emotional collapse. They must have had, both of them, afairly painful time of it in the cabin of the brig. In the end Morrison, casting desperately for an idea in the blackness of his despondency, hit upon the notion of inviting Heyst to travel with him in his brig andhave a share in his trading ventures up to the amount of his loan. 

It is characteristic of Heyst's unattached, floating existence that hewas in a position to accept this proposal. There is no reason to thinkthat he wanted particularly just then to go poking aboard the brig intoall the holes and corners of the Archipelago where Morrison picked upmost of his trade. Far from it; but he would have consented to almostany arrangement in order to put an end to the harrowing scene in thecabin. There was at once a great transformation act: Morrison raisinghis diminished head, and sticking the glass in his eye to lookedaffectionately at Heyst, a bottle being uncorked, and so on. It wasagreed that nothing should be said to anyone of this transaction. Morrison, you understand, was not proud of the episode, and he wasafraid of being unmercifully chaffed. 

"An old bird like me! To let myself be trapped by those damnedPortuguese rascals! I should never hear the last of it. We must keep itdark. "

From quite other motives, among which his native delicacy was theprincipal, Heyst was even more anxious to bind himself to silence. Agentleman would naturally shrink from the part of heavenly messengerthat Morrison would force upon him. It made Heyst uncomfortable, as itwas. And perhaps he did not care that it should be known that he hadsome means, whatever they might have been--sufficient, at any rate, toenable him to lend money to people. These two had a duet down there, like conspirators in a comic opera, of "Sh--ssh, shssh! Secrecy!Secrecy!" It must have been funny, because they were very serious aboutit. 

And for a time the conspiracy was successful in so far that we allconcluded that Heyst was boarding with the good-natured--some said:sponging on the imbecile--Morrison, in his brig. But you know how itis with all such mysteries. There is always a leak somewhere. Morrisonhimself, not a perfect vessel by any means, was bursting with gratitude, and under the stress he must have let out something vague--enough togive the island gossip a chance. And you know how kindly the world isin its comments on what it does not understand. A rumour sprang out thatHeyst, having obtained some mysterious hold on Morrison, had fastenedhimself on him and was sucking him dry. Those who had traced thesemutters back to their origin were very careful not to believe them. Theoriginator, it seems, was a certain Schomberg, a big, manly, beardedcreature of the Teutonic persuasion, with an ungovernable tongue whichsurely must have worked on a pivot. Whether he was a Lieutenant of theReserve, as he declared, I don't know. Out there he was by profession ahotel-keeper, first in Bangkok, then somewhere else, and ultimately inSourabaya. He dragged after him up and down that section of the tropicalbelt a silent, frightened, little woman with long ringlets, who smiledat one stupidly, showing a blue tooth. I don't know why so many of uspatronized his various establishments. He was a noxious ass, and hesatisfied his lust for silly gossip at the cost of his customers. Itwas he who, one evening, as Morrison and Heyst went past the hotel--theywere not his regular patrons--whispered mysteriously to the mixedcompany assembled on the veranda:

"The spider and the fly just gone by, gentlemen. " Then, very importantand confidential, his thick paw at the side of his mouth: "We are amongourselves; well, gentlemen, all I can say is, I don't you ever get mixedup with that Swede. Don't you ever get caught in his web. "

CHAPTER THREE

Human nature being what it is, having a silly side to it as well asa mean side, there were not a few who pretended to be indignant on nobetter authority than a general propensity to believe every evil report;and a good many others who found it simply funny to call Heyst theSpider--behind his back, of course. He was as serenely unconscious ofthis as of his several other nicknames. But soon people found otherthings to say of Heyst; not long afterwards he came very much to thefore in larger affairs. He blossomed out into something definite. Hefilled the public eye as the manager on the spot of the Tropical BeltCoal Company with offices in London and Amsterdam, and other thingsabout it that sounded and looked grandiose. The offices in the twocapitals may have consisted--and probably did--of one room in each;but at that distance, out East there, all this had an air. We were morepuzzled than dazzled, it is true; but even the most sober-minded amongus began to think that there was something in it. The Tesmans appointedagents, a contract for government mail-boats secured, the era of steambeginning for the islands--a great stride forward--Heyst's stride!

And all this sprang from the meeting of the cornered Morrison and of thewandering Heyst, which may or may not have been the direct outcome of aprayer. Morrison was not an imbecile, but he seemed to have got himselfinto a state of remarkable haziness as to his exact position towardsHeyst. For, if Heyst had been sent with money in his pocket by a directdecree of the Almighty in answer to Morrison's prayer then there was noreason for special gratitude, since obviously he could not help himself. But Morrison believed both, in the efficacy of prayer and in theinfinite goodness of Heyst. He thanked God with awed sincerity for hismercy, and could not thank Heyst enough for the service rendered asbetween man and man. In this (highly creditable) tangle of strongfeelings Morrison's gratitude insisted on Heyst's partnership in thegreat discovery. Ultimately we heard that Morrison had gone home throughthe Suez Canal in order to push the magnificent coal idea personallyin London. He parted from his brig and disappeared from our ken; butwe heard that he had written a letter or letters to Heyst, saying thatLondon was cold and gloomy; that he did not like either the men orthings, that he was "as lonely as a crow in a strange country. " Intruth, he pined after the Capricorn--I don't mean only the tropic; Imean the ship too. Finally he went into Dorsetshire to see his people, caught a bad cold, and died with extraordinary precipitation in thebosom of his appalled family. Whether his exertions in the City ofLondon had enfeebled his vitality I don't know; but I believe it wasthis visit which put life into the coal idea. Be it as it may, theTropical Belt Coal Company was born very shortly after Morrison, the victim of gratitude and his native climate, had gone to join hisforefathers in a Dorsetshire churchyard. 

Heyst was immensely shocked. He got the news in the Moluccas through theTesmans, and then disappeared for a time. It appears that he stayed witha Dutch government doctor in Amboyna, a friend of his who looked afterhim for a bit in his bungalow. He became visible again rather suddenly, his eyes sunk in his head, and with a sort of guarded attitude, as ifafraid someone would reproach him with the death of Morrison. 

Naive Heyst! As if anybody would . . . Nobody amongst us had anyinterest in men who went home. They were all right; they did not countany more. Going to Europe was nearly as final as going to Heaven. Itremoved a man from the world of hazard and adventure. 

As a matter of fact, many of us did not hear of this death till monthsafterwards--from Schomberg, who disliked Heyst gratuitously and made upa piece of sinister whispered gossip:

"That's what comes of having anything to do with that fellow. Hesqueezes you dry like a lemon, then chucks you out--sends you home todie. Take warning by Morrison!"

Of course, we laughed at the innkeeper's suggestions of black mystery. Several of us heard that Heyst was prepared to go to Europe himself, to push on his coal enterprise personally; but he never went. It wasn'tnecessary. The company was formed without him, and his nomination ofmanager in the tropics came out to him by post. 

From the first he had selected Samburan, or Round Island, for thecentral station. Some copies of the prospectus issued in Europe, havingfound their way out East, were passed from hand to hand. We greatlyadmired the map which accompanied them for the edification of theshareholders. On it Samburan was represented as the central spot of theEastern Hemisphere with its name engraved in enormous capitals. Heavylines radiated from it in all directions through the tropics, figuring amysterious and effective star--lines of influence or lines of distance, or something of that sort. Company promoters have an imagination oftheir own. There's no more romantic temperament on earth than thetemperament of a company promoter. Engineers came out, coolies wereimported, bungalows were put up on Samburan, a gallery driven into thehillside, and actually some coal got out. 

These manifestations shook the soberest minds. For a time everybody inthe islands was talking of the Tropical Belt Coal, and even those whosmiled quietly to themselves were only hiding their uneasiness. Oh, yes;it had come, and anybody could see what would be the consequences--theend of the individual trader, smothered under a great invasion ofsteamers. We could not afford to buy steamers. Not we. And Heyst was themanager. 

"You know, Heyst, enchanted Heyst. "

"Oh, come! He has been no better than a loafer around here as far backas any of us can remember. "

"Yes, he said he was looking for facts. Well, he's got hold of one thatwill do for all of us, " commented a bitter voice. 

"That's what they call development--and be hanged to it!" mutteredanother. 

Never was Heyst talked about so much in the tropical belt before. 

"Isn't he a Swedish baron or something?"

"He, a baron? Get along with you!"

For my part I haven't the slightest doubt that he was. While he wasstill drifting amongst the islands, enigmatical and disregarded like aninsignificant ghost, he told me so himself on a certain occasion. Itwas a long time before he materialized in this alarming way into thedestroyer of our little industry--Heyst the Enemy. 

It became the fashion with a good many to speak of Heyst as the Enemy. He was very concrete, very visible now. He was rushing all over theArchipelago, jumping in and out of local mail-packets as if they hadbeen tram-cars, here, there, and everywhere--organizing with all hismight. This was no mooning about. This was business. And this suddendisplay of purposeful energy shook the incredulity of the mostsceptical more than any scientific demonstration of the value of thesecoal-outcrops could have done. It was impressive. Schomberg was theonly one who resisted the infection. Big, manly in a portly style, and profusely bearded, with a glass of beer in his thick paw, he wouldapproach some table where the topic of the hour was being discussed, would listen for a moment, and then come out with his invariabledeclaration:

"All this is very well, gentlemen; but he can't throw any of hiscoal-dust in my eyes. There's nothing in it. Why, there can't beanything in it. A fellow like that for manager? Phoo!"

Was it the clairvoyance of imbecile hatred, or mere stupid tenacity ofopinion, which ends sometimes by scoring against the world in a mostastonishing manner? Most of us can remember instances of triumphantfolly; and that ass Schomberg triumphed. The T. B. C. Company went intoliquidation, as I began by telling you. The Tesmans washed their handsof it. The Government cancelled those famous contracts, the talk diedout, and presently it was remarked here and there that Heyst had fadedcompletely away. He had become invisible, as in those early days whenhe used to make a bolt clear out of sight in his attempts to break awayfrom the enchantment of "these isles, " either in the direction of NewGuinea or in the direction of Saigon--to cannibals or to cafes. Theenchanted Heyst! Had he at last broken the spell? Had he died? We weretoo indifferent to wonder overmuch. You see we had on the whole likedhim well enough. And liking is not sufficient to keep going the interestone takes in a human being. With hatred, apparently, it is otherwise. Schomberg couldn't forget Heyst. The keen, manly Teutonic creature was agood hater. A fool often is. 

"Good evening, gentlemen. Have you got everything you want? So! Good!You see? What was I always telling you? Aha! There was nothing in it. Iknew it. But what I would like to know is what became of that--Swede. "

He put a stress on the word Swede as if it meant scoundrel. He detestedScandinavians generally. Why? Goodness only knows. A fool like that isunfathomable. He continued:

"It's five months or more since I have spoken to anybody who has seenhim. "

As I have said, we were not much interested; but Schomberg, of course, could not understand that. He was grotesquely dense. Whenever threepeople came together in his hotel, he took good care that Heyst shouldbe with them. 

"I hope the fellow did not go and drown himself, " he would add with acomical earnestness that ought to have made us shudder; only our crowdwas superficial, and did not apprehend the psychology of this pioushope. 

"Why? Heyst isn't in debt to you for drinks is he?" somebody asked himonce with shallow scorn. 

"Drinks! Oh, dear no!"

The innkeeper was not mercenary. Teutonic temperament seldom is. But heput on a sinister expression to tell us that Heyst had not paid perhapsthree visits altogether to his "establishment. " This was Heyst's crime, for which Schomberg wished him nothing less than a long and tormentedexistence. Observe the Teutonic sense of proportion and nice forgivingtemper. 

At last, one afternoon, Schomberg was seen approaching a group of hiscustomers. He was obviously in high glee. He squared his manly chestwith great importance. 

"Gentlemen, I have news of him. Who? why, that Swede. He is stillon Samburan. He's never been away from it. The company is gone, the engineers are gone, the clerks are gone, the coolies are gone, everything's gone; but there he sticks. Captain Davidson, coming by fromthe westward, saw him with his own eyes. Something white on the wharf, so he steamed in and went ashore in a small boat. Heyst, right enough. Put a book into his pocket, always very polite. Been strolling onthe wharf and reading. 'I remain in possession here, ' he told CaptainDavidson. What I want to know is what he gets to eat there. A piece ofdried fish now and then--what? That's coming down pretty low for a manwho turned up his nose at my table d'hote!"

He winked with immense malice. A bell started ringing, and he led theway to the dining-room as if into a temple, very grave, with the airof a benefactor of mankind. His ambition was to feed it at a profitableprice, and his delight was to talk of it behind its back. It was verycharacteristic of him to gloat over the idea of Heyst having nothingdecent to eat. 

CHAPTER FOUR

A few of us who were sufficiently interested went to Davidson fordetails. These were not many. He told us that he passed to the north ofSamburan on purpose to see what was going on. At first, it looked as ifthat side of the island had been altogether abandoned. This was what heexpected. Presently, above the dense mass of vegetation that Samburanpresents to view, he saw the head of the flagstaff without a flag. Then, while steaming across the slight indentation which for a time was knownofficially as Black Diamond Bay, he made out with his glass the whitefigure on the coaling-wharf. It could be no one but Heyst. 

"I thought for certain he wanted to be taken off, so I steamed in. Hemade no signs. However, I lowered a boat. I could not see another livingbeing anywhere. Yes. He had a book in his hand. He looked exactly as wehave always seen him--very neat, white shoes, cork helmet. He explainedto me that he had always had a taste for solitude. It was the first Iever heard of it, I told him. He only smiled. What could I say? He isn'tthe sort of man one can speak familiarly to. There's something in him. One doesn't care to. 

"'But what's the object? Are you thinking of keeping possession of themine?' I asked him. 

"'Something of the sort, ' he says. 'I am keeping hold. '

"'But all this is as dead as Julius Caesar, ' I cried. 'In fact, you havenothing worth holding on to, Heyst. '

"'Oh, I am done with facts, ' says he, putting his hand to his helmetsharply with one of his short bows. "

Thus dismissed, Davidson went on board his ship, swung her out, and ashe was steaming away he watched from the bridge Heyst walking shorewardalong the wharf. He marched into the long grass and vanished--all butthe top of his white cork helmet, which seemed to swim in a green sea. Then that too disappeared, as if it had sunk into the living depths ofthe tropical vegetation, which is more jealous of men's conquests thanthe ocean, and which was about to close over the last vestiges of theliquidated Tropical Belt Coal Company--A. Heyst, manager in the East. 

Davidson, a good, simple fellow in his way, was strangely affected. Itis to be noted that he knew very little of Heyst. He was one of thosewhom Heyst's finished courtesy of attitude and intonation most stronglydisconcerted. He himself was a fellow of fine feeling, I think, thoughof course he had no more polish than the rest of us. We were naturallya hail-fellow-well-met crowd, with standards of our own--no worse, Idaresay, than other people's; but polish was not one of them. Davidson'sfineness was real enough to alter the course of the steamer hecommanded. Instead of passing to the south of Samburan, he made it hispractice to take the passage along the north shore, within about a mileof the wharf. 

"He can see us if he likes to see us, " remarked Davidson. Then he had anafterthought: "I say! I hope he won't think I am intruding, eh?"

We reassured him on the point of correct behaviour. The sea is open toall. 

This slight deviation added some ten miles to Davidson's round trip, butas that was sixteen hundred miles it did not matter much. 

"I have told my owner of it, " said the conscientious commander of theSissie. 

His owner had a face like an ancient lemon. He was small andwizened--which was strange, because generally a Chinaman, as he grows inprosperity, puts on inches of girth and stature. To serve a Chinese firmis not so bad. Once they become convinced you deal straight by them, their confidence becomes unlimited. You can do no wrong. So Davidson'sold Chinaman squeaked hurriedly:

"All right, all right, all right. You do what you like, captain--"

And there was an end of the matter; not altogether, though. From time totime the Chinaman used to ask Davidson about the white man. He was stillthere, eh?

"I never see him, " Davidson had to confess to his owner, who would peerat him silently through round, horn-rimmed spectacles, several sizes toolarge for his little old face. "I never see him. "

To me, on occasions he would say:

"I haven't a doubt he's there. He hides. It's very unpleasant. " Davidsonwas a little vexed with Heyst. "Funny thing, " he went on. "Of all thepeople I speak to, nobody ever asks after him but that Chinaman ofmine--and Schomberg, " he added after a while. 

Yes, Schomberg, of course. He was asking everybody about everything, andarranging the information into the most scandalous shape his imaginationcould invent. From time to time he would step up, his blinking, cushioned eyes, his thick lips, his very chestnut beard, looking full ofmalice. 

"Evening, gentlemen. Have you got all you want? So! Good! Well, I amtold the jungle has choked the very sheds in Black Diamond Bay. Fact. He's a hermit in the wilderness now. But what can this manager get toeat there? It beats me. "

Sometimes a stranger would inquire with natural curiosity:

"Who? What manager?"

"Oh, a certain Swede, "--with a sinister emphasis, as if he were saying"a certain brigand. " "Well known here. He's turned hermit from shame. That's what the devil does when he's found out. "

Hermit. This was the latest of the more or less witty labels appliedto Heyst during his aimless pilgrimage in this section of the tropicalbelt, where the inane clacking of Schomberg's tongue vexed our ears. 

But apparently Heyst was not a hermit by temperament. The sight of hisland was not invincibly odious to him. We must believe this, sincefor some reason or other he did come out from his retreat for a while. Perhaps it was only to see whether there were any letters for him at theTesmans. I don't know. No one knows. But this reappearance shows thathis detachment from the world was not complete. And incompleteness ofany sort leads to trouble. Axel Heyst ought not to have cared for hisletters--or whatever it was that brought him out after something morethan a year and a half in Samburan. But it was of no use. He had not thehermit's vocation! That was the trouble, it seems. 

Be this as it may, he suddenly reappeared in the world, broad chest, bald forehead, long moustaches, polite manner, and all--the completeHeyst, even to the kindly sunken eyes on which there still rested theshadow of Morrison's death. Naturally, it was Davidson who had given hima lift out of his forsaken island. There were no other opportunities, unless some native craft were passing by--a very remote andunsatisfactory chance to wait for. Yes, he came out with Davidson, towhom he volunteered the statement that it was only for a short time--afew days, no more. He meant to go back to Samburan. 

Davidson expressing his horror and incredulity of such foolishness, Heyst explained that when the company came into being he had his fewbelongings sent out from Europe. 

To Davidson, as to any of us, the idea of Heyst, the wandering drifting, unattached Heyst, having any belongings of the sort that can furnish ahouse was startlingly novel. It was grotesquely fantastic. It was like abird owning real property. 

"Belongings? Do you mean chairs and tables?" Davidson asked withunconcealed astonishment. 

Heyst did mean that. "My poor father died in London. It has been allstored there ever since, " he explained. 

"For all these years?" exclaimed Davidson, thinking how long we all hadknown Heyst flitting from tree to tree in a wilderness. 

"Even longer, " said Heyst, who had understood very well. 

This seemed to imply that he had been wandering before he came under ourobservation. In what regions? And what early age? Mystery. Perhaps hewas a bird that had never had a nest. 

"I left school early, " he remarked once to Davidson, on the passage. "Itwas in England. A very good school. I was not a shining success there. "

The confessions of Heyst. Not one of us--with the probable exception ofMorrison, who was dead--had ever heard so much of his history. Itlooks as if the experience of hermit life had the power to loosen one'stongue, doesn't it?

During that memorable passage, in the Sissie, which took about two days, he volunteered other hints--for you could not call it information--abouthis history. And Davidson was interested. He was interested not becausethe hints were exciting but because of that innate curiosity about ourfellows which is a trait of human nature. Davidson's existence, too, running the Sissie along the Java Sea and back again, was distinctlymonotonous and, in a sense, lonely. He never had any sort of company onboard. Native deck-passengers in plenty, of course, but never a whiteman, so the presence of Heyst for two days must have been a godsend. Davidson was telling us all about it afterwards. Heyst said that hisfather had written a lot of books. He was a philosopher. 

"Seems to me he must have been something of a crank, too, " wasDavidson's comment. "Apparently he had quarrelled with his people inSweden. Just the sort of father you would expect Heyst to have. Isn'the a bit of a crank himself? He told me that directly his father died helit out into the wide world on his own, and had been on the move till hefetched up against this famous coal business. Fits the son of the fathersomehow, don't you think?"

For the rest, Heyst was as polite as ever. He offered to pay for hispassage; but when Davidson refused to hear of it he seized him heartilyby the hand, gave one of his courtly bows, and declared that he wastouched by his friendly proceedings. 

"I am not alluding to this trifling amount which you decline to take, "he went on, giving a shake to Davidson's hand. "But I am touched by yourhumanity. " Another shake. "Believe me, I am profoundly aware of havingbeen an object of it. " Final shake of the hand. All this meant thatHeyst understood in a proper sense the little Sissie's periodicappearance in sight of his hermitage. 

"He's a genuine gentleman, " Davidson said to us. "I was really sorrywhen he went ashore. "

We asked him where he had left Heyst. 

"Why, in Sourabaya--where else?"

The Tesmans had their principal counting-house in Sourabaya. There hadlong existed a connection between Heyst and the Tesmans. The incongruityof a hermit having agents did not strike us, nor yet the absurdity of aforgotten cast-off, derelict manager of a wrecked, collapsed, vanishedenterprise, having business to attend to. We said Sourabaya, of course, and took it for granted that he would stay with one of the Tesmans. One of us even wondered what sort of reception he would get; for it wasknown that Julius Tesman was unreasonably bitter about the TropicalBelt Coal fiasco. But Davidson set us right. It was nothing of thekind. Heyst went to stay in Schomberg's hotel, going ashore in the hotellaunch. Not that Schomberg would think of sending his launch alongsidea mere trader like the Sissie. But she had been meeting a coastalmail-packet, and had been signalled to. Schomberg himself was steeringher. 

"You should have seen Schomberg's eyes bulge out when Heyst jumped inwith an ancient brown leather bag!" said Davidson. "He pretended notto know who it was--at first, anyway. I didn't go ashore with them. Wedidn't stay more than a couple of hours altogether. Landed two thousandcoconuts and cleared out. I have agreed to pick him up again on my nexttrip in twenty days' time. "

CHAPTER FIVE

Davidson happened to be two days late on his return trip; no greatmatter, certainly, but he made a point of going ashore at once, duringthe hottest hour of the afternoon, to look for Heyst. Schomberg's hotelstood back in an extensive enclosure containing a garden, some largetrees, and, under their spreading boughs, a detached "hall availablefor concerts and other performances, " as Schomberg worded it in hisadvertisements. Torn, and fluttering bills, intimating in heavy redcapitals CONCERTS EVERY NIGHT, were stuck on the brick pillars on eachside of the gateway. 

The walk had been long and confoundedly sunny. Davidson stood wiping hiswet neck and face on what Schomberg called "the piazza. " Several doorsopened on to it, but all the screens were down. Not a soul was in sight, not even a China boy--nothing but a lot of painted iron chairs andtables. Solitude, shade, and gloomy silence--and a faint, treacherousbreeze which came from under the trees and quite unexpectedly caused themelting Davidson to shiver slightly--the little shiver of the tropicswhich in Sourabaya, especially, often means fever and the hospital tothe incautious white man. 

The prudent Davidson sought shelter in the nearest darkened room. In theartificial dusk, beyond the levels of shrouded billiard-tables, a whiteform heaved up from two chairs on which it had been extended. The middleof the day, table d'hote tiffin once over, was Schomberg's easy time. Helounged out, portly, deliberate, on the defensive, the great fair beardlike a cuirass over his manly chest. He did not like Davidson, never avery faithful client of his. He hit a bell on one of the tables as hewent by, and asked in a distant, Officer-in-Reserve manner:

"You desire?"

The good Davidson, still sponging his wet neck, declared with simplicitythat he had come to fetch away Heyst, as agreed. 

"Not here!"

A Chinaman appeared in response to the bell. Schomberg turned to himvery severely:

"Take the gentleman's order. "

Davidson had to be going. Couldn't wait--only begged that Heyst shouldbe informed that the Sissie would leave at midnight. 

"Not--here, I am telling you!"

Davidson slapped his thigh in concern. 

"Dear me! Hospital, I suppose. " A natural enough surmise in a veryfeverish locality. 

The Lieutenant of the Reserve only pursed up his mouth and raised hiseyebrows without looking at him. It might have meant anything, butDavidson dismissed the hospital idea with confidence. However, he had toget hold of Heyst between this and midnight:

"He has been staying here?" he asked. 

"Yes, he was staying here. "

"Can you tell me where he is now?" Davidson went on placidly. Withinhimself he was beginning to grow anxious, having developed the affectionof a self-appointed protector towards Heyst. The answer he got was:

"Can't tell. It's none of my business, " accompanied by majesticoscillations of the hotel-keeper's head, hinting at some awful mystery. 

Davidson was placidity itself. It was his nature. He did not betray hissentiments, which were not favourable to Schomberg. 

"I am sure to find out at the Tesmans' office, " he thought. But it wasa very hot hour, and if Heyst was down at the port he would have learnedalready that the Sissie was in. It was even possible that Heyst hadalready gone on board, where he could enjoy a coolness denied to thetown. Davidson, being stout, was much preoccupied with coolness andinclined to immobility. He lingered awhile, as if irresolute. Schomberg, at the door, looking out, affected perfect indifference. He could notkeep it up, though. Suddenly he turned inward and asked with brusquerage:

"You wanted to see him?"

"Why, yes, " said Davidson. "We agreed to meet--"

"Don't you bother. He doesn't care about that now. "

"Doesn't he?"

"Well, you can judge for yourself. He isn't here, is he? You take myword for it. Don't you bother about him. I am advising you as a friend. "

"Thank you, " said, Davidson, inwardly startled at the savage tone. "Ithink I will sit down for a moment and have a drink, after all. "

This was not what Schomberg had expected to hear. He called brutally:

"Boy!"

The Chinaman approached, and after referring him to the white man by anod the hotel-keeper departed, muttering to himself. Davidson heard himgnash his teeth as he went. 

Davidson sat alone with the billiard-tables as if there had been not asoul staying in the hotel. His placidity was so genuine that he was notunduly, fretting himself over the absence of Heyst, or the mysteriousmanners Schomberg had treated him to. He was considering these things inhis own fairly shrewd way. Something had happened; and he was loath togo away to investigate, being restrained by a presentiment that somehowenlightenment would come to him there. A poster of CONCERTS EVERYEVENING, like those on the gate, but in a good state of preservation, hung on the wall fronting him. He looked at it idly and was struck bythe fact--then not so very common--that it was a ladies' orchestra;"Zangiacomo's eastern tour--eighteen performers. " The poster statedthat they had had the honour of playing their select repertoire beforevarious colonial excellencies, also before pashas, sheiks, chiefs, H. H. The Sultan of Mascate, etc. , etc. 

Davidson felt sorry for the eighteen lady-performers. He knew what thatsort of life was like, the sordid conditions and brutal incidents ofsuch tours led by such Zangiacomos who often were anything but musiciansby profession. While he was staring at the poster, a door somewhere athis back opened, and a woman came in who was looked upon as Schomberg'swife, no doubt with truth. As somebody remarked cynically once, she wastoo unattractive to be anything else. The opinion that he treated herabominably was based on her frightened expression. Davidson lifted hishat to her. Mrs. Schomberg gave him an inclination of her sallow headand incontinently sat down behind a sort of raised counter, facing thedoor, with a mirror and rows of bottles at her back. Her hair was veryelaborately done with two ringlets on the left side of her scraggy neck;her dress was of silk, and she had come on duty for the afternoon. Forsome reason or other Schomberg exacted this from her, though she addednothing to the fascinations of the place. She sat there in the smoke andnoise, like an enthroned idol, smiling stupidly over the billiards fromtime to time, speaking to no one, and no one speaking to her. Schomberghimself took no more interest in her than may be implied in a suddenand totally unmotived scowl. Otherwise the very Chinamen ignored herexistence. 

She had interrupted Davidson in his reflections. Being alone with her, her silence and open-mouthed immobility made him uncomfortable. He waseasily sorry for people. It seemed rude not to take any notice of her. He said, in allusion to the poster:

"Are you having these people in the house?"

She was so unused to being addressed by customers that at the sound ofhis voice she jumped in her seat. Davidson was telling us afterwardsthat she jumped exactly like a figure made of wood, without losing herrigid immobility. She did not even move her eyes; but she answered himfreely, though her very lips seemed made of wood. 

"They stayed here over a month. They are gone now. They played everyevening. "

"Pretty good, were they?"

To this she said nothing; and as she kept on staring fixedly in frontof her, her silence disconcerted Davidson. It looked as if she had notheard him--which was impossible. Perhaps she drew the line of speechat the expression of opinions. Schomberg might have trained her, fordomestic reasons, to keep them to herself. But Davidson felt in honourobliged to converse; so he said, putting his own interpretation on thissurprising silence:

"I see--not much account. Such bands hardly ever are. An Italian lot, Mrs. Schomberg, to judge by the name of the boss?"

She shook her head negatively. 

"No. He is a German really; only he dyes his hair and beard black forbusiness. Zangiacomo is his business name. "

"That's a curious fact, " said Davidson. His head being full of Heyst, itoccurred to him that she might be aware of other facts. This was a veryamazing discovery to anyone who looked at Mrs. Schomberg. Nobody hadever suspected her of having a mind. I mean even a little of it, I meanany at all. One was inclined to think of her as an It--an automaton, avery plain dummy, with an arrangement for bowing the head at timesand smiling stupidly now and then. Davidson viewed her profile with aflattened nose, a hollow cheek, and one staring, unwinking, goggle eye. He asked himself: Did that speak just now? Will it speak again? It wasas exciting, for the mere wonder of it, as trying to converse with amechanism. A smile played about the fat features of Davidson; the smileof a man making an amusing experiment. He spoke again to her:

"But the other members of that orchestra were real Italians, were theynot?"

Of course, he didn't care. He wanted to see whether the mechanism wouldwork again. It did. It said they were not. They were of all sorts, apparently. It paused, with the one goggle eye immovably gazing downthe whole length of the room and through the door opening on to the"piazza. " It paused, then went on in the same low pitch:

"There was even one English girl. "

"Poor devil!"--said Davidson, "I suppose these women are not much betterthan slaves really. Was that fellow with the dyed beard decent in hisway?"

The mechanism remained silent. The sympathetic soul of Davidson drew itsown conclusions. 

"Beastly life for these women!" he said. "When you say an English girl, Mrs. Schomberg, do you really mean a young girl? Some of these orchestragirls are no chicks. "

"Young enough, " came the low voice out of Mrs. Schomberg's unmovedphysiognomy. 

Davidson, encouraged, remarked that he was sorry for her. He was easilysorry for people. 

"Where did they go to from here?" he asked. 

"She did not go with them. She ran away. "

This was the pronouncement Davidson obtained next. It introduced a newsort of interest. 

"Well! Well!" he exclaimed placidly; and then, with the air of a man whoknows life: "Who with?" he inquired with assurance. 

Mrs. Schomberg's immobility gave her an appearance of listeningintently. Perhaps she was really listening; but Schomberg must have beenfinishing his sleep in some distant part of the house. The silence wasprofound, and lasted long enough to become startling. Then, enthronedabove Davidson, she whispered at last:

"That friend of yours. "

"Oh, you know I am here looking for a friend, " said Davidson hopefully. "Won't you tell me--"

"I've told you"

"Eh?"

A mist seemed to roll away from before Davidson's eyes, disclosingsomething he could not believe. 

"You can't mean it!" he cried. "He's not the man for it. " But the lastwords came out in a faint voice. Mrs. Schomberg never moved her head theleast bit. Davidson, after the shock which made him sit up, went slackall over. 

"Heyst! Such a perfect gentleman!" he exclaimed weakly. 

Mrs. Schomberg did not seem to have heard him. This startling fact didnot tally somehow with the idea Davidson had of Heyst. He never talkedof women, he never seemed to think of them, or to remember that theyexisted; and then all at once--like this! Running off with a casualorchestra girl!

"You might have knocked me down with a feather, " Davidson told us sometime afterwards. 

By then he was taking an indulgent view of both the parties to thatamazing transaction. First of all, on reflection, he was by no meanscertain that it prevented Heyst from being a perfect gentleman, asbefore. He confronted our open grins or quiet smiles with a seriousround face. Heyst had taken the girl away to Samburan; and that wasno joking matter. The loneliness, the ruins of the spot, had impressedDavidson's simple soul. They were incompatible with the frivolouscomments of people who had not seen it. That black jetty, sticking outof the jungle into the empty sea; these roof-ridges of deserted housespeeping dismally above the long grass! Ough! The gigantic and funeralblackboard sign of the Tropical Belt Coal Company, still emerging from awild growth of bushes like an inscription stuck above a grave figured bythe tall heap of unsold coal at the shore end of the wharf, added to thegeneral desolation. 

Thus the sensitive Davidson. The girl must have been miserable indeed tofollow such a strange man to such a spot. Heyst had, no doubt, toldher the truth. He was a gentleman. But no words could do justice tothe conditions of life on Samburan. A desert island was nothing to it. Moreover, when you were cast away on a desert island--why, you could nothelp yourself; but to expect a fiddle-playing girl out of an ambulantladies' orchestra to remain content there for a day, for one single day, was inconceivable. She would be frightened at the first sight of it. Shewould scream. 

The capacity for sympathy in these stout, placid men! Davidson wasstirred to the depths; and it was easy to see that it was about Heystthat he was concerned. We asked him if he had passed that way lately. 

"Oh, yes. I always do--about half a mile off. "

"Seen anybody about?"

"No, not a soul. Not a shadow. "

"Did you blow your whistle?"

"Blow the whistle? You think I would do such a thing?"

He rejected the mere possibility of such an unwarrantable intrusion. Wonderfully delicate fellow, Davidson!

"Well, but how do you know that they are there?" he was naturally asked. 

Heyst had entrusted Mrs. Schomberg with a message for Davidson--a fewlines in pencil on a scrap of crumpled paper. It was to the effect: thatan unforeseen necessity was driving him away before the appointed time. He begged Davidson's indulgence for the apparent discourtesy. The womanof the house--meaning Mrs. Schomberg--would give him the facts, thoughunable to explain them, of course. 

"What was there to explain?" wondered Davidson dubiously. 

"He took a fancy to that fiddle-playing girl, and--"

"And she to him, apparently, " I suggested. 

"Wonderfully quick work, " reflected Davidson. "What do you think willcome of it?"

"Repentance, I should say. But how is it that Mrs. Schomberg has beenselected for a confidante?"

For indeed a waxwork figure would have seemed more useful than thatwoman whom we all were accustomed to see sitting elevated above the twobilliard-tables--without expression, without movement, without voice, without sight. 

"Why, she helped the girl to bolt, " said Davidson turning at me hisinnocent eyes, rounded by the state of constant amazement in whichthis affair had left him, like those shocks of terror or sorrow whichsometimes leave their victim afflicted by nervous trembling. It lookedas though he would never get over it. 

"Mrs. Schomberg jerked Heyst's note, twisted like a pipe-light, into mylap while I sat there unsuspecting, " Davidson went on. "Directly I hadrecovered my senses, I asked her what on earth she had to do with itthat Heyst should leave it with her. And then, behaving like a paintedimage rather than a live woman, she whispered, just loud enough for meto hear:

"I helped them. I got her things together, tied them up in my own shawl, and threw them into the compound out of a back window. I did it. "

"That woman that you would say hadn't the pluck to lift her littlefinger!" marvelled Davidson in his quiet, slightly panting voice. "Whatdo you think of that?"

I thought she must have had some interest of her own to serve. She wastoo lifeless to be suspected of impulsive compassion. It was impossibleto think that Heyst had bribed her. Whatever means he had, he hadnot the means to do that. Or could it be that she was moved bythat disinterested passion for delivering a woman to a man which inrespectable spheres is called matchmaking?--a highly irregular exampleof it!

"It must have been a very small bundle, " remarked Davidson further. 

"I imagine the girl must have been specially attractive, " I said. 

"I don't know. She was miserable. I don't suppose it was more thana little linen and a couple of those white frocks they wear on theplatform. "

Davidson pursued his own train of thought. He supposed that such a thinghad never been heard of in the history of the tropics. For where couldyou find anyone to steal a girl out of an orchestra? No doubt fellowshere and there took a fancy to some pretty one--but it was not forrunning away with her. Oh dear no! It needed a lunatic like Heyst. 

"Only think what it means, " wheezed Davidson, imaginative under hisinvincible placidity. "Just only try to think! Brooding alone onSamburan has upset his brain. He never stopped to consider, or hecouldn't have done it. No sane man . . . How is a thing like that to goon? What's he going to do with her in the end? It's madness. "

"You say that he's mad. Schomberg tells us that he must be starving onhis island; so he may end yet by eating her, " I suggested. 

Mrs. Schomberg had had no time to enter into details, Davidson told us. Indeed, the wonder was that they had been left alone so long. Thedrowsy afternoon was slipping by. Footsteps and voices resounded on theveranda--I beg pardon, the piazza; the scraping of chairs, the ping ofa smitten bell. Customers were turning up. Mrs. Schomberg was beggingDavidson hurriedly, but without looking at him, to say nothing toanyone, when on a half-uttered word her nervous whisper was cut short. Through a small inner door Schomberg came in, his hair brushed, hisbeard combed neatly, but his eyelids still heavy from his nap. He lookedwith suspicion at Davidson, and even glanced at his wife; but he wasbaffled by the natural placidity of the one and the acquired habit ofimmobility in the other. 

"Have you sent out the drinks?" he asked surlily. 

She did not open her lips, because just then the head boy appeared witha loaded tray, on his way out. Schomberg went to the door and greetedthe customers outside, but did not join them. He remained blockinghalf the doorway, with his back to the room, and was still there whenDavidson, after sitting still for a while, rose to go. At the noisehe made Schomberg turned his head, watched him lift his hat to Mrs. Schomberg and receive her wooden bow accompanied by a stupid grin, andthen looked away. He was loftily dignified. Davidson stopped at thedoor, deep in his simplicity. 

"I am sorry you won't tell me anything about my friend's absence, " hesaid. "My friend Heyst, you know. I suppose the only course for me nowis to make inquiries down at the port. I shall hear something there, Idon't doubt. "

"Make inquiries of the devil!" replied Schomberg in a hoarse mutter. 

Davidson's purpose in addressing the hotel-keeper had been mainly tomake Mrs. Schomberg safe from suspicion; but he would fain have heardsomething more of Heyst's exploit from another point of view. It wasa shrewd try. It was successful in a rather startling way, because thehotel-keeper's point of view was horribly abusive. All of a sudden, inthe same hoarse sinister tone, he proceeded to call Heyst many names, ofwhich "pig-dog" was not the worst, with such vehemence that he actuallychoked himself. Profiting from the pause, Davidson, whose temperamentcould withstand worse shocks, remonstrated in an undertone:

"It's unreasonable to get so angry as that. Even if he had run off withyour cash-box--"

The big hotel-keeper bent down and put his infuriated face close toDavidson's. 

"My cash-box! My--he--look here, Captain Davidson! He ran off with agirl. What do I care for the girl? The girl is nothing to me. "

He shot out an infamous word which made Davidson start. That's what thegirl was; and he reiterated the assertion that she was nothing to him. What he was concerned for was the good name of his house. Wherever hehad been established, he had always had "artist parties" staying in hishouse. One recommended him to the others; but what would happen now, when it got about that leaders ran the risk in his house--his house--oflosing members of their troupe? And just now, when he had spent sevenhundred and thirty-four guilders in building a concert-hall in hiscompound. Was that a thing to do in a respectable hotel? The cheek, theindecency, the impudence, the atrocity! Vagabond, impostor, swindler, ruffian, schwein-hund!

He had seized Davidson by a button of his coat, detaining him inthe doorway, and exactly in the line of Mrs. Schomberg's stony gaze. Davidson stole a glance in that direction and thought of making somesort of reassuring sign to her, but she looked so bereft of senses, andalmost of life, perched up there, that it seemed not worth while. He disengaged his button with firm placidity. Thereupon, with a laststifled curse, Schomberg vanished somewhere within, to try and composehis spirits in solitude. Davidson stepped out on the veranda. The partyof customers there had become aware of the explosive interlude in thedoorway. Davidson knew one of these men, and nodded to him in passing;but his acquaintance called out:

"Isn't he in a filthy temper? He's been like that ever since. "

The speaker laughed aloud, while all the others sat smiling. Davidsonstopped. 

"Yes, rather. " His feelings were, he told us, those of bewilderedresignation; but of course that was no more visible to the others thanthe emotions of a turtle when it withdraws into its shell. 

"It seems unreasonable, " he murmured thoughtfully. 

"Oh, but they had a scrap!" the other said. 

"What do you mean? Was there a fight!--a fight with Heyst?" askedDavidson, much perturbed, if somewhat incredulous. 

"Heyst? No, these two--the bandmaster, the fellow who's taking thesewomen about and our Schomberg. Signor Zangiacomo ran amuck in themorning, and went for our worthy friend. I tell you, they were rollingon the floor together on this very veranda, after chasing each other allover the house, doors slamming, women screaming, seventeen of them, inthe dining-room; Chinamen up the trees. Hey, John? You climb tree to seethe fight, eh?"

The boy, almond-eyed and impassive, emitted a scornful grunt, finishedwiping the table, and withdrew. 

"That's what it was--a real, go-as-you-please scrap. And Zangiacomobegan it. Oh, here's Schomberg. Say, Schomberg, didn't he fly at you, when the girl was missed, because it was you who insisted that theartists should go about the audience during the interval?"

Schomberg had reappeared in the doorway. He advanced. His bearingwas stately, but his nostrils were extraordinarily expanded, and hecontrolled his voice with apparent effort. 

"Certainly. That was only business. I quoted him special terms andall for your sake, gentlemen. I was thinking of my regular customers. There's nothing to do in the evenings in this town. I think, gentlemen, you were all pleased at the opportunity of hearing a little good music;and where's the harm of offering a grenadine, or what not, to a ladyartist? But that fellow--that Swede--he got round the girl. He got roundall the people out here. I've been watching him for years. You rememberhow he got round Morrison. "

He changed front abruptly, as if on parade, and marched off. Thecustomers at the table exchanged glances silently. Davidson's attitudewas that of a spectator. Schomberg's moody pacing of the billiard-roomcould be heard on the veranda. 

"And the funniest part is, " resumed the man who had been speakingbefore--an English clerk in a Dutch house--"the funniest part is thatbefore nine o'clock that same morning those two were driving togetherin a gharry down to the port, to look for Heyst and the girl. I saw themrushing around making inquiries. I don't know what they would havedone to the girl, but they seemed quite ready to fall upon your Heyst, Davidson, and kill him on the quay. "

He had never, he said, seen anything so queer. Those two investigatorsworking feverishly to the same end were glaring at each other withsurprising ferocity. In hatred and mistrust they entered a steam-launch, and went flying from ship to ship all over the harbour, causing no endof sensation. The captains of vessels, coming on shore later in the day, brought tales of a strange invasion, and wanted to know who were the twooffensive lunatics in a steam-launch, apparently after a man and a girl, and telling a story of which one could make neither head nor tail. Theirreception by the roadstead was generally unsympathetic, even to thepoint of the mate of an American ship bundling them out over the railwith unseemly precipitation. 

Meantime Heyst and the girl were a good few miles away, having gone inthe night on board one of the Tesman schooners bound to the eastward. This was known afterwards from the Javanese boatmen whom Heyst hiredfor the purpose at three o'clock in the morning. The Tesman schooner hadsailed at daylight with the usual land breeze, and was probably still insight in the offing at the time. However, the two pursuers after theirexperience with the American mate, made for the shore. On landing, theyhad another violent row in the German language. But there was no secondfight; and finally, with looks of fierce animosity, they got togetherinto a gharry--obviously with the frugal view of sharing expenses--anddrove away, leaving an astonished little crowd of Europeans and nativeson the quay. 

After hearing this wondrous tale, Davidson went away from the hotelveranda, which was filling with Schomberg's regular customers. Heyst'sescapade was the general topic of conversation. Never before had thatunaccountable individual been the cause of so much gossip, he judged. No! Not even in the beginnings of the Tropical Belt Coal Company whenbecoming for a moment a public character was he the object of a sillycriticism and unintelligent envy for every vagabond and adventurer inthe islands. Davidson concluded that people liked to discuss that sortof scandal better than any other. 

I asked him if he believed that this was such a great scandal after all. 

"Heavens, no!" said that excellent man who, himself, was incapable ofany impropriety of conduct. "But it isn't a thing I would have donemyself; I mean even if I had not been married. "

There was no implied condemnation in the statement; rather somethinglike regret. Davidson shared my suspicion that this was in its essencethe rescue of a distressed human being. Not that we were two romantics, tingeing the world to the hue of our temperament, but that both of ushad been acute enough to discover a long time ago that Heyst was. 

"I shouldn't have had the pluck, " he continued. "I see a thing allround, as it were; but Heyst doesn't, or else he would have been scared. You don't take a woman into a desert jungle without being made sorry forit sooner or later, in one way or another; and Heyst being a gentlemanonly makes it worse. "

CHAPTER SIX

We said no more about Heyst on that occasion, and it so happened thatI did not meet Davidson again for some three months. When we did cometogether, almost the first thing he said to me was:

"I've seen him. "

Before I could exclaim, he assured me that he had taken no liberty, that he had not intruded. He was called in. Otherwise he would not havedreamed of breaking in upon Heyst's privacy. 

"I am certain you wouldn't, " I assured him, concealing my amusement athis wonderful delicacy. He was the most delicate man that ever took asmall steamer to and fro among the islands. But his humanity, which wasnot less strong and praiseworthy, had induced him to take hissteamer past Samburan wharf (at an average distance of a mile) everytwenty-three days--exactly. Davidson was delicate, humane, and regular. 

"Heyst called you in?" I asked, interested. 

Yes, Heyst had called him in as he was going by on his usual date. Davidson was examining the shore through his glasses with his unweariedand punctual humanity as he steamed past Samburan. 

I saw a man in white. It could only have been Heyst. He had fastenedsome sort of enormous flag to a bamboo pole, and was waving it at theend of the old wharf. 

Davidson didn't like to take his steamer alongside--for fear of beingindiscreet, I suppose; but he steered close inshore, stopped hisengines, and lowered a boat. He went himself in that boat, which wasmanned, of course, by his Malay seamen. 

Heyst, when he saw the boat pulling towards him, dropped hissignalling-pole; and when Davidson arrived, he was kneeling down engagedbusily in unfastening the flag from it. 

"Was there anything wrong?" I inquired, Davidson having paused in hisnarrative and my curiosity being naturally aroused. You must rememberthat Heyst as the Archipelago knew him was not--what shall I say--wasnot a signalling sort of man. 

"The very words that came out of my mouth, " said Davidson, "before Ilaid the boat against the piles. I could not help it!"

Heyst got up from his knees and began carefully folding up the flagthing, which struck Davidson as having the dimensions of a blanket. 

"No, nothing wrong, " he cried. His white teeth flashed agreeably belowthe coppery horizontal bar of his long moustaches. 

I don't know whether it was his delicacy or his obesity which preventedDavidson from clambering upon the wharf. He stood up in the boat, and, above him, Heyst stooped low with urbane smiles, thanking him andapologizing for the liberty, exactly in his usual manner. Davidson hadexpected some change in the man, but there was none. Nothing in himbetrayed the momentous fact that within that jungle there was a girl, aperformer in a ladies' orchestra, whom he had carried straight off theconcert platform into the wilderness. He was not ashamed or defiantor abashed about it. He might have been a shade confidential whenaddressing Davidson. And his words were enigmatical. 

"I took this course of signalling to you, " he said to Davidson, "becauseto preserve appearances might be of the utmost importance. Not to me, ofcourse. I don't care what people may say, and of course no one can hurtme. I suppose I have done a certain amount of harm, since I allowedmyself to be tempted into action. It seemed innocent enough, but allaction is bound to be harmful. It is devilish. That is why this worldis evil upon the whole. But I have done with it! I shall never lift alittle finger again. At one time I thought that intelligent observationof facts was the best way of cheating the time which is allotted to uswhether we want it or not; but now I, have done with observation, too. "

Imagine poor, simple Davidson being addressed in such terms alongsidean abandoned, decaying wharf jutting out of tropical bush. He hadnever heard anybody speak like this before; certainly not Heyst, whoseconversation was concise, polite, with a faint ring of playfulness inthe cultivated tones of his voice. 

"He's gone mad, " Davidson thought to himself. 

But, looking at the physiognomy above him on the wharf, he was obligedto dismiss the notion of common, crude lunacy. It was truly most unusualtalk. Then he remembered--in his surprise he had lost sight of it--thatHeyst now had a girl there. This bizarre discourse was probably theeffect of the girl. Davidson shook off the absurd feeling, and asked, wishing to make clear his friendliness, and not knowing what else tosay:

"You haven't run short of stores or anything like that?"

Heyst smiled and shook his head:

"No, no. Nothing of the kind. We are fairly well off here. Thanks, allthe same. If I have taken the liberty to detain you, it is I not fromany uneasiness for myself and my--companion. The person I was thinkingof when I made up my mind to invoke your assistance is Mrs. Schomberg. "

"I have talked with her, " interjected Davidson. 

"Oh! You? Yes, I hoped she would find means to--"

"But she didn't tell me much, " interrupted Davidson, who was not aversefrom hearing something--he hardly knew what. 

"H'm--Yes. But that note of mine? Yes? She found an opportunity to giveit to you? That's good, very good. She's more resourceful than one wouldgive her credit for. "

"Women often are--" remarked Davidson. The strangeness from which he hadsuffered, merely because his interlocutor had carried off a girl, woreoff as the minutes went by. "There's a lot of unexpectedness aboutwomen, " he generalized with a didactic aim which seemed to miss itsmark; for the next thing Heyst said was:

"This is Mrs. Schomberg's shawl. " He touched the stuff hanging overhis arm. "An Indian thing, I believe, " he added, glancing at his armsideways. 

"It isn't of particular value, " said Davidson truthfully. 

"Very likely. The point is that it belongs to Schomberg's wife. ThatSchomberg seems to be an unconscionable ruffian--don't you think so?"

Davidson smiled faintly. 

"We out here have got used to him, " he said, as if excusing a universaland guilty toleration of a manifest nuisance. "I'd hardly call him that. I only know him as a hotel-keeper. "

"I never knew him even as that--not till this time, when you were soobliging as to take me to Sourabaya, I went to stay there from economy. The Netherlands House is very expensive, and they expect you to bringyour own servant with you. It's a nuisance. "

"Of course, of course, " protested Davidson hastily. 

After a short silence Heyst returned to the matter of the shawl. Hewanted to send it back to Mrs. Schomberg. He said that it might be veryawkward for her if she were unable, if asked, to produce it. This hadgiven him, Heyst, much uneasiness. She was terrified of Schomberg. Apparently she had reason to be. 

Davidson had remarked that, too. Which did not prevent her, he pointedout, from making a fool of him, in a way, for the sake of a stranger. 

"Oh! You know!" said Heyst. "Yes, she helped me--us. "

"She told me so. I had quite a talk with her, " Davidson informed him. "Fancy anyone having a talk with Mrs. Schomberg! If I were to tell thefellows they wouldn't believe me. How did you get round her, Heyst?How did you think of it? Why, she looks too stupid to understand humanspeech and too scared to shoo a chicken away. Oh, the women, the women!You don't know what there may be in the quietest of them. "

"She was engaged in the task of defending her position in life, " saidHeyst. "It's a very respectable task. "

"Is that it? I had some idea it was that, " confessed Davidson. 

He then imparted to Heyst the story of the violent proceedings followingon the discovery of his flight. Heyst's polite attention to the taletook on a sombre cast; but he manifested no surprise, and offered nocomment. When Davidson had finished he handed down the shawl intothe boat, and Davidson promised to do his best to return it to Mrs. Schomberg in some secret fashion. Heyst expressed his thanks in a fewsimple words, set off by his manner of finished courtesy. Davidsonprepared to depart. They were not looking at each other. Suddenly Heystspoke:

"You understand that this was a case of odious persecution, don't you? Ibecame aware of it and--"

It was a view which the sympathetic Davidson was capable ofappreciating. 

"I am not surprised to hear it, " he said placidly. "Odious enough, Idare say. And you, of course--not being a married man--were free to stepin. Ah, well!"

He sat down in the stern-sheets, and already had the steering lines inhis hands when Heyst observed abruptly:

"The world is a bad dog. It will bite you if you give it a chance; but Ithink that here we can safely defy the fates. "

When relating all this to me, Davidson's only comment was:

"Funny notion of defying the fates--to take a woman in tow!"

CHAPTER SEVEN

Some considerable time afterwards--we did not meet very often--I askedDavidson how he had managed about the shawl and heard that he hadtackled his mission in a direct way, and had found it easy enough. Atthe very first call he made in Samarang he rolled the shawl as tightlyas he could into the smallest possible brown-paper parcel, which hecarried ashore with him. His business in the town being transacted, he got into a gharry with the parcel and drove to the hotel. With hisprecious experience, he timed his arrival accurately for the hour ofSchomberg's siesta. Finding the place empty as on the former occasion, he marched into the billiard-room, took a seat at the back, near thesort of dais which Mrs. Schomberg would in due course come to occupy, and broke the slumbering silence of the house by thumping a bellvigorously. Of course a Chinaman appeared promptly. Davidson ordered adrink and sat tight. 

"I would have ordered twenty drinks one after another, if necessary, "he said--Davidson's a very abstemious man--"rather than take that parcelout of the house again. Couldn't leave it in a corner without lettingthe woman know it was there. It might have turned out worse for her thannot bringing the thing back at all. "

And so he waited, ringing the bell again and again, and swallowing twoor three iced drinks which he did not want. Presently, as he hoped itwould happen, Mrs. Schomberg came in, silk dress, long neck, ringlets, scared eyes, and silly grin--all complete. Probably that lazy beast hadsent her out to see who was the thirsty customer waking up the echoes ofthe house at this quiet hour. Bow, nod--and she clambered up to her postbehind the raised counter, looking so helpless, so inane, as she satthere, that if it hadn't been for the parcel, Davidson declared, hewould have thought he had merely dreamed all that had passed betweenthem. He ordered another drink, to get the Chinaman out of the room, andthen seized the parcel, which was reposing on a chair near him, andwith no more than a mutter--"this is something of yours"--he rammed itswiftly into a recess in the counter, at her feet. There! The restwas her affair. And just in time, too. Schomberg turned up, yawningaffectedly, almost before Davidson had regained his seat. He cast aboutsuspicious and irate glances. An invincible placidity of expressionhelped Davidson wonderfully at the moment, and the other, of course, could have no grounds for the slightest suspicion of any sort ofunderstanding between his wife and this customer. 

As to Mrs. Schomberg, she sat there like a joss. Davidson was lost inadmiration. He believed, now, that the woman had been putting it onfor years. She never even winked. It was immense! The insight he hadobtained almost frightened him; he couldn't get over his wonder atknowing more of the real Mrs. Schomberg than anybody in the Islands, including Schomberg himself. She was a miracle of dissimulation. Nowonder Heyst got the girl away from under two men's noses, if he had herto help with the job!

The greatest wonder, after all, was Heyst getting mixed up withpetticoats. The fellow's life had been open to us for years and nothingcould have been more detached from feminine associations. Except that hestood drinks to people on suitable occasions, like any other man, thisobserver of facts seemed to have no connection with earthly affairs andpassions. The very courtesy of his manner, the flavour of playfulness inthe voice set him apart. He was like a feather floating lightly inthe workaday atmosphere which was the breath of our nostrils. For thisreason whenever this looker-on took contact with things he attractedattention. First, it was the Morrison partnership of mystery, thencame the great sensation of the Tropical Belt Coal where indeed variedinterests were involved: a real business matter. And then came thiselopement, this incongruous phenomenon of self-assertion, the greatestwonder of all, astonishing and amusing. 

Davidson admitted to me that, the hubbub was subsiding; and the affairwould have been already forgotten, perhaps, if that ass Schomberghad not kept on gnashing his teeth publicly about it. It was reallyprovoking that Davidson should not be able to give one some idea of thegirl. Was she pretty? He didn't know. He had stayed the whole afternoonin Schomberg's hotel, mainly for the purpose of finding out somethingabout her. But the story was growing stale. The parties at the tables onthe veranda had other, fresher, events to talk about and Davidson shrankfrom making direct inquiries. He sat placidly there, content to bedisregarded and hoping for some chance word to turn up. I shouldn'twonder if the good fellow hadn't been dozing. It's difficult to give youan adequate idea of Davidson's placidity. 

Presently Schomberg, wandering about, joined a party that had taken thetable next to Davidson's. 

"A man like that Swede, gentlemen, is a public danger, " he began. "Iremember him for years. I won't say anything of his spying--well, heused to say himself he was looking for out-of-the-way facts and what isthat if not spying? He was spying into everybody's business. He got holdof Captain Morrison, squeezed him dry, like you would an orange, andscared him off to Europe to die there. Everybody knows that CaptainMorrison had a weak chest. Robbed first and murdered afterwards! I don'tmince words--not I. Next he gets up that swindle of the Belt Coal. Youknow all about it. And now, after lining his pockets with other people'smoney, he kidnaps a white girl belonging to an orchestra which isperforming in my public room for the benefit of my patrons, and goesoff to live like a prince on that island, where nobody can get at him. Adamn silly girl . . . It's disgusting--tfui!"

He spat. He choked with rage--for he saw visions, no doubt. He jumped upfrom his chair, and went away to flee from them--perhaps. He went intothe room where Mrs. Schomberg sat. Her aspect could not have been verysoothing to the sort of torment from which he was suffering. 

Davidson did not feel called upon to defend Heyst. His proceeding was toenter into conversation with one and another, casually, and showing noparticular knowledge of the affair, in order to discover something aboutthe girl. Was she anything out of the way? Was she pretty? She couldn'thave been markedly so. She had not attracted special notice. She wasyoung--on that everybody agreed. The English clerk of Tesmans rememberedthat she had a sallow face. He was respectable and highly proper. Hewas not the sort to associate with such people. Most of these women werefairly battered specimens. Schomberg had them housed in what he calledthe Pavilion, in the grounds, where they were hard at it mending andwashing their white dresses, and could be seen hanging them out to drybetween the trees, like a lot of washerwomen. They looked very muchlike middle-aged washerwomen on the platform, too. But the girl hadbeen living in the main building along with the boss, the director, thefellow with the black beard, and a hard-bitten, oldish woman who tookthe piano and was understood to be the fellow's wife. 

This was not a very satisfactory result. Davidson stayed on, and evenjoined the table d'hote dinner, without gleaning any more information. He was resigned. 

"I suppose, " he wheezed placidly, "I am bound to see her some day. "

He meant to take the Samburan channel every trip, as before of course. 

"Yes, " I said. "No doubt you will. Some day Heyst will be signalling toyou again; and I wonder what it will be for. "

Davidson made no reply. He had his own ideas about that, and his silenceconcealed a good deal of thought. We spoke no more of Heyst's girl. Before we separated, he gave me a piece of unrelated observation. 

"It's funny, " he said, "but I fancy there's some gambling going onin the evening at Schomberg's place, on the quiet. I've noticed menstrolling away in twos and threes towards that hall where the orchestraused to play. The windows must be specially well shuttered, because Icould not spy the smallest gleam of light from that direction; but Ican't believe that those beggars would go in there only to sit and thinkof their sins in the dark. "

"That's strange. It's incredible that Schomberg should risk that sort ofthing, " I said. 

PART TWO

CHAPTER ONE

As we know, Heyst had gone to stay in Schomberg's hotel in completeignorance that his person was odious to that worthy. When he arrived, Zangiacomo's Ladies' Orchestra had been established there for some time. 

The business which had called him out from his seclusion in his lostcorner of the Eastern seas was with the Tesmans, and it had somethingto do with money. He transacted it quickly, and then found himself withnothing to do while he awaited Davidson, who was to take him back to hissolitude; for back to his solitude Heyst meant to go. He whom we usedto refer to as the Enchanted Heyst was suffering from thoroughdisenchantment. Not with the islands, however. The Archipelago has alasting fascination. It is not easy to shake off the spell of islandlife. Heyst was disenchanted with life as a whole. His scornfultemperament, beguiled into action, suffered from failure in a subtle wayunknown to men accustomed to grapple with the realities of common humanenterprise. It was like the gnawing pain of useless apostasy, a sort ofshame before his own betrayed nature; and in addition, he also sufferedfrom plain, downright remorse. He deemed himself guilty of Morrison'sdeath. A rather absurd feeling, since no one could possibly haveforeseen the horrors of the cold, wet summer lying in wait for poorMorrison at home. 

It was not in Heyst's character to turn morose; but his mental state wasnot compatible with a sociable mood. He spent his evenings sittingapart on the veranda of Schomberg's hotel. The lamentations of stringinstruments issued from the building in the hotel compound, theapproaches to which were decorated with Japanese paper lanterns strungup between the trunks of several big trees. Scraps of tunes more orless plaintive reached his ears. They pursued him even into his bedroom, which opened into an upstairs veranda. The fragmentary and raspingcharacter of these sounds made their intrusion inexpressibly tedious inthe long run. Like most dreamers, to whom it is given sometimes to hearthe music of the spheres, Heyst, the wanderer of the Archipelago, hada taste for silence which he had been able to gratify for years. Theislands are very quiet. One sees them lying about, clothed in their darkgarments of leaves, in a great hush of silver and azure, where the seawithout murmurs meets the sky in a ring of magic stillness. A sort ofsmiling somnolence broods over them; the very voices of their people aresoft and subdued, as if afraid to break some protecting spell. 

Perhaps this was the very spell which had enchanted Heyst in the earlydays. For him, however, that was broken. He was no longer enchanted, though he was still a captive of the islands. He had no intention toleave them ever. Where could he have gone to, after all these years?Not a single soul belonging to him lived anywhere on earth. Of thisfact--not such a remote one, after all--he had only lately become aware;for it is failure that makes a man enter into himself and reckon up hisresources. And though he had made up his mind to retire from the worldin hermit fashion, yet he was irrationally moved by this sense ofloneliness which had come to him in the hour of renunciation. It hurthim. Nothing is more painful than the shock of sharp contradictions thatlacerate our intelligence and our feelings. 

Meantime Schomberg watched Heyst out of the corner of his eye. Towards the unconscious object of his enmity he preserved a distantlieutenant-of-the-Reserve demeanour. Nudging certain of his customerswith his elbow, he begged them to observe what airs "that Swede" wasgiving himself. 

"I really don't know why he has come to stay in my house. This placeisn't good enough for him. I wish to goodness he had gone somewhere elseto show off his superiority. Here I have got up this series of concertsfor you gentlemen, just to make things a little brighter generally; anddo you think he'll condescend to step in and listen to a piece or two ofan evening? Not he. I know him of old. There he sits at the dark end ofthe piazza, all the evening long--planning some new swindle, no doubt. For two-pence I would ask him to go and look for quarters somewhereelse; only one doesn't like to treat a white man like that out in thetropics. I don't know how long he means to stay, but I'm willing to beta trifle that he'll never work himself up to the point of spending thefifty cents of entrance money for the sake of a little good music. "

Nobody cared to bet, or the hotel-keeper would have lost. One eveningHeyst was driven to desperation by the rasped, squeaked, scrapedsnatches of tunes pursuing him even to his hard couch, with a mattressas thin as a pancake and a diaphanous mosquito net. He descended amongthe trees, where the soft glow of Japanese lanterns picked out parts oftheir great rugged trunks, here and there, in the great mass of darknessunder the lofty foliage. More lanterns, of the shape of cylindricalconcertinas, hanging in a row from a slack string, decorated the doorwayof what Schomberg called grandiloquently "my concert-hall. " In hisdesperate mood Heyst ascended three steps, lifted a calico curtain, andwent in. 

The uproar in that small, barn-like structure, built of importedpine boards, and raised clear of the ground, was simply stunning. Aninstrumental uproar, screaming, grunting, whining, sobbing, scraping, squeaking some kind of lively air; while a grand piano, operated uponby a bony, red-faced woman with bad-tempered nostrils, rained hard noteslike hail through the tempest of fiddles. The small platform was filledwith white muslin dresses and crimson sashes slanting from shouldersprovided with bare arms, which sawed away without respite. Zangiacomoconducted. He wore a white mess-jacket, a black dress waistcoat, andwhite trousers. His longish, tousled hair and his great beard werepurple-black. He was horrible. The heat was terrific. There were perhapsthirty people having drinks at several little tables. Heyst, quiteovercome by the volume of noise, dropped into a chair. In the quick timeof that music, in the varied, piercing clamour of the strings, in themovements of the bare arms, in the low dresses, the coarse faces, the stony eyes of the executants, there was a suggestion ofbrutality--something cruel, sensual and repulsive. 

"This is awful!" Heyst murmured to himself. 

But there is an unholy fascination in systematic noise. He did notflee from it incontinently, as one might have expected him to do. Heremained, astonished at himself for remaining, since nothing could havebeen more repulsive to his tastes, more painful to his senses, and, so to speak, more contrary to his genius, than this rude exhibitionof vigour. The Zangiacomo band was not making music; it was simplymurdering silence with a vulgar, ferocious energy. One felt as ifwitnessing a deed of violence; and that impression was so strong that itseemed marvellous to see the people sitting so quietly on theirchairs, drinking so calmly out of their glasses, and giving no signsof distress, anger, or fear. Heyst averted his gaze from the unnaturalspectacle of their indifference. 

When the piece of music came to an end the relief was so great that hefelt slightly dizzy, as if a chasm of silence had yawned at his feet. When he raised his eyes, the audience, most perversely, was exhibitingsigns of animation and interest in their faces, and the women in whitemuslin dresses were coming down in pairs from the platform into the bodyof Schomberg's "concert-hall. " They dispersed themselves all over theplace. The male creature with the hooked nose and purple-black bearddisappeared somewhere. This was the interval during which, as the astuteSchomberg had stipulated, the members of the orchestra were encouragedto favour the members of the audience with their company--that is, suchmembers as seemed inclined to fraternize with the arts in a familiar andgenerous manner; the symbol of familiarity and generosity consisting inoffers of refreshment. 

The procedure struck Heyst as highly incorrect. However, the improprietyof Schomberg's ingenious scheme was defeated by the circumstance thatmost of the women were no longer young, and that none of them had everbeen beautiful. Their more or less worn checks were slightly rouged, butapart from that fact, which might have been simply a matter of routine, they did not seem to take the success of the scheme unduly to heart. The impulse to fraternize with the arts being obviously weak in theaudience, some of the musicians sat down listlessly at unoccupiedtables, while others went on perambulating the central passage: arm inarm, glad enough, no doubt, to stretch their legs while resting theirarms. Their crimson sashes gave a factitious touch of gaiety to thesmoky atmosphere of the concert-hall; and Heyst felt a sudden pity forthese beings, exploited, hopeless, devoid of charm and grace, whose fateof cheerless dependence invested their coarse and joyless features witha touch of pathos. 

Heyst was temperamentally sympathetic. To have them passing andrepassing close to his little table was painful to him. He was preparingto rise and go out when he noticed that two white muslin dresses andcrimson sashes had not yet left the platform. One of these dressesconcealed the raw-boned frame of the woman with the bad-tempered curveto her nostrils. She was no less a personage than Mrs. Zangiacomo. Shehad left the piano, and, with her back to the hall, was preparing theparts for the second half of the concert, with a brusque, impatientaction of her ugly elbow. This task done, she turned, and, perceivingthe other white muslin dress motionless on a chair in the second row, she strode towards it between the music-stands with an aggressive andmasterful gait. On the lap of that dress there lay, unclasped and idle, a pair of small hands, not very white, attached to well-formed arms. The next detail Heyst was led to observe was the arrangement of thehair--two thick, brown tresses rolled round an attractively shaped head. 

"A girl, by Jove!" he exclaimed mentally. 

It was evident that she was a girl. It was evident in the outline of theshoulders, in the slender white bust springing up, barred slantwise bythe crimson sash, from the bell-shaped spread of muslin skirt hiding thechair on which she sat averted a little from the body of the hall. Herfeet, in low white shoes, were crossed prettily. 

She had captured Heyst's awakened faculty of observation; he hadthe sensation of a new experience. That was because his faculty ofobservation had never before been captured by any feminine creature inthat marked and exclusive fashion. He looked at her anxiously, as no manever looks at another man; and he positively forgot where he was. He hadlost touch with his surroundings. The big woman, advancing, concealedthe girl from his sight for a moment. She bent over the seated youthfulfigure, in passing it very close, as if to drop a word into its ear. Her lips did certainly move. But what sort of word could it have beento make the girl jump up so swiftly? Heyst, at his table, was surprisedinto a sympathetic start. He glanced quickly round. Nobody was lookingtowards the platform; and when his eyes swept back there again, thegirl, with the big woman treading at her heels, was coming down thethree steps from the platform to the floor of the hall. There shepaused, stumbled one pace forward, and stood still again, whilethe other--the escort, the dragoon, the coarse big woman of thepiano--passed her roughly, and, marching truculently down the centreaisle between the chairs and tables, went out to rejoin the hook-nosedZangiacomo somewhere outside. During her extraordinary transit, as ifeverything in the hall were dirt under her feet, her scornful eyes metthe upward glance of Heyst, who looked away at once towards the girl. She had not moved. Her arms hung down; her eyelids were lowered. 

Heyst laid down his half-smoked cigar and compressed his lips. Then hegot up. It was the same sort of impulse which years ago had made himcross the sandy street of the abominable town of Delli in the island ofTimor and accost Morrison, practically a stranger to him then, a man introuble, expressively harassed, dejected, lonely. 

It was the same impulse. But he did not recognize it. He was notthinking of Morrison then. It may be said that, for the first timesince the final abandonment of the Samburan coal mine, he had completelyforgotten the late Morrison. It is true that to a certain extent hehad forgotten also where he was. Thus, unchecked by any sort of selfconsciousness, Heyst walked up the central passage. 

Several of the women, by this time, had found anchorage here and thereamong the occupied tables. They talked to the men, leaning on theirelbows, and suggesting funnily--if it hadn't been for the crimsonsashes--in their white dresses an assembly of middle-aged brideswith free and easy manners and hoarse voices. The murmuring noiseof conversations carried on with some spirit filled Schomberg'sconcert-room. Nobody remarked Heyst's movements; for indeed he was notthe only man on his legs there. He had been confronting the girl forsome time before she became aware of his presence. She was looking down, very still, without colour, without glances, without voice, withoutmovement. It was only when Heyst addressed her in his courteous tonethat she raised her eyes. 

"Excuse me, " he said in English, "but that horrible female has donesomething to you. She has pinched you, hasn't she? I am sure she pinchedyou just now, when she stood by your chair. "

The girl received this overture with the wide, motionless stare ofprofound astonishment. Heyst, vexed with himself, suspected that she didnot understand what he said. One could not tell what nationality thesewomen were, except that they were of all sorts. But she was astonishedalmost more by the near presence of the man himself, by his largelybald head, by the white brow, the sunburnt cheeks, the long, horizontalmoustaches of crinkly bronze hair, by the kindly expression of the man'sblue eyes looking into her own. He saw the stony amazement in hersgive way to a momentary alarm, which was succeeded by an expression ofresignation. 

"I am sure she pinched your arm most cruelly, " he murmured, ratherdisconcerted now at what he had done. 

It was a great comfort to hear her say:

"It wouldn't have been the first time. And suppose she did--what are yougoing to do about it?"

"I don't know, " he said with a faint, remote playfulness in his tonewhich had not been heard in it lately, and which seemed to catch herear pleasantly. "I am grieved to say that I don't know. But can I doanything? What would you wish me to do? Pray command me. "

Again, the greatest astonishment became visible in her face; for she nowperceived how different he was from the other men in the room. He was asdifferent from them as she was different from the other members of theladies' orchestra. 

"Command you?" she breathed, after a time, in a bewildered tone. "Whoare you?" she asked a little louder. 

"I am staying in this hotel for a few days. I just dropped in casuallyhere. This outrage--"

"Don't you try to interfere, " she said so earnestly that Heyst asked, inhis faintly playful tone:

"Is it your wish that I should leave you?"

"I haven't said that, " the girl answered. "She pinched me because Ididn't get down here quick enough--"

"I can't tell you how indignant I am--" said Heyst. "But since you aredown here now, " he went on, with the ease of a man of the world speakingto a young lady in a drawing-room, "hadn't we better sit down?"

She obeyed his inviting gesture, and they sat down on the nearestchairs. They looked at each other across a little round table with asurprised, open gaze, self-consciousness growing on them so slowly thatit was a long time before they averted their eyes; and very soon theymet again, temporarily, only to rebound, as it were. At last theysteadied in contact, but by that time, say some fifteen minutes from themoment when they sat down, the "interval" came to an end. 

So much for their eyes. As to the conversation, it had been perfectlyinsignificant because naturally they had nothing to say to each other. Heyst had been interested by the girl's physiognomy. Its expression wasneither simple nor yet very clear. It was not distinguished--that couldnot be expected--but the features had more fineness than those of anyother feminine countenance he had ever had the opportunity to observe soclosely. There was in it something indefinably audacious and infinitelymiserable--because the temperament and the existence of that girl werereflected in it. But her voice! It seduced Heyst by its amazing quality. It was a voice fit to utter the most exquisite things, a voice whichwould have made silly chatter supportable and the roughest talkfascinating. Heyst drank in its charm as one listens to the tone of someinstrument without heeding the tune. 

"Do you sing as well as play?" he asked her abruptly. 

"Never sang a note in my life, " she said, obviously surprised by theirrelevant question; for they had not been discoursing of sweet sounds. She was clearly unaware of her voice. "I don't remember that I ever hadmuch reason to sing since I was little, " she added. 

That inelegant phrase, by the mere vibrating, warm nobility of thesound, found its way into Heyst's heart. His mind, cool, alert, watchedit sink there with a sort of vague concern at the absurdity ofthe occupation, till it rested at the bottom, deep down, where ourunexpressed longings lie. 

"You are English, of course?" he said. 

"What do you think?" she answered in the most charming accents. Then, asif thinking that it was her turn to place a question: "Why do you alwayssmile when you speak?"

It was enough to make anyone look grave, but her good faith was soevident that Heyst recovered himself at once. 

"It's my unfortunate manner--" he said with his delicate, polishedplayfulness. "It is very objectionable to you?"

She was very serious. 

"No. I only noticed it. I haven't come across so many pleasant people asall that, in my life. "

"It's certain that this woman who plays the piano is infinitely moredisagreeable than any cannibal I have ever had to do with. "

"I believe you!" She shuddered. "How did you come to have anything to dowith cannibals?"

"It would be too long a tale, " said Heyst with a faint smile. Heyst'ssmiles were rather melancholy, and accorded badly with his greatmoustaches, under which his mere playfulness lurked as comfortable as ashy bird in its native thicket. "Much too long. How did you get amongstthis lot here?"

"Bad luck, " she answered briefly. 

"No doubt, no doubt, " Heyst assented with slight nods. Then, stillindignant at the pinch which he had divined rather than actually seeninflicted: "I say, couldn't you defend yourself somehow?"

She had risen already. The ladies of the orchestra were slowly regainingtheir places. Some were already seated, idle stony-eyed, before themusic-stands. Heyst was standing up, too. 

"They are too many for me, " she said. 

These few words came out of the common experience of mankind; yet byvirtue of her voice, they thrilled Heyst like a revelation. His feelingswere in a state of confusion, but his mind was clear. 

"That's bad. But it isn't actual ill-usage that this girl is complainingof, " he thought lucidly after she left him. 

CHAPTER TWO

That was how it began. How it was that it ended, as we know it did end, is not so easy to state precisely. It is very clear that Heyst was notindifferent, I won't say to the girl, but to the girl's fate. He wasthe same man who had plunged after the submerged Morrison whom hehardly knew otherwise than by sight and through the usual gossip of theislands. But this was another sort of plunge altogether, and likely tolead to a very different kind of partnership. 

Did he reflect at all? Probably. He was sufficiently reflective. Butif he did, it was with insufficient knowledge. For there is no evidencethat he paused at any time between the date of that evening and themorning of the flight. Truth to say, Heyst was not one of those menwho pause much. Those dreamy spectators of the world's agitation areterrible once the desire to act gets hold of them. They lower theirheads and charge a wall with an amazing serenity which nothing but anindisciplined imagination can give. 

He was not a fool. I suppose he knew--or at least he felt--where thiswas leading him. But his complete inexperience gave him the necessaryaudacity. The girl's voice was charming when she spoke to him of hermiserable past, in simple terms, with a sort of unconscious cynicisminherent in the truth of the ugly conditions of poverty. And whetherbecause he was humane or because her voice included all the modulationsof pathos, cheerfulness, and courage in its compass, it was not disgustthat the tale awakened in him, but the sense of an immense sadness. 

On a later evening, during the interval between the two parts of theconcert, the girl told Heyst about herself. She was almost a childof the streets. Her father was a musician in the orchestras of smalltheatres. Her mother ran away from him while she was little, and thelandladies of various poor lodging-houses had attended casually to herabandoned childhood. It was never positive starvation and absolute rags, but it was the hopeless grip of poverty all the time. It was her fatherwho taught her to play the violin. It seemed that he used to get drunksometimes, but without pleasure, and only because he was unable toforget his fugitive wife. After he had a paralytic stroke, fallingover with a crash in the well of a music-hall orchestra during theperformance, she had joined the Zangiacomo company. He was now in a homefor incurables. 

"And I am here, " she finished, "with no one to care if I make a hole inthe water the next chance I get or not. "

Heyst told her that he thought she could do a little better than that, if it was only a question of getting out of the world. She looked at himwith special attention, and with a puzzled expression which gave to herface an air of innocence. 

This was during one of the "intervals" between the two parts of theconcert. She had come down that time without being incited thereto by apinch from the awful Zangiacomo woman. It is difficult to suppose thatshe was seduced by the uncovered intellectual forehead and the longreddish moustaches of her new friend. New is not the right word. She hadnever had a friend before; and the sensation of this friendliness goingout to her was exciting by its novelty alone. Besides, any man who didnot resemble Schomberg appeared for that very reason attractive. She wasafraid of the hotel-keeper, who, in the daytime, taking advantage of thefact that she lived in the hotel itself, and not in the Pavilion withthe other "artists" prowled round her, mute, hungry, portentous behindhis great beard, or else assailed her in quiet corners and emptypassages with deep, mysterious murmurs from behind, which, notwithstanding their clear import, sounded horribly insane somehow. 

The contrast of Heyst's quiet, polished manner gave her special delightand filled her with admiration. She had never seen anything like thatbefore. If she had, perhaps, known kindness in her life, she had nevermet the forms of simple courtesy. She was interested by it as a verynovel experience, not very intelligible, but distinctly pleasurable. 

"I tell you they are too many for me, " she repeated, sometimesrecklessly, but more often shaking her head with ominous dejection. 

She had, of course, no money at all. The quantities of "black men" allabout frightened her. She really had no definite idea where she was onthe surface of the globe. The orchestra was generally taken from thesteamer to some hotel, and kept shut up there till it was time to go onboard another steamer. She could not remember the names she heard. 

"How do you call this place again?" she used to ask Heyst. 

"Sourabaya, " he would say distinctly, and would watch the discouragementat the outlandish sound coming into her eyes, which were fastened on hisface. 

He could not defend himself from compassion. He suggested that she mightgo to the consul, but it was his conscience that dictated this advice, not his conviction. She had never heard of the animal or of its uses. Aconsul! What was it? Who was he? What could he do? And when she learnedthat perhaps he could be induced to send her home, her head dropped onher breast. 

"What am I to do when I get there?" she murmured with an intonation sojust, with an accent so penetrating--the charm of her voice did not failher even in whispering--that Heyst seemed to see the illusion of humanfellowship on earth vanish before the naked truth of her existence, andleave them both face to face in a moral desert as arid as the sands ofSahara, without restful shade, without refreshing water. 

She leaned slightly over the little table, the same little table atwhich they had sat when they first met each other; and with no othermemories but of the stones in the streets her childhood had known, inthe distress of the incoherent, confused, rudimentary impressions of hertravels inspiring her with a vague terror of the world she said rapidly, as one speaks in desperation:

"_You_ do something! You are a gentleman. It wasn't I who spoke to youfirst, was it? I didn't begin, did I? It was you who came along andspoke to me when I was standing over there. What did you want to speakto me for? I don't care what it is, but you must do something. "

Her attitude was fierce and entreating at the same time--clamorous, infact though her voice had hardly risen above a breath. It was clamorousenough to be noticed. Heyst, on purpose, laughed aloud. She nearlychoked with indignation at this brutal heartlessness. 

"What did you mean, then, by saying 'command me!'?" she almost hissed. 

Something hard in his mirthless stare, and a quiet final "All right, "steadied her. 

"I am not rich enough to buy you out, " he went on, speaking with anextraordinary detached grin, "even if it were to be done; but I canalways steal you. "

She looked at him profoundly, as though these words had a hidden andvery complicated meaning. 

"Get away now, " he said rapidly, "and try to smile as you go. "

She obeyed with unexpected readiness; and as she had a set of very goodwhite teeth, the effect of the mechanical, ordered smile was joyous, radiant. It astonished Heyst. No wonder, it flashed through his mind, women can deceive men so completely. The faculty was inherent in them;they seemed to be created with a special aptitude. Here was a smilethe origin of which was well known to him; and yet it had conveyed asensation of warmth, had given him a sort of ardour to live which wasvery new to his experience. 

By this time she was gone from the table, and had joined the other"ladies of the orchestra. " They trooped towards the platform, driven intruculently by the haughty mate of Zangiacomo, who looked as thoughshe were restraining herself with difficulty from punching their backs. Zangiacomo followed, with his great, pendulous dyed beard and shortmess-jacket, with an aspect of hang-dog concentration imparted by hisdrooping head and the uneasiness of his eyes, which were set very closetogether. He climbed the steps last of all, turned about, displayinghis purple beard to the hall, and tapped with his bow. Heyst winced inanticipation of the horrible racket. It burst out immediately unabashedand awful. At the end of the platform the woman at the piano, presentingher cruel profile, her head tilted back, banged the keys without lookingat the music. 

Heyst could not stand the uproar for more than a minute. He went out, his brain racked by the rhythm of some more or less Hungarian dancemusic. The forests inhabited by the New Guinea cannibals where he hadencountered the most exciting of his earlier futile adventures weresilent. And this adventure, not in its execution, perhaps, but in itsnature, required even more nerve than anything he had faced before. Walking among the paper lanterns suspended to trees he remembered withregret the gloom and the dead stillness of the forests at the back ofGeelvink Bay, perhaps the wildest, the unsafest, the most deadly spoton earth from which the sea can be seen. Oppressed by his thoughts, he sought the obscurity and peace of his bedroom; but they were notcomplete. The distant sounds of the concert reached his ear, faintindeed, but still disturbing. Neither did he feel very safe in there;for that sentiment depends not on extraneous circumstances but on ourinward conviction. He did not attempt to go to sleep; he did not evenunbutton the top button of his tunic. He sat in a chair and mused. Formerly, in solitude and in silence, he had been used to think clearlyand sometimes even profoundly, seeing life outside the flatteringoptical delusion of everlasting hope, of conventional self-deceptions, of an ever-expected happiness. But now he was troubled; a light veilseemed to hang before his mental vision; the awakening of a tenderness, indistinct and confused as yet, towards an unknown woman. 

Gradually silence, a real silence, had established itself round him. Theconcert was over; the audience had gone; the concert-hall was dark; andeven the Pavilion, where the ladies' orchestra slept after its noisylabours, showed not a gleam of light. Heyst suddenly felt restless inall his limbs, as this reaction from the long immobility would not bedenied, he humoured it by passing quietly along the back veranda and outinto the grounds at the side of the house, into the black shadows underthe trees, where the extinguished paper lanterns were gently swingingtheir globes like withered fruit. 

He paced there to and fro for a long time, a calm, meditative ghost inhis white drill-suit, revolving in his head thoughts absolutely novel, disquieting, and seductive; accustoming his mind to the contemplationof his purpose, in order that by being faced steadily it should appearpraiseworthy and wise. For the use of reason is to justify the obscuredesires that move our conduct, impulses, passions, prejudices, andfollies, and also our fears. 

He felt that he had engaged himself by a rash promise to an action bigwith incalculable consequences. And then he asked himself if the girlhad understood what he meant. Who could tell? He was assailed by allsorts of doubts. Raising his head, he perceived something white flittingbetween the trees. It vanished almost at once; but there could be nomistake. He was vexed at being detected roaming like this in the middleof the night. Who could that be? It never occurred to him that perhapsthe girl, too, would not be able to sleep. He advanced prudently. Thenhe saw the white, phantom-like apparition again; and the next momentall his doubts as to the state of her mind were laid at rest, because hefelt her clinging to him after the manner of supplicants all the worldover. Her whispers were so incoherent that he could not understandanything; but this did not prevent him from being profoundly moved. Hehad no illusions about her; but his sceptical mind was dominated by thefulness of his heart. 

"Calm yourself, calm yourself, " he murmured in her ear, returning herclasp at first mechanically, and afterwards with a growing appreciationof her distressed humanity. The heaving of her breast and the tremblingof all her limbs, in the closeness of his embrace, seemed to enter hisbody, to infect his very heart. While she was growing quieter in hisarms, he was becoming more agitated, as if there were only a fixedquantity of violent emotion on this earth. The very night seemedmore dumb, more still, and the immobility of the vague, black shapes, surrounding him more perfect. 

"It will be all right, " he tried to reassure her, with a tone ofconviction, speaking into her ear, and of necessity clasping her moreclosely than before. 

Either the words or the action had a very good effect. He heard a lightsigh of relief. She spoke with a calmed ardour. 

"Oh, I knew it would be all right from the first time you spoke to me!Yes, indeed, I knew directly you came up to me that evening. I knew itwould be all right, if you only cared to make it so; but of course Icould not tell if you meant it. 'Command me, ' you said. Funny thing fora man like you to say. Did you really mean it? You weren't making fun ofme?"

He protested that he had been a serious person all his life. 

"I believe you, " she said ardently. He was touched by this declaration. "It's the way you have of speaking as if you were amused with people, "she went on. "But I wasn't deceived. I could see you were angry withthat beast of a woman. And you are clever. You spotted something atonce. You saw it in my face, eh? It isn't a bad face--say? You'll neverbe sorry. Listen--I'm not twenty yet. It's the truth, and I can't be sobad looking, or else--I will tell you straight that I have been worriedand pestered by fellows like this before. I don't know what comes tothem--"

She was speaking hurriedly. She choked, and then exclaimed, with anaccent of despair:

"What is it? What's the matter?"

Heyst had removed his arms from her suddenly, and had recoiled a little. "Is it my fault? I didn't even look at them, I tell you straight. Never!Have I looked at you? Tell me. It was you that began it. "

In truth, Heyst had shrunk from the idea of competition with fellowsunknown, with Schomberg the hotel-keeper. The vaporous white figurebefore him swayed pitifully in the darkness. He felt ashamed of hisfastidiousness. 

"I am afraid we have been detected, " he murmured. "I think I sawsomebody on the path between the house and the bushes behind you. "

He had seen no one. It was a compassionate lie, if there ever was one. His compassion was as genuine as his shrinking had been, and in hisjudgement more honourable. 

She didn't turn her head. She was obviously relieved. 

"Would it be that brute?" she breathed out, meaning Schomberg, ofcourse. "He's getting too forward with me now. What can you expect? Onlythis evening, after supper, he--but I slipped away. You don't mind him, do you? Why, I could face him myself now that I know you care for me. A girl can always put up a fight. You believe me? Only it isn't easy tostand up for yourself when you feel there's nothing and nobody at yourback. There's nothing so lonely in the world as a girl who has got tolook after herself. When I left poor dad in that home--it was in thecountry, near a village--I came out of the gates with seven shillingsand threepence in my old purse, and my railway ticket. I tramped a mile, and got into a train--"

She broke off, and was silent for a moment. 

"Don't you throw me over now, " she went on. "If you did, what shouldI do? I should have to live, to be sure, because I'd be afraid to killmyself, but you would have done a thousand times worse than killing abody. You told me you had been always alone, you had never had a dogeven. Well, then, I won't be in anybody's way if I live with you--noteven a dog's. And what else did you mean when you came up and looked atme so close?"

"Close? Did I?" he murmured unstirring before her in the profounddarkness. "So close as that?"

She had an outbreak of anger and despair in subdued tones. 

"Have you forgotten, then? What did you expect to find? I know what sortof girl I am; but all the same I am not the sort that men turn theirbacks on--and you ought to know it, unless you aren't made like theothers. Oh, forgive me! You aren't like the others; you are like no onein the world I ever spoke to. Don't you care for me? Don't you see--?"

What he saw was that, white and spectral, she was putting out her armsto him out of the black shadows like an appealing ghost. He took herhands, and was affected, almost surprised, to find them so warm, soreal, so firm, so living in his grasp. He drew her to him, and shedropped her head on his shoulder with a deep-sigh. 

"I am dead tired, " she whispered plaintively. 

He put his arms around her, and only by the convulsive movements of herbody became aware that she was sobbing without a sound. Sustaining her, he lost himself in the profound silence of the night. After a while shebecame still, and cried quietly. Then, suddenly, as if waking up, sheasked:

"You haven't seen any more of that somebody you thought was spyingabout?"

He started at her quick, sharp whisper, and answered that very likely hehad been mistaken. 

"If it was anybody at all, " she reflected aloud, "it wouldn't have beenanyone but that hotel woman--the landlord's wife. "

"Mrs. Schomberg, " Heyst said, surprised. 

"Yes. Another one that can't sleep o' nights. Why? Don't you see why?Because, of course, she sees what's going on. That beast doesn't eventry to keep it from her. If she had only the least bit of spirit! Sheknows how I feel, too, only she's too frightened even to look him in theface, let alone open her mouth. He would tell her to go hang herself. "

For some time Heyst said nothing. A public, active contest with thehotel-keeper was not to be thought of. The idea was horrible. Whisperinggently to the girl, he tried to explain to her that as things stood, anopen withdrawal from the company would be probably opposed. She listenedto his explanation anxiously, from time to time pressing the hand shehad sought and got hold of in the dark. 

"As I told you, I am not rich enough to buy you out so I shall steal youas soon as I can arrange some means of getting away from here. Meantimeit would be fatal to be seen together at night. We mustn't giveourselves away. We had better part at once. I think I was mistaken justnow; but if, as you say, that poor Mrs. Schomberg can't sleep of nights, we must be more careful. She would tell the fellow. "

The girl had disengaged herself from his loose hold while he talked, andnow stood free of him, but still clasping his hand firmly. 

"Oh, no, " she said with perfect assurance. "I tell you she daren't openher mouth to him. And she isn't as silly as she looks. She wouldn't giveus away. She knows a trick worth two of that. She'll help--that's whatshe'll do, if she dares do anything at all. "

"You seem to have a very clear view of the situation, " said Heyst, andreceived a warm, lingering kiss for this commendation. 

He discovered that to-part from her was not such an easy matter as hehad supposed it would be. 

"Upon my word, " he said before they separated, "I don't even know yourname. "

"Don't you? They call me Alma. I don't know why. Silly name! Magdalentoo. It doesn't matter; you can call me by whatever name you choose. Yes, you give me a name. Think of one you would like the soundof--something quite new. How I should like to forget everything that hasgone before, as one forgets a dream that's done with, fright and all! Iwould try. "

"Would you really?" he asked in a murmur. "But that's not forbidden. Iunderstand that women easily forget whatever in their past diminishesthem in their eyes. "

"It's your eyes that I was thinking of, for I'm sure I've never wishedto forget anything till you came up to me that night and looked methrough and through. I know I'm not much account; but I know how tostand by a man. I stood by father ever since I could understand. Hewasn't a bad chap. Now that I can't be of any use to him, I would justas soon forget all that and make a fresh start. But these aren't thingsthat I could talk to you about. What could I ever talk to you about?"

"Don't let it trouble you, " Heyst said. "Your voice is enough. I am inlove with it, whatever it says. "

She remained silent for a while, as if rendered breathless by this quietstatement. 

"Oh! I wanted to ask you--"

He remembered that she probably did not know his name, and expected thequestion to be put to him now; but after a moment of hesitation she wenton:

"Why was it that you told me to smile this evening in the concert-roomthere--you remember?"

"I thought we were being observed. A smile is the best of masks. Schomberg was at a table next but one to us, drinking with some Dutchclerks from the town. No doubt he was watching us--watching you, atleast. That's why I asked you to smile. "

"Ah, that's why. It never came into my head!"

"And you did it very well, too--very readily, as if you had understoodmy intention. "

"Readily!" she repeated. "Oh, I was ready enough to smile then. That'sthe truth. It was the first time for years I may say that I feltdisposed to smile. I've not had many chances to smile in my life, I cantell you; especially of late. "

"But you do it most charmingly--in a perfectly fascinating way. "

He paused. She stood still, waiting for more with the stillness ofextreme delight, wishing to prolong the sensation. 

"It astonished me, " he added. "It went as straight to my heart as thoughyou had smiled for the purpose of dazzling me. I felt as if I had neverseen a smile before in my life. I thought of it after I left you. Itmade me restless. "

"It did all that?" came her voice, unsteady, gentle, and incredulous. 

"If you had not smiled as you did, perhaps I should not have come outhere tonight, " he said, with his playful earnestness of tone. "It wasyour triumph. "

He felt her lips touch his lightly, and the next moment she was gone. Her white dress gleamed in the distance, and then the opaque darkness ofthe house seemed to swallow it. Heyst waited a little before he wentthe same way, round the corner, up the steps of the veranda, and intohis room, where he lay down at last--not to sleep, but to go over in hismind all that had been said at their meeting. 

"It's exactly true about that smile, " he thought. There he had spokenthe truth to her; and about her voice, too. For the rest--what must bemust be. 

A great wave of heat passed over him. He turned on his back, flung hisarms crosswise on the broad, hard bed, and lay still, open-eyed underthe mosquito net, till daylight entered his room, brightened swiftly, and turned to unfailing sunlight. He got up then, went to a smalllooking-glass hanging on the wall, and stared at himself steadily. Itwas not a new-born vanity which induced this long survey. He feltso strange that he could not resist the suspicion of his personalappearance having changed during the night. What he saw in the glass, however, was the man he knew before. It was almost a disappointment--abelittling of his recent experience. And then he smiled at hisnaiveness; for, being over five and thirty years of age, he ought tohave known that in most cases the body is the unalterable mask of thesoul, which even death itself changes but little, till it is put out ofsight where no changes matter any more, either to our friends or to ourenemies. 

Heyst was not conscious of either friends or of enemies. It was the veryessence of his life to be a solitary achievement, accomplished not byhermit-like withdrawal with its silence and immobility, but by a systemof restless wandering, by the detachment of an impermanent dwelleramongst changing scenes. In this scheme he had perceived the means ofpassing through life without suffering and almost without a single carein the world--invulnerable because elusive. 

CHAPTER THREE

For fifteen years Heyst had wandered, invariably courteous andunapproachable, and in return was generally considered a "queer chap. "He had started off on these travels of his after the death of hisfather, an expatriated Swede who died in London, dissatisfied with hiscountry and angry with all the world, which had instinctively rejectedhis wisdom. 

Thinker, stylist, and man of the world in his time, the elder Heysthad begun by coveting all the joys, those of the great and those of thehumble, those of the fools and those of the sages. For more than sixtyyears he had dragged on this painful earth of ours the most weary, themost uneasy soul that civilization had ever fashioned to its ends ofdisillusion and regret. One could not refuse him a measure of greatness, for he was unhappy in a way unknown to mediocre souls. His mother Heysthad never known, but he kept his father's pale, distinguished facein affectionate memory. He remembered him mainly in an ample bluedressing-gown in a large house of a quiet London suburb. For threeyears, after leaving school at the age of eighteen, he had lived withthe elder Heyst, who was then writing his last book. In this work, atthe end of his life, he claimed for mankind that right to absolute moraland intellectual liberty of which he no longer believed them worthy. 

Three years of such companionship at that plastic and impressionable agewere bound to leave in the boy a profound mistrust of life. The youngman learned to reflect, which is a destructive process, a reckoningof the cost. It is not the clear-sighted who lead the world. Greatachievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm mental fog, which thepitiless cold blasts of the father's analysis had blown away from theson. 

"I'll drift, " Heyst had said to himself deliberately. 

He did not mean intellectually or sentimentally or morally. He meantto drift altogether and literally, body and soul, like a detached leafdrifting in the wind-currents under the immovable trees of a forestglade; to drift without ever catching on to anything. 

"This shall be my defence against life, " he had said to himself with asort of inward consciousness that for the son of his father there was noother worthy alternative. 

He became a waif and stray, austerely, from conviction, as othersdo through drink, from vice, from some weakness of character--withdeliberation, as others do in despair. This, stripped of its facts, hadbeen Heyst's life up to that disturbing night. Next day, when he saw thegirl called Alma, she managed to give him a glance of frank tenderness, quick as lightning and leaving a profound impression, a secret touch onthe heart. It was in the grounds of the hotel, about tiffin time, whilethe Ladies of the orchestra were strolling back to their pavilion afterrehearsal, or practice, or whatever they called their morning musicalexercises in the hall. Heyst, returning from the town, where he haddiscovered that there would be difficulties in the way of getting awayat once, was crossing the compound, disappointed and worried. He hadwalked almost unwittingly into the straggling group of Zangiacomo'sperformers. It was a shock to him, on coming out of his brown study, tofind the girl so near to him, as if one waking suddenly should see thefigure of his dream turned into flesh and blood. She did not raise hershapely head, but her glance was no dream thing. It was real, the mostreal impression of his detached existence--so far. 

Heyst had not acknowledged it in any way, though it seemed to himimpossible that its effect on him should not be visible to anyone whohappened to be looking on. And there were several men on theveranda, steady customers of Schomberg's table d'hote, gazing in hisdirection--at the ladies of the orchestra, in fact. Heyst's dread arose, not out of shame or timidity, but from his fastidiousness. On gettingamongst them, however, he noticed no signs of interest or astonishmentin their faces, any more than if they had been blind men. Even Schomberghimself, who had to make way for him at the top of the stairs, wascompletely unperturbed, and continued the conversation he was carryingon with a client. 

Schomberg, indeed, had observed "that Swede" talking with the girl inthe intervals. A crony of his had nudged him; and he had thought that itwas so much the better; the silly fellow would keep everybody else off. He was rather pleased than otherwise and watched them out of the cornerof his eye with a malicious enjoyment of the situation--a sort ofSatanic glee. For he had little doubt of his personal fascination, andstill less of his power to get hold of the girl, who seemed too ignorantto know how to help herself, and who was worse than friendless, sinceshe had for some reason incurred the animosity of Mrs. Zangiacomo, awoman with no conscience. The aversion she showed him as far as shedared (for it is not always safe for the helpless to display thedelicacy of their sentiments), Schomberg pardoned on the score offeminine conventional silliness. He had told Alma, as an argument, thatshe was a clever enough girl to see that she could do no better than toput her trust in a man of substance, in the prime of life, who knewhis way about. But for the excited trembling of his voice, and theextraordinary way in which his eyes seemed to be starting out of hiscrimson, hirsute countenance, such speeches had every character of calm, unselfish advice--which, after the manner of lovers, passed easily intosanguine plans for the future. 

"We'll soon get rid of the old woman, " he whispered to her hurriedly, with panting ferocity. "Hang her! I've never cared for her. The climatedon't suit her; I shall tell her to go to her people in Europe. She willhave to go, too! I will see to it. Eins, zwei, march! And then we shallsell this hotel and start another somewhere else. "

He assured her that he didn't care what he did for her sake; and itwas true. Forty-five is the age of recklessness for many men, as if indefiance of the decay and death waiting with open arms in the sinistervalley at the bottom of the inevitable hill. Her shrinking form, herdowncast eyes, when she had to listen to him, cornered at the end of anempty corridor, he regarded as signs of submission to the overpoweringforce of his will, the recognition of his personal fascinations. Forevery age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early andthe human race come to an end. 

It's easy to imagine Schomberg's humiliation, his shocked fury, whenhe discovered that the girl who had for weeks resisted his attacks, hisprayers, and his fiercest protestations, had been snatched from underhis nose by "that Swede, " apparently without any trouble worth speakingof. He refused to believe the fact. He would have it, at first, thatthe Zangiacomos, for some unfathomable reason, had played him a scurvytrick, but when no further doubt was possible, he changed his view ofHeyst. The despised Swede became for Schomberg the deepest, the mostdangerous, the most hateful of scoundrels. He could not believe that thecreature he had coveted with so much force and with so little effect, was in reality tender, docile to her impulse, and had almost offeredherself to Heyst without a sense of guilt, in a desire of safety, andfrom a profound need of placing her trust where her woman's instinctguided her ignorance. Nothing would serve Schomberg but that she musthave been circumvented by some occult exercise of force or craft, by thelaying of some subtle trap. His wounded vanity wondered ceaselessly atthe means "that Swede" had employed to seduce her away from a manlike him--Schomberg--as though those means were bound to have beenextraordinary, unheard of, inconceivable. He slapped his forehead openlybefore his customers; he would sit brooding in silence or else wouldburst out unexpectedly declaiming against Heyst without measure, discretion, or prudence, with swollen features and an affectation ofoutraged virtue which could not have deceived the most childlike ofmoralists for a moment--and greatly amused his audience. 

It became a recognized entertainment to go and hear his abuse of Heyst, while sipping iced drinks on the veranda of the hotel. It was, in amanner, a more successful draw than the Zangiacomo concerts had everbeen--intervals and all. There was never any difficulty in starting theperformer off. Anybody could do it, by almost any distant allusion. As likely as not he would start his endless denunciations in the verybilliard-room where Mrs. Schomberg sat enthroned as usual, swallowingher sobs, concealing her tortures of abject humiliation and terror underher stupid, set, everlasting grin, which, having been provided for herby nature, was an excellent mask, in as much as nothing--not even deathitself, perhaps--could tear it away. 

But nothing lasts in this world, at least without changing itsphysiognomy. So, after a few weeks, Schomberg regained his outward calm, as if his indignation had dried up within him. And it was time. He wasbecoming a bore with his inability to talk of anything else but Heyst'sunfitness to be at large, Heyst's wickedness, his wiles, his astuteness, and his criminality. Schomberg no longer pretended to despise him. Hecould not have done it. After what had happened he could not pretend, even to himself. But his bottled-up indignation was fermentingvenomously. At the time of his immoderate loquacity one of hiscustomers, an elderly man, had remarked one evening:

"If that ass keeps on like this, he will end by going crazy. "

And this belief was less than half wrong. Schomberg had Heyst on thebrain. Even the unsatisfactory state of his affairs, which hadnever been so unpromising since he came out East directly after theFranco-Prussian War, he referred to some subtly noxious influence ofHeyst. It seemed to him that he could never be himself again till he hadgot even with that artful Swede. He was ready to swear that Heyst hadruined his life. The girl so unfairly, craftily, basely decoyed awaywould have inspired him to success in a new start. Obviously Mrs. Schomberg, whom he terrified by savagely silent moods combined withunderhand, poisoned glances, could give him no inspiration. He had growngenerally neglectful, but with a partiality for reckless expedients, asif he did not care when and how his career as a hotel-keeper was to bebrought to an end. This demoralized state accounted for what Davidsonhad observed on his last visit to the Schomberg establishment, some twomonths after Heyst's secret departure with the girl to the solitude ofSamburan. 

The Schomberg of a few years ago--the Schomberg of the Bangkok days, for instance, when he started the first of his famed table d'hotedinners--would never have risked anything of the sort. His genius ran tocatering, "white man for white men" and to the inventing, elaborating, and retailing of scandalous gossip with asinine unction and impudentdelight. But now his mind was perverted by the pangs of wounded vanityand of thwarted passion. In this state of moral weakness Schombergallowed himself to be corrupted. 

CHAPTER FOUR

The business was done by a guest who arrived one fine morning bymail-boat--immediately from Celebes, having boarded her in Macassar, but generally, Schomberg understood, from up China Sea way; a wandererclearly, even as Heyst was, but not alone and of quite another kind. 

Schomberg, looking up from the stern-sheets of his steam-launch, whichhe used for boarding passenger ships on arrival, discovered a darksunken stare plunging down on him over the rail of the first-class partof the deck. He was no great judge of physiognomy. Human beings, forhim, were either the objects of scandalous gossip or else recipients ofnarrow strips of paper, with proper bill-heads stating the name of hishotel--"W. Schomberg, proprietor, accounts settled weekly. "

So in the clean-shaven, extremely thin face hanging over the mail-boat'srail Schomberg saw only the face of a possible "account. " Thesteam-launches of other hotels were also alongside, but he obtained thepreference. 

"You are Mr. Schomberg, aren't you?" the face asked quite unexpectedly. 

"I am at your service, " he answered from below; for business isbusiness, and its forms and formulas must be observed, even if one'smanly bosom is tortured by that dull rage which succeeds the fury ofbaffled passion, like the glow of embers after a fierce blaze. 

Presently the possessor of the handsome but emaciated face was seatedbeside Schomberg in the stern-sheets of the launch. His body was longand loose-jointed, his slender fingers, intertwined, clasped the legresting on the knee, as he lolled back in a careless yet tense attitude. On the other side of Schomberg sat another passenger, who was introducedby the clean-shaven man as--

"My secretary. He must have the room next to mine. "

"We can manage that easily for you. "

Schomberg steered with dignity, staring straight ahead, but very muchinterested by these two promising "accounts. " Their belongings, a coupleof large leather trunks browned by age and a few smaller packages, were piled up in the bows. A third individual--a nondescript, hairycreature--had modestly made his way forward and had perched himself onthe luggage. The lower part of his physiognomy was over-developed;his narrow and low forehead, unintelligently furrowed by horizontalwrinkles, surmounted wildly hirsute cheeks and a flat nose with wide, baboon-like nostrils. There was something equivocal in the appearance ofhis shaggy, hair-smothered humanity. He, too, seemed to be a follower ofthe clean-shaven man, and apparently had travelled on deck with nativepassengers, sleeping under the awnings. His broad, squat frame denotedgreat strength. Grasping the gunwales of the launch, he displayed apair of remarkably long arms, terminating in thick, brown hairy paws ofsimian aspect. 

"What shall we do with the fellow of mine?" the chief of the party askedSchomberg. "There must be a boarding-house somewhere near the port--somegrog-shop where they could let him have a mat to sleep on?"

Schomberg said there was a place kept by a Portuguese half-caste. 

"A servant of yours?" he asked. 

"Well, he hangs on to me. He is an alligator-hunter. I picked him up inColombia, you know. Ever been in Colombia?"

"No, " said Schomberg, very much surprised. "An alligator-hunter? Funnytrade! Are you coming from Colombia, then?"

"Yes, but I have been coming for a long time. I come from a good manyplaces. I am travelling west, you see. "

"For sport, perhaps?" suggested Schomberg. 

"Yes. Sort of sport. What do you say to chasing the sun?"

"I see--a gentleman at large, " said Schomberg, watching a sailing canoeabout to cross his bow, and ready to clear it by a touch of the helm. 

The other passenger made himself heard suddenly. 

"Hang these native craft! They always get in the way. "

He was a muscular, short man with eyes that gleamed and blinked, a harshvoice, and a round, toneless, pock-marked face ornamented by a thin, dishevelled moustache, sticking out quaintly under the tip of a rigidnose. Schomberg made the reflection that there was nothing secretarialabout him. Both he and his long, lank principal wore the usual whitesuit of the tropics, cork helmets, pipe-clayed white shoes--all correct. The hairy nondescript creature perched on their luggage in the bow had acheck shirt and blue dungaree trousers. He gazed in their direction fromforward in an expectant, trained-animal manner. 

"You spoke to me first, " said Schomberg in his manly tones. "You wereacquainted with my name. Where did you hear of me, gentlemen, may Iask?"

"In Manila, " answered the gentleman at large, readily. "From a man withwhom I had a game of cards one evening in the Hotel Castille. "

"What man? I've no friends in Manila that I know of, " wondered Schombergwith a severe frown. 

"I can't tell you his name. I've clean forgotten it; but don't youworry. He was anything but a friend of yours. He called you all thenames he could think of. He said you set a lot of scandal going abouthim once, somewhere--in Bangkok, I think. Yes, that's it. You wererunning a table d'hote in Bangkok at one time, weren't you?"

Schomberg, astounded by the turn of the information, could only throwout his chest more and exaggerate his austere Lieutenant-of-the-Reservemanner. A table d'hote? Yes, certainly. He always--for the sake of whitemen. And here in this place, too? Yes, in this place, too. 

"That's all right, then. " The stranger turned his black, cavernous, mesmerizing glance away from the bearded Schomberg, who sat grippingthe brass tiller in a sweating palm. "Many people in the evening at yourplace?"

Schomberg had recovered somewhat. 

"Twenty covers or so, take one day with another, " he answered feelingly, as befitted a subject on which he was sensitive. "Ought to be more, if only people would see that it's for their own good. Precious littleprofit I get out of it. You are partial to tables d'hote, gentlemen?"

The new guest made answer that he liked a hotel where one could findsome local people in the evening. It was infernally dull otherwise. Thesecretary, in sign of approval, emitted a grunt of astonishing ferocity, as if proposing to himself to eat the local people. All this soundedlike a longish stay, thought Schomberg, satisfied under his grave air;till, remembering the girl snatched away from him by the last guest whohad made a prolonged stay in his hotel, he ground his teeth so audiblythat the other two looked at him in wonder. The momentary convulsionof his florid physiognomy seemed to strike them dumb. They exchanged aquick glance. Presently the clean-shaven man fired out another questionin his curt, unceremonious manner:

"You have no women in your hotel, eh?"

"Women!" Schomberg exclaimed indignantly, but also as if a littlefrightened. "What on earth do you mean by women? What women? There'sMrs. Schomberg, of course, " he added, suddenly appeased, with loftyindifference. 

"If she knows how to keep her place, then it will do. I can't standwomen near me. They give me the horrors, " declared the other. "They area perfect curse!"

During this outburst the secretary wore a savage grin. The chief guestclosed his sunken eyes, as if exhausted, and leaned the back of his headagainst the stanchion of the awning. In this pose, his long, feminineeyelashes were very noticeable, and his regular features, sharp line ofthe jaw, and well-cut chin were brought into prominence, giving him aused-up, weary, depraved distinction. He did not open his eyes tillthe steam-launch touched the quay. Then he and the other man got ashorequickly, entered a carriage, and drove away to the hotel, leavingSchomberg to look after their luggage and take care of their strangecompanion. The latter, looking more like a performing bear abandoned byhis show men than a human being, followed all Schomberg's movements stepby step, close behind his back, muttering to himself in a languagethat sounded like some sort of uncouth Spanish. The hotel-keeper feltuncomfortable till at last he got rid of him at an obscure den wherea very clean, portly Portuguese half-caste, standing serenely in thedoorway, seemed to understand exactly how to deal with clients of everykind. He took from the creature the strapped bundle it had been huggingclosely through all its peregrinations in that strange town, and cutshort Schomberg's attempts at explanation by a most confident--

"I comprehend very well, sir. "

"It's more than I do, " thought Schomberg, going away thankful at beingrelieved of the alligator-hunter's company. He wondered what thesefellows were, without being able to form a guess of sufficientprobability. Their names he learned that very day by direct inquiry "toenter in my books, " he explained in his formal military manner, chestthrown out, beard very much in evidence. 

The shaven man, sprawling in a long chair, with his air of witheredyouth, raised his eyes languidly. 

"My name? Oh, plain Mr. Jones--put that down--a gentleman at large. Andthis is Ricardo. " The pock-marked man, lying prostrate in another longchair, made a grimace, as if something had tickled the end of his nose, but did not come out of his supineness. "Martin Ricardo, secretary. Youdon't want any more of our history, do you? Eh, what? Occupation? Putdown, well--tourists. We've been called harder names before now; itwon't hurt our feelings. And that fellow of mine--where did you tuck himaway? Oh, he will be all right. When he wants anything he'll take it. He's Peter. Citizen of Colombia. Peter, Pedro--I don't know that he everhad any other name. Pedro, alligator hunter. Oh, yes--I'll pay his boardwith the half-caste. Can't help myself. He's so confoundedly devoted tome that if I were to give him the sack he would be at my throat. ShallI tell you how I killed his brother in the wilds of Colombia? Well, perhaps some other time--it's a rather long story. What I shall alwaysregret is that I didn't kill him, too. I could have done it without anyextra trouble then; now it's too late. Great nuisance; but he's usefulsometimes. I hope you are not going to put all this in your book?"

The offhand, hard manner and the contemptuous tone of "plain Mr. Jones"disconcerted Schomberg utterly. He had never been spoken to like thisin his life. He shook his head in silence and withdrew, not exactlyscared--though he was in reality of a timid disposition under his manlyexterior--but distinctly mystified and impressed. 

CHAPTER FIVE

Three weeks later, after putting his cash-box away in the safe whichfilled with its iron bulk a corner of their room, Schomberg turnedtowards his wife, but without looking at her exactly, and said:

"I must get rid of these two. It won't do!"

Mrs. Schomberg had entertained that very opinion from the first; but shehad been broken years ago into keeping her opinions to herself. Sittingin her night attire in the light of a single candle, she was careful notto make a sound, knowing from experience that her very assent would beresented. With her eyes she followed the figure of Schomberg, clad inhis sleeping suit, and moving restlessly about the room. 

He never glanced her way, for the reason that Mrs. Schomberg, inher night attire, looked the most unattractive object inexistence--miserable, insignificant, faded, crushed, old. And thecontrast with the feminine form he had ever in his mind's eye made hiswife's appearance painful to his aesthetic sense. 

Schomberg walked about swearing and fuming for the purpose of screwinghis courage up to the sticking point. 

"Hang me if I ought not to go now, at once, this minute, into hisbedroom, and tell him to be off--him and that secretary of his--early inthe morning. I don't mind a round game of cards, but to make a decoy ofmy table d'hote--my blood boils! He came here because some lying rascalin Manila told him I kept a table d'hote. "

He said these things, not for Mrs. Schomberg's information, but simplythinking aloud, and trying to work his fury up to a point where it wouldgive him courage enough to face "plain Mr. Jones. "

"Impudent overbearing, swindling sharper, " he went on. "I have a goodmind to--"

He was beside himself in his lurid, heavy, Teutonic manner, so unlikethe picturesque, lively rage of the Latin races; and though his eyesstrayed about irresolutely, yet his swollen, angry features awakened inthe miserable woman over whom he had been tyrannizing for years a fearfor his precious carcass, since the poor creature had nothing else butthat to hold on to in the world. She knew him well; but she did not knowhim altogether. The last thing a woman will consent to discover in a manwhom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage. And, timid in her corner, she ventured to say pressingly:

"Be careful, Wilhelm! Remember the knives and revolvers in theirtrunks. "

In guise of thanks for that anxious reminder, he swore horribly inthe direction of her shrinking person. In her scanty nightdress, andbarefooted, she recalled a mediaeval penitent being reproved for hersins in blasphemous terms. Those lethal weapons were always present toSchomberg's mind. Personally, he had never seen them. His part, tendays after his guests' arrival, had been to lounge in manly, carelessattitudes on the veranda--keeping watch--while Mrs. Schomberg, providedwith a bunch of assorted keys, her discoloured teeth chattering and herglobular eyes absolutely idiotic with fright, was "going through" theluggage of these strange clients. Her terrible Wilhelm had insisted onit. 

"I'll be on the look-out, I tell you, " he said. "I shall give you awhistle when I see them coming back. You couldn't whistle. And if hewere to catch you at it, and chuck you out by the scruff of the neck, itwouldn't hurt you much; but he won't touch a woman. Not he! He has toldme so. Affected beast. I must find out something about their littlegame, and so there's an end of it. Go in! Go now! Quick march!"

It had been an awful job; but she did go in, because she was much moreafraid of Schomberg than of any possible consequences of the act. Hergreatest concern was lest no key of the bunch he had provided her withshould fit the locks. It would have been such a disappointment forWilhelm. However, the trunks, she found, had been left open; but herinvestigation did not last long. She was frightened of firearms, andgenerally of all weapons, not from personal cowardice, but as some womenare, almost superstitiously, from an abstract horror of violence andmurder. She was out again on the veranda long before Wilhelm had anyoccasion for a warning whistle. The instinctive, motiveless fear beingthe most difficult to overcome, nothing could induce her to return toher investigations, neither threatening growls nor ferocious hisses, noryet a poke or two in the ribs. 

"Stupid female!" muttered the hotel-keeper, perturbed by the notionof that armoury in one of his bedrooms. This was from no abstractsentiment, with him it was constitutional. "Get out of my sight, " hesnarled. "Go and dress yourself for the table d'hote. "

Left to himself, Schomberg had meditated. What the devil did this mean?His thinking processes were sluggish and spasmodic; but suddenly thetruth came to him. 

"By heavens, they are desperadoes!" he thought. 

Just then he beheld "plain Mr. Jones" and his secretary with theambiguous name of Ricardo entering the grounds of the hotel. They hadbeen down to the port on some business, and now were returning; Mr. Jones lank, spare, opening his long legs with angular regularity likea pair of compasses, the other stepping out briskly by his side. Conviction entered Schomberg's heart. They _were_ two desperadoes--nodoubt about it. But as the funk which he experienced was merelya general sensation, he managed to put on his most severeOfficer-of-the-Reserve manner, long before they had closed with him. 

"Good morning, gentlemen. "

Being answered with derisive civility, he became confirmed in his suddenconviction of their desperate character. The way Mr. Jones turned hishollow eyes on one, like an incurious spectre, and the way the other, when addressed, suddenly retracted his lips and exhibited his teethwithout looking round--here was evidence enough to settle that point. Desperadoes! They passed through the billiard-room, inscrutablymysterious, to the back of the house, to join their violated trunks. 

"Tiffin bell will ring in five minutes, gentlemen. " Schomberg calledafter them, exaggerating the deep manliness of his tone. 

He had managed to upset himself very much. He expected to see them comeback infuriated and begin to bully him with an odious lack of restraint. Desperadoes! However they didn't; they had not noticed anything unusualabout their trunks and Schomberg recovered his composure and saidto himself that he must get rid of this deadly incubus as soon aspracticable. They couldn't possibly want to stay very long; this was notthe town--the colony--for desperate characters. He shrank from action. He dreaded any kind of disturbance--"fracas" he called it--in his hotel. Such things were not good for business. Of course, sometimes one had tohave a "fracas;" but it had been a comparatively trifling task to seizethe frail Zangiacomo--whose bones were no larger than a chicken's--roundthe ribs, lift him up bodily, dash him to the ground, and fall onhim. It had been easy. The wretched, hook-nosed creature lay withoutmovement, buried under its purple beard. 

Suddenly, remembering the occasion of that "fracas, " Schomberg groanedwith the pain as of a hot coal under his breastbone, and gave himself upto desolation. Ah, if he only had that girl with him he would have beenmasterful and resolute and fearless--fight twenty desperadoes--carefor nobody on earth! Whereas the possession of Mrs. Schomberg was noincitement to a display of manly virtues. Instead of caring for no one, he felt that he cared for nothing. Life was a hollow sham; he wasn'tgoing to risk a shot through his lungs or his liver in order to preserveits integrity. It had no savour--damn it!

In his state of moral decomposition, Schomberg, master as he was of theart of hotel-keeping, and careful of giving no occasion for criticismto the powers regulating that branch of human activity, let things taketheir course; though he saw very well where that course was tending. It began first with a game or two after dinner--for the drinks, apparently--with some lingering customer, at one of the little tablesranged against the walls of the billiard-room. Schomberg detected themeaning of it at once. "That's what it was! This was what they were!"And, moving about restlessly (at that time his morose silent period hadset in), he cast sidelong looks at the game; but he said nothing. It wasnot worth while having a row with men who were so overbearing. Even whenmoney appeared in connection with these postprandial games, into whichmore and more people were being drawn, he still refrained from raisingthe question; he was reluctant to draw unduly the attention of "plainMr. Jones" and of the equivocal Ricardo, to his person. One evening, however, after the public rooms of the hotel had become empty, Schombergmade an attempt to grapple with the problem in an indirect way. 

In a distant corner the tired China boy dozed on his heels, his backagainst the wall. Mrs. Schomberg had disappeared, as usual, between tenand eleven. Schomberg walked about slowly in and out of the room andthe veranda, thoughtful, waiting for his two guests to go to bed. Thensuddenly he approached them, militarily, his chest thrown out, his voicecurt and soldierly. 

"Hot night, gentlemen. "

Mr Jones, lolling back idly in a chair, looked up. Ricardo, as idle, butmore upright, made no sign. 

"Won't you have a drink with me before retiring?" went on Schomberg, sitting down by the little table. 

"By all means, " said Mr. Jones lazily. 

Ricardo showed his teeth in a strange, quick grin. Schomberg feltpainfully how difficult it was to get in touch with these men, bothso quiet, so deliberate, so menacingly unceremonious. He ordered theChinaman to bring in the drinks. His purpose was to discover how longthese guests intended to stay. Ricardo displayed no conversational vein, but Mr. Jones appeared communicative enough. His voice somehow matchedhis sunken eyes. It was hollow without being in the least mournful;it sounded distant, uninterested, as though he were speaking from thebottom of a well. Schomberg learned that he would have the privilege oflodging and boarding these gentlemen for at least a month more. He couldnot conceal his discomfiture at this piece of news. 

"What's the matter? Don't you like to have people in your house?" askedplain Mr. Jones languidly. "I should have thought the owner of a hotelwould be pleased. "

He lifted his delicate and beautifully pencilled eyebrows. Schombergmuttered something about the locality being dull and uninteresting totravellers--nothing going on--too quiet altogether, but he only provokedthe declaration that quiet had its charm sometimes, and even dullnesswas welcome as a change. 

"We haven't had time to be dull for the last three years, " added plainMr. Jones, his eyes fixed darkly on Schomberg whom he further moreinvited to have another drink, this time with him, and not to worryhimself about things he did not understand; and especially not to beinhospitable--which in a hotel-keeper is highly unprofessional. 

"I don't understand, " grumbled Schomberg. "Oh, yes, I understandperfectly well. I--"

"You are frightened, " interrupted Mr. Jones. "What is the matter?"

"I don't want any scandal in my place. That's what's the matter. "

Schomberg tried to face the situation bravely, but that steady, blackstare affected him. And when he glanced aside uncomfortably, he metRicardo's grin uncovering a lot of teeth, though the man seemed absorbedin his thoughts all the time. 

"And, moreover, " went on Mr. Jones in that distant tone of his, "youcan't help yourself. Here we are and here we stay. Would you try toput us out? I dare say you could do it; but you couldn't do it withoutgetting hurt--very badly hurt. We can promise him that, can't we, Martin?"

The secretary retracted his lips and looked up sharply at Schomberg, asif only too anxious to leap upon him with teeth and claws. 

Schomberg managed to produce a deep laugh. 

"Ha! Ha! Ha!"

Mr Jones closed his eyes wearily, as if the light hurt them, and lookedremarkably like a corpse for a moment. This was bad enough; but when heopened them again, it was almost a worse trial for Schomberg's nerves. The spectral intensity of that glance, fixed on the hotel-keeper (andthis was most frightful) without any definite expression, seemed todissolve the last grain of resolution in his character. 

"You don't think, by any chance, that you have to do with ordinarypeople, do you?" inquired Mr. Jones, in his lifeless manner, whichseemed to imply some sort of menace from beyond the grave. 

"He's a gentleman, " testified Martin Ricardo with a sudden snap of thelips, after which his moustaches stirred by themselves in an odd, felinemanner. 

"Oh, I wasn't thinking of that, " said plain Mr. Jones, while Schomberg, dumb and planted heavily in his chair looked from one to the other, leaning forward a little. "Of course I am that; but Ricardo attachestoo much importance to a social advantage. What I mean, for instance, isthat he, quiet and inoffensive as you see him sitting here, would thinknothing of setting fire to this house of entertainment of yours. Itwould blaze like a box of matches. Think of that! It wouldn't advanceyour affairs much, would it?--whatever happened to us. "

"Come, come gentlemen, " remonstrated Schomberg, in a murmur. "This isvery wild talk!"

"And you have been used to deal with tame people, haven't you? But wearen't tame. We once kept a whole angry town at bay for two days, andthen we got away with our plunder. It was in Venezuela. Ask Martinhere--he can tell you. "

Instinctively Schomberg looked at Ricardo, who only passed the tip ofhis tongue over his lips with an uncanny sort of gusto, but did notoffer to begin. 

"Well, perhaps it would be a rather long story, " Mr. Jones concededafter a short silence. 

"I have no desire to hear it, I am sure, " said Schomberg. "This isn'tVenezuela. You wouldn't get away from here like that. But all this issilly talk of the worst sort. Do you mean to say you would make deadlytrouble for the sake of a few guilders that you and that other"--eyeingRicardo suspiciously, as one would look at a strange animal--"gentlemancan win of an evening? Isn't as if my customers were a lot of rich menwith pockets full of cash. I wonder you take so much trouble and riskfor so little money. "

Schomberg's argument was met by Mr. Jones's statement that one must dosomething to kill time. Killing time was not forbidden. For the rest, being in a communicative mood, Mr. Jones said languidly and in a voiceindifferent, as if issuing from a tomb, that he depended on himself, asif the world were still one great, wild jungle without law. Martin wassomething like that, too--for reasons of his own. 

All these statements Ricardo confirmed by short, inhuman grins. Schomberg lowered his eyes, for the sight of these two men intimidatedhim; but he was losing patience. 

"Of course, I could see at once that you were two desperatecharacters--something like what you say. But what would you think ifI told you that I am pretty near as desperate as you two gentlemen?'Here's that Schomberg has an easy time running his hotel, ' peoplethink; and yet it seems to me I would just as soon let you rip me openand burn the whole show as not. There!"

A low whistle was heard. It came from Ricardo, and was derisive. Schomberg, breathing heavily, looked on the floor. He was reallydesperate. Mr. Jones remained languidly sceptical. 

"Tut, tut! You have a tolerable business. You are perfectly tame; you--"He paused, then added in a tone of disgust: "You have a wife. "

Schomberg tapped the floor angrily with his foot and uttered anindistinct, laughing curse. 

"What do you mean by flinging that damned trouble at my head?" he cried. "I wish you would carry her off with you some where to the devil! Iwouldn't run after you. "

The unexpected outburst affected Mr. Jones strangely. He had a horrifiedrecoil, chair and all, as if Schomberg had thrust a wriggling viper inhis face. 

"What's this infernal nonsense?" he muttered thickly. "What do you mean?How dare you?"

Ricardo chuckled audibly. 

"I tell you I am desperate, " Schomberg repeated. "I am as desperate asany man ever was. I don't care a hang what happens to me!"

"Well, then"--Mr. Jones began to speak with a quietly threateningeffect, as if the common words of daily use had some other deadlymeaning to his mind--"well, then, why should you make yourselfridiculously disagreeable to us? If you don't care, as you say, youmight just as well let us have the key of that music-shed of yours fora quiet game; a modest bank--a dozen candles or so. It would be greatlyappreciated by your clients, as far as I can judge from the way theybetted on a game of ecarte I had with that fair, baby-faced man--what'shis name? They just yearn for a modest bank. And I am afraid Martin herewould take it badly if you objected; but of course you won't. Think ofthe calls for drinks!"

Schomberg, raising his eyes, at last met the gleams in two dark cavernsunder Mr. Jones's devilish eyebrows, directed upon him impenetrably. Heshuddered as if horrors worse than murder had been lurking there, andsaid, nodding towards Ricardo:

"I dare say he wouldn't think twice about sticking me, if he had you athis back! I wish I had sunk my launch, and gone to the bottom myselfin her, before I boarded the steamer you came by. Ah, well, I've beenalready living in hell for weeks, so you don't make much difference. I'll let you have the concert-room--and hang the consequences. Butwhat about the boy on late duty? If he sees the cards and actual moneypassing, he will be sure to blab, and it will be all over the town in notime. "

A ghastly smile stirred the lips of Mr. Jones. 

"Ah, I see you want to make a success of it. Very good. That's the wayto get on. Don't let it disturb you. You chase all the Chinamen to bedearly, and we'll get Pedro here every evening. He isn't the conventionalwaiter's cut, but he will do to run to and fro with the tray, whileyou sit here from nine to eleven serving out drinks and gathering themoney. "

"There will be three of them now, " thought the unlucky Schomberg. 

But Pedro, at any rate, was just a simple, straightforward brute, ifa murderous one. There was no mystery about him, nothing uncanny, nosuggestion of a stealthy, deliberate wildcat turned into a man, or of aninsolent spectre on leave from Hades, endowed with skin and bones anda subtle power of terror. Pedro with his fangs, his tangled beard, andqueer stare of his little bear's eyes was, by comparison, delightfullynatural. Besides, Schomberg could no longer help himself. 

"That will do very well, " he asserted mournfully. "But if you gentlemen, if you had turned up here only three months ago--ay, less than threemonths ago--you would have found somebody very different from what I amnow to talk to you. It's true. What do you think of that?"

"I scarcely know what to think. I should think it was a lie. You wereprobably as tame three months ago as you are now. You were born tame, like most people in the world. "

Mr Jones got up spectrally, and Ricardo imitated him with a snarl and astretch. Schomberg, in a brown study, went on, as if to himself:

"There has been an orchestra here--eighteen women. "

Mr Jones let out an exclamation of dismay, and looked about as if thewalls around him and the whole house had been infected with plague. Thenhe became very angry, and swore violently at Schomberg for daring tobring up such subjects. The hotel-keeper was too much surprised to getup. He gazed from his chair at Mr. Jones's anger, which had nothingspectral in it but was not the more comprehensible for that. 

"What's the matter?" he stammered out. "What subject? Didn't you hear mesay it was an orchestra? There's nothing wrong in that. Well, there wasa girl amongst them--" Schomberg's eyes went stony; he clasped his handsin front of his breast with such force that his knuckles came out white. "Such a girl! Tame, am I? I would have kicked everything to pieces aboutme for her. And she, of course . . . I am in the prime of life . . . Then a fellow bewitched her--a vagabond, a false, bring, swindling, underhand, stick-at-nothing brute. Ah!"

His entwined fingers cracked as he tore his hands apart, flung out hisarms, and leaned his forehead on them in a passion of fury. The othertwo looked at his shaking back--the attenuated Mr. Jones with mingledscorn and a sort of fear, Ricardo with the expression of a cat whichsees a piece of fish in the pantry out of reach. Schomberg flung himselfbackwards. He was dry-eyed, but he gulped as if swallowing sobs. 

"No wonder you can do with me what you like. You have no idea--just letme tell you of my trouble--"

"I don't want to know anything of your beastly trouble, " said Mr. Jones, in his most lifelessly positive voice. 

He stretched forth an arresting hand, and, as Schomberg remainedopen-mouthed, he walked out of the billiard-room in all the uncanninessof his thin shanks. Ricardo followed at his leader's heels; but heshowed his teeth to Schomberg over his shoulder. 

CHAPTER SIX

From that evening dated those mysterious but significant phenomena inSchomberg's establishment which attracted Captain Davidson's casualnotice when he dropped in, placid yet astute, in order to returnMrs. Schomberg's Indian shawl. And strangely enough, they lastedsome considerable time. It argued either honesty and bad luck orextraordinary restraint on the part of "plain Mr. Jones and Co. " intheir discreet operations with cards. 

It was a curious and impressive sight, the inside of Schomberg'sconcert-hall, encumbered at one end by a great stack of chairs piled upon and about the musicians' platform, and lighted at the other by twodozen candles disposed about a long trestle table covered with greencloth. In the middle, Mr. Jones, a starved spectre turned into a banker, faced Ricardo, a rather nasty, slow-moving cat turned into a croupier. By contrast, the other faces round that table, anything between twentyand thirty, must have looked like collected samples of intenselyartless, helpless humanity--pathetic in their innocent watch for thesmall turns of luck which indeed might have been serious enough forthem. They had no notice to spare for the hairy Pedro, carrying a traywith the clumsiness of a creature caught in the woods and taught to walkon its hind legs. 

As to Schomberg, he kept out of the way. He remained in thebilliard-room, serving out drinks to the unspeakable Pedro with an airof not seeing the growling monster, of not knowing where the drinkswent, of ignoring that there was such a thing as a music-room over thereunder the trees within fifty yards of the hotel. He submitted himselfto the situation with a low-spirited stoicism compounded of fear andresignation. Directly the party had broken up, (he could see darkshapes of the men drifting singly and in knots through the gate of thecompound), he would withdraw out of sight behind a door not quit closed, in order to avoid meeting his two extraordinary guests; but he wouldwatch through the crack their contrasted forms pass through thebilliard-room and disappear on their way to bed. Then he would heardoors being slammed upstairs; and a profound silence would fall upon thewhole house, upon his hotel appropriated, haunted by those insolentlyoutspoken men provided with a whole armoury of weapons in their trunks. A profound silence. Schomberg sometimes could not resist the notion thathe must be dreaming. Shuddering, he would pull himself together, and creep out, with movements strangely inappropriate to theLieutenant-of-the-Reserve bearing by which he tried to keep up hisself-respect before the world. 

A great loneliness oppressed him. One after another he would extinguishthe lamps, and move softly towards his bedroom, where Mrs. Schombergwaited for him--no fit companion for a man of his ability and "in theprime of life. " But that life, alas, was blighted. He felt it; and neverwith such force as when on opening the door he perceived that womansitting patiently in a chair, her toes peeping out under the edge of hernight-dress, an amazingly small amount of hair on her head droopingon the long stalk of scraggy neck, with that everlasting scared grinshowing a blue tooth and meaning nothing--not even real fear. For shewas used to him. 

Sometimes he was tempted to screw the head off the stalk. He imaginedhimself doing it--with one hand, a twisting movement. Not seriously, ofcourse. Just a simple indulgence for his exasperated feelings. He wasn'tcapable of murder. He was certain of that. And, remembering suddenly theplain speeches of Mr. Jones, he would think: "I suppose I am too tamefor that"--quite unaware that he had murdered the poor woman morallyyears ago. He was too unintelligent to have the notion of such a crime. Her bodily presence was bitterly offensive, because of its contrast witha very different feminine image. And it was no use getting rid of her. She was a habit of years, and there would be nothing to put in herplace. At any rate, he could talk to that idiot half the night if hechose. 

That night he had been vapouring before her as to his intention to facehis two guests and, instead of that inspiration he needed, had merelyreceived the usual warning: "Be careful, Wilhelm. " He did not want to betold to be careful by an imbecile female. What he needed was a pair ofwoman's arms which, flung round his neck, would brace him up for theencounter. Inspire him, he called it to himself. 

He lay awake a long time; and his slumbers, when they came, wereunsatisfactory and short. The morning light had no joy for his eyes. He listened dismally to the movements in the house. The Chinamen wereunlocking and flinging wide the doors of the public rooms which openedon the veranda. Horrors! Another poisoned day to get through somehow!The recollection of his resolve made him feel actually sick for amoment. First of all the lordly, abandoned attitudes of Mr. Jonesdisconcerted him. Then there was his contemptuous silence. Mr. Jonesnever addressed himself to Schomberg with any general remarks, neveropened his lips to him unless to say "Good morning"--two simple wordswhich, uttered by that man, seemed a mockery of a threatening character. And, lastly, it was not a frank physical fear he inspired--for as tothat, even a cornered rat will fight--but a superstitious shrinking awe, something like an invincible repugnance to seek speech with a wickedghost. That it was a daylight ghost surprisingly angular in hisattitudes, and for the most part spread out on three chairs, didnot make it any easier. Daylight only made him a more weird, a moredisturbing and unlawful apparition. Strangely enough in the evening whenhe came out of his mute supineness, this unearthly side of him was lessobtrusive. At the gaming-table, when actually handling the cards, it wasprobably sunk quite out of sight; but Schomberg, having made up his mindin ostrich-like fashion to ignore what was going on, never entered thedesecrated music-room. He had never seen Mr. Jones in the exercise ofhis vocation--or perhaps it was only his trade. 

"I will speak to him tonight, " Schomberg said to himself, while he drankhis morning tea, in pyjamas, on the veranda, before the rising sun hadtopped the trees of the compound, and while the undried dew stilllay silvery on the grass, sparkled on the blossoms of the centralflower-bed, and darkened the yellow gravel of the drive. "That's whatI'll do. I won't keep out of sight tonight. I shall come out and catchhim as he goes to bed carrying the cash-box. "

After all, what was the fellow but common desperado? Murderous? Oh, yes;murderous enough, perhaps--and the muscles of Schomberg's stomach had aquivering contraction under his airy attire. But even a common desperadowould think twice or, more likely, a hundred times, before openlymurdering an inoffensive citizen in a civilized, European-ruled town. Hejerked his shoulders. Of course! He shuddered again, and paddled back tohis room to dress himself. His mind was made up, and he would thinkno more about it; but still he had his doubts. They grew and unfoldedthemselves with the progress of the day, as some plants do. At timesthey made him perspire more than usual, and they did away with thepossibility of his afternoon siesta. After turning over on his couchmore than a dozen times, he gave up this mockery of repose, got up, andwent downstairs. 

It was between three and four o'clock, the hour of profound peace. Thevery flowers seemed to doze on their stalks set with sleepy leaves. Noteven the air stirred, for the sea-breeze was not due till later. Theservants were out of sight, catching naps in the shade somewhere behindthe house. Mrs. Schomberg in a dim up-stair room with closed jalousies, was elaborating those two long pendant ringlets which were such afeature of her hairdressing for her afternoon duties. At that time nocustomers ever troubled the repose of the establishment. Wandering abouthis premises in profound solitude, Schomberg recoiled at the door of thebilliard-room, as if he had seen a snake in his path. All alone with thebilliards, the bare little tables, and a lot of untenanted chairs, Mr. Secretary Ricardo sat near the wall, performing with lightning rapiditysomething that looked like tricks with his own personal pack of cards, which he always carried about in his pocket. Schomberg would have backedout quietly if Ricardo had not turned his head. Having been seen, thehotel-keeper elected to walk in as the lesser risk of the two. Theconsciousness of his inwardly abject attitude towards these men causedhim always to throw his chest out and assume a severe expression. Ricardo watched his approach, clasping the pack of cards in both hands. 

"You want something, perhaps?" suggested Schomberg in hislieutenant-of-the-Reserve voice. 

Ricardo shook his head in silence and looked expectant. With himSchomberg exchanged at least twenty words every day. He was infinitelymore communicative than his patron. At times he looked very much likean ordinary human being of his class; and he seemed to be in an amiablemood at that moment. Suddenly spreading some ten cards face downward inthe form of a fan, he thrust them towards Schomberg. 

"Come, man, take one quick!"

Schomberg was so surprised that he took one hurriedly, after a veryperceptible start. The eyes of Martin Ricardo gleamed phosphorescentin the half-light of the room screened from the heat and glare of thetropics. 

"That's the king of hearts you've got, " he chuckled, showing his teethin a quick flash. 

Schomberg, after looking at the card, admitted that it was, and laid itdown on the table. 

"I can make you take any card I like nine times out of ten, " exulted thesecretary, with a strange curl of his lips and a green flicker in hisraised eyes. 

Schomberg looked down at him dumbly. For a few seconds neither of themstirred; then Ricardo lowered his glance, and, opening his fingers, let the whole pack fall on the table. Schomberg sat down. He sat downbecause of the faintness in his legs, and for no other reason. His mouthwas dry. Having sat down, he felt that he must speak. He squared hisshoulders in parade style. 

"You are pretty good at that sort of thing, " he said. 

"Practice makes perfect, " replied the secretary. 

His precarious amiability made it impossible for Schomberg to get away. Thus, from his very timidity, the hotel-keeper found himself engagedin a conversation the thought of which filled him with apprehension. Itmust be said, in justice to Schomberg, that he concealed his funk verycreditably. The habit of throwing out his chest and speaking in a severevoice stood him in good stead. With him, too, practice made perfect; andhe would probably have kept it up to the end, to the very last moment, to the ultimate instant of breaking strain which would leave himgrovelling on the floor. To add to his secret trouble, he was at a losswhat to say. He found nothing else but the remark:

"I suppose you are fond of cards. "

"What would you expect?" asked Ricardo in a simple, philosophical tone. "It is likely I should not be?" Then, with sudden fire: "Fond of cards?Ay, passionately!"

The effect of this outburst was augmented by the quiet lowering of theeyelids, by a reserved pause as though this had been a confession ofanother kind of love. Schomberg cudgelled his brains for a new topic, but he could not find one. His usual scandalous gossip would not servethis turn. That desperado did not know anyone anywhere within a thousandmiles. Schomberg was almost compelled to keep to the subject. 

"I suppose you've always been so--from your early youth. "

Ricardo's eyes remained cast down. His fingers toyed absently with thepack on the table. 

"I don't know that it was so early. I first got in the way of it playingfor tobacco--in forecastles of ships, you know--common sailor games. Weused to spend whole watches below at it, round a chest, under aslush lamp. We would hardly spare the time to get a bite of salthorse--neither eat nor sleep. We could hardly stand when the watcheswere mustered on deck. Talk of gambling!" He dropped the reminiscenttone to add the information, "I was bred to the sea from a boy, youknow. "

Schomberg had fallen into a reverie, but without losing the sense ofimpending calamity. The next words he heard were:

"I got on all right at sea, too. Worked up to be mate. I was mate of aschooner--a yacht, you might call her--a special good berth too, in theGulf of Mexico, a soft job that you don't run across more than once in alifetime. Yes, I was mate of her when I left the sea to follow him. "

Ricardo tossed up his chin to indicate the room above; from whichSchomberg, his wits painfully aroused by this reminder of Mr. Jones'sexistence, concluded that the latter had withdrawn into his bedroom. Ricardo, observing him from under lowered eyelids, went on:

"It so happened that we were shipmates. "

"Mr Jones, you mean? Is he a sailor too?"

Ricardo raised his eyelids at that. 

"He's no more Mr. Jones than you are, " he said with obvious pride. "He asailor! That just shows your ignorance. But there! A foreigner can't beexpected to know any better. I am an Englishman, and I know a gentlemanat sight. I should know one drunk, in the gutter, in jail, under thegallows. There's a something--it isn't exactly the appearance, it'sa--no use me trying to tell you. You ain't an Englishman, and if youwere, you wouldn't need to be told. "

An unsuspected stream of loquacity had broken its dam somewhere deepwithin the man, had diluted his fiery blood and softened his pitilessfibre. Schomberg experienced mingled relief and apprehension, as ifsuddenly an enormous savage cat had begun to wind itself about his legsin inexplicable friendliness. No prudent man under such circumstanceswould dare to stir. Schomberg didn't stir. Ricardo assumed an easyattitude, with an elbow on the table. Schomberg squared his shouldersafresh. 

"I was employed, in that there yacht--schooner, whatever you call it--byten gentlemen at once. That surprises you, eh? Yes, yes, ten. Leastwisethere were nine of them gents good enough in their way, and onedownright gentleman, and that was . . . "

Ricardo gave another upward jerk of his chin as much as to say: He! Theonly one. 

"And no mistake, " he went on. "I spotted him from the first day. How?Why? Ay, you may ask. Hadn't seen that many gentlemen in my life. Well, somehow I did. If you were an Englishman, you would--"

"What was your yacht?" Schomberg interrupted as impatiently as he dared;for this harping on nationality jarred on his already tried nerves. "What was the game?"

"You have a headpiece on you! Game! 'Xactly. That's what it was--thesort of silliness gentlemen will get up among themselves to play atadventure. A treasure-hunting expedition. Each of them put down so muchmoney, you understand, to buy the schooner. Their agent in the cityengaged me and the skipper. The greatest secrecy and all that. I reckonhe had a twinkle in his eye all the time--and no mistake. But thatwasn't our business. Let them bust their money as they like. The pity ofit was that so little of it came our way. Just fair pay and no more. Anddamn any pay, much or little, anyhow--that's what I say!"

He blinked his eyes greenishly in the dim light. The heat seemed tohave stilled everything in the world but his voice. He swore at large, abundantly, in snarling undertones, it was impossible to say why, thencalmed down as inexplicably, and went on, as a sailor yarns. 

"At first there were only nine of them adventurous sparks, then, just aday or two before the sailing date, he turned up. Heard of it somehow, somewhere--I would say from some woman, if I didn't know him as I do. Hewould give any woman a ten-mile berth. He can't stand them. Or maybe ina flash bar. Or maybe in one of them grand clubs in Pall Mall. Anyway, the agent netted him in all right--cash down, and only about four andtwenty hours for him to get ready; but he didn't miss his ship. Not he!You might have called it a pier-head jump--for a gentleman. I saw himcome along. Know the West India Docks, eh?"

Schomberg did not know the West India Docks. Ricardo looked at himpensively for a while, and then continued, as if such ignorance had tobe disregarded. 

"Our tug was already alongside. Two loafers were carrying his dunnagebehind him. I told the dockman at our moorings to keep all fast for aminute. The gangway was down already; but he made nothing of it. Up hejumps, one leap, swings his long legs over the rail, and there he ison board. They pass up his swell dunnage, and he puts his hand in histrousers pocket and throws all his small change on the wharf for themchaps to pick up. They were still promenading that wharf on all fourswhen we cast off. It was only then that he looked at me--quietly, youknow; in a slow way. He wasn't so thin then as he is now; but I noticedhe wasn't so young as he looked--not by a long chalk. He seemed to touchme inside somewhere. I went away pretty quick from there; I was wantedforward anyhow. I wasn't frightened. What should I be frightened for? Ionly felt touched--on the very spot. But Jee-miny, if anybody had toldme we should be partners before the year was out--well, I would have--"

He swore a variety of strange oaths, some common, others quaintlyhorrible to Schomberg's ears, and all mere innocent exclamations ofwonder at the shifts and changes of human fortune. Schomberg movedslightly in his chair. But the admirer and partner of "plain Mr. Jones"seemed to have forgotten Schomberg's existence for the moment. Thestream of ingenuous blasphemy--some of it in bad Spanish--had run dry, and Martin Ricardo, connoisseur in gentlemen, sat dumb with a stony gazeas if still marvelling inwardly at the amazing elections, conjunctions, and associations of events which influence man's pilgrimage on thisearth. 

At last Schomberg spoke tentatively:

"And so the--the gentleman, up there, talked you over into leaving agood berth?"

Ricardo started. 

"Talked me over! Didn't need to talk me over. Just beckoned to me, andthat was enough. By that time we were in the Gulf of Mexico. One nightwe were lying at anchor, close to a dry sandbank--to this day I am notsure where it was--off the Colombian coast or thereabouts. We wereto start digging the next morning, and all hands had turned in early, expecting a hard day with the shovels. Up he comes, and in his quiet, tired way of speaking--you can tell a gentleman by that as much as byanything else almost--up he comes behind me and says, just like thatinto my ear, in a manner: 'Well, what do you think of our treasure huntnow?'

"I didn't even turn my head; 'xactly as I stood, I remained, and I spokeno louder than himself:

"'If you want to know, sir, it's nothing but just damned tom-foolery. '

"We had, of course, been having short talks together at one time oranother during the passage. I dare say he had read me like a book. Thereain't much to me, except that I have never been tame, even when walkingthe pavement and cracking jokes and standing drinks to chums--ay, and tostrangers, too. I would watch them lifting their elbows at my expense, or splitting their side at my fun--I _can_ be funny when I like, youbet!"

A pause for self-complacent contemplation of his own fun and generositychecked the flow of Ricardo's speech. Schomberg was concerned to keepwithin bounds the enlargement of his eyes, which he seemed to feelgrowing bigger in his head. 

"Yes, yes, " he whispered hastily. 

"I would watch them and think: 'You boys don't know who I am. If youdid--!' With girls, too. Once I was courting a girl. I used to kiss herbehind the ear and say to myself: 'If you only knew who's kissing you, my dear, you would scream and bolt!' Ha! ha! Not that I wanted todo them any harm; but I felt the power in myself. Now, here we sit, friendly like, and that's all right. You aren't in my way. But I am notfriendly to you. I just don't care. Some men do say that; but I reallydon't. You are no more to me one way or another than that fly there. Just so. I'd squash you or leave you alone. I don't care what I do. "

If real force of character consists in overcoming our sudden weaknesses, Schomberg displayed plenty of that quality. At the mention of the fly, he re-enforced the severe dignity of his attitude as one inflates acollapsing toy balloon with a great effort of breath. The easy-going, relaxed attitude of Ricardo was really appalling. 

"That's so, " he went on. "I am that sort of fellow. You wouldn't thinkit, would you? No. You have to be told. So I am telling you, and I daresay you only half believe it. But you can't say to yourself that I amdrunk, stare at me as you may. I haven't had anything stronger than aglass of iced water all day. Takes a real gentleman to see through afellow. Oh, yes--he spotted me. I told you we had a few talks at seaabout one thing or another. And I used to watch him down the skylight, playing cards in the cuddy with the others. They had to pass the timeaway somehow. By the same token he caught me at it once, and it was thenthat I told him I was fond of cards--and generally lucky in gambling, too. Yes, he had sized me up. Why not? A gentleman's just like any otherman--and something more. "

It flashed through Schomberg's mind: that these two were indeed wellmatched in their enormous dissimilarity, identical souls in differentdisguises. 

"Says he to me"--Ricardo started again in a gossiping manner--'I'mpacked up. It's about time to go, Martin. '

"It was the first time he called me Martin. Says I:

"'Is that it, sir?'

"'You didn't think I was after that sort of treasure, did you? I wantedto clear out from home quietly. It's a pretty expensive way of getting apassage across, but it has served my turn. '

"I let him know very soon that I was game for anything, from pitch andtoss to wilful murder, in his company. 

"'Wilful murder?' says he in his quiet way. 'What the deuce is that?What are you talking about? People do get killed sometimes when they getin one's way, but that's self-defence--you understand?'

"I told him I did. And then I said I would run below for a minute, toram a few of my things into a sailor's bag I had. I've never cared fora lot of dunnage; I believed in going about flying light when I was atsea. I came back and found him strolling up and down the deck, as ifhe were taking a breath of fresh air before turning in, like any otherevening. 

"'Ready?'

"'Yes, sir. '

"He didn't even look at me. We had had a boat in the water astern eversince we came to anchor in the afternoon. He throws the stump of hiscigar overboard. 

"'Can you get the captain out on deck?' he asks. 

"That was the last thing in the world I should have thought of doing. Ilost my tongue for a moment. 

"'I can try, ' says I. 

"'Well, then, I am going below. You get him up and keep him with youtill I come back on deck. Mind! Don't let him go below till I return. '

"I could not help asking why he told me to rouse a sleeping man, whenwe wanted everybody on board to sleep sweetly till we got clear of theschooner. He laughs a little and says that I didn't see all the bearingsof this business. 

"'Mind, ' he says, 'don't let him leave you till you see me come upagain. ' He puts his eyes close to mine. 'Keep him with you at allcosts. '

"'And that means?' says I. 

"'All costs to him--by every possible or impossible means. I don't wantto be interrupted in my business down below. He would give me lotsof trouble. I take you with me to save myself trouble in variouscircumstances; and you've got to enter on your work right away. '

"'Just so, sir, ' says I; and he slips down the companion. 

"With a gentleman you know at once where you are; but it was a ticklishjob. The skipper was nothing to me one way or another, any more than youare at this moment, Mr. Schomberg. You may light your cigar or blow yourbrains out this minute, and I don't care a hang which you do, both orneither. To bring the skipper up was easy enough. I had only to stamp onthe deck a few times over his head. I stamped hard. But how to keep himup when he got there?

"'Anything the matter; Mr. Ricardo?' I heard his voice behind me. 

"There he was, and I hadn't thought of anything to say to him; so Ididn't turn round. The moonlight was brighter than many a day I couldremember in the North Sea. 

"'Why did you call me? What are you staring at out there, Mr. Ricardo?'

"He was deceived by my keeping my back to him. I wasn't staring atanything, but his mistake gave me a notion. 

"'I am staring at something that looks like a canoe over there, ' I saidvery slowly. 

"The skipper got concerned at once. It wasn't any danger from theinhabitants, whoever they were. 

"'Oh, hang it!' says he. 'That's very unfortunate. ' He had hoped thatthe schooner being on the coast would not get known so very soon. 'Dashed awkward, with the business we've got in hand, to have a lot ofniggers watching operations. But are you certain this is a canoe?'

"'It may be a drift-log, ' I said; 'but I thought you had better have alook with your own eyes. You may make it out better than I can. '

"His eyes weren't anything as good as mine. But he says:

"'Certainly. Certainly. You did quite right. '

"And it's a fact I had seen some drift-logs at sunset. I saw what theywere then and didn't trouble my head about them, forgot all about ittill that very moment. Nothing strange in seeing drift-logs off a coastlike that; and I'm hanged if the skipper didn't make one out in thewake of the moon. Strange what a little thing a man's life hangs onsometimes--a single word! Here you are, sitting unsuspicious before me, and you may let out something unbeknown to you that would settle yourhash. Not that I have any ill-feeling. I have no feelings. If theskipper had said, 'O, bosh!' and had turned his back on me, he would nothave gone three steps towards his bed; but he stood there and stared. And now the job was to get him off the deck when he was no longer wantedthere. 

"'We are just trying to make out if that object there is a canoe or alog, ' says he to Mr. Jones. 

"Mr Jones had come up, lounging as carelessly as when he went below. While the skipper was jawing about boats and drifting logs. I asked bysigns, from behind, if I hadn't better knock him on the head and drophim quietly overboard. The night was slipping by, and we had to go. Itcouldn't be put off till next night no more. No. No more. And do youknow why?"

Schomberg made a slight negative sign with his head. This direct appealannoyed him, jarred on the induced quietude of a great talker forcedinto the part of a listener and sunk in it as a man sinks into slumber. Mr. Ricardo struck a note of scorn. 

"Don't know why? Can't you guess? No? Because the boss had got hold ofthe skipper's cash-box by then. See?"

CHAPTER SEVEN

"A common thief!"

Schomberg bit his tongue just too late, and woke up completely as he sawRicardo retract his lips in a cat-like grin; but the companion of "plainMr. Jones" didn't alter his comfortable, gossiping attitude. 

"Garn! What if he did want to see his money back, like any tameshopkeeper, hash-seller, gin-slinger, or ink-spewer does? Fancy a mudturtle like you trying to pass an opinion on a gentleman! A gentlemanisn't to be sized up so easily. Even I ain't up to it sometimes. Forinstance, that night, all he did was to waggle his finger at me. Theskipper stops his silly chatter, surprised. 

"'Eh? What's the matter?' asks he. 

"The matter! It was his reprieve--that's what was the matter. 

"'O, nothing, nothing, ' says my gentleman. 'You are perfectly right. Alog--nothing but a log. '

"Ha, ha! Reprieve, I call it, because if the skipper had gone on withhis silly argument much longer he would have had to be knocked outof the way. I could hardly hold myself in on account of the preciousminutes. However, his guardian angel put it into his head to shut up andgo back to his bed. I was ramping mad about the lost time. "

"'Why didn't you let me give him one on his silly coconut sir?' I asks. 

"'No ferocity, no ferocity, ' he says, raising his finger at me as calmas you please. 

"You can't tell how a gentleman takes that sort of thing. They don'tlost their temper. It's bad form. You'll never see him lose histemper--not for anybody to see anyhow. Ferocity ain't good form, either--that much I've learned by this time, and more, too. I've hadthat schooling that you couldn't tell by my face if I meant to rip youup the next minute--as of course I could do in less than a jiffy. I havea knife up the leg of my trousers. "

"You haven't!" exclaimed Schomberg incredulously. 

Mr Ricardo was as quick as lightning in changing his lounging, idleattitude for a stooping position, and exhibiting the weapon with onejerk at the left leg of his trousers. Schomberg had just a view of it, strapped to a very hairy limb, when Mr. Ricardo, jumping up, stamped hisfoot to get the trouser-leg down, and resumed his careless pose with oneelbow on the table. 

"It's a more handy way to carry a tool than you would think, " he wenton, gazing abstractedly into Schomberg's wide-open eyes. "Suppose somelittle difference comes up during a game. Well, you stoop to pick up adropped card, and when you come up--there you are ready to strike, orwith the thing up you sleeve ready to throw. Or you just dodge under thetable when there's some shooting coming. You wouldn't believe the damagea fellow with a knife under the table can do to ill-conditioned skunksthat want to raise trouble, before they begin to understand what thescreaming's about, and make a bolt--those that can, that is. "

The roses of Schomberg's cheek at the root of his chestnut beard fadedperceptibly. Ricardo chuckled faintly. 

"But no ferocity--no ferocity! A gentleman knows. What's the good ofgetting yourself into a state? And no shirking necessity, either. Nogentleman ever shirks. What I learn I don't forget. Why! We gambledon the plains, with a damn lot of cattlemen in ranches; played fair, mind--and then had to fight for our winnings afterwards as often as not. We've gambled on the hills and in the valleys and on the sea-shore, andout of sight of land--mostly fair. Generally it's good enough. We beganin Nicaragua first, after we left that schooner and her fool errand. There were one hundred and twenty-seven sovereigns and some Mexicandollars in that skipper's cash-box. Hardly enough to knock a man on thehead for from behind, I must confess; but that the skipper had a narrowescape the governor himself could not deny afterwards. 

"'Do you want me to understand, sir, that you mind there being one lifemore or less on this earth?' I asked him, a few hours after we got away. 

"'Certainly not, ' says he. 

"'Well, then, why did you stop me?'

"'There's a proper way of doing things. You'll have to learn to becorrect. There's also unnecessary exertion. That must be avoided, too--if only for the look of the thing. ' A gentleman's way of puttingthings to you--and no mistake!

"At sunrise we got into a creek, to lie hidden in case the treasure huntparty had a mind to take a spell hunting for us. And dash me if theydidn't! We saw the schooner away out, running to leeward, with ten pairsof binoculars sweeping the sea, no doubt on all sides. I advised thegovernor to give her time to beat back again before we made a start. Sowe stayed up that creek something like ten days, as snug as can be. Onthe seventh day we had to kill a man, though--the brother of this Pedrohere. They were alligator-hunters, right enough. We got our lodgings intheir hut. Neither the boss nor I could habla Espanol--speak Spanish, you know--much then. Dry bank, nice shade, jolly hammocks, fresh fish, good game, everything lovely. The governor chucked them a few dollars tobegin with; but it was like boarding with a pair of savage apes, anyhow. By and by we noticed them talking a lot together. They had twiggedthe cash-box, and the leather portmanteaus, and my bag--a jolly lot ofplunder to look at. They must have been saying to each other:

"'No one's ever likely to come looking for these two fellows, who seemto have fallen from the moon. Let's cut their throats. '

"Why, of course! Clear as daylight. I didn't need to spy one of themsharpening a devilish long knife behind some bushes, while glancingright and left with his wild eyes, to know what was in the wind. Pedrowas standing by, trying the edge of another long knife. They thought wewere away on our lookout at the mouth of the river, as was usual with usduring the day. Not that we expected to see much of the schooner, butit was just as well to make certain, if possible; and then it was coolerout of the woods, in the breeze. Well, the governor was there rightenough, lying comfortable on a rug, where he could watch the offing, butI had gone back to the hut to get a chew of tobacco out of my bag. I hadnot broken myself of the habit then, and I couldn't be happy unless Ihad a lump as big as a baby's fist in my cheek. "

At the cannibalistic comparison, Schomberg muttered a faint, sickly"don't. " Ricardo hitched himself up in his seat and glanced down hisoutstretched legs complacently. 

"I am tolerably light on my feet, as a general thing, " he went on. "Dashme if I don't think I could drop a pinch of salt on a sparrow's tail, if I tried. Anyhow, they didn't hear me. I watched them two brown, hairybrutes not ten yards off. All they had on was white linen drawers rolledup on their thighs. Not a word they said to each other. Antonio wasdown on his thick hams, busy rubbing a knife on a flat stone; Pedro wasleaning against a small tree and passing his thumb along the edge of hisblade. I got away quieter than a mouse, you bet. "

"I didn't say anything to the boss then. He was leaning on his elbowon his rug, and didn't seem to want to be spoken to. He's likethat--sometimes that familiar you might think he would eat out of yourhand, and at others he would snub you sharper than a devil--but alwaysquiet. Perfect gentleman, I tell you. I didn't bother him, then; butI wasn't likely to forget them two fellows, so businesslike with theirknives. At that time we had only one revolver between us two--thegovernor's six-shooter, but loaded only in five chambers; and we had nomore cartridges. He had left the box behind in a drawer in his cabin. Awkward! I had nothing but an old clasp-knife--no good at all foranything serious. 

"In the evening we four sat round a bit of fire outside thesleeping-shed, eating broiled fish off plantain leaves, with roast yamsfor bread--the usual thing. The governor and I were on one side, andthese two beauties cross-legged on the other, grunting a word or twoto each other, now and then, hardly human speech at all, and their eyesdown, fast on the ground. For the last three days we couldn't get themto look us in the face. Presently I began to talk to the boss quietly, just as I am talking to you now, careless like, and I told him all I hadobserved. He goes on picking up pieces of fish and putting them into hismouth as calm as anything. It's a pleasure to have anything to do with agentleman. Never looked across at them once. 

"'And now, ' says I, yawning on purpose, 'we've got to stand watch atnight, turn about, and keep our eyes skinned all day, too, and mind wedon't get jumped upon suddenly. '

"'It's perfectly intolerable, ' says the governor. 'And you with noweapon of any sort!'

"'I mean to stick pretty close to you, sir, from this on, if you don'tmind, ' says I. 

"He just nods the least bit, wipes his fingers on the plantain leaf, puts his hand behind his back, as if to help himself to rise from theground, snatches his revolver from under his jacket and plugs a bulletplumb centre into Mr. Antonio's chest. See what it is to have to do witha gentleman. No confounded fuss, and things done out of hand. But hemight have tipped me a wink or something. I nearly jumped out of myskin. Scared ain't in it! I didn't even know who had fired. Everythinghad been so still just before that the bang of the shot seemedthe loudest noise I had ever heard. The honourable Antonio pitchesforward--they always do, towards the shot; you must have noticed thatyourself--yes, he pitches forward on to the embers, and all that lot ofhair on his face and head flashes up like a pinch of gunpowder. Greasy, I expect; always scraping the fat off them alligators' hides--"

"Look here, " exclaimed Schomberg violently, as if trying to burst someinvisible bonds, "do you mean to say that all this happened?"

"No, " said Ricardo coolly. "I am making it all up as I go along, just tohelp you through the hottest part of the afternoon. So down he pitcheshis nose on the red embers, and up jumps our handsome Pedro and I at thesame time, like two Jacks-in-the-box. He starts to bolt away, with hishead over his shoulder, and I, hardly knowing what I was doing, springon his back. I had the sense to get my hands round his neck at once, andit's about all I could do to lock my fingers tight under his jaw. Yousaw the beauty's neck, didn't you? Hard as iron, too. Down we both went. Seeing this the governor puts his revolver in his pocket. 

"'Tie his legs together, sir, ' I yell. 'I'm trying to strangle him. '

"There was a lot of their fibre-lines lying about. I gave him a lastsqueeze and then got up. 

"'I might have shot you, ' says the governor, quite concerned. 

"'But you are glad to have saved a cartridge, sir, ' I tell him. 

"My jump did save it. It wouldn't have done to let him get away inthe dark like that, and have the beauty dodging around in the bushes, perhaps, with the rusty flint-lock gun they had. The governor owned upthat the jump was the correct thing. 

"'But he isn't dead, ' says he, bending over him. 

"Might as well hope to strangle an ox. We made haste to tie his elbowsback, and then, before he came to himself, we dragged him to a smalltree, sat him up, and bound him to it, not by the waist but by theneck--some twenty turns of small line round his throat and the trunk, finished off with a reef-knot under his ear. Next thing we did was toattend to the honourable Antonio, who was making a great smell frizzlinghis face on the red coals. We pushed and rolled him into the creek, andleft the rest to the alligators. 

"I was tired. That little scrap took it out of me something awful. Thegovernor hadn't turned a hair. That's where a gentleman has the pullof you. He don't get excited. No gentleman does--or hardly ever. I fellasleep all of a sudden and left him smoking by the fire I had madeup, his railway rug round his legs, as calm as if he were sitting in afirst-class carriage. We hardly spoke ten words to each other afterit was over, and from that day to this we have never talked of thebusiness. I wouldn't have known he remembered it if he hadn't alluded toit when talking with you the other day--you know, with regard to Pedro. "

"It surprised you, didn't it? That's why I am giving you this yarn ofhow he came to be with us, like a sort of dog--dashed sight more useful, though. You know how he can trot around with trays? Well, he could bringdown an ox with his fist, at a word from the boss, just as cleverly. Andfond of the governor! Oh, my word! More than any dog is of any man. "

Schomberg squared his chest. 

"Oh, and that's one of the things I wanted to mention to Mr. Jones, " hesaid. "It's unpleasant to have that fellow round the house so early. Hesits on the stairs at the back for hours before he is needed here, andfrightens people so that the service suffers. The Chinamen--"

Ricardo nodded and raised his hand. 

"When I first saw him he was fit to frighten a grizzly bear, let alonea Chinaman. He's become civilized now to what he once was. Well, thatmorning, first thing on opening my eyes, I saw him sitting there, tiedup by the neck to the tree. He was blinking. We spend the day watchingthe sea, and we actually made out the schooner working to windward, which showed that she had given us up. Good! When the sun rose again, Itook a squint at our Pedro. He wasn't blinking. He was rolling his eyes, all white one minute and black the next, and his tongue was hanging outa yard. Being tied up short by the neck like this would daunt the archdevil himself--in time--in time, mind! I don't know but that even areal gentleman would find it difficult to keep a stiff lip to the end. Presently we went to work getting our boat ready. I was busying myselfsetting up the mast, when the governor passes the remark:

"'I think he wants to say something. '

"I had heard a sort of croaking going on for some time, only I wouldn'ttake any notice; but then I got out of the boat and went up to him, withsome water. His eyes were red--red and black and half out of hishead. He drank all the water I gave him, but he hadn't much to say forhimself. I walked back to the governor. 

"'He asks for a bullet in his head before we go, ' I said. I wasn't atall pleased. 

"'Oh, that's out of the question altogether, ' says the governor. 

"He was right there. Only four shots left, and ninety miles of wildcoast to put behind us before coming to the first place where you couldexpect to buy revolver cartridges. 

"'Anyhow, ' I tells him, 'he wants to be killed some way or other, as afavour. '

"And then I go on setting up the boat's mast. I didn't care much for thenotion of butchering a man bound hand and foot and fastened by the neckbesides. I had a knife then--the honourable Antonio's knife; and thatknife is this knife. 

"Ricardo gave his leg a resounding slap. 

"First spoil in my new life, " he went on with harsh joviality. "Thedodge of carrying it down there I learned later. I carried it stuck inmy belt that day. No, I hadn't much stomach for the job; but when youwork with a gentleman of the real right sort you may depend on yourfeelings being seen through your skin. Says the governor suddenly:

"'It may even be looked upon as his right'--you hear a gentlemanspeaking there?--'but what do you think of taking him with us in theboat?'

"And the governor starts arguing that the beggar would be useful inworking our way along the coast. We could get rid of him before comingto the first place that was a little civilized. I didn't want muchtalking over. Out I scrambled from the boat. 

"'Ay, but will he be manageable, sir?'

"'Oh, yes. He's daunted. Go on, cut him loose--I take theresponsibility. '

"'Right you are, sir. '

"He sees me come along smartly with his brother's knife in my hand--Iwasn't thinking how it looked from his side of the fence, you know--andjiminy, it nearly killed him! He stared like a crazed bullock and beganto sweat and twitch all over, something amazing. I was so surprised, that I stopped to look at him. The drops were pouring over his eyebrows, down his beard, off his nose--and he gurgled. Then it struck me that hecouldn't see what was in my mind. By favour or by right he didn't liketo die when it came to it; not in that way, anyhow. When I stepped roundto get at the lashing, he let out a sort of soft bellow. Thought I wasgoing to stick him from behind, I guess. I cut all the turns with oneslash, and he went over on his side, flop, and started kicking with histied legs. Laugh! I don't know what there was so funny about it, but Ifairly shouted. What between my laughing and his wriggling, I had a jobin cutting him free. As soon as he could feel his limbs he makes for thebank, where the governor was standing, crawls up to him on his hands andknees, and embraces his legs. Gratitude, eh? You could see that beingallowed to live suited that chap down to the ground. The governor getshis legs away from him gently and just mutters to me:

"'Let's be off. Get him into the boat. '

"It was not difficult, " continued Ricardo, after eyeing Schombergfixedly for a moment. "He was ready enough to get into the boat, and--here he is. He would let himself be chopped into small pieces--witha smile, mind; with a smile!--for the governor. I don't know about himdoing that much for me; but pretty near, pretty near. I did the tying upand the untying, but he could see who was the boss. And then he knows agentleman. A dog knows a gentleman--any dog. It's only some foreignersthat don't know; and nothing can teach them, either. "

"And you mean to say, " asked Schomberg, disregarding what might havebeen annoying for himself in the emphasis of the final remark, "you meanto say that you left steady employment at good wages for a life likethis?"

"There!" began Ricardo quietly. "That's just what a man like you wouldsay. You are that tame! I follow a gentleman. That ain't the same thingas to serve an employer. They give you wages as they'd fling a bone toa dog, and they expect you to be grateful. It's worse than slavery. Youdon't expect a slave that's bought for money to be grateful. And if yousell your work--what is it but selling your own self? You've got so manydays to live and you sell them one after another. Hey? Who can pay meenough for my life? Ay! But they throw at you your week's money andexpect you to say 'thank you' before you pick it up. "

He mumbled some curses, directed at employers generally, as it seemed, then blazed out:

"Work be damned! I ain't a dog walking on its hind legs for a bone; I ama man who's following a gentleman. There's a difference which you willnever understand, Mr. Tame Schomberg. "

He yawned slightly. Schomberg, preserving a military stiffnessreinforced by a slight frown, had allowed his thoughts to stray away. They were busy detailing the image of a young girl--absent--gone--stolenfrom him. He became enraged. There was that rascal looking at himinsolently. If the girl had not been shamefully decoyed away from him, he would not have allowed anyone to look at him insolently. He wouldhave made nothing of hitting that rogue between the eyes. Afterwards hewould have kicked the other without hesitation. He saw himself doing it;and in sympathy with this glorious vision Schomberg's right foot, andarm moved convulsively. 

At this moment he came out of his sudden reverie to note with alarm thewide-awake curiosity of Mr. Ricardo's stare. 

"And so you go like this about the world, gambling, " he remarkedinanely, to cover his confusion. But Ricardo's stare did not change itscharacter, and he continued vaguely:

"Here and there and everywhere. " He pulled himself together, squared hisshoulders. "Isn't it very precarious?" he said firmly. 

The word precarious--seemed to be effective, because Ricardo's eyes losttheir dangerously interested expression. 

"No, not so bad, " Ricardo said, with indifference. "It's my opinion thatmen will gamble as long as they have anything to put on a card. Gamble?That's nature. What's life itself? You never know what may turn up. Theworst of it is that you never can tell exactly what sort of cards youare holding yourself. What's trumps?--that is the question. See? Any manwill gamble if only he's given a chance, for anything or everything. Youtoo--"

"I haven't touched a card now for twenty years, " said Schomberg in anaustere tone. 

"Well, if you got your living that way you would be no worse than youare now, selling drinks to people--beastly beer and spirits, rottenstuff fit to make an old he-goat yell if you poured it down its throat. Pooh! I can't stand the confounded liquor. Never could. A whiff of neatbrandy in a glass makes me feel sick. Always did. If everybody was likeme, liquor would be going a-begging. You think it's funny in a man, don't you?"

Schomberg made a vague gesture of toleration. Ricardo hitched up hischair and settled his elbow afresh on the table. 

"French siros I must say I do like. Saigon's the place for them. I seeyou have siros in the bar. Hang me if I ain't getting dry, conversinglike this with you. Come, Mr. Schomberg, be hospitable, as the governorsays. "

Schomberg rose and walked with dignity to the counter. His footstepsechoed loudly on the floor of polished boards. He took down a bottle, labelled "Sirop de Groseille. " The little sounds he made, the clink ofglass, the gurgling of the liquid, the pop of the soda-water cork hada preternatural sharpness. He came back carrying a pink and glisteningtumbler. Mr. Ricardo had followed his movements with oblique, coylyexpectant yellow eyes, like a cat watching the preparation of a saucerof milk, and the satisfied sound after he had drunk might have been aslightly modified form of purring, very soft and deep in his throat. Itaffected Schomberg unpleasantly as another example of something inhumanin those men wherein lay the difficulty of dealing with them. Aspectre, a cat, an ape--there was a pretty association for a mere man toremonstrate with, he reflected with an inward shudder; for Schomberg hadbeen overpowered, as it were, by his imagination, and his reason couldnot react against that fanciful view of his guests. And it was not onlytheir appearance. The morals of Mr. Ricardo seemed to him to be prettymuch the morals of a cat. Too much. What sort of argument could a mereman offer to a . . . Or to a spectre, either! What the morals of aspectre could be, Schomberg had no idea. Something dreadful, nodoubt. Compassion certainly had no place in them. As to the ape--well, everybody knew what an ape was. It had no morals. Nothing could be morehopeless. 

Outwardly, however, having picked up the cigar which he had laid asideto get the drink, with his thick fingers, one of them ornamented by agold ring, Schomberg smoked with moody composure. Facing him, Ricardoblinked slowly for a time, then closed his eyes altogether, with theplacidity of the domestic cat dozing on the hearth-rug. In anothermoment he opened them very wide, and seemed surprised to see Schombergthere. 

"You're having a very slack time today, aren't you?" he observed. "Butthen this whole town is confoundedly slack, anyhow; and I've never facedsuch a slack party at a table before. Come eleven o'clock, they begin totalk of breaking up. What's the matter with them? Want to go to bed soearly, or what?"

"I reckon you don't lose a fortune by their wanting to go to bed, " saidSchomberg, with sombre sarcasm. 

"No, " admitted Ricardo, with a grin that stretched his thin mouth fromear to ear, giving a sudden glimpse of his white teeth. "Only, you see, when I once start, I would play for nuts, for parched peas, for anyrubbish. I would play them for their souls. But these Dutchmen aren'tany good. They never seem to get warmed up properly, win or lose. I'vetried them both ways, too. Hang them for a beggarly, bloodless lot ofanimated cucumbers!"

"And if anything out of the way was to happen, they would be justas cool in locking you and your gentleman up, " Schomberg snarledunpleasantly. 

"Indeed!" said Ricardo slowly, taking Schomberg's measure with his eyes. "And what about you?"

"You talk mighty big, " burst out the hotel-keeper. "You talk of rangingall over the world, and doing great things, and taking fortune by thescruff of the neck, but here you stick at this miserable business!"

"It isn't much of a lay--that's a fact, " admitted Ricardo unexpectedly. 

Schomberg was red in the face with audacity. 

"I call it paltry, " he spluttered. 

"That's how it looks. Can't call it anything else. " Ricardo seemed tobe in an accommodating mood. "I should be ashamed of it myself, only yousee the governor is subject to fits--"

"Fits!" Schomberg cried out, but in a low tone. "You don't say so!" Heexulted inwardly, as if this disclosure had in some way diminished thedifficulty of the situation. "Fits! That's a serious thing, isn't it?You ought to take him to the civil hospital--a lovely place. "

Ricardo nodded slightly, with a faint grin. 

"Serious enough. Regular fits of laziness, I call them. Now and thenhe lays down on me like this, and there's no moving him. If you think Ilike it, you're a long way out. Generally speaking, I can talk him over. I know how to deal with a gentleman. I am no daily-bread slave. But whenhe has said, 'Martin, I am bored, ' then look out! There's nothing to dobut to shut up, confound it!"

Schomberg, very much cast down, had listened open-mouthed. 

"What's the cause of it?" he asked. "Why is he like this? I don'tunderstand. "

"I think I do, " said Ricardo. "A gentleman, you know, is not such asimple person as you or I; and not so easy to manage, either. If only Ihad something to lever him out with!"

"What do you mean, to lever him out with?" muttered Schomberghopelessly. 

Ricardo was impatient with this denseness. 

"Don't you understand English? Look here! I couldn't make thisbilliard table move an inch if I talked to it from now till the end ofdays--could I? Well, the governor is like that, too, when the fits areon him. He's bored. Nothing's worthwhile, nothing's good enough, that'smere sense. But if I saw a capstan bar lying about here, I would soonmanage to shift that billiard table of yours a good many inches. Andthat's all there is to it. "

He rose noiselessly, stretched himself, supple and stealthy, withcurious sideways movements of his head and unexpected elongations of histhick body, glanced out of the corners of his eyes in the direction ofthe door, and finally leaned back against the table, folding his arms onhis breast comfortably, in a completely human attitude. 

"That's another thing you can tell a gentleman by--his freakishness. A gentleman ain't accountable to nobody, any more than a tramp on theroads. He ain't got to keep time. The governor got like this once in aone-horse Mexican pueblo on the uplands, away from everywhere. He layall day long in a dark room--"

"Drunk?" This word escaped Schomberg by inadvertence at which he becamefrightened. But the devoted secretary seemed to find it natural. 

"No, that never comes on together with this kind of fit. He just laythere full length on a mat, while a ragged, bare-legged boy that he hadpicked up in the street sat in the patio, between two oleanders near theopen door of his room, strumming on a guitar and singing tristes to himfrom morning to night. You know tristes--twang, twang, twang, aouh, hoo!Chroo, yah!"

Schomberg uplifted his hands in distress. This tribute seemed to flatterRicardo. His mouth twitched grimly. 

"Like that--enough to give colic to an ostrich, eh? Awful. Well, therewas a cook there who loved me--an old fat, Negro woman with spectacles. I used to hide in the kitchen and turn her to, to make me dulces--sweetthings, you know, mostly eggs and sugar--to pass the time away. I amlike a kid for sweet things. And, by the way, why don't you ever havea pudding at your tablydott, Mr. Schomberg? Nothing but fruit, morning, noon, and night. Sickening! What do you think a fellow is--a wasp?"

Schomberg disregarded the injured tone. 

"And how long did that fit, as you call it, last?" he asked anxiously. 

"Weeks, months, years, centuries, it seemed to me, " returned Mr. Ricardowith feeling. "Of an evening the governor would stroll out into the salaand fritter his life away playing cards with the juez of the place--alittle Dago with a pair of black whiskers--ekarty, you know, aquick French game, for small change. And the comandante, a one-eyed, half-Indian, flat-nosed ruffian, and I, we had to stand around and beton their hands. It was awful!"

"Awful, " echoed Schomberg, in a Teutonic throaty tone of despair. "Lookhere, I need your rooms. "

"To be sure. I have been thinking that for some time past, " said Ricardoindifferently. 

"I was mad when I listened to you. This must end!"

"I think you are mad yet, " said Ricardo, not even unfolding his arms orshifting his attitude an inch. He lowered his voice to add: "And ifI thought you had been to the police, I would tell Pedro to catchyou round the waist and break your fat neck by jerking your headbackward--snap! I saw him do it to a big buck nigger who was flourishinga razor in front of the governor. It can be done. You hear a low crack, that's all--and the man drops down like a limp rag. "

Not even Ricardo's head, slightly inclined on the left shoulder, hadmoved; but when he ceased the greenish irises which had been staring outof doors glided into the corners of his eyes nearest to Schomberg andstayed there with a coyly voluptuous expression. 

CHAPTER EIGHT

Schomberg felt desperation, that lamentable substitute for courage, ooze out of him. It was not so much the threat of death as the weirdlycircumstantial manner of its declaration which affected him. A mere"I'll murder you, " however ferocious in tone, and earnest, in purpose, he could have faced; but before this novel mode of speech and procedure, his imagination being very sensitive to the unusual, he collapsed as ifindeed his moral neck had been broken--snap!

"Go to the police? Of course not. Never dreamed of it. Too late now. I've let myself be mixed up in this. You got my consent while I wasn'tmyself. I explained it to you at the time. "

Ricardo's eye glided gently off Schomberg to stare far away. 

"Ay! Some trouble with a girl. But that's nothing to us. "

"Naturally. What I say is, what's the good of all that savage talk tome?" A bright argument occurred to him. "It's out of proportion; foreven if I were fool enough to go to the police now, there's nothingserious to complain about. It would only mean deportation for you. Theywould put you on board the first west-bound steamer to Singapore. " Hehad become animated. "Out of this to the devil, " he added between histeeth for his own private satisfaction. 

Ricardo made no comment, and gave no sign of having heard a single word. This discouraged Schomberg, who had looked up hopefully. 

"Why do you want to stick here?" he cried. "It can't pay you peopleto fool around like this. Didn't you worry just now about moving yourgovernor? Well, the police would move him for you; and from Singaporeyou can go on to the east coast of Africa. "

"I'll be hanged if the fellow isn't up to that silly trick!" wasRicardo's comment, spoken in an ominous tone which recalled Schomberg tothe realities of his position. 

"No! No!" he protested. "It's a manner of speaking. Of course Iwouldn't. "

"I think that trouble about the girl has really muddled your brains, Mr. Schomberg. Believe me, you had better part friends with us; for, deportation or no deportation, you'll be seeing one of us turning upbefore long to pay you off for any nasty dodge you may be hatching inthat fat head of yours. "

"Gott im Himmel!" groaned Schomberg. "Will nothing move him out? Willhe stop here immer--I mean always? Suppose I were to make it worth yourwhile, couldn't you--"

"No, " Ricardo interrupted. "I couldn't, unless I had something to leverhim out with. I've told you that before. "

"An inducement?" muttered Schomberg. 

"Ay. The east coast of Africa isn't good enough. He told me the otherday that it will have to wait till he is ready for it; and he may not beready for a long time, because the east coast can't run away, and no oneis likely to run off with it. "

These remarks, whether considered as truisms or as depicting Mr. Jones's mental state, were distinctly discouraging to the long-sufferingSchomberg; but there is truth in the well-known saying that placesthe darkest hour before the dawn. The sound of words, apart from thecontext, has its power; and these two words, 'run off, ' had a specialaffinity to the hotel-keeper's, haunting idea. It was always presentin his brain, and now it came forward evoked by a purely fortuitousexpression. No, nobody could run off with a continent; but Heyst had runoff with the girl!

Ricardo could have had no conception of the cause of Schomberg's changedexpression. Yet it was noticeable enough to interest him so much thathe stopped the careless swinging of his leg and said, looking at thehotel-keeper:

"There's not much use arguing against that sort of talk--is there?"

Schomberg was not listening. 

"I could put you on another track, " he said slowly, and stopped, as ifsuddenly choked by an unholy emotion of intense eagerness combined withfear of failure. Ricardo waited, attentive, yet not without a certaincontempt. 

"On the track of a man!" Schomberg uttered convulsively, and pausedagain, consulting his rage and his conscience. 

"The man in the moon, eh?" suggested Ricardo, in a jeering murmur. 

Schomberg shook his head. 

"It would be nearly as safe to rook him as if he were the Man in themoon. You go and try. It isn't so very far. "

He reflected. These men were thieves and murderers as well as gamblers. Their fitness for purposes of vengeance was appallingly complete. But hepreferred not to think of it in detail. He put it to himself summarilythat he would be paying Heyst out and would, at the same time, relievehimself of these men's oppression. He had only to let loose his naturalgift for talking scandalously about his fellow creatures. And in thiscase his great practice in it was assisted by hate, which, like love, has an eloquence of its own. With the utmost ease he portrayed forRicardo, now seriously attentive, a Heyst fattened by years of privateand public rapines, the murderer of Morrison, the swindler of manyshareholders, a wonderful mixture of craft and impudence, of deeppurposes and simple wiles, of mystery and futility. In this exercise ofhis natural function Schomberg revived, the colour coming back to hisface, loquacious, florid, eager, his manliness set off by the militarybearing. 

"That's the exact story. He was seen hanging about this part of theworld for years, spying into everybody's business: but I am the onlyone who has seen through him from the first--contemptible, double-faced, stick-at-nothing, dangerous fellow. "

"Dangerous, is he?"

Schomberg came to himself at the sound of Ricardo's voice. 

"Well, you know what I mean, " he said uneasily. "A lying, circumventing, soft-spoken, polite, stuck-up rascal. Nothing open about him. "

Mr Ricardo had slipped off the table, and was prowling about the room inan oblique, noiseless manner. He flashed a grin at Schomberg in passing, and a snarling:

"Ah! H'm!"

"Well, what more dangerous do you want?" argued Schomberg. "He's in noway a fighting man, I believe, " he added negligently. 

"And you say he has been living alone there?"

"Like the man in the moon, " answered Schomberg readily. "There's noone that cares a rap what becomes of him. He has been lying low, youunderstand, after bagging all that plunder. 

"Plunder, eh? Why didn't he go home with it?" inquired Ricardo. 

The henchman of plain Mr. Jones was beginning to think that this wassomething worth looking into. And he was pursuing truth in the mannerof men of sounder morality and purer intentions than his own; that is hepursued it in the light of his own experience and prejudices. For facts, whatever their origin (and God only knows where they come from), can beonly tested by our own particular suspicions. Ricardo was suspicious allround. Schomberg, such is the tonic of recovered self-esteem, Schombergretorted fearlessly:

"Go home? Why don't you go home? To hear your talk, you must have madea pretty considerable pile going round winning people's money. You oughtto be ready by this time. "

Ricardo stopped to look at Schomberg with surprise. 

"You think yourself very clever, don't you?" he said. 

Schomberg just then was so conscious of being clever that the snarlingirony left him unmoved. There was positively a smile in his nobleTeutonic beard, the first smile for weeks. He was in a felicitous vein. 

"How do you know that he wasn't thinking of going home? As a matter offact, he was on his way home. "

"And how do I know that you are not amusing yourself by spinning outa blamed fairy tale?" interrupted Ricardo roughly. "I wonder at myselflistening to the silly rot!"

Schomberg received this turn of temper unmoved. He did not require to bevery subtly observant to notice that he had managed to arouse some sortof feeling, perhaps of greed, in Ricardo's breast. 

"You won't believe me? Well! You can ask anybody that comes here ifthat--that Swede hadn't got as far as this house on his way home. Whyshould he turn up here if not for that? You ask anybody. "

"Ask, indeed!" returned the other. "Catch me asking at large about a manI mean to drop on! Such jobs must be done on the quiet--or not at all. "

The peculiar intonation of the last phrase touched the nape ofSchomberg's neck with a chill. He cleared his throat slightly and lookedaway as though he had heard something indelicate. Then, with a jump asit were:

"Of course he didn't tell me. Is it likely? But haven't I got eyes?Haven't I got my common sense to tell me? I can see through people. Bythe same token, he called on the Tesmans. Why did he call on the Tesmanstwo days running, eh? You don't know? You can't tell?"

He waited complacently till Ricardo had finished swearing quite openlyat him for a confounded chatterer, and then went on:

"A fellow doesn't go to a counting-house in business hours for a chatabout the weather, two days running. Then why? To close his account withthem one day, and to get his money out the next! Clear, what?"

Ricardo, with his trick of looking one way and moving another approachedSchomberg slowly. 

"To get his money?" he purred. 

"Gewiss, " snapped Schomberg with impatient superiority. "What else? Thatis, only the money he had with the Tesmans. What he has buried or putaway on the island, devil only knows. When you think of the lot of hardcash that passed through that man's hands, for wages and stores and allthat--and he's just a cunning thief, I tell you. " Ricardo's hard starediscomposed the hotel-keeper, and he added in an embarrassed tone: "Imean a common, sneaking thief--no account at all. And he calls himself aSwedish baron, too! Tfui!"

"He's a baron, is he? That foreign nobility ain't much, " commented Mr. Ricardo seriously. "And then what? He hung about here!"

"Yes, he hung about, " said Schomberg, making a wry mouth. "He--hungabout. That's it. Hung--"

His voice died out. Curiosity was depicted in Ricardo's countenance. 

"Just like that; for nothing? And then turned about and went back tothat island again?"

"And went back to that island again, " Schomberg echoed lifelessly, fixing his gaze on the floor. 

"What's the matter with you?" asked Ricardo with genuine surprise. "Whatis it?"

Schomberg, without looking up, made an impatient gesture. His face wascrimson, and he kept it lowered. Ricardo went back to the point. 

"Well, but how do you account for it? What was his reason? What did hego back to the island for?"

"Honeymoon!" spat out Schomberg viciously. 

Perfectly still, his eyes downcast, he suddenly, with no preliminarystir, hit the table with his fist a blow which caused the utterlyunprepared Ricardo to leap aside. And only then did Schomberg look upwith a dull, resentful expression. 

Ricardo stared hard for a moment, spun on his heel, walked to the endof the room, came back smartly, and muttered a profound "Ay! Ay!" aboveSchomberg's rigid head. That the hotel-keeper was capable of agreat moral effort was proved by a gradual return of his severe, Lieutenant-of-the-Reserve manner. 

"Ay, ay!" repeated Ricardo more deliberately than before, and as ifafter a further survey of the circumstances, "I wish I hadn't asked you, or that you had told me a lie. It don't suit me to know that there's awoman mixed up in this affair. What's she like? It's the girl you--"

"Leave off!" muttered Schomberg, utterly pitiful behind his stiffmilitary front. 

"Ay, ay!" Ricardo ejaculated for the third time, more and moreenlightened and perplexed. "Can't bear to talk about it--so bad as that?And yet I would bet she isn't a miracle to look at. "

Schomberg made a gesture as if he didn't know, as if he didn't care. Then he squared his shoulders and frowned at vacancy. 

"Swedish baron--h'm!" Ricardo continued meditatively. "I believe thegovernor would think that business worth looking up, quite, if I put itto him properly. The governor likes a duel, if you will call it so; butI don't know a man that can stand up to him on the square. Have you everseen a cat play with a mouse? It's a pretty sight!"

Ricardo, with his voluptuously gleaming eyes and the coy expression, looked so much like a cat that Schomberg would have felt all the alarmof a mouse if other feelings had not had complete possession of hisbreast. 

"There are no lies between you and me, " he said, more steadily than hethought he could speak. 

"What's the good now? He funks women. In that Mexican pueblo where welay grounded on our beef-bones, so to speak, I used to go to dances ofan evening. The girls there would ask me if the English caballero inthe posada was a monk in disguise, or if he had taken a vow to thesancissima madre not to speak to a woman, or whether--You can imaginewhat fairly free-spoken girls will ask when they come to the point ofnot caring what they say; and it used to vex me. Yes, the governor funksfacing women. "

"One woman?" interjected Schomberg in guttural tones. 

"One may be more awkward to deal with than two, or two hundred, for thatmatter. In a place that's full of women you needn't look at them unlessyou like; but if you go into a room where there is only one woman, youngor old, pretty or ugly, you have got to face her. And, unless you areafter her, then--the governor is right enough--she's in the way. "

"Why notice them?" muttered Schomberg. "What can they do?"

"Make a noise, if nothing else, " opined Mr. Ricardo curtly, with thedistaste of a man whose path is a path of silence; for indeed, nothingis more odious than a noise when one is engaged in a weighty andabsorbing card game. "Noise, noise, my friend, " he went on forcibly;"confounded screeching about something or other, and I like it no morethan the governor does. But with the governor there's something elsebesides. He can't stand them at all. "

He paused to reflect on this psychological phenomenon, and as nophilosopher was at hand to tell him that there is no strong sentimentwithout some terror, as there is no real religion without a littlefetishism, he emitted his own conclusion, which surely could not go tothe root of the matter. 

"I'm hanged if I don't think they are to him what liquor is to me. Brandy--pah!"

He made a disgusted face, and produced a genuine shudder. Schomberglistened to him in wonder. It looked as if the very scoundrelism, ofthat--that Swede would protect him; the spoil of his iniquity standingbetween the thief and the retribution. 

"That's so, old buck. " Ricardo broke the silence after contemplatingSchomberg's mute dejection with a sort of sympathy. "I don't think thistrick will work. "

"But that's silly, " whispered the man deprived of the vengeance which hehad seemed already to hold in his hand, by a mysterious and exasperatingidiosyncrasy. 

"Don't you set yourself to judge a gentleman. " Ricardo without angeradministered a moody rebuke. "Even I can't understand the governorthoroughly. And I am an Englishman and his follower. No, I don't think Icare to put it before him, sick as I am of staying here. "

Ricardo could not be more sick of staying than Schomberg was of seeinghim stay. Schomberg believed so firmly in the reality of Heyst ascreated by his own power of false inferences, of his hate, of his loveof scandal, that he could not contain a stifled cry of convictionas sincere as most of our convictions, the disguised servants of ourpassions, can appear at a supreme moment. 

"It would have been like going to pick up a nugget of a thousand pounds, or two or three times as much, for all I know. No trouble, no--"

"The petticoat's the trouble, " Ricardo struck in. 

He had resumed his noiseless, feline, oblique prowling, in which anobserver would have detected a new character of excitement, such as awild animal of the cat species, anxious to make a spring, might betray. Schomberg saw nothing. It would probably have cheered his droopingspirits; but in a general way he preferred not to look at Ricardo. Ricardo, however, with one of his slanting, gliding, restless glances, observed the bitter smile on Schomberg's bearded lips--the unmistakablesmile of ruined hopes. 

"You are a pretty unforgiving sort of chap, " he said, stopping for amoment with an air of interest. "Hang me if I ever saw anybody look sodisappointed! I bet you would send black plague to that island if youonly knew how--eh, what? Plague too good for them? Ha, ha, ha!"

He bent down to stare at Schomberg who sat unstirring with stony eyesand set features, and apparently deaf to the rasping derision of thatlaughter so close to his red fleshy ear. 

"Black plague too good for them, ha, ha!" Ricardo pressed the point onthe tormented hotel-keeper. Schomberg kept his eyes down obstinately. 

"I don't wish any harm to the girl--" he muttered. 

"But did she bolt from you? A fair bilk? Come!"

"Devil only knows what that villainous Swede had done to her--what hepromised her, how he frightened her. She couldn't have cared for him, I know. " Schomberg's vanity clung to the belief in some atrocious, extraordinary means of seduction employed by Heyst. "Look how hebewitched that poor Morrison, " he murmured. 

"Ah, Morrison--got all his money, what?"

"Yes--and his life. "

"Terrible fellow, that Swedish baron! How is one to get at him?"

Schomberg exploded. 

"Three against one! Are you shy? Do you want me to give you a letter ofintroduction?"

"You ought to look at yourself in a glass, " Ricardo said quietly. "Dashme if you don't get a stroke of some kind presently. And this is thefellow who says women can do nothing! That one will do for you, unlessyou manage to forget her. "

"I wish I could, " Schomberg admitted earnestly. "And it's all the doingof that Swede. I don't get enough sleep, Mr. Ricardo. And then, tofinish me off, you gentlemen turn up . . . As if I hadn't enough worry. "

"That's done you good, " suggested the secretary with ironic seriousness. "Takes your mind off that silly trouble. At your age too. "

He checked himself, as if in pity, and changing his tone:

"I would really like to oblige you while doing a stroke of business atthe same time. "

"A good stroke, " insisted Schomberg, as if it were mechanically. In hissimplicity he was not able to give up the idea which had entered hishead. An idea must be driven out by another idea, and with Schombergideas were rare and therefore tenacious. "Minted gold, " he murmured witha sort of anguish. 

Such an expressive combination of words was not without effect uponRicardo. Both these men were amenable to the influence of verbalsuggestions. The secretary of "plain Mr. Jones" sighed and murmured. 

"Yes. But how is one to get at it?"

"Being three to one, " said Schomberg, "I suppose you could get it forthe asking. "

"One would think the fellow lived next door, " Ricardo growledimpatiently. "Hang it all, can't you understand a plain question? I haveasked you the way. "

Schomberg seemed to revive. 

"The way?"

The torpor of deceived hopes underlying his superficial changes of moodhad been pricked by these words which seemed pointed with purpose. 

"The way is over the water, of course, " said the hotel-keeper. "Forpeople like you, three days in a good, big boat is nothing. It's no morethan a little outing, a bit of a change. At this season the Java Seais a pond. I have an excellent, safe boat--a ship's life-boat--carrythirty, let alone three, and a child could handle her. You wouldn't geta wet face at this time of the year. You might call it a pleasure-trip. "

"And yet, having this boat, you didn't go after her yourself--or afterhim? Well, you are a fine fellow for a disappointed lover. "

Schomberg gave a start at the suggestion. 

"I am not three men, " he said sulkily, as the shortest answer of theseveral he could have given. 

"Oh, I know your sort, " Ricardo let fall negligently. "You are like mostpeople--or perhaps just a little more peaceable than the rest of thebuying and selling gang that bosses this rotten show. Well, well, you respectable citizen, " he went on, "let us go thoroughly into thematter. "

When Schomberg had been made to understand that Mr. Jones's henchman wasready to discuss, in his own words, "this boat of yours, with coursesand distances, " and such concrete matters of no good augury to thatvillainous Swede, he recovered his soldierly bearing, squared hisshoulders, and asked in his military manner:

"You wish, then, to proceed with the business?"

Ricardo nodded. He had a great mind to, he said. A gentleman had to behumoured as much as possible; but he must be managed, too, on occasions, for his own good. And it was the business of the right sort of"follower" to know the proper time and the proper methods of thatdelicate part of his duty. Having exposed this theory Ricardo proceededto the application. 

"I've never actually lied to him, " he said, "and I ain't going to now. I shall just say nothing about the girl. He will have to get over theshock the best he can. Hang it all! Too much humouring won't do here. "

"Funny thing, " Schomberg observed crisply. 

"Is it? Ay, you wouldn't mind taking a woman by the throat in some darkcorner and nobody by, I bet!"

Ricardo's dreadful, vicious, cat-like readiness to get his claws out atany moment startled Schomberg as usual. But it was provoking too. 

"And you?" he defended himself. "Don't you want me to believe you are upto anything?"

"I, my boy? Oh, yes. I am not that gentleman; neither are you. Take 'emby the throat or chuck 'em under the chin is all one to me--almost, "affirmed Ricardo, with something obscurely ironical in his complacency. "Now, as to this business. A three days' jaunt in a good boat isn't athing to frighten people like us. You are right, so far; but there areother details. "

Schomberg was ready enough to enter into details. He explained that hehad a small plantation, with a fairly habitable hut on it, on Madura. Heproposed that his guest should start from town in his boat, as if goingfor an excursion to that rural spot. The custom-house people on the quaywere used to see his boat go off on such trips. 

From Madura, after some repose and on a convenient day, Mr. Jonesand party would make the real start. It would all be plain sailing. Schomberg undertook to provision the boat. The greatest hardship thevoyagers need apprehend would be a mild shower of rain. At that seasonof the year there were no serious thunderstorms. 

Schomberg's heart began to thump as he saw himself nearing hisvengeance. His speech was thick but persuasive. 

"No risk at all--none whatever. "

Ricardo dismissed these assurances of safety with an impatient gesture. He was thinking of other risks. 

"The getting away from here is all right; but we may be sighted at sea, and that may bring awkwardness later on. A ship's boat with three whitemen in her, knocking about out of sight of land, is bound to make talk. Are we likely to be seen on our way?"

"No, unless by native craft, " said Schomberg. 

Ricardo nodded, satisfied. Both these white men looked on native life asa mere play of shadows. A play of shadows the dominant race couldwalk through unaffected and disregarded in the pursuit of itsincomprehensible aims and needs. No. Native craft did not count, ofcourse. It was an empty, solitary part of the sea, Schomberg expoundedfurther. Only the Ternate mail-boat crossed that region about the eighthof every month, regularly--nowhere near the island though. Rigid, hisvoice hoarse, his heart thumping, his mind concentrated on the successof his plan, the hotel-keeper multiplied words, as if to keep as manyof them as possible between himself and the murderous aspect of hispurpose. 

"So, if you gentlemen depart from my plantation quietly at sunset on theeighth--always best to make a start at night, with a land breeze--it's ahundred to one--What am I saying?--it's a thousand to one that nohuman eye will see you on the passage. All you've got to do is keep herheading north-east for, say, fifty hours; perhaps not quite so long. There will always be draft enough to keep a boat moving; you may reckonon that; and then--"

The muscles about his waist quivered under his clothes with eagerness, with impatience, and with something like apprehension, the true natureof which was not clear to him. And he did not want to investigate it. Ricardo regarded him steadily, with those dry eyes of his shining morelike polished stones than living tissue. 

"And then what?" he asked. 

"And then--why, you will astonish der herr baron--ha, ha!"

Schomberg seemed to force the words and the laugh out of himself in ahoarse bass. 

"And you believe he has all that plunder by him?" asked Ricardo, ratherperfunctorily, because the fact seemed to him extremely probable whenlooked at all round by his acute mind. 

Schomberg raised his hands and lowered them slowly. 

"How can it be otherwise? He was going home, he was on his way, in thishotel. Ask people. Was it likely he would leave it behind him?"

Ricardo was thoughtful. Then, suddenly raising his head, he remarked:

"Steer north-east for fifty hours, eh? That's not much of a sailingdirection. I've heard of a port being missed before on betterinformation. Can't you say what sort of landfall a fellow may expect?But I suppose you have never seen that island yourself?"

Schomberg admitted that he had not seen it, in a tone in which aman congratulates himself on having escaped the contamination of anunsavoury experience. No, certainly not. He had never had any businessto call there. But what of that? He could give Mr. Ricardo as good asea-mark as anybody need wish for. He laughed nervously. Miss it! Hedefied anyone that came within forty miles of it to miss the retreat ofthat villainous Swede. 

"What do you think of a pillar of smoke by day and a loom of fire atnight? There's a volcano in full blast near that island--enough to guidealmost a blind man. What more do you want? An active volcano to steerby?"

These last words he roared out exultingly, then jumped up and glared. The door to the left of the bar had swung open, and Mrs. Schomberg, dressed for duty, stood facing him down the whole length of the room. She clung to the handle for a moment, then came in and glided to herplace, where she sat down to stare straight before her, as usual. 

PART THREE

CHAPTER ONE

Tropical nature had been kind to the failure of the commercialenterprise. The desolation of the headquarters of the Tropical Belt CoalCompany had been screened from the side of the sea; from the side whereprying eyes--if any were sufficiently interested, either in malice orin sorrow--could have noted the decaying bones of that once sanguineenterprise. 

Heyst had been sitting among the bones buried so kindly in the grass oftwo wet seasons' growth. The silence of his surroundings, broken only bysuch sounds as a distant roll of thunder, the lash of rain through thefoliage of some big trees, the noise of the wind tossing the leaves ofthe forest, and of the short seas breaking against the shore, favouredrather than hindered his solitary meditation. 

A meditation is always--in a white man, at least--more or less aninterrogative exercise. Heyst meditated in simple terms on the mysteryof his actions; and he answered himself with the honest reflection:

"There must be a lot of the original Adam in me, after all. "

He reflected, too, with the sense of making a discovery, that hisprimeval ancestor is not easily suppressed. The oldest voice in theworld is just the one that never ceases to speak. If anybody could havesilenced its imperative echoes, it should have been Heyst's father, withhis contemptuous, inflexible negation of all effort; but apparently hecould not. There was in the son a lot of that first ancestor who, as soon as he could uplift his muddy frame from the celestial mould, started inspecting and naming the animals of that paradise which he wasso soon to lose. 

Action--the first thought, or perhaps the first impulse, on earth! Thebarbed hook, baited with the illusions of progress, to bring out of thelightless void the shoals of unnumbered generations!

"And I, the son of my father, have been caught too, like the silliestfish of them all. " Heyst said to himself. 

He suffered. He was hurt by the sight of his own life, which ought tohave been a masterpiece of aloofness. He remembered always his lastevening with his father. He remembered the thin features, the great massof white hair, and the ivory complexion. A five-branched candlestickstood on a little table by the side of the easy chair. They had beentalking a long time. The noises of the street had died out one by one, till at last, in the moonlight, the London houses began to look like thetombs of an unvisited, unhonoured, cemetery of hopes. 

He had listened. Then, after a silence, he had asked--for he was reallyyoung then:

"Is there no guidance?"

His father was in an unexpectedly soft mood on that night, when the moonswam in a cloudless sky over the begrimed shadows of the town. 

"You still believe in something, then?" he said in a clear voice, which had been growing feeble of late. "You believe in flesh and blood, perhaps? A full and equable contempt would soon do away with that, too. But since you have not attained to it, I advise you to cultivatethat form of contempt which is called pity. It is perhaps the leastdifficult--always remembering that you, too, if you are anything, are aspitiful as the rest, yet never expecting any pity for yourself. "

"What is one to do, then?" sighed the young man, regarding his father, rigid in the high-backed chair. 

"Look on--make no sound, " were the last words of the man who had spenthis life in blowing blasts upon a terrible trumpet which filled heavenand earth with ruins, while mankind went on its way unheeding. 

That very night he died in his bed, so quietly that they found himin his usual attitude of sleep, lying on his side, one hand under hischeek, and his knees slightly bent. He had not even straightened hislegs. 

His son buried the silenced destroyer of systems, of hopes, of beliefs. He observed that the death of that bitter contemner of life did nottrouble the flow of life's stream, where men and women go by thick asdust, revolving and jostling one another like figures cut out of corkand weighted with lead just sufficiently to keep them in their proudlyupright posture. 

After the funeral, Heyst sat alone, in the dusk, and his meditation tookthe form of a definite vision of the stream, of the fatuously jostling, nodding, spinning figures hurried irresistibly along, and giving no signof being aware that the voice on the bank had been suddenly silenced. . . Yes. A few obituary notices generally insignificant and some grosslyabusive. The son had read them all with mournful detachment. 

"This is the hate and rage of their fear, " he thought to himself, "andalso of wounded vanity. They shriek their little shriek as they flypast. I suppose I ought to hate him too . . . "

He became aware of his eyes being wet. It was not that the man was hisfather. For him it was purely a matter of hearsay which could not initself cause this emotion. No! It was because he had looked at him solong that he missed him so much. The dead man had kept him on the bankby his side. And now Heyst felt acutely that he was alone on the bank ofthe stream. In his pride he determined not to enter it. 

A few slow tears rolled down his face. The rooms, filling with shadows, seemed haunted by a melancholy, uneasy presence which could not expressitself. The young man got up with a strange sense of making way forsomething impalpable that claimed possession, went out of the house, andlocked the door. A fortnight later he started on his travels--to "lookon and never make a sound. "

The elder Heyst had left behind him a little money and a certainquantity of movable objects, such as books, tables, chairs, andpictures, which might have complained of heartless desertion after manyyears of faithful service; for there is a soul in things. Heyst, ourHeyst, had often thought of them, reproachful and mute, shrouded andlocked up in those rooms, far away in London with the sounds of thestreet reaching them faintly, and sometimes a little sunshine, whenthe blinds were pulled up and the windows opened from time to time inpursuance of his original instructions and later reminders. It seemedas if in his conception of a world not worth touching, and perhaps notsubstantial enough to grasp, these objects familiar to his childhood andhis youth, and associated with the memory of an old man, were the onlyrealities, something having an absolute existence. He would never havethem sold, or even moved from the places they occupied when he lookedupon them last. When he was advised from London that his lease hadexpired, and that the house, with some others as like it as two peas, was to be demolished, he was surprisingly distressed. 

He had entered by then the broad, human path of inconsistencies. Alreadythe Tropical Belt Coal Company was in existence. He sent instructionsto have some of the things sent out to him at Samburan, just as anyordinary, credulous person would have done. They came, torn out fromtheir long repose--a lot of books, some chairs and tables, his father'sportrait in oils, which surprised Heyst by its air of youth, because heremembered his father as a much older man; a lot of small objects, suchas candlesticks, inkstands, and statuettes from his father's study, which surprised him because they looked so old and so much worn. 

The manager of the Tropical Belt Coal Company, unpacking them on theveranda in the shade besieged by a fierce sunshine, must have felt likea remorseful apostate before these relics. He handled them tenderly;and it was perhaps their presence there which attached him to the islandwhen he woke up to the failure of his apostasy. Whatever the decisivereason, Heyst had remained where another would have been glad to be off. The excellent Davidson had discovered the fact without discovering thereason, and took a humane interest in Heyst's strange existence, whileat the same time his native delicacy kept him from intruding on theother's whim of solitude. He could not possibly guess that Heyst, aloneon the island, felt neither more nor less lonely than in any otherplace, desert or populous. Davidson's concern was, if one may express itso, the danger of spiritual starvation; but this was a spirit which hadrenounced all outside nourishment, and was sustaining itself proudly onits own contempt of the usual coarse ailments which life offers to thecommon appetites of men. 

Neither was Heyst's body in danger of starvation, as Schomberg had soconfidently asserted. At the beginning of the company's operations theisland had been provisioned in a manner which had outlasted the need. Heyst did not need to fear hunger; and his very loneliness had not beenwithout some alleviation. Of the crowd of imported Chinese labourers, one at least had remained in Samburan, solitary and strange, like aswallow left behind at the migrating season of his tribe. 

Wang was not a common coolie. He had been a servant to white men before. The agreement between him and Heyst consisted in the exchange of a fewwords on the day when the last batch of the mine coolies was leavingSamburan. Heyst, leaning over the balustrade of the veranda, was lookingon, as calm in appearance as though he had never departed from thedoctrine that this world, for the wise, is nothing but an amusingspectacle. Wang came round the house, and standing below, raised up hisyellow, thin face. 

"All finished?" he asked. Heyst nodded slightly from above, glancingtowards the jetty. A crowd of blue-clad figures with yellow faces andcalves was being hustled down into the boats of the chartered steamerlying well out, like a painted ship on a painted sea; painted in crudecolours, without shadows, without feeling, with brutal precision. 

"You had better hurry up if you don't want to be left behind. "

But the Chinaman did not move. 

"We stop, " he declared. Heyst looked down at him for the first time. 

"You want to stop here?"

"Yes. "

"What were you? What was your work here?"

"Mess-loom boy. "

"Do you want to stay with me here as my boy?" inquired Heyst, surprised. 

The Chinaman unexpectedly put on a deprecatory expression, and said, after a marked pause:

"Can do. "

"You needn't, " said Heyst, "unless you like. I propose to stay onhere--it may be for a very long time. I have no power to make you go ifyou wish to remain, but I don't see why you should. "

"Catchee one piecee wife, " remarked Wang unemotionally, and marched off, turning his back on the wharf and the great world beyond, represented bythe steamer waiting for her boats. 

Heyst learned presently that Wang had persuaded one of the women ofAlfuro village, on the west shore of the island, beyond the centralridge, to come over to live with him in a remote part of the company'sclearing. It was a curious case, inasmuch as the Alfuros, having beenfrightened by the sudden invasion of Chinamen, had blocked the path overthe ridge by felling a few trees, and had kept strictly on their ownside. The coolies, as a body, mistrusting the manifest mildness of theseharmless fisher-folk, had kept to their lines, without attempting tocross the island. Wang was the brilliant exception. He must have beenuncommonly fascinating, in a way that was not apparent to Heyst, or elseuncommonly persuasive. The woman's services to Heyst were limited tothe fact that she had anchored Wang to the spot by her charms, whichremained unknown to the white man, because she never came near thehouses. The couple lived at the edge of the forest, and she couldsometimes be seen gazing towards the bungalow shading her eyes with herhand. Even from a distance she appeared to be a shy, wild creature, and Heyst, anxious not to try her primitive nerves unduly, scrupulouslyavoided that side of the clearing in his strolls. 

The day--or rather the first night--after his hermit life began, he wasaware of vague sounds of revelry in that direction. Emboldened by thedeparture of the invading strangers, some Alfuros, the woman's friendsand relations, had ventured over the ridge to attend something in thenature of a wedding feast. Wang had invited them. But this was the onlyoccasion when any sound louder than the buzzing of insects had troubledthe profound silence of the clearing. The natives were never invitedagain. Wang not, only knew how to live according to conventionalproprieties, but had strong personal views as to the manner of arranginghis domestic existence. After a time Heyst perceived that Wang hadannexed all the keys. Any keys left lying about vanished after Wang hadpassed that way. Subsequently some of them--those that did not belongto the store-rooms and the empty bungalows, and could not be regardedas the common property of this community of two--were returned to Heyst, tied in a bunch with a piece of string. He found them one morninglying by the side of his plate. He had not been inconvenienced by theirabsence, because he never locked up anything in the way of drawers andboxes. Heyst said nothing. Wang also said nothing. Perhaps he had alwaysbeen a taciturn man; perhaps he was influenced by the genius of thelocality, which was certainly that of silence. Till Heyst and Morrisonhad landed in Black Diamond Bay, and named it, that side of Samburan hadhardly ever heard the sound of human speech. It was easy to be taciturnwith Heyst, who had plunged himself into an abyss of meditation overbooks, and remained in it till the shadow of Wang falling across thepage, and the sound of a rough, low voice uttering the Malay word"makan, " would force him to climb out to a meal. 

Wang in his native province in China might have been an aggressively, sensitively genial person; but in Samburan he had clothed himself ina mysterious stolidity and did not seem to resent not being spoken toexcept in single words, at a rate which did not average half a dozen perday. And he gave no more than he got. It is to be presumed that if hesuffered he made up for it with the Alfuro woman. He always went back toher at the first fall of dusk, vanishing from the bungalow suddenly atthis hour, like a sort of topsy-turvy, day-hunting, Chinese ghost with awhite jacket and a pigtail. Presently, giving way to a Chinaman's rulingpassion, he could be observed breaking the ground near his hut, betweenthe mighty stumps of felled trees, with a miner's pickaxe. After atime, he discovered a rusty but serviceable spade in one of the emptystore-rooms, and it is to be supposed that he got on famously; butnothing of it could be seen, because he went to the trouble of pullingto pieces one of the company's sheds in order to get materials formaking a high and very close fence round his patch, as if the growingof vegetables were a patented process, or an awful and holy mysteryentrusted to the keeping of his race. 

Heyst, following from a distance the progress of Wang's gardening and ofthese precautions--there was nothing else to look at--was amused atthe thought that he, in his own person, represented the market forits produce. The Chinaman had found several packets of seeds in thestore-rooms, and had surrendered to an irresistible impulse to put theminto the ground. He would make his master pay for the vegetables whichhe was raising to satisfy his instinct. And, looking silently at thesilent Wang going about his work in the bungalow in his unhasty, steady way; Heyst envied the Chinaman's obedience to his instincts, thepowerful simplicity of purpose which made his existence appear almostautomatic in the mysterious precision of its facts. 

CHAPTER TWO

During his master's absence at Sourabaya, Wang had busied himself withthe ground immediately in front of the principal bungalow. Emergingfrom the fringe of grass growing across the shore end of the coal-jetty, Heyst beheld a broad, clear space, black and level, with only one or twoclumps of charred twigs, where the flame had swept from the front of hishouse to the nearest trees of the forest. 

"You took the risk of firing the grass?" Heyst asked. 

Wang nodded. Hanging on the arm of the white man before whom he stoodwas the girl called Alma; but neither from the Chinaman's eyes nor fromhis expression could anyone have guessed that he was in the slightestdegree aware of the fact. 

"He has been tidying the place in his labour-saving way, " explainedHeyst, without looking at the girl, whose hand rested on his forearm. "He's the whole establishment, you see. I told you I hadn't even a dogto keep me company here. "

Wang had marched off towards the wharf. 

"He's like those waiters in that place, " she said. That place wasSchomberg's hotel. 

"One Chinaman looks very much like another, " Heyst remarked. "We shallfind it useful to have him here. This is the house. "

They faced, at some distance, the six shallow steps leading up to theveranda. The girl had abandoned Heyst's arm. 

"This is the house, " he repeated. 

She did not offer to budge away from his side, but stood staring fixedlyat the steps, as if they had been something unique and impracticable. Hewaited a little, but she did not move. 

"Don't you want to go in?" he asked, without turning his head to look ather. "The sun's too heavy to stand about here. " He tried to overcomea sort of fear, a sort of impatient faintness, and his voice soundedrough. "You had better go in, " he concluded. 

They both moved then, but at the foot of the stairs Heyst stopped, whilethe girl went on rapidly, as if nothing could stop her now. She crossedthe veranda swiftly, and entered the twilight of the big central roomopening upon it, and then the deeper twilight of the room beyond. Shestood still in the dusk, in which her dazzled eyes could scarcely makeout the forms of objects, and sighed a sigh of relief. The impressionof the sunlight, of sea and sky, remained with her like a memory of apainful trial gone through--done with at last!

Meanwhile Heyst had walked back slowly towards the jetty; but he did notget so far as that. The practical and automatic Wang had got hold ofone of the little trucks that had been used for running baskets of coalalongside ships. He appeared pushing it before him, loaded lightly withHeyst's bag and the bundle of the girl's belongings, wrapped in Mrs. Schomberg's shawl. Heyst turned about and walked by the side of therusty rails on which the truck ran. Opposite the house Wang stopped, lifted the bag to his shoulder, balanced it carefully, and then took thebundle in his hand. 

"Leave those things on the table in the big room--understand?"

"Me savee, " grunted Wang, moving off. 

Heyst watched the Chinaman disappear from the veranda. It was not tillhe had seen Wang come out that he himself entered the twilight of thebig room. By that time Wang was out of sight at the back of the house, but by no means out of hearing. The Chinaman could hear the voice ofhim who, when there were many people there, was generally referred toas "Number One. " Wang was not able to understand the words, but the toneinterested him. 

"Where are you?" cried Number One. 

Then Wang heard, much more faint, a voice he had never heard before--anovel impression which he acknowledged by cocking his head slightly toone side. 

"I am here--out of the sun. "

The new voice sounded remote and uncertain. Wang heard nothing more, though he waited for some time, very still, the top of his shaven pollexactly level with the floor of the back veranda. His face meanwhilepreserved an inscrutable immobility. Suddenly he stooped to pick upthe lid of a deal candle-box which was lying on the ground by his foot. Breaking it up with his fingers, he directed his steps towards thecook-shed, where, squatting on his heels, he proceeded to kindle a smallfire under a very sooty kettle, possibly to make tea. Wang had someknowledge of the more superficial rites and ceremonies of white men'sexistence, otherwise so enigmatically remote to his mind, and containingunexpected possibilities of good and evil, which had to be watched forwith prudence and care. 

CHAPTER THREE

That morning, as on all the others of the full tale of mornings sincehis return with the girl to Samburan, Heyst came out on the veranda andspread his elbows on the railing, in an easy attitude of proprietorship. The bulk of the central ridge of the island cut off the bungalow fromsunrises, whether glorious or cloudy, angry or serene. The dwellerstherein were debarred from reading early the fortune of the new-bornday. It sprang upon them in its fulness with a swift retreat of thegreat shadow when the sun, clearing the ridge, looked down, hot and dry, with a devouring glare like the eye of an enemy. But Heyst, once theNumber One of this locality, while it was comparatively teeming withmankind, appreciated the prolongation of early coolness, the subdued, lingering half-light, the faint ghost of the departed night, thefragrance of its dewy, dark soul captured for a moment longer betweenthe great glow of the sky and the intense blaze of the uncovered sea. 

It was naturally difficult for Heyst to keep his mind from dwelling onthe nature and consequences of this, his latest departure from the partof an unconcerned spectator. Yet he had retained enough of his wreckedphilosophy to prevent him from asking himself consciously how it wouldend. But at the same time he could not help being temperamentally, fromlong habit and from set purpose, a spectator still, perhaps a littleless naive but (as he discovered with some surprise) not much more farsighted than the common run of men. Like the rest of us who act, all hecould say to himself, with a somewhat affected grimness, was:

"We shall see!"

This mood of grim doubt intruded on him only when he was alone. Therewere not many such moments in his day now; and he did not like them whenthey came. On this morning he had no time to grow uneasy. Alma came outto join him long before the sun, rising above the Samburan ridge, sweptthe cool shadow of the early morning and the remnant of the night'scoolness clear off the roof under which they had dwelt for more thanthree months already. She came out as on other mornings. He had heardher light footsteps in the big room--the room where he had unpacked thecases from London; the room now lined with the backs of books halfway upon its three sides. Above the cases the fine matting met the ceiling oftightly stretched white calico. In the dusk and coolness nothing gleamedexcept the gilt frame of the portrait of Heyst's father, signed by afamous painter, lonely in the middle of a wall. 

Heyst did not turn round. 

"Do you know what I was thinking of?" he asked. 

"No, " she said. Her tone betrayed always a shade of anxiety, as thoughshe were never certain how a conversation with him would end. She leanedon the guard-rail by his side. 

"No, " she repeated. "What was it?" She waited. Then, rather withreluctance than shyness, she asked:

"Were you thinking of me?"

"I was wondering when you would come out, " said Heyst, still withoutlooking at the girl--to whom, after several experimental essays incombining detached letters and loose syllables, he had given the name ofLena. 

She remarked after a pause:

"I was not very far from you. "

"Apparently you were not near enough for me. "

"You could have called if you wanted me, " she said. "And I wasn't solong doing my hair. "

"Apparently it was too long for me. "

"Well, you were thinking of me, anyhow. I am glad of it. Do you know, it seems to me, somehow, that if you were to stop thinking of me Ishouldn't be in the world at all!"

He turned round and looked at her. She often said things which surprisedhim. A vague smile faded away on her lips before his scrutiny. 

"What is it?" he asked. "It is a reproach?"

"A reproach! Why, how could it be?" she defended herself. 

"Well, what did it mean?" he insisted. 

"What I said--just what I said. Why aren't you fair?"

"Ah, this is at least a reproach!"

She coloured to the roots of her hair. 

"It looks as if you were trying to make out that I am disagreeable, " shemurmured. "Am I? You will make me afraid to open my mouth presently. Ishall end by believing I am no good. "

Her head drooped a little. He looked at her smooth, low brow, thefaintly coloured checks, and the red lips parted slightly, with thegleam of her teeth within. 

"And then I won't be any good, " she added with conviction. "That Iwon't! I can only be what you think I am. "

He made a slight movement. She put her hand on his arm, without raisingher head, and went on, her voice animated in the stillness of her body:

"It is so. It couldn't be any other way with a girl like me and a manlike you. Here we are, we two alone, and I can't even tell where weare. "

"A very well-known spot of the globe, " Heyst uttered gently. "Theremust have been at least fifty thousand circulars issued at the time--ahundred and fifty thousand, more likely. My friend was looking afterthat, and his ideas were large and his belief very strong. Of us two itwas he who had the faith. A hundred and fifty thousand, certainly. "

"What is it you mean?" she asked in a low tone. 

"What should I find fault with you for?" Heyst went on. "For beingamiable, good, gracious--and pretty?"

A silence fell. Then she said:

"It's all right that you should think that of me. There's no one here tothink anything of us, good or bad. "

The rare timbre of her voice gave a special value to what she uttered. The indefinable emotion which certain intonations gave him, he wasaware, was more physical than moral. Every time she spoke to him sheseemed to abandon to him something of herself--something excessivelysubtle and inexpressible, to which he was infinitely sensible, which hewould have missed horribly if she were to go away. While he was lookinginto her eyes she raised her bare forearm, out of the short sleeve, andheld it in the air till he noticed it and hastened to pose his greatbronze moustaches on the whiteness of the skin. Then they went in. 

Wang immediately appeared in front, and, squatting on his heels, beganto potter mysteriously about some plants at the foot of the veranda. When Heyst and the girl came out again, the Chinaman had gone in hispeculiar manner, which suggested vanishing out of existence rather thanout of sight, a process of evaporation rather than of movement. Theydescended the steps, looking at each other, and started off smartlyacross the cleared ground; but they were not ten yards away when, without perceptible stir or sound, Wang materialized inside the emptyroom. The Chinaman stood still with roaming eyes, examining the walls asif for signs, for inscriptions; exploring the floor as if for pitfalls, for dropped coins. Then he cocked his head slightly at the profile ofHeyst's father, pen in hand above a white sheet of paper on a crimsontablecloth; and, moving forward noiselessly, began to clear away thebreakfast things. 

Though he proceeded without haste, the unerring precision of hismovements, the absolute soundlessness of the operation, gave itsomething of the quality of a conjuring trick. And, the trick havingbeen performed, Wang vanished from the scene, to materialize presentlyin front of the house. He materialized walking away from it, with novisible or guessable intention; but at the end of some ten paces hestopped, made a half turn, and put his hand up to shade his eyes. Thesun had topped the grey ridge of Samburan. The great morning shadow wasgone; and far away in the devouring sunshine Wang was in time to seeNumber One and the woman, two remote white specks against the sombreline of the forest. In a moment they vanished. With the smallest displayof action, Wang also vanished from the sunlight of the clearing. 

Heyst and Lena entered the shade of the forest path which crossed theisland, and which, near its highest point had been blocked by felledtrees. But their intention was not to go so far. After keeping to thepath for some distance, they left it at a point where the forest wasbare of undergrowth, and the trees, festooned with creepers, stood clearof one another in the gloom of their own making. Here and there greatsplashes of light lay on the ground. They moved, silent in the greatstillness, breathing the calmness, the infinite isolation, the repose ofa slumber without dreams. They emerged at the upper limit of vegetation, among some rocks; and in a depression of the sharp slope, like a smallplatform, they turned about and looked from on high over the sea, lonely, its colour effaced by sunshine, its horizon a heat mist, a mereunsubstantial shimmer in the pale and blinding infinity overhung by thedarker blaze of the sky. 

"It makes my head swim, " the girl murmured, shutting her eyes andputting her hand on his shoulder. 

Heyst, gazing fixedly to the southward, exclaimed:

"Sail ho!"

A moment of silence ensued. 

"It must be very far away, " he went on. "I don't think you could see it. Some native craft making for the Moluccas, probably. Come, we mustn'tstay here. "

With his arm round her waist, he led her down a little distance, andthey settled themselves in the shade; she, seated on the ground, he alittle lower, reclining at her feet. 

"You don't like to look at the sea from up there?" he said after a time. 

She shook her head. That empty space was to her the abomination ofdesolation. But she only said again:

"It makes my head swim. "

"Too big?" he inquired. 

"Too lonely. It makes my heart sink, too, " she added in a low voice, asif confessing a secret. 

"I'm am afraid, " said Heyst, "that you would be justified in reproachingme for these sensations. But what would you have?"

His tone was playful, but his eyes, directed at her face, were serious. She protested. 

"I am not feeling lonely with you--not a bit. It is only when we come upto that place, and I look at all that water and all that light--"

"We will never come here again, then, " he interrupted her. 

She remained silent for a while, returning his gaze till he removed it. 

"It seems as if everything that there is had gone under, " she said. 

"Reminds you of the story of the deluge, " muttered the man, stretched ather feet and looking at them. "Are you frightened at it?"

"I should be rather frightened to be left behind alone. When I say, I, of course I mean we. "

"Do you?" . . . Heyst remained silent for a while. "The vision of aworld destroyed, " he mused aloud. "Would you be sorry for it?"

"I should be sorry for the happy people in it, " she said simply. 

His gaze travelled up her figure and reached her face, where he seemedto detect the veiled glow of intelligence, as one gets a glimpse of thesun through the clouds. 

"I should have thought it's they specially who ought to have beencongratulated. Don't you?"

"Oh, yes--I understand what you mean; but there were forty days beforeit was all over. "

"You seem to be in possession of all the details. "

Heyst spoke just to say something rather than to gaze at her in silence. She was not looking at him. 

"Sunday school, " she murmured. "I went regularly from the time Iwas eight till I was thirteen. We lodged in the north of London, offKingsland Road. It wasn't a bad time. Father was earning good moneythen. The woman of the house used to pack me off in the afternoon withher own girls. She was a good woman. Her husband was in the post office. Sorter or something. Such a quiet man. He used to go off after supperfor night-duty, sometimes. Then one day they had a row, and broke up thehome. I remember I cried when we had to pack up all of a sudden and gointo other lodgings. I never knew what it was, though--"

"The deluge, " muttered Heyst absently. 

He felt intensely aware of her personality, as if this were the firstmoment of leisure he had found to look at her since they had cometogether. The peculiar timbre of her voice, with its modulations ofaudacity and sadness, would have given interest to the most inanechatter. But she was no chatterer. She was rather silent, with acapacity for immobility, an upright stillness, as when resting on theconcert platform between the musical numbers, her feet crossed, herhands reposing on her lap. But in the intimacy of their life her grey, unabashed gaze forced upon him the sensation of something inexplicablereposing within her; stupidity or inspiration, weakness or force--orsimply an abysmal emptiness, reserving itself even in the moments ofcomplete surrender. 

During a long pause she did not look at him. Then suddenly, as ifthe word "deluge" had stuck in her mind, she asked, looking up at thecloudless sky:

"Does it ever rain here?"

"There is a season when it rains almost every day, " said Heyst, surprised. "There are also thunderstorms. We once had a 'mud-shower. '"

"Mud-shower?"

"Our neighbour there was shooting up ashes. He sometimes clears hisred-hot gullet like that; and a thunderstorm came along at thesame time. It was very messy; but our neighbour is generally wellbehaved--just smokes quietly, as he did that day when I first showedyou the smudge in the sky from the schooner's deck. He's a good-natured, lazy fellow of a volcano. "

"I saw a mountain smoking like that before, " she said, staring at theslender stem of a tree-fern some dozen feet in front of her. "It wasn'tvery long after we left England--some few days, though. I was so ill atfirst that I lost count of days. A smoking mountain--I can't think howthey called it. "

"Vesuvius, perhaps, " suggested Heyst. 

"That's the name. "

"I saw it, too, years, ages ago, " said Heyst. 

"On your way here?"

"No, long before I ever thought of coming into this part of the world. Iwas yet a boy. "

She turned and looked at him attentively, as if seeking to discover sometrace of that boyhood in the mature face of the man with the hairthin at the top and the long, thick moustaches. Heyst stood the frankexamination with a playful smile, hiding the profound effect theseveiled grey eyes produced--whether on his heart or on his nerves, whether sensuous or spiritual, tender or irritating, he was unable tosay. 

"Well, princess of Samburan, " he said at last, "have I found favour inyour sight?"

She seemed to wake up, and shook her head. 

"I was thinking, " she murmured very low. 

"Thought, action--so many snares! If you begin to think you will beunhappy. "

"I wasn't thinking of myself!" she declared with a simplicity which tookHeyst aback somewhat. 

"On the lips of a moralist this would sound like a rebuke, " he said, half seriously; "but I won't suspect you of being one. Moralists and Ihaven't been friends for many years. "

She had listened with an air of attention. 

"I understood you had no friends, " she said. "I am pleased that there'snobody to find fault with you for what you have done. I like to thinkthat I am in no one's way. "

Heyst would have said something, but she did not give him time. Unconscious of the movement he made she went on:

"What I was thinking to myself was, why are you here?"

Heyst let himself sink on his elbow again. 

"If by 'you' you mean 'we'--well, you know why we are here. "

She bent her gaze down at him. 

"No, it isn't that. I meant before--all that time before you came acrossme and guessed at once that I was in trouble, with no one to turn to. And you know it was desperate trouble too. "

Her voice fell on the last words, as if she would end there; but therewas something so expectant in Heyst's attitude as he sat at her feet, looking up at her steadily, that she continued, after drawing a short, quick breath:

"It was, really. I told you I had been worried before by bad fellows. It made me unhappy, disturbed--angry, too. But oh, how I hated, hated, _hated_ that man!"

"That man" was the florid Schomberg with the military bearing, benefactor of white men ('decent food to eat in decent company')--maturevictim of belated passion. The girl shuddered. The characteristicharmoniousness of her face became, as it were, decomposed for aninstant. Heyst was startled. 

"Why think of it now?" he cried. 

"It's because I was cornered that time. It wasn't as before. It wasworse, ever so much. I wished I could die of my fright--and yet it'sonly now that I begin to understand what a horror it might have been. Yes, only now, since we--"

Heyst stirred a little. 

"Came here, " he finished. 

Her tenseness relaxed, her flushed face went gradually back to itsnormal tint. 

"Yes, " she said indifferently, but at the same time she gave him astealthy glance of passionate appreciation; and then her face took on amelancholy cast, her whole figure drooped imperceptibly. 

"But you were coming back here anyhow?" she asked. 

"Yes. I was only waiting for Davidson. Yes, I was coming back here, tothese ruins--to Wang, who perhaps did not expect to see me again. It'simpossible to guess at the way that Chinaman draws his conclusions, andhow he looks upon one. "

"Don't talk about him. He makes me feel uncomfortable. Talk aboutyourself!"

"About myself? I see you are still busy with the mystery of my existencehere; but it isn't at all mysterious. Primarily the man with the quillpen in his hand in that picture you so often look at is responsible formy existence. He is also responsible for what my existence is, orrather has been. He was a great man in his way. I don't know much of hishistory. I suppose he began like other people; took fine words for good, ringing coin and noble ideals for valuable banknotes. He was a greatmaster of both, himself, by the way. Later he discovered--how am I toexplain it to you? Suppose the world were a factory and all mankindworkmen in it. Well, he discovered that the wages were not good enough. That they were paid in counterfeit money. "

"I see!" the girl said slowly. 

"Do you?"

Heyst, who had been speaking as if to himself, looked up curiously. 

"It wasn't a new discovery, but he brought his capacity for scorn tobear on it. It was immense. It ought to have withered this globe. Idon't know how many minds he convinced. But my mind was very young then, and youth I suppose can be easily seduced--even by a negation. He wasvery ruthless, and yet he was not without pity. He dominated me withoutdifficulty. A heartless man could not have done so. Even to fools he wasnot utterly merciless. He could be indignant, but he was too great forflouts and jeers. What he said was not meant for the crowd; it could notbe; and I was flattered to find myself among the elect. They read hisbooks, but I have heard his living word. It was irresistible. It wasas if that mind were taking me into its confidence, giving me a specialinsight into its mastery of despair. Mistake, no doubt. There issomething of my father in every man who lives long enough. But theydon't say anything. They can't. They wouldn't know how, or perhaps, they wouldn't speak if they could. Man on this earth is an unforeseenaccident which does not stand close investigation. However, thatparticular man died as quietly as a child goes to sleep. But, afterlistening to him, I could not take my soul down into the street to fightthere. I started off to wander about, an independent spectator--if thatis possible. "

For a long time the girl's grey eyes had been watching his face. Shediscovered that, addressing her, he was really talking to himself. Heystlooked up, caught sight of her as it were, and caught himself up, with alow laugh and a change of tone. 

"All this does not tell you why I ever came here. Why, indeed? It's likeprying into inscrutable mysteries which are not worth scrutinizing. Aman drifts. The most successful men have drifted into their successes. I don't want to tell you that this is a success. You wouldn't believeme if I did. It isn't; neither is it the ruinous failure it looks. Itproves nothing, unless perhaps some hidden weakness in my character--andeven that is not certain. "

He looked fixedly at her, and with such grave eyes that she felt obligedto smile faintly at him, since she did not understand what he meant. Hersmile was reflected, still fainter, on his lips. 

"This does not advance you much in your inquiry, " he went on. "And intruth your question is unanswerable; but facts have a certain positivevalue, and I will tell you a fact. One day I met a cornered man. I usethe word because it expresses the man's situation exactly, and becauseyou just used it yourself. You know what that means?"

"What do you say?" she whispered, astounded. "A man!"

Heyst laughed at her wondering eyes. 

"No! No! I mean in his own way. "

"I knew very well it couldn't be anything like that, " she observed underher breath. 

"I won't bother you with the story. It was a custom-house affair, strange as it may sound to you. He would have preferred to be killedoutright--that is, to have his soul dispatched to another world, ratherthan to be robbed of his substance, his very insignificant substance, inthis. I saw that he believed in another world because, being cornered, as I have told you, he went down on his knees and prayed. What do youthink of that?"

Heyst paused. She looked at him earnestly. 

"You didn't make fun of him for that?" she said. 

Heyst made a brusque movement of protest

"My dear girl, I am not a ruffian, " he cried. Then, returning to hisusual tone: "I didn't even have to conceal a smile. Somehow it didn'tlook a smiling matter. No, it was not funny; it was rather pathetic; hewas so representative of an the past victims of the Great Joke. But itis by folly alone that the world moves, and so it is a respectable thingupon the whole. And besides, he was what one would call a good man. Idon't mean especially because he had offered up a prayer. No! He wasreally a decent fellow, he was quite unfitted for this world, he was afailure, a good man cornered--a sight for the gods; for no decent mortalcares to look at that sort. " A thought seemed to occur to him. He turnedhis face to the girl. "And you, who have been cornered too--did youthink of offering a prayer?"

Neither her eyes nor a single one of her features moved the least bit. She only let fall the words:

"I am not what they call a good girl. "

"That sounds evasive, " said Heyst after a short silence. "Well, the goodfellow did pray and after he had confessed to it I was struck by thecomicality of the situation. No, don't misunderstand me--I am notalluding to his act, of course. And even the idea of Eternity, Infinity, Omnipotence, being called upon to defeat the conspiracy of two miserablePortuguese half-castes did not move my mirth. From the point of view ofthe supplicant, the danger to be conjured was something like the endof the world, or worse. No! What captivated my fancy was that I, AxelHeyst, the most detached of creatures in this earthly captivity, theveriest tramp on this earth, an indifferent stroller going through theworld's bustle--that I should have been there to step into the situationof an agent of Providence. _I_, a man of universal scorn andunbelief. . . . "

"You are putting it on, " she interrupted in her seductive voice, with acoaxing intonation. 

"No. I am not like that, born or fashioned, or both. I am not fornothing the son of my father, of that man in the painting. I am he, allbut the genius. And there is even less in me than I make out, becausethe very scorn is falling away from me year after year. I have neverbeen so amused as by that episode in which I was suddenly called to actsuch an incredible part. For a moment I enjoyed it greatly. It got himout of his corner, you know. "

"You saved a man for fun--is that what you mean? Just for fun?"

"Why this tone of suspicion?" remonstrated Heyst. "I suppose the sightof this particular distress was disagreeable to me. What you call funcame afterwards, when it dawned on me that I was for him a walking, breathing, incarnate proof of the efficacy of prayer. I was a littlefascinated by it--and then, could I have argued with him? You don'targue against such evidence, and besides it would have looked as ifI had wanted to claim all the merit. Already his gratitude was simplyfrightful. Funny position, wasn't it? The boredom came later, when welived together on board his ship. I had, in a moment of inadvertence, created for myself a tie. How to define it precisely I don't know. Onegets attached in a way to people one has done something for. But is thatfriendship? I am not sure what it was. I only know that he who forms atie is lost. The germ of corruption has entered into his soul. "

Heyst's tone was light, with the flavour of playfulness which seasonedall his speeches and seemed to be of the very essence of his thoughts. The girl he had come across, of whom he had possessed himself, to whosepresence he was not yet accustomed, with whom he did not yet know how tolive; that human being so near and still so strange, gave him a greatersense of his own reality than he had ever known in all his life. 

CHAPTER FOUR

With her knees drawn up, Lena rested her elbows on them and held herhead in both her hands. 

"Are you tired of sitting here?" Heyst asked. 

An almost imperceptible negative movement of the head was all the answershe made. 

"Why are you looking so serious?" he pursued, and immediately thoughtthat habitual seriousness, in the long run, was much more bearable thanconstant gaiety. "However, this expression suits you exceedingly, " headded, not diplomatically, but because, by the tendency of his taste, it was a true statement. "And as long as I can be certain that it is notboredom which gives you this severe air, I am willing to sit here andlook at you till you are ready to go. "

And this was true. He was still under the fresh sortilege of theircommon life, the surprise of novelty, the flattered vanity of hispossession of this woman; for a man must feel that, unless he has ceasedto be masculine. Her eyes moved in his direction, rested on him, then returned to their stare into the deeper gloom at the foot of thestraight tree-trunks, whose spreading crowns were slowly withdrawingtheir shade. The warm air stirred slightly about her motionless head. She would not look at him, from some obscure fear of betraying herself. She felt in her innermost depths an irresistible desire to give herselfup to him more completely, by some act of absolute sacrifice. This wassomething of which he did not seem to have an idea. He was a strangebeing without needs. She felt his eyes fixed upon her; and as he keptsilent, she said uneasily--for she didn't know what his silences mightmean:

"And so you lived with that friend--that good man?"

"Excellent fellow, " Heyst responded, with a readiness that she did notexpect. "But it was a weakness on my part. I really didn't want to, onlyhe wouldn't let me off, and I couldn't explain. He was the sort of manto whom you can't explain anything. He was extremely sensitive, and itwould have been a tigerish thing to do to mangle his delicate feelingsby the sort of plain speaking that would have been necessary. Hismind was like a white-walled, pure chamber, furnished with, say, sixstraw-bottomed chairs, and he was always placing and displacing themin various combinations. But they were always the same chairs. He wasextremely easy to live with; but then he got hold of this coal idea--or, rather, the idea got hold of him, it entered into that scantilyfurnished chamber of which I have just spoken, and sat on all thechairs. There was no dislodging it, you know! It was going to make hisfortune, my fortune, everybody's fortune. In past years, in moments ofdoubt that will come to a man determined to remain free from absurditiesof existence, I often asked myself, with a momentary dread, in what waywould life try to get hold of me? And this was the way. He got it intohis head that he could do nothing without me. And was I now, he askedme, to spurn and ruin him? Well, one morning--I wonder if he had gonedown on his knees to pray that night!--one morning I gave in. "

Heyst tugged violently at a tuft of dried grass, and cast it away fromhim with a nervous gesture. 

"I gave in, " he repeated. 

Looking towards him with a movement of her eyes only, the girl noticedthe strong feeling on his face with that intense interest which hisperson awakened in her mind and in her heart. But it soon passed away, leaving only a moody expression. 

"It's difficult to resist where nothing matters, " he observed. "Andperhaps there is a grain of freakishness in my nature. It amused meto go about uttering silly, commonplace phrases. I was never so wellthought of in the islands till I began to jabber commercial gibberishlike the veriest idiot. Upon my word, I believe that I was actuallyrespected for a time. I was as grave as an owl over it; I had to beloyal to the man. I have been, from first to last, completely, utterlyloyal to the best of my ability. I thought he understood something aboutcoal. And if I had been aware that he knew nothing of it, as in fact hedidn't, well--I don't know what I could have done to stop him. In oneway or another I should have had to be loyal. Truth, work, ambition, love itself, may be only counters in the lamentable or despicable gameof life, but when one takes a hand one must play the game. No, the shadeof Morrison needn't haunt me. What's the matter? I say, Lena, why areyou staring like that? Do you feel ill?"

Heyst made as if to get on his feet. The girl extended her arm to arresthim, and he remained staring in a sitting posture, propped on one arm, observing her indefinable expression of anxiety, as if she were unableto draw breath. 

"What has come to you?" he insisted, feeling strangely unwilling tomove, to touch her. 

"Nothing!" She swallowed painfully. "Of course it can't be. What namedid you say? I didn't hear it properly. "

"Name?" repeated Heyst dazedly. "I only mentioned Morrison. It's thename of that man of whom I've been speaking. What of it?"

"And you mean to say that he was your friend?"

"You have heard enough to judge for yourself. You know as much of ourconnection as I know myself. The people in this part of the worldwent by appearances, and called us friends, as far as I can remember. Appearances--what more, what better can you ask for? In fact you can'thave better. You can't have anything else. "

"You are trying to confuse me with your talk, " she cried. "You can'tmake fun of this. "

"Can't? Well, no I can't. It's a pity. Perhaps it would have been thebest way, " said Heyst, in a tone which for him could be called gloomy. "Unless one could forget the silly business altogether. " His faintplayfulness of manner and speech returned, like a habit one has schooledoneself into, even before his forehead had cleared completely. "But whyare you looking so hard at me? Oh, I don't object, and I shall try notto flinch. Your eyes--"

He was looking straight into them, and as a matter of fact had forgottenall about the late Morrison at that moment. 

"No, " he exclaimed suddenly. "What an impenetrable girl you are Lena, with those grey eyes of yours! Windows of the soul, as some poet hassaid. The fellow must have been a glazier by vocation. Well, nature hasprovided excellently for the shyness of your soul. "

When he ceased speaking, the girl came to herself with a catch of herbreath. He heard her voice, the varied charm of which he thought he knewso well, saying with an unfamiliar intonation:

"And that partner of yours is dead?"

"Morrison? Oh, yes, as I've told you, he--"

"You never told me. "

"Didn't I? I thought I did; or, rather, I thought you must know. Itseems impossible that anybody with whom I speak should not know thatMorrison is dead. "

She lowered her eyelids, and Heyst was startled by something like anexpression of horror on her face. 

"Morrison!" she whispered in an appalled tone. "Morrison!" Her headdrooped. Unable to see her features, Heyst could tell from her voicethat for some reason or other she was profoundly moved by the syllablesof that unromantic name. A thought flashed through his head--could shehave known Morrison? But the mere difference of their origins made itwildly improbable. 

"This is very extraordinary!" he said. "Have you ever heard the namebefore?"

Her head moved quickly several times in tiny affirmative nods, as if shecould not trust herself to speak, or even to look at him. She was bitingher lower lip. 

"Did you ever know anybody of that name?" he asked. 

The girl answered by a negative sign; and then at last she spoke, jerkily, as if forcing herself against some doubt or fear. She had heardof that very man, she told Heyst. 

"Impossible!" he said positively. "You are mistaken. You couldn't haveheard of him, it's--"

He stopped short, with the thought that to talk like this was perfectlyuseless; that one doesn't argue against thin air. 

"But I did hear of him; only I didn't know then, I couldn't guess, thatit was your partner they were talking about. "

"Talking about my partner?" repeated Heyst slowly. 

"No. " Her mind seemed almost as bewildered, as full of incredulity, ashis. "No. They were talking of you really; only I didn't know it. "

"Who were they?" Heyst raised his voice. "Who was talking of me? Talkingwhere?"

With the first question he had lifted himself from his recliningposition; at the last he was on his knees before her, their heads on alevel. 

"Why, in that town, in that hotel. Where else could it have been?" shesaid. 

The idea of being talked about was always novel to Heyst's simplifiedconception of himself. For a moment he was as much surprised as if hehad believed himself to be a mere gliding shadow among men. Besides, he had in him a half-unconscious notion that he was above the level ofisland gossip. 

"But you said first that it was of Morrison they talked, " he remarked tothe girl, sinking on his heels, and no longer much interested. "Strangethat you should have the opportunity to hear any talk at all! I wasrather under the impression that you never saw anybody belonging to thetown except from the platform. "

"You forget that I was not living with the other girls, " she said. "After meals they used to go back to the Pavilion, but I had to stay inthe hotel and do my sewing, or what not, in the room where they talked. "

"I didn't think of that. By the by, you never told me who they were. "

"Why, that horrible red-faced beast, " she said, with all the energy ofdisgust which the mere thought of the hotel-keeper provoked in her. 

"Oh, Schomberg!" Heyst murmured carelessly. 

"He talked to the boss--to Zangiacomo, I mean. I had to sit there. Thatdevil-woman sometimes wouldn't let me go away. I mean Mrs. Zangiacomo. "

"I guessed, " murmured Heyst. "She liked to torment you in a varietyof ways. But it is really strange that the hotel-keeper should talk ofMorrison to Zangiacomo. As far as I can remember he saw very little ofMorrison professionally. He knew many others much better. "

The girl shuddered slightly. 

"That was the only name I ever overheard. I would get as far away fromthem as I could, to the other end of the room, but when that beaststarted shouting I could not help hearing. I wish I had never heardanything. If I had got up and gone out of the room I don't suppose thewoman would have killed me for it; but she would have rowed me in anasty way. She would have threatened me and called me names. That sort, when they know you are helpless, there's nothing to stop them. I don'tknow how it is, but bad people, real bad people that you can see arebad, they get over me somehow. It's the way they set about downing one. I am afraid of wickedness. "

Heyst watched the changing expressions of her face. He encouraged her, profoundly sympathetic, a little amused. 

"I quite understand. You needn't apologize for your great delicacy inthe perception of inhuman evil. I am a little like you. "

"I am not very plucky, " she said. 

"Well! I don't know myself what I would do, what countenance I wouldhave before a creature which would strike me as being evil incarnate. Don't you be ashamed!"

She sighed, looked up with her pale, candid gaze and a timid expressionon her face, and murmured:

"You don't seem to want to know what he was saying. "

"About poor Morrison? It couldn't have been anything bad, for the poorfellow was innocence itself. And then, you know, he is dead, and nothingcan possibly matter to him now. "

"But I tell you that it was of you he was talking!" she cried. 

"He was saying that Morrison's partner first got all there was to getout of him, and then, and then--well, as good as murdered him--sent himout to die somewhere!"

"You believe that of me?" said Heyst, after a moment of perfect silence. 

"I didn't know it had anything to do with you. Schomberg was talkingof some Swede. How was I to know? It was only when you began telling meabout how you came here--"

"And now you have my version. " Heyst forced himself to speak quietly. "So that's how the business looked from outside!" he muttered. 

"I remember him saying that everybody in these parts knew the story, "the girl added breathlessly. 

"Strange that it should hurt me!" mused Heyst to himself; "yet it does. I seem to be as much of a fool as those everybodies who know the storyand no doubt believe it. Can you remember any more?" he addressed thegirl in a grimly polite tone. "I've often heard of the moral advantagesof seeing oneself as others see one. Let us investigate further. Can'tyou recall something else that everybody knows?"

"Oh! Don't laugh!" she cried. 

"Did I laugh? I assure you I was not aware of it. I won't ask youwhether you believe the hotel-keeper's version. Surely you must know thevalue of human judgement!"

She unclasped her hands, moved them slightly, and twined her fingers asbefore. Protest? Assent? Was there to be nothing more? He was relievedwhen she spoke in that warm and wonderful voice which in itselfcomforted and fascinated one's heart, which made her lovable. 

"I heard this before you and I ever spoke to each other. It went out ofmy memory afterwards. Everything went out of my memory then; and I wasglad of it. It was a fresh start for me, with you--and you know it. Iwish I had forgotten who I was--that would have been best; and I verynearly did forget. "

He was moved by the vibrating quality of the last words. She seemed tobe talking low of some wonderful enchantment, in mysterious terms ofspecial significance. He thought that if she only could talk to himin some unknown tongue, she would enslave him altogether by the sheerbeauty of the sound, suggesting infinite depths of wisdom and feeling. 

"But, " she went on, "the name stuck in my head, it seems; and when youmentioned it--"

"It broke the spell, " muttered Heyst in angry disappointment as if hehad been deceived in some hope. 

The girl, from her position a little above him, surveyed with stilleyes the abstracted silence of the man on whom she now depended witha completeness of which she had not been vividly conscious before, because, till then, she had never felt herself swinging between theabysses of earth and heaven in the hollow of his arm. What if he shouldgrow weary of the burden?

"And, moreover, nobody had ever believed that tale!"

Heyst came out with an abrupt burst of sound which made her open hersteady eyes wider, with an effect of immense surprise. It was a purelymechanical effect, because she was neither surprised nor puzzled. Infact, she could understand him better then than at any moment since shefirst set eyes on him. 

He laughed scornfully. 

"What am I thinking of?" he cried. "As if it could matter to me whatanybody had ever said or believed, from the beginning of the world tillthe crack of doom!"

"I never heard you laugh till today, " she observed. "This is the secondtime!"

He scrambled to his feet and towered above her. 

"That's because, when one's heart has been broken into in the way youhave broken into mine, all sorts of weaknesses are free to enter--shame, anger, stupid indignation, stupid fears--stupid laughter, too. I wonderwhat interpretation you are putting on it?"

"It wasn't gay, certainly, " she said. "But why are you angry with me?Are you sorry you took me away from those beasts? I told you who I was. You could see it. "

"Heavens!" he muttered. He had regained his command of himself. "Iassure you I could see much more than you could tell me. I could seequite a lot that you don't even suspect yet, but you can't be seen quitethrough. "

He sank to the ground by her side and took her hand. She asked gently:

"What more do you want from me?"

He made no sound for a time. 

"The impossible, I suppose, " he said very low, as one makes aconfidence, and pressing the hand he grasped. 

It did not return the pressure. He shook his head as if to drive awaythe thought of this, and added in a louder, light tone:

"Nothing less. And it isn't because I think little of what I've gotalready. Oh, no! It is because I think so much of this possession ofmine that I can't have it complete enough. I know it's unreasonable. Youcan't hold back anything--now. "

"Indeed I couldn't, " she whispered, letting her hand lie passive in histight grasp. "I only wish I could give you something more, or better, orwhatever it is you want. "

He was touched by the sincere accent of these simple words. 

"I tell you what you can do--you can tell me whether you would have gonewith me like this if you had known of whom that abominable idiot of ahotel-keeper was speaking. A murderer--no less!"

"But I didn't know you at all then, " she cried. "And I had the sense tounderstand what he was saying. It wasn't murder, really. I never thoughtit was. "

"What made him invent such an atrocity?" Heyst exclaimed. "He seems astupid animal. He _is_ stupid. How did he manage to hatch that prettytale? Have I a particularly vile countenance? Is black selfishnesswritten all over my face? Or is that sort of thing so universally humanthat it might be said of anybody?"

"It wasn't murder, " she insisted earnestly. 

"I know. I understand. It was worse. As to killing a man, which would bea comparatively decent thing to do, well--I have never done that. "

"Why should you do it?" she asked in a frightened voice. 

"My dear girl, you don't know the sort of life I have been leading inunexplored countries, in the wilds; it's difficult to give you an idea. There are men who haven't been in such tight places as I have foundmyself in who have had to--to shed blood, as the saying is. Even thewilds hold prizes which tempt some people; but I had no schemes, noplans--and not even great firmness of mind to make me unduly obstinate. I was simply moving on, while the others, perhaps, were going somewhere. An indifference as to roads and purposes makes one meeker, as it were. And I may say truly, too, that I never did care, I won't say for life--Ihad scorned what people call by that name from the first--but for beingalive. I don't know if that is what men call courage, but I doubt itvery much. "

"You! You have no courage?" she protested. 

"I really don't know. Not the sort that always itches for a weapon, forI have never been anxious to use one in the quarrels that a man getsinto in the most innocent way sometimes. The differences for whichmen murder each other are, like everything else they do, the mostcontemptible, the most pitiful things to look back upon. No, I've neverkilled a man or loved a woman--not even in my thoughts, not even in mydreams. "

He raised her hand to his lips, and let them rest on it for a space, during which she moved a little closer to him. After the lingering kisshe did not relinquish his hold. 

"To slay, to love--the greatest enterprises of life upon a man! And Ihave no experience of either. You must forgive me anything that may haveappeared to you awkward in my behaviour, inexpressive in my speeches, untimely in my silences. "

He moved uneasily, a little disappointed by her attitude, but indulgentto it, and feeling, in this moment of perfect quietness, that in holdingher surrendered hand he had found a closer communion than they had everachieved before. But even then there still lingered in him a sense ofincompleteness not altogether overcome--which, it seemed, nothing everwould overcome--the fatal imperfection of all the gifts of life, whichmakes of them a delusion and a snare. 

All of a sudden he squeezed her hand angrily. His delicately playfulequanimity, the product of kindness and scorn, had perished with theloss of his bitter liberty. 

"Not murder, you say! I should think not. But when you led me to talkjust now, when the name turned up, when you understood that it was of methat these things had been said, you showed a strange emotion. I couldsee it. "

"I was a bit startled, " she said. 

"At the baseness of my conduct?" he asked. 

"I wouldn't judge you, not for anything. "

"Really?"

"It would be as if I dared to judge everything that there is. " With herother hand she made a gesture that seemed to embrace in one movement theearth and the heaven. "I wouldn't do such a thing. "

Then came a silence, broken at last by Heyst:

"I! I! do a deadly wrong to my poor Morrison!" he cried. "I, who couldnot bear to hurt his feelings. I, who respected his very madness! Yes, this madness, the wreck of which you can see lying about the jetty ofDiamond Bay. What else could I do? He insisted on regarding me as hissaviour; he was always restraining the eternal obligation on the tip ofhis tongue, till I was burning with shame at his gratitude. What could Ido? He was going to repay me with this infernal coal, and I had to joinhim as one joins a child's game in a nursery. One would no more havethought of humiliating him than one would think of humiliating a child. What's the use of talking of all this! Of course, the people herecould not understand the truth of our relation to each other. But whatbusiness of theirs was it? Kill old Morrison! Well, it is less criminal, less base--I am not saying it is less difficult--to kill a man than tocheat him in that way. You understand that?"

She nodded slightly, but more than once and with evident conviction. Hiseyes rested on her, inquisitive, ready for tenderness. 

"But it was neither one nor the other, " he went on. "Then, why I youremotion? All you confess is that you wouldn't judge me. "

She turned upon him her veiled, unseeing grey eyes in which nothing ofher wonder could be read. 

"I said I couldn't, " she whispered. 

"But you thought that there was no smoke without fire!" the playfulnessof tone hardly concealed his irritation. "What power there must be inwords, only imperfectly heard--for you did not listen with particularcare, did you? What were they? What evil effort of invention drove theminto that idiot's mouth out of his lying throat? If you were to try toremember, they would perhaps convince me, too. "

"I didn't listen, " she protested. "What was it to me what they said ofanybody? He was saying that there never were such loving friends tolook at as you two; then, when you got all you wanted out of him and gotthoroughly tired of him, too, you kicked him out to go home and die. "

Indignation, with an undercurrent of some other feeling, rang in thesequoted words, uttered in her pure and enchanting voice. She ceasedabruptly and lowered her long, dark lashes, as if mortally weary, sickat heart. 

"Of course, why shouldn't you get tired of that or any other--company?You aren't like anyone else, and--and the thought of it made me unhappysuddenly; but indeed, I did not believe anything bad of you. I--"

A brusque movement of his arm, flinging her hand away, stopped hershort. Heyst had again lost control of himself. He would have shouted, if shouting had been in his character. 

"No, this earth must be the appointed hatching planet of calumny enoughto furnish the whole universe. I feel a disgust at my own person, as ifI had tumbled into some filthy hole. Pah! And you--all you can say isthat you won't judge me; that you--"

She raised her head at this attack, though indeed he had not turned toher. 

"I don't believe anything bad of you, " she repeated. "I couldn't. "

He made a gesture as if to say:

"That's sufficient. "

In his soul and in his body he experienced a nervous reaction fromtenderness. All at once, without transition, he detested her. But onlyfor a moment. He remembered that she was pretty, and, more, that shehad a special grace in the intimacy of life. She had the secret ofindividuality which excites--and escapes. 

He jumped up and began to walk to and fro. Presently his hidden furyfell into dust within him, like a crazy structure, leaving behindemptiness, desolation, regret. His resentment was not against the girl, but against life itself--that commonest of snares, in which he felthimself caught, seeing clearly the plot of plots and unconsoled by thelucidity of his mind. 

He swerved and, stepping up to her, sank to the ground by her side. Before she could make a movement or even turn her head his way, he tookher in his arms and kissed her lips. He tasted on them the bitternessof a tear fallen there. He had never seen her cry. It was like anotherappeal to his tenderness--a new seduction. The girl glanced round, moved suddenly away, and averted her face. With her hand she signedimperiously to him to leave her alone--a command which Heyst did notobey. 

CHAPTER FIVE

When she opened her eyes at last and sat up, Heyst scrambled quickly tohis feet and went to pick up her cork helmet, which had rolled a littleway off. Meanwhile she busied herself in doing up her hair, plaited onthe top of her head in two heavy, dark tresses, which had come loose. Hetendered her the helmet in silence, and waited as if unwilling to hearthe sound of his own voice. 

"We had better go down now, " he suggested in a low tone. 

He extended his hand to help her up. He had the intention to smile, but abandoned it at the nearer sight of her still face, in which wasdepicted the infinite lassitude of her soul. On their way to regain theforest path they had to pass through the spot from which the view ofthe sea could be obtained. The flaming abyss of emptiness, the liquid, undulating glare, the tragic brutality of the light, made her long forthe friendly night, with its stars stilled by an austere spell; for thevelvety dark sky and the mysterious great shadow of the sea, conveyingpeace to the day-weary heart. She put her hand to her eyes. Behind herback Heyst spoke gently. 

"Let us get on, Lena. "

She walked ahead in silence. Heyst remarked that they had never beenout before during the hottest hours. It would do her no good, he feared. This solicitude pleased and soothed her. She felt more and more likeherself--a poor London girl playing in an orchestra, and snatched outfrom the humiliations, the squalid dangers of a miserable existence, by a man like whom there was not, there could not be, another in thisworld. She felt this with elation, with uneasiness, with an intimatepride--and with a peculiar sinking of the heart. 

"I am not easily knocked out by any such thing as heat, " she saiddecisively. 

"Yes, but I don't forget that you're not a tropical bird. "

"You weren't born in these parts, either, " she returned. 

"No, and perhaps I haven't even your physique. I am a transplantedbeing. Transplanted! I ought to call myself uprooted--an unnatural stateof existence; but a man is supposed to stand anything. "

She looked back at him and received a smile. He told her to keep in theshelter of the forest path, which was very still and close, full of heatif free from glare. Now and then they had glimpses of the company's oldclearing blazing with light, in which the black stumps of trees stoodcharred, without shadows, miserable and sinister. They crossed the openin a direct line for the bungalow. On the veranda they fancied they hada glimpse of the vanishing Wang, though the girl was not at all surethat she had seen anything move. Heyst had no doubts. 

"Wang has been looking out for us. We are late. "

"Was he? I thought I saw something white for a moment, and then I didnot see it any more. "

"That's it--he vanishes. It's a very remarkable gift in that Chinaman. "

"Are they all like that?" she asked with naive curiosity and uneasiness. 

"Not in such perfection, " said Heyst, amused. 

He noticed with approval that she was not heated by the walk. The dropsof perspiration on her forehead were like dew on the cool, white petalof a flower. He looked at her figure of grace and strength, solid andsupple, with an ever-growing appreciation. 

"Go in and rest yourself for a quarter of an hour; and then Mr. Wangwill give us something to eat, " he said. 

They had found the table laid. When they came together again and satdown to it, Wang materialized without a sound, unheard, uncalled, anddid his office. Which being accomplished, at a given moment he was not. 

A great silence brooded over Samburan--the silence of the great heatthat seems pregnant with fatal issues, like the silence of ardentthought. Heyst remained alone in the big room. The girl seeing himtake up a book, had retreated to her chamber. Heyst sat down underhis father's portrait; and the abominable calumny crept back into hisrecollection. The taste of it came on his lips, nauseating and corrosivelike some kinds of poison. He was tempted to spit on the floor, naively, in sheer unsophisticated disgust of the physical sensation. He shook hishead, surprised at himself. He was not used to receive his intellectualimpressions in that way--reflected in movements of carnal emotion. Hestirred impatiently in his chair, and raised the book to his eyes withboth hands. It was one of his father's. He opened it haphazard, andhis eyes fell on the middle of the page. The elder Heyst had written ofeverything in many books--of space and of time, of animals and of stars;analysing ideas and actions, the laughter and the frowns of men, and thegrimaces of their agony. The son read, shrinking into himself, composinghis face as if under the author's eye, with a vivid consciousness ofthe portrait on his right hand, a little above his head; a wonderfulpresence in its heavy frame on the flimsy wall of mats, looking exiledand at home, out of place and masterful, in the painted immobility ofprofile. 

And Heyst, the son, read:

Of the stratagems of life the most cruel is the consolation of love--themost subtle, too; for the desire is the bed of dreams. 

He turned the pages of the little volume, "Storm and Dust, " glancinghere and there at the broken text of reflections, maxims, short phrases, enigmatical sometimes and sometimes eloquent. It seemed to him that hewas hearing his father's voice, speaking and ceasing to speak again. Startled at first, he ended by finding a charm in the illusion. Heabandoned himself to the half-belief that something of his father dweltyet on earth--a ghostly voice, audible to the ear of his own flesh andblood. With what strange serenity, mingled with terrors, had that manconsidered the universal nothingness! He had plunged into it headlong, perhaps to render death, the answer that faced one at every inquiry, more supportable. 

Heyst stirred, and the ghostly voice ceased; but his eyes followed thewords on the last page of the book:

Men of tormented conscience, or of a criminal imagination, are aware ofmuch that minds of a peaceful, resigned cast do not even suspect. It isnot poets alone who dare descend into the abyss of infernal regions, oreven who dream of such a descent. The most inexpressive of human beingsmust have said to himself, at one time or another: "Anything but this!". . . 

We all have our instants of clairvoyance. They are not very helpful. The character of the scheme does not permit that or anything else tobe helpful. Properly speaking its character, judged by the standardsestablished by its victims, is infamous. It excuses every violence ofprotest and at the same time never fails to crush it, just as itcrushes the blindest assent. The so-called wickedness must be, like theso-called virtue, its own reward--to be anything at all . . . 

Clairvoyance or no clairvoyance, men love their captivity. To theunknown force of negation they prefer the miserably tumbled bed of theirservitude. Man alone can give one the disgust of pity; yet I find iteasier to believe in the misfortune of mankind than in its wickedness. 

These were the last words. Heyst lowered the book to his knees. Lena'svoice spoke above his drooping head:

"You sit there as if you were unhappy. "

"I thought you were asleep, " he said. 

"I was lying down right enough, but I never closed my eyes. "

"The rest would have done you good after our walk. Didn't you try?"

"I was lying down, I tell you, but sleep I couldn't. "

"And you made no sound! What want of sincerity. Or did you want to bealone for a time?"

"I--alone?" she murmured. 

He noticed her eyeing the book, and got up to put it back in thebookcase. When he turned round, he saw that she had dropped into thechair--it was the one she always used--and looked as if her strength hadsuddenly gone from her, leaving her only her youth, which seemed verypathetic, very much at his mercy. He moved quickly towards the chair. 

"Tired, are you? It's my fault, taking you up so high and keeping youout so long. Such a windless day, too!"

She watched his concern, her pose languid, her eyes raised to him, but as unreadable as ever. He avoided looking into them for that veryreason. He forgot himself in the contemplation of those passive arms, ofthese defenceless lips, and--yes, one had to go back to them--of thesewide-open eyes. Something wild in their grey stare made him think ofsea-birds in the cold murkiness of high latitudes. He started when shespoke, all the charm of physical intimacy revealed suddenly in thatvoice. 

"You should try to love me!" she said. 

He made a movement of astonishment. 

"Try, " he muttered. "But it seems to me--" He broke off, saying tohimself that if he loved her, he had never told her so in so many words. Simple words! They died on his lips. "What makes you say that?" heasked. 

She lowered her eyelids and turned her head a little. 

"I have done nothing, " she said in a low voice. "It's you who have beengood, helpful, and tender to me. Perhaps you love me for that--justfor that; or perhaps you love me for company, and because--well! Butsometimes it seems to me that you can never love me for myself, onlyfor myself, as people do love each other when it is to be for ever. "Her head drooped. "Forever, " she breathed out again; then, still morefaintly, she added an entreating: "Do try!"

These last words went straight to his heart--the sound of them more thanthe sense. He did not know what to say, either from want of practice indealing with women or simply from his innate honesty of thought. Allhis defences were broken now. Life had him fairly by the throat. But hemanaged a smile, though she was not looking at him; yes, he did manageit--the well-known Heyst smile of playful courtesy, so familiar to allsorts and conditions of men in the islands. 

"My dear Lena, " he said, "it looks as if you were trying to pick a veryunnecessary quarrel with me--of all people!"

She made no movement. With his elbows spread out he was twisting theends of his long moustaches, very masculine and perplexed, enveloped inthe atmosphere of femininity as in a cloud, suspecting pitfalls, and asif afraid to move. 

"I must admit, though, " he added, "that there is no one else; and Isuppose a certain amount of quarrelling is necessary for existence inthis world. "

That girl, seated in her chair in graceful quietude, was to him like ascript in an unknown language, or even more simply mysterious, likeany writing to the illiterate. As far as women went he was altogetheruninstructed and he had not the gift of intuition which is fostered inthe days of youth by dreams and visions, exercises of the heart fittingit for the encounters of a world, in which love itself rests as muchon antagonism as on attraction. His mental attitude was that of a manlooking this way and that on a piece of writing which he is unable todecipher, but which may be big with some revelation. He didn't know whatto say. All he found to add was:

"I don't even understand what I have done or left undone to distress youlike this. "

He stopped, struck afresh by the physical and moral sense of theimperfections of their relations--a sense which made him desire herconstant nearness, before his eyes, under his hand, and which, whenshe was out of his sight, made her so vague, so elusive and illusory, apromise that could not be embraced and held. 

"No! I don't see clearly what you mean. Is your mind turned towards thefuture?" he interpellated her with marked playfulness, because hewas ashamed to let such a word pass his lips. But all his cherishednegations were falling off him one by one. 

"Because if it is so there is nothing easier than to dismiss it. In ourfuture, as in what people call the other life, there is nothing to befrightened of. "

She raised her eyes to him; and if nature had formed them to expressanything else but blank candour he would have learned how terrifiedshe was by his talk and the fact that her sinking heart loved him moredesperately than ever. He smiled at her. 

"Dismiss all thought of it, " he insisted. "Surely you don't suspectafter what I have heard from you, that I am anxious to return tomankind. I! I! murder my poor Morrison! It's possible that I may bereally capable of that which they say I have done. The point is that Ihaven't done it. But it is an unpleasant subject to me. I ought to beashamed to confess it--but it is! Let us forget it. There's that in you, Lena, which can console me for worse things, for uglier passages. And ifwe forget, there are no voices here to remind us. "

She had raised her head before he paused. 

"Nothing can break in on us here, " he went on and, as if there had beenan appeal or a provocation in her upward glance, he bent down and tookher under the arms, raising her straight out of the chair into a suddenand close embrace. Her alacrity to respond, which made her seem as lightas a feather, warmed his heart at that moment more than closer caresseshad done before. He had not expected that ready impulse towards himselfwhich had been dormant in her passive attitude. He had just felt theclasp of her arms round his neck, when, with a slight exclamation--"He'shere!"--she disengaged herself and bolted, away into her room. 

CHAPTER SIX

Heyst was astounded. Looking all round, as if to take the whole roomto witness of this outrage, he became aware of Wang materialized in thedoorway. The intrusion was as surprising as anything could be, in viewof the strict regularity with which Wang made himself visible. Heystwas tempted to laugh at first. This practical comment on his affirmationthat nothing could break in on them relieved the strain of his feelings. He was a little vexed, too. The Chinaman preserved a profound silence. 

"What do you want?" asked Heyst sternly. 

"Boat out there, " said the Chinaman. 

"Where? What do you mean? Boat adrift in the straits?"

Some subtle change in Wang's bearing suggested his being out of breath;but he did not pant, and his voice was steady. 

"No--row. "

It was Heyst now who was startled and raised his voice. 

"Malay man, eh?"

Wang made a slight negative movement with his head. 

"Do you hear, Lena?" Heyst called out. "Wang says there is a boat insight--somewhere near apparently. Where's that boat Wang?"

"Round the point, " said Wang, leaping into Malay unexpectedly, and in aloud voice. "White men three. "

"So close as that?" exclaimed Heyst, moving out on the veranda followedby Wang. "White men? Impossible!"

Over the clearing the shadows were already lengthening. The sunhung low; a ruddy glare lay on the burnt black patch in front ofthe bungalow, and slanted on the ground between the straight, tall, mast-like trees soaring a hundred feet or more without a branch. Thegrowth of bushes cut off all view of the jetty from the veranda. Faraway to the right Wang's hut, or rather its dark roof of mats, couldbe seen above the bamboo fence which insured the privacy of the Alfurowoman. The Chinaman looked that way swiftly. Heyst paused, and thenstepped back a pace into the room. 

"White men, Lena, apparently. What are you doing?"

"I am just bathing my eyes a little, " the girl's voice said from theinner room. 

"Oh, yes; all right!"

"Do you want me?"

"No. You had better--I am going down to the jetty. Yes, you had betterstay in. What an extraordinary thing!"

It was so extraordinary that nobody could possibly appreciatehow extraordinary it was but himself. His mind was full of mereexclamations, while his feet were carrying him in the direction of thejetty. He followed the line of the rails, escorted by Wang. 

"Where were you when you first saw the boat?" he asked over hisshoulder. 

Wang explained in Malay that he had gone to the shore end of the wharf, to get a few lumps of coal from the big heap, when, happening to raisehis eyes from the ground, he saw the boat--a white man boat, not acanoe. He had good eyes. He had seen the boat, with the men at the oars;and here Wang made a particular gesture over his eyes, as if his visionhad received a blow. He had turned at once and run to the house toreport. 

"No mistake, eh?" said Heyst, moving on. At the very outer edge of thebelt he stopped short. Wang halted behind him on the path, till thevoice of Number One called him sharply forward into the open. He obeyed. 

"Where's that boat?" asked Heyst forcibly. "I say--where is it?"

Nothing whatever was to be seen between the point and the jetty. Thestretch of Diamond Bay was like a piece of purple shadow, lustrous andempty, while beyond the land, the open sea lay blue and opaque under thesun. Heyst's eyes swept all over the offing till they met, far off, thedark cone of the volcano, with its faint plume of smoke broadening andvanishing everlastingly at the top, without altering its shape in theglowing transparency of the evening. 

"The fellow has been dreaming, " he muttered to himself. 

He looked hard at the Chinaman. Wang seemed turned into stone. Suddenly, as if he had received a shock, he started, flung his arm out with apointing forefinger, and made guttural noises to the effect that there, there, there, he had seen a boat. 

It was very uncanny. Heyst thought of some strange hallucination. Unlikely enough; but that a boat with three men in it should have sunkbetween the point and the jetty, suddenly, like a stone, without leavingas much on the surface as a floating oar, was still more unlikely. Thetheory of a phantom boat would have been more credible than that. 

"Confound it!" he muttered to himself. 

He was unpleasantly affected by this mystery; but now a simpleexplanation occurred to him. He stepped hastily out on the wharf. Theboat, if it had existed and had retreated, could perhaps be seen fromthe far end of the long jetty. 

Nothing was to be seen. Heyst let his eyes roam idly over the sea. Hewas so absorbed in his perplexity that a hollow sound, as of somebodytumbling about in a boat, with a clatter of oars and spars, failed tomake him move for a moment. When his mind seized its meaning, he hadno difficulty in locating the sound. It had come from below--under thejetty!

He ran back for a dozen yards or so, and then looked over. His sightplunged straight into the stern-sheets of a big boat, the greater partof which was hidden from him by the planking of the jetty. His eyesfell on the thin back of a man doubled up over the tiller in a queer, uncomfortable attitude of drooping sorrow. Another man, more directlybelow Heyst, sprawled on his back from gunwale to gunwale, half offthe after thwart, his head lower than his feet. This second man glaredwildly upward, and struggled to raise himself, but to all appearance wasmuch too drunk to succeed. The visible part of the boat contained alsoa flat, leather trunk, on which the first man's long legs were tuckedup nervelessly. A large earthenware jug, with its wide mouth uncorked, rolled out on the bottom-boards from under the sprawling man. 

Heyst had never been so much astonished in his life. He stared dumbly atthe strange boat's crew. From the first he was positive that thesemen were not sailors. They wore the white drill-suit of tropicalcivilization; but their apparition in a boat Heyst could not connectwith anything plausible. The civilization of the tropics could havehad nothing to do with it. It was more like those myths, current inPolynesia, of amazing strangers, who arrive at an island, gods ordemons, bringing good or evil to the innocence of the inhabitants--giftsof unknown things, words never heard before. 

Heyst noticed a cork helmet floating alongside the boat, evidentlyfallen from the head of the man doubled over the tiller, who displayeda dark, bony poll. An oar, too, had been knocked overboard, probablyby the sprawling man, who was still struggling, between the thwarts. By this time Heyst regarded the visitation no longer with surprise, butwith the sustained attention demanded by a difficult problem. With onefoot poised on the string-piece, and leaning on his raised knee, hewas taking in everything. The sprawling man rolled off the thwart, collapsed, and, most unexpectedly, got on his feet. He swayed dizzily, spreading his arms out and uttered faintly a hoarse, dreamy "Hallo!" Hisupturned face was swollen, red, peeling all over the nose and cheeks. His stare was irrational. Heyst perceived stains of dried blood all overthe front of his dirty white coat, and also on one sleeve. 

"What's the matter? Are you wounded?"

The other glanced down, reeled--one of his feet was inside a large pithhat--and, recovering himself, let out a dismal, grating sound in themanner of a grim laugh. 

"Blood--not mine. Thirst's the matter. Exhausted's the matter. Done up. Drink, man! Give us water!"

Thirst was in the very tone of his words, alternating a broken croak anda faint, throaty rustle which just reached Heyst's ears. The man in theboat raised his hands to be helped up on the jetty, whispering:

"I tried. I am too weak. I tumbled down. "

Wang was coming along the jetty slowly, with intent, straining eyes. 

"Run back and bring a crowbar here. There's one lying by the coal-heap, "Heyst shouted to him. 

The man standing in the boat sat down on the thwart behind him. Ahorrible coughing laugh came through his swollen lips. 

"Crowbar? What's that for?" he mumbled, and his head dropped on hischest mournfully. 

Meantime, Heyst, as if he had forgotten the boat, started kicking hardat a large brass tap projecting above the planks. To accommodate shipsthat came for coal and happened to need water as well, a stream hadbeen tapped in the interior and an iron pipe led along the jetty. Itterminated with a curved end almost exactly where the strangers' boathad been driven between the piles; but the tap was set fast. 

"Hurry up!" Heyst yelled to the Chinaman, who was running with thecrowbar in his hand. 

Heyst snatched it from him and, obtaining a leverage against thestring-piece, wrung the stiff tap round with a mighty jerk. "I hope thatpipe hasn't got choked!" he muttered to himself anxiously. 

It hadn't; but it did not yield a strong gush. The sound of a thinstream, partly breaking on the gunwale of the boat and partlysplashing alongside, became at once audible. It was greeted by a cry ofinarticulate and savage joy. Heyst knelt on the string-piece and peereddown. The man who had spoken was already holding his open mouth underthe bright trickle. Water ran over his eyelids and over his nose, gurgled down his throat, flowed over his chin. Then some obstruction inthe pipe gave way, and a sudden thick jet broke on his face. In a momenthis shoulders were soaked, the front of his coat inundated; he streamedand dripped; water ran into his pockets, down his legs, into his shoes;but he had clutched the end of the pipe, and, hanging on with bothhands, swallowed, spluttered, choked, snorted with the noises of aswimmer. Suddenly a curious dull roar reached Heyst's ears. Somethinghairy and black flew from under the jetty. A dishevelled head, coming onlike a cannonball, took the man at the pipe in flank, with enough forceto tear his grip loose and fling him headlong into the stern-sheets. Hefell upon the folded legs of the man at the tiller, who, roused by thecommotion in the boat, was sitting up, silent, rigid, and very much likea corpse. His eyes were but two black patches, and his teeth glistenedwith a death's head grin between his retracted lips, no thicker thanblackish parchment glued over the gums. 

From him Heyst's eyes wandered to the creature who had replaced thefirst man at the end of the water-pipe. Enormous brown paws clutched itsavagely; the wild, big head hung back, and in a face covered with a wetmass of hair there gaped crookedly a wide mouth full of fangs. The waterfilled it, welled up in hoarse coughs, ran down on each side of the jawsand down the hairy throat, soaked the black pelt of the enormous chest, naked under a torn check shirt, heaving convulsively with a play ofmassive muscles carved in red mahogany. 

As soon as the first man had recovered the breath knocked out of himby the irresistible charge, a scream of mad cursing issued from thestern-sheets. With a rigid, angular crooking of the elbow, the man atthe tiller put his hand back to his hip. 

"Don't shoot him, sir!" yelled the first man. "Wait! Let me have thattiller. I will teach him to shove himself in front of a caballero!"

Martin Ricardo flourished the heavy piece of wood, leaped forward withastonishing vigour, and brought it down on Pedro's head with a crashthat resounded all over the quiet sweep of Black Diamond Bay. A crimsonpatch appeared on the matted hair, red veins appeared in the waterflowing all over his face, and it dripped in rosy drops off his head. But the man hung on. Not till a second furious blow descended did thehairy paws let go their grip and the squirming body sink limply. Beforeit could touch the bottom-boards, a tremendous kick in the ribs fromRicardo's foot shifted it forward out of sight, whence came the noise ofa heavy thud, a clatter of spars, and a pitiful grunt. Ricardo stoopedto look under the jetty. 

"Aha, dog! This will teach you to keep back where you belong, youmurdering brute, you slaughtering savage, you! You infidel, you robberof churches! Next time I will rip you open from neck to heel, youcarrion-cater! Esclavo!"

He backed a little and straightened himself up. 

"I don't mean it really, " he remarked to Heyst, whose steady eyes methis from above. He ran aft briskly. 

"Come along, sir. It's your turn. I oughtn't to have drunk first. 'Struth, I forgot myself! A gentleman like you will overlook that, Iknow. " As he made these apologies, Ricardo extended his hand. "Let mesteady you, sir. "

Slowly Mr. Jones unfolded himself in all his slenderness, rocked, staggered, and caught Ricardo's shoulder. His henchman assisted himto the pipe, which went on gushing a clear stream of water, sparklingexceedingly against the black piles and the gloom under the jetty. 

"Catch hold, sir, " Ricardo advised solicitously. "All right?"

He stepped back, and, while Mr. Jones revelled in the abundance ofwater, he addressed himself to Heyst with a sort of justificatoryspeech, the tone of which, reflecting his feelings, partook of purringand spitting. They had been thirty hours tugging at the oars, heexplained, and they had been more than forty hours without water, exceptthat the night before they had licked the dew off the gunwales. 

Ricardo did not explain to Heyst how it happened. At that precise momenthe had no explanation ready for the man on the wharf, who, he guessed, must be wondering much more at the presence of his visitors than attheir plight. 

CHAPTER SEVEN

The explanation lay in the two simple facts that the light winds andstrong currents of the Java Sea had drifted the boat about until theypartly lost their bearings; and that by some extra-ordinary mistakeone of the two jars put into the boat by Schomberg's man contained saltwater. Ricardo tried to put some pathos into his tones. Pulling forthirty hours with eighteen-foot oars! And the sun! Ricardo relievedhis feelings by cursing the sun. They had felt their hearts and lungsshrivel within them. And then, as if all that hadn't been troubleenough, he complained bitterly, he had had to waste his faintingstrength in beating their servant about the head with a stretcher. Thefool had wanted to drink sea water, and wouldn't listen to reason. There was no stopping him otherwise. It was better to beat him intoinsensibility than to have him go crazy in the boat, and to be obligedto shoot him. The preventive, administered with enough force to brainan elephant, boasted Ricardo, had to be applied on two occasions--thesecond time all but in sight of the jetty. 

"You have seen the beauty, " Ricardo went on expansively, hiding his lackof some sort of probable story under this loquacity. "I had to hammerhim away from the spout. Opened afresh all the old broken spots on hishead. You saw how hard I had to hit. He has no restraint, no restraintat all. If it wasn't that he can be made useful in one way or another, Iwould just as soon have let the governor shoot him. "

He smiled up at Heyst in his peculiar lip-retracting manner, and addedby way of afterthought:

"That's what will happen to him in the end, if he doesn't learn torestrain himself. But I've taught him to mind his manners for a while, anyhow!"

And again he addressed his quick grin up to the man on the wharf. Hisround eyes had never left Heyst's face ever since he began to deliverhis account of the voyage. 

"So that's how he looks!" Ricardo was saying to himself. 

He had not expected Heyst to be like this. He had formed for himselfa conception containing the helpful suggestion of a vulnerable point. These solitary men were often tipplers. But no!--this was not adrinking man's face; nor could he detect the weakness of alarm, or eventhe weakness of surprise, on these features, in those steady eyes. 

"We were too far gone to climb out, " Ricardo went on. "I heard youwalking along though. I thought I shouted; I tried to. You didn't hearme shout?"

Heyst made an almost imperceptible negative sign, which the greedy eyesof Ricardo--greedy for all signs--did not miss. 

"Throat too parched. We didn't even care to whisper to each otherlately. Thirst chokes one. We might have died there under this wharfbefore you found us. "

"I couldn't think where you had gone to. " Heyst was heard at last, addressing directly the newcomers from the sea. "You were seen as soonas you cleared that point. "

"We were seen, eh?" grunted Mr. Ricardo. "We pulled likemachines--daren't stop. The governor sat at the tiller, but he couldn'tspeak to us. She drove in between the piles till she hit something, andwe all tumbled off the thwarts as if we had been drunk. Drunk--ha, ha!Too dry, by George! We fetched in here with the very last of ourstrength, and no mistake. Another mile would have done for us. When Iheard your footsteps, above, I tried to get up, and I fell down. "

"That was the first sound I heard, " said Heyst. 

Mr Jones, the front of his soiled white tunic soaked and plasteredagainst his breast-bone, staggered away from the water-pipe. Steadyinghimself on Ricardo's shoulder, he drew a long breath, raised hisdripping head, and produced a smile of ghastly amiability, which waslost upon the thoughtful Heyst. Behind his back the sun, touching thewater, was like a disc of iron cooled to a dull red glow, ready to startrolling round the circular steel plate of the sea, which, under thedarkening sky, looked more solid than the high ridge of Samburan; moresolid than the point, whose long outlined slope melted into its ownunfathomable shadow blurring the dim sheen on the bay. The forcefulstream from the pipe broke like shattered glass on the boat's gunwale. Its loud, fitful, and persistent splashing revealed the depths of theworld's silence. 

"Great notion, to lead the water out here, " pronounced Ricardoappreciatively. 

Water was life. He felt now as if he could run a mile, scale a ten-footwall, sing a song. Only a few minutes ago he was next door to a corpse, done up, unable to stand, to lift a hand; unable to groan. A drop ofwater had done that miracle. 

"Didn't you feel life itself running and soaking into you, sir?" heasked his principal, with deferential but forced vivacity. 

Without a word, Mr. Jones stepped off the thwart and sat down in thestern-sheets. 

"Isn't that man of yours bleeding to death in the bows under there?"inquired Heyst. 

Ricardo ceased his ecstasies over the life-giving water and answered ina tone of innocence:

"He? You may call him a man, but his hide is a jolly sight tougher thanthe toughest alligator he ever skinned in the good old days. You don'tknow how much he can stand: I do. We have tried him a long time ago. Ola, there! Pedro! Pedro!" he yelled, with a force of lung testifying tothe regenerative virtues of water. 

A weak "Senor?" came from under the wharf. 

"What did I tell you?" said Ricardo triumphantly. "Nothing can hurt him. He's all right. But, I say, the boat's getting swamped. Can't you turnthis water off before you sink her under us? She's half full already. "

At a sign from Heyst, Wang hammered at the brass tap on the wharf, thenstood behind Number One, crowbar in hand, motionless as before. Ricardowas perhaps not so certain of Pedro's toughness as he affirmed; for hestooped, peering under the wharf, then moved forward out of sight. Thegush of water ceasing suddenly, made a silence which became completewhen the after-trickle stopped. Afar, the sun was reduced to a redspark, glowing very low in the breathless immensity of twilight. Purplegleams lingered on the water all round the boat. The spectral figure inthe stern-sheets spoke in a languid tone:

"That--er--companion--er--secretary of mine is a queer chap. I am afraidwe aren't presenting ourselves in a very favourable light. "

Heyst listened. It was the conventional voice of an educated man, only strangely lifeless. But more strange yet was this concern forappearances, expressed, he did not know, whether in jest or in earnest. Earnestness was hardly to be supposed under the circumstances, and noone had ever jested in such dead tones. It was something which could notbe answered, and Heyst said nothing. The other went on:

"Travelling as I do, I find a man of his sort extremely useful. He hashis little weaknesses, no doubt. "

"Indeed!" Heyst was provoked into speaking. "Weakness of the arm is notone of them; neither is an exaggerated humanity, as far as I can judge. "

"Defects of temper, " explained Mr. Jones from the stern-sheets. 

The subject of this dialogue, coming out just then from under thewharf into the visible part of the boat, made himself heard in his owndefence, in a voice full of life, and with nothing languid in his manneron the contrary, it was brisk, almost jocose. He begged pardon forcontradicting. He was never out of temper with "our Pedro. " Thefellow was a Dago of immense strength and of no sense whatever. Thiscombination made him dangerous, and he had to be treated accordingly, ina manner which he could understand. Reasoning was beyond him. 

"And so"--Ricardo addressed Heyst with animation--"you mustn't besurprised if--"

"I assure you, " Heyst interrupted, "that my wonder at your arrivalin your boat here is so great that it leaves no room for minorastonishments. But hadn't you better land?"

"That's the talk, sir!" Ricardo began to bustle about the boat, talkingall the time. Finding himself unable to "size up" this man, he wasinclined to credit him with extraordinary powers of penetration, which, it seemed to him, would be favoured by silence. Also, he feared somepointblank question. He had no ready-made story to tell. He and hispatron had put off considering that rather important detail toolong. For the last two days, the horrors of thirst, coming on themunexpectedly, had prevented consultation. They had had to pull fordear life. But the man on the wharf, were he in league with the devilhimself, would pay for all their sufferings, thought Ricardo with anunholy joy. 

Meantime, splashing in the water which covered the bottom-boards, Ricardo congratulated himself aloud on the luggage being out of the wayof the wet. He had piled it up forward. He had roughly tied up Pedro'shead. Pedro had nothing to grumble about. On the contrary, he ought tobe mighty thankful to him, Ricardo, for being alive at all. 

"Well, now, let me give you a leg up, sir, " he said cheerily tohis motionless principal in the stern-sheets. "All our troubles areover--for a time, anyhow. Ain't it luck to find a white man on thisisland? I would have just as soon expected to meet an angel fromheaven--eh, Mr. Jones? Now then--ready, sir? one, two, three, up yougo!"

Helped from below by Ricardo, and from above by the man more unexpectedthan an angel, Mr. Jones scrambled up and stood on the wharf by the sideof Heyst. He swayed like a reed. The night descending on Samburan turnedinto dense shadow the point of land and the wharf itself, and gave adark solidity to the unshimmering water extending to the last fainttrace of light away to the west. Heyst stared at the guests whom therenounced world had sent him thus at the end of the day. The only othervestige of light left on earth lurked in the hollows of the thin man'seyes. They gleamed, mobile and languidly evasive. The eyelids fluttered. 

"You are feeling weak, " said Heyst. 

"For the moment, a little, " confessed the other. 

With loud panting, Ricardo scrambled on his hands and knees upon thewharf, energetic and unaided. He rose up at Heyst's elbow and stampedhis foot on the planks, with a sharp, provocative, double beat, suchas is heard sometimes in fencing-schools before the adversaries engagetheir foils. Not that the renegade seaman Ricardo knew anything offencing. What he called "shooting-irons, " were his weapons, or the stillless aristocratic knife, such as was even then ingeniously strappedto his leg. He thought of it, at that moment. A swift stooping motion, then, on the recovery, a ripping blow, a shove off the wharf, and nonoise except a splash in the water that would scarcely disturb thesilence. Heyst would have no time for a cry. It would be quick and neat, and immensely in accord with Ricardo's humour. But he repressed thisgust of savagery. The job was not such a simple one. This piece had tobe played to another tune, and in much slower time. He returned to hisnote of talkative simplicity. 

"Ay; and I too don't feel as strong as I thought I was when the firstdrink set me up. Great wonder-worker water is! And to get it right hereon the spot! It was heaven--hey, sir?"

Mr Jones, being directly addressed, took up his part in the concertedpiece:

"Really, when I saw a wharf on what might have been an uninhabitedisland, I couldn't believe my eyes. I doubted its existence. I thoughtit was a delusion till the boat actually drove between the piles, as yousee her lying now. "

While he was speaking faintly, in a voice which did not seem to belongto the earth, his henchman, in extremely loud and terrestrial accents, was fussing about their belongings in the boat, addressing himself toPedro:

"Come, now--pass up the dunnage there! Move, yourself, hombre, or I'llhave to get down again and give you a tap on those bandages of yours, you growling bear, you!"

"Ah! You didn't believe in the reality of the wharf?" Heyst was sayingto Mr. Jones. 

"You ought to kiss my hands!"

Ricardo caught hold of an ancient Gladstone bag and swung it on thewharf with a thump. 

"Yes! You ought to burn a candle before me as they do before the saintsin your country. No saint has ever done so much for you as I have, youungrateful vagabond. Now then! Up you get!"

Helped by the talkative Ricardo, Pedro scrambled up on the wharf, wherehe remained for some time on all fours, swinging to and fro his shaggyhead tied up in white rags. Then he got up clumsily, like a bulky animalin the dusk, balancing itself on its hind legs. 

Mr Jones began to explain languidly to Heyst that they were in a prettybad state that morning, when they caught sight of the smoke of thevolcano. It nerved them to make an effort for their lives. Soonafterwards they made out the island. 

"I had just wits enough left in my baked brain to alter the directionof the boat, " the ghostly voice went on. "As to finding assistance, a wharf, a white man--nobody would have dreamed of it. Simplypreposterous!"

"That's what I thought when my Chinaman came and told me he had seen aboat with white men pulling up, " said Heyst. 

"Most extraordinary luck, " interjected Ricardo, standing by anxiouslyattentive to every word. "Seems a dream, " he added. "A lovely dream!"

A silence fell on that group of three, as if everyone had become afraidto speak, in an obscure sense of an impending crisis. Pedro on one sideof them and Wang on the other had the air of watchful spectators. A fewstars had come out pursuing the ebbing twilight. A light draught of airtepid enough in the thickening twilight after the scorching day, strucka chill into Mr. Jones in his soaked clothes. 

"I may infer, then, that there is a settlement of white people here?" hemurmured, shivering visibly. 

Heyst roused himself. 

"Oh, abandoned, abandoned. I am alone here--practically alone; butseveral empty houses are still standing. No lack of accommodation. Wemay just as well--here, Wang, go back to the shore and run the trolleyout here. "

The last words having been spoken in Malay, he explained courteouslythat he had given directions for the transport of the luggage. Wang hadmelted into the night--in his soundless manner. 

"My word! Rails laid down and all, " exclaimed Ricardo softly, in a toneof admiration. "Well, I never!"

"We were working a coal-mine here, " said the late manager of theTropical Belt Coal Company. "These are only the ghosts of things thathave been. "

Mr Jones's teeth were suddenly started chattering by another faint puffof wind, a mere sigh from the west, where Venus cast her rays on thedark edge of the horizon, like a bright lamp hung above the grave of thesun. 

"We might be moving on, " proposed Heyst. "My Chinaman andthat--ah--ungrateful servant of yours, with the broken head, can loadthe things and come along after us. "

The suggestion was accepted without words. Moving towards the shore, the three men met the trolley, a mere metallic rustle which whisked pastthem, the shadowy Wang running noiselessly behind. Only the sound oftheir footsteps accompanied them. It was a long time since so manyfootsteps had rung together on that jetty. Before they stepped on to thepath trodden through the grass, Heyst said:

"I am prevented from offering you a share of my own quarters. " Thedistant courtliness of this beginning arrested the other two suddenly, as if amazed by some manifest incongruity. "I should regret it more, "he went on, "if I were not in a position to give you the choice of thoseempty bungalows for a temporary home. "

He turned round and plunged into the narrow track, the two othersfollowing in single file. 

"Queer start!" Ricardo took the opportunity for whispering, as he fellbehind Mr. Jones, who swayed in the gloom, enclosed by the stalks oftropical grass, almost as slender as a stalk of grass himself. 

In this order they emerged into the open space kept clear of vegetationby Wang's judicious system of periodic firing. The shapes of buildings, unlighted, high-roofed, looked mysteriously extensive and featurelessagainst the increasing glitter of the stars. Heyst was pleased atthe absence of light in his bungalow. It looked as uninhabited asthe others. He continued to lead the way, inclining to the right. Hisequable voice was heard:

"This one would be the best. It was our counting-house. There is somefurniture in it yet. I am pretty certain that you'll find a couple ofcamp bedsteads in one of the rooms. "

The high-pitched roof of the bungalow towered up very close, eclipsingthe sky. 

"Here we are. Three steps. As you see, there's a wide veranda. Sorry tokeep you waiting for a moment; the door is locked, I think. "

He was heard trying it. Then he leaned against the rail, saying:

"Wang will get the keys. "

The others waited, two vague shapes nearly mingled together in thedarkness of the veranda, from which issued a sudden chattering of Mr. Jones's teeth, directly suppressed, and a slight shuffle of Ricardo'sfeet. Their guide and host, his back against the rail, seemed to haveforgotten their existence. Suddenly he moved, and murmured:

"Ah, here's the trolley. "

Then he raised his voice in Malay, and was answered, "Ya tuan, " from anindistinct group that could be made out in the direction of the track. 

"I have sent Wang for the key and a light, " he said, in a voicethat came out without any particular direction--a peculiarity whichdisconcerted Ricardo. 

Wang did not tarry long on his mission. Very soon from the distantrecesses of obscurity appeared the swinging lantern he carried. It casta fugitive ray on the arrested trolley with the uncouth figure of thewild Pedro drooping over the load; then it moved towards the bungalowand ascended the stairs. After working at the stiff lock, Wang appliedhis shoulder to the door. It came open with explosive suddenness, as ifin a passion at being thus disturbed after two years' repose. From thedark slope of a tall stand-up writing-desk a forgotten, solitary sheetof paper flew up and settled gracefully on the floor. 

Wang and Pedro came and went through the offended door, bringing thethings off the trolley, one flitting swiftly in and out, the otherstaggering heavily. Later, directed by a few quiet words from NumberOne, Wang made several journeys with the lantern to the store-rooms, bringing in blankets, provisions in tins, coffee, sugar, and a packet ofcandles. He lighted one, and stuck it on the ledge of the stand-up desk. Meantime Pedro, being introduced to some kindling-wood and a bundle ofdry sticks, had busied himself outside in lighting a fire, on which heplaced a ready-filled kettle handed to him by Wang impassively, at arm'slength, as if across a chasm. Having received the thanks of his guests, Heyst wished them goodnight and withdrew, leaving them to their repose. 

CHAPTER EIGHT

Heyst walked away slowly. There was still no light in his bungalow, andhe thought that perhaps it was just as well. By this time he was muchless perturbed. Wang had preceded him with the lantern, as if in a hurryto get away from the two white men and their hairy attendant. The lightwas not dancing along any more; it was standing perfectly still by thesteps of the veranda. 

Heyst, glancing back casually, saw behind him still another light--thelight of the strangers' open fire. A black, uncouth form, stooping overit monstrously, staggered away into the outlying shadows. The kettle hadboiled, probably. 

With that weird vision of something questionably human impressed uponhis senses, Heyst moved on a pace or two. What could the people be whohad such a creature for their familiar attendant? He stopped. The vagueapprehension, of a distant future, in which he saw Lena unavoidablyseparated from him by profound and subtle differences; the scepticalcarelessness which had accompanied every one of his attempts at action, like a secret reserve of his soul, fell away from him. He no longerbelonged to himself. There was a call far more imperious and august. Hecame up to the bungalow, and at the very limit of the lantern's light, on the top step, he saw her feet and the bottom part of her dress. Therest of her person was suggested dimly as high as her waist. She saton a chair, and the gloom of the low eaves descended upon her head andshoulders. She didn't stir. 

"You haven't gone to sleep here?" he asked. 

"Oh, no! I was waiting for you--in the dark. "

Heyst, on the top step, leaned against a wooden pillar, after moving thelantern to one side. 

"I have been thinking that it is just as well you had no light. Butwasn't it dull for you to sit in the dark?"

"I don't need a light to think of you. " Her charming voice gave a valueto this banal answer, which had also the merit of truth. Heyst laugheda little, and said that he had had a curios experience. She made noremark. He tried to figure to himself the outlines of her easy pose. A spot of dim light here and there hinted at the unfailing grace ofattitude which was one of her natural possessions. 

She had thought of him, but not in connection with the strangers. Shehad admired him from the first; she had been attracted by his warmvoice, his gentle eye, but she had felt him too wonderfully difficult toknow. He had given to life a savour, a movement, a promise mingled withmenaces, which she had not suspected were to be found in it--or, at anyrate, not by a girl wedded to misery as she was. She said to herselfthat she must not be irritated because he seemed too self-contained, andas if shut up in a world of his own. When he took her in his arms, shefelt that his embrace had a great and compelling force, that he wasmoved deeply, and that perhaps he would not get tired of her so verysoon. She thought that he had opened to her the feelings of delicatejoy, that the very uneasiness he caused her was delicious in itssadness, and that she would try to hold him as long as she could--tillher fainting arms, her sinking soul, could cling to him no more. 

"Wang's not here, of course?" Heyst said suddenly. She answered as if inher sleep. 

"He put this light down here without stopping, and ran. "

"Ran, did he? H'm! Well, it's considerably later than his usual timeto go home to his Alfuro wife; but to be seen running is a sort ofdegradation for Wang, who has mastered the art of vanishing. Do youthink he was startled out of his perfection by something?"

"Why should he be startled?"

Her voice remained dreamy, a little uncertain. 

"I have been startled, " Heyst said. 

She was not listening to him. The lantern at their feet threw theshadows of her face upward. Her eyes glistened, as if frightened andattentive, above a lighted chin and a very white throat. 

"Upon my word, " mused Heyst, "now that I don't see them, I can hardlybelieve that those fellows exist!"

"And what about me?" she asked, so swiftly that he made a movement likesomebody pounced upon from an ambush. "When you don't see me, do youbelieve that I exist?"

"Exist? Most charmingly! My dear Lena, you don't know your ownadvantages. Why, your voice alone would be enough to make youunforgettable!"

"Oh, I didn't mean forgetting in that way. I dare say if I were todie you would remember me right enough. And what good would that be toanybody? It's while I am alive that I want--"

Heyst stood by her chair, a stalwart figure imperfectly lighted. Thebroad shoulders, the martial face that was like a disguise of hisdisarmed soul, were lost in the gloom above the plane of light in whichhis feet were planted. He suffered from a trouble with which she hadnothing to do. She had no general conception of the conditions of theexistence he had offered to her. Drawn into its peculiar stagnation sheremained unrelated to it because of her ignorance. 

For instance, she could never perceive the prodigious improbability ofthe arrival of that boat. She did not seem to be thinking of it. Perhapsshe had already forgotten the fact herself. And Heyst resolved suddenlyto say nothing more of it. It was not that he shrank from alarming her. Not feeling anything definite himself he could not imagine a preciseeffect being produced on her by any amount of explanation. There is aquality in events which is apprehended differently by different mindsor even by the same mind at different times. Any man living at allconsciously knows that embarrassing truth. Heyst was aware that thisvisit could bode nothing pleasant. In his present soured tempertowards all mankind he looked upon it as a visitation of a particularlyoffensive kind. 

He glanced along the veranda in the direction of the other bungalow. Thefire of sticks in front of it had gone out. No faint glow of embers, notthe slightest thread of light in that direction, hinted at the presenceof strangers. The darker shapes in the obscurity, the dead silence, betrayed nothing of that strange intrusion. The peace of Samburanasserted itself as on any other night. Everything was as before, except--Heyst became aware of it suddenly--that for a whole minute, perhaps, with his hand on the back of the girl's chair and within a footof her person, he had lost the sense of her existence, for the firsttime since he had brought her over to share this invincible, thisundefiled peace. He picked up the lantern, and the act made a silentstir all along the veranda. A spoke of shadow swung swiftly across herface, and the strong light rested on the immobility of her features, asof a woman looking at a vision. Her eyes were still, her lips serious. Her dress, open at the neck, stirred slightly to her even breathing. 

"We had better go in, Lena, " suggested Heyst, very low, as if breaking aspell cautiously. 

She rose without a word. Heyst followed her indoors. As they passedthrough the living-room, he left the lantern burning on the centretable. 

CHAPTER NINE

That night the girl woke up, for the first time in her new experience, with the sensation of having been abandoned to her own devices. She wokeup from a painful dream of separation brought about in a way which shecould not understand, and missed the relief of the waking instant. The desolate feeling of being alone persisted. She was really alone. A night-light made it plain enough, in the dim, mysterious manner of adream; but this was reality. It startled her exceedingly. 

In a moment she was at the curtain that hung in the doorway, and raisedit with a steady hand. The conditions of their life in Samburan wouldhave made peeping absurd; nor was such a thing in her character. Thiswas not a movement of curiosity, but of downright alarm--the continueddistress and fear of the dream. The night could not have been very faradvanced. The light of the lantern was burning strongly, striping thefloor and walls of the room with thick black bands. She hardly knewwhether she expected to see Heyst or not; but she saw him at once, standing by the table in his sleeping-suit, his back to the doorway. She stepped in noiselessly with her bare feet, and let the curtain fallbehind her. Something characteristic in Heyst's attitude made her say, almost in a whisper:

"You are looking for something. "

He could not have heard her before; but he didn't start at theunexpected whisper. He only pushed the drawer of the table in and, without even looking over his shoulder, asked quietly, accepting herpresence as if he had been aware of all her movements:

"I say, are you certain that Wang didn't go through this room thisevening?"

"Wang? When?"

"After leaving the lantern, I mean. "

"Oh, no. He ran on. I watched him. "

"Or before, perhaps--while I was with these boat people? Do you know?Can you tell?"

"I hardly think so. I came out as the sun went down, and sat outsidetill you came back to me. "

"He could have popped in for an instant through the back veranda. "

"I heard nothing in here, " she said. "What is the matter?"

"Naturally you wouldn't hear. He can be as quiet as a shadow, when helikes. I believe he could steal the pillows from under our heads. Hemight have been here ten minutes ago. "

"What woke you up? Was it a noise?"

"Can't say that. Generally one can't tell, but is it likely, Lena? Youare, I believe, the lighter sleeper of us two. A noise loud enough towake me up would have awakened you, too. I tried to be as quiet as Icould. What roused you?"

"I don't know--a dream, perhaps. I woke up crying. "

"What was the dream?"

Heyst, with one hand resting on the table, had turned in her direction, his round, uncovered head set on a fighter's muscular neck. She left hisquestion unanswered, as if she had not heard it. 

"What is it you have missed?" she asked in her turn, very grave. 

Her dark hair, drawn smoothly back, was done in two thick tresses forthe night. Heyst noticed the good form of her brow, the dignity of itswidth, its unshining whiteness. It was a sculptural forehead. He had amoment of acute appreciation intruding upon another order of thoughts. It was as if there could be no end of his discoveries about that girl, at the most incongruous moments. 

She had on nothing but a hand-woven cotton sarong--one of Heyst's fewpurchases, years ago, in Celebes, where they are made. He had forgottenall about it till she came, and then had found it at the bottom of anold sandalwood trunk dating back to pre-Morrison days. She had quicklylearned to wind it up under her armpits with a safe twist, as Malayvillage girls do when going down to bathe in a river. Her shoulders andarms were bare; one of her tresses, hanging forward, looked almost blackagainst the white skin. As she was taller than the average Malay woman, the sarong ended a good way above her ankles. She stood poised firmly, half-way between the table and the curtained doorway, the insteps of herbare feet gleaming like marble on the overshadowed matting of the floor. The fall of her lighted shoulders, the strong and fine modelling ofher arms hanging down her sides, her immobility, too, had somethingstatuesque, the charm of art tense with life. She was not verybig--Heyst used to think of her, at first, as "that poor littlegirl, "--but revealed free from the shabby banality of a white platformdress, in the simple drapery of the sarong, there was that in her formand in the proportions of her body which suggested a reduction from aheroic size. 

She moved forward a step. 

"What is it you have missed?" she asked again. 

Heyst turned his back altogether on the table. The black spokes ofdarkness over the floor and the walls, joining up on the ceiling in apath of shadow, were like the bars of a cage about them. It was his turnto ignore a question. 

"You woke up in a fright, you say?" he said. 

She walked up to him, exotic yet familiar, with her white woman's faceand shoulders above the Malay sarong, as if it were an airy disguise, but her expression was serious. 

"No, " she replied. "It was distress, rather. You see, you weren't there, and I couldn't tell why you had gone away from me. A nasty dream--thefirst I've had, too, since--"

"You don't believe in dreams, do you?" asked Heyst. 

"I once knew a woman who did. Leastwise, she used to tell people whatdreams mean, for a shilling. "

"Would you go now and ask her what this dream means?" inquired Heystjocularly. 

"She lived in Camberwell. She was a nasty old thing!"

Heyst laughed a little uneasily. 

"Dreams are madness, my dear. It's things that happen in the wakingworld, while one is asleep, that one would be glad to know the meaningof. "

"You have missed something out of this drawer, " she said positively. 

"This or some other. I have looked into every single one of them andcome back to this again, as people do. It's difficult to believe theevidence of my own senses; but it isn't there. Now, Lena, are you surethat you didn't--"

"I have touched nothing in the house but what you have given me. "

"Lena!" he cried. 

He was painfully affected by this disclaimer of a charge which he hadnot made. It was what a servant might have said--an inferior opento suspicion--or, at any rate, a stranger. He was angry at being sowretchedly misunderstood; disenchanted at her not being instinctivelyaware of the place he had secretly given her in his thoughts. 

"After all, " he said to himself, "we are strangers to each other. "

And then he felt sorry for her. He spoke calmly:

"I was about to say, are you sure you have no reason to think that theChinaman has been in this room tonight?"

"You suspect him?" she asked, knitting her eyebrows. 

"There is no one else to suspect. You may call it a certitude. "

"You don't want to tell me what it is?" she inquired, in the equabletone in which one takes a fact into account. 

Heyst only smiled faintly. 

"Nothing very precious, as far as value goes, " he replied. 

"I thought it might have been money, " she said. 

"Money!" exclaimed Heyst, as if the suggestion had been altogetherpreposterous. She was so visibly surprised that he hastened to add: "Ofcourse, there is some money in the house--there, in that writing-desk, the drawer on the left. It's not locked. You can pull it right out. There is a recess, and the board at the back pivots: a very simplehiding-place, when you know the way to it. I discovered it by accident, and I keep our store of sovereigns in there. The treasure, my dear, isnot big enough to require a cavern. "

He paused, laughed very low, and returned her steady stare. 

"The loose silver, some guilders and dollars, I have always kept in thatunlocked left drawer. I have no doubt Wang knows what there is in it, but he isn't a thief, and that's why I--no, Lena, what I've missed isnot gold or jewels; and that's what makes the fact interesting--whichthe theft of money cannot be. "

She took a long breath, relieved to hear that it was not money. A greatcuriosity was depicted on her face, but she refrained from pressing himwith questions. She only gave him one of her deep-gleaming smiles. 

"It isn't me so it must be Wang. You ought to make him give it back toyou. "

Heyst said nothing to that naive and practical suggestion, for theobject that he missed from the drawer was his revolver. 

It was a heavy weapon which he had owned for many years and had neverused in his life. Ever since the London furniture had arrived inSamburan, it had been reposing in the drawer of the table. The realdangers of life, for him, were not those which could be repelledby swords or bullets. On the other hand neither his manner nor hisappearance looked sufficiently inoffensive to expose him to light-mindedaggression. 

He could not have explained what had induced him to go to the drawerin the middle of the night. He had started up suddenly--which was veryunusual with him. He had found himself sitting up and extremely wideawake all at once, with the girl reposing by his side, lying with herface away from him, a vague, characteristically feminine form in the dimlight. She was perfectly still. 

At that season of the year there were no mosquitoes in Samburan, and thesides of the mosquito net were looped up. Heyst swung his feet to thefloor, and found himself standing there, almost before he had becomeaware of his intention to get up. 

Why he did this he did not know. He didn't wish to wake her up, andthe slight creak of the broad bedstead had sounded very loud to him. Heturned round apprehensively and waited for her to move, but she did notstir. While he looked at her, he had a vision of himself lying theretoo, also fast asleep, and--it occurred to him for the first time in hislife--very defenceless. This quite novel impression of the dangers ofslumber made him think suddenly of his revolver. He left the bedroomwith noiseless footsteps. The lightness of the curtain he had to liftas he passed out, and the outer door, wide open on the blackness ofthe veranda--for the roof eaves came down low, shutting out thestarlight--gave him a sense of having been dangerously exposed, he couldnot have said to what. He pulled the drawer open. Its emptiness cut histrain of self-communion short. He murmured to the assertive fact:

"Impossible! Somewhere else!"

He tried to remember where he had put the thing; but those provokedwhispers of memory were not encouraging. Foraging in every receptacleand nook big enough to contain a revolver, he came slowly to theconclusion that it was not in that room. Neither was it in the other. The whole bungalow consisted of the two rooms and a profuse allowance ofveranda all round. Heyst stepped out on the veranda. 

"It's Wang, beyond a doubt, " he thought, staring into the night. "He hasgot hold of it for some reason. "

There was nothing to prevent that ghostly Chinaman from materializingsuddenly at the foot of the stairs, or anywhere, at any moment, andtoppling him over with a dead sure shot. The danger was so irremediablethat it was not worth worrying about, any more than the generalprecariousness of human life. Heyst speculated on this added risk. Howlong had he been at the mercy of a slender yellow finger on the trigger?That is, if that was the fellow's reason for purloining the revolver. 

"Shoot and inherit, " thought Heyst. "Very simple. " Yet there was in hismind a marked reluctance to regard the domesticated grower of vegetablesin the light of a murderer. 

"No, it wasn't that. For Wang could have done it any time this lasttwelve months or more--"

Heyst's mind had worked on the assumption that Wang had possessedhimself of the revolver during his own absence from Samburan; but atthat period of his speculation his point of view changed. It struck himwith the force of manifest certitude that the revolver had been takenonly late in the day, or on that very night. Wang, of course. But why?So there had been no danger in the past. It was all ahead. 

"He has me at his mercy now, " thought Heyst, without particularexcitement. 

The sentiment he experienced was curiosity. He forgot himself in it: itwas as if he were considering somebody else's strange predicament. Buteven that sort of interest was dying out when, looking to his left, hesaw the accustomed shapes of the other bungalows looming in the night, and remembered the arrival of the thirsty company in the boat. Wangwould hardly risk such a crime in the presence of other white men. Itwas a peculiar instance of the "safety in numbers, " principle, whichsomehow was not much to Heyst's taste. 

He went in gloomily, and stood over the empty drawer in deep andunsatisfactory thought. He had just made up his mind that he mustbreathe nothing of this to the girl, when he heard her voice behind him. She had taken him by surprise, but he resisted the impulse to turn roundat once under the impression that she might read his trouble in hisface. Yes, she had taken him by surprise, and for that reason theconversation which began was not exactly as he would have conducted itif he had been prepared for her pointblank question. He ought to havesaid at once: "I've missed nothing. " It was a deplorable thing that heshould have let it come so far as to have her ask what it was he missed. He closed the conversation by saying lightly:

"It's an object of very small value. Don't worry about it--it isn'tworth while. The best you can do is to go and lie down again, Lena. "

Reluctant she turned away, and only in the doorway asked: "And you?"

"I think I shall smoke a cheroot on the veranda. I don't feel sleepy forthe moment. "

"Well, don't be long. "

He made no answer. She saw him standing there, very still, with a frownon his brow, and slowly dropped the curtain. 

Heyst did really light a cheroot before going out again on the veranda. He glanced up from under the low eaves, to see by the stars how thenight went on. It was going very slowly. Why it should have irked him hedid not know, for he had nothing to expect from the dawn; but everythinground him had become unreasonable, unsettled, and vaguely urgent, layinghim under an obligation, but giving him no line of action. He feltcontemptuously irritated with the situation. The outer world had brokenupon him; and he did not know what wrong he had done to bring this onhimself, any more than he knew what he had done to provoke the horriblecalumny about his treatment of poor Morrison. For he could not forgetthis. It had reached the ears of one who needed to have the most perfectconfidence in the rectitude of his conduct. 

"And she only half disbelieves it, " he thought, with hopelesshumiliation. 

This moral stab in the back seemed to have taken some of his strengthfrom him, as a physical wound would have done. He had no desire to doanything--neither to bring Wang to terms in the matter of the revolvernor to find out from the strangers who they were, and how theirpredicament had come about. He flung his glowing cigar away into thenight. But Samburan was no longer a solitude wherein he could indulge inall his moods. The fiery parabolic path the cast-out stump traced in theair was seen from another veranda at a distant of some twenty yards. Itwas noted as a symptom of importance by an observer with his facultiesgreedy for signs, and in a state of alertness tense enough almost tohear the grass grow. 

CHAPTER TEN

The observer was Martin Ricardo. To him life was not a matter ofpassive renunciation, but of a particularly active warfare. He wasnot mistrustful of it, he was not disgusted with it, still less was heinclined to be suspicious of its disenchantments; but he was vividlyaware that it held many possibilities of failure. Though very far frombeing a pessimist, he was not a man of foolish illusions. He didnot like failure, not only because of its unpleasant and dangerousconsequences, but also because of its damaging effect upon his ownappreciation of Martin Ricardo. And this was a special job, of his owncontriving, and of considerable novelty. It was not, so to speak, in hisusual line of business--except, perhaps, from a moral standpoint, aboutwhich he was not likely to trouble his head. For these reasons MartinRicardo was unable to sleep. 

Mr Jones, after repeated shivering fits, and after drinking much hottea, had apparently fallen into deep slumber. He had very peremptorilydiscouraged attempts at conversation on the part of his faithfulfollower. Ricardo listened to his regular breathing. It was all verywell for the governor. He looked upon it as a sort of sport. A gentlemannaturally would. But this ticklish and important job had to be pulledoff at all costs, both for honour and for safety. Ricardo rose quietly, and made his way on the veranda. He could not lie still. He wanted togo out for air, and he had a feeling that by the force of his eagernesseven the darkness and the silence could be made to yield something tohis eyes and ears. 

He noted the stars, and stepped back again into the dense darkness. He resisted the growing impulse to go out and steal towards the otherbungalow. It would have been madness to start prowling in the dark onunknown ground. And for what end? Unless to relieve the oppression. Immobility lay on his limbs like a leaden garment. And yet he wasunwilling to give up. He persisted in his objectless vigil. The man ofthe island was keeping quiet. 

It was at that moment that Ricardo's eyes caught the vanishing redtrail of light made by the cigar--a startling revelation of the man'swakefulness. He could not suppress a low "Hallo!" and began to sidlealong towards the door, with his shoulders rubbing the wall. For all heknew, the man might have been out in front by this time, observing theveranda. As a matter of fact, after flinging away the cheroot, Heysthad gone indoors with the feeling of a man who gives up an unprofitableoccupation. But Ricardo fancied he could hear faint footfalls on theopen ground, and dodged quickly into the room. There he drew breath, andmeditated for a while. His next step was to feel for the matches onthe tall desk, and to light the candle. He had to communicate to hisgovernor views and reflections of such importance that it was absolutelynecessary for him to watch their effect on the very countenance of thehearer. At first he had thought that these matters could have waitedtill daylight; but Heyst's wakefulness, disclosed in that startling way, made him feel suddenly certain that there could be no sleep for him thatnight. 

He said as much to his governor. When the little dagger-like flame haddone its best to dispel the darkness, Mr. Jones was to be seen reposingon a camp bedstead, in a distant part of the room. A railway rugconcealed his spare form up to his very head, which rested on theother railway rug rolled up for a pillow. Ricardo plumped himself downcross-legged on the floor, very close to the low bedstead; so that Mr. Jones--who perhaps had not been so very profoundly asleep--on openinghis eyes found them conveniently levelled at the face of his secretary. 

"Eh? What is it you say? No sleep for you tonight? But why can't you let_me_ sleep? Confound your fussiness!"

"Because that there fellow can't sleep--that's why. Dash me if he hasn'tbeen doing a think just now! What business has he to think in the middleof the night?"

"How do you know?"

"He was out, sir--up in the middle of the night. My own eyes saw it. "

"But how do you know that he was up to think?" inquired Mr. Jones. "Itmight have been anything--toothache, for instance. And you may havedreamed it for all I know. Didn't you try to sleep?"

"No, sir. I didn't even try to go to sleep. "

Ricardo informed his patron of his vigil on the veranda, and of therevelation which put an end to it. He concluded that a man up with acigar in the middle of the night must be doing a think. 

Mr Jones raised himself on his elbow. This sign of interest comfortedhis faithful henchman. 

"Seems to me it's time we did a little think ourselves, " added Ricardo, with more assurance. Long as they had been together the moods of hisgovernor were still a source of anxiety to his simple soul. 

"You are always making a fuss, " remarked Mr. Jones, in a tolerant tone. 

"Ay, but not for nothing, am I? You can't say that, sir. Mine may not bea gentleman's way of looking round a thing, but it isn't a fool's way, either. You've admitted that much yourself at odd times. "

Ricardo was growing warmly argumentative. Mr. Jones interrupted himwithout heat. 

"You haven't roused me to talk about yourself, I presume?"

"No, sir. " Ricardo remained silent for a minute, with the tip ofhis tongue caught between his teeth. "I don't think I could tell youanything about myself that you don't know, " he continued. There was asort of amused satisfaction in his tone which changed completely as hewent on. "It's that man, over there, that's got to be talked over. Idon't like him. "

He, failed to observe the flicker of a ghastly smile on his governor'slips. 

"Don't you?" murmured Mr. Jones, whose face, as he reclined on hiselbow, was on a level with the top of his follower's head. 

"No, sir, " said Ricardo emphatically. The candle from the other side ofthe room threw his monstrous black shadow on the wall. "He--I don't knowhow to say it--he isn't hearty-like. "

Mr Jones agreed languidly in his own manner:

"He seems to be a very self-possessed man. "

"Ay, that's it. Self--" Ricardo choked with indignation. "I would soonlet out some of his self-possession through a hole between his ribs, ifthis weren't a special job!"

Mr Jones had been making his own reflections, for he asked:

"Do you think he is suspicious?"

"I don't see very well what he can be suspicious of, " pondered Ricardo. "Yet there he was doing a think. And what could be the object of it?What made him get out of his bed in the middle of the night. 'Tain'tfleas, surely. "

"Bad conscience, perhaps, " suggested Mr. Jones jocularly. 

His faithful secretary suffered from irritation, and did not see thejoke. In a fretful tone he declared that there was no such thing asconscience. There was such a thing as funk; but there was nothing tomake that fellow funky in any special way. He admitted, however, thatthe man might have been uneasy at the arrival of strangers, because ofall that plunder of his put away somewhere. 

Ricardo glanced here and there, as if he were afraid of being overheardby the heavy shadows cast by the dim light all over the room. Hispatron, very quiet, spoke in a calm whisper:

"And perhaps that hotel-keeper has been lying to you about him. He maybe a very poor devil indeed. "

Ricardo shook his head slightly. The Schombergian theory of Heyst hadbecome in him a profound conviction, which he had absorbed as naturallyas a sponge takes up water. His patron's doubts were a wanton denyingof what was self-evident; but Ricardo's voice remained as before, a softpurring with a snarling undertone. 

"I am sup-prised at you, sir! It's the very way them tame ones--thecommon 'yporcrits of the world--get on. When it comes to plunderdrifting under one's very nose, there's not one of them that would keephis hands off. And I don't blame them. It's the way they do it that setsmy back up. Just look at the story of how he got rid of that pal of his!Send a man home to croak of a cold on the chest--that's one of your tametricks. And d'you mean to say, sir, that a man that's up to it wouldn'tbag whatever he could lay his hands in his 'yporcritical way? What wasall that coal business? Tame citizen dodge; 'yporcrisy--nothing else. No, no, sir! The thing is to extract it from him as neatly as possible. That's the job; and it isn't so simple as it looks. I reckon you havelooked at it all round, sir, before you took up the notion of thistrip. "

"No. " Mr. Jones was hardly audible, staring far away from his couch. "Ididn't think about it much. I was bored. "

"Ay, that you were--bad. I was feeling pretty desperate that afternoon, when that bearded softy of a landlord got talking to me about thisfellow here. Quite accidentally, it was. Well, sir, here we are after amighty narrow squeak. I feel all limp yet; but never mind--his swag willpay for the lot!"

"He's all alone here, " remarked Mr. Jones in a hollow murmur. 

"Ye-es, in a way. Yes, alone enough. Yes, you may say he is. "

"There's that Chinaman, though. "

"Ay, there's the Chink, " assented Ricardo rather absentmindedly. 

He was debating in his mind the advisability of making a clean breast ofhis knowledge of the girl's existence. Finally he concluded he wouldn't. The enterprise was difficult enough without complicating it with anupset to the sensibilities of the gentleman with whom he had the honourof being associated. Let the discovery come of itself, he thought, and then he could swear that he had known nothing of that offensivepresence. 

He did not need to lie. He had only to hold his tongue. 

"Yes, " he muttered reflectively, "there's that Chink, certainly. "

At bottom, he felt a certain ambiguous respect for his governor'sexaggerated dislike of women, as if that horror of feminine presencewere a sort of depraved morality; but still morality, since he countedit as an advantage. It prevented many undesirable complications. He didnot pretend to understand it. He did not even try to investigatethis idiosyncrasy of his chief. All he knew was that he himself wasdifferently inclined, and that it did not make him any happier or safer. He did not know how he would have acted if he had been knocking aboutthe world on his own. Luckily he was a subordinate, not a wage-slave buta follower--which was a restraint. Yes! The other sort of dispositionsimplified matters in general; it wasn't to be gainsaid. But it wasclear that it could also complicate them--as in this most important and, in Ricardo's view, already sufficiently delicate case. And the worst ofit was that one could not tell exactly in what precise manner it wouldact. 

It was unnatural, he thought somewhat peevishly. How was one to reckonup the unnatural? There were no rules for that. The faithful henchmanof plain Mr. Jones, foreseeing many difficulties of a material order, decided to keep the girl out of the governor's knowledge, out of hissight, too, for as long a time as it could be managed. That, alas, seemed to be at most a matter of a few hours; whereas Ricardo fearedthat to get the affair properly going would take some days. Once wellstarted, he was not afraid of his gentleman failing him. As is often thecase with lawless natures, Ricardo's faith in any given individual wasof a simple, unquestioning character. For man must have some support inlife. 

Cross-legged, his head drooping a little and perfectly still, he mighthave been meditating in a bonze-like attitude upon the sacred syllable"Om. " It was a striking illustration of the untruth of appearances, forhis contempt for the world was of a severely practical kind. There wasnothing oriental about Ricardo but the amazing quietness of his pose. Mr. Jones was also very quiet. He had let his head sink on the rolled-uprug, and lay stretched out on his side with his back to the light. Inthat position the shadows gathered in the cavities of his eyes madethem look perfectly empty. When he spoke, his ghostly voice had only totravel a few inches straight into Ricardo's left ear. 

"Why don't you say something, now that you've got me awake?"

"I wonder if you were sleeping as sound as you are trying to make out, sir, " said the unmoved Ricardo. 

"I wonder, " repeated Mr. Jones. "At any rate, I was resting quietly!"

"Come, sir!" Ricardo's whisper was alarmed. "You don't mean to sayyou're going to be bored?"

"No. "

"Quite right!" The secretary was very much relieved. "There's nooccasion to be, I can tell you, sir, " he whispered earnestly. "Anythingbut that! If I didn't say anything for a bit, it ain't because thereisn't plenty to talk about. Ay, more than enough. "

"What's the matter with you?" breathed out his patron. "Are you going toturn pessimist?"

"Me turn? No, sir! I ain't of those that turn. You may call me hardnames, if you like, but you know very well that I ain't a croaker. "Ricardo changed his tone. "If I said nothing for a while, it was becauseI was meditating over the Chink, sir. "

"You were? Waste of time, my Martin. A Chinaman is unfathomable. "

Ricardo admitted that this might be so. Anyhow, a Chink was neitherhere nor there, as a general thing, unfathomable as he might be; but aSwedish baron wasn't--couldn't be! The woods were full of such barons. 

"I don't know that he is so tame, " was Mr. Jones's remark, in asepulchral undertone. 

"How do you mean, sir? He ain't a rabbit, of course. You couldn'thypnotize him, as I saw you do to more than one Dago, and other kindsof tame citizens, when it came to the point of holding them down to agame. "

"Don't you reckon on that, " murmured plain Mr. Jones seriously. 

"No, sir, I don't, though you have a wonderful power of the eye. It's afact. "

"I have a wonderful patience, " remarked Mr. Jones dryly. 

A dim smile flitted over the lips of the faithful Ricardo who neverraised his head. 

"I don't want to try you too much, sir, but this is like no other job weever turned our minds to. "

"Perhaps not. At any rate let us think so. "

A weariness with the monotony of life was reflected in the tone of thisqualified assent. It jarred on the nerves of the sanguine Ricardo. 

"Let us think of the way to go to work, " he retorted a littleimpatiently. "He's a deep one. Just look at the way he treated that chumof his. Did you ever hear of anything so low? And the artfulness of thebeast--the dirty, tame artfulness!"

"Don't you start moralizing, Martin, " said Mr. Jones warningly. "As faras I can make out the story that German hotel-keeper told you, it seemsto show a certain amount of character;--and independence from commonfeelings which is not usual. It's very remarkable, if true. "

"Ay, ay! Very remarkable. It's mighty low down, all the same, " muttered, Ricardo obstinately. "I must say I am glad to think he will be paid offfor it in a way that'll surprise him!"

The tip of his tongue appeared lively for an instant, as if trying forthe taste of that ferocious retribution on his compressed lips. ForRicardo was sincere in his indignation before the elementary principleof loyalty to a chum violated in cold blood, slowly, in a patientduplicity of years. There are standards in villainy as in virtue, andthe act as he pictured it to himself acquired an additional horrorfrom the slow pace of that treachery so atrocious and so tame. Buthe understood too the educated judgement of his governor, a gentlemanlooking on all this with the privileged detachment of a cultivated mind, of an elevated personality. 

"Ay, he's deep--he's artful, " he mumbled between his sharp teeth. 

"Confound you!" Mr. Jones's calm whisper crept into his ear. "Come tothe point. "

Obedient, the secretary shook off his thoughtfulness. There was asimilarity of mind between these two--one the outcast of his vices, theother inspired by a spirit of scornful defiance, the aggressiveness ofa beast of prey looking upon all the tame creatures of the earth as itsnatural victim. Both were astute enough, however, and both were awarethat they had plunged into this adventure without a sufficient scrutinyof detail. The figure of a lonely man far from all assistance hadloomed up largely, fascinating and defenceless in the middle of the sea, filling the whole field of their vision. There had not seemed to be anyneed for thinking. As Schomberg had been saying: "Three to one. "

But it did not look so simple now in the face of that solitude which waslike an armour for this man. The feeling voiced by the henchman in hisown way--"We don't seem much forwarder now we are here" was acknowledgedby the silence of the patron. It was easy enough to rip a fellow up ordrill a hole in him, whether he was alone or not, Ricardo reflected inlow, confidential tones, but--

"He isn't alone, " Mr. Jones said faintly, in his attitude of a mancomposed for sleep. "Don't forget that Chinaman. " Ricardo startedslightly. 

"Oh, ay--the Chink!"

Ricardo had been on the point of confessing about the girl; but no! Hewanted his governor to be unperturbed and steady. Vague thoughts, which he hardly dared to look in the face, were stirring his brain inconnection with that girl. She couldn't be much account, he thought. Shecould be frightened. And there were also other possibilities. The Chink, however, could be considered openly. 

"What I was thinking about it, sir, " he went on earnestly, "isthis--here we've got a man. He's nothing. If he won't be good, he can bemade quiet. That's easy. But then there's his plunder. He doesn't carryit in his pocket. "

"I hope not, " breathed Mr. Jones. 

"Same here. It's too big, we know, but if he were alone, he would notfeel worried about it overmuch--I mean the safety of the pieces. Hewould just put the lot into any box or drawer that was handy. "

"Would he?"

"Yes, sir. He would keep it under his eye, as it were. Why not? It isnatural. A fellow doesn't put his swag underground, unless there's avery good reason for it. "

"A very good reason, eh?"

"Yes, sir. What do you think a fellow is--a mole?"

From his experience, Ricardo declared that man was not a burrowingbeast. Even the misers very seldom buried their hoard, unless forexceptional reasons. In the given situation of a man alone on an island, the company of a Chink was a very good reason. Drawers would not besafe, nor boxes, either, from a prying, slant-eyed Chink. No, sir, unless a safe--a proper office safe. But the safe was there in the room. 

"Is there a safe in this room? I didn't notice it, " whispered Mr. Jones. 

That was because the thing was painted white, like the walls of theroom; and besides, it was tucked away in the shadows of a corner. Mr. Jones had been too tired to observe anything on his first coming ashore;but Ricardo had very soon spotted the characteristic form. He onlywished he could believe that the plunder of treachery, duplicity, andall the moral abominations of Heyst had been there. But no; the blamedthing was open. 

"It might have been there at one time or another, " he commentedgloomily, "but it isn't there now. "

"The man did not elect to live in this house, " remarked Mr. Jones. "Andby the by, what could he have meant by speaking of circumstances whichprevented him lodging us in the other bungalow? You remember what hesaid, Martin? Sounded cryptic. "

Martin, who remembered and understood the phrase as directly motived bythe existence of the girl, waited a little before saying:

"Some of his artfulness, sir; and not the worst of it either. Thatmanner of his to us, this asking no questions, is some more of hisartfulness. A man's bound to be curious, and he is; yet he goes on as ifhe didn't care. He does care--or else what was he doing up with a cigarin the middle of the night, doing a think? I don't like it. "

"He may be outside, observing the light here, and saying the very samething to himself of our own wakefulness, " gravely suggested Ricardo'sgovernor. 

"He may be, sir; but this is too important to be talked over in thedark. And the light is all right, it can be accounted for. There's alight in this bungalow in the middle of the night because--why, becauseyou are not well. Not well, sir--that's what's the matter, and you willhave to act up to it. "

The consideration had suddenly occurred to the faithful henchman, in thelight of a felicitous expedient to keep his governor and the girl apartas long as possible. Mr. Jones received the suggestion without theslightest stir, even in the deep sockets of his eyes, where a steady, faint gleam was the only thing telling of life and attention in hisattenuated body. But Ricardo, as soon as he had enunciated his happythought, perceived in it other possibilities more to the point and ofgreater practical advantage. 

"With your looks, sir, it will be easy enough, " he went on evenly, asif no silence had intervened, always respectful, but frank, withperfect simplicity of purpose. "All you've got to do is just to lie downquietly. I noticed him looking sort of surprised at you on the wharf, sir. "

At these words, a naive tribute to the aspect of his physique, even moresuggestive of the grave than of the sick-bed, a fold appeared on thatside of the governor's face which was exposed to the dim light--a deep, shadowy, semicircular fold from the side of the nose to bottom of thechin--a silent smile. By a side-glance Ricardo had noted this play offeatures. He smiled, too, appreciative, encouraged. 

"And you as hard as nails all the time, " he went on. "Hang me if anybodywould believe you aren't sick, if I were to swear myself black inthe face! Give us a day or two to look into matters and size up that'yporcrit. "

Ricardo's eyes remained fixed on his crossed shins. The chief, in hislifeless accents, approved. 

"Perhaps it would be a good idea. "

"The Chink, he's nothing. He can be made quiet any time. "

One of Ricardo's hands, reposing palm upwards on his folded legs, madea swift thrusting gesture, repeated by the enormous darting shadow of anarm very low on the wall. It broke the spell of perfect stillness inthe room. The secretary eyed moodily the wall from which the shadow hadgone. Anybody could be made quiet, he pointed out. It was not anythingthat the Chink could do; no, it was the effect that his company musthave produced on the conduct of the doomed man. A man! What was a man? ASwedish baron could be ripped up, or else holed by a shot, as easily asany other creature; but that was exactly what was to be avoided, tillone knew where he had hidden his plunder. 

"I shouldn't think it would be some sort of hole in his bungalow, "argued Ricardo with real anxiety. 

No. A house can be burnt--set on fire accidentally, or on purpose, whilea man's asleep. Under the house--or in some crack, cranny, or crevice?Something told him it wasn't that. The anguish of mental effortcontracted Ricardo's brow. The skin of his head seemed to move in thistravail of vain and tormenting suppositions. 

"What did you think a fellow is, sir--a baby?" he said, in answer to Mr. Jones's objections. "I am trying to find out what I would do myself. Hewouldn't be likely to be cleverer than I am. "

"And what do you know about yourself?"

Mr Jones seemed to watch his follower's perplexities with amusementconcealed in a death-like composure. 

Ricardo disregarded the question. The material vision of the spoilabsorbed all his faculties. A great vision! He seemed to see it. A fewsmall canvas bags tied up with thin cord, their distended rotundityshowing the inside pressure of the disk-like forms of coins--gold, solid, heavy, eminently portable. Perhaps steel cash-boxes with a chaseddesign, on the covers; or perhaps a black and brass box with a handleon the top, and full of goodness knows what. Bank notes? Why not? Thefellow had been going home; so it was surely something worth going homewith. 

"And he may have put it anywhere outside--anywhere!" cried Ricardo in adeadened voice, "in the forest--"

That was it! A temporary darkness replaced the dim light of the room. The darkness of the forest at night and in it the gleam of a lantern, bywhich a figure is digging at the foot of a tree-trunk. As likely as not, another figure holding that lantern--ha, feminine! The girl!

The prudent Ricardo stifled a picturesque and profane exclamation, partly joy, partly dismay. Had the girl been trusted or mistrusted bythat man? Whatever it was, it was bound to be wholly! With women therecould be no half-measures. He could not imagine a fellow half-trustinga woman in that intimate relation to himself, and in those particularcircumstances of conquest and loneliness where no confidences couldappear dangerous since, apparently, there could be no one she couldgive him away to. Moreover, in nine cases out of ten the woman would betrusted. But, trusted or mistrusted, was her presence a favourable orunfavourable condition of the problem? That was the question!

The temptation to consult his chief, to talk over the weighty fact, andget his opinion on it, was great indeed. Ricardo resisted it; but theagony of his solitary mental conflict was extremely sharp. A woman ina problem is an incalculable quantity, even if you have something to goupon in forming your guess. How much more so when you haven't even oncecaught sight of her. 

Swift as were his mental processes, he felt that a longer silence wasinadvisable. He hastened to speak:

"And do you see us, sir, you and I, with a couple of spades having totackle this whole confounded island?"

He allowed himself a slight movement of the arm. The shadow enlarged itinto a sweeping gesture. 

"This seems rather discouraging, Martin, " murmured the unmoved governor. 

"We mustn't be discouraged--that's all!" retorted his henchman. "Andafter what we had to go through in that boat too! Why it would be--"

He couldn't find the qualifying words. Very calm, faithful, and yetastute, he expressed his new-born hopes darkly. 

"Something's sure to turn up to give us a hint; only this job can't berushed. You may depend on me to pick up the least little bit of a hint;but you, sir--you've got to play him very gently. For the rest you cantrust me. "

"Yes; but I ask myself what YOU are trusting to. "

"Our luck, " said the faithful Ricardo. "Don't say a word against that. It might spoil the run of it. "

"You are a superstitious beggar. No, I won't say anything against it. "

"That's right, sir. Don't you even think lightly of it. Luck's not to beplayed with. "

"Yes, luck's a delicate thing, " assented Mr. Jones in a dreamy whisper. 

A short silence ensued, which Ricardo ended in a discreet and tentativevoice. 

"Talking of luck, I suppose he could be made to take a hand withyou, sir--two-handed picket or ekkarty, you being seedy and keepingindoors--just to pass the time. For all we know, he may be one of themhot ones once they start--"

"Is it likely?" came coldly from the principal. "Considering what weknow of his history--say with his partner. "

"True, sir. He's a cold-blooded beast; a cold-blooded, inhuman--"

"And I'll tell you another thing that isn't likely. He would not belikely to let himself be stripped bare. We haven't to do with a youngfool that can be led on by chaff or flattery, and in the end simplyoverawed. This is a calculating man. "

Ricardo recognized that clearly. What he had in his mind was somethingon a small scale, just to keep the enemy busy while he, Ricardo, hadtime to nose around a bit. 

"You could even lose a little money to him, sir, " he suggested. 

"I could. "

Ricardo was thoughtful for a moment. 

"He strikes me, too, as the sort of man to start prancing when onedidn't expect it. What do you think, sir? Is he a man that would prance?That is, if something startled him. More likely to prance than torun--what?"

The answer came at once, because Mr. Jones understood the peculiar idiomof his faithful follower. 

"Oh, without doubt! Without doubt!"

"It does me good to hear that you think so. He's a prancing beast, and so we mustn't startle him--not till I have located the stuff. Afterwards--"

Ricardo paused, sinister in the stillness of his pose. Suddenly hegot up with a swift movement and gazed down at his chief in moodyabstraction. Mr. Jones did not stir. 

"There's one thing that's worrying me, " began Ricardo in a subduedvoice. 

"Only one?" was the faint comment from the motionless body on thebedstead. 

"I mean more than all the others put together. "

"That's grave news. "

"Ay, grave enough. It's this--how do you feel in yourself, sir? Are youlikely to get bored? I know them fits come on you suddenly; but surelyyou can tell--"

"Martin, you are an ass. "

The moody face of the secretary brightened up. 

"Really, sir? Well, I am quite content to be on these terms--I mean aslong as you don't get bored. It wouldn't do, sir. "

For coolness, Ricardo had thrown open his shirt and rolled up hissleeves. He moved stealthily across the room, bare-footed, towards thecandle, the shadow of his head and shoulders growing bigger behind himon the opposite wall, to which the face of plain Mr. Jones was turned. With a feline movement, Ricardo glanced over his shoulder at the thinback of the spectre reposing on the bed, and then blew out the candle. 

"In fact, I am rather amused, Martin, " Mr. Jones said in the dark. 

He heard the sound of a slapped thigh and the jubilant exclamation ofhis henchman:

"Good! That's the way to talk, sir!"

PART FOUR

CHAPTER ONE

Ricardo advanced prudently by short darts from one tree-trunk toanother, more in the manner of a squirrel than a cat. The sun hadrisen some time before. Already the sparkle of open sea was encroachingrapidly on the dark, cool, early-morning blue of Diamond Bay; but thedeep dusk lingered yet under the mighty pillars of the forest, betweenwhich the secretary dodged. 

He was watching Number One's bungalow with an animal-like patience, ifwith a very human complexity of purpose. This was the second morningof such watching. The first one had not been rewarded by success. Well, strictly speaking, there was no hurry. 

The sun, swinging above the ridge all at once, inundated with light thespace of burnt grass in front of Ricardo and the face of the bungalow, on which his eyes were fixed, leaving only the one dark spot of thedoorway. To his right, to his left, and behind him, splashes of goldappeared in the deep shade of the forest, thinning the gloom under theragged roof of leaves. 

This was not a very favourable circumstance for Ricardo's purpose. Hedid not wish to be detected in his patient occupation. For what he waswatching for was a sight of the girl--that girl! just a glimpse acrossthe burnt patch to see what she was like. He had excellent eyes, andthe distance was not so great. He would be able to distinguish her facequite easily if she only came out on the veranda; and she was boundto do that sooner or later. He was confident that he could form someopinion about her--which, he felt, was very necessary, before venturingon some steps to get in touch with her behind that Swedish baron's back. His theoretical view of the girl was such that he was quite prepared, on the strength of that distant examination, to show himselfdiscreetly--perhaps even make a sign. It all depended on his reading ofthe face. She couldn't be much. He knew that sort!

By protruding his head a little he commanded, through the foliage of afestooning creeper, a view of the three bungalows. Irregularly disposedalong a flat curve, over the veranda rail of the farthermost one hung adark rug of a tartan pattern, amazingly conspicuous. Ricardo could seethe very checks. A brisk fire of sticks was burning on the ground infront of the steps, and in the sunlight the thin, fluttering flame hadpaled almost to invisibility--a mere rosy stir under a faint wreath ofsmoke. He could see the white bandage on the head of Pedro bending overit, and the wisps of black hair standing up weirdly. He had wound thatbandage himself, after breaking that shaggy and enormous head. Thecreature balanced it like a load, staggering towards the steps. Ricardocould see a small, long-handled saucepan at the end of a great hairypaw. 

Yes, he could see all that there was to be seen, far and near. Excellenteyes! The only thing they could not penetrate was the dark oblong of thedoorway on the veranda under the low eaves of the bungalow's roof. Andthat was vexing. It was an outrage. Ricardo was easily outraged. Surelyshe would come out presently! Why didn't she? Surely the fellow did nottie her up to the bedpost before leaving the house!

Nothing appeared. Ricardo was as still as the leafy cables of creepersdepending in a convenient curtain from the mighty limb sixty feet abovehis head. His very eyelids were still, and this unblinking watchfulnessgave him the dreamy air of a cat posed on a hearth-rug contemplating thefire. Was he dreaming? There, in plain sight, he had before him a white, blouse-like jacket, short blue trousers, a pair of bare yellow calves, apigtail, long and slender--

"The confounded Chink!" he muttered, astounded. 

He was not conscious of having looked away; and yet right there, in themiddle of the picture, without having come round the right-hand corneror the left-hand corner of the house, without falling from the sky orsurging up from the ground, Wang had become visible, large as life, and engaged in the young-ladyish occupation of picking flowers. Stepby step, stooping repeatedly over the flower-beds at the foot of theveranda, the startlingly materialized Chinaman passed off the scene ina very commonplace manner, by going up the steps and disappearing in thedarkness of the doorway. 

Only then the yellow eyes of Martin Ricardo lost their intent fixity. Heunderstood that it was time for him to be moving. That bunch offlowers going into the house in the hand of a Chinaman was for thebreakfast-table. What else could it be for?

"I'll give you flowers!" he muttered threateningly. "You wait!"

Another moment, just for a glance towards the Jones bungalow, whencehe expected Heyst to issue on his way to that breakfast so offensivelydecorated, and Ricardo began his retreat. His impulse, his desire, wasfor a rush into the open, face to face with the appointed victim, forwhat he called a "ripping up, " visualized greedily, and always withthe swift preliminary stooping movement on his part--the forerunner ofcertain death to his adversary. This was his impulse; and as it was, soto speak, constitutional, it was extremely difficult to resist when hisblood was up. What could be more trying than to have to skulk and dodgeand restrain oneself, mentally and physically, when one's blood was up?Mr. Secretary Ricardo began his retreat from his post of observationbehind a tree opposite Heyst's bungalow, using great care to remainunseen. His proceedings were made easier by the declivity of the ground, which sloped sharply down to the water's edge. There, his feet feelingthe warmth of the island's rocky foundation already heated by the sun, through the thin soles of his straw slippers he was, as it were, sunkout of sight of the houses. A short scramble of some twenty feet broughthim up again to the upper level, at the place where the jetty had itsroot in the shore. He leaned his back against one of the lofty uprightswhich still held up the company's signboard above the mound of derelictcoal. Nobody could have guessed how much his blood was up. To containhimself he folded his arms tightly on his breast. 

Ricardo was not used to a prolonged effort of self-control. His craft, his artfulness, felt themselves always at the mercy of his nature, whichwas truly feral and only held in subjection by the influence of the"governor, " the prestige of a gentleman. It had its cunning too, but itwas being almost too severely tried since the feral solution of a growland a spring was forbidden by the problem. Ricardo dared not venture outon the cleared ground. He dared not. 

"If I meet the beggar, " he thought, "I don't know what I mayn't do. Idaren't trust myself. "

What exasperated him just now was his inability to understandHeyst. Ricardo was human enough to suffer from the discovery of hislimitations. No, he couldn't size Heyst up. He could kill him withextreme ease--a growl and a spring--but that was forbidden! However, hecould not remain indefinitely under the funereal blackboard. 

"I must make a move, " he thought. 

He moved on, his head swimming a little with the repressed desire ofviolence, and came out openly in front of the bungalows, as if he hadjust been down to the jetty to look at the boat. The sunshine envelopedhim, very brilliant, very still, very hot. The three buildings facedhim. The one with the rug on the balustrade was the most distant; nextto it was the empty bungalow; the nearest, with the flower-beds at thefoot of its veranda, contained that bothersome girl, who had managedso provokingly to keep herself invisible. That was why Ricardo's eyeslingered on that building. The girl would surely be easier to "size up"than Heyst. A sight of her, a mere glimpse, would have been something togo by, a step nearer to the goal--the first real move, in fact. Ricardosaw no other move. And any time she might appear on that veranda!

She did not appear; but, like a concealed magnet, she exercised herattraction. As he went on, he deviated towards the bungalow. Though hismovements were deliberate, his feral instincts had such sway that if hehad met Heyst walking towards him, he would have had to satisfy hisneed of violence. But he saw nobody. Wang was at the back of the house, keeping the coffee hot against Number One's return for breakfast. Eventhe simian Pedro was out of sight, no doubt crouching on the door-step, his red little eyes fastened with animal-like devotion on Mr. Jones, whowas in discourse with Heyst in the other bungalow--the conversation ofan evil spectre with a disarmed man, watched by an ape. 

His will having very little to do with it, Ricardo, darting swiftglances in all directions, found himself at the steps of the Heystbungalow. Once there, falling under an uncontrollable force ofattraction, he mounted them with a savage and stealthy action of hislimbs, and paused for a moment under the eaves to listen to the silence. Presently he advanced over the threshold one leg--it seemed to stretchitself, like a limb of india-rubber--planted his foot within, brought upthe other swiftly, and stood inside the room, turning his head from sideto side. To his eyes, brought in there from the dazzling sunshine, allwas gloom for a moment. His pupils, like a cat's, dilating swiftly, hedistinguished an enormous quantity of books. He was amazed; and he wasput off too. He was vexed in his astonishment. He had meant to note theaspect and nature of things, and hoped to draw some useful inference, some hint as to the man. But what guess could one make out of amultitude of books? He didn't know what to think; and he formulated hisbewilderment in the mental exclamation:

"What the devil has this fellow been trying to set up here--a school?"

He gave a prolonged stare to the portrait of Heyst's father, that severeprofile ignoring the vanities of this earth. His eyes gleamed sidewaysat the heavy silver candlesticks--signs of opulence. He prowled as astray cat entering a strange place might have done, for if Ricardo hadnot Wang's miraculous gift of materializing and vanishing, rather thancoming and going, he could be nearly as noiseless in his less elusivemovements. He noted the back door standing just ajar; and an the timehis slightly pointed ears, at the utmost stretch of watchfulness, keptin touch with the profound silence outside enveloping the absolutestillness of the house. 

He had not been in the room two minutes when it occurred to him that hemust be alone in the bungalow. The woman, most likely, had sneaked outand was walking about somewhere in the grounds at the back. She hadbeen probably ordered to keep out of sight. Why? Because the fellowmistrusted his guests; or was it because he mistrusted _her_?

Ricardo reflected that from a certain point of view it amounted nearlyto the same thing. He remembered Schomberg's story. He felt thatrunning away with somebody only to get clear of that beastly, tame, hotel-keeper's attention was no proof of hopeless infatuation. She couldbe got in touch with. 

His moustaches stirred. For some time he had been looking at a closeddoor. He would peep into that other room, and perhaps see something moreinforming than a confounded lot of books. As he crossed over, he thoughtrecklessly:

"If the beggar comes in suddenly, and starts to prance, I'll rip him upand be done with it!"

He laid his hand on the handle, and felt the door come unlatched. Beforehe pulled it open, he listened again to the silence. He felt it allabout him, complete, without a flaw. 

The necessity of prudence had exasperated his self-restraint. A moodof ferocity woke up in him, and, as always at such times, he becamephysically aware of the sheeted knife strapped to his leg. He pulled atthe door with fierce curiosity. It came open without a squeak of hinge, without a rustle, with no sound at all; and he found himself glaring atthe opaque surface of some rough blue stuff, like serge. A curtain wasfitted inside, heavy enough and long enough not to stir. 

A curtain! This unforeseen veil, baffling his curiosity checked hisbrusqueness. He did not fling it aside with an impatient movement; heonly looked at it closely, as if its texture had to be examined beforehis hand could touch such stuff. In this interval of hesitation, heseemed to detect a flaw in the perfection of the silence, the faintestpossible rustle, which his ears caught and instantly, in the effort ofconscious listening, lost again. No! Everything was still inside andoutside the house, only he had no longer the sense of being alone there. 

When he put out his hand towards the motionless folds it was withextreme caution, and merely to push the stuff aside a little, advancinghis head at the same time to peep within. A moment of completeimmobility ensued. Then, without anything else of him stirring, Ricardo's head shrank back on his shoulders, his arm descended slowly tohis side. There was a woman in there. The very woman! Lighted dimlyby the reflection of the outer glare, she loomed up strangely big andshadowy at the other end of the long, narrow room. With her back tothe door, she was doing her hair with bare arms uplifted. One of themgleamed pearly white; the other detached its perfect form in blackagainst the unshuttered, uncurtained square window-hole. She was there, her fingers busy with her dark hair, utterly unconscious, exposed anddefenceless--and tempting. 

Ricardo drew back one foot and pressed his elbows close to his sides;his chest started heaving convulsively as if he were wrestling orrunning a race; his body began to sway gently back and forth. Theself-restraint was at an end: his psychology must have its way. Theinstinct for the feral spring could no longer be denied. Ravish orkill--it was all one to him, as long as by the act he liberated thesuffering soul of savagery repressed for so long. After a quick glanceover his shoulder, which hunters of big game tell us no lion or tigeromits to give before charging home, Ricardo charged, head down, straightat the curtain. The stuff, tossed up violently by his rush, settleditself with a slow, floating descent Into vertical folds, motionless, without a shudder even, in the still, warm air. 

CHAPTER TWO

The clock--which once upon a time had measured the hours of philosophicmeditation--could not have ticked away more than five seconds when Wangmaterialized within the living-room. His concern primarily was with thedelayed breakfast, but at once his slanting eyes became immovably fixedupon the unstirring curtain. For it was behind it that he had locatedthe strange, deadened scuffling sounds which filled the empty room. Theslanting eyes of his race could not achieve a round, amazed stare, butthey remained still, dead still, and his impassive yellow face grew allat once careworn and lean with the sudden strain of intense, doubtful, frightened watchfulness. Contrary impulses swayed his body, rooted tothe floor-mats. He even went so far as to extend his hand towards thecurtain. He could not reach it, and he didn't make the necessary stepforward. 

The mysterious struggle was going on with confused thuds of bare feet, in a mute wrestling match, no human sound, hiss, groan, murmur, orexclamation coming through the curtain. A chair fell over, not with acrash but lightly, as if just grazed, and a faint metallic ring of thetin bath succeeded. Finally the tense silence, as of two adversarieslocked in a deadly grip, was ended by the heavy, dull thump of a softbody flung against the inner partition of planks. It seemed to shakethe whole bungalow. By that time, walking backward, his eyes, hisvery throat, strained with fearful excitement, his extended arm stillpointing at the curtain, Wang had disappeared through the back door. Once out in the compound, he bolted round the end of the house. Emerginginnocently between the two bungalows he lingered and lounged in theopen, where anybody issuing from any of the dwellings was bound to seehim--a self-possessed Chinaman idling there, with nothing but perhaps anunserved breakfast on his mind. 

It was at this time that Wang made up his mind to give up all connectionwith Number One, a man not only disarmed but already half vanquished. Till that morning he had had doubts as to his course of action, but thisoverheard scuffle decided the question. Number One was a doomed man--oneof those beings whom it is unlucky to help. Even as he walked in theopen with a fine air of unconcern, Wang wondered that no sound of anysort was to be heard inside the house. For all he knew, the white womanmight have been scuffling in there with an evil spirit, which had ofcourse killed her. For nothing visible came out of the house he watchedout of the slanting corner of his eye. The sunshine and the silenceoutside the bungalow reigned undisturbed. 

But in the house the silence of the big room would not have struck anacute ear as perfect. It was troubled by a stir so faint that it couldhardly be called a ghost of whispering from behind the curtain. 

Ricardo, feeling his throat with tender care, breathed out admiringly:

"You have fingers like steel. Jimminy! You have muscles like a giant!"

Luckily for Lena, Ricardo's onset had been so sudden--she was windingher two heavy tresses round her head--that she had no time to lower herarms. This, which saved them from being pinned to her sides, gave her abetter chance to resist. His spring had nearly thrown her down. Luckily, again, she was standing so near the wall that, though she was drivenagainst it headlong, yet the shock was not heavy enough to knock all thebreath out of her body. On the contrary, it helped her first instinctiveattempt to drive her assailant backward. 

After the first gasp of a surprise that was really too over-powering fora cry, she was never in doubt of the nature of her danger. She defendedherself in the full, clear knowledge of it, from the force of instinctwhich is the true source of every great display of energy, and with adetermination which could hardly have been expected from a girl who, cornered in a dim corridor by the red-faced, stammering Schomberg, hadtrembled with shame, disgust, and fear; had drooped, terrified, beforemere words spluttered out odiously by a man who had never in his lifelaid his big paw on her. 

This new enemy's attack was simple, straightforward violence. It was notthe slimy, underhand plotting to deliver her up like a slave, whichhad sickened her heart and had made her feel in her loneliness that heroppressors were too many for her. She was no longer alone in the worldnow. She resisted without a moment of faltering, because she was nolonger deprived of moral support; because she was a human being whocounted; because she was no longer defending herself for herself alone;because of the faith that had been born in her--the faith in the man ofher destiny, and perhaps in the Heaven which had sent him so wonderfullyto cross her path. 

She had defended herself principally by maintaining a desperate, murderous clutch on Ricardo's windpipe, till she felt a suddenrelaxation of the terrific hug in which he stupidly and ineffectuallypersisted to hold her. Then with a supreme effort of her arms and ofher suddenly raised knee, she sent him flying against the partition. The cedar-wood chest stood in the way, and Ricardo, with a thump whichboomed hollow through the whole bungalow, fell on it in a sittingposture, half strangled, and exhausted not so much by the efforts as bythe emotions of the struggle. 

With the recoil of her exerted strength, she too reeled, staggered back, and sat on the edge of the bed. Out of breath, but calm and unabashed, she busied herself in readjusting under her arms the brown and yellowfigured Celebes sarong, the tuck of which had come undone during thefight. Then, folding her bare arms tightly on her breast, she leanedforward on her crossed legs, determined and without fear. 

Ricardo, leaning forward too, his nervous force gone, crestfallen like abeast of prey that has missed its spring, met her big grey eyes lookingat him--wide open, observing, mysterious--from under the dark arches ofher courageous eyebrows. Their faces were not a foot apart. He ceasedfeeling about his aching throat and dropped the palms of his handsheavily on his knees. He was not looking at her bare shoulders, at herstrong arms; he was looking down at the floor. He had lost one of hisstraw slippers. A chair with a white dress on it had been overturned. These, with splashes of water on the floor out of a brusquely misplacedsponge-bath, were the only traces of the struggle. 

Ricardo swallowed twice consciously, as if to make sure of his throatbefore he spoke again:

"All right. I never meant to hurt you--though I am no joker when itcomes to it. "

He pulled up the leg of his pyjamas to exhibit the strapped knife. She glanced at it without moving her head, and murmured with scornfulbitterness:

"Ah, yes--with that thing stuck in my side. In no other way. "

He shook his head with a shamefaced smile. 

"Listen! I am quiet now. Straight--I am. I don't need to explainwhy--you know how it is. And I can see, now, this wasn't the way withyou. "

She made no sound. Her still, upward gaze had a patient, mournfulnesswhich troubled him like a suggestion of an inconceivable depth. He addedthoughtfully:

"You are not going to make a noise about this silly try of mine?"

She moved her head the least bit. 

"Jee-miny! You are a wonder--" he murmured earnestly, relieved more thanshe could have guessed. 

Of course, if she had attempted to run out, he would have stuck theknife between her shoulders, to stop her screaming; but all the fatwould have been in the fire, the business utterly spoiled, and the rageof the governor--especially when he learned the cause--boundless. Awoman that does not make a noise after an attempt of that kind hastacitly condoned the offence. Ricardo had no small vanities. Butclearly, if she would pass it over like this, then he could not be soutterly repugnant to her. He felt flattered. And she didn't seem afraidof him either. He already felt almost tender towards the girl--thatplucky, fine girl who had not tried to run screaming from him. 

"We shall be friends yet. I don't give you up. Don't think it. Friendsas friends can be!" he whispered confidently. "Jee-miny! You aren't atame one. Neither am I. You will find that out before long. "

He could not know that if she had not run out, it was because thatmorning, under the sum of growing uneasiness at the presence of theincomprehensible visitors, Heyst had confessed to her that it was hisrevolver he had been looking for in the night; that it was gone, that hewas a disarmed, defenceless man. She had hardly comprehended the meaningof his confession. Now she understood better what it meant. The effortof her self-control, her stillness, impressed Ricardo. Suddenly shespoke:

"What are you after?"

He did not raise his eyes. His hands reposing on his knees, his droopinghead, something reflective in his pose, suggested the weariness of asimple soul, the fatigue of a mental rather than physical contest. Heanswered the direct question by a direct statement, as if he were tootired to dissemble:

"After the swag. "

The word was strange to her. The veiled ardour of her grey gaze fromunder the dark eyebrows never left Ricardo's. 

"A swag?" she murmured quietly. "What's that?"

"Why, swag, plunder--what your gentleman has been pinching right andleft for years--the pieces. Don't you know? This!"

Without looking up, he made the motion of counting money into thepalm of his hand. She lowered her eyes slightly to observe this bitof pantomime, but returned them to his face at once. Then, in a merebreath:

"How do you know anything about him?" she asked, concealing her puzzledalarm. "What has it got to do with you?"

"Everything, " was Ricardo's concise answer, in a low, emphatic whisper. He reflected that this girl was really his best hope. Out of the unfadedimpression of past violence there was growing the sort of sentimentwhich prevents a man from being indifferent to a woman he has once heldin his arms--if even against her will--and still more so if she haspardoned the outrage. It becomes then a sort of bond. He felt positivelythe need to confide in her--a subtle trait of masculinity, this almostphysical need of trust which can exist side by side with the most brutalreadiness of suspicion. 

"It's a game of grab--see?" he went on, with a new inflection ofintimacy in his murmur. He was looking straight at her now. 

"That fat, tame slug of a gin-slinger, Schomberg, put us up to it. "

So strong is the impression of helpless and persecuted misery, that thegirl who had fought down a savage assault without faltering could notcompletely repress a shudder at the mere sound of the abhorred name. 

Ricardo became more rapid and confidential:

"He wants to pay him off--pay both of you, at that; so he told me. Hewas hot after you. He would have given all he had into those hands ofyours that have nearly strangled me. But you couldn't, eh? Nohow--what?"He paused. "So, rather than--you followed a gentleman?"

He noticed a slight movement of her head and spoke quickly. 

"Same here--rather than be a wage-slave. Only these foreigners aren't tobe trusted. You're too good for him. A man that will rob his bestchum?" She raised her head. He went on, well pleased with his progress, whispering hurriedly: "Yes. I know all about him. So you may guess howhe's likely to treat a woman after a bit!"

He did not know that he was striking terror into her breast now. Stillthe grey eyes remained fixed on him unmovably watchful, as if sleepyunder the white forehead. She was beginning to understand. His wordsconveyed a definite, dreadful meaning to her mind, which he proceeded toenlighten further in a convinced murmur. 

"You and I are made to understand each other. Born alike, bred alike, Iguess. You are not tame. Same here! You have been chucked out into thisrotten world of 'yporcrits. Same here!"

Her stillness, her appalled stillness, wore to him an air of fascinatedattention. He asked abruptly:

"Where is it?"

She made an effort to breathe out:

"Where's what?"

His tone expressed excited secrecy. 

"The swag--plunder--pieces. It's a game of grab. We must have it; but itisn't easy, and so you will have to lend a hand. Come! is it kept in thehouse?"

As often with women, her wits were sharpened by the very terror of theglimpsed menace. She shook her head negatively. 

"No. "

"Sure?"

"Sure, " she said. 

"Ay! Thought so. Does your gentleman trust you?"

Again she shook her head. 

"Blamed 'yporcrit, " he said feelingly, and then reflected: "He's one ofthe tame ones, ain't he?"

"You had better find out for yourself, " she said. 

"You trust me. I don't want to die before you and I have made friends. "This was said with a strange air of feline gallantry. Then, tentatively:"But he could be brought to trust you, couldn't he?"

"Trust me?" she said, in a tone which bordered on despair, but which hemistook for derision. 

"Stand in with us, " he urged. "Give the chuck to all this blamed'yporcrisy. Perhaps, without being trusted, you have managed to find outsomething already, eh?"

"Perhaps I have, " she uttered with lips that seemed to her to befreezing fast. 

Ricardo now looked at her calm face with something like respect. He waseven a little awed by her stillness, by her economy of words. Womanlike, she felt the effect she had produced, the effect of knowing much and ofkeeping all her knowledge in reserve. So far, somehow, this had come, about of itself. Thus encouraged, directed in the way of duplicity, therefuge of the weak, she made a heroically conscious effort and forcedher stiff, cold lips into a smile. 

Duplicity--the refuge of the weak and the cowardly, but of the disarmed, too! Nothing stood between the enchanted dream of her existence anda cruel catastrophe but her duplicity. It seemed to her that the mansitting there before her was an unavoidable presence, which had attendedall her life. He was the embodied evil of the world. She was not ashamedof her duplicity. With a woman's frank courage, as soon as she sawthat opening she threw herself into it without reserve, with only onedoubt--that of her own strength. She was appalled by the situation; butalready all her aroused femininity, understanding that whether Heystloved her or not she loved him, and feeling that she had brought this onhis head, faced the danger with a passionate desire to defend her own. 

CHAPTER THREE

To Ricardo the girl had been so unforeseen that he was unable to bringupon her the light of his critical faculties. Her smile appeared to himfull of promise. He had not expected her to be what she was. Who, fromthe talk he had heard, could expect to meet a girl like this? She wasa blooming miracle, he said to himself, familiarly, yet with a tingeof respect. She was no meat for the likes of that tame, respectablegin-slinger. Ricardo grew hot with indignation. Her courage, herphysical strength, demonstrated at the cost of his discomfiture, commanded his sympathy. He felt himself drawn to her by the proofsof her amazing spirit. Such a girl! She had a strong soul; and herreflective disposition to throw over her connection proved that she wasno hypocrite. 

"Is your gentleman a good shot?" he said, looking down on the flooragain, as if indifferent. 

She hardly understood the phrase; but in its form it suggested someaccomplishment. It was safe to whisper an affirmative. 

"Yes. "

"Mine, too--and better than good, " Ricardo murmured, and then, in aconfidential burst: "I am not so good at it, but I carry a pretty deadlything about me, all the same!"

He tapped his leg. She was past the stage of shudders now. Stiff allover, unable even to move her eyes, she felt an awful mental tensionwhich was like blank forgetfulness. Ricardo tried to influence her inhis own way. 

"And my gentleman is not the sort that would drop me. He ain't noforeigner; whereas you, with your baron, you don't know what's beforeyou--or, rather, being a woman, you know only too well. Much betternot to wait for the chuck. Pile in with us and get your share--of theplunder, I mean. You have some notion about it already. "

She felt that if she as much as hinted by word or sign that there was nosuch thing on the island, Heyst's life wouldn't be worth half an hour'spurchase; but all power of combining words had vanished in the tensionof her mind. Words themselves were too difficult to think of--all exceptthe word "yes, " the saving word! She whispered it with not a feature ofher face moving. To Ricardo the faint and concise sound proved a cool, reserved assent, more worth having from that amazing mistress of herselfthan a thousand words from any other woman. He thought with exultationthat he had come upon one in a million--in ten millions! His whisperbecame frankly entreating. 

"That's good! Now all you've got to do is to make sure where he keepshis swag. Only do be quick about it! I can't stand much longer thiscrawling-on-the-stomach business so as not to scare your gentleman. Whatdo you think a fellow is--a reptile?"

She stared without seeing anyone, as a person in the night sits staringand listening to deadly sounds, to evil incantations. And always in herhead there was that tension of the mind trying to get hold of something, of a saving idea which seemed to be so near and could not be captured. Suddenly she seized it. Yes--she had to get that man out of thehouse. At that very moment, raised outside, not very near, but hearddistinctly, Heyst's voice uttered the words:

"Have you been looking out for me, Wang?"

It was for her like a flash of lightning framed in the darkness whichhad beset her on all sides, showing a deadly precipice right under herfeet. With a convulsive movement she sat up straight, but had no powerto rise. Ricardo, on the contrary, was on his feet on the instant, asnoiseless as a cat. His yellow eyes gleamed, gliding here and there;but he too seemed unable to make another movement. Only his moustachesstirred visibly, like the feelers of some animal. 

Wang's answer, "Ya tuan, " was heard by the two in the room, but morefaintly. Then Heyst again:

"All right! You may bring the coffee in. Mem Putih out in the room yet?"

To this question Wang made no answer. 

Ricardo's and the girl's eyes met, utterly without expression, all theirfaculties being absorbed in listening for the first sound of Heyst'sfootsteps, for any sound outside which would mean that Ricardo's retreatwas cut off. Both understood perfectly well that Wang must have goneround the house, and that he was now at the back, making it impossiblefor Ricardo to slip out unseen that way before Heyst came in at thefront. 

A darkling shade settled on the face of the devoted secretary. Here wasthe business utterly spoiled! It was the gloom of anger, and even ofapprehension. He would perhaps have made a dash for it through the backdoor, if Heyst had not been heard ascending the front steps. He climbedthem slowly, very slowly, like a man who is discouraged or weary--orsimply thoughtful; and Ricardo had a mental vision of his face, with itsmartial moustache, the lofty forehead, the impassive features, and thequiet, meditative eyes. Trapped! Confound it! After all, perhaps thegovernor was right. Women had to be shunned. Fooling with this one hadapparently ruined the whole business. For, trapped as he was he mightjust as well kill, since, anyhow, to be seen was to be unmasked. But hewas too fair-minded to be angry with the girl. 

Heyst had paused on the veranda, or in the very doorway. 

"I shall be shot down like a dog if I ain't quick, " Ricardo mutteredexcitedly to the girl. 

He stooped to get hold of his knife; and the next moment would havehurled himself out through the curtain, nearly, as prompt and fully asdeadly to Heyst as an unexpected thunderbolt. The feel more than thestrength of the girl's hand, clutching at his shoulder, checked him. Heswung round, crouching with a yellow upward glare. Ah! Was she turningagainst him?

He would have stuck his knife into the hollow of her bare throat ifhe had not seen her other hand pointing to the window. It was a longopening, high up, close under the ceiling almost, with a single pivotingshutter. 

While he was still looking at it she moved noiselessly away, pickingup the overturned chair, and placed it under the wall. Then she lookedround; but he didn't need to be beckoned to. In two long, tiptoeingstrides he was at her side. 

"Be quick!" she gasped. 

He seized her hand and wrung it with all the force of his dumbgratitude, as a man does to a chum when there is no time for words. Thenhe mounted the chair. Ricardo was short--too short to get over without anoisy scramble. He hesitated an instant; she, watchful, bore rigidly onthe seat with her beautiful bare arms, while, light and sure, he usedthe back of the chair as a ladder. The masses of her brown hair fell allabout her face. 

Footsteps resounded in the next room, and Heyst's voice, not very loud, called her by name. 

"Lena!"

"Yes! In a minute, " she answered with a particular intonation which sheknew would prevent Heyst from coming in at once. 

When she looked up, Ricardo had vanished, letting himself down outsideso lightly that she had not heard the slightest noise. She stood upthen, bewildered, frightened, as if awakened from a drugged sleep, withheavy, downcast, unseeing eyes, her fortitude tired out, her imaginationas if dead within her and unable to keep her fear alive. 

Heyst moved about aimlessly in the other room. This sound roused herexhausted wits. At once she began to think, hear, see; and what shesaw--or rather recognized, for her eyes had been resting on it all thetime--was Ricardo's straw slipper, lost in the scuffle, lying near thebath. She had just time to step forward and plant her foot on it whenthe curtains shook, and, pushed aside, disclosed Heyst in the doorway. 

Out of the appeased enchantment of the senses she had found with him, like a sort of bewitched state, his danger brought a sensation of warmthto her breast. She felt something stir in there, something profound, like a new sort of life. 

The room was in partial darkness, Ricardo having accidentally swungthe pivoted shutter as he went out of the window. Heyst peered from thedoorway. 

"Why, you haven't done your hair yet, " he said. 

"I won't stop to do it now. I shan't be long, " she replied steadily, andremained still, feeling Ricardo's slipper under the sole of her foot. 

Heyst, with a movement of retreat, let the curtain drop slowly. On theinstant she stooped for the slipper, and, with it in her hand, spunround wildly, looking for some hiding-place; but there was no such spotin the bare room. The chest, the leather bunk, a dress or two of hershanging on pegs--there was no place where the merest hazard might notguide Heyst's hand at any moment. Her wildly roaming eyes were caughtby the half-closed window. She ran to it, and by raising herself on hertoes was able to reach the shutter with her fingertips. She pushed itsquare, stole back to the middle of the room, and, turning about, swungher arm, regulating the force of the throw so as not to let the slipperfly too far out and hit the edge of the overhanging eaves. It was atask of the nicest judgement for the muscles of those round arms, stillquivering from the deadly wrestle with a man, for that brain, tense withthe excitement of the situation and for the unstrung nerves flickeringdarkness before her eyes. At last the slipper left her hand. As soon asit passed the opening, it was out of her sight. She listened. She didnot hear it strike anything; it just vanished, as if it had wings to flyon through the air. Not a sound! It had gone clear. 

Her valiant arms hanging close against her side, she stood as if turnedinto stone. A faint whistle reached her ears. The forgetful Ricardo, becoming very much aware of his loss, had been hanging about in greatanxiety, which was relieved by the appearance of the slipper flying fromunder the eaves; and now, thoughtfully, he had ventured a whistle to puther mind at ease. 

Suddenly the girl reeled forward. She saved herself from a fall only byembracing with both arms one of the tall, roughly carved posts holdingthe mosquito net above the bed. For a long time she dung to it, with herforehead leaning against the wood. One side of her loosened sarong hadslipped down as low as her hip. The long brown tresses of her hairfell in lank wisps, as if wet, almost black against her white body. Heruncovered flank, damp with the sweat of anguish and fatigue, gleamedcoldly with the immobility of polished marble in the hot, diffusedlight falling through the window above her head--a dim reflection of theconsuming, passionate blaze of sunshine outside, all aquiver with theeffort to set the earth on fire, to burn it to ashes. 

CHAPTER FOUR

Heyst, seated at the table with his chin on his breast, raised his headat the faint rustle of Lena's dress. He was startled by the dead pallorof her cheeks, by something lifeless in her eyes, which looked athim strangely, without recognition. But to his anxious inquiries sheanswered reassuringly that there was nothing the matter with her, really. She had felt giddy on rising. She had even had a moment offaintness, after her bath. She had to sit down to wait for it to pass. This had made her late dressing. 

"I didn't try to do my hair. I didn't want to keep you waiting anylonger, " she said. 

He was unwilling to press her with questions about her health, since sheseemed to make light of this indisposition. She had not done her hair, but she had brushed it, and had tied it with a ribbon behind. With herforehead uncovered, she looked very young, almost a child, a carewornchild; a child with something on its mind. 

What surprised Heyst was the non-appearance of Wang. The Chinaman hadalways materialized at the precise moment of his service, neither toosoon nor too late. This time the usual miracle failed. What was themeaning of this?

Heyst raised his voice--a thing he disliked doing. It was promptlyanswered from the compound:

"Ada tuan!"

Lena, leaning on her elbow, with her eyes on her plate, did not seem tohear anything. When Wang entered with a tray, his narrow eyes, tiltedinward by the prominence of salient cheek-bones, kept her under stealthyobservation all the time. Neither the one nor the other of that whitecouple paid the slightest attention to him and he withdrew withouthaving heard them exchange a single word. He squatted on his heels onthe back veranda. His Chinaman's mind, very clear but not far-reaching, was made up according to the plain reason of things, such as it appearedto him in the light of his simple feeling for self-preservation, untrammelled by any notions of romantic honour or tender conscience. Hisyellow hands, lightly clasped, hung idly between his knees. The gravesof Wang's ancestors were far away, his parents were dead, his elderbrother was a soldier in the yamen of some Mandarin away in Formosa. Noone near by had a claim on his veneration or his obedience. He had beenfor years a labouring restless vagabond. His only tie in the worldwas the Alfuro woman, in exchange for whom he had given away someconsiderable part of his hard-earned substance; and his duty, in reason, could be to no one but himself. 

The scuffle behind the curtain was a thing of bad augury for that NumberOne for whom the Chinaman had neither love nor dislike. He had been awedenough by that development to hang back with the coffee-pot till at lastthe white man was induced to call him in. Wang went in with curiosity. Certainly, the white woman looked as if she had been wrestling witha spirit which had managed to tear half her blood out of her beforeletting her go. As to the man, Wang had long looked upon him as being insome sort bewitched; and now he was doomed. He heard their voices inthe room. Heyst was urging the girl to go and lie down again. He wasextremely concerned. She had eaten nothing. 

"The best thing for you. You really must!"

She sat listless, shaking her head from time to time negatively, as ifnothing could be any good. But he insisted; she saw the beginning ofwonder in his eyes, and suddenly gave way. 

"Perhaps I had better. "

She did not want to arouse his wonder, which would lead him straight tosuspicion. He must not suspect!

Already, with the consciousness of her love for this man, of thatsomething rapturous and profound going beyond the mere embrace, therewas born in her a woman's innate mistrust of masculinity, of thatseductive strength allied to an absurd, delicate shrinking from therecognition of the naked necessity of facts, which never yet frighteneda woman worthy of the name. She had no plan; but her mind, quieted downsomewhat by the very effort to preserve outward composure for his sake, perceived that her behaviour had secured, at any rate, a short period ofsafety. Perhaps because of the similarity of their miserable origin inthe dregs of mankind, she had understood Ricardo perfectly. He wouldkeep quiet for a time now. In this momentarily soothing certitude herbodily fatigue asserted itself, the more overpoweringly since its causewas not so much the demand on her strength as the awful suddenness ofthe stress she had had to meet. She would have tried to overcome itfrom the mere instinct of resistance, if it had not been for Heyst'salternate pleadings and commands. Before this eminently masculinefussing she felt the woman's need to give way, the sweetness ofsurrender. 

"I will do anything you like, " she said. 

Getting up, she was surprised by a wave of languid weakness that cameover her, embracing and enveloping her like warm water, with a noise inher ears as of a breaking sea. 

"You must help me along, " she added quickly. 

While he put his arm round her waist--not by any means an uncommon thingfor him to do--she found a special satisfaction in the feeling of beingthus sustained. She abandoned all her weight to that encircling andprotecting pressure, while a thrill went through her at the suddenthought that it was she who would have to protect him, to be thedefender of a man who was strong enough to lift her bodily, as he wasdoing even then in his two arms. For Heyst had done this as soon as theyhad crept through the doorway of the room. He thought it was quickerand simpler to carry her the last step or two. He had grown really tooanxious to be aware of the effort. He lifted her high and deposited heron the bed, as one lays a child on its side in a cot. Then he sat downon the edge, masking his concern with a smile which obtained no responsefrom the dreamy immobility of her eyes. But she sought his hand, seizedit eagerly; and while she was pressing it with all the force ofwhich she was capable, the sleep she needed overtook her suddenly, overwhelmingly, as it overtakes a child in a cot, with her lips partedfor a safe, endearing word which she had thought of but had no time toutter. 

The usual flaming silence brooded over Samburan. 

"What in the world is this new mystery?" murmured Heyst to himself, contemplating her deep slumber. 

It was so deep, this enchanted sleep, that when some time afterwards hegently tried to open her fingers and free his hand, he succeeded withoutprovoking the slightest stir. 

"There is some very simple explanation, no doubt, " he thought, as hestole out into the living-room. 

Absent-mindedly he pulled a book out of the top shelf, and sat down withit; but even after he had opened it on his knee, and had been staringat the pages for a time, he had not the slightest idea of what it wasabout. He stared and stared at the crowded, parallel lines. It was onlywhen, raising his eyes for no particular reason, he saw Wang standingmotionless on the other side of the table, that he regained completecontrol of his faculties. 

"Oh, yes, " he said, as if suddenly reminded of a forgotten appointmentof a not particularly welcome sort. 

He waited a little, and then, with reluctant curiosity, forced himselfto ask the silent Wang what he had to say. He had some idea that thematter of the vanished revolver would come up at last; but the gutturalsounds which proceeded from the Chinaman did not refer to that delicatesubject. His speech was concerned with cups, saucers, plates, forks, andknives. All these things had been put away in the cupboards on theback veranda, where they belonged, perfectly clean, "all plopel. " Heystwondered at the scrupulosity of a man who was about to abandon him;for he was not surprised to hear Wang conclude the account of hisstewardship with the words:

"I go now. "

"Oh! You go now?" said Heyst, leaning back, his book on his knees. 

"Yes. Me no likee. One man, two man, three man--no can do! Me go now. "

"What's frightening you away like this?" asked Heyst, while through hismind flashed the hope that something enlightening might come from thatbeing so unlike himself, taking contact with the world with a simplicityand directness of which his own mind was not capable. "Why?" he went on. "You are used to white men. You know them well. "

"Yes. Me savee them, " assented Wang inscrutably. "Me savee plenty. "

All that he really knew was his own mind. He had made it up to withdrawhimself and the Alfuro woman from the uncertainties of the relationswhich were going to establish themselves between those white men. Itwas Pedro who had been the first cause of Wang's suspicion and fear. TheChinaman had seen wild men. He had penetrated, in the train of a Chinesepedlar, up one or two of the Bornean rivers into the country of theDyaks. He had also been in the interior of Mindanao, where there arepeople who live in trees--savages, no better than animals; but ahairy brute like Pedro, with his great fangs and ferocious growls, wasaltogether beyond his conception of anything that could be looked uponas human. The strong impression made on him by Pedro was the primeinducement which had led Wang to purloin the revolver. Reflection onthe general situation, and on the insecurity of Number One, came later, after he had obtained possession of the revolver and of the box ofcartridges out of the table drawer in the living-room. 

"Oh, you savee plenty about white men, " Heyst went on in a slightlybantering tone, after a moment of silent reflection in which he hadconfessed to himself that the recovery of the revolver was not to bethought of, either by persuasion or by some more forcible means. "Youspeak in that fashion, but you are frightened of those white men overthere. "

"Me no flightened, " protested Wang raucously, throwing up hishead--which gave to his throat a more strained, anxious appearance thanever. "Me no likee, " he added in a quieter tone. "Me velly sick. "

He put his hand over the region under the breast-bone. 

"That, " said Heyst, serenely positive, "belong one piecee lie. Thatisn't proper man-talk at all. And after stealing my revolver, too!"

He had suddenly decided to speak about it, because this frankness couldnot make the situation much worse than it was. He did not suppose for amoment that Wang had the revolver anywhere about his person; and afterhaving thought the matter over, he had arrived at the conclusion thatthe Chinaman never meant to use the weapon against him. After a slightstart, because the direct charge had taken him unawares, Wang tore openthe front of his jacket with a convulsive show of indignation. 

"No hab got. Look see!" he mouthed in pretended anger. 

He slapped his bare chest violently; he uncovered his very ribs, allastir with the panting of outraged virtue; his smooth stomach heavedwith indignation. He started his wide blue breeches flapping about hisyellow calves. Heyst watched him quietly. 

"I never said you had it on you, " he observed, without raising hisvoice; "but the revolver is gone from where I kept it. "

"Me no savee levolvel, " Wang said obstinately. 

The book lying open on Heyst's knee slipped suddenly and he made asharp movement to catch it up. Wang was unable to see the reason ofthis because of the table, and leaped away from what seemed to him athreatening symptom. When Heyst looked up, the Chinaman was already atthe door facing the room, not frightened, but alert. 

"What's the matter?" asked Heyst. 

Wang nodded his shaven head significantly at the curtain closing thedoorway of the bedroom. 

"Me no likee, " he repeated. 

"What the devil do you mean?" Heyst was genuinely amazed. "Don't likewhat?"

Wang pointed a long lemon-coloured finger at the motionless folds. 

"Two, " he said. 

"Two what? I don't understand. "

"Suppose you savee, you no like that fashion. Me savee plenty. Me gonow. "

Heyst had risen from his chair, but Wang kept his ground in the doorwayfor a little longer. His almond-shaped eyes imparted to his face anexpression of soft and sentimental melancholy. The muscles of his throatmoved visibly while he uttered a distinct and guttural "Goodbye" andvanished from Number One's sight. 

The Chinaman's departure altered the situation. Heyst reflected on whatwould be best to do in view of that fact. For a long time he hesitated;then, shrugging his shoulders wearily, he walked out on the veranda, down the steps, and continued at a steady gait, with a thoughtful mien, in the direction of his guests' bungalow. He wanted to make an importantcommunication to them, and he had no other object--least of all to givethem the shock of a surprise call. Nevertheless, their brutish henchmannot being on watch, it was Heyst's fate to startle Mr. Jones and hissecretary by his sudden appearance in the doorway. Their conversationmust have been very interesting to prevent them from hearing thevisitor's approach. In the dim room--the shutters were kept constantlyclosed against the heat--Heyst saw them start apart. It was Mr. Joneswho spoke:

"Ah, here you are again! Come in, come in!"

Heyst, taking his hat off in the doorway, entered the room. 

CHAPTER FIVE

Waking up suddenly, Lena looked, without raising her head from thepillow, at the room in which she was alone. She got up quickly, as ifto counteract the awful sinking of her heart by the vigorous use of herlimbs. But this sinking was only momentary. Mistress of herself frompride, from love, from necessity, and also because of a woman'svanity in self-sacrifice, she met Heyst, returning from the strangers'bungalow, with a dear glance and a smile. 

The smile he managed to answer, but, noticing that he avoided her eyes, she composed her lips and lowered her gaze. For the same reason shehastened to speak to him in a tone of indifference, which she put onwithout effort, as if she had grown adept in duplicity since sunrise. 

"You have been over there again?"

"I have. I thought--but you had better know first that we have lost Wangfor good. "

She repeated "For good?" as if she had not understood. 

"For good or evil--I shouldn't know which if you were to ask me. He hasdismissed himself. He's gone. "

"You expected him to go, though, didn't you?"

Heyst sat down on the other side of the table. 

"Yes. I expected it as soon as I discovered that he had annexed myrevolver. He says he hasn't taken it. That's untrue of course. AChinaman would not see the sense of confessing under any circumstances. To deny any charge is a principle of right conduct; but he hardlyexpected to be believed. He was a little enigmatic at the last, Lena. Hestartled me. "

Heyst paused. The girl seemed absorbed in her own thoughts. 

"He startled me, " I repeated Heyst. She noted the anxiety in his tone, and turned her head slightly to look at him across the table. 

"It must have been something--to startle you, " she said. In the depthof her parted lips, like a ripe pomegranate, there was a gleam of whiteteeth. 

"It was only a single word--and some of his gestures. He had been makinga good deal of noise. I wonder we didn't wake you up. How soundly youcan sleep! I say, do you feel all right now?"

"As fresh as can be, " she said, treating him to another deep gleam ofa smile. "I heard no noise, and I'm glad of it. The way he talks in hisharsh voice frightens me. I don't like all these foreign people. "

"It was just before he went away--bolted out, I should say. He noddedand pointed at the curtain to our room. He knew you were there, ofcourse. He seemed to think--he seemed to try to give me to understandthat you were in special--well, danger. You know how he talks. "

She said nothing; she made no sound, only the faint tinge of colourebbed out of her cheek. 

"Yes, " Heyst went on. "He seemed to try to warn me. That must have beenit Did he imagine I had forgotten your existence? The only word he saidwas 'two'. It sounded so, at least. Yes, 'two'--and that he didn't likeit. "

"What does that mean?" she whispered. 

"We know what the word two means, don't we, Lena? We are two. Neverwere such a lonely two out of the world, my dear! He might have triedto remind me that he himself has a woman to look after. Why are you sopale, Lena?"

"Am I pale?" she asked negligently. 

"You are. " Heyst was really anxious. 

"Well, it isn't from fright, " she protested truthfully. 

Indeed, what she felt was a sort of horror which left her absolutelyin the full possession of all her faculties; more difficult to bear, perhaps, for that reason, but not paralysing to her fortitude. 

Heyst in his turn smiled at her. 

"I really don't know that there is any reason to be frightened. "

"I mean I am not frightened for myself. "

"I believe you are very plucky, " he said. The colour had returned to herface. "I" continued Heyst, "am so rebellious to outward impressionsthat I can't say that much about myself. I don't react with sufficientdistinctness. " He changed his tone. "You know I went to see those menfirst thing this morning. "

"I know. Be careful!" she murmured. 

"I wonder how one can be careful! I had a long talk with--but I don'tbelieve you have seen them. One of them is a fantastically thin, longperson, apparently ailing; I shouldn't wonder if he were really so. Hemakes rather a point of it in a mysterious manner. I imagine he musthave suffered from tropical fevers, but not so much as he tries to makeout. He's what people would call a gentleman. He seemed on the point ofvolunteering a tale of his adventures--for which I didn't ask him--butremarked that it was a long story; some other time, perhaps. 

"'I suppose you would like to know who I am?' he asked me. 

"I told him I would leave it to him, in a tone which, between gentlemen, could have left no doubt in his mind. He raised himself on his elbow--hewas lying down on the camp-bed--and said:

"'I am he who is--'"

Lena seemed not to be listening; but when Heyst paused, she turned herhead quickly to him. He took it for a movement of inquiry, but in thishe was wrong. A great vagueness enveloped her impressions, but all herenergy was concentrated on the struggle that she wanted to take uponherself, in a great exaltation of love and self-sacrifice, which iswoman's sublime faculty; altogether on herself, every bit of it, leavinghim nothing, not even the knowledge of what she did, if that werepossible. She would have liked to lock him up by some stratagem. Hadshe known of some means to put him to sleep for days she would have usedincantations or philtres without misgivings. He seemed to her too goodfor such contacts, and not sufficiently equipped. This last feeling hadnothing to do with the material fact of the revolver being stolen. Shecould hardly appreciate that fact at its full value. 

Observing her eyes fixed and as if sightless--for the concentration onher purpose took all expression out of them--Heyst imagined it to be theeffect of a great mental effort. 

"No use asking me what he meant, Lena; I don't know, and I did notask him. The gentleman, as I have told you before, seems devoted tomystification. I said nothing, and he laid down his head again onthe bundle of rugs he uses for a pillow. He affects a state of greatweakness, but I suspect that he's perfectly capable of leaping to hisfeet if he likes. Having been ejected, he said, from his proper socialsphere because he had refused to conform to certain usual conventions, he was a rebel now, and was coming and going up and down the earth. AsI really did not want to listen to all this nonsense, I told him thatI had heard that sort of story about somebody else before. His grin isreally ghastly. He confessed that I was very far from the sort of man heexpected to meet. Then he said:

"'As to me, I am no blacker than the gentleman you are thinking of, andI have neither more nor less determination. '"

Heyst looked across the table at Lena. Propped on her elbows, andholding her head in both hands, she moved it a little with an air ofunderstanding. 

"Nothing could be plainer, eh?" said Heyst grimly. "Unless, indeed, thisis his idea of a pleasant joke; for, when he finished speaking, he burstinto a loud long laugh. I didn't join him!"

"I wish you had, " she breathed out. 

"I didn't join him. It did not occur to me. I am not much of adiplomatist. It would probably have been wise, for, indeed, I believehe had said more than he meant to say, and was trying to take it back bythis affected jocularity. Yet when one thinks of it, diplomacy withoutforce in the background is but a rotten reed to lean upon. And I don'tknow whether I could have done it if I had thought of it. I don't know. It would have been against the grain. Could I have done it? I have livedtoo long within myself, watching the mere shadows and shades of life. To deceive a man on some issue which could be decided quicker, by hisdestruction while one is disarmed, helpless, without even the power torun away--no! That seems to me too degrading. And yet I have you here. I have your very existence in my keeping. What do you say, Lena? Would Ibe capable of throwing you to the lions to save my dignity?"

She got up, walked quickly round the table, posed herself on his kneeslightly, throwing one arm round his neck, and whispered in his ear:

"You may if you like. And may be that's the only way I would consent toleave you. For something like that. If it were something no bigger thanyour little finger. "

She gave him a light kiss on the lips and was gone before he coulddetain her. She regained her seat and propped her elbows again on thetable. It was hard to believe that she had moved from the spot at all. The fleeting weight of her body on his knees, the hug round his neck, the whisper in his ear, the kiss on his lips, might have been theunsubstantial sensations of a dream invading the reality of waking life;a sort of charming mirage in the barren aridity of his thoughts. Hehesitated to speak till she said, businesslike:

"Well. And what then?"

Heyst gave a start. 

"Oh, yes. I didn't join him. I let him have his laugh out by himself. Hewas shaking all over, like a merry skeleton, under a cotton sheet he wascovered with--I believe in order to conceal the revolver that he had inhis right hand. I didn't see it, but I have a distinct impression it wasthere in his fist. As he had not been looking at me for some time, butstaring into a certain part of the room, I turned my head and saw ahairy, wild sort of creature which they take about with them, squattingon its heels in the angle of the walls behind me. He wasn't there whenI came in. I didn't like the notion of that watchful monster behind myback. If I had been less at their mercy, I should certainly have changedmy position. As things are now, to move would have been a mere weakness. So I remained where I was. The gentleman on the bed said he could assureme of one thing; and that was that his presence here was no more morallyreprehensible than mine. 

"'We pursue the same ends, ' he said, 'only perhaps I pursue them withmore openness than you--with more simplicity. '

"That's what he said, " Heyst went on, after looking at Lena in a sort ofinquiring silence. "I asked him if he knew beforehand that I was livinghere; but he only gave me a ghastly grin. I didn't press him for ananswer, Lena. I thought I had better not. "

On her smooth forehead a ray of light always seemed to rest. Her loosehair, parted in the middle, covered the hands sustaining her head. Sheseemed spellbound by the interest of the narrative. Heyst did not pauselong. He managed to continue his relation smoothly enough, beginningafresh with a piece of comment. 

"He would have lied impudently--and I detest being told a lie. It makesme uncomfortable. It's pretty clear that I am not fitted for the affairsof the wide world. But I did not want him to think that I accepted hispresence too meekly, so I said that his comings or goings on theearth were none of my business, of course, except that I had a naturalcuriosity to know when he would find it convenient to resume them. 

"He asked me to look at the state he was in. Had I been all alone here, as they think I am, I should have laughed at him. But not being alone--Isay, Lena, you are sure you haven't shown yourself where you could beseen?"

"Certain, " she said promptly. 

He looked relieved. 

"You understand, Lena, that when I ask you to keep so strictly out ofsight, it is because you are not for them to look at--to talk about. Mypoor Lena! I can't help that feeling. Do you understand it?"

She moved her head slightly in a manner that was neither affirmative nornegative. 

"People will have to see me some day, " she said. 

"I wonder how long it will be possible for you to keep out of sight?"murmured Heyst thoughtfully. He bent over the table. "Let me finishtelling you. I asked him point blank what it was he wanted with me; heappeared extremely unwilling to come to the point. It was not reallyso pressing as all that, he said. His secretary, who was in fact hispartner, was not present, having gone down to the wharf to look attheir boat. Finally the fellow proposed that he should put off a certaincommunication he had to make till the day after tomorrow. I agreed;but I also told him that I was not at all anxious to hear it. I had noconception in what way his affairs could concern me. 

"'Ah, Mr. Heyst, ' he said, 'you and I have much more in common than youthink. '"

Heyst struck the table with his fist unexpectedly. 

"It was a jeer; I am sure it was!"

He seemed ashamed of this outburst and smiled faintly into themotionless eyes of the girl. 

"What could I have done--even if I had had my pockets full ofrevolvers?"

She made an appreciative sign. 

"Killing's a sin, sure enough, " she murmured. 

"I went away, " Heyst continued. "I left him there, lying on his sidewith his eyes shut. When I got back here, I found you looking ill. Whatwas it, Lena? You did give me a scare! Then I had the interview withWang while you rested. You were sleeping quietly. I sat here to considerall these things calmly, to try to penetrate their inner meaning andtheir outward bearing. It struck me that the two days we have beforeus have the character of a sort of truce. The more I thought of it, themore I felt that this was tacitly understood between Jones and myself. It was to our advantage, if anything can be of advantage to peoplecaught so completely unawares as we are. Wang was gone. He, at any rate, had declared himself, but as I did not know what he might take it intohis head to do, I thought I had better warn these people that I was nolonger responsible for the Chinaman. I did not want Mr. Wang making somemove which would precipitate the action against us. Do you see my pointof view?"

She made a sign that she did. All her soul was wrapped in her passionatedetermination, in an exalted belief in herself--in the contemplationof her amazing opportunity to win the certitude, the eternity, of thatman's love. 

"I never saw two men, " Heyst was saying, "more affected by a piece ofinformation than Jones and his secretary, who was back in the bungalowby then. They had not heard me come up. I told them I was sorry tointrude. 

"'Not at all! Not at all, ' said Jones. 

"The secretary backed away into a corner and watched me like a wary cat. In fact, they both were visibly on their guard. 

"'I am come, ' I told them, 'to let you know that my servant hasdeserted--gone off. '

"At first they looked at each other as if they had not understood what Iwas saying; but very soon they seemed quite concerned. 

"'You mean to say your Chink's cleared out?' said Ricardo, comingforward from his corner. 'Like this--all at once? What did he do itfor?'

"I said that a Chinaman had always a simple and precise reason for whathe did, but that to get such a reason out of him was not so easy. All hetold me, I said, was that he 'didn't like'. 

"They were extremely disturbed at this. Didn't like what, they wanted toknow. 

"'The looks of you and your party, ' I told Jones. 

"'Nonsense!' he cried out, and immediately Ricardo, the short man, struck in. 

"'Told you that? What did he take you for, sir--an infant? Or do youtake us for kids?--meaning no offence. Come, I bet you will tell us nextthat you've missed something. '"

"'I didn't mean to tell you anything of the sort, ' I said, 'but as amatter of fact it is so. '

"He slapped his thigh. 

"'Thought so. What do you think of this trick, governor?'

"Jones made some sort of sign to him, and then that extraordinarycat-faced associate proposed that he and their servant should come outand help me catch or kill the Chink. 

"My object, I said, was not to get assistance. I did not intend to chasethe Chinaman. I had come only to warn them that he was armed, and thathe really objected to their presence on the island. I wanted them tounderstand that I was not responsible for anything that might happen. 

"'Do you mean to tell us, ' asked Ricardo, 'that there is a crazy Chinkwith a six-shooter broke loose on this island, and that you don't care?'

"Strangely enough they did not seem to believe my story. They wereexchanging significant looks all the time. Ricardo stole up close tohis principal; they had a confabulation together, and then somethinghappened which I did not expect. It's rather awkward, too. 

"Since I would not have their assistance to get hold of the Chinkand recover my property, the least they could do was to send me theirservant. It was Jones who said that, and Ricardo backed up the idea. 

"'Yes, yes--let our Pedro cook for all hands in your compound! He isn'tso bad as he looks. That's what we will do!'

"He bustled out of the room to the veranda, and let out an ear-splittingwhistle for their Pedro. Having heard the brute's answering howl, Ricardo ran back into the room. 

"'Yes, Mr. Heyst. This will do capitally, Mr. Heyst. You just directhim to do whatever you are accustomed to have done for you in the way ofattendance. See?'

"Lena, I confess to you that I was taken completely by surprise. I hadnot expected anything of the sort. I don't know what I expected. I am soanxious about you that I can't keep away from these infernal scoundrels. And only two months ago I would not have cared. I would have defiedtheir scoundrelism as much as I have scorned all the other intrusions oflife. But now I have you! You stole into my life, and--"

Heyst drew a deep breath. The girl gave him a quick, wide-eyed glance. 

"Ah! That's what you are thinking of--that you have me!"

It was impossible to read the thoughts veiled by her steady grey eyes, to penetrate the meaning of her silences, her words, and even herembraces. He used to come out of her very arms with the feeling of abaffled man. 

"If I haven't you, if you are not here, then where are you?" criedHeyst. "You understand me very well. "

She shook her head a little. Her red lips, at which he looked now, herlips as fascinating as the voice that came out of them, uttered thewords:

"I hear what you say; but what does it mean?"

"It means that I could lie and perhaps cringe for your sake. "

"No! No! Don't you ever do that, " she said in haste, while her eyesglistened suddenly. "You would hate me for it afterwards!"

"Hate you?" repeated Heyst, who had recalled his polite manner. "No!You needn't consider the extremity of the improbable--as yet. But I willconfess to you that I--how shall I call it?--that I dissembled. First Idissembled my dismay at the unforeseen result of my idiotic diplomacy. Do you understand, my dear girl?"

It was evident that she did not understand the word. Heyst produced hisplayful smile, which contrasted oddly with the worried character of hiswhole expression. His temples seemed to have sunk in, his face looked alittle leaner. 

"A diplomatic statement, Lena, is a statement of which everything istrue, but the sentiment which seems to prompt it. I have never beendiplomatic in my relation with mankind--not from regard for itsfeelings, but from a certain regard for my own. Diplomacy doesn't gowell with consistent contempt. I cared little for life and still lessfor death. "

"Don't talk like that!"

"I dissembled my extreme longing to take these wandering scoundrelsby their throats, " he went on. "I have only two hands--I wish I had ahundred to defend you--and there were three throats. By that timetheir Pedro was in the room too. Had he seen me engaged with their twothroats, he would have been at mine like a fierce dog, or any othersavage and faithful brute. I had no difficulty in dissembling my longingfor the vulgar, stupid, and hopeless argument of fight. I remarked thatI really did not want a servant. I couldn't think of depriving them oftheir man's services; but they would not hear me. They had made up theirminds. 

"'We shall send him over at once, ' Ricardo said, 'to start cookingdinner for everybody. I hope you won't mind me coming to eat it withyou in your bungalow; and we will send the governor's dinner over to himhere. '

"I could do nothing but hold my tongue or bring on a quarrel--somemanifestation of their dark purpose, which we have no means to resist. Of course, you may remain invisible this evening; but with thatatrocious-brute prowling all the time at the back of the house, how longcan your presence be concealed from these men?"

Heyst's distress could be felt in his silence. The girl's head, sustained by her hands buried in the thick masses of her hair, had aperfect immobility. 

"You are certain you have not been seen so far?" he asked suddenly. 

The motionless head spoke. 

"How can I be certain? You told me you wanted me to keep out of the way. I kept out of the way. I didn't ask your reason. I thought you didn'twant people to know that you had a girl like me about you. "

"What? Ashamed?" cried Heyst. 

"It isn't what's right, perhaps--I mean for you--is it?"

Heyst lifted his hands, reproachfully courteous. 

"I look upon it as so very much right that I couldn't bear the idea ofany other than sympathetic, respectful eyes resting on you. I dislikedand mistrusted these fellows from the first. Didn't you understand?"

"Yes; I did keep out of sight, " she said. 

A silence fell. At last Heyst stirred slightly. 

"All this is of very little importance now, " he said with a sigh. "This is a question of something infinitely worse than mere looks andthoughts, however base and contemptible. As I have told you, I metRicardo's suggestions by silence. As I was turning away he said:

"'If you happen to have the key of that store-room of yours on you, Mr. Heyst, you may just as well let me have it; I will give it to ourPedro. '

"I had it on me, and I tendered it to him without speaking. The hairycreature was at the door by then, and caught the key, which Ricardothrew to him, better than any trained ape could have done. I came away. All the time I had been thinking anxiously of you, whom I had leftasleep, alone here, and apparently ill. "

Heyst interrupted himself, with a listening turn of his head. He hadheard the faint sound of sticks being snapped in the compound. He roseand crossed the room to look out of the back door. 

"And here the creature is, " he said, returning to the table. "Here heis, already attending to the fire. Oh, my dear Lena!"

She had followed him with her eyes. She watched him go out on the frontveranda cautiously. He lowered stealthily a couple of screens that hungbetween the column, and remained outside very still, as if interestedby something on the open ground. Meantime she had risen in her turn, totake a peep into the compound. Heyst, glancing over his shoulder, sawher returning to her seat. He beckoned to her, and she continued tomove, crossing the shady room, pure and bright in her white dress, herhair loose, with something of a sleep-walker in her unhurried motion, inher extended hand, in the sightless effect of her grey eyes luminous inthe half-light. He had never seen such an expression in her facebefore. It had dreaminess in it, intense attention, and something likesternness. Arrested in the doorway by Heyst's extended arm, she seemedto wake up, flushed faintly--and this flush, passing off, carried awaywith it the strange transfiguring mood. With a courageous gestureshe pushed back the heavy masses of her hair. The light clung to herforehead. Her delicate nostrils quivered. Heyst seized her arm andwhispered excitedly:

"Slip out here, quickly! The screens will conceal you. Only you mustmind the stair-space. They are actually out--I mean the other two. Youhad better see them before you--"

She made a barely perceptible movement of recoil, checked at once, andstood still. Heyst released her arm. 

"Yes, perhaps I had better, " she said with unnatural deliberation, andstepped out on the veranda to stand close by his side. 

Together, one on each side of the screen, they peeped between the edgeof the canvas and the veranda-post entwined with creepers. A great heatascended from the sun-smitten ground, in an ever-rising wave, as if fromsome secret store of earth's fiery heart; for the sky was growing cooleralready, and the sun had declined sufficiently for the shadows of Mr. Jones and his henchman to be projected towards the bungalow side byside--one infinitely slender, the other short and broad. 

The two visitors stood still and gazed. To keep up the fiction of hisinvalidism, Mr. Jones, the gentleman, leaned on the arm of Ricardo, thesecretary, the top of whose hat just came up to his governor's shoulder. 

"Do you see them?" Heyst whispered into the girl's ear. "Here theyare, the envoys of the outer world. Here they are before you--evilintelligence, instinctive savagery, arm in arm. The brute force is atthe back. A trio of fitting envoys perhaps--but what about the welcome?Suppose I were armed, could I shoot these two down where they stand?Could I?"

Without moving her head, the girl felt for Heyst's hand, pressed it andthereafter did not let it go. He continued, bitterly playful:

"I don't know. I don't think so. There is a strain in me which lays meunder an insensate obligation to avoid even the appearance of murder. I have never pulled a trigger or lifted my hand on a man, even inself-defence. "

The suddenly tightened grip of her hand checked him. 

"They are making a move, " she murmured. 

"Can they be thinking of coming here?" Heyst wondered anxiously. 

"No, they aren't coming this way, " she said; and there was anotherpause. "They are going back to their house, " she reported finally. 

After watching them a little longer, she let go Heyst's hand and movedaway from the screen. He followed her into the room. 

"You have seen them now, " he began. "Think what it was to me to see themland in the dusk, fantasms from the sea--apparitions, chimeras! And theypersist. That's the worst of it--they persist. They have no right tobe--but they are. They ought to have aroused my fury. But I haverefined everything away by this time--anger, indignation, scorn itself. Nothing's left but disgust. Since you have told me of that abominablecalumny, it has become immense--it extends even to myself. " He looked upat her. 

"But luckily I have you. And if only Wang had, not carried off thatmiserable revolver--yes, Lena, here we are, we two!"

She put both her hands on his shoulders and looked straight into hiseyes. He returned her penetrating gaze. It baffled him. He could notpierce the grey veil of her eyes; but the sadness of her voice thrilledhim profoundly. 

"You are not reproaching me?" she asked slowly. 

"Reproach? What a word between us! It could only be myself--but themention of Wang has given me an idea. I have been, not exactly cringing, not exactly lying, but still dissembling. You have been hidingyourself, to please me, but still you have been hiding. All this is verydignified. Why shouldn't we try begging now? A noble art? Yes. Lena, we must go out together. I couldn't think of leaving you alone, andI must--yes, I must speak to Wang. We shall go and seek that man, whoknows what he wants and how to secure what he wants. We will go atonce!"

"Wait till I put my hair up, " she agreed instantly, and vanished behindthe curtain. 

When the curtain had fallen behind her, she turned her head back withan expression of infinite and tender concern for him--for him whom shecould never hope to understand, and whom she was afraid she could neversatisfy, as if her passion were of a hopelessly lower quality, unableto appease some exalted and delicate desire of his superior soul. In acouple of minutes she reappeared. They left the house by the door ofthe compound, and passed within three feet of the thunderstruck Pedro, without even looking in his direction. He rose from stooping over a fireof sticks, and, balancing himself clumsily, uncovered his enormous fangsin gaping astonishment. Then suddenly he set off rolling on his bandylegs to impart to his masters the astonishing discovery of a woman. 

CHAPTER SIX

As luck would have it, Ricardo was lounging alone on the veranda of theformer counting-house. He scented some new development at once, and randown to meet the trotting, bear-like figure. The deep, growling noisesit made, though they had only a very remote resemblance to the Spanishlanguage, or indeed to any sort of human speech, were from longpractice quite intelligible to Mr. Jones's secretary. Ricardo was rathersurprised. He had imagined that the girl would continue to keep out ofsight. That line apparently was given up. He did not mistrust her. Howcould he? Indeed, he could not think of her existence calmly. 

He tried to keep her image out of his mind so that he should be ableto use its powers with some approach to that coolness which the complexnature of the situation demanded from him, both for his own sake and asthe faithful follower of plain Mr. Jones, gentleman. 

He collected his wits and thought. This was a change of policy, probablyon the part of Heyst. If so, what could it mean? A deep fellow! Unlessit was her doing; in which case--h'm--all right. Must be. She wouldknow what she was doing. Before him Pedro, lifting his feet alternately, swayed to and fro sideways--his usual attitude of expectation. Hislittle red eyes, lost in the mass of hair, were motionless. Ricardostared into them with calculated contempt and said in a rough, angryvoice:

"Woman! Of course there is. We know that without you!" He gave the tamemonster a push. "Git! Vamos! Waddle! Get back and cook the dinner. Whichway did they go, then?"

Pedro extended a huge, hairy forearm to show the direction, and went offon his bandy legs. Advancing a few steps, Ricardo was just in time tosee, above some bushes, two white helmets moving side by side in theclearing. They disappeared. Now that he had managed to keep Pedro frominforming the governor that there was a woman on the island, he couldindulge in speculation as to the movements of these people. His attitudetowards Mr. Jones had undergone a spiritual change, of which he himselfwas not yet fully aware. 

That morning, before tiffin, after his escape from the Heyst bungalow, completed in such an inspiring way by the recovery of the slipper, Ricardo had made his way to their allotted house, reeling as he ran, his head in a whirl. He was wildly excited by visions of inconceivablepromise. He waited to compose himself before he dared to meet thegovernor. On entering the room, he found Mr. Jones sitting on the campbedstead like a tailor on his board, cross-legged, his long back againstthe wall. 

"I say, sir. You aren't going to tell me you are bored?"

"Bored! No! Where the devil have you been all this time?"

"Observing--watching--nosing around. What else? I knew you had company. Have you talked freely, sir?"

"Yes, I have, " muttered Mr. Jones. 

"Not downright plain, sir?"

"No. I wished you had been here. You loaf all the morning, and now youcome in out of breath. What's the matter?"

"I haven't been wasting my time out there, " said Ricardo. "Nothing's thematter. I--I--might have hurried a bit. " He was in truth still panting;only it was not with running, but with the tumult of thoughts andsensations long repressed, which had been set free by the adventure ofthe morning. He was almost distracted by them now. He forgot himself inthe maze of possibilities threatening and inspiring. "And so you had along talk?" he said, to gain time. 

"Confound you! The sun hasn't affected your head, has it? Why are youstaring at me like a basilisk?"

"Beg pardon, sir. Wasn't aware I stared, " Ricardo apologizedgood-humouredly. "The sun might well affect a thicker skull than mine. It blazes. Phew! What do you think a fellow is, sir--a salamander?"

"You ought to have been here, " observed Mr. Jones. 

"Did the beast give any signs of wanting to prance?" asked Ricardoquickly, with absolutely genuine anxiety. "It wouldn't do, sir. You mustplay him easy for at least a couple of days, sir. I have a plan. I havea notion that I can find out a lot in a couple of days. "

"You have? In what way?"

"Why, by watching, " Ricardo answered slowly. 

Mr Jones grunted. 

"Nothing new, that. Watch, eh? Why not pray a little, too?"

"Ha, ha, ha! That's a good one, " burst out the secretary, fixing Mr. Jones with mirthless eyes. 

The latter dropped the subject indolently. 

"Oh, you may be certain of at least two days, " he said. 

Ricardo recovered himself. His eyes gleamed voluptuously. 

"We'll pull this off yet--clean--whole--right through, if you will onlytrust me, sir. "

"I am trusting you right enough, " said Mr. Jones. "It's your interest, too. "

And, indeed, Ricardo was truthful enough in his statement. He didabsolutely believe in success now. But he couldn't tell his governorthat he had intelligences in the enemy's camp. It wouldn't do to tellhim of the girl. Devil only knew what he would do if he learned therewas a woman about. And how could he begin to tell of it? He couldn'tconfess his sudden escapade. 

"We'll pull it off, sir, " he said, with perfectly acted cheerfulness. He experienced gusts of awful joy expanding in his heart and hot like afanned flame. 

"We must, " pronounced Mr. Jones. "This thing, Martin, is not like ourother tries. I have a peculiar feeling about this. It's a differentthing. It's a sort of test. "

Ricardo was impressed by the governor's manner; for the first time ahint of passion could be detected in him. But also a word he used, theword "test, " had struck him as particularly significant somehow. It wasthe last word uttered during that morning's conversation. Immediatelyafterwards Ricardo went out of the room. It was impossible for him tokeep still. An elation in which an extraordinary softness mingled withsavage triumph would not allow it. It prevented his thinking, also. He walked up and down the veranda far into the afternoon, eyeing thebungalow at every turn. It gave no sign of being inhabited. Once ortwice he stopped dead short and looked down at his left slipper. Eachtime he chuckled audibly. His restlessness kept on increasing till atlast it frightened him. He caught hold of the balustrade of the verandaand stood still, smiling not at his thought but at the strong sense oflife within him. He abandoned himself to it carelessly, even recklessly. He cared for no one, friend or enemy. At that moment Mr. Jones calledhim by name from within. A shadow fell on the secretary's face. 

"Here, sir, " he answered; but it was a moment before he could make uphis mind to go in. 

He found the governor on his feet. Mr. Jones was tired of lying downwhen there was no necessity for it. His slender form, gliding about theroom, came to a standstill. 

"I've been thinking, Martin, of something you suggested. At the time itdid not strike me as practical; but on reflection it seems to me thatto propose a game is as good a way as any to let him understand that thetime has come to disgorge. It's less--how should I say?--vulgar. He willknow what it means. It's not a bad form to give to the business--whichin itself is crude, Martin, crude. "

"Want to spare his feelings?" jeered the secretary in such a bitter tonethat Mr. Jones was really surprised. 

"Why, it was your own notion, confound you!"

"Who says it wasn't?" retorted Ricardo sulkily. "But I am fairly sick ofthis crawling. No! No! Get the exact bearings of his swag and then a ripup. That's plenty good enough for him. "

His passions being thoroughly aroused, a thirst for blood was allied inhim with a thirst for tenderness--yes, tenderness. A sort of anxious, melting sensation pervaded and softened his heart when he thought ofthat girl--one of his own sort. And at the same time jealousy startedgnawing at his breast as the image of Heyst intruded itself on hisfierce anticipation of bliss. 

"The crudeness of your ferocity is positively gross, Martin, " Mr. Jonessaid disdainfully. "You don't even understand my purpose. I mean tohave some sport out of him. Just try to imagine the atmosphere of thegame--the fellow handling the cards--the agonizing mockery of it! Oh, I shall appreciate this greatly. Yes, let him lose his money instead ofbeing forced to hand it over. You, of course, would shoot him at once, but I shall enjoy the refinement and the jest of it. He's a man of thebest society. I've been hounded out of my sphere by people very muchlike that fellow. How enraged and humiliated he will be! I promisemyself some exquisite moments while watching his play. "

"Ay, and suppose he suddenly starts prancing. He may not appreciate thefun. "

"I mean you to be present, " Mr. Jones remarked calmly. 

"Well, as long as I am free to plug him or rip him up whenever I thinkthe time has come, you are welcome to your bit of sport, sir. I shan'tspoil it. "

CHAPTER SEVEN

It was at this precise moment of their conversation that Heyst hadintruded on Mr. Jones and his secretary with his warning about Wang, ashe had related to Lena. When he left them, the two looked at each otherin wondering silence. My Jones was the first to break it. 

"I say, Martin!"

"Yes, sir. "

"What does this mean?"

"It's some move. Blame me if I can understand. "

"Too deep for you?" Mr. Jones inquired dryly. 

"It's nothing but some of his infernal impudence, " growled thesecretary. "You don't believe all that about the Chink, do you, sir?'Tain't true. "

"It isn't necessary for it to be true to have a meaning for us. It's thewhy of his coming to tell us this tale that's important. "

"Do you think he made it up to frighten us?" asked Ricardo. 

Mr Jones scowled at him thoughtfully. 

"The man looked worried, " he muttered, as if to himself. "Suppose thatChinaman has really stolen his money! The man looked very worried. "

"Nothing but his artfulness, sir, " protested Ricardo earnestly, for theidea was too disconcerting to entertain. "Is it likely that he wouldhave trusted a Chink with enough knowledge to make it possible?" heargued warmly. "Why, it's the very thing that he would keep close about. There's something else there. Ay, but what?"

"Ha, ha, ha!" Mr. Jones let out a ghostly, squeaky laugh. "I've neverbeen placed in such a ridiculous position before, " he went on, with asepulchral equanimity of tone. "It's you, Martin, who dragged me intoit. However, it's my own fault too. I ought to--but I was reallytoo bored to use my brain, and yours is not to be trusted. You are ahothead!"

A blasphemous exclamation of grief escaped from Ricardo. Not to betrusted! Hothead! He was almost tearful. 

"Haven't I heard you, sir, saying more than twenty times since we gotfired out from Manila that we should want a lot of capital to work theEast Coast with? You were always telling me that to prime properly allthem officials and Portuguese scallywags we should have to lose heavilyat first. Weren't you always worrying about some means of getting holdof a good lot of cash? It wasn't to be got hold of by allowing yourselfto become bored in that rotten Dutch town and playing a two-penny gamewith confounded beggarly bank clerks and such like. Well, I've broughtyou here, where there is cash to be got--and a big lot, to a moral, " headded through his set teeth. 

Silence fell. Each of them was staring into a different corner of theroom. Suddenly, with a slight stamp of his foot, Mr. Jones made for thedoor. Ricardo caught him up outside. 

"Put an arm through mine, sir, " he begged him gently but firmly. "No usegiving the game away. An invalid may well come out for a breath of freshair after the sun's gone down a bit. That's it, sir. But where do youwant to go? Why did you come out, sir?"

Mr Jones stopped short. 

"I hardly know myself, " he confessed in a hollow mutter, staringintently at the Number One bungalow. "It's quite irrational, " hedeclared in a still lower tone. 

"Better go in, sir, " suggested Ricardo. "What's that? Those screensweren't down before. He's spying from behind them now, I bet--thedodging, artful, plotting beast!"

"Why not go over there and see if we can't get to the bottom of thisgame?" was the unexpected proposal uttered by Mr. Jones. "He will haveto talk to us. "

Ricardo repressed a start of dismay, but for a moment could not speak. He only pressed the governor's hand to his side instinctively. 

"No, sir. What could you say? Do you expect to get to the bottom of hislies? How could you make him talk? It isn't time yet to come to gripswith that gent. You don't think I would hang back, do you? His Chink, ofcourse, I'll shoot like a dog the moment I catch sight of him; but asto that Mr. Blasted Heyst, the time isn't yet. My head's cooler just nowthan yours. Let's go in again. Why, we are exposed here. Suppose hetook it into his head to let off a gun on us! He's an unaccountable, 'yporcritical skunk. "

Allowing himself to be persuaded, Mr. Jones returned to his seclusion. The secretary, however, remained on the veranda--for the purpose, hesaid, of seeing whether that Chink wasn't sneaking around; in whichcase he proposed to take a long shot at the galoot and chance theconsequences. His real reason was that he wanted to be alone, away fromthe governor's deep-sunk eyes. He felt a sentimental desire to indulgehis fancies in solitude. A great change had come over Mr. Ricardo sincethat morning. A whole side of him which from prudence, from necessity, from loyalty, had been kept dormant, was aroused now, colouringhis thoughts and disturbing his mental poise by the vision of suchstaggering consequences as, for instance, the possibility of an activeconflict with the governor. The appearance of the monstrous Pedro withhis news drew Ricardo out of a feeling of dreaminess wrapped up in asense of impending trouble. A woman? Yes, there was one; and it made allthe difference. After driving away Pedro, and watching the whitehelmets of Heyst and Lena vanishing among the bushes he stood lost inmeditation. 

"Where could they be off to like this?" he mentally asked himself. 

The answer found by his speculative faculties on their utmost stretchwas--to meet that Chink. For in the desertion of Wang Ricardo did notbelieve. It was a lying yarn, the organic part of a dangerous plot. Heyst had gone to combine some fresh move. But then Ricardo felt surethat the girl was with him--the girl full of pluck, full of sense, fullof understanding; an ally of his own kind!

He went indoors briskly. Mr. Jones had resumed his cross-legged pose atthe head of the bed, with his back against the wall. 

"Anything new?"

"No, sir. "

Ricardo walked about the room as if he had no care in the world. Hehummed snatches of song. Mr. Jones raised his waspish eyebrows, at thesound. The secretary got down on his knees before an old leather trunk, and, rummaging in there, brought out a small looking-glass. He fell toexamining his physiognomy in it with silent absorption. 

"I think I'll shave, " he decided, getting up. 

He gave a sidelong glance to the governor, and repeated it several timesduring the operation, which did not take long, and even afterwards, whenafter putting away the implements, he resumed his walking, humming moresnatches of unknown songs. Mr. Jones preserved a complete immobility, his thin lips compressed, his eyes veiled. His face was like a carving. 

"So you would like to try your hand at cards with that skunk, sir?" saidRicardo, stopping suddenly and rubbing his hands. 

Mr Jones gave no sign of having heard anything. 

"Well, why not? Why shouldn't he have the experience? You remember inthat Mexican town--what's its name?--the robber fellow they caught inthe mountains and condemned to be shot? He played cards half the nightwith the jailer and the sheriff. Well, this fellow is condemned, too. He must give you your game. Hang it all, a gentleman ought to have somelittle relaxation! And you have been uncommonly patient, sir. "

"You are uncommonly volatile all of a sudden, " Mr. Jones remarked in abored voice. "What's come to you?"

The secretary hummed for a while, and then said:

"I'll try to get him over here for you tonight, after dinner. If I ain'there myself, don't you worry, sir. I shall be doing a bit of nosingaround--see?"

"I see, " sneered Mr. Jones languidly. "But what do you expect to see inthe dark?"

Ricardo made no answer, and after another turn or two slipped out of theroom. He no longer felt comfortable alone with the governor. 

CHAPTER EIGHT

Meantime Heyst and Lena, walking rather fast, approached Wang's hut. Asking the girl to wait, Heyst ascended the little ladder of bamboosgiving access to the door. It was as he had expected. The smoky interiorwas empty, except for a big chest of sandalwood too heavy for hurriedremoval. Its lid was thrown up, but whatever it might have contained wasno longer there. All Wang's possessions were gone. Without tarrying inthe hut, Heyst came back to the girl, who asked no questions, with herstrange air of knowing or understanding everything. 

"Let us push on, " he said. 

He went ahead, the rustle of her white skirt following him into theshades of the forest, along the path of their usual walk. Though the airlay heavy between straight denuded trunks, the sunlit patches moved onthe ground, and raising her eyes Lena saw far above her head theflutter of the leaves, the surface shudder on the mighty limbs extendedhorizontally in the perfect immobility of patience. Twice Heyst lookedover his shoulder at her. Behind the readiness of her answering smilethere was a fund of devoted, concentrated passion, burning with the hopeof a more perfect satisfaction. They passed the spot where it was theirpractice to turn towards the barren summit of the central hill. Heystheld steadily on his way towards the upper limit of the forest. Themoment they left its shelter, a breeze enveloped them, and a greatcloud, racing over the sun, threw a peculiar sombre tint overeverything. Heyst pointed up a precipitous, rugged path clinging to theside of the hill. It ended in a barricade of felled trees, a primitivelyconceived obstacle which must have cost much labour to erect at justthat spot. 

"This, " Heyst, explained in his urbane tone, "is a barrier against themarch of civilization. The poor folk over there did not like it, as itappeared to them in the shape of my company--a great step forward, assome people used to call it with mistaken confidence. The advanced foothas been drawn back, but the barricade remains. "

They went on climbing slowly. The cloud had driven over, leaving anadded brightness on the face of the world. 

"It's a very ridiculous thing, " Heyst went on; "but then it is theproduct of honest fear--fear of the unknown, of the incomprehensible. It's pathetic, too, in a way. And I heartily wish, Lena, that we were onthe other side of it. "

"Oh, stop, stop!" she cried, seizing his arm. 

The face of the barricade they were approaching had been piled up with alot of fresh-cut branches. The leaves were still green. A gentle breeze, sweeping over the top, stirred them a little; but what had startled thegirl was the discovery of several spear-blades protruding from the massof foliage. She had made them out suddenly. They did not gleam, but shesaw them with extreme distinctness, very still, very vicious to look at. 

"You had better let me go forward alone, Lena, " said Heyst. 

She tugged, persistently at his arm, but after a time, during whichhe never ceased to look smilingly into her terrified eyes, he ended bydisengaging himself. 

"It's a sign rather than a demonstration, " he argued, persuasively. "Just wait here a moment. I promise not to approach near enough to bestabbed. "

As in a nightmare she watched Heyst go up the few yards of the path asif he never meant to stop; and she heard his voice, like voices heardin dreams, shouting unknown words in an unearthly tone. Heyst was onlydemanding to see Wang. He was not kept waiting very long. Recoveringfrom the first flurry of her fright, Lena noticed a commotion in thegreen top-dressing of the barricade. She exhaled a sigh of relief whenthe spear-blades retreated out of sight, sliding inward--the horriblethings! in a spot facing Heyst a pair of yellow hands parted the leaves, and a face filled the small opening--a face with very noticeable eyes. It was Wang's face, of course, with no suggestion of a body belonging toit, like those cardboard faces at which she remembered gazing as a childin the window of a certain dim shop kept by a mysterious little man inKingsland Road. Only this face, instead of mere holes, had eyes whichblinked. She could see the beating of the eyelids. The hands on eachside of the face, keeping the boughs apart, also did not look as if theybelonged to any real body. One of them was holding a revolver--a weaponwhich she recognized merely by intuition, never having seen such anobject before. 

She leaned her shoulders against the rock of the perpendicular hillsideand kept her eyes on Heyst, with comparative composure, since the spearswere not menacing him any longer. Beyond the rigid and motionless backhe presented to her, she saw Wang's unreal cardboard face moving itsthin lips and grimacing artificially. She was too far down the path tohear the dialogue, carried on in an ordinary voice. She waited patientlyfor its end. Her shoulders felt the warmth of the rock; now and then awhiff of cooler air seemed to slip down upon her head from above; theravine at her feet, choked fun of vegetation, emitted the faint, drowsyhum of insect life. Everything was very quiet. She failed to noticethe exact moment when Wang's head vanished from the foliage, taking theunreal hands away with it. To her horror, the spear-blades came glidingslowly out. The very hair on her head stirred; but before she hadtime to cry out, Heyst, who seemed rooted to the ground, turned roundabruptly and began to move towards her. His great moustaches did notquite hide an ugly but irresolute smile; and when he had come down nearenough to touch her, he burst out into a harsh laugh:

"Ha, ha, ha!"

She looked at him, uncomprehending. He cut short his laugh and saidcurtly:

"We had better go down as we came. "

She followed him into the forest. The advance of the afternoon hadfilled it with gloom. Far away a slant of light between the trees closedthe view. All was dark beyond. Heyst stopped. 

"No reason to hurry, Lena, " he said in his ordinary, serenely politetones. "We return unsuccessful. I suppose you know, or at least canguess, what was my object in coming up there?"

"No, I can't guess, dear, " she said, and smiled, noticing withemotion that his breast was heaving as if he had been out of breath. Nevertheless, he tried to command his speech, pausing only a littlebetween the words. 

"No? I went up to find Wang. I went up"--he gasped again here, but thiswas for the last time--"I made you come with me because I didn't liketo leave you unprotected in the proximity of those fellows. " Suddenly hesnatched his cork helmet off his head and dashed it on the ground. "No!"he cried roughly. "All this is too unreal altogether. It isn't to beborne! I can't protect you! I haven't the power. "

He glared at her for a moment, then hastened after his hat which hadbounded away to some distance. He came back looking at her face, whichwas very white. 

"I ought to beg your pardon for these antics, " he said, adjusting hishat. "A movement of childish petulance! Indeed, I feel very much like achild in my ignorance, in my powerlessness, in my want of resource, ineverything except in the dreadful consciousness of some evil hangingover your head--yours!"

"It's you they are after, " she murmured. 

"No doubt, but unfortunately--"

"Unfortunately--what?"

"Unfortunately, I have not succeeded with Wang, " he said. "I failed tomove his Celestial, heart--that is, if there is such a thing. He told mewith horrible Chinese reasonableness that he could not let us pass thebarrier, because we should be pursued. He doesn't like fights. He gaveme to understand that he would shoot me with my own revolver withoutany sort of compunction, rather than risk a rude and distastefulcontest with the strange barbarians for my sake. He has preached to thevillagers. They respect him. He is the most remarkable man they haveever seen, and their kinsman by marriage. They understand his policy. And anyway only women and children and a few old fellows are left in thevillage. This is the season when the men are away in trading vessels. But it would have been all the same. None of them have a taste forfighting--and with white men too! They are peaceable, kindly folk andwould have seen me shot with extreme satisfaction. Wang seemed to thinkmy insistence--for I insisted, you know--very stupid and tactless. But adrowning man clutches at straws. We were talking in such Malay as we areboth equal to. 

"'Your fears are foolish, ' I said to him. 

"'Foolish? of course I am foolish, ' he replied. 'If I were a wise man, I would be a merchant with a big hong in Singapore, instead of being amine coolie turned houseboy. But if you don't go away in time, I willshoot you before it grows too dark to take aim. Not till then, NumberOne, but I will do it then. Now--finish!'

"'All right, ' I said. 'Finish as far as I am concerned; but you can haveno objections to the mem putih coming over to stay with the Orang Kaya'swomen for a few days. I will make a present in silver for it. ' OrangKaya, is the head man of the village, Lena, " added Heyst. 

She looked at him in astonishment. 

"You wanted me to go to that village of savages?" she gasped. "Youwanted me to leave you?"

"It would have given me a freer hand. "

Heyst stretched out his hands and looked at them for a moment, then letthem fall by his side. Indignation was expressed more in the curve ofher lips than in her clear eyes, which never wavered. 

"I believe Wang laughed, " he went on. "He made a noise like aturkey-cock. "

"'That would be worse than anything, ' he told me. 

"I was taken aback. I pointed out to him that he was talking nonsense. It could not make any difference to his security where you were, becausethe evil men, as he calls them, did not know of your existence. I didnot lie exactly, Lena, though I did stretch the truth till it cracked;but the fellow seems to have an uncanny insight. He shook his head. Heassured me they knew all about you. He made a horrible grimace at me. "

"It doesn't matter, " said the girl. "I didn't want--I would not havegone. "

Heyst raised his eyes. 

"Wonderful intuition! As I continued to press him, Wang made thatvery remark about you. When he smiles, his face looks like a conceiteddeath's head. It was his very last remark that you wouldn't want to. Iwent away then. "

She leaned back against a tree. Heyst faced her in the same attitude ofleisure, as if they had done with time and all the other concerns of theearth. Suddenly, high above their heads the roof of leaves whispered atthem tumultuously and then ceased. 

"That was a strange notion of yours, to send me away, " she said. "Sendme away? What for? Yes, what for?"

"You seem indignant, " he remarked listlessly. 

"To these savages, too!" she pursued. "And you think I would have gone?You can do what you like with me--but not that, not that!"

Heyst looked into the dim aisles of the forest. Everything was so stillnow that the very ground on which they stood seemed to exhale silenceinto the shade. 

"Why be indignant?" he remonstrated. "It has not happened. I gave uppleading with Wang. Here we are, repulsed! Not only without power toresist the evil, but unable to make terms for ourselves with the worthyenvoys, the envoys extraordinary of the world we thought we had donewith for years and years. And that's bad, Lena, very bad. "

"It's funny, " she said thoughtfully. "Bad? I suppose it is. I don't knowthat it is. But do you? Do you? You talk as if you didn't believe init. "

She gazed at him earnestly. 

"Do I? Ah! That's it. I don't know how to talk. I have managed to refineeverything away. I've said to the Earth that bore me: 'I am I and youare a shadow. ' And, by Jove, it is so! But it appears that such wordscannot be uttered with impunity. Here I am on a Shadow inhabitedby Shades. How helpless a man is against the Shades! How is one tointimidate, persuade, resist, assert oneself against them? I have lostall belief in realities . . . Lena, give me your hand. "

She looked at him surprised, uncomprehending. 

"Your hand, " he cried. 

She obeyed; he seized it with avidity as if eager to raise it to hislips, but halfway up released his grasp. They looked at each other for atime. 

"What's the matter, dear?" she whispered timidly. 

"Neither force nor conviction, " Heyst muttered wearily to himself. "Howam I to meet this charmingly simple problem?"

"I am sorry, " she murmured. 

"And so am I, " he confessed quickly. "And the bitterest of thishumiliation is its complete uselessness--which I feel, I feel!"

She had never before seen him give such signs of feeling. Across hisghastly face the long moustaches flamed in the shade. He spoke suddenly:

"I wonder if I could find enough courage to creep among them in thenight, with a knife, and cut their throats one after another, as theyslept! I wonder--"

She was frightened by his unwonted appearance more than by the words inhis mouth, and said earnestly:

"Don't you try to do such a thing! Don't you think of it!"

"I don't possess anything bigger than a penknife. As to thinking of it, Lena, there's no saying what one may think of. I don't think. Somethingin me thinks--something foreign to my nature. What is the matter?"

He noticed her parted lips, and the peculiar stare in her eyes, whichhad wandered from his face. 

"There's somebody after us. I saw something white moving, " she cried. 

Heyst did not turn his head; he only glanced at her out-stretched arm. 

"No doubt we are followed; we are watched. "

"I don't see anything now, " she said. 

"And it does not matter, " Heyst went on in his ordinary voice. "Here weare in the forest. I have neither strength nor persuasion. Indeed, it'sextremely difficult to be eloquent before a Chinaman's head stuck atone out of a lot of brushwood. But can we wander among these big treesindefinitely? Is this a refuge? No! What else is left to us? I did thinkfor a moment of the mine; but even there we could not remain very long. And then that gallery is not safe. The props were too weak to beginwith. Ants have been at work there--ants after the men. A death-trap, atbest. One can die but once, but there are many manners of death. "

The girl glanced about fearfully, in search of the watcher or followerwhom she had glimpsed once among the trees; but if he existed, he hadconcealed himself. Nothing met her eyes but the deepening shadows of theshort vistas between the living columns of the still roof of leaves. She looked at the man beside her expectantly, tenderly, with suppressedaffright and a sort of awed wonder. 

"I have also thought of these people's boat, " Heyst went on. "We couldget into that, and--only they have taken everything out of her. I haveseen her oars and mast in a corner of their room. To shove off in anempty boat would be nothing but a desperate expedition, supposing eventhat she would drift out a good distance between the islands before themorning. It would only be a complicated manner of committing suicide--tobe found dead in a boat, dead from sun and thirst. A sea mystery. I wonder who would find us! Davidson, perhaps; but Davidson passedwestward ten days ago. I watched him steaming past one early morning, from the jetty. "

"You never told me, " she said. 

"He must have been looking at me through his big binoculars. Perhaps, ifI had raised my arm--but what did we want with Davidson then, you andI? He won't be back this way for three weeks or more, Lena. I wish I hadraised my arm that morning. "

"What would have been the good of it?" she sighed out. 

"What good? No good, of course. We had no forebodings. This seemed to bean inexpugnable refuge, where we could live untroubled and learn to knoweach other. "

"It's perhaps in trouble that people get to know each other, " shesuggested. 

"Perhaps, " he said indifferently. "At any rate, we would not have goneaway from here with him; though I believe he would have come in eagerlyenough, and ready for any service he could render. It's that fat man'snature--a delightful fellow. You would not come on the wharf that timeI sent the shawl back to Mrs. Schomberg through him. He has never seenyou. "

"I didn't know that you wanted anybody ever to see me, " she said. 

He had folded his arms on his breast and hung his head. 

"And I did not know that you cared to be seen as yet. A misunderstandingevidently. An honourable misunderstanding. But it does not matter now. "

He raised his head after a silence. 

"How gloomy this forest has grown! Yet surely the sun cannot have setalready. "

She looked round; and as if her eyes had just been opened, she perceivedthe shades of the forest surrounding her, not so much with gloom, butwith a sullen, dumb, menacing hostility. Her heart sank in the engulfingstillness, at that moment she felt the nearness of death, breathing onher and on the man with her. If there had been a sudden stir of leaves, the crack of a dry branch, the faintest rustle, she would have screamedaloud. But she shook off the unworthy weakness. Such as she was, afiddle-scraping girl picked up on the very threshold of infamy, shewould try to rise above herself, triumphant and humble; and thenhappiness would burst on her like a torrent, flinging at her feet theman whom she loved. 

Heyst stirred slightly. 

"We had better be getting back, Lena, since we can't stay all night inthe woods--or anywhere else, for that matter. We are the slaves ofthis infernal surprise which has been sprung on us by--shall I sayfate?--your fate, or mine. "

It was the man who had broken the silence, but it was the woman wholed the way. At the very edge of the forest she stopped, concealed by atree. He joined her cautiously. 

"What is it? What do you see, Lena?" he whispered. 

She said that it was only a thought that had come into her head. Shehesitated for a moment giving him over her shoulder a shining gleam inher grey eyes. She wanted to know whether this trouble, this danger, this evil, whatever it was, finding them out in their retreat, was not asort of punishment. 

"Punishment?" repeated Heyst. He could not understand what she meant. When she explained, he was still more surprised. "A sort of retribution, from an angry Heaven?" he said in wonder. "On us? What on earth for?"

He saw her pale face darken in the dusk. She had blushed. Her whisperingflowed very fast. It was the way they lived together--that wasn't right, was it? It was a guilty life. For she had not been forced into it, driven, scared into it. No, no--she had come to him of her own freewill, with her whole soul yearning unlawfully. 

He was so profoundly touched that he could not speak for a moment. Toconceal his trouble, he assumed his best Heystian manner. 

"What? Are our visitors then messengers of morality, avengers ofrighteousness, agents of Providence? That's certainly an original view. How flattered they would be if they could hear you!"

"Now you are making fun of me, " she said in a subdued voice which brokesuddenly. 

"Are you conscious of sin?" Heyst asked gravely. She made no answer. "For I am not, " he added; "before Heaven, I am not!"

"You! You are different. Woman is the tempter. You took me up from pity. I threw myself at you. "

"Oh, you exaggerate, you exaggerate. It was not so bad as that, " he saidplayfully, keeping his voice steady with an effort. 

He considered himself a dead man already, yet forced to pretend thathe was alive for her sake, for her defence. He regretted that he hadno Heaven to which he could recommend this fair, palpitating handful ofashes and dust--warm, living sentient his own--and exposed helplessly toinsult, outrage, degradation, and infinite misery of the body. 

She had averted her face from him and was still. He suddenly seized herpassive hand. 

"You will have it so?" he said. "Yes? Well, let us then hope for mercytogether. "

She shook her head without looking at him, like an abashed child. 

"Remember, " he went on incorrigible with his delicate raillery, "thathope is a Christian virtue, and surely you can't want all the mercy foryourself. "

Before their eyes the bungalow across the cleared ground stood bathed ina sinister light. An unexpected chill gust of wind made a noise in thetree-tops. She snatched her hand away and stepped out into the open;but before she had advanced more than three yards, she stood still andpointed to the west. 

"Oh look there!" she exclaimed. 

Beyond the headland of Diamond Bay, lying black on a purple sea, greatmasses of cloud stood piled up and bathed in a mist of blood. A crimsoncrack like an open wound zigzagged between them, with a piece of darkred sun showing at the bottom. Heyst cast an indifferent glance at theill-omened chaos of the sky. 

"Thunderstorm making up. We shall hear it all night, but it won't visitus, probably. The clouds generally gather round the volcano. "

She was not listening to him. Her eyes reflected the sombre and violenthues of the sunset. 

"That does not look much like a sign of mercy, " she said slowly, as ifto herself, and hurried on, followed by Heyst. Suddenly she stopped. "Idon't care. I would do more yet! And some day you'll forgive me. You'llhave to forgive me!"

CHAPTER NINE

Stumbling up the steps, as if suddenly exhausted, Lena entered the roomand let herself fall on the nearest chair. Before following her, Heysttook a survey of the surroundings from the veranda. It was a completesolitude. There was nothing in the aspect of this familiar scene to tellhim that he and the girl were not completely alone as they had been inthe early days of their common life on this abandoned spot, with onlyWang discreetly materializing from time to time and the uncomplainingmemory of Morrison to keep them company. 

After the cold gust of wind there was an absolute stillness of theair. The thunder-charged mass hung unbroken beyond the low, ink-blackheadland, darkening the twilight. By contrast, the sky at the zenithdisplayed pellucid clearness, the sheen of a delicate glass bubble whichthe merest movement of air might shatter. A little to the left, betweenthe black masses of the headland and of the forest, the volcano, afeather of smoke by day and a cigar-glow at night, took its first fieryexpanding breath of the evening. Above it a reddish star came out likean expelled spark from the fiery bosom of the earth, enchanted intopermanency by the mysterious spell of frozen spaces. 

In front of Heyst the forest, already full of the deepest shades, stoodlike a wall. But he lingered, watching its edge, especially where itended at the line of bushes, masking the land end of the jetty. Sincethe girl had spoken of catching a glimpse of something white among thetrees, he believed pretty firmly that they had been followed in theirexcursion up the mountain by Mr. Jones's secretary. No doubt the fellowhad watched them out of the forest, and now, unless he took the troubleto go back some distance and fetch a considerable circuit inland overthe clearing, he was bound to walk out into the open space before thebungalows. Heyst did, indeed, imagine at one time some movement betweenthe trees, lost as soon as perceived. He stated patiently, but nothingmore happened. After all, why should he trouble about these people'sactions? Why this stupid concern for the preliminaries, since, whenthe issue was joined, it would find him disarmed and shrinking from theugliness and degradation of it?

He turned and entered the room. Deep dusk reigned in there already. Lena, near the door, did not move or speak. The sheen of the whitetablecloth was very obtrusive. The brute these two vagabonds had tamedhad entered on its service while Heyst and Lena were away. The table waslaid. Heyst walked up and down the room several times. The girl remainedwithout sound or movement on the chair. But when Heyst, placing the twosilver candelabra on the table, struck a match to light the candles, she got up suddenly and went into the bedroom. She came out again almostimmediately, having taken off her hat. Heyst looked at her over hisshoulder. 

"What's the good of shirking the evil hour? I've lighted thesecandles for a sign of our return. After all, we might not have beenwatched--while returning, I mean. Of course we were seen leaving thehouse. "

The girl sat down again. The great wealth of her hair looked very darkabove her colourless face. She raised her eyes, glistening softly inthe light with a sort of unreadable appeal, with a strange effect ofunseeing innocence. 

"Yes, " said Heyst across the table, the fingertips of one hand restingon the immaculate cloth. "A creature with an antediluvian lower jaw, hairy like a mastodon, and formed like a pre-historic ape, has laid thistable. Are you awake, Lena? Am I? I would pinch myself, only I know thatnothing would do away with this dream. Three covers. You know it is theshorter of the two who's coming--the gentleman who, in the play of hisshoulders as he walks, and in his facial structure, recalls a Jaguar. Ah, you don't know what a jaguar is? But you have had a good look atthese two. It's the short one, you know, who's to be our guest. "

She made a sign with her head that she knew; Heyst's insistence broughtRicardo vividly before her mental vision. A sudden languor, like thephysical echo of her struggle with the man, paralysed all her limbs. She lay still in the chair, feeling very frightened at thisphenomenon--ready to pray aloud for strength. 

Heyst had started to pace the room. 

"Our guest! There is a proverb--in Russia, I believe--that when aguest enters the house, God enters the house. The sacred virtue ofhospitality! But it leads one into trouble as well as any other. "

The girl unexpectedly got up from the chair, swaying her supple figureand stretching her arms above her head. He stopped to look at hercuriously, paused, and then went on:

"I venture to think that God has nothing to do with such a hospitalityand with such a guest!"

She had jumped to her feet to react against the numbness, to discoverwhether her body would obey her will. It did. She could stand up, andshe could move her arms freely. Though no physiologist, she concludedthat all that sudden numbness was in her head, not in her limbs. Herfears assuaged, she thanked God for it mentally, and to Heyst murmured aprotest:

"Oh, yes! He's got to do with everything--every little thing. Nothingcan happen--"

"Yes, " he said hastily, "one of the two sparrows can't be struck to theground--you are thinking of that. " The habitual playful smile faded onthe kindly lips under the martial moustache. "Ah, you remember what youhave been told--as a child--on Sundays. "

"Yes, I do remember. " She sank into the chair again. "It was the onlydecent bit of time I ever had when I was a kid, with our landlady's twogirls, you know. "

"I wonder, Lena, " Heyst said, with a return to his urbane playfulness, "whether you are just a little child, or whether you represent somethingas old as the world. "

She surprised Heyst by saying dreamily:

"Well--and what about you?"

"I? I date later--much later. I can't call myself a child, but I am sorecent that I may call myself a man of the last hour--or is it the hourbefore last? I have been out of it so long that I am not certain how farthe hands of the clock have moved since--since--"

He glanced at the portrait of his father, exactly above the head of thegirl, as if it were ignoring her in its painted austerity of feeling. Hedid not finish the sentence; but he did not remain silent for long. 

"Only what must be avoided are fallacious inferences, my dearLena--especially at this hour. "

"Now you are making fun of me again, " she said without looking up. 

"Am I?" he cried. "Making fun? No, giving warning. Hang it all, whatevertruth people told you in the old days, there is also this one--thatsparrows do fall to the ground, that they are brought to the ground. This is no vain assertion, but a fact. That's why"--again histone changed, while he picked up the table knife and let it falldisdainfully--"that's why I wish these wretched round knives had someedge on them. Absolute rubbish--neither edge, point, nor substance. Ibelieve one of these forks would make a better weapon at a pinch. Butcan I go about with a fork in my pocket?" He gnashed his teeth with arage very real, and yet comic. 

"There used to be a carver here, but it was broken and thrown away along time ago. Nothing much to carve here. It would have made a nobleweapon, no doubt; but--"

He stopped. The girl sat very quiet, with downcast eyes. As he keptsilence for some time, she looked up and said thoughtfully:

"Yes, a knife--it's a knife that you would want, wouldn't you, in case, in case--"

He shrugged his shoulders. 

"There must be a crowbar or two in the sheds; but I have given up allthe keys together. And then, do you see me walking about with a crowbarin my hand? Ha, ha! And besides, that edifying sight alone might startthe trouble for all I know. In truth, why has it not started yet?"

"Perhaps they are afraid of you, " she whispered, looking down again. 

"By Jove, it looks like it, " he assented meditatively. "They do seem tohang back for some reason. Is that reason prudence, or downright fear, or perhaps the leisurely method of certitude?"

Out in the black night, not very far from the bungalow, resounded a loudand prolonged whistle. Lena's hands grasped the sides of the chair, butshe made no movement. Heyst started, and turned his face away from thedoor. 

The startling sound had died away. 

"Whistles, yells, omens, signals, portents--what do they matter?" hesaid. "But what about the crowbar? Suppose I had it! Could I standin ambush at the side of the door--this door--and smash the firstprotruding head, scatter blood and brains over the floor, over thesewalls, and then run stealthily to the other door to do the samething--and repeat the performance for a third time, perhaps? Could I? Onsuspicion, without compunction, with a calm and determined purpose? No, it is not in me. I date too late. Would you like to see me attempt thisthing while that mysterious prestige of mine lasts--or their not lessmysterious hesitation?"

"No, no!" she whispered ardently, as if compelled to speak by hiseyes fixed on her face. "No, it's a knife you want to defend yourselfwith--to defend--there will be time--"

"And who knows if it isn't really my duty?" he began again, as if he hadnot heard her disjointed words at all. "It may be--my duty to you, tomyself. For why should I put up with the humiliation of their secretmenaces? Do you know what the world would say?"

He emitted a low laugh, which struck her with terror. She would have gotup, but he stooped so low over her that she could not move without firstpushing him away. 

"It would say, Lena, that I--the Swede--after luring my friend andpartner to his death from mere greed of money, have murdered theseunoffending shipwrecked strangers from sheer funk. That would bethe story whispered--perhaps shouted--certainly spread out, andbelieved--and believed, my dear Lena!"

"Who would believe such awful things?"

"Perhaps you wouldn't--not at first, at any rate; but the power ofcalumny grows with time. It's insidious and penetrating. It can evendestroy one's faith in oneself--dry-rot the soul. "

All at once her eyes leaped to the door and remained fixed, stony, alittle enlarged. Turning his head, Heyst beheld the figure of Ricardoframed in the doorway. For a moment none of the three moved, then, looking from the newcomer to the girl in the chair, Heyst formulated asardonic introduction. 

"Mr Ricardo, my dear. "

Her head drooped a little. Ricardo's hand went up to his moustache. Hisvoice exploded in the room. 

"At your service, ma'am!"

He stepped in, taking his hat off with a flourish, and dropping itcarelessly on a chair near the door. 

"At your service, " he repeated, in quite another tone. "I was made awarethere was a lady about, by that Pedro of ours; only I didn't know Ishould have the privilege of seeing you tonight, ma'am. "

Lena and Heyst looked at him covertly, but he, with a vague gazeavoiding them both, looked at nothing, seeming to pursue some point inspace. 

"Had a pleasant walk?" he asked suddenly. 

"Yes. And you?" returned Heyst, who had managed to catch his glance. 

"I haven't been a yard away from the governor this afternoon tillI started for here. " The genuineness of the accent surprised Heyst, without convincing him of the truth of the words. 

"Why do you ask?" pursued Ricardo with every inflection of perfectcandour. 

"You might have wished to explore the island a little, " said Heyst, studying the man, who, to render him justice, did not try to free hiscaptured gaze. "I may remind you that it wouldn't be a perfectly safeproceeding. "

Ricardo presented a picture of innocence. 

"Oh, yes--meaning that Chink that has ran away from you. He ain't much!"

"He has a revolver, " observed Heyst meaningly. 

"Well, and you have a revolver, too, " Mr. Ricardo argued unexpectedly. "I don't worry myself about that. "

"That's different. I am not afraid of you, " Heyst made answer after ashort pause. 

"Of me?"

"Of all of you. "

"You have a queer way of putting things, " began Ricardo. 

At that moment the door on the compound side of the house came open withsome noise, and Pedro entered, pressing the edge of a loaded tray to hisbreast. His big, hairy head rolled a little, his feet fell in front ofeach other with a short, hard thump on the floor. The arrival changedthe current of Ricardo's thought, perhaps, but certainly of his speech. 

"You heard me whistling a little while ago outside? That was to give hima hint, as I came along, that it was time to bring in the dinner; andhere it is. "

Lena rose and passed to the right of Ricardo, who lowered his glance fora moment. They sat down at the table. The enormous gorilla back of Pedroswayed out through the door. 

"Extraordinary strong brute, ma'am, " said Ricardo. He, had a propensityto talk about "his Pedro, " as some men will talk of their dog. "He ain'tpretty, though. No, he ain't pretty. And he has got to be kept under. Iam his keeper, as it might be. The governor don't trouble his head muchabout dee-tails. All that's left to Martin. Martin, that's me, ma'am. "

Heyst saw the girl's eyes turn towards Mr. Jones's secretary and restblankly on his face. Ricardo, however, looked vaguely into space, and, with faint flickers of a smile about his lips, made conversationindefatigably against the silence of his entertainers. He boastedlargely of his long association with Mr. Jones--over four years now, hesaid. Then, glancing rapidly at Heyst:

"You can see at once he's a gentleman, can't you?"

"You people, " Heyst said, his habitual playful intonation tinged withgloom, "are divorced from all reality in my eyes. "

Ricardo received this speech as if he had been expecting to hearthose very words, or else did not mind at all what Heyst might say. He muttered an absent-minded "Ay, ay, " played with a bit of biscuit, sighed, and said, with a peculiar stare which did not seem to carry anydistance, but to stop short at a point in the air very near his face:

"Anybody can see at once _you_ are one. You and the governor ought tounderstand each other. He expects to see you tonight. The governor isn'twell, and we've got to think of getting away from here. "

While saying these words he turned himself full towards Lena, butwithout any marked expression. Leaning back with folded arms, the girlstared before her as if she had been alone in the room. But underthat aspect of almost vacant unconcern the perils and emotion that hadentered into her life warmed her heart, exalted her mind with a sense ofan inconceivable intensity of existence. 

"Really? Thinking of going away from here?" Heyst murmured. 

"The best of friends must part, " Ricardo pronounced slowly. "And, aslong as they part friends, there's no harm done. We two are used to beon the move. You, I understand, prefer to stick in one place. "

It was obvious that all this was being said merely for the sake oftalking, and that Ricardo's mind was concentrated on some purposeunconnected with the words that were coming but of his mouth. 

"I should like to know, " Heyst asked with incisive politeness, "how youhave come to understand this or anything else about me? As far as I canremember, I've made you no confidences. "

Ricardo, gazing comfortably into space out of the back of his chair--forsome time all three had given up any pretence of eating--answeredabstractedly:

"Any fellow might have guessed it!" He sat up suddenly, and uncoveredall his teeth in a grin of extraordinary ferocity, which was belied bythe persistent amiability of his tone. "The governor will be the manto tell you something about that. I wish you would say you would see mygovernor. He's the one who does all our talking. Let me take you to himthis evening. He ain't at all well; and he can't make up his mind to goaway without having a talk with you. "

Heyst, looking up, met Lena's eyes. Their expression of candour seemedto hide some struggling intention. Her head, he fancied, had made animperceptible affirmative movement. Why? What reason could she have? Wasit the prompting of some obscure instinct? Or was it simply a delusionof his own senses? But in this strange complication invading thequietude of his life, in his state of doubt and disdain and almost ofdespair with which he looked at himself, he would let even a delusiveappearance guide him through a darkness so dense that it made forindifference. 

"Well, suppose I _do_ say so. "

Ricardo did not conceal his satisfaction, which for a moment interestedHeyst. 

"It can't be my life they are after, " he said to himself. "What goodcould it be to them?"

He looked across the table at the girl. What did it matter whether shehad nodded or not? As always when looking into her unconscious eyes, hetasted something like the dregs of tender pity. He had decided to go. Her nod, imaginary or not imaginary, advice or illusion, had tipped thescale. He reflected that Ricardo's invitation could scarcely be anythingin the nature of a trap. It would have been too absurd. Why carry subtlyinto a trap someone already bound hand and foot, as it were?

All this time he had been looking fixedly at the girl he called Lena. Inthe submissive quietness of her being, which had been her attitude eversince they had begun their life on the island, she remained as secretas ever. Heyst got up abruptly, with a smile of such enigmatic anddespairing character that Mr. Secretary Ricardo, whose abstract gaze hadan all-round efficiency, made a slight crouching start, as if to diveunder the table for his leg-knife--a start that was repressed, as soonas begun. He had expected Heyst to spring on him or draw a revolver, because he created for himself a vision of him in his own image. Insteadof doing either of these obvious things, Heyst walked across theroom, opened the door and put his head through it to look out into thecompound. 

As soon as his back was turned, Ricardo's hand sought the girl's armunder the table. He was not looking at her, but she felt the groping, nervous touch of his search, felt suddenly the grip of his fingers aboveher wrist. He leaned forward a little; still he dared not look at her. His hard stare remained fastened on Heyst's back. In an extremely lowhiss, his fixed idea of argument found expression scathingly:

"See! He's no good. He's not the man for you!"

He glanced at her at last. Her lips moved a little, and he was awedby that movement without a sound. Next instant the hard grasp of hisfingers vanished from her arm. Heyst had shut the door. On his way backto the table, he crossed the path of the girl they had called Alma--shedidn't know why--also Magdalen, whose mind had remained so long in doubtas to the reason of her own existence. She no longer wondered at thatbitter riddle, since her heart found its solution in a blinding, hotglow of passionate pride. 

CHAPTER TEN

She passed by Heyst as if she had indeed been blinded by some secret, lurid, and consuming glare into which she was about to enter. Thecurtain of the bedroom door fell behind her into rigid folds. Ricardo'svacant gaze seemed to be watching the dancing flight of a fly in midair. 

"Extra dark outside, ain't it?" he muttered. 

"Not so dark but that I could see that man of yours prowling aboutthere, " said Heyst in measured tones. 

"What--Pedro? He's scarcely a man you know; or else I wouldn't be sofond of him as I am. "

"Very well. Let's call him your worthy associate. "

"Ay! Worthy enough for what we want of him. A great standby is Peter ina scrimmage. A growl and a bite--oh, my! And you don't want him about?"

"I don't. "

"You want him out of the way?" insisted Ricardo with an affectationof incredulity which Heyst accepted calmly, though the air in the roomseemed to grow more oppressive with every word spoken. 

"That's it. I do want him out of the way. " He forced himself to speakequably. 

"Lor'! That's no great matter. Pedro's not much use here. The businessmy governor's after can be settled by ten minutes' rational talkwith--with another gentleman. Quiet talk!"

He looked up suddenly with hard, phosphorescent eyes. Heyst didn't movea muscle. Ricardo congratulated himself on having left his revolverbehind. He was so exasperated that he didn't know what he might havedone. He said at last:

"You want poor, harmless Peter out of the way before you let me take youto see the governor--is that it?"

"Yes, that is it. "

"H'm! One can see, " Ricardo said with hidden venom, "that you are agentleman; but all that gentlemanly fancifulness is apt to turn sour ona plain man's stomach. However--you'll have to pardon me. "

He put his fingers into his mouth and let out a whistle which seemed todrive a thin, sharp shaft of air solidly against one's nearest ear-drum. Though he greatly enjoyed Heyst's involuntary grimace, he sat perfectlystolid waiting for the effect of the call. 

It brought Pedro in with an extraordinary, uncouth, primevalimpetuosity. The door flew open with a clatter, and the wild figure itdisclosed seemed anxious to devastate the room in leaps and bounds;but Ricardo raised his open palm, and the creature came in quietly. His enormous half-closed paws swung to and fro a little in front of hisbowed trunk as he walked. Ricardo looked on truculently. 

"You go to the boat--understand? Go now!"

The little red eyes of the tame monster blinked with painful attentionin the mass of hair. 

"Well? Why don't you get? Forgot human speech, eh? Don't you know anylonger what a boat is?"

"Si--boat, " the creature stammered out doubtfully. 

"Well, go there--the boat at the jetty. March off to it and sit there, lie down there, do anything but go to sleep there--till you hear mycall, and then fly here. Them's your orders. March! Get, vamos! No, notthat way--out through the front door. No sulks!"

Pedro obeyed with uncouth alacrity. When he had gone, the gleam ofpitiless savagery went out of Ricardo's yellow eyes, and his physiognomytook on, for the first time that evening, the expression of a domesticcat which is being noticed. 

"You can watch him right into the bushes, if you like. Too dark, eh? Whynot go with him to the very spot, then?"

Heyst made a gesture of vague protest. 

"There's nothing to assure me that he will stay there. I have no doubtof his going, but it's an act without guarantee. "

"There you are!" Ricardo shrugged his shoulders philosophically. "Can'tbe helped. Short of shooting our Pedro, nobody can make absolutely sureof his staying in the same place longer than he has a mind to; but Itell you, he lives in holy terror of my temper. That's why I put on mysudden-death air when I talk to him. And yet I wouldn't shoot him--notI, unless in such a fit of rage as would make a man shoot his favouritedog. Look here, sir! This deal is on the square. I didn't tip him a winkto do anything else. He won't budge from the jetty. Are you coming alongnow, sir?"

A short-silence ensued. Ricardo's jaws were working ominously under hisskin. His eyes glided: voluptuously here and there, cruel and dreamy, Heyst checked a sudden movement, reflected for a while, then said:

"You must wait a little. "

"Wait a little! Wait a little! What does he think a fellow is--a gravenimage?" grumbled Ricardo half audibly. 

Heyst went into the bedroom, and shut the door after him with a bang. Coming from the light, he could not see a thing in there at first; yethe received the impression of the girl getting up from the floor. Onthe less opaque darkness of the shutter-hole, her head detached itselfsuddenly, very faint, a mere hint of a round, dark shape without a face. 

"I am going, Lena. I am going to confront these scoundrels. " He wassurprised to feel two arms falling on his shoulders. "I thought thatyou--" he began. 

"Yes, yes!" the girl whispered hastily. 

She neither clung to him, nor yet did she try to draw him to her. Herhands grasped his shoulders, and she seemed to him to be staring intohis face in the dark. And now he could see something of her face, too--an oval without features--and faintly distinguish her person, inthe blackness, a form without definite lines. 

"You have a black dress here, haven't you, Lena?" he asked, speakingrapidly, and so low that she could just hear him. 

"Yes--an old thing. "

"Very good. Put it on at once. "

"But why?"

"Not for mourning!" Them was something peremptory in the slightly ironicmurmur. "Can you find it and get into it in the dark?"

She could. She would try. He waited, very still. He could imagineher movements over there at the far end of the room; but his eyes, accustomed now to the darkness, had lost her completely. When she spoke, her voice surprised him by its nearness. She had done what he had toldher to do, and had approached him, invisible. 

"Good! Where's that piece of purple veil I've seen lying about?" heasked. 

There was no answer, only a slight rustle. 

"Where is it?" he repeated impatiently. 

Her unexpected breath was on his cheek. 

"In my hands. "

"Capital! Listen, Lena. As soon as I leave the bungalow with thathorrible scoundrel, you slip out at the back--instantly, lose notime!--and run round into the forest. That will be your time, while weare walking away, and I am sure he won't give me the slip. Run into theforest behind the fringe of bushes between the big trees. You will know, surely, how to find a place in full view of the front door. I fear foryou; but in this black dress, with most of your face muffled up in thatdark veil, I defy anybody to find you there before daylight. Wait in theforest till the table is pushed into full view of the doorway, and yousee three candles out of four blown out and one relighted--or, shouldthe lights be put out here while you watch them, wait till three candlesare lighted and then two put out. At either of these signals run back ashard as you can, for it will mean that I am waiting for you here. "

While he was speaking, the girl had sought and seized one of hishands. She did not press it; she held it loosely, as it were timidly, caressingly. It was no grasp; it was a mere contact, as if only to makesure that he was there, that he was real and no mere darker shadow inthe obscurity. The warmth of her hand gave Heyst a strange, intimatesensation of all her person. He had to fight down a new sort of emotion, which almost unmanned him. He went on, whispering sternly:

"But if you see no such signals, don't let anything--fear, curiosity, despair, or hope--entice you back to this house; and with the first signof dawn steal away along the edge of the clearing till you strike thepath. Wait no longer, because I shall probably be dead. "

The murmur of the word "Never!" floated into his ear as if it formeditself in the air. 

"You know the path, " he continued. "Make your way to the barricade. Goto Wang--yes, to Wang. Let nothing stop you!" It seemed to him that thegirl's hand trembled a little. "The worst he can do to you is to shootyou, but he won't. I really think he won't, if I am not there. Stay withthe villagers, with the wild people, and fear nothing. They will be moreawed by you than you can be frightened of them. Davidson's bound to turnup before very long. Keep a look-out for a passing steamer. Think ofsome sort of signal to call him. "

She made no answer. The sense of the heavy, brooding silence in theoutside world seemed to enter and fill the room--the oppressive infinityof it, without breath, without light. It was as if the heart of heartshad ceased to beat and the end of all things had come. 

"Have you understood? You are to run out of the house at once, " Heystwhispered urgently. 

She lifted his hand to her lips and let it go. He was startled. 

"Lena!" he cried out under his breath. 

She was gone from his side. He dared not trust himself--no, not even tothe extent of a tender word. 

Turning to go out he heard a thud somewhere in the house. To open thedoor, he had first to lift the curtain; he did so with his face over hisshoulder. The merest trickle of light, earning through the keyholeand one or two cracks, was enough for his eyes to see her plainly, allblack, down on her knees, with her head and arms flung on the foot ofthe bed--all black in the desolation of a mourning sinner. What wasthis? A suspicion that there were everywhere more things than hecould understand crossed Heyst's mind. Her arm, detached from the bed, motioned him away. He obeyed, and went out, full of disquiet. 

The curtain behind him had not ceased to tremble when she was up on herfeet, close against it, listening for sounds, for words, in a stooping, tragic attitude of stealthy attention, one hand clutching at her breastas if to compress, to make less loud the beating of her heart. Heysthad caught Mr. Jones's secretary in the contemplation of his closedwriting-desk. Ricardo might have been meditating how to break into it;but when he turned about suddenly, he showed so distorted a face thatit made Heyst pause in wonder at the upturned whites of the eyes, whichwere blinking horribly, as if the man were inwardly convulsed. 

"I thought you were never coming, " Ricardo mumbled. 

"I didn't know you were pressed for time. Even if your going awaydepends on this conversation, as you say, I doubt if you are the men toput to sea on such a night as this, " said Heyst, motioning Ricardo toprecede him out of the house. 

With feline undulations of hip and shoulder, the secretary left theroom at once. There was something cruel in the absolute dumbness of thenight. The great cloud covering half the sky hung right against one, like an enormous curtain hiding menacing preparations of violence. Asthe feet of the two men touched the ground, a rumble came from behindit, preceded by a swift, mysterious gleam of light on the waters of thebay. 

"Ha!" said Ricardo. "It begins. "

"It may be nothing in the end, " observed Heyst, stepping along steadily. 

"No! Let it come!" Ricardo said viciously. "I am in the humour for it!"

By the time the two men had reached the other bungalow, the far-offmodulated rumble growled incessantly, while pale lightning in waves ofcold fire flooded and ran off the island in rapid succession. Ricardo, unexpectedly, dashed ahead up the steps and put his head through thedoorway. 

"Here he is, governor! Keep him with you as long as you can--till youhear me whistle. I am on the track. "

He flung these words into the room with inconceivable speed, and stoodaside to let the visitor pass through the doorway; but he had to waitan appreciable moment, because Heyst, seeing his purpose, had scornfullyslowed his pace. When Heyst entered the room it was with a smile, theHeyst smile, lurking under his martial moustache. 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Two candles were burning on the stand-up desk. Mr. Jones, tightlyenfolded in an old but gorgeous blue silk dressing-gown, kept hiselbows close against his sides and his hands deeply plunged into theextraordinarily deep pockets of the garment. The costume accentuated hisemaciation. He resembled a painted pole leaning against the edge of thedesk, with a dried head of dubious distinction stuck on the top of it. Ricardo lounged in the doorway. Indifferent in appearance to whatwas going on, he was biding his time. At a given moment, between twoflickers of lightning, he melted out of his frame into the outerair. His disappearance was observed on the instant by Mr. Jones, whoabandoned his nonchalant immobility against the desk, and made a fewsteps calculated to put him between Heyst and the doorway. 

"It's awfully close, " he remarked

Heyst, in the middle of the room, had made up his mind to speak plainly. 

"We haven't met to talk about the weather. You favoured me earlier inthe day with a rather cryptic phrase about yourself. 'I am he that is, 'you said. What does that mean?"

Mr. Jones, without looking at Heyst, continued his absentmindedmovements till, attaining the desired position, he brought his shoulderswith a thump against the wall near the door, and raised his head. Inthe emotion of the decisive moment his haggard face glistened withperspiration. Drops ran down his hollow cheeks and almost blinded thespectral eyes in their bony caverns. 

"It means that I am a person to be reckoned with. No--stop! Don't putyour hand into your pocket--don't. "

His voice had a wild, unexpected shrillness. Heyst started, and thereensued a moment of suspended animation, during which the thunder'sdeep bass muttered distantly and the doorway to the right of Mr. Jonesflickered with bluish light. At last Heyst shrugged his shoulders; heeven looked at his hand. He didn't put it in his pocket, however. Mr. Jones, glued against the wall, watched him raise both his hands tothe ends of his horizontal moustaches, and answered the note ofinterrogation in his steady eyes. 

"A matter of prudence, " said Mr. Jones in his natural hollow tones, andwith a face of deathlike composure. "A man of your free life has surelyperceived that. You are a much talked-about man, Mr. Heyst--and though, as far as I understand, you are accustomed to employ the subtlerweapons of intelligence, still I can't afford to take any risks ofthe--er--grosser methods. I am not unscrupulous enough to be a match foryou in the use of intelligence; but I assure you, Mr. Heyst, that inthe other way you are no match for me. I have you covered at thisvery moment. You have been covered ever since you entered this room. Yes--from my pocket. "

During this harangue Heyst looked deliberately over his shoulder, stepped back a pace, and sat down on the end of the camp bedstead. Leaning his elbow on one knee, he laid his cheek in the palm of his handand seemed to meditate on what he should say next. Mr. Jones, plantedagainst the wall, was obviously waiting for some sort of overture. As nothing came, he resolved to speak himself; but he hesitated. For, though he considered that the most difficult step had been taken, hesaid to himself that every stage of progress required great caution, lest the man in Ricardo's phraseology, should "start to prance"--whichwould be most inconvenient. He fell back on a previous statement:

"And I am a person to be reckoned with. "

The other man went on looking at the floor, as if he were alone in theroom. There was a pause. 

"You have heard of me, then?" Heyst said at length, looking up. 

"I should think so! We have been staying at Schomberg's hotel. "

"Schom--" Heyst choked on the word. 

"What's the matter, Mr. Heyst?"

"Nothing. Nausea, " Heyst said resignedly. He resumed his former attitudeof meditative indifference. "What is this reckoning you are talkingabout?" he asked after a time, in the quietest possible tone. "I don'tknow you. "

"It's obvious that we belong to the same--social sphere, " began Mr. Jones with languid irony. Inwardly he was as watchful as he could be. "Something has driven you out--the originality of your ideas, perhaps. Or your tastes. "

Mr Jones indulged in one of his ghastly smiles. In repose his featureshad a curious character of evil, exhausted austerity; but when hesmiled, the whole mask took on an unpleasantly infantile expression. Arecrudescence of the rolling thunder invaded the room loudly, and passedinto silence. 

"You are not taking this very well, " observed Mr. Jones. This waswhat he said, but as a matter of fact he thought that the businesswas shaping quite satisfactorily. The man, he said to himself, had nostomach for a fight. Aloud he continued: "Come! You can't expect to haveit always your own way. You are a man of the world. "

"And you?" Heyst interrupted him unexpectedly. "How do you defineyourself?"

"I, my dear sir? In one way I am--yes, I am the world itself, come topay you a visit. In another sense I am an outcast--almost an outlaw. If you prefer a less materialistic view, I am a sort of fate--theretribution that waits its time. "

"I wish to goodness you were the commonest sort of ruffian!" said Heyst, raising his equable gaze to Mr. Jones. "One would be able to talk to youstraight then, and hope for some humanity. As it is--"

"I dislike violence and ferocity of every sort as much as you do, " Mr. Jones declared, looking very languid as he leaned against the wall, butspeaking fairly loud. "You can ask my Martin if it is not so. This, Mr. Heyst, is a soft age. It is also an age without prejudices. I've heardthat you are free from them yourself. You mustn't be shocked if I tellyou plainly that we are after your money--or I am, if you prefer to makeme alone responsible. Pedro, of course, knows no more of it thanany other animal would. Ricardo is of the faithful-retainerclass--absolutely identified with all my ideas, wishes, and even whims!"

Mr Jones pulled his left hand out of his pocket, got a handkerchief outof another, and began to wipe the perspiration from his forehead, neck, and chin. The excitement from which he suffered made his breathingvisible. In his long dressing-gown he had the air of a convalescentinvalid who had imprudently overtaxed his strength. Heyst, broad-shouldered, robust, watched the operation from the end of the campbedstead, very calm, his hands on his knees. 

"And by the by, " he asked, "where is he now, that henchman of yours?Breaking into my desk?"

"That would be crude. Still, crudeness is one of life's conditions. "There was the slightest flavour of banter in the tone of Ricardo'sgovernor. "Conceivable, but unlikely. Martin is a little crude; but youare not, Mr. Heyst. To tell you the truth, I don't know preciselywhere he is. He has been a little mysterious of late; but he has myconfidence. No, don't get up, Mr. Heyst!"

The viciousness of his spectral face was indescribable. Heyst, who hadmoved a little, was surprised by the disclosure. 

"It was not my intention, " he said. 

"Pray remain seated, " Mr. Jones insisted in a languid voice, but with avery determined glitter in his black eye-caverns. 

"If you were more observant, " said Heyst with dispassionate contempt, "you would have known before I had been five minutes in the room that Ihad no weapon of any sort on me. "

"Possibly; but pray keep your hands still. They are very well where theyare. This is too big an affair for me to take any risks. "

"Big? Too big?" Heyst repeated with genuine surprise. "Good Heavens!Whatever you are looking for, there's very little of it here--verylittle of anything. "

"You would naturally say so, but that's not what we have heard, "retorted Mr. Jones quickly, with a grin so ghastly that it wasimpossible to think it voluntary. 

Heyst's face had grown very gloomy. He knitted his brows. 

"What have you heard?" he asked. 

"A lot, Mr. Heyst--a lot, " affirmed Mr. Jones. He was vying to recoverhis manner of languid superiority. "We have heard, for instance, of acertain Mr. Morrison, once your partner. "

Heyst could not repress a slight movement. 

"Aha!" said Mr. Jones, with a sort of ghostly glee on his face. 

The muffled thunder resembled the echo of a distant cannonade below thehorizon, and the two men seemed to be listening to it in sullen silence. 

"This diabolical calumny will end in actually and literally taking mylife from me, " thought Heyst. 

Then, suddenly, he laughed. Portentously spectral, Mr. Jones frowned atthe sound. 

"Laugh as much as you please, " he said. "I, who have been hounded outfrom society by a lot of highly moral souls, can't see anything funny inthat story. But here we are, and you will now have to pay for your fun, Mr. Heyst. "

"You have heard a lot of ugly lies, " observed Heyst. "Take my word forit!"

"You would say so, of course--very natural. As a matter of fact Ihaven't heard very much. Strictly speaking, it was Martin. He collectsinformation, and so on. You don't suppose I would talk to that Schomberganimal more than I could help? It was Martin whom he took into hisconfidence. "

"The stupidity of that creature is so great that it becomes formidable, "Heyst said, as if speaking to himself. 

Involuntarily, his mind turned to the girl, wandering in the forest, alone and terrified. Would he ever see her again? At that thought henearly lost his self-possession. But the idea that if she followedhis instructions those men were not likely to find her steadied him alittle. They did not know that the island had any inhabitants; and hehimself once disposed of, they would be too anxious to get away to wastetime hunting for a vanished girl. 

All this passed through Heyst's mind in a flash, as men think in momentsof danger. He looked speculatively at Mr. Jones, who, of course, hadnever for a moment taken his eyes from his intended victim. And, theconviction came to Heyst that this outlaw from the higher spheres was anabsolutely hard and pitiless scoundrel. 

Mr Jones's voice made him start. 

"It would be useless, for instance, to tell me that your Chinaman hasrun off with your money. A man living alone with a Chinaman on an islandtakes care to conceal property of that kind so well that the devilhimself--"

"Certainly, " Heyst muttered. 

Again, with his left hand, Mr. Jones mopped his frontal bone, hisstalk-like neck, his razor jaws, his fleshless chin. Again his voicefaltered and his aspect became still more gruesomely malevolent as of awicked and pitiless corpse. 

"I see what you mean, " he cried, "but you mustn't put too much trustin your ingenuity. You don't strike me as a very ingenious person, Mr. Heyst. Neither am I. My talents lie another way. But Martin--"

"Who is now engaged in rifling my desk, " interjected Heyst. 

"I don't think so. What I was going to say is that Martin is muchcleverer than a Chinaman. Do you believe in racial superiority, Mr. Heyst? I do, firmly. Martin is great at ferreting out such secrets asyours, for instance. "

"Secrets like mine!" repeated Heyst bitterly. "Well I wish him joy ofall he can ferret out!"

"That's very kind of you, " remarked Mr. Jones. He was beginning tobe anxious for Martin's return. Of iron self-possession at thegaming-table, fearless in a sudden affray, he found that this ratherspecial kind of work was telling on his nerves. "Keep still as you are!"he cried sharply. 

"I've told you I am not armed, " said Heyst, folding his arms on hisbreast. 

"I am really inclined to believe that you are not, " admitted Mr. Jonesseriously. "Strange!" he mused aloud, the caverns of his eyes turnedupon Heyst. Then briskly: "But my object is to keep you in this room. Don't provoke me, by some unguarded movement, to smash your knee or dosomething definite of that sort. " He passed his tongue over his lips, which were dry and black, while his forehead glistened with moisture. "Idon't know if it wouldn't be better to do it at once!"

"He who deliberates is lost, " said Heyst with grave mockery. 

Mr Jones disregarded the remark. He had the air of communing withhimself. 

"Physically I am no match for you, " he said slowly, his black gaze fixedupon the man sitting on the end of the bed. "You could spring--"

"Are you trying to frighten yourself?" asked Heyst abruptly. "You don'tseem to have quite enough pluck for your business. Why don't you do itat once?"

Mr Jones, taking violent offence, snorted like a savage skeleton. 

"Strange as it may seem to you, it is because of my origin, my breeding, my traditions, my early associations, and such-like trifles. Noteverybody can divest himself of the prejudices of a gentleman as easilyas you have done, Mr. Heyst. But don't worry about my pluck. If you wereto make a clean spring at me, you would receive in mid air, so to speak, something that would make you perfectly harmless by the time you landed. No, don't misapprehend us, Mr. Heyst. We are--er--adequate bandits; andwe are after the fruit of your labours as a--er--successful swindler. It's the way of the world--gorge and disgorge!"

He leaned wearily the back of his head against the wall. His vitalityseemed exhausted. Even his sunken eyelids drooped within the bonysockets. Only his thin, waspish, beautifully pencilled eyebrows, drawntogether a little, suggested the will and the power to sting--somethingvicious, unconquerable, and deadly. 

"Fruits! Swindler!" repeated Heyst, without heat, almost withoutcontempt. "You are giving yourself no end of trouble, you and yourfaithful henchman, to crack an empty nut. There are no fruits here, asyou imagine. There are a few sovereigns, which you may have if you like;and since you have called yourself a bandit--"

"Yaas!" drawled Mr. Jones. "That, rather than a swindler. Open warfareat least!"

"Very good! Only let me tell you that there were never in the world twomore deluded bandits--never!"

Heyst uttered these words with such energy that Mr. Jones, stiffeningup, seemed to become thinner and taller in his metallic bluedressing-gown against the whitewashed wall. 

"Fooled by a silly, rascally innkeeper!" Heyst went on. "Talked overlike a pair of children with a promise of sweets!"

"I didn't talk with that disgusting animal, " muttered Mr. Jonessullenly; "but he convinced Martin, who is no fool. "

"I should think he wanted very much to be convinced, " said Heyst, withthe courteous intonation so well known in the Islands. "I don't want todisturb your touching trust in your--your follower, but he must be themost credulous brigand in existence. What do you imagine? If the storyof my riches were ever so true, do you think Schomberg would haveimparted it to you from sheer altruism? Is that the way of the world, Mr. Jones?"

For a moment the lower jaw of Ricardo's gentleman dropped; but it cameup with a snap of scorn, and he said with spectral intensity:

"The beast is cowardly! He was frightened, and wanted to get rid ofus, if you want to know, Mr. Heyst. I don't know that the materialinducement was so very great, but I was bored, and we decided to acceptthe bribe. I don't regret it. All my life I have been seeking newimpressions, and you have turned out to be something quite out ofthe common. Martin, of course, looks to the material results. He'ssimple--and faithful--and wonderfully acute. "

"Ah, yes! He's on the track--" and now Heyst's speech had the characterof politely grim raillery--"but not sufficiently on the track, asyet, to make it quite convenient to shoot me without more ado. Didn'tSchomberg tell you precisely where I conceal the fruit of my rapines?Pah! Don't you know he would have told you anything, true or false, froma very clear motive? Revenge! Mad hate--the unclean idiot!"

Mr Jones did not seem very much moved. On his right hand the doorwayincessantly flickered with distant lightning, and the continuous rumbleof thunder went on irritatingly, like the growl of an inarticulate giantmuttering fatuously. 

Heyst overcame his immense repugnance to allude to her whose image, cowering in the forest was constantly before his eyes, with all thepathos and force of its appeal, august, pitiful, and almost holy to him. It was in a hurried, embarrassed manner that he went on:

"If it had not been for that girl whom he persecuted with his insane andodious passion, and who threw herself on my protection, he would neverhave--but you know well enough!"

"I don't know!" burst out Mr. Jones with amazing heat. "Thathotel-keeper tried to talk to me once of some girl he had lost, but Itold him I didn't want to hear any of his beastly women stories. It hadsomething to do with you, had it?"

Heyst looked on serenely at this outburst, then lost his patience alittle. 

"What sort of comedy is this? You don't mean to say that you didn't knowthat I had--that there was a girl living with me here?"

One could see that the eyes of Mr. Jones had become fixed in the depthsof their black holes by the gleam of white becoming steady there. Thewhole man seemed frozen still. 

"Here! Here!" he screamed out twice. There was no mistaking hisastonishment, his shocked incredulity--something like frighteneddisgust. 

Heyst was disgusted also, but in another way. He too was incredulous. He regretted having mentioned the girl; but the thing was done, hisrepugnance had been overcome in the heat of his argument against theabsurd bandit. 

"Is it possible that you didn't know of that significant fact?" heinquired. "Of the only effective truth in the welter of silly lies thatdeceived you so easily?"

"No, I didn't!" Mr. Jones shouted. "But Martin did!" he added in a faintwhisper, which Heyst's ears just caught and no more. 

"I kept her out of sight as long as I could, " said Heyst. "Perhaps, withyour bringing up traditions, and so on; you will understand my reasonfor it. "

"He knew. He knew before!" Mr. Jones mourned in a hollow voice. "He knewof her from the first!"

Backed hard against the wall he no longer watched Heyst. He had the airof a man who had seen an abyss yawning under his feet. 

"If I want to kill him, this is my time, " thought Heyst; but he did notmove. 

Next moment Mr. Jones jerked his head up, glaring with sardonic fury. 

"I have a good mind to shoot you, you woman-ridden hermit, you man inthe moon, that can't exist without--no, it won't be you that I'll shoot. It's the other woman-lover--the prevaricating, sly, low-class, amorouscuss! And he shaved--shaved under my very nose. I'll shoot him!"

"He's gone mad, " thought Heyst, startled by the spectre's sudden fury. 

He felt himself more in danger, nearer death, than ever since he hadentered that room. An insane bandit is a deadly combination. He did not, could not know that Mr. Jones was quick-minded enough to see already theend of his reign over his excellent secretary's thoughts and feelings;the coming failure of Ricardo's fidelity. A woman had intervened!A woman, a girl, who apparently possessed the power to awakenmen's disgusting folly. Her power had been proved in two instancesalready--the beastly innkeeper, and that man with moustaches, upon whomMr. Jones, his deadly right hand twitching in his pocket, glared more inrepulsion than in anger. The very object of the expedition was lost fromview in his sudden and overwhelming sense of utter insecurity. Andthis made Mr. Jones feel very savage; but not against the man with themoustaches. Thus, while Heyst was really feeling that his life wasnot worth two minutes, purchase, he heard himself addressed withno affection of languid impertinence but with a burst of feverishdetermination. 

"Here! Let's call a truce!" said Mr. Jones. 

Heyst's heart was too sick to allow him to smile. 

"Have I been making war on you?" he asked wearily. "How do you expectme to attach any meaning to your words?" he went on. "You seem to be amorbid, senseless sort of bandit. We don't speak the same language. If Iwere to tell you why I am here, talking to you, you wouldn't believeme, because you would not understand me. It certainly isn't the loveof life, from which I have divorced myself long ago--not sufficiently, perhaps; but if you are thinking of yours, then I repeat to you that ithas never been in danger from me. I am unarmed. "

Mr Jones was biting his lower lip, in a deep meditation. It was onlytowards the last that he looked at Heyst. 

"Unarmed, eh?" Then he burst out violently: "I tell you, a gentleman isno match for the common herd. And yet one must make use of the brutes. Unarmed, eh? And I suppose that creature is of the commonest sort. Youcould hardly have got her out of a drawing-room. Though they're allalike, for that matter. Unarmed! It's a pity. I am in much greaterdanger than you are or were--or I am much mistaken. But I am not--I knowmy man!"

He lost his air of mental vacancy and broke out into shrillexclamations. To Heyst they seemed madder than anything that had gonebefore. 

"On the track! On the scent!" he cried, forgetting himself to the pointof executing a dance of rage in the middle of the floor. 

Heyst looked on, fascinated by this skeleton in a gay dressing-gown, jerkily agitated like a grotesque toy on the end of an invisible string. It became quiet suddenly. 

"I might have smelt a rat! I always knew that this would be the danger. "He changed suddenly to a confidential tone, fixing his sepulchral stareon Heyst. "And yet here I am, taken in by the fellow, like the veriestfool. I've been always on the watch for some beastly influence, but hereI am, fairly caught. He shaved himself right in front of me and I neverguessed!"

The shrill laugh, following on the low tone of secrecy, sounded soconvincingly insane that Heyst got up as if moved by a spring. Mr. Jonesstepped back two paces, but displayed no uneasiness. 

"It's as clear as daylight!" he uttered mournfully, and fell silent. 

Behind him the doorway flickered lividly, and the sound as of a navalaction somewhere away on the horizon filled the breathless pause. Mr. Jones inclined his head on his shoulder. His mood had completelychanged. 

"What do you say, unarmed man? Shall we go and see what is detainingmy trusted Martin so long? He asked me to keep you engaged in friendlyconversation till he made a further examination of that track. Ha, ha, ha!"

"He is no doubt ransacking my house, " said Heyst. 

He was is bewildered. It seemed to him that all this was anincomprehensible dream, or perhaps an elaborate other-world joke, contrived by that spectre in a gorgeous dressing gown. 

Mr Jones looked at him with a horrible, cadaverous smile of inscrutablemockery, and pointed to the door. Heyst passed through it first. Hisfeelings had become so blunted that he did not care how soon he was shotin the back. 

"How oppressive the air is!" the voice of Mr. Jones said at his elbow. "This stupid storm gets on my nerves. I would welcome some rain, thoughit would be unpleasant to get wet. On the other hand, this exasperatingthunder has the advantage of covering the sound of our approach. Thelightning's not so convenient. Ah, your house is fully illuminated!My clever Martin is punishing your stock of candles. He belongs to theunceremonious classes, which are also unlovely, untrustworthy, and soon. "

"I left the candles burning, " said Heyst, "to save him trouble. "

"You really believed he would go to your house?" asked Mr. Jones withgenuine interest. 

"I had that notion, strongly. I do believe he is there now. "

"And you don't mind?"

"No!"

"You don't!" Mr. Jones stopped to wonder. "You are an extraordinaryman, " he said suspiciously, and moved on, touching elbows with Heyst. 

In the latter's breast dwelt a deep silence, the complete silence ofunused faculties. At this moment, by simply shouldering Mr. Jones, hecould have thrown him down and put himself, by a couple of leaps, beyondthe certain aim of the revolver; but he did not even think of that. Hisvery will seemed dead of weariness. He moved automatically, his headlow, like a prisoner captured by the evil power of a masqueradingskeleton out of a grave. Mr. Jones took charge of the direction. Theyfetched a wide sweep. The echoes of distant thunder seemed to dog theirfootsteps. 

"By the by, " said Mr. Jones, as if unable to restrain his curiosity, "aren't you anxious about that--ouch!--that fascinating creature to whomyou owe whatever pleasure you can find in our visit?"

"I have placed her in safety, " said Heyst. "I--I took good care ofthat. "

Mr Jones laid a hand on his arm. 

"You have? Look! is that what you mean?"

Heyst raised his head. In the flicker of lightning the desolation of thecleared ground on his left leaped out and sank into the night, togetherwith the elusive forms of things distant, pale, unearthly. But in thebrilliant square of the door he saw the girl--the woman he had longed tosee once more as if enthroned, with her hands on the arms of the chair. She was in black; her face was white, her head dreamily inclined on herbreast. He saw her only as low as her knees. He saw her--there, in theroom, alive with a sombre reality. It was no mocking vision. She was notin the forest--but there! She sat there in the chair, seemingly withoutstrength, yet without fear, tenderly stooping. 

"Can you understand their power?" whispered the hot breath of Mr. Jonesinto his ear. "Can there be a more disgusting spectacle? It's enough tomake the earth detestable. She seems to have found her affinity. Moveon closer. If I have to shoot you in the end, then perhaps you will diecured. "

Heyst obeyed the pushing pressure of a revolver barrel between hisshoulders. He felt it distinctly, but he did not feel the ground underhis feet. They found the steps, without his being aware that he wasascending them--slowly, one by one. Doubt entered into him--a doubt ofa new kind, formless, hideous. It seemed to spread itself all over him, enter his limbs, and lodge in his entrails. He stopped suddenly, witha thought that he who experienced such a feeling had no business tolive--or perhaps was no longer living. 

Everything--the bungalow, the forest, the open ground--trembledincessantly, the earth, the sky itself, shivered all the time, and theonly thing immovable in the shuddering universe was the interior of thelighted room and the woman in black sitting in the light of the eightcandle-flames. They flung around her an intolerable brilliance whichhurt his eyes, seemed to sear his very brain with the radiation ofinfernal heat. It was some time before his scorched eyes made outRicardo seated on the floor at some little distance, his back to thedoorway, but only partly so; one side of his upturned face showing theabsorbed, all forgetful rapture of his contemplation. 

The grip of Mr. Jones's hard claw drew Heyst back a little. In the rollof thunder, swelling and subsiding, he whispered in his ear a sarcastic:"Of course!"

A great shame descended upon Heyst--the shame of guilt, absurd andmaddening. Mr. Jones drew him still farther back into the darkness ofthe veranda. 

"This is serious, " he went on, distilling his ghostly venom into Heyst'svery ear. "I had to shut my eyes many times to his little flings; butthis is serious. He has found his soul-mate. Mud souls, obscene andcunning! Mud bodies, too--the mud of the gutter! I tell you, we areno match for the vile populace. I, even I, have been nearly caught. Heasked me to detain you till he gave me the signal. It won't be youthat I'll have to shoot, but him. I wouldn't trust him near me for fiveminutes after this!"

He shook Heyst's arm a little. 

"If you had not happened to mention the creature, we should both havebeen dead before morning. He would have stabbed you as you came downthe steps after leaving me and then he would have walked up to me andplanted the same knife between my ribs. He has no prejudices. The vilerthe origin, the greater the freedom of these simple souls!"

He drew a cautious, hissing breath and added in an agitated murmur: "Ican see right into his mind, I have been nearly caught napping by hiscunning. "

He stretched his neck to peer into the room from the side. Heyst, too, made a step forward, under the slight impulse of that slender handclasping his hand with a thin, bony grasp. 

"Behold!" the skeleton of the crazy bandit jabbered thinly into his earin spectral fellowship. "Behold the simple, Acis kissing the sandalsof the nymph, on the way to her lips, all forgetful, while the menacinglife of Polyphemus already sounds close at hand--if he could only hearit! Stoop a little. "

CHAPTER TWELVE

On returning to the Heyst bungalow, rapid as if on wings, Ricardofound Lena waiting for him. She was dressed in black; and at once hisuplifting exultation was replaced by an awed and quivering patiencebefore her white face, before the immobility of her reposeful pose, themore amazing to him who had encountered the strength of her limbs andthe indomitable spirit in her body. She had come out after Heyst'sdeparture, and had sat down under the portrait to wait for the return ofthe man of violence and death. While lifting the curtain, she felt theanguish of her disobedience to her lover, which was soothed by a feelingshe had known before--a gentle flood of penetrating sweetness. Shewas not automatically obeying a momentary suggestion, she was underinfluences more deliberate, more vague, and of greater potency. She hadbeen prompted, not by her will, but by a force that was outside of herand more worthy. She reckoned upon nothing definite; she had calculatednothing. She saw only her purpose of capturing death--savage, sudden, irresponsible death, prowling round the man who possessed her, deathembodied in the knife ready to strike into his heart. No doubt it hadbeen a sin to throw herself into his arms. With that inspirationthat descends at times from above for the good or evil of our commonmediocrity, she had a sense of having been for him only a violent andsincere choice of curiosity and pity--a thing that passes. She did notknow him. If he were to go away from her and disappear, she would utterno reproach, she would not resent it; for she would hold in herself theimpress of something most rare and precious--his embraces made her ownby her courage in saving his life. 

All she thought of--the essence of her tremors, her flushes of heat, andher shudders of cold--was the question how to get hold of that knife, the mark and sign of stalking death. A tremor of impatience to clutchthe frightful thing, glimpsed once and unforgettable, agitated herhands. 

The instinctive flinging forward of these hands stopped Ricardo deadshort between the door and her chair, with the ready obedience of aconquered man who can bide his time. Her success disconcerted her. Shelistened to the man's impassioned transports of terrible eulogy and evenmore awful declarations of love. She was even able to meet his eyes, oblique, apt to glide away, throwing feral gleams of desire. 

"No!" he was saying, after a fiery outpouring of words in which the mostferocious phrases of love were mingled with wooing accents of entreaty. "I will have no more of it! Don't you mistrust me. I am sober in mytalk. Feel how quietly my heart beats. Ten times today when you, you, you, swam in my eye, I thought it would burst one of my ribs or leapout of my throat. It has knocked itself dead and tired, waiting for thisevening, for this very minute. And now it can do no more. Feel how quietit is!"

He made a step forward, but she raised her clear voice commandingly:

"No nearer!"

He stopped with a smile of imbecile worship on his lips, and with thedelighted obedience of a man who could at any moment seize her in hishands and dash her to the ground. 

"Ah! If I had taken you by the throat this morning and had my way withyou, I should never have known what you am. And now I do. You are awonder! And so am I, in my way. I have nerve, and I have brains, too. We should have been lost many times but for me. I plan--I plot for mygentleman. Gentleman--pah! I am sick of him. And you are sick of yours, eh? You, you!"

He shook all over; he cooed at her a string of endearing names, obsceneand tender, and then asked abruptly:

"Why don't you speak to me?"

"It's my part to listen, " she said, giving him an inscrutable smile, with a flush on her cheek and her lips cold as ice. 

"But you will answer me?"

"Yes, " she said, her eyes dilated as if with sudden interest. 

"Where's that plunder? Do you know?"

"No! Not yet. "

"But there is plunder stowed somewhere that's worth having?"

"Yes, I think so. But who knows?" she added after a pause. 

"And who cares?" he retorted recklessly. "I've had enough of thiscrawling on my belly. It's you who are my treasure. It's I who found youout where a gentleman had buried you to rot for his accursed pleasure!"

He looked behind him and all around for a seat, then turned to her histroubled eyes and dim smile. 

"I am dog-tired, " he said, and sat down on the floor. "I went tired thismorning, since I came in here and started talking to you--as tired as ifI had been pouring my life-blood here on these planks for you to dabbleyour white feet in. "

Unmoved, she nodded at him thoughtfully. Woman-like, all her facultiesremained concentrated on her heart's desire--on the knife--while the manwent on babbling insanely at her feet, ingratiating and savage, almostcrazy with elation. But he, too, was holding on to his purpose. 

"For you! For you I will throw away money, lives--all the lives butmine! What you want is a man, a master that will let you put the heel ofyour shoe on his neck; not that skulker, who will get tired of you in ayear--and you of him. And then what? You are not the one to sit still;neither am I. I live for myself, and you shall live for yourself, too--not for a Swedish baron. They make a convenience of people like youand me. A gentleman is better than an employer, but an equal partnershipagainst all the 'yporcrits is the thing for you and me. We'll go onwandering the world over, you and I both free and both true. You are nocage bird. We'll rove together, for we are of them that have no homes. We are born rovers!"

She listened to him with the utmost attention, as if any unexpectedword might give her some sort of opening to get that dagger, that awfulknife--to disarm murder itself, pleading for her love at her feet. Againshe nodded at him thoughtfully, rousing a gleam in his yellow eyes, yearning devotedly upon her face. When he hitched himself a littlecloser, her soul had no movement of recoil. This had to be. Anythinghad to be which would bring the knife within her reach. He talked moreconfidentially now. 

"We have met, and their time has come, " he began, looking up into hereyes. "The partnership between me and my gentleman has to be ripped up. There's no room for him where we two are. Why, he would shoot me like adog! Don't you worry. This will settle it not later than tonight!"

He tapped his folded leg below the knee, and was surprised, flattered, by the lighting up of her face, which stooped towards him eagerly andremained expectant, the lips girlishly parted, red in the pale face, andquivering in the quickened drawing of her breath. 

"You marvel, you miracle, you man's luck and joy--one in a million! No, the only one. You have found your man in me, " he whispered tremulously. "Listen! They are having their last talk together; for I'll do for yourgentleman, too, by midnight. "

Without the slightest tremor she murmured, as soon as the tightening ofher breast had eased off and the words would come:

"I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry--with him. "

The pause, the tone, had all the value of meditated advice. 

"Good, thrifty girl!" he laughed low, with a strange feline gaiety, expressed by the undulating movement of his shoulders and the sparklingsnap of his oblique eyes. "You am still thinking about the chance ofthat swag. You'll make a good partner, that you will! And, I say, what adecoy you will make! Jee-miny!"

He was carried away for a moment, but his face darkened swiftly. 

"No! No reprieve. What do you think a fellow is--a scarecrow? All hatand clothes and no feeling, no inside, no brain to make fancies forhimself? No!" he went on violently. "Never in his life will he go againinto that room of yours--never any more!"

A silence fell. He was gloomy with the torment of his jealousy, and didnot even look at her. She sat up and slowly, gradually, bent lower andlower over him, as if ready to fall into his arms. He looked up at last, and checked this droop unwittingly. 

"Say! You, who are up to fighting a man with your bare hands, couldyou--eh?--could you manage to stick one with a thing like that knife ofmine?"

She opened her eyes very wide and gave him a wild smile. 

"How can I tell?" she whispered enchantingly. "Will you let me have alook at it?"

Without taking his eyes from her face, he pulled the knife out of itssheath--a short, broad, cruel double-edged blade with a bone handle--andonly then looked down at it. 

"A good friend, " he said simply. "Take it in your hand and feel thebalance, " he suggested. 

At the moment when she bent forward to receive it from him, there wasa flash of fire in her mysterious eyes--a red gleam in the white mistwhich wrapped the promptings and longings of her soul. She had done it!The very sting of death was in her hands, the venom of the viper in herparadise, extracted, safe in her possession--and the viper's head allbut lying under her heel. Ricardo, stretched on the mats of the floor, crept closer and closer to the chair in which she sat. 

All her thoughts were busy planning how to keep possession of thatweapon which had seemed to have drawn into itself every danger andmenace on the death-ridden earth. She said with a low laugh, theexultation in which he failed to recognize:

"I didn't think that you would ever trust me with that thing!"

"Why not?"

"For fear I should suddenly strike you with it. "

"What for? For this morning's work? Oh, no! There's no spite in you forthat. You forgave me. You saved me. You got the better of me, too. Andanyhow, what good would it be?"

"No, no good, " she admitted. 

In her heart she felt that she would not know how to do it; that if itcame to a struggle, she would have to drop the dagger and fight with herhands. 

"Listen. When we are going about the world together, you shall alwayscall me husband. Do you hear?"

"Yes, " she said bracing herself for the contest, in whatever shape itwas coming. 

The knife was lying in her lap. She let it slip into the fold of herdress, and laid her forearms with clasped fingers over her knees, whichshe pressed desperately together. The dreaded thing was out of sight atlast. She felt a dampness break out all over her. 

"I am not going to hide you, like that good-for-nothing, finicky, sneerygentleman. You shall be my pride and my chum. Isn't that better thanrotting on an island for the pleasure of a gentleman, till he gives youthe chuck?"

"I'll be anything you like, " she said. 

In his intoxication he crept closer with every word she uttered, withevery movement she made. 

"Give your foot, " he begged in a timid murmur, and in the fullconsciousness of his power. 

Anything! Anything to keep murder quiet and disarmed till strength hadreturned to her limbs and she could make up her mind what to do. Herfortitude had been shaken by the very facility of success that had cometo her. She advanced her foot forward a little from under the hem of herskirt; and he threw himself on it greedily. She was not even aware ofhim. She had thought of the forest, to which she had been told to run. Yes, the forest--that was the place for her to carry off the terriblespoil, the sting of vanquished death. Ricardo, clasping her ankle, pressed his lips time after time to the instep, muttering gasping wordsthat were like sobs, making little noises that resembled the sounds ofgrief and distress. Unheard by them both, the thunder growled distantlywith angry modulations of it's tremendous voice, while the world outsideshuddered incessantly around the dead stillness of the room where theframed profile of Heyst's father looked severely into space. 

Suddenly Ricardo felt himself spurned by the foot he had beencherishing--spurned with a push of such violence into the very hollow ofhis throat that it swung him back instantly into an upright position onhis knees. He read his danger in the stony eyes of the girl; and inthe very act of leaping to his feet he heard sharply, detached on thecomminatory voice of the storm the brief report of a shot which halfstunned him, in the manner of a blow. He turned his burning head, andsaw Heyst towering in the doorway. The thought that the beggar hadstarted to prance darted through his mind. For a fraction of a secondhis distracted eyes sought for his weapon an over the floor. He couldn'tsee it. 

"Stick him, you!" he called hoarsely to the girl, and dashed headlongfor the door of the compound. 

While he thus obeyed the instinct of self-preservation, his reason wastelling him that he could not possibly reach it alive. It flew open, however, with a crash, before his launched weight, and instantly heswung it to behind him. There, his shoulder leaning against it, hishands clinging to the handle, dazed and alone in the night full ofshudders and muttered menaces, he tried to pull himself together. Heasked himself if he had been shot at more than once. His shoulder waswet with the blood trickling from his head. Feeling above his ear, heascertained that it was only a graze, but the shock of the surprise hadunmanned him for the moment. 

What the deuce was the governor about to let the beggar break loose likethis? Or--was the governor dead, perhaps?

The silence within the room awed him. Of going back there could be noquestion. 

"But she know show to take care of her self, " he muttered. 

She had his knife. It was she now who was deadly, while he was disarmed, no good for the moment. He stole away from the door, staggering, thewarm trickle running down his neck, to find out what had become of thegovernor and to provide himself with a firearm from the armoury in thetrunks. 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Mr Jones, after firing his shot over Heyst's shoulder, had thought itproper to dodge away. Like the spectre he was, he noiselessly vanishedfrom the veranda. Heyst stumbled into the room and looked around. Allthe objects in there--the books, portrait on the wall--seemed shadowy, unsubstantial, the dumb accomplices of an amazing dream-plot ending inan illusory effect of awakening and the impossibility of ever closinghis eyes again. With dread he forced himself to look at the girl. Stillin the chair, she was leaning forward far over her knees, and had hiddenher face in her hands. Heyst remembered Wang suddenly. How clear allthis was--and how extremely amusing! Very. 

She sat up a little, then leaned back, and taking her hands from herface, pressed both of them to her breast as if moved to the heart byseeing him there looking at her with a black, horror-struck curiosity. He would have pitied her, if the triumphant expression of her face hadnot given him a shock which destroyed the balance of his feelings. Shespoke with an accent of wild joy:

"I knew you would come back in time! You are safe now. I have done it!I would never, never have let him--" Her voice died out, while her eyesshone at him as when the sun breaks through a mist. "Never get it back. Oh, my beloved!"

He bowed his head gravely, and said in his polite. Heystian tone:

"No doubt you acted from instinct. Women have been provided with theirown weapon. I was a disarmed man, I have been a disarmed man all my lifeas I see it now. You may glory in your resourcefulness and your profoundknowledge of yourself; but I may say that the other attitude, suggestiveof shame, had its charm. For you are full of charm!"

The exultation vanished from her face. 

"You mustn't make fun of me now. I know no shame. I was thanking Godwith all my sinful heart for having been able to do it--for giving youto me in that way--oh, my beloved--all my own at last!"

He stared as if mad. Timidly she tried to excuse herself for disobeyinghis directions for her safety. Every modulation of her enchanting voicecut deep into his very breast, so that he could hardly understand thewords for the sheer pain of it. He turned his back on her; but a suddendrop, an extraordinary faltering of her tone, made him spin round. Onher white neck her pale head dropped as in a cruel drought a witheredflower droops on its stalk. He caught his breath, looked at her closely, and seemed to read some awful intelligence in her eyes. At the momentwhen her eyelids fell as if smitten from above by an the gleam ofold silver familiar to him from boyhood, the very invisible power, hesnatched her up bodily out of the chair, and disregarding an unexpectedmetallic clatter on the floor, carried her off into the other room. Thelimpness of her body frightened him. Laying her down on the bed, heran out again, seized a four-branched candlestick on the table, and ranback, tearing down with a furious jerk the curtain that swung stupidlyin his way, but after putting the candlestick on the table by the bed, he remained absolutely idle. There did not seem anything more for himto do. Holding his chin in his hand he looked down intently at her stillface. 

"Has she been stabbed with this thing?" asked Davidson, whom suddenly hesaw standing by his side and holding up Ricardo's dagger to his sight. Heyst uttered no word of recognition or surprise. He gave Davidson onlya dumb look of unutterable awe, then, as if possessed with a suddenfury, started tearing open the front of the girls dress. She remainedinsensible under his hands, and Heyst let out a groan which madeDavidson shudder inwardly the heavy plaint of a man who falls clubbed inthe dark. 

They stood side by side, looking mournfully at the little black holemade by Mr. Jones's bullet under the swelling breast of a dazzling andas it were sacred whiteness. It rose and fell slightly--so slightly thatonly the eyes of the lover could detect the faint stir of life. Heyst, calm and utterly unlike himself in the face, moving about noiselessly, prepared a wet cloth, and laid it on the insignificant wound, round which there was hardly a trace of blood to mar the charm, thefascination, of that mortal flesh. 

Her eyelids fluttered. She looked drowsily about, serene, as if fatiguedonly by the exertions of her tremendous victory, capturing the verysting of death in the service of love. But her eyes became verywide awake when they caught sight of Ricardo's dagger, the spoil ofvanquished death, which Davidson was still holding, unconsciously. 

"Give it to me, " she said. "It's mine. "

Davidson put the symbol of her victory into her feeble hands extended tohim with the innocent gesture of a child reaching eagerly for a toy. 

"For you, " she gasped, turning her eyes to Heyst. "Kill nobody. "

"No, " said Heyst, taking the dagger and laying it gently on her breast, while her hands fell powerless by her side. 

The faint smile on her deep-cut lips waned, and her head sank deep intothe pillow, taking on the majestic pallor and immobility of marble. But over the muscles, which seemed set in their transfigured beauty forever, passed a slight and awful tremor. With an amazing strength sheasked loudly:

"What's the matter with me?"

"You have been shot, dear Lena, " Heyst said in a steady voice, whileDavidson, at the question, turned away and leaned his forehead againstthe post of the foot of the bed. 

"Shot? I did think, too, that something had struck me. "

Over Samburan the thunder had ceased to growl at last, and the world ofmaterial forms shuddered no more under the emerging stars. The spiritof the girl which was passing away from under them clung to her triumphconvinced of the reality of her victory over death. 

"No more, " she muttered. "There will be no more! Oh, my beloved, " shecried weakly, "I've saved you! Why don't you take me into your arms andcarry me out of this lonely place?"

Heyst bent low over her, cursing his fastidious soul, which even at thatmoment kept the true cry of love from his lips in its infernal mistrustof all life. He dared not touch her and she had no longer the strengthto throw her arms about his neck. 

"Who else could have done this for you?" she whispered gloriously. 

"No one in the world, " he answered her in a murmur of unconcealeddespair. 

She tried to raise herself, but all she could do was to lift her heada little from the pillow. With a terrible and gentle movement, Heysthastened to slip his arm under her neck. She felt relieved at once ofan intolerable weight, and was content to surrender to him the infiniteweariness of her tremendous achievement. Exulting, she saw herselfextended on the bed, in a black dress, and profoundly at peace, while, stooping over her with a kindly, playful smile, he was ready to lifther up in his firm arms and take her into the sanctuary of his innermostheart--for ever! The flush of rapture flooding her whole being broke outin a smile of innocent, girlish happiness; and with that divine radianceon her lips she breathed her, last triumphant, seeking for his glance inthe shades of death. 

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

"Yes, Excellency, " said Davidson in his placid voice; "there are moredead in this affair--more white people, I mean--than have been killed inmany of the battles in the last Achin war. "

Davidson was talking with an Excellency, because what was alluded to inconversation as "the mystery of Samburan" had caused such a sensation inthe Archipelago that even those in the highest spheres were anxious tohear something at first hand. Davidson had been summoned to an audience. It was a high official on his tour. 

"You knew the late Baron Heyst well?"

"The truth is that nobody out here can boast of having known him well, "said Davidson. "He was a queer chap. I doubt if he himself knew howqueer he was. But everybody was aware that I was keeping my eye on himin a friendly way. And that's how I got the warning which made me turnround in my tracks. In the middle of my trip and steam back to Samburan, where, I am grieved to say, I arrived too late. "

Without enlarging very much, Davidson explained to the attentiveExcellency how a woman, the wife of a certain hotel-keeper namedSchomberg, had overheard two card-sharping rascals making inquiries fromher husband as to the exact position of the island. She caught only afew words referring to the neighbouring volcano, but there were enoughto arouse her suspicions--"which, " went on Davidson, "she imparted tome, your Excellency. They were only too well founded!"

"That was very clever of her, " remarked the great man. 

"She's much cleverer than people have any conception of, " said Davidson. 

But he refrained from disclosing to the Excellency the real cause whichhad sharpened Mrs. Schomberg's wits. The poor woman was in mortal terrorof the girl being brought back within reach of her infatuated Wilhelm. Davidson only said that her agitation had impressed him; but heconfessed that while going back, he began to have his doubts as to therebeing anything in it. 

"I steamed into one of those silly thunderstorms that hang about thevolcano, and had some trouble in making the island, " narrated Davidson. "I had to grope my way dead slow into Diamond Bay. I don't suppose thatanybody, even if looking out for me, could have heard me let go theanchor. "

He admitted that he ought to have gone ashore at once; but everythingwas perfectly dark and absolutely quiet. He felt ashamed of hisimpulsiveness. What a fool he would have looked, waking up a man in themiddle of the night just to ask him if he was all right! And then thegirl being there, he feared that Heyst would look upon his visit as anunwarrantable intrusion. 

The first intimation he had of there being anything wrong was a bigwhite boat, adrift, with the dead body of a very hairy man inside, bumping against the bows of his steamer. Then indeed he lost no time ingoing ashore--alone, of course, from motives of delicacy. 

"I arrived in time to see that poor girl die, as I have told yourExcellency, " pursued Davidson. "I won't tell you what a time I had withhim afterwards. He talked to me. His father seems to have been a crank, and to have upset his head when he was young. He was a queer chap. Practically the last words he said to me, as we came out on the veranda, were:

"'Ah, Davidson, woe to the man whose heart has not learned while youngto hope, to love--and to put its trust in life!'

"As we stood there, just before I left him, for he said he wanted to bealone with his dead for a time, we heard a snarly sort of voice near thebushes by the shore calling out:

"'Is that you, governor?'

"'Yes, it's me. '

"'Jeeminy! I thought the beggar had done for you. He has startedprancing and nearly had me. I have been dodging around, looking for youever since. '

"'Well, here I am, ' suddenly screamed the other voice, and then a shotrang out. 

"'This time he has not missed him, ' Heyst said to me bitterly, and wentback into the house. 

"I returned on board as he had insisted I should do. I didn't wantto intrude on his grief. Later, about five in the morning, some of mycalashes came running to me, yelling that there was a fire ashore. Ilanded at once, of course. The principal bungalow was blazing. Theheat drove us back. The other two houses caught one after another likekindling-wood. There was no going beyond the shore end of the jetty tillthe afternoon. "

Davidson sighed placidly. 

"I suppose you are certain that Baron Heyst is dead?"

"He is--ashes, your Excellency, " said Davidson, wheezing a little; "heand the girl together. I suppose he couldn't stand his thoughts beforeher dead body--and fire purifies everything. That Chinaman of whom Itold your Excellency helped me to investigate next day, when theembers got cooled a little. We found enough to be sure. He's not a badChinaman. He told me that he had followed Heyst and the girl through theforest from pity, and partly out of curiosity. He watched the house tillhe saw Heyst go out, after dinner, and Ricardo come back alone. While hewas dodging there, it occurred to him that he had better cast the boatadrift, for fear those scoundrels should come round by water and bombardthe village from the sea with their revolvers and Winchesters. He judgedthat they were devils enough for anything. So he walked down the wharfquietly; and as he got into the boat, to cast her off, that hairy manwho, it seems, was dozing in her, jumped up growling, and Wang shot himdead. Then he shoved the boat off as far as he could and went away. "

There was a pause. Presently Davidson went on, in his tranquil manner:

"Let Heaven look after what has been purified. The wind and rain willtake care of the ashes. The carcass of that follower, secretary, orwhatever the unclean ruffian called himself, I left where it lay, toswell and rot in the sun. His principal had shot him neatly through thehead. Then, apparently, this Jones went down to the wharf to look forthe boat and for the hairy man. I suppose he tumbled into the water byaccident--or perhaps not by accident. The boat and the man were gone, and the scoundrel saw himself alone, his game clearly up, and fairlytrapped. Who knows? The water's very clear there, and I could see himhuddled up on the bottom, between two piles, like a heap of bones in ablue silk bag, with only the head and the feet sticking out. Wang wasvery pleased when he discovered him. That made everything safe, he said, and he went at once over the hill to fetch his Alfuro woman back to thehut. "

Davidson took out his handkerchief to wipe the perspiration off hisforehead. 

"And then, your Excellency, I went away. There was nothing to be donethere. "

"Clearly!" assented the Excellency. 

Davidson, thoughtful, seemed to weigh the matter in his mind, and thenmurmured with placid sadness:

"Nothing!"

October 1912--May 1914