The Man from Sulu and other stories
Author: H de Vere Stacpoole
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: British author H de Vere Stacpoole is best remembered for his novel "The Blue Lagoon", but was a prolific novelist and short story writer. For a number of years he was a ship's doctor for a shipping line which serviced the south seas trade, where many of his stories are set; later he went into general practice in the UK. This original collection contains stories collected from newspapers and magazines, the sources of which are given. 1: The Vengeance of Mynheer Van Lok 2: The Man From Sulu 3: Under the Flame Trees 4: Bully Beef 5: The Damoclean Sword 6: Wild Ducks 7: The Face at the Window 8:

THE MAN FROM SULU
and other stories

H. De Vere Stacpoole

1863-1951

An original collection of H De Vere Stacpoole's short fiction produced in 2022 by "Pulpmeister" from stories published in newspapers and magazines.

Contents

1: The Vengeance of Mynheer Van Lok

2: The Man From Sulu

3: Under the Flame Trees

4: Bully Beef

5: The Damoclean Sword

6: Wild Ducks

7: The Face at the Window

8: The Case of Mrs. Mencken

9: The Snuff-box of  M. de Sartines

10:  Turn About

11: Did Kressler Kill His Wife?

12: The Lady Detective

13: The Heller Robbery

14: The King of Maleka

15: Kadjaman

16: The Queen's Necklace

17: The Story of Gombi

18: The End of the Road

19: The Gold Bar

20: Maru

21: Magic

22: Luck of the Templetons

23: The Ten-Franc Counter

____________________

1: The Vengeance of Mynheer Van Lok

The Strand Magazine, June 1934

Sun (Sydney) 19 May 1940

MYNHEER ANDREAS VAN LOK, having finished his morning correspondence, lit a cigarette and glanced at the time, left his office, and went into the brilliancy of Hooft-street. It had been raining during the early hours, then fog had followed on the rain, clearing to leave the blue Javanese sky unstained by any trace of mist or cloud, and the great sea city of Sandabar burning in the sun.

Andreas turned to the left in the direction of Woeverman's bar. The street was crowded. Javanese, Sumatrans, Chinese, Malays, Europeans, all contributed to the colored and moving picture; a chattering crowd whose voices were mixed with the creak of ox-carts, the hum of the electric trams, shouts of ricksha men and the toot of motor-horns.

As he turned into Woeverman's the bellow of a ship's siren lifted itself from  the wharves, passed over the city and came back faintly echoed from the hills. It came from the Rotterdam-Lloyd mail boat preparing to cast off and bound for Tandjong Priok and Holland.

Woeverman's was crowded. It was the hour before lunch and the crowd was mainly composed of business men talking rubber, cotton, tea, cacao and scandal. The air was blue with cigar smoke and three bar-tenders were busy, the rattle of the cocktail-shakers mixing with the drone of the electric fans. Andreas, a man with a black pointed heard, passed along from group to group; he seemed to know everyone, also he seemed looking for someone. He was looking for Hendrick Hartmann, and he found him at the far end of the bar, glass in hand, and just about to drink.

"Ah, there you are," said Andreas. "I have been looking for you."

The two men formed a striking contrast when standing together. Andreas short and dark, plain almost to ugliness and forty if an hour. Hartmann young, tall, fair-haired, good-looking. Andreas hard-faced, almost morose. Hartmann gay and debonair. Yet these two, then, so different one from the other, were the closest friends; had been so for several years, sharing many things in common, and one vice— the love of practical joking. It was Andreas who generally designed the traps, Hartmann who constructed and set them, and it may he said of the victims that they were generally objectionable people who deserved trapping.

All the same and taking it at its best, practical joking is a cruel form of sport and brings little real credit to its known practitioners. But these jesters were clever enough never to be caught, and the cleverness was nearly always the cleverness of Andreas.

"What's up?" asked Hartmann.

"Nothing much," replied the other. "Only that fool Koenig has annoyed me."

"What's he done?"

"Oh, a lot of things, but this thing is personal to me; something I don't care to talk about even to you— but you know Koenig."

"Yes," said Hartmann, "silly old swine; forget him— what's yours?"

Koenig was Chief of Police, one of those well-meaning men who so often make blunders— such as his blunder in raiding Jaar's night club when it was stuffed full of high-class business men not with their wives and families— but though a blunderer at times, pretty harmless, and it surprised Hartmann to notice the venomosity in the tone and manner of the other.

In fact Andreas this morning seemed quite changed, filled with a repressed bitterness that seemed to poison his mind towards all things, even making him look coldly on his companion, at least so Hartmann thought. He refused a drink. He had a touch of liver; then looking at his watch, he said: "Come along down to the 'Constantia' and have lunch with me. I've got an idea and I want you to help me out with it."

"Right," said Hartmann, "and what's the idea?"

"I'll tell you later on," said Andreas.

The "Constantia" beyond Harlem Avenue faces the sea, and you can lunch on the verandah in full view of the Indian Ocean; fleet fishing prahus out from Mayal or Tandjong Lupar, junks dreaming along, less sailing than seeming to move on the slow drift of time.

Andreas smoked cigarettes, refusing food and watching the other eat, talking. of trade and trivial matters and little by little losing his frozen manner; exchanging it for a queer sort of gaiety, subdued as though checked by some overmastering thought.

"Well," said Hartmann as he lit a cigarette after the meal, "and what's the idea you wanted to tell me about?"

"Koenig," replied the other.

"But Koenig is not an idea."

"No, but my idea has to do with Koenig.  I am going to play a joke on him and I want your help."

"Good," said Hartmann. "And what's the joke?"

"The idea came to me," said Andreas, "from that shooting case he made such a blunder about last year, arresting the wrong man."

"Yes."

"I remembered that yesterday, it's wonderful how old facts sometimes turn up just when they are wanted, and how things fit in, for the old fool is giving a garden reception tomorrow."

"I know, I've got an invitation."

"Yes, you are one of his friends. Well, you must go, but get there late. It's for four o'clock, you must get there at five."

"That's easily done."

"The rest is just as easy. You must go alone, that is essential, and don't go in by his front gate; you know that the garden of his bungalow, like those of all the bungalows on De Ruyter-avenue, has a back gate opening on the Wild Park; you must come through the Wild Park from Grotius-street and through the back gate, and, this is the essential thing, apologise for coming in that way. You can say you were in a hurry as you had to come from Grotius-street, where you were delayed on business."

"Well, that's easy enough, but I don't see the point."

"No, but Koenig will when I spring my joke on him."

"Can't you tell me the joke?"

"No," said Andreas, "because there is a woman mixed up in it, and I haven't her leave to tell you— yet."

"All right," said Hartmann, "I don't mind; The only bother to me is that we have always done our little japes without being found out, except in the case of that cat we sent to Mynheer Voss, and now this means simply declaring the thing openly as ours— and, of course, I'm sure to make an enemy of Koenig."

"Does that matter? Besides, you won't. I'll take all the blame of the business, it's worth it— you'll simply die— simply die."

Andreas shook with mirth at the jest concealed and impossible to be revealed till the right moment.

"Right," said Hartmann, looking at his watch. "I'll do what you want, and now I must be off, as I have an appointment to meet."

Then off he went, light-heartedly, ignorant as a child of the strange business which he had promised to assist in.

Hartmann had permanent rooms in the "Herrenhaus," the German-run hotel which stands on the upper level beside the Van Haanen's Club. He had no servant worries, or wife worries, or family worries, and few business worries. That is perhaps why he took life as a joke and why he put on so readily the fool's cap of the jester, or, rather, why he was so ready to put it on the heads of others. He had never experienced the unpleasant sensation of wearing it himself, and he was unconscious of the fact that he sometimes ran that risk, according to the rule: "He who jests with others must expect others to jest with him."

This morning, after breakfast, sitting in the deep verandah and smoking a cigarette, life seemed very good indeed; the "Herrenhaus" and Van Haanen's are two of the highest placed buildings in Sandabar, and from where he sat he could see the whole new moon crescent of the city, the coast from Cape Mayal to Cape Tomai. the wharves with their long line of warehouses, the yellow funnels of a Nederland boat, and beyond all these, stretching, to be lost in haze, the luminous blue of the Indian Ocean.

He had dealt with his mail; a letter from a woman, a receipted bill from a tailor, circulars and a card inviting him to dinner with Mynheer Pel, the President of the Estates Union.

This invitation brought to mind Koenig's invitation for that afternoon and his promise to Andreas. He had scarcely thought of it last night, but now, clear-headed, at ease, and gazing at the good world before him. the recollection of it vaguely worried him. He liked to be "hail fellow well met" with all men. He liked to be, what he was, popular. Though the mischievous spirit in him loved a practical joke, it had never brought him into bad odor, simply because he had never been discovered, or only once.

But this, as he had said yesterday, was an open business, Koenig being turned into a fool would be partly his work— Andreas had said he would take any blame attached to the business—still.

There was another point, Andreas's manner. Even the light and easy-going mind of Hartmann had recognised that. It exhibited the hatred of a man who earnestly hated another, and it hinted that this business might in some way do Koenig real injury if Andreas hated him like that — not a pleasant thought.

Up to this he had always known Andreas as a pretty hard nut and a bad man to cross, but a friend who would stick to you in business as in pleasure; a good companion when not suffering from liver or fits of moroseness, but deadly to an enemy — that was Andreas.

The last quality had never divorced itself from the others till now, nor called for consideration. One or two instances came to Hartmann's mind exhibiting Andreas's attitude towards personal enemies; they were not pleasant. Cardross had been ruined. Oh, it wasn't altogether the fall in rubber, of which he had only a small holding, it was the enmity of this man who could hate so well and who evidently hated Koenig.

"Put not out your hand in any way to help the hatred of another man against another man."

This old Dutch saying was unknown to Hartmann; all the same, its spirit was talking to him. He wished he hadn't consented to engage in this stupid business. Why not back out of it before It was too late? It would be quite easy to ring up Andreas on the phone.

Would it?

Yes, easy enough if it were to talk of ordinary affairs, but not so easy if it were to say:

"Andreas, I have been thinking of that business about Koenig. I'd rather not join in it."

Hartmann could see Andreas's face closing up, and he could hear the sharp question:

"Why?"

A question difficult to answer because it was difficult to say the truth:

"I'm afraid for old Koenig and my own reputation. You have evidently a frightful down on him. I would much prefer that you conducted your quarrel with Koenig without my assistance."

That would mean a break with Andreas and it might mean the conversion of him into an enemy. Hartmann had always accepted him as a friend. Now, for the first time, he had to consider the acceptance of him as an enemy. He did not like the idea at all; the idea of setting against himself that mind intricate and dark and capable of such ill-will as it had shown towards Koenig, was not a pleasant idea.

Well, what was to be done? He could not think of any way out of the business. After all, the thing he was required to do was so trivial, was it worth making any unpleasantness about it?

At twelve o'clock he left his rooms and went into Van Haanen's. There he met Mynheer Van Buren, Mynheer Pel, and several other worthies; at one o'clock he had luncheon, and at half-past two he went up to the card room. As it was a Saturday, the room was full. The card room at Van Haanen's is divided into two parts. A room with half a dozen small tables for bridge and a room devoted to baccarat.

Hartmann stood watching the baccarat for half an hour or so.

Subconcsciously working, his mind had suddenly decided not to go to Koenig's party, and to excuse himself to Andreas by simply saying, "Awfully sorry, old chap, but I was playing baccarat at Van Haanen's and my watch let me down. It stopped at four, and then I found it was too late to get to Koenig's by the time you told me."

He was an adept at constructing little social fibs of this sort— excuses to avoid unpleasantnesses. He took his place at the baccarat table.

At first the luck was not with him but after a while it changed, it came favorable, and, except as variable flaws, held.

At half-past five he had won six thousand three hundred gulden, and being a cautious player salted his experience; he decided to stop, well pleased with himself. He had avoided a dull party, avoided giving offence to Andreas, and had pocketed a good sum of money.

He come out of the card room at down the stairs to the hall. Van Haanen's is a woman's club as well as a man's, only the two sexes kept apart like oil and water— almost, for though no woman ever goes to the upper rooms sacred to the men, the men often invaded lower rooms which form the women's quarters— when invited.  Men go there and have tea with their wives or other men's wives,  to play bridge; never to dine, for there is no dining or luncheon room as on the floor above.

As Hartmann crossed the hall towards the entrance door he met a woman who was coming in.

It was Andreas's wife, a blonde girl  with blue eyes, exquisitely dressed in silk and Chiramen, who had just stepped out of her car, which was waiting at the door.

"Have you seen Andreas?" she asked.

"No," replied Hartmann, "he's not in the club. Where have you come from?"

"Koenig's— such a dull affair. I expected to see you there and I expected Andreas would turn up when he'd done with the office, but he didn't— what have you been doing?"

"Playing baccarat; I've been here all day. Have you had tea?"

"Yes," said she, "at least cocktails— come in, I want to talk to you."

She led the way in. There were few women about, Koenig's garden party having drained the place; they passed through the reading-room and on to the broad verandah that fronts the city and sea; here they sat down and the wife of Andreas, having chosen a cigarette from her case and lit it, leaned back in her chair. She seemed thoughtful and to have something on her mind, and as she sat brooding he told her of the joke Andreas had proposed to play on Koenig.

"I am rather worried," said she, "about Andreas."

"How?"

"You remember the night before last. We thought he had gone to Tuboi."

"You said he had gone there."

"I know— and perhaps he did, perhaps it was my amah's mistake; she said to me next morning, 'I saw the master last night; he walked in the garden.' "

Hartmann was silent for a moment. He felt vaguely disturbed.

"But surely," said he at last, "surely—"

"It may have been the amah's mistake," said she, "but all the same I have noticed a difference in him. I know he has had money worries. I am afraid we are in a bad way financially, but it's not that— it's me; at least, I think so. I always told you he was jealous about me— and other men."

"Yes," said Hartmann.

All this was decidedly unpleasant. The woman before him had fascinated him, but the fascination had been fading for some time; distaste was threatening his regard for her. Looking at her now, he felt irritated and at fault. Andreas had always seethed to him a complaisant husband, despite what she had said about his jealousy; anyhow, unsuspicious, and the idea that he was not only suspicious, but that he had been spying on them came as a distinct shock.

"Of course," she went on, "I suppose all men are subject to jealousy, but Andreas is not an ordinary man and I feel very uneasy."

"Why?"

"I don't know. It's him. And if he has found out things and is saying nothing— that's what makes me uneasy. To think of him brooding and working in the dark and then maybe suddenly—"

"Yes?"

"I don't know— it's like the silence before a thunderstorm."

Her uneasiness communicated itself to him by her voice and manner even more than by her words. Then, trying to shake the feeling off:

"Perhaps," said he, "what is really wrong with him— I mean, if you think his manner has changed— is money worries, you said he was worried—"

"Oh, it's more than worries," said she. "Our affairs, and I tell it to you though I would tell it to no one else, are in a very bad state, as far as I can see. He's been speculating in rubber; as far as I can see, we are broke."

Here was another pleasant idea for Hartmann to contemplate; leaving Andreas and jealousy aside, he could not desert this woman financially if she applied to him for help; even if she didn't apply and he knew that she was in poverty he would have to try and help her, and if Andreas made trouble in the courts there would be damages on top of all.

"And the thing that frightens me," she went on, "is the state his mind may be in if he knows anything really about us— I mean that and the money worry together may make him desperate. If he goes to his lawyers—"

"Don't," said Hartmann. "Why suppose things— besides, there is no evidence; native servants are not believed even if they talk, and— well, there's no use meeting troubles half-way."

He left her at the club and went back to his rooms. He was for the first time in many years seriously put out. Andreas's suggested joke on Koenig took on a new complexion. Was it possible that it had nothing to do with Koenig, that it was. some dodge for the manufacture of extra evidence?

Grotius-street. Andreas had told him to say he had been delayed by an interview in Grotius-street.

Why?

He could not tell, but the question added to his mind disturbance. Life had been so easy and pleasant and luck had always been with him. He reckoned that he did not count one enemy among all the people he knew, they were all his friends; he was popular and the knowledge that he was universally liked was part of his mental atmosphere, feeding his self-respect and sense of well-being— and now this hint of trouble.

The trouble whose other name is "Disclosure." Yes, he had been a fool, and his folly and its possible consequences could not be made less or lightened by any excuse he had to offer if Andreas set the law to work. The plea that "the woman tempted me" has never lessened the effect of the fall.

Still, there was luck, the luck that had always been with him, and this was a lucky day. The banknotes won at baccarat told him that; and they did not tell him a lie.

AT SEVEN O'CLOCK, just as Hartmann was preparing to go out to dine at the "Constantia," a servant knocked at his door with the announcement that sergeant of police Harneck wished to see him.

Followed Harneck, a bull-necked man, looking half strangled in the collar of his white tunic. Mynheer Koenig wished to see Mynheer Hartmann and to see him at once on urgent business, the police car was at the door. Would Mynheer Hartmann kindly come— where to? Police headquarters.

"Certainly," said Hartmann, wondering what old Koenig could possibly want with him, and at such short notice, also a wee bit disturbed in mind; though Koenig was a friend, he was chief of the Law Executive, and this had something to do with law on the very face of it. Still, he knew himself to be beyond the law both in business and private affairs— except in the case of the woman who had been troubling his mind. That was something by which the law might touch him, but not through the hand of Koenig, which had only to do with criminals.

So he thought, during the short drive to police headquarters, which are situated in Hooft-street. Following Harneck, he passed through the main doorway, along a passage, to a room barely furnished with two chairs, a table, and a spittoon. Harneck, asking him to wait, went out and shut the door, and Hartmann waited.

He waited five minutes, then he grew impatient and a bit irritable. Bringing him here in such a hurry, and then calmly making him wait like this! He would go out and investigate. He came to the door, but the handle would not turn, it was evidently a dummy; also, he noticed, what he had noticed before but without mental comment, that the door had a grille in it.

He came back to the table and sat down. This was most evidently a waiting-room designed not for honest men, but criminals, to wait in, and as he sat considering this fact, and despite Reason, who told him that he had nothing to fear, the sweat came out on the palms of his hands.

He had nothing to fear from Koenig or the criminal law, and yet, somehow, he was afraid, and the fear seemed to emanate from the disturbing interview he had had that day with the wife of Andreas; it had cast a stain on the serenity of his life, it had conveyed a threat of the possibility of trouble, more than the possibility, if the amah was not wrong when she said, "The master was here last night; he walked in the garden."

To Hartmann, just now, it was as though something, unseen but deadly, were creeping towards him in the dark, something that might be Andreas, something that at any moment might pounce.

The door opened and Harneck appeared.

"Come with me, please," said Harneck, and Hartmann noted that he had omitted the word "Mynheer."

Chief of Police, Justus Til Koenig, was seated before his desk table examining some papers when the visitor was brought in. Koenig was a heavily built, semi-bald old gentleman of the Bismarck type, but without the eagle glance; in fact, he looked not unlike a waxwork portrait of the Great Chancellor, done by an inferior hand and rather botched at that.

He bowed to Hartmann stiffly and asked him to take the chair which stood at the opposite side of the table. Harneck did not leave the room. He stood close to Hartmann and during the interview did not stir.

"You were a friend of Mynheer Andreas Van Lok?"

It was funny to hear Koenig saying that as though they hadn't all played cards , together at the club. Still, he was on his official perch.

"I am his friend," said Hartmann. "What about it?"

"At a quarter past five, to-day." said Koenig, "Park Inspector Kempfer, going through the Wild Park which lies at the back of my garden, and to which I have a right of entrance through a gate, had his attention drawn to something lying on one of the paths. The body of a man. The body of Andreas Van Lok, who had been murdered."

"What!" cried Hartmann. "Andreas!"

Koenig held up his hand. "Park Inspector Kempfer found him lying on the ground, stabbed in the neck, a knife was lying close to him, there were signs of a struggle; he was still breathing when Kempfer found him, but unconscious. The murderer must have done his work at five or a little after, in the opinion of Dr. Strench."

Hartmann listened, horrified.

"This is the knife," said Koenig, taking a native dagger with a shagreen handle out of a cupboard box on the table. ''There are no finger prints obtainable, because shagreen does not lend itself to that. Have you ever seen that knife before?"

"Never," said Hartmann. his eyes on the knife. "There is on the shagreen a mark very small but clearly indicating the letter 'H' scratched with some sharp instrument."

"Yes," said Hartmann, examining the knife handle, "that is so."

He placed the knife on the table while Koenig took a paper from the box. It was a letter addressed to him and posted early that morning.

"I received this at noon," said Koenig. "It is from Andreas Van Lok. It says: 'Excuse me if I am late for your show to-day, as my friend Hartmann has asked me to meet him on important business at five o'clock, but I will come along—"

"Never," cried Hartmann. "I never asked him to meet me."

"He goes on to say," continued Koenig, "that he will bring you along with him, as the place of your meeting was quite close to my house— in the Wild Park."

Hartmann moistened his lips. The thing that had been crawling towards him had sprung.

Koenig took a letter from the box.

"We found this on the dead man's body. It is an anonymous letter received by him a week ago, judging by the postmark. Read it." He handed it to Hartmann, who read:

"Your wife is playing the fool with Hartmann. Keep your eyes open for your own sake— and hers."

It was a genuine letter, and evidently the cause of Andreas's suspicions. Yes, he had walked in the garden that night beyond any manner of doubt, this man of darkness.

Hartmann put the letter on the table. Then he said to Koenig:

"I had better tell you all I know. This is a bad business, but different from what you think. I never asked Andreas Van Lok to meet me in the Wild Park; but yesterday, he asked me to come late to your party, not by the front gate but by the gate opening on to the Park. I was to apologise to you for coming that way owing to the fact that I had been delayed by an appointment in Grotius-street, and had to take the short cut through the Park."

"Yes?"

"That was all I had to do."

"Why did he ask you to do this?"

"It was to be part of a practical joke he wanted to play on you."

"What sort of joke?"

"I don't know."

Koenig glanced at Harneck as though to say: "Just listen to that!"

Then to Hartmann: "Is that all the explanation you can give?"

"No, it's only the beginning. Though he would not tell me what the joke was I could see that he was filled with animosity which I thought was against you. I know now it was against me. He would not accept a drink nor would he eat with me. I agreed to do what he asked; it was such a simple thing, but this morning my mind turned against the business, it seemed to me that owing to his seeming hatred of you it might have bad consequences and I did not wish to be mixed up in it, so I determined not to go to your party and to excuse myself to Andreas by saying that my watch had stopped "

"If you did not come to my party," cut in Koenig, "where then did you go?"

"Nowhere. I came to my decision at Van Haanen's. I was there from before luncheon till six, and was playing baccarat at five, the time you say this crime was committed."

"Have you witnesses?"

"Oh, half a hundred; also six thousand gulden I won at play."

"That is fortunate for you," said Koenig, "if enquiry confirms what you say. Your theory, then, is that this man committed suicide, which is possible, as he could have inflicted the wound on himself, and did so in a way that would implicate you."

"I have no theory to offer, only facts, but I think, leaving everything else aside, that he killed himself owing to financial reasons, and being determined to die by his own hand would, have made it appear that he had died by mine. He hated me on account of his wife."

"Had he reason to?"

"Koenig," said Hartmann, "I am not talking in the presence of the Chief of Police and this officer, but in the presence of two Dutch gentlemen. When I say I cannot answer your question you will understand that I have no right to answer it as it involves a woman who is not here and who will suffer enough, God knows, through the death of this man who was her husband.

"That anonymous letter which would have helped to destroy me if I had fallen in with his plans, would, if published, only add to her suffering. It has done harm enough— let it be burnt."

"I will take note of what you suggest," replied Koenig.

BUT THOUGH Hartmann was not destroyed, it would be a grave mistake to imagine that Andreas failed altogether in his revenge. The man who escapes with his life from a fire is never quite the same; imagination of what might have happened tends to torment him at times. It is worse with the man, innocent of murder, who has escaped the ignominy and death of a felon, by chance.

For Hartmann, Andreas still walks in the garden, still wanders in the Wild Park; still whispers on the wind, "Suppose— yes, just suppose, you had done what I asked you to do?"

A question that has to be answered by imagination.

____________________

2: The Man From Sulu

The Windsor Magazine December 1932

Sun (Sydney) 1 June 1941

THE blue sea that they call the Gulf of Tonkin showed to starboard the far-off hills of Hainan; to port nothing but its azure desolation and a junk. Eight bells had just struck and the Man from Sulu, whose deck chair was next to mine, handed me over a number of the Pacific Magazine, which he had been reading.

"You know," he said, "I wish I could write. I've just read a yarn there— island setting and all that— and, well, I could give them a story that beats it hollow."

I proposed a cocktail, which he accepted, also a big Van Maurick cigar, under whose influence his mind, like an oyster, opened, and I got the yarn. It here follows, put in my own words.

WHEN THE Chinks erupted and did the Captain in, Seldon was on the bridge and Havilland in the chart-room. The Chinese steersman, who had only been waiting for the signal, dropped the wheel, whipped out a knife and went for Seldon, who ducked, dashed into the chart-room, secured the old man's automatic pistol, turned, and shot the Chink through the stomach. The Chinaman fell with his head inside the chart-room door, and the man with the automatic finished him off with a bullet through the brain, and then came running out, followed by Havilland.

They came to the after canvas of the bridge and looked over.

The Nan Shan had an all Chink crew, and the deck was swarming with Chinamen. The fellows had come up from the engine-room and stokehold; two of them were in the act of heaving the body of the Captain overboard, others were getting the boats ready for launching, and the rest were bringing up mats and mats of rice from below and ripping them open.

They were after the opium. Two thousand pounds' worth of Canton opium smuggled in the rice had been the secret of the captain of the Nan Shan and his mate, Seldon. The secret had escaped like an evil genie, and this was the result.

"Good God!" said Havilland.

He was the passenger. He had been lying on the couch in the chart-room reading an old yellow-backed copy of It's Never Too Late to Mend, when all this had come like a thunder-clap. He felt stunned, but Seldon, a small man, red and sharp as a ferret, leaning over the rail with the heavy Colt automatic in his hand, seemed unmoved.

As far as the bridge went, he was master of the situation. The fellows below had heard the shooting, and as long as the man on the bridge held his hand they were content to get on with their work and leave him alone.

"They're after the opium," he explained to Havilland. "The old man had it hid in those rice mats— they never knew of that automatic, or they'd have nicked it before the fun began. It's a frame-up, and it's clicked to the minute. Y'see, the Formosa coast is only a few miles away. You'd see it only for that haze— clever devils, clever devils, I must say."

He brooded over the scene below. Havilland watched without speaking.

The steam had been shut off, and the Nan Shan lay wallowing in the gentle swell that ran away oilily to be lost in the haze that hid Formosa.

"THEY'VE left the dinghy," said Seldon, as they watched the boats away and making for the east. "That comes of being hurried on a job. They should have stove her and opened the seacocks and wiped us and the old hooker clean out. but they were working against time and the headsman, and they haven't done their job so badly, b'gosh!"

Havilland know little of Seldon; he had only known him during the few days out from Canton on the northward run to Amoy. He had net cared for him particularly, and this detached way of his of talking about the murderers and their work, this air of what one might almost call sympathetic criticism, did not appeal.

"We've nothing to do but stick and let her drift," said the mate. "The current runs north, and is setting us towards the Pescadores; we ought to sight one of the southern islands to-morrow. Before that something may overhaul us, and we may be able to pick up enough hands to take her to Swatow, or maybe get a tow— there's no telling."

They came down from the bridge. It was funny to be on board a ship like that, engines stopped, decks vacant, bridge deserted— and the silence! Now and then, as the Nan Shan rolled to the gentle swell, came the rattle of the rudder-chain, and now and then the creak of spar or structure; occasionally she groaned, as if thinking of her sins against Customs and Humanity, but all these sounds broke nothing of the spell that held her or the silence which was the silence of the dead.

It wanted three hours of sunset, the boats now almost beyond sight had no more interest, and Havilland, who had dipped down to his cabin and found his few belongings intact, was smoking a pipe, seated on the edge of the main hatch and wondering, not at the terrible things he had seen, but at his insensibility to their terror— they did not seem part of reality.

Seldon had gone below; now he was on deck again, now on the bridge, now vanished into the chart-room. He was flitting about the ship like an uneasy spirit, in a purposeless, purposeful way that made Havilland wonder.

Coming down from the bridge, he found that Seldon had lugged up some bunk bedding from the cabins, also all their dunnage and some provisions and water, in case of accident.

They slept on deck, taking watch and watch, and when Havilland awoke it was to find the sun just breaking above the sea and the mate calling him to lend a hand with the dinghy.

The Nan Shan was sinking. Whether the Chinks had opened a seacock or whether Seldon had attended to that business for reasons of his own, who can say, but the old tub was preparing for her last act in life, and Havilland, half-awake and galvanised by the shouts and orders of the mate, found himself helping to get the dinghy afloat and the stuff into her.

As they pushed off, stepping the mast and raising the sail, Havilland's eyes followed the direction in which the mate was pointing. A ring of sea-birds showed, touched by the just-risen sun, and, a bit to westward of the birds, the hump of an island.

It was the southern outlier of the Pescadores. No one ever goes there of set purpose; there is nothing to go for or to be had except water and a small amount of fruit, and yet, on its southern side, it has a little harbor made by nature as if for a joke. Two curving reefs run out, forming the two piers, but the entrance between the pier heads is not more than thirty feet broad.

Broad enough, however, for the dinghy and broad enough for the craft already anchored by the western pier, a little, ratty-looking old yawl of about ten tons, whose owner, naked as Noah, except for a loincloth, stood waiting to receive them on the sandy beach. Waiting and shouting quite unnecessary directions and laughing as he helped to run the boat up— a most extraordinary sea individual, wild-looking as a molly mawk, brown as a hickory nut, well-proportioned, and not seeming more than twenty-five or so. After asking where in the hell they'd blown in from, and scarcely listening to the reply, he brought them along up to the shack he had built among the trees and started hospitality by making tea for them in a billy, chattering all the time thirteen to a dozen.

Australian. Yes, indeed, he was Australian-born, Royd by name. Used to work with his father at Thursday Island before the pearling went into the hands of the Japs. Father died, and then he worked alone with the old yawl— that was her at anchor— and a blackfellow; they pushed up north, sea-scraping, picking up things here and there; there was money to be made that way; precious coral; pearls sometimes; sea-shells— orange cowries were worth a couple of pounds apiece in the Sydney market— and such like. Last three years he had been in China waters and done a bit with a bêche-de-mer. He liked the Chinks. Did they know Swatow? He went there to bank his money when he made any— but he didn't count much on money; it only meant tobacco and grub. God's good air was money enough for any man— still, he wanted a new boat; the old Lone Jack wasn't going to hold together much longer, and he wanted a new boat, and he reckoned he was going to have one, too. The black-fellow had skipped two years ago, but he'd got a new mate.

He lay on his back on the sand most of the time he was talking, in absolute indolence of the absolutely perfect animal at ease. Sometimes he would turn and prop himself on his elbow, and sometimes turn his head towards the trees as though he were expecting or waiting for someone— possibly the mate he had spoken of, and, sure enough, this was so, for presently, to the rustle of giant Japonica leaves pushed aside, out from the trees stepped the mate.

Not a wild-looking scallywag like himself, but a slip of a brown girl, almost a child, and naked but for a yard and a half of Japanese chiramen; she was carrying a net bag holding some fruit she had picked, and as she came up to them, hailed by Royd, she threw the bag and its contents down beside him and then stood while he talked to her. Chinese? No, she seemed to Havilland of some mixed race, picturesque enough; wonderful eyes, luminous and dark, at once far-seeing and unseeing, like those of some spirit from another world. After a few words, she went and sat down apart from them near the trees.

"That's her," said Royd. "Picked her up as a pup two years ago. Met in with an old drifted sampan. She was in it with a woman.

"Woman was dead. Her mother, most like. I've called her Chayla, because it was off Chayla Island I met in with them. Well, as I was saying, if you like to stick here till I leave, I can take you along with me over to Swatow. I shan't be here more than a week longer. I'll have cleaned up by then, and there's grub enough between fish and turtles' eggs and such and rice; no, I don't want being paid for the job. I reckon well leave it at that."

He whistled between his teeth and looked seaward as he leaned on his elbow. He had never bothered to ask details as to how they had been wrecked. Seldon had in a few words given him a vague indication that it was through mutiny and foul play on board of a coasting steamer; that was enough for Royd. His life was so filled with marvels and happenings, between weather, natives, reefs, and sharks, such an entire and whole-time gamble with Luck and Death, that the happenings occurring to others left him cold.

"And now," said he, sitting upright, "I'll show you what I have been doing here, if you'll come along with me." He got up, and they followed him along the sands in the direction of the eastern reef that made one of the piers of the little harbor.

Some three fathoms down lay the wreck of a junk. A strange sight, clear to be seen through the diamond-bright water; all sunlit and gay with colored coral and waving sea fans, and frequented by painted fish popping in and out of the shadows. A picture vaguely moving with the gentle undulations of the swell. It had evidently been a fighting junk; on the white sand beside the half-shattered timbers lay a gun. a small cannon so thickly coral-crusted as to look like a sausage. No sign of masts, and the deck was fractured where the great break had occurred, showing the gloom of the hold occupied now only by squids and congers.

"Pirate junk," said Royd, "and she's been there twenty years. I know all about her. Me and the girl"— he always spoke of her as the girl— "were down last year behind Hal Chuen Island; there's a place there where the junks put in for repair, a bit of a harbor not much bigger than this one, but the tide falls tremendous there, and they've fixed up a dry dock of sorts, but good enough for me, for they work dirt cheap if you pick your season when business is slack.

"I'd got the boat docked for an overhaul when I met in with an old one-eyed Chink. His left leg was the size of the trunk of a tree with that disease, whatever they call it, and he told me he'd been a sailor, and we used to have a talk, and I'd give him tobacco, and we got pretty friendly, me and him and the girl, till it came to one afternoon when he let go his mind and told me of this place and this old junk and all about her.

"She'd broke her back on the reef In a big storm and then gone down just as you see her. Only one of the crew got on the reef, and when he was taken off from here he said nothing about her, knowing she had treasure on board and reckoning to come back for it. He'd had the thing up his sleeve for years.

"I fixed with him to come here and have a look and to give him half of whatever I found, and I got my chart of these waters and he marked the spot, but I had no chance to get here till a month ago."

"Did you find anything?" asked Seldon.

"I've been diving every day since I came here," said he, "and I've picked up lots of things. I'll show you some to-night. This is how it's done."

He took from where it was lying on the reef a little scoop net of the sort used for prawns, only smaller, and then, just as he was, he dived. The wreck below shivered to pieces as the impact broke the surface into ripples; then, when the water became smooth again, it showed, with Royd close beside it filling the net with sand. The third lot of sand held a coin thick and black and almost featureless.

"Silver, I reckon," said Royd, coming on to the reef. "And now you see what it's like, plenty of hard work, same as pearling, and most of it chance."

"I expect you've cleaned up pretty well," said Seldon.

"Oh, I'm not grumbling," said Royd. "I've done fair, and I reckon my half profits will give me that new boat, but, as I said, I'm sticking here awhile yet. I reckon another week's diving may be worth the while. There's stuff in that sand still, though to get it all you'd want a dredger."

"How much do you reckon she had on board when she broke up?" asked Seldon.

"Well, the Chink told me she had the worth of two scoops on board," replied Royd. "They used to work it by putting a pirate crew on board a steamer; when the pirates had taken possession, this old hooker would be on the spot to take over the stuff— sort of floating treasure-chest."

THAT night, under the light of a great full moon. Royd, leaving the others with whom he had been seated on the sands, went to the shack amidst the trees and returned with an old battered tin cash-box tied round with a length of signal halyard line.

"Here's the takings," said he. He sat down and untied the line and raised the lid, and produced, first, a little leather bag of coins. Sixty-two brass-yellow Australian sovereigns. He poured a few into the palm of his hand.

"Found them, bag and all," said he. "They'd gone a bit dark, but I polished them up. Sixty-two of them— not bad for a start."

He put them aside, and produced a cross that glittered in the moonlight. It was set with diamonds. Seldon took it and looked at it.

"That's worth something," said he; "hundreds — twenty stones and every one a beauty." He handed it to Havilland, who looked at it and gave it back to Royd, who bad produced another little bag of leather containing rings. There were thirty, some just hoops of plain gold, some valuable, containing stones, one was a nose ring set with a pearl, and every one doubtless with a tragic story attached to it. There remained only in the box some coins, a few American dollars, and some gold coins which Seldon pronounced old Portuguese.

"A good haul," said he, "but you run the chance of being swindled when you try to get rid of them."

"Oh, I reckon I know a man who'll take the lot," said Royd, "and keep a shut head— they don't belong to no one, been sunk twenty years, and God knows who they were taken off, but I don't want any Government butting in and stealing them off me. No, I've got the man for the business; he's a Jew at Amoy."

"You'll have to give half what you get to that Chink you told us of," said Seldon.

"Of course," said Royd. He tied up the box and took it back to the Royd had rigged them up a tent from some old canvas be brought over from the yawl, and presently, having finished their pipes, they retired to rest, and the great full moon took guard of the island, where all was peace in a silence broken only by the sound of the wind in the trees and the eternal murmur of the sea.

TWO days passed, during which Royd fished up a few coins, Chinese, mostly, but nothing of any value. But that did not make Royd cut his work short; it is the chance of another pearl that keeps the pearl-diver diving, even when he knows that the beds, are exhausted. He would stay another week, he told them, and, as for Havilland, he was content. Not only did Royd and his work interest him, but also the girl. Her absolute devotion contrasted strangely with his indifference, or seeming indifference. It seemed to Havilland like the love of a dog for a man and the attitude of the man towards the dog. On the evening of the third day, Seldon, who was taking a stroll with his companion along the bit of sand that lies beyond the western pier of reef, turned to look back, as though to make sure no one was in hearing, and then spoke.

"It would be a joke If old man Royd went to scratch up the stuff and found it gone," said Seldon, "and us with it."

"I don't see where the joke would come in," replied the other. "Besides, it wouldn't be possible."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, suppose we wanted to nick the stuff—"

"Don't talk vulgar," said Seldon, with a laugh. "That thing is a box, isn't it? And what's to-day, twenty-fourth of December, if my tablets ain't wrong. Call it a Christmas box and shut your eyes and call me old man Santa Claus, and take what's given you— or the half of it."

"If you mean what you are saying," replied the other, "what I'd call you would be a damn robber."

Seldon laughed. "Ain't got no more sense of humor than a turkey," said he.

"Maybe," replied Havilland, "and we'll leave it at that."

In the tent that night the problem of Seldon kept Havilland awake long after they had retired to rest. One thing seemed certain, the mate could not act single-handed in any attempt at robbery. Fortunately, he had not got the automatic pistol; he had left it on the ship in the hurry of getting away, and had remarked on the fact in the boat. On this comforting fact Havilland after a while fell asleep.

I AM NOW going to let the Man from Sulu (he was Havilland) finish the story in his own words.

"I WOKE UP somewhere about midnight and found the chap gone from the tent. I listened, but I couldn't hear anything but the sea on the rocks. Then I looked under the canvas on the side of the tent where he had been sleeping, and I saw the blighter in full moonlight.

"That side of the tent gave a view of the trees, and there he was with the box he'd just dug up from the sand. He came hurrying along towards the sea edge, and he hadn't got more than a few yards when I saw the girl come out of the shack like an eel.... She picked up one of the fish spears that lay by the shack, and next moment was after him.

"I scrambled out of the tent. When I got out Seldon had passed me, running, and she was just passing with the spear in her hand like a javelin. She got him not more than a few yards from tide mark. Before starting to steal the stuff he had got the dinghy down nearly afloat and some grub in her, everything ready for the fade-away, but she got him through the back with the spear before he could reach the boat.

"Then she saw me, and turned to get the spear out to do me in, too, but couldn't, because of the barb. She turned in a flash and raced back to the tent, and I knew she'd gone for another spear.

"I didn't wait.

"I shoved the dinghy off and tumbled in and took to the sculls and began rowing for all I was worth towards the harbor mouth.

"I reckoned I was safe, for the canvas boat Royd used for the yawl, and which was lying on the beach, would be no use chasing the dinghy.

"She didn't bother about the canvas boat; she knew better than that. She came tearing along the pier made by the western reef to cut me off at the opening.

"The opening was only thirty feet or so wide.

"Rowed! Good Lord! I should think I rowed, and I was just passing through when she was only five yards from the pier-end. Then came the spear whimpering past my head. I can hear that thing still, sometimes.

"I got clear away and made Formosa, and what became of that girl and her fancy man I don't know. Hers wasn't what you might call strictly Christmas behavior, as you might say, but then, you see, she was a pagan and didn't know anything about our traditions and ways."

THE MAN FROM SULU flung the stump of his cigar over the rail and rose up from his chair. The luncheon bugle had just gone.

___________________

3: Under The Flame Trees

The Story-teller, July 1922

I WAS SITTING in front of Thibaud's Café one evening when I saw Lewishon, whom I had not met for years.

Thibaud's Café, I must tell you first, is situated on Coconut Square, Noumea. Noumea has a bad name, but it is not at all a bad place if you are not a convict. Neither is New Caledonia, take it all together, and that evening, sitting and smoking and listening to the band and watching the crowd, and the dusk taking the flame trees, it seemed to me for a moment that Tragedy had withdrawn, that there was no such place as the Isle Nou out there in the harbor and that the musicians making the echoes ring to the Sambre-et-Meuse were primarily musicians, not convicts.

Then I saw Lewishon crossing the square by the Liberty Statue and attracted his attention. He came and sat by me, and we smoked and talked while I tried to realize that it was fifteen years since I had seen him last and that he hadn't altered in the least— in the dusk.

"I've been living here for years," said he. "When I saw you last in Frisco I was about to take up a proposition in Oregon. I didn't, owing to a telegram going wrong. That little fact changed my whole life. I came to the islands instead and started trading, then I came to live in New Caledonia. I'm married."

"Oh," I said, "is that so?"

Something in the tone of those two words "I'm married" struck me as strange.

We talked on indifferent subjects, and before we parted I promised to come over and see him next day at his place a few miles from the town. I did and I was astonished at what I saw.

New Caledonia, pleasant as the climate may be, is not the place one would live in by choice. In those days, the convicts were still coming there from France. The gangs of prisoners shepherded by wardens armed to the teeth, the great barges filled with prisoners that ply every evening when work is over between the harbor quay and the Isle Nou, the military air of the place and the fretting regulations, all these things and more robbed it of its appeal as a residential neighborhood. Yet the Lewishons lived there and what astonished me was the evidence of their wealth and the fact that they had no apparent interests at all to bind them to the place.

Mrs. Lewishon was a woman of forty-five or so, yet her beauty had scarce begun to fade. I was introduced to her by Lewishon on the broad veranda of their house, which stood in the midst of gardens more wonderful than the gardens of La Mortola.

A week or so later, after dining with me in the town he told me the story of his marriage, one of the strangest stories I ever heard and this is it, just as he told it.

"The Pacific is the finest place in the world to drop money in. You see it's so big and full of holes that look like safe investments. I started, after I parted with you, growing coconut trees in the Fijis. It takes five years for a coconut palm to grow, but when it's grown it will bring you in an income of eighteen pence or so a year according as the copra prices range. I planted forty thousand young trees and at the end of the fourth year a hurricane took the lot. That's the Pacific. I was down and out, and then I struck luck. That's the Pacific again. I got to be agent for a big English firm here in Noumea and in a short time I was friends with everyone from Chardin, the governor, right down.

"Chardin was a good sort but very severe. The former governor had been lax, so the people said, letting rules fall into abeyance like the rule about cropping the convicts' hair and beards to the same pattern. However that may have been, Chardin had just come as governor and I had not been here more than a few months when one day a big, white yacht from France came and dropped anchor in the harbor. A day or two after, a lady appeared at my office and asked for an interview.

"She had heard of me through a friend, she said, and she sought my assistance in a most difficult matter. In plain English, she wanted me to help in the escape of a convict.

"I was aghast. I was about to order her out of the office, when something— something— something, I don't know what, held my tongue while, with the cunning of a desperate woman in love, she managed to still my anger. 'I understand,' she said, 'and I should have been surprised if you had taken the matter calmly, but will you listen to me and when you have heard me out, tell me if you would not have done what I have done today?'

"I could not stop her, and this is what she told me.

"Her name was Madame Armand Duplessis. Her maiden name had been Alexandre. She was the only child of Alexandre the big sugar refiner, and at his death she found herself a handsome young girl with a fortune of about twenty million francs— and nothing between her and the rogues of the world but an old maiden aunt given to piety and guileless as a rabbit. However, she managed to escape the sharks and married an excellent man, a captain in the cavalry and attached to St. Cyr. He died shortly after the marriage and the young widow, left desolate and without a child to console her, took up living again with her aunt, or rather the aunt came to live with her in the big house she occupied on the Avenue de la Grande Armée.

"About six months after, she met Duplessis. I don't know how she met him, she didn't say, but anyhow he wasn't quite in the same circle as herself. He was a clerk in La Fontaine's Bank and only drawing a few thousand francs a year, but he was handsome and attractive and young, and the upshot of it was they got married.

"She did not know anything of his past history and he had no family in evidence, nothing to stand on at all but his position at the bank, but she did not mind— she was in love and she took him on trust and they got married. A few months after marriage a change came over Duplessis. He had always been given rather to melancholy, but now an acute depression of spirits came on him for no reason apparently. He could not sleep, his appetite failed, and the doctors, fearing consumption, ordered him away on a sea voyage. When he heard this prescription he laughed in such a strange way that Madame Duplessis, who had been full of anxiety as to his bodily condition, became for a moment apprehensive as to his mental state. However she said nothing, keeping her fears hidden and busying herself in preparations for the voyage.

"It chanced that just at that moment a friend had a yacht to dispose of, an eight-hundred-ton auxiliary-engined schooner, La Gaudriole. It was going cheap and Madame Duplessis, who was a good business woman, bought it, reckoning to sell it again when the voyage was over.

"A month later they left Marseilles.

"They visited Greece and the islands, then, having touched at Alexandria, they passed through the canal, came down the Red Sea and crossed the Indian Ocean. They touched at Ceylon and while there Madame Duplessis suggested that, instead of going to Madras as they had intended, they should go into the Pacific by way of the Straits of Malacca. Duplessis opposed this suggestion at first, then fell in with it. More than that, he became enthusiastic about it. A weight seemed suddenly to have been lifted from his mind, his eyes grew bright, and the melancholy that all the breezes of the Indian Ocean had not blown away suddenly vanished.

"Two days later they left Ceylon, came through the Straits of Malacca and, by way of the Arafura Sea and Torres Straits, into the Pacific. The captain of the yacht had suggested the Santa Cruz islands as their first stopping place, but one night Duplessis took his wife aside and asked her would she mind their making for New Caledonia instead. Then he gave his reason.

"He said to her, 'When you married me I told you I had no family. That was not quite the truth. I have a brother. He is a convict serving sentence in Noumea. I did not tell you because the thing was painful to me as death.'

"You can fancy her feelings, struck by a bombshell like that, but she says nothing and he goes on telling her the yarn he ought to have told her before they were married.

"This brother, Charles Duplessis, had been rather a wild young scamp. He lived in the Rue du Mont Thabor, a little street behind the Rue St. Honoré in Paris, and he made his money on the Stock Exchange. Then he got into terrible trouble. He was accused of a forgery committed by another man but could not prove his innocence. Armand was certain of his innocence but could do nothing, and Charles was convicted and sent to New Caledonia.

"Well, Madame Duplessis sat swallowing that fact, and when he'd done speaking she sat swallowing some more as if her throat was dry. Then she says to Armand:

" 'Your brother is innocent, then,' she says.

" 'As innocent as yourself,' he answers her, 'and it is the knowledge of all this that has caused my illness and depression. Before I was married, I managed to forget it all, but married to the woman I love, rich and happy, with enviable surroundings, thoughts of Charles came and knocked at my door, saying, 'Remember me in your happiness.'"

" 'But can we do nothing for him?' asked Madame Duplessis.

" 'Nothing' replied Armand, 'unless we can help him to escape.'

"Then he went on to tell her how he had not wanted to come on this long voyage at first, feeling that there was some fate in the business, and that it would surely bring him somehow or another to Noumea; then how the idea had come to him at Ceylon that he might be able to help Charles to escape.

"She asked him if had he any plan, and he replied that he had not—that it was impossible to make any plan till he reached Noumea and studied the place and its possibilities.

"Well, there was the position the woman found herself in, and a nice position it was. Think of it, married only a short time and now condemned to help a prisoner to escape from New Caledonia, for, though she could easily have refused, she felt compelled to the business both for the sake of her husband and the sake of his brother, an innocent man wrongfully convicted.

"She agreed to help in the attempt, like the high-spirited woman she was, and a few days later they raised the New Caledonia reef and the Noumea lighthouse that marks the entrance to the harbor.

"Madame Duplessis had a big acquaintance in Paris, especially among the political and military people, and, no sooner had the yacht berthed than the governor and chief people who knew her name began to show their attentions, tumbling over themselves with invitations to dinners and parties.

"That, again, was a nice position for her, having to accept the hospitality of the people she had come to betray, so to speak. But she had to do it. It was the only way to help her husband along in his scheme and, leaving the yacht, she took up her residence in a house she rented on the sea road; you may have seen it, a big white place with green verandas, and there she and her husband spent their time while the yacht was being overhauled.

"They gave dinners and parties and went on picnics; they regularly laid themselves out to please. Then one night Armand came to his wife and said he had been studying all means of escape from Noumea and had found only one. He would not say what it was, and she was content not to poke into the business, leaving him to do the plotting and planning till the time came when she could help.

"Armand said that before he could do anything in the affair he must first have an interview with Charles. They were hand in glove with the governor and it was easy enough to ask to see a prisoner, but the bother was the name of Duplessis, for Charles had been convicted and deported under that name. The governor had never noticed Charles and the name of Duplessis was in the prison books and forgotten. It would mean raking the whole business up and claiming connection with a convict. Still, it had to be done.

' "Next day Armand called at the governor house and had an interview. He told the governor that a relation named Charles Duplessis was among the convicts and that he very much wanted to have an interview with him.

"Now the laws at that time were very strict and the governor, though pretty lax in some things, as I've said, found himself up against a very stiff proposition and that proposition was how to tell Armand there was nothing doing.

"'I am sorry,' said the governor, 'but what you ask is impossible, Monsieur Duplessis. A year ago it would have been easy enough, but since the escape of Benonini and that Englishman Travels, the orders from Paris have forbidden visitors. Any message you would like me to send to your relation shall be sent, but an interview— no.'

"Then Armand played his ace of trumps. He confessed, swearing the governor to secrecy, that Charles was his brother. He said that Charles had in his possession a family secret that it was vital to obtain. He talked and talked and the upshot was that the governor gave in.

"Charles would be brought by two wardens to the house on the Sea Road after dark on the following day. The interview was to take place in a room with a single door and single window. One warden was to guard the door on the outside, the other would stand below the window. The whole interview was not to last longer than half an hour.

"Next evening after dark, steps sounded on the path to the house with the green veranda, Madame Duplessis had retired to her room, she had dismissed the servants for the evening and Armand himself opened the door. One of those little ten-cent, whale-oil lamps was the only light in the passage but it was enough for Armand to see the forms of the wardens and another form, that of his brother.

"The wardens, unlike the governor, weren't particular about trifles. They didn't bother about guarding doors and windows. Sure of being able to pot anyone who made an attempt to leave the house, they sat on the fence in the moonlight counting the money Armand had given them, ten napoleons apiece.

"Half an hour passed during which Madame Duplessis heard voices in argument from the room below, and then she heard the hall door open as Charles went out. Charles shaded his eyes against the moon, saw the wardens approaching him from the fence, and walked off with them back to the prison he had come from.

"Then Madame Duplessis came from her room and found her husband in the passage. He seemed overcome by the interview with his brother.

"She asked him had he made plans for Charles' escape, and he answered: 'No.' Then he went on to say that escape was impossible. They had talked the whole thing over and had come to that decision. She stood there in the hall likening to him, wondering dimly what had happened, for only a few hours before he had been full of plans and energy and now this interview seemed to have crushed all the life out of him.

"Then she said: 'If that is so there is no use in our remaining any longer at Noumea.' He agreed with her and went off to his room, leaving her there wondering more than ever what could have happened to throw everything out of gear in that way.

"She was a high-spirited woman and she had thought little of the danger of the business; pitying Charles, she did not mind risking her liberty to set him free, and the thought that her husband had funked the business came to her suddenly as she stood there, like a stab in the heart.

"She went off to her room and went to bed, but she could not sleep for thinking, and the more she thought the clearer it seemed to her that her husband, brought up to scratch, had got cold feet, as the Yankees say, and had backed out of the show, leaving Charles to his fate.

"She was more sure next morning for he kept away from her, had breakfast early and went off into the town shopping. But the shock of her life came at dinner time, for when he turned up for the meal it was plain to be seen he had been drinking more than was good for him— trying to drown the recollections of his own weakness, it seemed to her.

"She had never seen him under the influence before and she was shocked at the change it made in him. She left the table.

"Afterward she was sorry that she did that for it was like the blow of an ax between them. Next morning he would scarcely speak to her and the day after they were due to leave for France.

"They were due out at midday, and at eleven Duplessis—who had lingered in the town to make some purchases—had not come on board. He did not turn up till half an hour after the time they were due to sail, and when he did it was plain to be seen that all his purchases had been made in cafe's.

" 'He was flushed and laughing and joking with the boatman who brought him off, and his wife, seeing his condition, went below and left the deck to him—a nice position for a woman on board a yacht like that with all the sailors looking on, to say nothing of the captain and officers. However there was nothing to be done and she had to make the best of it, which she did by avoiding her husband as much as she could from that point on. The chap had gone clean off the handle. It was as if his failure to be man enough to rescue his brother had broken him, and the drink which he flew to for consolation finished the business.

They stopped at Colombo and he went ashore. They were three days getting him back and when he came he looked like a sack of meal in the stern sheet of the pinnace. They stopped at Port Said and he got ashore again without any money, but that was nothing, for a chap coming off a yacht like that gets all the tick he wants for anything in Port Said. He was a week there and was only got away by the captain of the yacht knocking seven bells out of him with his fists and then handing the carcass to two quartermasters to take on board ship.

"They stopped nowhere else till they reached Marseilles, and there they found Madame Duplessis' lawyer waiting for them, having been notified by cable from Port Said.

"A doctor was had in and he straightened Armand up with strychnine and bromide, and they brushed his hair and shaved him and stuck him in a chair for a family conference, consisting of Madame Duplessis, the old maiden aunt, Armand, and the lawyer.

"Armand had no fight in him. He looked mighty sorry for himself but offered no explanations or excuses, beyond saying that the drink had got into his head. Madame Duplessis, on the other hand, was out for scalps—do you wonder! Fancy that voyage all the way back with a husband worse than drunk! When I say worse than drunk I mean that this chap wasn't content to take his booze and carry on as a decent man would have done. No, sir. He embroidered on the business without the slightest thought of his wife. An ordinary man full up with liquor and with a wife touring round would have tried to have hidden his condition as far as he could, but this blighter carried on regardless, and, when the whisky was in, wasn't to hold or bind.

"Of course she recognized that something in his brain had given way and she took into account that he was plainly trying to drown the recollection of his cowardice in not helping Charles to escape. All the same she was out for scalps and said so.

"She said she would live with him no more, that she had been a fool to marry a man whom she had only known for a few months and of whose family she knew nothing. She said she would give him an allowance of a thousand francs a month if he would sheer off and get out of her sight and never let her see him again.

"He sat listening to all this without a sign of shame and when she'd finished he flattened her out by calmly asking for fifteen hundred a month instead of a thousand. Never said he was sorry, just asked for a bigger allowance as if he was talking to a business man he was doing a deal with instead of a wife he had injured and outraged. Even the old lawyer was sick, and it takes a lot to sicken a French lawyer, I can tell you that.

"What does she do? She says: 'I'll allow you two thousand a month on the condition I never see your face or hear from you again. If you show yourself before me,' she says, 'or write to me, I'll stop the allowance. If you try to move the law to make us live together, I'll turn all my money into gold coin and throw it in the sea and myself after it, you beast,' she says.

"And he says, 'All right, all right, don't fly away with things,' he says. 'Give me my allowance and you'll never see me again.'

"One day an old woman turned up at her house asking her to come at once to where he was living as he was mortally ill and couldn't hold out more than a few hours.

"She didn't think twice, but came, taking a cab and being landed in a little old back street at the door of a house that stood between a thieves' cafe and a rag shop.

"Up the stairs she went, following the old woman, and into a room where his royal highness was lying with a jug of whisky on the floor beside him and a hectic blush on his cheeks.

" 'I'm dying,' he says, 'and I want to tell you something you ought to know. I was sent to New Caledonia,' he says, 'for a robbery committed by another man.'

"She thought he was raving, but she says, 'Go on.'

" 'Armand and I were twins,' he says, 'as like as two peas. Armand could do nothing. He stayed in Paris while poor Charles—that's me—went making roads on Noumea. Then you married him.'

" 'But you are Armand,' she cries, 'you are my husband or am I mad?'

" 'Not a bit,' says he. 'I'm Charles, his twin brother.

" 'A year ago you and him came in a big yacht to Noumea and the governor sent me one night to have a talk with him. When we were alone he told me how his heart had been burning a hole in him for years, how he had married a rich woman— that's you— and how when he was happy and rich his heart had burned him worse so that the doctors not knowing what was wrong with him had ordered him a sea voyage.' Then Charles goes on to tell how Armand had come to the conclusion that even if he helped Charles to escape this likeness between them would lead surely to the giving away of the whole show, make trouble among the crew of the yacht and so on— besides the fact that it was next to impossible for a man to escape from Noumea in the ordinary way. But said Armand, 'We can change places and no one will know. Strip and change here and now,' he says, 'the guards are outside, I'll take your place and go to prison and you'll be free. I've got a scissors here and two snips will make our hair the same, and by good luck we are both clean shaven. You've done half your sentence of ten years and I'll do the other half,' he says. 'The only bargain I'll make is that you'll respect my wife and live apart from her and, after a while, you'll break the news to her and, maybe, when I'm free in five years she'll forgive me.'

"Charles finishes up by excusing himself for the drink, saying if she'd served five years without the chance of a decent wet all that time she'd maybe have done as he'd done.

"He died an hour after and there was that woman left with lots to thank about— first of all her husband wasn't the drunkard that had disgraced her, but he was a convict serving his time and serving it wrongfully.

"The thundering great fact stood up like a shot tower before her that Armand wasn't the drunkard that had disgraced her in two ports and before a ship's company, wasn't the swine that took her allowance and asked for more. That he was a saint, if ever a man was a saint.

"She rushed home, telegraphed to Marseilles and recommissioned the Gaudriole that was still lying at the wharves. A week later she sailed again for Noumea.

"On the voyage she plotted and planned. She had determined to save him from the four years or so of the remains of his sentence at all costs and hazards, and when the yacht put in here she had a plan fixed on, but it was kiboshed by the fact that the governor, as I have said, was changed. However she took up residence for a while in the town. People she had known before called on her and she gave out that her husband was dead.

"You can fancy how a rich widow was run after by all and sundry, myself included— not that I had any idea about her money. I only cared for herself. She knew this as women know such things, by instinct. She had asked for my help. I'm a strange chap in some ways. I had liked her enough to ruin myself for her by risking everything to give her husband back to her, and between us we had worked out a plan that was a pippin.

"It would have freed Armand only that we found on inquiring about him that he had already escaped— he was dead. Died of fever two months before she came.

"I heard once of a Japanese child that said her doll was alive because she loved it so much, adding that if you loved anything enough it lived. Well, in my experience, if you love anything enough you can make it love you.

"That woman stayed on in Noumea and I made her love me. At last I married her. You know her— she is my wife. She loves Armand still, as a memory, and for the sake of his memory we live here. It's as good a place to live as anywhere else, especially now that they have settled to send no more convicts from France."

________________

4: Bully Beef

The Strand Magazine, May 1934

Sydney Mail (NSW)  7 Dec 1938

YOU would scarcely credit the number of little businesses, coast and island, associated with the Western Pacific and to be found in Mulholland's Directory, which, however, does not give you the illicit ones, like that, for instance, of Mr. James Hennessy, carried on under the cloak of a microscopic trade in copra.

Illicit trading is much more fun than the other sort if you have the nerve and the ease of conscience that is the associate and child of absolute amorality; and Mr. Hennessy, being well fitted out in this respect, being also possessed of an artistic sense and a lover of the sun, had chosen for his home and trading centre Samba, a fragment of beauty that seems to have dropped from Paradise into the blue Pacific, the splash of its fall fixed and eternalised in the foam of the reef.

SAMBA is American (mandated), and is too small for honest trade and just too far from the Californian coast to be turned into a bathing beach, useless for any purposes except those of a poet, a painter, or a Hennessy; for the moons of Samba are larger and more luminous than the moons of anywhere else, the flowers more wonderful, and the peace more perfect— also the remoteness a blind to the roving eye of the American Customs on the look-out for distributing centres, one might think.

Hennessy's little house was planted on the edge of the trees that bordered the three hundred yards of salt-white beach which is the only landing beach of this happy island. Hennessy's wife, a yellow lady who talked Irish with a Chinese intonation and no doubt Chinese with an Irish accent, lived in the kitchen premises, exhibiting her existence mostly through the mediumship of marvellous curries, chop-suey, and crabs cooked in the Canton manner. His boat lay on the beach, and in it he could row out and, letting her drift on the placid inshore waters, smoke and dream or contemplate through green fathoms the pretty painted fish and the wonders of Nature as revealed in the world of coral.

ONE morning (it was April 1st and a Tuesday) Hennessy came out on his verandah in pyjamas and slippers to find the U.S. Customs ship Sim anchored inside the reef. She was not exactly a ship; she was, as a matter of, fact, an eighty-ton ketch with a powerful Diesel engine, built at the Haarlem yards at Benicia, the yards where the old Pacific schooners used to come from and whose slipways gave to the world the Leonora and the Mary Rose. She looked lovely lying there at her moorings on the wan blue early morning water that the sun had not yet reached over the shoulder of the island, and with the gulls flitting and chanting round her; but Hennessy, contemplative in his pyjamas, showed no sign of admiration, but the reverse.

'That blasted Sterrett!'

He spoke the words almost dispassionately; then, turning, he came back into the house and sat down to breakfast on what had been set out for him by the chop-suey lady. Hot rolls and coffee, fried eggs and tomatoes, island honey: all perfect in their way, yet spoiled for him by Sterrett.

STERRETT was a Customs officer whose home port was Santa Barbara, but whose radius of action had been enlarged by Authority when Authority had  chosen him to deal with a certain ring connected with the dope traffic.

'Go where you want to as long as you get them.'

Those were his instructions, boiled down, and he had acted on them.

Like the fox in its earth when the huntsman takes to the spade, Hennessy for some time past had heard Sterrett digging for him. Distinctly. This was the third visit of the Sim to Samba within a year. He felt himself suspected; he felt that, somehow or another, Authority had got it into its head that beautiful, peaceful little Samba was being used as a centre of distribution for goods that oughtn't to be distributed; he felt aggrieved, and this morning a wee bit disturbed, for the Lark, with Captain Murphy and a big consignment of Canton opium, ought to have arrived yesterday, and was almost sure to arrive to-day, if not tomorrow. Was it simply a coincidence Sterrett's coming at this moment? No, there was something in it— but it did not matter.

Sterrett, hunt as much as he liked, would not find the stuff. Even Captain Pat Murphy, the conveyer of it, did not know that he had it on board!

Captain Pat was not blind either to the unlawful occasions of the Lark or to the fact that his charterers were what they were, but on this occasion he was blind. He had been ordered to take a consignment of copra to Connors of San Francisco and to return in ballast, having purchased some stores, including twelve large-sized tins of bully beef, not from the ship chandler's, but from Aaronson's the first provision shop on the right as you go up Market Street from Ferry Buildings.

'Remember, the first provision store on the right of the street,' had been the instructions, and Captain Pat could be absolutely reckoned on m to obey instructions to the letter.

Aaronson's, the first provision shop on the right as you go up Market Street, sold provisions, it is true, but in reality it was the distributing centre of a dope ring whose muffled activities had caught the ear of Sterrett; he was after them— at least, he was after their top man, Voules, a ruffian as big as King Kong and twice as dangerous to society.

Hennessy, who was only one of the agents of his majesty, had no fear as regards the arrival of the Lark; the opium contained in the tins labelled 'Bully Beef' would never be suspected. The tins were absolute masterpieces, absolute replicas of the tins put out by the great firm that feeds half the world and half the wars of the world. King Kong never went wrong about his tins; whether they were bully beef tins or condensed milk tins or asparagus tins, they were always absolutely above suspicion. No, there was nothing to be feared owing to the arrival of the Lark.

'HELLO, Judge!'

Sterrett had stepped on to the veranda, and Hennessy, coming out, gave him greeting. They sat down in the two cane Madeira chairs to the right of the doorway, and Hennessy produced cigarettes.

'And how's business?' asked Sterrett after he had explained the reason of his look-in at Samba— a refit owing to a blow he had experienced south of Tongi.

'Business nothing!' said Hennessy. 'Call it fun, if copra prices are ruling same as when I sent my last consignment to Connors; and at the best of times it's not much business I'd be doing at all, with half a dozen coconut trees for me stock-in-trade and a lot of bone-lazy Kanakas to work the stuff.'

'Copra's rising,' said Sterrett. 'I took note of that in the Los Angeles Times when I was last in.'

'Is it?' said Hennessy. 'Well, that's great news, if Cap Pat Murphy hasn't hit Connors before the rising. He took away a cargo seven weeks ago, and he was due back yesterday by my reckoning.'

'Old Pat Murphy— I know him— least, I know of him. Do you find him a trustable man?'

'I've never found him robbing me,' said Hennessy.

Then they became silent, lounging in the creaky chairs, smoking and contemplating the glory of the scene; for the sun was now full on the amethystine sea, on the reef with its fighting gulls, and the tranquil blue of the inshore waters, where the Sim swung stern to the shore with the bright ripple of the flooding tide at her chain. Trade might be possible, but wickedness surely could not exist in such a world whose peace and pure loveliness had even affected the mind of Sterrett, turning it for a moment from ideas of business towards a single bright idea— drinks.

An idea that was just beginning to formulate itself in the words, 'You haven't got a spot of—?' when business struck him dumb. The fore-canvas of a small ship had broken to sight beyond the cape to southward. It was the Lark.

Hennessy had half risen to get drinks. He completed the resurrection, shaded his eyes, confirmed the fact, and went in for the hooch.

When he came out the Lark had declared herself openly a small schooner with a low freeboard and dingy canvas suggestive, in a dead calm, of a beggarwoman's washing hung out to dry, but bellying now to a full sailing breeze from the west.

'Beauty, ain't she?' said Sterrett as he took his drink from the other. 'She and old Pat are a match pair, if you ask me. Lord knows what she hasn't run in her time since she quitted sharking. I've got her record, which is mostly guns, rum, and dope. Turned respectable two years ago when she was bought by the Way Hoo Mission Society, but they couldn't stick her more than six months— she stank too strong of old shark-oil and evil doings, to say nothing of leaking like a colander; so Pat got her for next to nix, and what he's been doing with her is what I want to know. Carrying little cargoes of copra and such-like, maybe; all the same, I've been a long time waiting to get him and her together for a talk. Funny I should have blown in just now, ain't it?'

'Very. You going to overhaul her?'

'Maybe I'll have a look round. You've found him trustable, you say— all the same, there's no knowing what little private trade of his own he's carrying on under cover of your copra.'

On board the Sim he waited till the Lark's anchor was down, then he put off for her, laying his boat alongside and coming on board leg over rail without a by your leave, Customs fashion, to be received by Captain Pat, a bulbous-faced mariner attired simply in a net undervest and shorts.

'United States Customs,' announced Sterrett.

'Knew it— smelt you,' pleasantly replied Captain Pat.

'Captain Pat Murphy?'

'The same.'

'My name's Sterrett. I've come just to look over you.'

'And welcome, but you're wastin' your time.'

'No matter, it's the Government's.'

'Sure— where would you like to be lookin' first?'

Sterrett jerked his thumb in the direction of the hatch cover, the locking bars were removed, and he descended with two of his men whom he called up from the boat. Captain Pat lit a pipe and smoked, contemplating the beauty of the shore till the others returned.

'Where next?' asked the Captain.

'Fo'c'sle.'

The fo'c'sle drawn blank, it was the turn of the cabin lockers, bunks, bedding— nothing.

Captain Pat, looking on, had if driven into him that Sterrett must have been well documented as to his (Captain Pat's) past and the past of the Lark, and the revelations must have been recent else all this would have happened before. It also seemed to him that it was an extraordinary piece of good luck Sterrett pouncing on them like this when there was nothing to find. On any other voyage it would have been different.

'And now for the lazarette,' said Sterrett.

'Out with the stuff till I have a look at it.' He spoke to his men, not the Captain, and as they passed the stuff up, bag by bag and tin by tin, he took each article and examined it with the swift glance that falsity could not fool, the glance of the cashier who is dealing with coin and notes; the bread bag and the bags containing oatmeal and rice were dealt with more exhaustively, but the tins containing beef, baked beans, etc., went through at a glance. One point struck him.

'You've a good deal of stuff here,' said he, 'all that beef— what have you been feeding your people on during the voyage?'

'Oh, them tins aren't mine,' replied Captain Pat. 'That beef's for Hennessy and his Kanakas. What have I been feedin' us on? Taters and bread and oatmeal parridge and corned mutton which's all gone, and salt pork— like to see the harness cask?'

'Yep.'

The harness cask drawn blank, Captain Pat made declaration that chickens had also been consumed on the voyage and inquired if United States Customs would like to inspect the empty coop.

'Well then,' said he, 'would you like to have a look at me teeth?'

Sterrett laughed. When not a nose-hound he was quite human.

'Yes, Cap,' said he, 'but I'll see them, no doubt, when we are at dinner. Hennessy asked me to dinner, one sharp, and told me to tell you to come along.'

Then he put off for his ship, not in the least assured of Captain Pat's innocence as regards certain matters, but quite sure that on this occasion Customs had struck a bald patch.

AT five minutes to one Captain Pat stepped on to Hennessy 's verandah, dressed respectably in a suit of white drill and a panama. He put the panama on the floor and took a seat and a vermouth. Sterrett had already arrived, and the smell of the curry from the kitchen was arriving. They sat down to dinner. It was like two hares and a hound meeting for a festive occasion, only in the animal world there could be no such thing as such sinking of differences; for in their hearts as in their minds they were now for the moment one— at least, just three men and a curry that might have descended from paradise, palm toddy, the fore-knowledge of Benedictine to follow and excellent cigars. Hennessy did himself well, he could afford to.

The conversation, loud enough to be heard in the kitchen, was not of the sort intended for the ears of ladies— but as the Wong woman was not a lady it didn't matter; besides, she was half deaf, owing to a pre-nuptial blow on the head received from a sister Chink in Gay Street, Hong Kong. Roars of laughter that reached the Kanaka children playing on the beach toll of stories never to be found in print, and it was one of these stories, about San Francisco, that, causing reflections to enter the head of Captain Pat, sprang the mine.

'By the way,' said he to Hennessy, 'that place wasn't near Ferry Building.'

'What place?' asked Hennessy. 'The place where you told me to get the beef; it was right away up Market Street, near Lotta's Fountain.'

'Oh, was it?' said Hennessy. 'My mistake.'

Then he made another mistake by hurriedly offering Sterrett another cigar, the present one being only half smoked. However, the thing passed off and time passed on till the Customs man, having consumed all he could consume, shook the ashes from his coat', looked at his watch, and, saying: 'Well, boys, I must love you and leave you— come and dine to-morrow with me on board the ship,' took his departure.

HENNESSY saw him off from the verandah, then, coming back into the cigar haze, sat down again opposite Captain Pat.

'What the blazes did you go talking like that before that chap?' asked Hennessy. 'Talking like what before what chap?'

'Talking about the beef.'

'And what's wrong with that?' asked the Captain. 'Ain't them tins all right? Don't be telling me—?'

'They're all right, they're all right,' cut in the other. 'It's only I didn't want him to know I was gettin' me stores from Aaronson, as Aaronson and me have had a few little deals together as regards whisky — that's all.'

So he lied on the principle that it was always better to keep Captain Pat and business secrets as far apart as possible. The Captain was loyal enough, but he couldn't keep his mouth shut, and when he opened it he often put his foot in it.

'Leaving that aside,' he went on, 'what did you mean by saying that Aaronson's was more than halfway up Market Street?'

'I don't know anything about Aaronson's,' replied the Captain. 'I'd forgot the name you gave me, your sailing orders was clear enough without any name; you told me, distinct, to go up the street till I got to the first provision store on the right of it, and that I did, but it was nowhere near Perry Buildings, it was more'n half-way up.'

'On the right-hand side of the street?'

'Yep.'

'There's something wrong here,' said Hennessy. 'Stand up. Now you're facing up Market Street, which is the right-hand side of it?'

Captain Pat indicated his left.

'But that's your left hand, you fool.'

'Who's saying it isn't? But it's the street's right. Sure, I've come down Market Street five hundred times if I've come, down wanst, I've lived in Polk two years and every marnin—'

'But, you silly blighter— oh, Gosh!— I see— you got that fixed in your thick head and couldn't get it out. What the blazes does it matter your going down or coming up?— that's nothing to do with the right and left of a street.'

'Listen to him! Hasn't comin' down a river nothin' to do with the banks of it to right and left, and does comin' up a river alter them banks? The right bank of the Hudson's the right bank of the Hudson, whether you are coming up or going down.'

'But a river's not a street.'

'Not much difference I can see, except one's wather and the other eshphalty; one's got trams running' up , and down it, t'other steamboats.'

'Oh, shut up! Well, there it is, you took the wrong side and went to the wrong shop and that's all about it.'

'And what's the fuss about, what are you making all the trouble for, isn't one shop as good as another, and isn't beef beef?'

A yellow dog that, hoping for the best, had put its head in at the door received the answer in the form of a high velocity banana from the hand of Hennessy.

THE moon was rising over the island, and Sterrett, seated on a deck-chair on the deck of the Sim, was contemplating the scene. Lights showed on the reef to southward where Kanakas were fish-spearing in the pools, and the ghost of a Hawaiian guitar seemed telling of some long-forgotten love-affair to the wind coming from the groves. Hennessy's bungalow showed the amber glow of a lamp from the sitting-room where he and the Cap, after an airing on the beach, no doubt, and business transactions, would be sitting in interminable talk.

Sterrett was exercised in his mind. The way Hennessy had taken Captain Pat's announcement about the beef had raised suspicion— well, suspicion is perhaps too strong a word to use, for he had seen the tins and passed them and he was not a man to doubt himself; all the same, those tins were talking away down in the depths of his mind and they were talking about Hennessy.

It would be quite easy even now to demand to have them opened, but that would have been to admit that he doubted his own act in passing them; also, if they were honest he would look a bit of a fool— still—

As he sat cogitating on this matter, voices came to him from the Lark, which was lying close by.

'Ain't we going to leave an anchor watch?' inquired one voice.

'Garn,' replied another, 'anchor watch be sugared. Who's to steal her? Pat will be drunk when he comes off.'

Sterrett looked.

The Lark had dropped a boat and her crew were in the boat, all but one man— the objector. Then he joined the others and the boat made for the land, where they beached her, frankly, close to the dinghy in which Captain Pat had rowed himself ashore that afternoon, and in which he would be rowing himself back if not too drunk.

Sterrett took thought for a second. Then he rose, went below, and returned with what is known to the Customs men of the Santa Barbara coast as a ferret, a long bradawl with an almost imperceptible groove in it an inch behind the sharp point; also with an electric lamp.

He hauled in the ship's dinghy, which was streaming on a line, rowed off to the Lark, tied up, went on board, and darted below. He hanked the tins out of the lazarette, placed one on the floor and pierced it with the ferret, drew the instrument out, and examined the groove with nose and eye— beef. It was the same with the rest. The holes would not be noticed till their results became manifest many days hence. Having left everything in order, our man returned to the Sim.

Was he satisfied? No. Another man would have been sure that he had made a mistake in suspecting anything groggy in Hennessy's relationship with those tins; they were innocent beef— how then? What then?

But Sterrett was not another man, and though the intellectual part of his nature might adhere to plain and proven facts the sniffy part was still flinging up its nose and scenting the winds of possibility. Hennessy's manner when Captain Pat had brought the tins on the  tapis, that was where the scent came from. There was something — something— something— but what?

THE creak of oars broke into his reverie. A small boat was coming out, leaving a track of frosted silver on the water. The rower was singing:

'Oh, there was an ould hen

And she had a wooden leg,

And she went to the barn,

And she laid a wooden egg.

She laid it right down

By the barn— don't you think

It's just about time

For another little dhrink?'

The singer was Captain Pat, not soused, but lively.

Sterrett hailed him. 'Ahoy, there, Cap!'

'Yourself!'

'Come aboard and have another little drink.'

'Sure.'

Sterrett fetched another deck-chair for the musician, also the mixings. Followed great contentment.

'Lord, ain't it a glurious night?'

'Sure.'

'Reminds me of the ould days when I used to go courtin'.'

'Nights, you mean.'

'Nights, I mane. Well, well— there's no fools like the young fools, but, faith, I wouldn't mind being a fool again.'

The conversation, steered by Sterrett, turned towards San Francisco, and suddenly:

'What were you saying to Hennessy about that shop being up Market Street?' asked Sterrett.

'Oh, Hennessy — you mean Aaronson's, though I'd forgot his name? Tould me particular to go to the first grub store on the right of the street as you go up from Ferry Buildings and see the manager and tell him I'd come for them beef tins, and so I did, only Hennessy'd got' the right and left of the street wrong.'

When followed an explanation of the right and left complex.

'So,' said Sterrett, 'the long and the short of it is, you went to the wrong shop.'

'Of course I did,' replied the Cap.

'And the shop you didn't go to was Aaronson's.'

'Of course it was the shop I didn't go to, seeing I didn't go there. You seem about as thick-headed as Hennessy, and him bothering me about it as if, as I tould him, one shop wasn't as good as another and as if beef wasn't beef.'

'Sure,' said Sterrett, reviewing in his rapid brain the whole proposition as it now appeared.

Cap Pat innocent as a babbling baby. Innocent goods bought by him at the wrong shop instead of possibly criminal goods to be bought at the right shop, the right shop Aaronson's. Aaronson — was Aaronson's name on the suspect list? The list of gentlefolk with '?' attached to their names, yet whose doings and connections somehow evaded inquiry. He could not tell till he got back to Santa Barbara.

NEXT morning the Sim was gone. Hennessy felt surprised and the slightest bit disturbed. He questioned Captain Pat, and the Cap could only say that Sterrett had said nothing about pulling up his hook to him last night.

'I went aboard for a drink,' said he, 'and he didn't say nothin' about leavin'— but that's the way of those chaps, always running in and out like rats.'

'What did you talk about?'

'Oh, one thing and another.'

'He didn't say anything about his work or San Francisco?'

'Nothing, only he stuck to my way of thinking when I told him of our barge over the right and left of streets.'

Hennessy pumped; not much came up, at least only what we know; still, enough to increase Hennessy's vague disturbance of mind. Very little would have made him take a canoe and quit Samba for a less well-known address, but he hung on. What the Captain had given away was not, he felt sure, enough to start the law in motion— at least, he felt almost sure.

THE explosion that blew King Kong and his associates sky-high, if not to heaven, had repercussions all down the Pacific coast. At least half a dozen men were arrested in the ports and port towns, and last came Hennessy's turn. The Sim arrived with Sterrett, a warrant, manacles and all.

Hennessy had departed.

Captain Pat, who was still there, failing charter, made deposition, rather muddled with palm wine, but quite speechable.

'The chap was broodin' ever since you left,' said he. 'Then a week ago, ould Sru, who does some of the copra supplying, asked for payment in beef and Hennessy gave him a tin out of the storehouse, and the ould chap came back in half an hour to say the tin had gone bad because a hole had been bored in it and it was the same with all the lot, and Hennessy he sat down with a pencil and bit of paper and a calendar and all and said to me, "They were the tins you fetched from 'Frisco and I'm trying to calculate when them holes were bored. It couldn't have been in 'Frisco, because the stuff would have been badder than it is; it's not so bad as all that— not stinkin', but more like prepared to stink — gone sour—"

'Well, he does his calculating, and that night he says to me, "I reckon Sterrett"— meanin' you— "is a clever chap, but maybe he's a bit too clever." He kept drinking gin and saying that over and over, and that was all the limit of his conversation that night. Bughouse, I think he'd gone; and next day he piled a canoe with his belongings and money— he said he reckoned Samba wasn't healthy. He said there were too many holes in the position; he said one hole wouldn't have mattered, but twelve was eleven too many to be anything but a warning from the Almighty that a skunk was at work. He seemed to have got them holes in the tins in his head— bughouse, clean bughouse— for he seemed to have you in his head, same as if you was a movie star, as well as the holes, and kep' on talkin' of your cleverness and how you were too clever, and all such.

'Then he put out, his canoe lookin' like a fruit store with bananas tied to the outrigger poles and a cask of water enough to last him weeks. "I'll send you a picter postcard from my new address," says he, "when I've found it, and if anyone asks for me tell 'em wherever I've gone I haven't gone to Hootle Footle Land, where the mugs come from."

'So, seein' you're askin' for him, there you have it.'

'Damn!' said Sterrett.

_______________

5: The Damoclean Sword

Mercury (Hobart)  31 Aug 1938

I WAS staying at Grange-on-the-Sands when John Sargenson came down to the little hotel. He did not know that I was there, and it was, a mutual and pleasant surprise when, coming Into the hotel bar for a glass of beer at 11 a.m., I found him newly arrived and seated on a high stool by the counter, talking to the barmaid.

Let me say at once that the bar of the "Crab Hotel" is not as other bars are. Pitch-pine panelled and frequented mostly by the sound of the sea, an occasional visitor, and a few old longshoremen fresh and innocent as sea breezes, it is a bar that a bishop might enter without losing in dignity or self-respect.

Miss Jenkins— the presiding deity— who was chatting with Sargenson when I entered, was in keeping with her surroundings; a plain healthy girl with an honest mind of her own, a pleasant word for everyone, a faithful, church-goer and a serious student of the works of Mrs. Barclay and Mr. Hocking.

I was somewhat surprised to see these two getting on so well together; for Sargenson, as far as he had disclosed himself to me, was a man of reserved disposition and of a severe habit of thought. Very wealthy, unmarried, and without any business to worry him, he engaged himself in none of those occupations pursued by the wealthy und the free. Horses, motor-cars, golf courses, and salmon rivers made no appeal to him. Chess was one of his few pleasures, and anything with a problem in it had a curious fascination for him. More— especially if the problem had to do with crime.

"Criminals set problems for honest men to un-ravel," he said to me once. "That is why criminals interest me. In them-selves they are the most uninteresting people in the world, simply because their motives are always sordid. The most fascinatingly interesting murder problem has for its core the low-down creature who, for the sake of gain, has committed the murder."

"How about murders for the sake of revenge?" I asked.

"There aren't any," he replied; "or if there are they rarely present a problem. Revenge murders, at least in this country, are, I should say, nearly always committed in hot blood. And hot blood leaves traces as plain as the spoor of an elephant. But I said there aren't any— I can't recall any murder for the sake of revenge committed within my memory— that is to say any murder of distinction. I know men have shot one another and knifed one another, and servant girls have put rat poison in their mistress' food, but those little affairs do not rank in my category of crimes worth considering."

SARGENSON was an admirer of Sherlock Holmes and a greater admirer still of the Chevalier Dupin, and it chanced that on the following morning— Sunday— as we were walking along the beach discussing the methods of the latter, Fate put into the hands of Sargenson the material for an inquiry that would have delighted the heart of the Chevalier's inventor.

The fine weather of the day before and early morning had vanished, giving place to a clouded sky and a blustering south-westerly wind with a push in it that spoke of more weather be-hind. The sea had grown angry and big, sheeting up over the desolate sands and showing white caps far out, where all the visible traffic was a lone tramp steamer pounding along down the Channel and a pilot boat making up. We had almost reached the limits of the sands where the rocks cut out sheer into the water, when something washing on the waves caught my eye; a doric spot on the spume, now drowned out, now appearing again. Sargenson had noticed it too.

"Look," said he; "it's an old shoe, and, by Jove! there's something tied to it."

The next wave laid this offering of the sea fairly at our feet, and a strange enough gift it was. An old red satin, high-heeled shoe, connected and tied to a bundle of blue papers by a piece of red tape a foot and a half long. The tape was wound round the bundle of papers and farmed a binding as well as a connecting ligament

Sargenson, with the crook of his stick, raised shoe and bundle and carried them dripping to the rocks, where we sat down to contemplate our find.

"Funny, isn't it?" said he. "Where in the world can they have come from?"

"Some ship, possibly," I replied. "Take the tape off the bundle and see what the papers are."

He took a penknife from his pocket and carefully cut the tape where it en-circled the papers. They were sodden with water, and the outside layers went to pulp under his fingers, without showing any stain, however, of writing or printing ink. The inside papers, though damp, held together. There were three of them of equal size; rough sheets of blue-white paper, which, when spread out, showed no sign of writing or mark of any sort.

"This becomes very interesting," said Sargenson.

"There doesn't seem to be any reason in it," said I.

"That's just why it's interesting," he replied. "There is a reason for everything. Why should these extremely uninteresting and commonplace pieces of paper have been so carefully tied up; why, the shoe— why—" He broke off, and, whistling softly to himself, picked up the shoe.

It had been lined with white satin, but the dye had reached the lining, turning it a pale pink; it had been considerably worn, and on the satin of the inside, almost obliterated, was the maker's name in gold letters, "Morton— Birmingham."

SARGENSON spelled out the letters, and he was on the point of handing the things to me, when, instead, he took up the open pocketknife which he had laid beside him on the rock, and carefully with the point of it picked out something from the inside of the shoe— something that had tucked itself in the crevice between the leather of the sole and the side. It was a grain of rice— a grain of rice swollen by the sea water and faintly pink with the dye of the outside satin.

"There's another seemingly unreasonable thing," said he. Then he laughed, flicked the rice grain away, closed his penknife, and put it in his pocket.

I carried the shoe back to the hotel, leaving the papers and the tape for the wind to play with, the irritating puzzle of the business pursuing me.

"What woman," said I, as we sat at dinner, "could have tied that rubbish to her shoe and flung it into the water— and why?"

"Lord knows," said he; "but it wasn't a woman— at least, I don't think so."

"Why?"

"Because those knots on the tape were a man's. Women don't tie knots like that. Do you know, there seems to me something tragic about all that. It may be fancy, but I've got a feeling that if we could open up the reality of the business, we would come on some-thing more serious than a cast-off shoe tied to a bundle of blank papers."

"We never will," I said.

"Possibly not," he replied.

SARGENSON left for town next day, and I saw nothing and heard nothing of him again till one December evening— six months later— when he turned up at my rooms in. London. It was 9 p.m., and I was sitting over the fire reading a hook when he was shown in. He took the arm-chair opposite mine and lit a pipe, and after we had talked for a while on Indifferent matters he came to the real object of his visit

"By the way," said he, "do you remember that shoe we picked up on the beach at Grange-on-the-Sands?"

I had something to say relative to that shoe, but I held my peace, for I guessed by his manner that he had some story to unfold.

"Yes," said I; "I remember it. What about it?"

"You remember that I was very much interested in the business; more than you were? Well, all the way to London that shoe haunted me. That and the bundle of papers, and the length of red tape and the grain of rice. Well, so stupid are we that the idea of a wedding did not occur to me till I reached Waterloo."

"The idea of a wedding?"

"Rather, the idea of coupling the shoe with a wedding. They throw old shoes and rice after newly-married people, and an old shoe thrown into a carriage after a bride who has just received a shower of rice— do you take me?"

"Might carry a grain of rice in it— yes, it's possible-and the bride might keep the shoe for luck."

"Precisely. I kept figuring on that idea— as the Americans say— all day. Then I set my imagination to work to discover in what possible manner that shoe found itself in the sea— and you would laugh, perhaps, it you knew the money and time I spent in working out the possibilities involved in that problem. The result was the arrival at the most possible solution. The thing was flotsam from a passing ship. The currents ran very strong on that part of the coast, and the set of the current just there was quite enough to account for the carriage shoreward of a small article dropped from a vessel passing up or down Channel. The shoe was then most probably dropped from a ship, and that ship was most probably outward bound."

"Why outward bound?"

"Well, don't you see, the thing was to my mind the property of a newly-married woman."

"I see; a newly-married woman leaving England on her honeymoon or emigrating. You are a perfect Sherlock Holmes!"

"Don't laugh-wait till you have heard the end. I determined, having gone so far, to go farther. You will remember that there was the name of the maker on the inside of the shoe, 'Morton— Birmingham'? Now that might have been considered by some people a fine clue to the owner. I disregarded it at once. Morton's I discovered to be a large general stores, the shoe was old ; the clue was worthless. I did not spend an hour on it. Instead, I looked for a much more important thing— the ship."

"Good heavens! Why, there are a thousand ships going up and down Channel," said I.

"Oh, no, there aren't-not at one particular time. It was Wednesday, June 3, that we found the thing, at 9 a.m.

"I was hunting for a ship that passed Grange-on-the-Sands outward bound between midnight and nine o'clock on .the morning of June 3; not a sailing ship or a tramp, but a passenger ship. I employed a man to do this spade work tor me. It took him three days and it cost me five guineas. He brought me only three possible ships; and not only that, he brought me their passenger lists."

I could not but admire the persistency of this mole digging into the darkness of the world's affairs for the pure pleasure of the thing, but I said nothing while be went on:

"There was a Japanese boat, the Fuji Maru, and there was a married couple on its passenger list; but they had a family, so they were ruled out. There was a Union Castle intermediate boat, but it had scarcely any passengers and no married couple. The reason it had so few passengers was owing to the fact that it would call at Southampton where most of its passengers were due to join. There was also a Black Funnel liner. She was full up, and in her passenger list occurred the names of only two married couples— a Mr. and Mrs. Johnstone and a Mr. and Mrs. Fremling. I said to myself that shoe belongs in all probability to Mrs. Johnstone or Mrs. Fremling. The Black Funnel liner was named the Glasgow, bound for Cape Town and Durban, and not due back for another nine or ten weeks. She was a swift boat, almost as good as the mail, and she did not stop at Las Palmas or Teneriffe like most African boats; she stopped at the Cape Verde Islands. Now all my trouble and inquiries up to this had led me nowhere— only, that is to say, to a probability, or, to put it more correctly, to something between a possibility and a probability. The thing had amused my mind, but honestly I was getting rather tired of it, and the very sight of a woman's shoe gave me indigestion. I went for a trip to Paris, and then I went to Scotland, but I had left with my spade man in London directions to ascertain the exact date of, the Glasgow's return and to wire me when she was coming into port. This he did, and I came up to London, and two days later I managed it so that the purser of the Glasgow dined with me at the Savoy.

"The purser is the brains of a passenger ship, and Mr. Hitchin, of the Glasgow, was a very good representative of his class. A little man, quick in the uptake and a hit reserved at first. My agent had told him that I was a wealthy man; what other things he had said I don't know, beside the tact that I wanted to make inquiries as to Africa; but I do know that when Hitchin met me in the lounge of the Savoy he was awkward and evidently not quite at ease, and that a cocktail at the American bar scarcely thawed him. However, at dinner he became more himself. Nothing inspires confidence so much as food; eating with another man you become more friendly than even drinking with him. I expect the reason comes from undated ages when men ate only together who were of the same tribe or family, or who were absolute and assured friends. However that may be, when towards the close of the meal I told him that I wanted to make inquiries not about Africa but about one of the Glasgow's passengers on the last African trip, he did not shy at the question.

" 'You had two married couples on the last voyage out,' said I, 'and I am interested in one of them.' I noticed that his face changed.

" 'Yes,' said he; 'is it by any chance Mr. and Mrs. Fremling you are interested in— I suppose you saw it in the papers?'

"Now, when he said that I experienced the most extraordinary thrill. Could it be possible that my blind hunting after imaginary game was to bear me to something in reality?

" 'About Mrs. Fremling?.' I asked.

" 'Yes,' said he; 'about Mrs. Fremling.'

"We had finished dinner by this, and it was in the lounge over coffee and cigars that lie told me the whole story.

"The Glasgow had cleared the Thames and was making down Channel; it was one o'clock in the morning when Fremling appeared on deck saying that his wife, who occupied the lower bunk in their cabin, was not in her bunk and was nowhere to be found. The quartermaster on duty, the officer of the watch, had seen nothing of her. Mrs. Fremling, it seemed, was a sleep-walker according to her husband's account, and he feared that she might have come on deck and fallen over-board..

"Now, all aft of the bridge and the alleyways was in darkness, and it would have been possible for a passenger to come on deck unobserved. Had she got on the after-gratings, there was nothing but the after-rail to prevent her reaching the sea, and the after rail was not an insuperable obstacle. Leaving that aside, she might climb over the bulwark rails if walking in her sleep or determined on suicide. However that might be, Mrs. Fremling had vanished, and her husband was inconsolable.

" 'There was no suspicion of foul play,' said I.

" 'Oh, no,' said Hitchin. 'Why should there be? There was no cry or struggle heard, and a man cannot pitch a woman overboard same as it she were a bale of wool.' " He looked at me curiously.

" 'Why do you ask?' he finished.

" 'I'll be quite frank with you,' said I, 'and I will ask you to treat what I say as confidential. I believe Fremling murdered his wife. Come— I see you have something on your mind about' him; out with it.'

" 'Well,' said Hitchin, 'it's nothing much— only this: Mr. Fremling left the ship at Cape Town; we went on to Durban, and we came back to Cape Town, where we stayed a day and a hair, well, I found out by accident that Fremling was staying at the Mount Nelson, and he was registered under the name of Mason.'

" 'Changed his name?'

" 'Yes.'

" 'You did nothing?'

" 'What could one do? My business is not to act as a detective, and I had nothing to go on; a man may change his name for a dozen reasons.'

" 'Well,' said I, 'the fact remains, it is only one more fact in the case, but for me it is the crowning one. By the way, what are the portholes on the Glasgow like?' "

"He knew at once what I meant. Since the terrible fire in New York Harbour when people were slowly roasted alive with their heads protruding through portholes too small to give exit to a grown person's body, ship builders have altered and expanded their ideas in this direction. The port-holes of the Glasgow were quite big enough to allow the passage of an ordinary person's body, and Hitchin said so.

"'You think lie threw her through the porthole?' said he, 'or, rather, forced her through?'

" 'That is the Idea,' I replied. 'Killed her in some sort of way; and then pushed her out through the port-hole. It would be quite safe; the splash would be nothing in a ship under way, and a ship's side at night is the most unobserved blank wall in the world.'

"Hitchin pondered over, this, and then he asked me straight, out how I had come into the business and what I knew of the Fremlings. I told him the whole story of the finding of the shoe and the papers, and how I reasoned the thing out, basing my reasoning on the grain of rice. He was considerably impressed, and I must own that I was considerably impressed myself with my own astuteness, and also with the feeling that Providence— Justice if you like the term better— had used me as his instrument in the matter. For not only had I worked up from absolute darkness to the face of the tragedy, but I had brought with me the suggestion based on material evidence that Fremling had throw some of his wife's belongings over board. Hitchin, reviewing all the circumstances with me, agreed that the shoe and the papers might not have been the property of the lost woman but that taking everything into consideration it was one million chance to one that they were. Also going over the matter soberly we came to the conclusion that, suggestive as all the evidence in the case might be, it was legally use less at present. Also, I saw that Hitchin, much as he was interested in the affair, had little stomach for prosecuting the-matter. He was a ship's purser with his living to make and wife and family at Hammersmith He said so frankly, and I agreed to leave him out of the business till such time as his evidence might be required. In return, he gave me a full and minute description of Fremling, alias Mason and we parted company, he going of to Hammersmith and I returning to my rooms.

"Now, what I ought to have done was plain. I ought to have gone to New Scotland Yard, sent to you for that shoe, and placed the whole matter in the hands of trained detectives."

"What I did do," went on Sargenson "seems to me now a lunatic proceeding, yet it was justified by results. I found that a Union Castle boat was leaving for the Cape in two days, and I took my passage on board her to Cape Town. Frankly, I went for pleasure as well as for business, for I felt the need of a sea voyage. Fate was pursuing Fremling as well as Justice, for it had cast the shoe of his wife into the hands of an idle man with money enough to satisfy all his whims and with an instinct for detective work; and it was just that feeling— the feeling I had of Fate being at my shoulder— that gave me the push necessary to carry the thing through.

"On the voyage I was engaged sometimes in speculating on the one mysterious thing which will never be explained, perhaps— why those papers were tied to the shoe and why they were hove overboard. I came to the only probable solution. Fremling had bundled out of the porthole after his wife everything that might incriminate him; had made a rapid search of her luggage, flinging photographs, papers, and so forth— the shoe and the bundle of papers, tied together for some reason by Mrs. Fremling, with the rest. I remembered the knots on the tape seemed to have been tied by a man; all the same I did not alter my opinion, which was upheld by the fact that Fremling, after his landing at Cape Town, had changed his name, -wishing, we may presume, to cut himself absolutely off from his past.

"At Cape Town I began my hunt for the gentleman. I determined to meet him, speak to him, ask him about his wife, and at the first sign of hesitation on his part, the first evidence of guilt, go for him bald-headed and accuse him right out and. man to man. A dangerous thing to do, but a thing to be done. I loathed him already, and I never knew the hunting instinct was so deep in me till then. At Cape Town I found the man for my purpose— Lewis, the sharpest detective in the world, I should think, and a man who knows Africa like the inside of his own pockets. He told me I was a fool, and then he took the commission and we started together on the grand hunt.

"We tracked Mason to Port Elizabeth, and then to Durban; from Durban we followed his spoor to Bloemfontein, and there at an hotel we found him. A medium-sized man, very quiet in appearance, and nothing remarkable about his face with, the exception of the cheek bone. His face just there was broad and flat-quite noticeably so. It was on the verandah of the hotel that I tackled him. He was seated in a basket arm-chair smoking a cigar and with a drink beside him. I drew an arm-chair right up to his table and sat down and gave him 'good-day,' calling him by his name Fremling.

"He knew at once that his hour had come; and he showed his knowledge by his manner, still very quiet; the quiet of a man paralysed by the sudden appearance of the long-expected and long-dreaded.

" 'I have come from England,' said I, 'about that matter on board the Glasgow. I have a friend here with me.'

"He looked up and saw Lewis.

" 'And,' finished I, 'we want the pleasure of your company back to Durban.'

"He rose in a leisurely manner from his chair. Then, taking his fingers from the pocket of his waistcoat where they had been fumbling, he clapped his hand to his mouth.

"Almost immediately he fell on the verandah floor in a fit, and he was dead in live minutes. He had taken cyanide of potassium. Arrest, trial, verdict, death, all came to him like a stroke of lightning.

"You remember that morning I said that I felt there was a tragedy behind that shoe? Well, what do you think of it?"

I SAT speechless for a moment, whilst Sargenson sat watching me, evidently proud of himself and his deeds.

"But," I said at last, "that shoe and those papers had nothing, to do with Mrs. Fremling— no more than I have."

"I beg your pardon," said he; "what is that you say?"

"That shoe and those papers were part of the properties of a cinematograph company."

"A cinematograph company?"

"Good heavens yes! There was a photoplay on the beach that morning at seven— some rubbish— anyhow, part of the thing was the flinging away of some documents into the sea by a woman. To make them sink she tied her shoe to them with a stone in the shoe. When you had gone that day I mentioned the finding of the shoe to Miss Jenkins, the barmaid. She had been down watching the show, and she explained the whole business, with the exception of the rice grain, which may have had a dozen possible origins."

"Good God!" said Sargenson.

He was silent for a moment. Then he said: "So I was following a wrong scent all the time?"

"You were."

"And yet it led me to the murderer just as truly as if it had been in connection with him."

"That is so— if you are sure that Fremling murdered his wife."

"Why, he confessed it. You would have had no doubt at all about that if you had seen his end. Tell me, is this thing the long arm of Coincidence— or Justice, or what?"

"Well," said I, "so far as I can see, it's the long arm of Providence, for if you had done what people call the sensible thing, and placed the matter in the hands of Scotland Yard, they would either have turned the affair down or inquired into it. They would have come to me for the shoe, heard the truth, laughed at you, and Fremling would have escaped."

He agreed with me, and, so far as I can make out, from that day forward he has observed a humbler frame of mind with regard to those things which are eternally confronting human reason— and confounding it.

_________________

6: Wild Ducks

World's News (Sydney) 25 Jan 1919

IT was breaking-up day at the Seminary, and all the cabs in Myrtle Bosworth were in commission, to say nothing of the omnibus from the Queen's Hotel, carting girls, bicycles, portmanteaux, hockey sticks, and relatives to the station. There were big girls and little ones, flax-headed girls, black-headed girls, spindle-shanked children, and great, tall girls of seven-teen or eighteen, who looked as if they had grown up through everything but childhood.

And the chatter and the noise! The first day of rook shooting was nothing to it.

Miss Spenlove, the proprietress, who was seated in the study paying journey money and giving parting words, could hear herself speak, but the voice seemed in her ears as the voice of another woman at a distance. She had been at it since five on tea and toast and antipyrine, and it was now ten.

"There is your money, Doris, and now be sure and take care of Maud, give the guard sixpence when you change at Okehampton— the guard of the second train— you needn't give the guard here anything. You have the packet of sandwiches— that is right. I hope you will have pleasant holidays, good-bye. Now Jennifer Fibber, here is your journey money, seven and sixpence, and be sure—"

"Oh, but, Miss Spenlove, there must be some mistake. I'll never be able to get home on that."

"Be sure and take the blue omnibus at Paddington; your aunt wrote particularly to say that; now, good-bye, and try to be a better girl next term. Pray for a new heart, Jennifer Fibber, for you need one badly. Pauline Pyecroft. Oh, you have your money all right, so your aunt advises me, and she told me strictly to tell you that you were to take a four-wheeler— if you can get one— not a taxi-meter cab, at Paddington."

"Yes, Miss Spenlove."

"What I like about you, Pauline," said Miss Spenlove, pausing a moment in her distracted career, "is that, though dull in some things, you are obedient. Obedience is one of the crowning virtues of women."

"Yes, Miss Spenlove."

"You are leaving school for good to-day, but you are entering another and more difficult school, the world. I hope sincerely you will be happy. Good-bye, dear, and always remember me, and come and see me if you are ever at Myrtle Bosworth."

PAULINE PYECROFT was a girl of sixteen, well set up, and, as they say of corpses at coroners' inquests, "well nourished."

She had Titian gold hair, large and luminous eyes with curled-up lashes of dark brown, a passable nose and lovely lips, full, sensitive, yet not too sensitive, delightful lips in fact.

When Miss Pyecroft first joined the Seminary at the age of thirteen, she was just a "little red-headed thing," a feminunculus— to coin a barbarism— a hoop-bowler, toffee-eater, silkworm-keeper. Her hands were often grubby, and washing her neck of a cold morning was often a matter of force and lamentation. But as time went on, Nature, with that suddenness by which she alters women and almond trees, began to touch Miss Pyecroft up.

It was like the unfolding of a flower.

"Why, you little beast, I do believe you're growing pretty," was an expression once used to Miss Pyecroft by a day scholar, and that night Miss Pyecroft looked at herself in a borrowed mirror and smiled.

"What's she been saying to you, Pye?" asked a tall, black-haired girl who was waiting in the hall (she and Miss Pyecroft being journey-mates as far as London).

"Oh, the usual sludge, talking about crowns and things. I say, has your luggage gone to the station?"

"Yes."

"Well, let's walk to the station; we can miss the ten-thirty and go by the eleven-fifteen."

"Right," said the dark-haired lady, and they departed.

"I have an idea," said Miss Farmiloe of the black hair, as they neared the station, "an awfully fine idea; we'll catch the ten-thirty after all."

Miss Pyecroft demurred. "I'm not going to travel with that menagerie, with their buns and feeding bottles and hockey sticks and—"

"I'm not going travel with any menagerie," said Miss Farmiloe, darkly. "You wait and see— you going first?"

"Yes."

"Then give me your money and I'll get the tickets. Wait on the platform and don't move till I come to you."

The express had just drawn up, and the platform was in a turmoil, presenting the tableau of two omnibus loads and five cabs full of girls and their belongings, half a dozen distracted porters, a guard, whistle to lip and misogyny at heart, an engine blowing on steam, and Miss Pyecroft standing in the midst of It all with the placidity of a ruminating  animal.

"Pauline! Pauline!" cried a far voice from a vacuous-looking young female face, leaning out of a second-class carriage, labelled "Ladies only."

"There's room here— Pauline!" But Pauline stood, seeming to hear not, nor moved, till, the guard's whistle blowing, Miss Farmiloe arrived, seized her by the arm, rushed her to a first-class smoking carriage and opened the door. It was empty, and they bundled in just as the train was moving.

"This is better than being locked up with that lot," said Miss Farmiloe, arranging her hat in the strip of mirror under the rack. "Wasn't it a scrumptious idea of mine? Imagine Spenny's face if she saw us in what she calls a 'gentleman's carriage.' "

She sat down and took a packet of Stinckams' Gold Cut cigarettes and a box of matches from her pocket.

"You'll be sick again," said Pauline gloomily. "I wouldn't if I were you, Anne. Where did you buy those?"

"Bobby, my brother, sent me them. Have one; they're ever so nice."

"No, thanks; they make your teeth black, and I read in the 'Lady's Illustrated' or somewhere, they make your eyes red."

"I love the smell of smoke in a house, don't you?" asked the amateur cigarette smoker, blowing smoke through her pretty nose with conscious pride. "I wouldn't give a halfpenny for a man who didn't smoke, would you?"

"If you love men that smoke," replied Pauline, putting her pretty feet comfortably up on the cushions, "you'd love Scram."

"What's that?"

"It's a sort of man my aunt keeps."

"I beg your pardon?" said Miss Farmiloe.

"Oh, she's awfully jolly, but a bit cracked, you know. She's literary, a Socialist, and all that, and Scram's a sort of broken-down, tame cat who writes poetry or something. He's a Norwegian or Scandinavian or something, and lives in a garret in London, and gets starved out now and then, and comes and settles on Aunt and Uncle. You must see him. And such clothes, too; he won't wear decent clothes."

"He must be a tulip, I should think."

"Tulips aren't in it with Scram," assented Pauline in a weary voice. "And he's such a disgrace; he waves his arms about sometimes when he's walking along, and talks to himself. He's extraordinary, goes out and gets wet and comes home and won't have a fire in his bedroom. Aunt says he's had some frightful tragedy, love affair or something, that's blasted his life, and that his soul hates his body and tries to make it as uncomfortable as possible; but the worst of it is he makes everyone else uncomfortable too, and doesn't care a bit. Of course, the village thinks he's a lunatic we're talking care of."

"Pleasant for you."

"Oh, I don't mind, he's rather fun to watch. I take him out walking sometimes, and we go for miles and miles. He never says anything the whole way, just grunts when you speak to him. I like him; he's a new sort of man, and that's a change."

"Are there any decent men in your village?"

"It's two villages," replied Miss Pyecroft evasively. "Ours is a village, a very old one round a tower. A mile away, just on the edge of the sea, is the other part of it, sprung up like a ring of horrid mushrooms— bungalows and tin cottages, and mixed bathing, and all that. I tell you it's a place."

"How so?" asked Miss Farmiloe interestedly.

"Our village is called Hellgate, and it's called Little Hellgate, and there's martello towers all along the shore."

"Yet, but how so? What do you mean by calling it a place?"

"Why, I mean the people that live in it— they're all either bankrupts or divorced people, or dreadful people, you know."

"S'that so?" languidly murmured Miss Farmiloe, whose head was slightly drooping, and whose lips were slightly quivering. Then, suddenly, and from the depths of her soul:—

"Oh, dear me."

"Put your head out of the window," shrieked Pauline. "Quick!"

"It must have been the blue labelled ones." murmured the victim, when the agony had abated, and she was lying full length on the cushions, bathed in a cold perspiration.

"What blue labelled ones?"

"The blue labelled— oh, throw them out of the window— I'll give it to Bobby when I meet him. Oh, dear me."

Pauline flung the cigarettes and matches out of the window.

"Now, hold my hand," murmured the invalid, "and tell me some more about Scram— and the bungalows and things."

"Why didn't you tell me all this about your family before?" asked the invalid, after half an hour of spicy revelations.

"Because you never asked me," said Pauline wearily. "Where's this? Westbourne Park; they take the tickets here."

"I'll tell you what I'm going to do when we get to Paddington," said Miss Farmiloe, as the train restarted; "I'm going to have something to eat. Will you come? I've lots of money."

"I have to get into a four-wheel cab." replied Pauline, "and be driven carefully to Victoria. A four-wheeler, mind you. Will I come?— won't I?"

At Paddington they mingled with the crowd, carefully avoiding all bearers of hockey-sticks, hoops, and string book-bags."

"I've four pounds," said Miss Farmiloe, "and I'm going to bust it, as Bobby says. Get into this taxi."

"What sort's Bobby?" asked Pauline, when they were in the cab.

"Pinoli's in Wardour Street," directed Miss Farmiloe, through the window. "Bobby— oh, he's all right, but he's nothing to father. You should see father. He's on the Stock Exchange, and he's one of the jolliest people I ever met. Doesn't care a button what I do, and gives me all the money I want, and takes me out to restaurants and places, and theatres. I believe he knows actresses."

"I say," said Miss Pyecroft, after more family revelations, "why didn't you tell me all this about your family before?"

"Because you never asked me." replied Miss Farmiloe.

At Pinoli's they got out, and Miss Farmiloe presented the taxi-man with his legal fare minus a tip, and got thanked in the language of his kind.

"Anne, how can you?" murmured Pauline lit her tranquil voice, as she followed her companion into the cafe.

"I often lunch here," said Anne, taking her seat at a little table near the door.

"Do you know, Anne," said her companion, "you're quite a different person from the person you appeared to be at Spenny's. You are not the least the same as you were this morning."

"I'm always different in London," said Miss Farmiloe.

"I always thought you were very staid and respectable," continued Pauline mournfully, "though you used to smoke paper cigarettes up the chimney and say "jam" when you were in a wax. I thought all the things girls said you said you did in London were gas— you had such a reputation, too, for blundering stupidity. Still, I wish the whole lot of you— your father, Bobby, and the rest— would come down and live at Hellgate. You'd be a godsend."

"Is there a house of any sort to let?"

"There's a bungalow furnished. I believe— at least, Aunt said that the green bungalow was still empty."

"Bill, please— what's the rent— sixty a year? Why, I could take it myself, almost. Pap could come down for week-ends, you know. Well, we'll see about it later. What shall we do now?"

"I know what I must do," said Pauline. "Get into a cab and fly. What train call I catch?"

"Oh, bother—don't go yet. I say—"

"Well?"

"Why not come and have tea with me. We'll go to Harrods, and then we'll go to a theatre."

"And how am I to get back?" asked Miss Pyecroft.

"I'll tell you," said the other, with a flash of inspiration. "You won't get back."

"How?"

"We left our luggage at Paddington Station, didn't we?"

"Yes."

"Well, we'll stop at the Great Western Hotel for the night, and you can get back in the morning."

"But what would Aunt say?"

"You can tell her you stopped with me. That won't be a lie; she'll think you stopped with my people.''

"Oh!" said Miss Pyecroft.

They returned to dismal Paddington in a taxi. Removing the luggage from the cloak-room, they took a room at the hotel; then, by a system of tube trains, they reached Harrods, inspected millinery, and tried on quite a number of sets of furs in the fur department; bought each other imaginary presents in the jewellery department, and had what amounted to a high tea in the restaurant.

Then, at the theatre ticket-office, they inspected the list of theatres, and from the menu chose the "Wild Duck."

"It's Ibsen," said Miss Pyecroft, "Wouldn't Spenny have a fit?"

They took dress-circle tickets, Miss Farmiloe paying, as it was her treat.

Eight o'clock found them in the theatre, and the theatre packed with Ibsenites— most peculiar-looking folk, all wearing the same Ibsenitic expression.

Now, fancy, a few feats away from the two chocolate munchers, a stuffy-looking family party of three, consisting of an old gentleman in broadcloth, with "Westbourne Park" stamped upon him, his wife, her sister. Not theatre people, by any means, and evidently attracted to the "Wild Duck" by the out-door flavor and simplicity of its name.

People as far removed from the Stock Exchange, Pinoli's, and Kettner's as Rigel from Sirius. They were the Farmiloe family, who, having received "tickets for the theatre," had come, leaving a cold supper to await the daughter who was late in arriving from school.

Miss Farmiloe, at the end of the first act, was delivering her verdict: "Well, this is tosh," when a hand fell on her shoulder from behind, and a voice said:—

"Anne!"

"BUT WHAT made you say they were nice, and what made you think of the Stock Exchange?" asked Miss Pyecroft, as they were crying themselves to sleep that night in a stuffy Bayswater bedroom, after interviews with the Great Western Hotel people, conducted by Farmiloe pere.

"I don't know." replied the romancer. "I just thought of it— I wanted them to be like that— oh, I am so miserable."

"Cheer up," said Miss Pyecroft. "I'm as bad as you. There isn't any Scram— I only read about him, and Aunt isn't a Socialist. All that came out of a book. She's the most awfully proper person in the world— worse than yours.''

Miss Farmiloe ceased her groans.

"What'll she say when they take you back to-morrow?" asked she, in a voice that was almost interested.

"I don't know," replied Miss Pyecroft.

_________________

7: The Face at the Window

World's News (Sydney) 10 Aug 1918

THE Candons had gone to France for their holiday, and were staying at St. Dizier. It was the first real holiday since the honeymoon, and they were enjoying it.

Candon had recently been elected to the chair of Physiology at the M'Gill University in Shrewsbury.

It was a sure thousand a year and a certain lead to higher things, and this Continental holiday was, so to speak, the sigh of relief after six years of struggle, hardship, and even— sometimes— privation. He was a fine-looking, jovial, upstanding man of the new type of scientist.

Julia Candon was a little woman, gracile and quiet as a mouse. Not unlike a mouse if you can fancy a mouse with large grey eyes.

She had been the making of Candon, and she had that wonderful and intimate knowledge of his character which love alone can give and women alone possess.

They had no children. Children are extra padlocks on one's treasure chest, and Julia, who had always been praying to Heaven for one little baby for the sake of the baby, would have welcomed a dozen, not only for their own sakes but for that of her treasure.

"Jack," said she one day, a week before their return to England, "I wonder ought we to go?"

Jack, through the mediumship of the English tennis club, had made the acquaintance of the Duc de St. Die, whose estates lie to the westward of St. Dizier. St. Die had taken a fancy to Jack and Julia, introduced them to his wife, and invited them to his place for a couple of days.

"Why not?" asked Jack, who was packing a suitcase, in his shirt sleeves, and with a cigar in his mouth. "They're really jolly people, and you won't have the chance of seeing a real old French chateau again in a hurry."

"I don't know," said Julia. "They are such grand people and we are so small— and I have no evening frocks."

"No evening frocks!— why, you have two."

"Only old things," said Julia. "Still, I don't want to spoil your pleasure.''

St. Die's motor-car was to call for them at four, and at four precisely the gorgeous limousine arrived at the hotel.

The way lay through a forest where the road was carpeted with pine needles, and here, above the faint hum of the almost silently running car, they could hear the bark of the fox and the call of the jay from the green gloom that seemed to hold all the creatures of Grimm and Andersen.

The forest fascinated Julia, but the park of the chateau made her forget the forest, it seemed leagues in extent. Leagues of sunlit grass-land browsed down to velvet by the cattle, broken in the far distance by bosky groves, and studded with solitary oaks— vast trees, each standing in the pond of its own shadow.

Then the chateau made her forget the park, and the Duc made her forget everything else, for he was standing on the steps to receive them.

Only for royalty would he have done what he did for these inconspicuous people, strangers in a strange land, and Julia did not recognise that she was under the spell of an exquisite art, the product of centuries of culture and rule; she only felt at ease as she came up the steps with this man, so ordinary, easy-going, and friendly, and apparently so commonplace.

For them he robbed the great hall of the chateau of its vastness, and made the suits of armor seem vaguely the shells of their own ancestors, the stiff men-servants their own attendants.

Under the pretence of showing them the tapestry on the stairs, he managed to lead them to the doors of their own rooms on the first floor, twin bedrooms intercommunicating, where a valet and a maid were putting things in order, or pretending to do so, whilst waiting to receive the visitors and do their bidding.

When they came downstairs again, St Die, who was not waiting for them, but who chanced to meet them all the same, led the way to the drawing-room, where afternoon tea was in progress.

His wife received them. There were twenty-five or thirty people in the room, the windows were open to the western terrace, which was lit by the late afternoon sun, and Julia, handed over by her hostess to a stout, young Englishman, found herself discussing horses with a volubility and an interest quite alien to her nature, and finding out the fact that it is not till we have to make conversation that we find how much we have to say on topics that we imagine we have never considered.

An hour later Jack Candon, who had quite lost sight of his wife, found himself in the sunk garden of the chateau with his host. They had come out on the terrace for a smoke, and had wandered through the gardens, deep in a philosophical discussion, and absolutely blind to the beauties around them.

St Die was laying down his theory of the origin of life, and Candon, violently dissenting, was about to attack the St. Die theory, when, glancing up, he saw Julia at one of the windows of the first floor.

St. Die, looking up also, bowed, and Julia, with a smile and a little nod to the two men, vanished.

"It is the nursery," said St. Die; "my wife has taken your wife to see the children. Ah!" he broke off, turning to a rose tree on which a careless gardener had allowed some withered roses to remain, "this is what I hate to see."

He began to pluck the dead roses off, and Candon, glancing up at the window on the chance of Julia looking out again, saw, not Julia, but someone else.

A girl had come to have a peep— a girl more lovely than any of the roses in the garden. She was dressed in brown, a very sober and Quakerish garb, hinting of the governess, and her eyes were fixed on Candon.

Then she turned away, but as she turned she glanced back at him.

"So you see," said St. Die, finishing with the rose tree, "my theory may be said to be like the theory of Arrhenius— but with a difference."

"yes," said Candon. "I see what you mean." The words came mechanically. The theory of St. Die's as to origin of life strutted and spread its tail unharmed, the stone he had picked up to fling at it fell from his hand; that long, fatal glance was like the long pull of the bowman that sends the arrow deep into the victim, bedding it up to the feathers.

Throwing away the stump of his cigar, Candon turned with his host and strolled back to the terrace. Entering the house by way of the drawing-room, he went upstairs.

Julia was in her bedroom, looking over the frock she was to wear that evening, singing to herself, happy and excited.

She had discovered the fact that great people are just as nice as small, and far easier to get on with as a rule; that among them your wealth and your birth are absolutely of no account, so long as you yourself are not objectionable.

She had dreaded the women she might meet, yet they were all amiable, uncritical, and pleasant, and the dowdiest were the greatest. The stout, young man who had talked to her about horses was the Duke of Suffolk, and a plain old lady who had evidently taken a fancy to her was the Princess of Gratzenberg. The visit to the nursery had completed the charm.

"Well," said Julia, "how have you been getting on? Aren't they delightful people? So simple and homely. I'm not a bit ashamed of my poor old evening frock any more. I've been to see the children in the nursery; they are perfect ducks."

"Yes, they are nice people," said Jack, stretching himself on a couch and lighting a cigarette. "I saw you at the window, and someone looked out— the governess, I suppose?"

"She's a dear," said Julia. "The children seem to love her, and I don't wonder."

She had resumed her work on the dress she was altering, and said nothing more for a while, whilst Candon, lying on a couch, smoking a cigarette and looking at her, felt as though a strong and honorable man was standing at the end of the couch, looking at him with scorn, and saying: "You cheat!"

The strong man was himself, the Jack Candon he had always known, the Jack Candon who had never dreamed of any other woman than Julia.

Then the strong man vanished for a moment, and right between the couch and Julia the girl in the brown dress presented herself, framed in a window space— absolute loveliness, saying to him, with that terrible backward glance: "You please me— I am yours!"

He rose from the couch, and, walking to the window, looked out at the view.

He was himself again. The act of rising from the couch had dispelled his dreams and fancies, and the absurdity of the position appeared before him fully in all its harlequin dress. A steady-going, married man stricken by the glance of a governess! Cupid darts at forty!

Then, leaving the window, he walked over to where Julia was working, and, bending down, kissed her on the neck, whilst Julia, looking up with a smile, held up her lips to be kissed also.

Eased in his conscience, he took his seat, this time on the side of the bed, and sat watching her as she put the last stitches to the frock.

After dinner a band of wandering musicians who had arrived at the chateau struck up in the gallery of the hall, and there was a dance which lasted till midnight.

At half-past twelve Candon went to bed, tired out, happy, and with no thought at all for anything but the festivity, the sounds of which were still ringing in his ears. He awoke at eight o'clock, and his first thought was of the beautiful girl to whom he had almost lost his heart.

The vision scarcely disturbed him. He had mastered its power, and he no longer felt self-reproach for the momentary foolishness that had overcome him. The girl had looked at him— well, what then? There was nothing in that. And he might be very well assured that she had not cast the glance at Jack Candon. Seeing him with the Duc, she had fancied him, no doubt, one of the great people who frequented the place. She had fancied she was fascinating a lord or a duke. She was a governess with ambitions, a forward hussy— aye— but how pretty she was, all the same.

He was considering the latter fact when the valet, entering with hot water, disturbed his meditations. The valet looking about for his dressing-gown—which he had not brought quite put to flight all ideas of everything but the poor figure he must be cutting in the eyes of the servant. He went to his bath in a borrowed dressing-gown, and he went down to breakfast with the dressing-gown pursuing him phantom-wise.

The programme for the day was a picnic to Chaumont, a wonderful affair, in which a whole fleet of motor-cars took part. They arrived back in time for dinner, and, as there was no dance that night, Julia retired at half-past eleven, whilst Jack remained for half an hour longer; smoking and chatting with some of the men.

As he came up the stairs, heavy-footed from the day's enjoyment, he thought regretfully of the fact that they were leaving on the morrow. On the first floor landing he was turning down the corridor to his room when his eye caught sight of something moving in the left hand corridor.

It was the girl.

She was half-way down the passage, which ended at a crimson curtain, and the softly burning electric lights showed her distinctly. She had seen him, too. As she passed along she looked back, and when she reached the curtain she looked back again, paused for half a second, and then vanished, the curtain closing behind her.

Candon hesitated, then he came down the corridor, walking swiftly, drew the curtain aside, and looked.

Before him lay a continuation of the corridor, lit by a single electric lamp, and, as he stood listening and watching, he heard the voice of a child complaining, just as children complain when awakened from sleep.

He knew the reason of the curtain now; it divided the children's quarters from the rest of the house.

The voice of the child had brought him to his senses, and, releasing the curtain which he had drawn aside, he retraced his steps.

He turned on the electric lamp in his own room and then peeped in at Julia. There was just sufficient light to see her as she lay, sound asleep, motionless as a tired child.

Then he undressed hurriedly, got into bed, and switched off the light.

He had followed her—and every step down that corridor had been a deeper betrayal of the woman who loved him. More than that, he knew in his heart that had she continued to lead him he would have followed her—anywhere.

He was still under the spell, yet he could not think clearly on the matter and feel the shame of his action.

He, a married man, had fallen in love with the Duc de St. Die's governess! That was the fact that he had to reason and find the reason for, whilst shame, sitting on his chest, kept him awake till dawn, and then chased him is to nightmare land.

NEXT MORNING, about eleven o'clock, he was crossing from the smoke-room to the picture gallery with his host, when he saw three children going up the stairs, accompanied by a young, florid-looking girl, a German to the tips of her fingers.

"Ah! there go the children," said St. Die; "they have been out with the governess." He waved his hand to them, and passed on into the picture gallery, Candon following.

"It that their governess?" asked Candon.

"Yes," said St. Die, "that is the governess."

"But have you not another governess?"

"No— why do you ask?"

A chill, coming from heaven knows where, stole over the heart of Candon.

"I saw a young lady dressed in brown," said he, "whom I mistook for the governess."

"Ah!" said St. Die, who was looking at him, curiously. "You saw a young lady dressed in brown?"

He said nothing more on the subject, but talked of the pictures as they walked along, pointing out this one and that, till they reached a little curtained alcove, where he paused for a moment, as if undecided. Then, as if making up his mind, he turned to the alcove, and stripped the curtain aside.

"Was that, by any chance, the lady you saw?" asked St. Die.

Candon found himself face to face with the girl in brown.

"Good heavens!" said he.

"It is a good picture," said St. Die, "though the painter is unknown. It is Julie de St. Die, and she died two hundred years ago by the hand of the man she ruined. You have had an experience given to few. Very few people see her— she is shy— very shy—. But if a happily married man chanced to be here he might see her— or any really happy person whose happiness might be broken— she was that sort," he finished rather bitterly, releasing the curtain.

"Julia," said Candon, later in the day, as they were being conveyed back to St. Dizier. "That place was haunted."

"What place?" asked the startled Julia.

The chateau. I saw the ghost. It was a girl; I saw her the evening we came, and I saw her again last night."

"Oh, Jack!" cried Julia, nestling close to him, why didn't you tell me?"

"I— I didn't like to," replied Candon.

_________________

8: The Case of Mrs. Mencken

The Strand Magazine, July 1931

Voice (Hobart) 17 April 1937

THE night was young, and when, one of your strong, silent men begins to talk, as Crashman had been talking, it is often worthwhile to listen.

"One might fancy you were speaking from experience," I said.

"I am," he replied. "Listen. I'd just as soon talk of this matter to an, ordinary person as I would wash a dirty shirt in the courtyard of the Savoy— but you're different— because you may be able to help me. I'll tell you how when I have done."

"I was married fifteen years ago," said Mr. Crashman. "I'd known her five years before that. She came out to Burma to marry me. We were happy. After the first foolery of love is over comes the strain, and if there isn't affection to meet it, comes the break, pretty often. Affection is quite a different thing from love; it hasn't anything to do with sex. I've known an old horse and an old donkey; put out to grass to end their days, couldn't bear to be parted from one another; that's the sort of thing that holds in married life and takes the rub of servant worries and so forth without parting.

"If you ever want to try out a wife and see what sort of stuff is in her, take her out East and start her in a bungalow, and see what prickly heat and native servants will do— there are other things besides: eighteen-inch centipedes, scorpions that love to make nests in hat-boxes, snakes, white ants— but you know the lot.

"My wife— Jane, I will call her for short— never grumbled at all, even when she caught Piroli, our first curse in the form of a cook, using an old turban for a pudding cloth. Hurricanes didn't bother her, and as she began, so she went on— and so she went on for twelve years.

"There was just, one thing that threatened to come, between us, or rather I should say it— tried to threaten, for I was proof against it, and that one thing was the fact that she tended to be jealous of other women— where I was concerned.

"If I'd been a gay Lothario, or even one of those common flirtatious asses you meet every day, the thing would have split us apart in no time, but I'm built different. I'm not a woman-hater; I can enjoy the sight of a pretty girl nicely dressed, but, honest to God, women bore me to distraction. It's my fault, not theirs, and the funny thing is that women, somehow, seem to like me, though-what they can see in a damn gorilla like myself, just Providence only knows.

"Jane fitted my mind; she never bored me; there was something in her make-up that made her as companionable as a pipe; she wasn't good-looking, she was just Jane, and that, I suppose, was why I married her and why I was happy in my marriage. "And then she showed me this jealousy business, which tickled me to death when I found it out. She never said a word on any occasion, but her manner told me everything. If she had only spoken I'd have told her straight out not to make a fool of herself, but she didn't, and things jogged along until three years ago, when we went to live for a while at Weltevreden.

"Weltevreden is Dutch. It's a suburb of old Batavia, and all the best Dutch people live there.

"I went on a political job to do with rubber planting, and I was accredited to Mynheer Claes, one of the top men, and we were very well received:

"The Dutch are most hospitable in a. heavy way, and we were always out dining and so forth, and finding no difficulty with the language, for the Dutch nearly talk English— or French.

"At one of these dinner parties we met a lady, a Mrs. Mencken. She was English, but had been married to a foreigner, who was presumably dead, for he never turned up, and she was a queer-looking woman.

"You know that beastly picture of Mona Lisa? She was something like that, without the grin; a wisp of a woman, all eyes and nerves, and the funny thing was that at the dinner party I scarcely noticed this woman; I was talking all the time to a great bubble-faced Dutch girl and finding her horribly funny, for she was fresh out from school in England and someone had been teaching her English swear words, which she repeated like a parrot for fun, and to show What she knew of English slang— you can fancy!

"Once, looking up, I met the eyes of Mrs. Mencken.

"When we went to the drawing-room after our cigars we found the coffee table spread, Dutch fashion, and there, in a corner, I saw my wife and the Mencken woman chatting away thick as thieves.

"When we got home that night my wife just said, 'You and that Bloom girl' (Bloom was the name of the bubble-faced, filly) 'seemed to be enjoying yourselves greatly .at dinner.

" 'Should think so,' said I. 'She asked me didn't I think Batavia a blasted hole'; then I explained, but she wasn't listening, and then she butted in about the Mencken woman.

"She was greatly struck with Mrs. M. Mrs. M was a sweet little thing, and her life seemed to have been so sad. 'You can see it in her eyes,' said Jane. 'More like dyspepsia,' said I. 'Her eyes have dark rings around them; sort of woman that drugs, I should think.'

"That's a thing one oughtn't to say about anybody,' said she, and she was right, and I said I was sorry, and we went to bed and I thought the thing buried.

"We had hired a bungalow in Hooft Avenue, and had taken on the servants, a Chinese cook and two Java boys. Right good servants they were, too, so we had no difficulty in entertaining, and one of the first people we entertained was Mrs. M.

"She came to tea, and I was very civil to her, though I didn't care for her. I felt rather a cad for what I had said about drugs, so that's why I was extra civil, I suppose. Any-how, I talked a good deal to her, and when everyone was gone Jane said to me, 'I'm so glad you were nice to little Mrs. Mencken.'

" 'Why, good heavens,' I said, 'when am I nasty to people?'

" 'It's not that,' she said, 'but it's just I'm glad you made her feel at home. The Dutch are very nice in their way, but it's good for English people to cling together— don't you think?'

"The idea of clinging to Mrs. Mencken had never occurred to me and I said so, and Jane laughed and called me an idiot— and that was that. Not the slightest trace of jealousy in the case of Mrs. M.. Funny, wasn't it? For Mrs. M. was a lot better-looking .than some of the women Jane had turned up her nose at. Fact was, she had got round to the soft side of Jane, and had palled up with her, and blinded her.

"At the end of the month she was no longer Mrs. Mencken, but Elise— that was her name, Elise.

"She used to drop in to see us when she liked, and Jane used to drop in to see her at the hotel where she was staying. They swapped yarns about past servants, and so on, and they employed the same dressmaker one of them had discovered in Weltreveden, gushing news of the find to the other, same as crows do when they find a carcase; regular pals they'd become; not that I minded or bothered, till one day at the club, of which I'd been made an honorary member, Bob Sellers, the tobacco man, blew in, and Mrs. M's name being mentioned by chance, he dropped the cards out of his hand and nearly upset his drink.

"'What's wrong with her?' I asked.

" 'What's wrong with the tobacco blight?' said he. 'Nothing, as far as I know; it's done its work splendidly— same with her. Keep her out of your house at any cost, if you don't want trouble — she's a double-edged vamp. What's trumps?'

"He wouldn't give details, but I gathered that her speciality was married couples— that is to say, married men, and that left me unmoved, same as a smallpox scare leaves a man who has just been vaccinated.

"We came to England two months later, Jane delaying our departure for a week so that we might travel on the same ship as Elise, who was also going home.

"It was the Grotius, a small ship but a good sea boat, and very comfortable. "Jane had brought a cat, a Persian she'd bought in Burma and toted along to Weltevreden. It travelled in a wicker cage; the Mencken woman looked after it when Jane was seasick, and fed it and fondled it and carried it about on deck, holding it up sometimes for me to look at. I didn't like cats, not Persians, any-how; all eyes and nerves and claws; and the cat in her arms increased the dislike I was beginning to have for Elise.

"It had come into my mind that she was trying the vamping business on me, and before we reached Southampton I knew, sure enough, that she was.

"I didn't care, personally. What worried me was the notion that got hold of Jane.

"Jane had been jolly good to this woman, stood her all sorts of treats, and, at the South-Western Hotel at Southampton, where we stayed for a day or two after our arrival, she asked her to stay, as our guest before going on to London.

"I said to Jane: 'Look here, I want to say something. I think you ought to be careful with that woman.'

" 'What woman?' she said, knowing quite well who I meant.

" 'Mrs. Mencken,' said I. 'You mean Elise,' said she. 'And why ought I to be careful about her?' " 'Well, there was a man in the club at Weltevreden,' said I, 'and he told me she was a woman to be careful of; in fact," not to let her into my house.'

"Jane thought for a moment, then she said:

" 'Why didn't you tell me that then?'

"See how she had me? I hadn't told her simply because the vamping business hadn't begun at Weltevreden, and I didn't know the woman's character for certain then.

" 'I didn't want to make mischief,' said I, for, of course, I didn't want to tell her the whole truth."

"Why not?" I asked.

Crashman laughed. "Imagine a man saying to his wife, 'Another woman is after me—'

"I see; go on."

"Jane thought for a moment, and then she said, 'If you didn't want to make mischief then, why do you want to make mischief now?'

"Do you get the inwardness of that? The thing runs absolutely logically, yet it turned me into a mischief maker. Me trying to protect her from a woman not to be trusted, only to be told I was a mischief-maker. But I held myself in.

" 'What was the man's name?' asked Jane at last.

" 'Sellers,' said I, like a fool.

" 'Well, he ought to be ashamed of himself,' said she, 'and I'll certainly tell her.'

"Here was a nice thing, a howling action for slander, maybe, and a sure row with Sellers, anyhow.

"You'll do no such thing,' I said, and then the row began,, a first class conjugal row'. It was also the first of any importance between, us. We flung bitter things at one another like brickbats, and it ended up by her breaking down and crying. Horrid!

"I went off down to the bar and had a whisky. I had about six and no dinner. Then I met some steamboat men and went to a cinema, whiskies all the way there and whiskies all the way back. It was a rainy night. It was Southampton after the East, as well as the Mencken woman and Jane and the row, and the thought of Sellers and the slander action, a general all-round breakdown, with more drinks in the smoke-room to follow, seeing I was a guest in the hotel and there was no closing time for me.

"Two waiters got me up to bed, singing. Jane and I had separate rooms, but she came out on the landing to see what the concert party was about— and she'd never seen me tanked before."

Crashman paused to fill and light his pipe, and the music of the band from the port deck came to us, and the thudding of an electric light dynamo, mixed with the faraway mumble of the screw.

"Do you know Chillerton Mansions in Kensington?" he went on.

"That large block of flats?"

"Yes, that's it. A friend had taken us a service flat at the top of it, so we had quarters waiting for us in town, and there I arrived next day with a sick headache , and a frozen wife. We had all travelled up from Southampton together, the cat, the Mencken woman, Jane and myself, all in the same carriage, with luncheon at the same table in the restaurant car, Mrs. M. going back to our carriage every now and then to see that the cat was all right, also making what conversation there was; a family friend and sympathiser, tactful and trying to make things easy, but, of course, not saying a word on the awful subject.

"She came to the flat to see us in and honesty, despite everything, I was glad to have her, for she saved me talking to Jane about trifles, as I would have had to do if we'd been alone together.

"That night I sort of made it up with Jane, apologised and all that, and the  thing blew over, leaving its mark, of course, but not a hint of what was coming.

"I was pretty busy in town and Jane was thrown on her own pretty much, but she was happy enough, for she had shopping to do and friends in London, including Elise. I didn't care; I didn't want any more rows. She could stick to the woman if she wanted to. And things jogged along till one Thursday business turned up that would take me to Birmingham for three days. 'And if that's so,' said Jane, 'I'll go and stay with Cousin Arthur at Staines till Monday. I've promised and promised, and this is a chance. We can shut up the flat whilst we are away — and you'll be sure to be back on Monday?'

" 'Sure,' said I, and next morning off she went to Staines, and half an hour later off I went with an attache case for Birmingham.

"We had both clean forgotten the cat, or to tell the flat people to look after it. That confounded cat was to do me in, combined with the Mencken hussy; but I didn't know that as I drove to the Foreign Office, where I had some business to attend to before starting on my journey. Cazalet was the man I saw at the Foreign Office. He had some important paper for me to attend to, and when I said I'd take them with me he put his foot down.

"They had to be attended to right away, and I'd have to stay in London , in case I was wanted: it was a big rubber complex, and Van Buren, the Dutch syndicate man, was making a bother, and my expert knowledge, straight from the East as I was, might be essential.

"So there I was with nothing to do but wire Birmingham, putting off my appointment, and take myself back .to the flat to look after the papers and hold myself on tap, so to speak, if wanted.

"I wasn't in any too good a temper, I assure you, and when I got back to the Mansions and found the cat curled up in an armchair, I was not a bit happier at the thought of having to look after it. If I hadn't come back, of course, the flat people would have found it and looked after it. I'd have to do that now, and feeding cats is not a hobby of mine, especially Persians.

"Down I sat to my work, and in an hour I had the documents straightened out, and I was putting them in my pocket for the post when I heard a noise: the door opened and in came Mrs. Mencken.

"The sight of her was enough to send my barometer down with a flop, same as it fell before that last hurricane we had in Java. First Cazalet, then the cat, then the documents, then her on top of it all.

" 'Oh, you're in,' said she. 'The lift man said he thought you were both out, so I came up to see. Where is Jane?'

" 'Jane's gone to Staines,' said I.

" 'And left you?' she said.

" 'Well,' I said, 'I'm here. Looks as if she had, doesn't it?'

"She sat down in the chair and took the cat in her arms. Then she began to talk. At first of ordinary things, then of happiness and unhappiness in life.

"This was the real business. She'd been masking her batteries up to this; she talked, looking at me as if I was a hundred miles away. She said she was going away, working herself up all the time, going away for ever. When I said 'Why,' she threw the cat on the floor, worked her hands, gurgled in her throat and cried into her handkerchief. I thought I heard the word 'you' half bubble up out of the handkerchief.

" 'Now don't be a fool," I said, absolutely shocked. 'Don't be a fool,' I said putting my hand on her shoulder, for I half wanted to fling her out of the room.

"Next moment she was up and her arms were around me and she was sobbing on my. breast.

"I scraped her off, and holding her by the two shoulders, shook her.

" 'Don't you know I've a wife?' I cried.

" 'A wife,' she bubbled; then, drawing her breath — and I believe she had actually for the moment forgotten my presence—'a wife— ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

"I never heard anything like that hysterical laugh; it was like the soul of a bad woman having delirium tremens, and it was all against Jane, poisonous and sneering, and something in my head went snap, and I saw red, and I caught up my whangee cane, which was on the table, and landed her one lovely wallop over the legs. I did, indeed.

"She screeched, ran to the couch, and put a cushion over her head. Funny, wasn't it? But that's what she did, like an ostrich; and I'd only just thrown my whangee away, because I was afraid of giving her another wallop, when the door opened and in walked Jane.

"Mrs. Mencken acting hysterics on the couch, me in a blind fury— a pleasant sight for Jane. I saw in a flash that she had come rushing back from Staines, having remembered the cat and thinking me gone to Birmingham.

And just that moment in turning I trod on the brute's tail, it gave a yell, and I kicked it under the sofa.

"I didn't kick it hard; just gave it a lift with my toe; it was all a kind of reflex action against circumstance, then I rushed down the stairs, left the whole caboodle to fight it out among themselves, and found myself in the street without a hat. A taxi was going by; I hailed it, and drove to a hat shop."

"Why didn't you go back and try to explain?"

"Explain what? Why I wasn't in Birmingham? Why Mrs. Mencken was there? Why I had kicked the cat? All to a woman in a shocking stale of mind? Yes, its very easy for anyone to say, 'Why didn't you explain"' -said yourself if you had been in my place, just exactly what would you have?"

"I see. Well, what did you do then?"

"Drove to my brother's, after I'd fitted myself with a tile, and got him to go to the Mansions and fetch me some clothes. He was hours away and came back with the clothes and things, and a face as long as a fiddle. Said Jane had gone for good to her cousin's, seemed nervous in my presence, and wanting to get rid of m. Few days after I saw Jane's lawyer. She has money of her own. He didn't seem happy, either. He was tremendously civil, but quite definite.

"As, far as I could make out, the Mencken woman had given no explanation but hysterics, left Jane to think what she liked, and vanished into the blue. As I was saying you can't get the better of a woman or a cat— a man can't, anyhow. Jane did not want a divorce, or any scandal like that, but she wouldn't live with me. I went East, and now I m coming back to England again.  That's all."

"You said something about my helping you."

"Oh, that— it just crossed my mind. I want Jane back, and that's the truth. To get her back I'd have to tell her everything, and convince her. That's beyond me. Put the blame on Mrs. M; no, I'd sooner stick single than start pitching her a yarn on that. But you might be able to help. You see, if the story came to her from a disinterested party, and accidentally, so to speak, it might get home to her; she'd see the story in its proper light."

"You don't mean to suggest my writing to your wife?"

"No; give all the details and publish it in a magazine. Alter the names— that wouldn't matter. She'd recognise the details and come, maybe, to recognise the truth of the business."

"But, my dear man," I cried, "it's easy enough to do that, but it's a million to one against her reading the thing. There are hundreds of magazines "

"She always reads one magazine," said Crashman, mentioning the name. "If you can get it in there, she is sure to see it."

SO HERE IT IS, Mrs. Crashman, whose real name begins with an L (he asked me to say that to make sure), and, if I cannot vouch for the truth of the story— though I believe it to be true— I can vouch for the fact that Mr. L. is still very sincerely yours.

______________

9: The Snuff-box of  M. de Sartines

Cassell's Magazine May 1909

Freeman's Journal (Sydney) 12 Aug 1909

One of several stories of the resourceful Larenne, secretary to M. de Sartines

'LARENNE!' said M. de Sartines.

'Sir,' answered Lavenne.

'I have sent for you on a matter of some importance. Be seated; be seated.'

De Sartines was finishing his morning correspondence. He was writing rapidly at the end of his last letter, and tapping impatiently with his heel on the parquet of the floor as if to emphasize the words. Then he cast sand on the paper, folded, sealed and addressed the letter, flung it in a flat blue osier basket where lay a dozen others, and rang for the usher. The letters having ,been taken away, De Sartines cast a green silk cover over the papers on the bureau and turned to Lavenne.

At the time he had been writing, the heart of this extraordinary man had been consumed by impatience, burning impatience, kept under control whist the commonplace matter of the letters was under hand. He turned now to his subordinate, whose face showed nothing of the curiosity that was in his mind.

'Left my snuff-box the day before yesterday at the Marshal de Richelieu's,' said De Sartines.

'Yes, sir,' said Lavenne.

His chief's statement seemed simple enough and innocent in all truth, but in the age of which we are writing, and at the court of Versailles, the most simple and seemingly innocent occurrences were often the seeds of disastrous events. Therefore when M. De Sartines said, 'I have left my snuff-box at the Duc de Richelieu's,' Lavenne knowing the Duc to be the enemy of his master pricked the ears of his intelligence.

'Excuse me, monsieur,' said Lavenne, before the other could proceed, 'but was the snuff in your snuff-box unmixed?'

'It was not,' said De Sartines, charmed to be understood at a flash like this without the trouble of words. 'There was a paper of the deepest importance to myself.'

'Aha!' said Lavenne.

'Now,' said De Sartines with a wave of his hand as though he were waving aside social inequality for a moment, while he discussed this matter with his inferior, 'the trick has been played me, but it is not finished yet. They have the paper, but to take the paper to the King, and say, "We have stolen this from M. le Comte De Sartines," would be a brutal method which would not commend itself to his Majesty. No, my snuff-box containing the document in question lies in the bureau of the Duc de Richelieu. The Duc de Richelieu is giving a dinner party to-night; he has suborned a thief, Le Chat?'

'I know him,' cut in Lavenne.

'To break into his house and steal the snuff-box, making enough noise to attract attention. When they have seized the thief, him and his booty, the Duc will let the thing fall, pick it up, and say "Hey! what is this buried amidst M. De Sartines' snuff!" The paper will be read publicly, and — mon Dieu!'

De Sartines rose to 'his feet and paced the room. His agitation was terrible.

'He has commissioned Le Chat for the burglary?' said Lavenne.

'Yes,' replied De Sartines.

'He must have given him a heavy bribe.'

'He has, and the promise of his release immediately after capture. The whole, affair has been explained to Le Chat, for if two ruffians wish to succeed, in their plans they must take for their motto, "Know one another." I have learned the whole plot from a spy of mine in the household of the Duc.'

Lavenne meditated for a moment. He was sincerely attached to his master, for De Sartines, heartless as a sword, and a polished brute, was a very brave man, and a very clever man, and two brave and clever men must always feel a regard for one another. Besides he treated Lavenne in business matters as an equal, yet De Sartines was a noble. To appreciate what that means you would require to transport yourself back to the age we are dealing with, and see in the flesh M. de Sartines, M. de Coigny, the Duc de Polastron, de Duc de Richelieu— any of the thousand and one gentlemen who lent their persons, their jewels, their grace, wit, and dignity to make a Court night at Versailles the most gorgeous function that the world has ever seen between four walls.

'Of course,' said De Sartine, 'I could arrest Le Chat, but if I do they will find some other means.'

'Quite so, sir,' said Lavenne. Then having meditated for a moment he rose to his feet.

'May I take this affair into my hands, sir?' asked he.

'Take it,' said De Sartine. 'and should you succeed I offer you no reward. This is a personal service you are rendering me.'

The jewels of Golconda would not have equaled in Lavenne's eyes the worth of this astute little speech, which placed him on a footing almost of equality with his master. Bowing profoundly he left the room.

HALF AN HOUR later found him in the street of the Armed Horseman, that villainous district where once we saw him saved from death by Marie Ancelot. All sorts of crooked alleys led from this street right and left towards the Alley of the Lantern on one side and the Rue Jouffre on the other. Choosing the most dingy and desperate-looking of these passages, Lavenne plunged up it, paused before an iron-bolted, worm-eaten door and knocked.

At the third knock a key turned in a rusty lock, the door opened, and a man with a green patch over his right eye appeared.

'M. Lavenne!' said the man.

'Le Chat,' replied Lavenne. 'Well, what are you waiting for? I am alone. Stand aside, and let me in. This is no police affair, but just a friendly visit.'

Le Chat stood aside, and Lavenne entered a dirty courtyard hung round with cages containing pigeons. Le Chat was a pigeon-fancier as well as a thief. It is a necessity of the police system that men like Le Chat should be used by the . police. Lavenne had used this man several times, and he intended to use him again.

The problem was this. It would be easy enough to make Le Chat betray Richelieu, but without doubt the moment the thief had seized the snuff-box he would be seized in turn. Of course there might be a chance of his casting it out of the window and of Lavenne waiting below to receive it, but unfortunately Lavenne did not know the room where the bureau containing the snuff-box lay, so he could not tell from which window it would come. Le Chat might abstract the precious document from the box and swallow it, but Lavenne well knew that watchful eyes would follow the burglar's every movement, and before the muscles of deglutition could convey the secret of De Sartines down the oesophagus of Le Chiat, that person would be seized; and— if by any chance he were to complete the act of deglutition— M. le Duc de Richelieu would be the very person to have him slit open and the document recovered. It was a knotty problem, but not beyond the powers of Lavenne.

'Le Chat,' said Lavenne, taking his seat on a bench under the pigeon cages.

'Monsieur?' replied 'Le Chat.

'Come here and stand before me,' said Lavenne. 'That's right. You are going this evening to Versailles on a visit to the Duc de Richelieu. Useless, useless. I know all. I do not wish to interfere with your pleasures or occupations, but you see this sword, Le Chat?'

'Yes, monsieur,' replied the trembling Le Chat, who feared Lavenne much more than he feared De Sartines or even the King. '

'That sword has passed through the heart of Praslin, and, as there is a God in Heaven, Le Chat, it will pass through your heart this night should you fail me in the least particular. I am going to Versailles with you; we will journey together.'

'Mordieu! monsieur,' said Le Chat. 'What do I care for the Duc de Richelieu! Give me your orders and I will obey.'

'Right,' said Lavenne.

THE DINNER which M. le Due de Richelieu was giving that evening at his house at Versailles included in the list of guests some of the best known names in France. The Duc de Choiseul, the Duchesse de Choiseul, M. de Coigny, the Princesse de Polastrom were present amidst the eighteen or twenty guests, and at the head of his table, brilliant, adorned with his orders, scintillating wit as a diamond scintillates light, sat Richelieu, a man of fifty or so— by his looks.

He was, as a matter of fact, seventy-four.

Close to him stood the door of the library wherein the burglary was to take place. It was to be a course in the dinner, to follow the sweets— a dessert, and the document which would prove the ruin of M. de Sartines would be read out by one of the guests, just as nowadays the motto of a cracker is read out at a suburban party. Richelieu had fixed on M. de Coigny as the reader. Needless to say, not one of the guests was party to the infamous plot.

Now, Richelieu had fixed on De Coigny as the reader because De Coigny was his greatest enemy, and, at the same time, a friend of De Sartines. De Coigny would, when he had glanced over the thing, refuse to read it to a certainty ; he might, perhaps, attempt to destroy it, and so be involved in the disgrace of De Sartines. It was one of those neat double-edged little affairs for which M. le Duc de Richelieu was famous.

'M. le Duc,' said the Princesse de Polastron, who sat on the right of her host, 'when I look, at this pear lying on my plate, M. d'Ampreyille's shade appears before me.'

'Happy shade!' murmured Richelieu.

'And I try to conjure up his feelings,' continued the Princess, 'when he found that he had swallowed the poisoned half of the pear which he had intended for—'

Ere the Princesse could finish, a cry for help, and the sound of furniture being overthrown came from the library and froze the tongues of the guests.

'Aha!' cried Richelieu, his eyes blazing, 'What is this?'

He rose from the table and, taking a wax candle from a sconce, opened the door of the library. The guests trooping behind him, and peeping over each other's shoulders, saw a strange sight.

On the floor of the library lay Le Chat, and kneeling on his chest, Raft, Richelieu's confidential servant.

'I have caught him, monsieur,' raid Raft. 'A burglar in the act. Oh, he is quiet enough now I have broken his arm.'

'Remove him,' said Richelieu calmly. 'Lock him up. and send for the police.' Le Chat struggled to his feet, and with hung-down head was led from the room by Raft, taken downstairs, and dismissed at a back door with a purse of gold.

'Now, gentlemen,' said Richelieu, 'may I ask your help in picking up my valuables. Ah! what is this? The snuff-box of M. de Sartines (which he left here the other day) open and, ma foi! a little note hidden in the snuff!'

'Now the sentiments of what lady 'ie embalmed in the snuff of M. de Sartines?' asked the Princess de Polastron.

'Let us see,' said Madame de Choiseul.

'M. de Coigny,' said Richelieu, laughing like a boy, 'you who are M. de Sartines' best friend, read it for us. I give you permission, for I am the confidant of his amours.'

De Coigny, who hated Richelieu as much as he liked De Sartines, took the little note and approached a taper with it, determining in his own mind to destroy it should it cast ridicule on his friend. Richelieu, who read his determination in his face, drew near enough to interpose.

'I think,' said De Coigny, when he had scanned the note, 'I had rather not read this.'

'Read it,' said Richelieu, 'or I will do so myself.'

' "I have discovered, monsieur, the reason why M. de Richelieu refused you an audience yesterday when you called in quest of your snuff-box. He was not indisposed, but the enamel of his right cheek was cracked from the eye to the chin, and he was under repairs.— Lavenne.' "

'OH, PRAISE LE CHAT, monsieur, not me,' said Lavenne in his interview with M. de Sartines that night. 'He substituted the paper very neatly, better than I could have done myself.'

'Yes,' replied De Sartines as he burned the recovered document over a taper. 'Le Chat shall have my praise. But you, Lavenne— ah! mon Dieu! you have given me not only my revenge but the laughter of Versailles on my side— what shall I give you in return?'

'Monsieur,' said Lavenne, 'to a comedian the greatest gift on earth is laughter.'

___________________

10: Turn About

Australian Women's Weekly 11 Feb 1939

TO give foreigners a just impression of English mentality it is just as well when you are in France to know French, also the French; and this remark applies to Monte Carlo, the chief city of the Kingdom of Monaco, for Monaco is French, though why, I don't know, seeing it was brought up at the knee of Italy.

Johnson did not know French. He was a Manchester man with a small share in a large business to do with dry goods; he was also, like his partners, a highly moral and religious man; he had rather prominent front teeth and he wore glasses, was addicted to white waistcoats in summer on Sundays, and sang in the choir in the Simnel Street Baptist Chapel.

Travelling to Genoa on business with a hundred ten-pound Bank of England notes in his pocket, money of the firm for the purchase of certain silks in the Genoa market, he had made the journey by boat to Monaco— being a friend of Harvey Malcolmson, the shipping people, he got the jaunt for nothing. He had reckoned without the seasickness which Neptune threw in, also for nothing, with the result that, landing at Monaco, William Johnson found himself in no fit state to proceed. He put up at the Hotel du Parc in La Condamine after inquiring the charges of half a dozen other establishments by telephone from the shipping office.

Next day, partly recovered, he penetrated into Monte, where the reflection of his prominent front teeth might have been seen in the plate windows of the more important dry-goods stores.

Though he didn't know much French he knew the value of the franc, and the things he saw astonished him by their cheapness, for Monte Carlo in certain ways is not dear, especially with the franc hopping about somewhere near a hundred as it then was.

He lunched for twenty francs at a cheap restaurant, and after luncheon he found himself in front of the Casino. He wanted to see the tables; it was a sight every man ought to see once, and he had no fear at all that he would be drawn into playing— he was far too sensible for that.

As he crossed the atrium to the door of the rooms, compunction came with him arm-in-arm, a new form of compunction quite different from the six and eleven three farthings sort.

Here was sin being committed on a big scale on limited premises, a sort of sin factory in short.

Johnson had heard and believed that people were always committing suicide at Monte Carlo owing to their losses at the tables. He was not far wrong in this belief, despite the fact that his imagination perhaps over-colored the picture.

Strange to say, the rooms did not impress him; despite all the genius of Garnier and the gold of M. Blanc, they produced a distinct feeling of disappointment in the mind of William Johnson, from which fact a psychologist with a knowledge of his job would at once have arrived at the truth that W.J. was a man with an imagination

A smell of cheap scent and rank foreigners Ailed the place, vague and deadened by the fumes of carbonic acid.

He felt little interest in the goings-on. His usually alert brain felt heavy and he was conscious that his digestion was not working as it ought. Yet, despite everything he could not but feel surprised at the crowd round the tables.

There were elderly women here, women who looked like charwomen or cooks out of work; women with wealthy-looking bags stuffed with gambling counters; women with cards which they pricked now and then, following the play and the evolution of some absurd "system." Men of Middle Europe, of the Near East and of Blackpool.

The whole post-war Monte Carlo crowd indeed, both in front of the Café de Paris and round the tables, summed themselves up in Johnson's brain under the title, Blackpool; and he was no mean judge, in his way, of men, women, blouses and suitings.

HE took his stand at the second table on the right of the entrance, and began to study not the players, but the game.

Though he knew next to nothing of roulette, his quick mind soon took up the points of this game that seems to have been invented by the devil to suit all customers, from the timid to the reckless.

He saw that putting your ten francs on the color you could only lose or win ten francs, on a number you could only lose ten francs, yet might win three hundred and fifty. He noted that you win double your stake on the dozens, and so forth and so on, taking it all in slowly and ever more filled with the infernal ingenuity that constructed this game— a game with all the intricate machinery of a clock.

Then, as he was watching, a woman on the opposite side of the table put ten francs on Number 33 and the number turning up she received three hundred and fifty francs.

Seeing is believing, and this sight gave the mind of Johnson, accustomed only to the ordinary profits of trade, a little jolt.

Of course, this was gambling and not one of a hundred of the fools who backed the numbers had a chance of winning; still, it was fascinating to speculate that if she had put on a hundred francs she would have received three thousand five hundred.

He left the table and went to another.

It was at this table that William Johnson received the shock of his life, for, across it, seated near the croupier and nervously toying with a small heap of ivory counters, sat Sebright, the cashier.

Not the cashier of the Casino, but the cashier of Jackson, Bols & Johnson, of Manchester. Sebright. the cashier of his firm, the man of accounts, whose holiday was always taken in the summer; Sebright, who neither gambled, drank nor smoked, who was interested in Sunday schools and wore mittens in winter. It couldn't be, yet it was. That red head, those rather long teeth and that scar on the temple "owing to an abscess" could belong to no one else.

But Johnson had left Sebright in Manchester only a little more than a week ago, safe behind his desk; a thing as fixed as the Town Hall and as incorruptible—  apparently! Amazed, half-stunned, doubting, he stood watching and waiting to catch the eye of the gambler, who was now placing three counters in different positions on the board.

Then came the cry of the croupier and the spin of the wheel. Zero raked all the stakes into the pocket of the bank save the few halfpence on red and black, and Johnson, turning, left the room, crossed the atrium and sought the bar, where only soft drinks were sold.

What should he do? The fact was plain; Sebright, like many another, had fallen, scooped the till, and bolted. It must be so— and yet— well, there was no use in speculating as to whether it was so or not; the question remained— if it was so, what should he do— he, William Johnson, partner of the firm to whom the till belonged? The police, of course, there could be no compromising. Mercy? Nonsense.

That he was a coward by nature was a fact that he did not know, a coward and an imaginative man, possessed of that dwarf sort of imagination that delights in picturing possibilities. Suppose Sebright were to pull out a pistol and shoot himself? That would be a nice sort of thing, a shock to one's nerves that would last a lifetime.

Now, as a matter of fact, a defaulting cashier found in the rooms at Monte Carlo is very like a torpedo or mine found drifted up on the beach, a thing which may explode on being touched, or may not. Recognising this fact unadorned by simile, Johnson paced the atrium biting his nails

Why did people do this sort of thing, putting other people into such unpleasant positions? Why had this happened to him? Why had he come into the Casino? If he hadn't been so sea-sick on the voyage he would be safe now at Genoa. If he hadn't come by sea he wouldn't have been sea-sick. He was stating these facts and putting to himself these questions when, suddenly, from the door of the rooms came Sebright. right into his arms, as you may say.

Sebright recognised the other with a start; then he laughed.

"Well," said he, "things seem to be happening to-day. I'm broke, and here are you. Police outside. I suppose. Nice mess."

"Yes," said Johnson, "nice mess."

"But how in the nation did they find I was here?" asked the other, "and why didn't they put the police on straight without dragging you from Genoa?"

"I haven't been to Genoa yet," said Johnson, "and they've found out nothing. I came in here by accident half-an-hour ago, and saw you playing in the rooms and knew all, at once."

"GOOD Lord!" cried Sebright, whose amazing brain could add up a column of figures at a glance, "but this isn't chance. Mr. Johnson, this is Providence."

"In what way?" asked the other unenthusiastically.

"They know nothing," said Sebright. "Now, listen to me, Mr. Johnson. Don't ask me why I did it. It was mainly Bols; that greasy chap got on my brain and I had a little trouble with some worrying debts, and Manchester got on top of Bols. I got ten days' leave, to be taken from my summer holiday, to see a sick aunt who died ten years ago, and I took two thousand which can't be missed for another month. I came here and in two days with a run of bad luck I've lost the coin, every magg. I've had a bitter lesson. I'm no hypocrite. You've said to yourself, no doubt, 'Here's a chap teaching in Sunday schools, showing himself to the world as a pious man, yet all the time a thief.' That's not so. Before Heaven, Mr. Johnson, gambling is my only vice— maybe, too, I'm a hard man if hardly dealt with, but I'm no hypocrite. I believe in Providence. Look at the position; nobody knows what I've done but you; as sure as this hand is on my wrist, Providence sent you here to-day to pull me out, to finish its work, to put me on my feet, having taught me for ever to go straight and quit play, which has been mostly on horse-racing and football. I'm broke; Providence has broke me. Lend me a hundred francs, it's not more than a pound, for the luck's turned-that I feel. I'll play big and before to-night I'll wager I'll get everything back and more.

"You don't want to give me to the police," went on the red-headed one. "I'm an empty purse, anyhow, and besides you don't want to placard In Manchester the fact that you found me at the tables. It's no use to do that; folks would say, 'What was he doing at the tables himself?' I'm not saying that to frighten you, Mr. Johnson, I'm just stating a fact."

It was the deciding fact with Johnson.

"But what will happen to you," said he, "if you lose the hundred?"

"What happens to everyone who is cleaned out here," replied Sebright. "I'll go for the viatique."

Johnson understood him to mean that he would commit suicide.

Johnson was aghast; not having any understanding then of the Continental official loan service frequently tapped by the authentic traveller in temporary embarrassment... Johnson was aghast.

"After that," said Sebright, "Heaven knows what will happen to me, but that's my own affair. I swear you'll be bothered no more with me."

Johnson had already decided. He felt somehow that Providence had sent him as an intervener, he felt a curious assurance that the luck would turn, and he had a nasty suspicion that Sebright, before he committed the viatique, might in some way, by writing home, perhaps, involve him (Johnson) in the business, or at least give the fact of his visit to the Casino away.

He had already decided, but it took him five minutes before giving consent.

"I may be wrong or I may be right," said he at last, taking a note for a hundred francs from his pocket-book. "At all events I do it to save you, if save you I can."

He gave the note to the other, who thanked him, but without effusion. He knew Johnson. He knew all the factors that had made him decide on the loan, all except the fact-also a factor-that Johnson, like many mortals, was a gambler, unknown even to himself.

Sebright turned and led the way into the rooms. Having changed his note for counters he chose the first table on the left, found a seat just vacated, and sat down. Johnson stood behind him.

As he stood the recognition came to him that a hundred francs was little more than a pound. It had seemed quite a sum when Sebright asked for it and when he had handed it over, this gaily colored note of the Bank of France. A little over a pound, and Sebright proposed to turn it into two thousand! He felt for a moment the sensations of that gastric nightmare in which the in-finitely little presents Itself in opposition to the infinitely great. He felt as though he were watching an ant setting to work to build a pyramid that had to be built, and in the space of a few hours.

Then he held his breath. Sebright had placed his whole pile on Number 3. The wheel span, the ball pursued Its frantic course, slowed, wobbled and fell into a slot with the click of the roulette ball, which is singularly like the click of a cocked pistol.

Sebright had won. Three thousand five hundred francs, close on forty pounds-and in less than half-a-minute!

Johnson, turning away from the table, left the room. He couldn't stand to watch it, sure in his mind that the next turn of the wheel would sweep everything away. His lips were dry. He paced the atrium. He sat down. He got up. He sought the bar, swallowed more Vichy water and waited.

Twenty, thirty, forty minutes passed-an hour.

Sebright must be winning. Playing desperately as he was, he would have been cleared out long ago-If he hadn't been winning.

He came into the rooms. There was a crowd round the table on the left. He couldn't see the gambler; had he killed himself and had they carted him out by a side door? Johnson had heard of men shooting themselves and being rushed away like that. No. There was the red head glimpsed for a moment on nearer approach. Fool, why didn't he get up with his winnings-if he had been winning, as surely he had? Why, why!

Johnson, biting his nails, returned to the atrium, sat down and waited.

Ah, if he had only remained through all that séance, what a game he would have seen! It was, perhaps, not a great victory, as victories at Monte Carlo go, but it was a great battle and a winning one, and the victor left the rooms two hours and ten minutes after he had entered them and found Johnson waiting and paler than himself.

"Have you won?" asked Johnson.

"Yes," said Sebright. "How much?"

"Come to my room at the Alexandra," replied Sebright.

In a few minutes they were in Sebright's room, where the anaconda discharged the ox on to the bed in the form of two big bundles of bank-notes.

"Five thousand six hundred pounds, as near as I can make it," said he. "Lord! I wouldn't do it again. I wouldn't do it again for fifty-six thousands pounds. Never again-never, never, never again. I've had my lesson. It's near broke me."

"Five thousand six hundred pounds!" said Johnson.

Sebright began to unroll the notes. When the French print big bank-notes they print them big. Some of these were as big as hearthrugs almost.

Sebright began to collect some of the notes.

"Here's two thousand pounds' worth," said he, "and a bit over; it's the firm's money; take it lest by any chance I should lose it before we get back."

Johnson took and counted the notes and put them in his pocket.

"And here's your loan to me," said Sebright; "ten times what you gave me." He handed a thousand francs to the other.

Johnson hesitated.

"Don't be shy about taking it," said Sebright. "It's no more than your due; you risked that hundred— go on, now."

Johnson took the note. It was better than nothing, but in his heart he felt that half of the winnings, when the two thousand had been deducted was rightly his.

He had done nothing, assisted in no way at the play, simply lent the other a pound, so to speak, yet he felt bitterly that the half of three thousand six hundred pounds was being held from him; that a generous man would have said, "We'll split the winnings."

Greed rose up In him, Immense, yet he could do nothing. To demand half would be to make himself the accomplice of this defaulting cashier -yet he would have taken half with a ready hand if it had been offered to him.

More. He knew instinctively that such a demand would be useless. Sebright was not the man to part. Sebright was a horribly hard nut, and Johnson had no nutcrackers.

He couldn't threaten Sebright with the law because of the explanations that would have to be made in court, Monte Carlo and Simnel Street Chapel wouldn't run in double harness— at least, without the jeers of the onlookers.

"Well," said he at last, "and what do you propose to do now?"

"When I get back to Manchester," said the other, folding up the remaining notes, "I'll put this stuff in an annuity and never touch the interest only to invest it. It'll be a tidy bit for my old age."

"But surely you are not thinking of going back to Manchester?" said Johnson, suddenly and joyfully finding a knife in his hand.

"And why not?"

"Why not? Think. How can you go back to the firm?"

"They don't know anything," said Sebright. "No more than dead men, and the money's returned to them."

"But I'm one of the firm," replied Johnson, "and I know everything, and in common justice to my partners you must see that—"

"Go on," said Sebright.

"There's no going on;-you must see that the thing is impossible— quite."

A very ugly look came into Sebright's face.

"You'd tell on me, would you?" said he.

"It's not a question of telling, it's a question of honor to my partners."

Sebright considered for a moment.

"I gave you that two thousand, fearing that by any mischance I might lose lt." said he. I'll take that money back to Manchester myself. Hand it over, please."

"Most certainly not,'" said Johnson. "It is the money of the firm, and in this room I am the firm."

"I Intend to take the money back to the firm myself," said Sebright. "Won't you give it up? Very well."

He walked across to the bell by the door and placed a finger on the ivory button. Johnson noted that he pressed it.

"What are you ringing that bell for?"

"To give you in charge for stealing my money," replied Sebright. "The Casino will back me in my statement as to what I took from there. I'm not joking; you want a crash and you'll have one, by heaven!"

Johnson fumbled rapidly in his pockets, took the notes and flung them on the bed.

"There you are," said he. "Take them."

Sebright took them and verified the amount. Whilst he was doing this a knock came to the door and a waiter appeared.

"A bottle of Apollinaris," said Sebright, giving the order he would have given if his bluff had failed. Then to Johnson: "I did not know you before, but I know you now; you'd have barred my chance to get back to respectability— why? Well, you know that I mean to run straight, that I've been frank with you, that what I did was the act of a madman, not of a criminal. Yet you'd block me out if you could, which you can't. This money will go back into the firm's pocket when I return at the end of the week, and you won't talk. You haven't the guts to talk, seeing that if you did Bols would raise a rumpus that would be heard all over Manchester, not to say England, and that you've taken nine hundred francs of my winnings, which would come out. Why, man. you're accessory after the fact. By Jove. I've never thought of that before," Sebright chuckled. "It's a question of honor whether I ought to tell the other partners. Well, we've had enough of this fooling, and now good day to you. See you when I get back to Manchester."

The waiter brought in the Apollinaris as Johnson took his departure.

It was now five o'clock In the afternoon, the sun was sinking towards the Esterelles and the blue and brilliant day was softening to its close. Johnson took his seat outside the Cafe de Paris and before a cup of coffee

His mind was not constructed to hold anger long or breed the spirit of revenge. Sebright had come out of a terrible hole with his help and had made him a paltry return. He would quite willingly have blocked Sebright's path back to respect-ability on account of that, but he couldn't, and there was no use in thinking about it; what really engaged his thoughts as he sat now before the Cafe de Paris, watching without seeing the crowd round him, was the great golden egg that Luck had dropped in Sebright's hat.

He felt a curious new sensation not unlike hunger.

Five thousand pounds! Even a thousand.

If Sebright, with little more than a pound, had made five thousand, might not he. Johnson, with a fiver make a thousand?

Even five hundred, even a hundred.

Could he afford a fiver?

Over and above the thousand pounds of the firm's money, he had his travelling expenses, enough and to spare-and, of course, why, he had the nine hundred francs Sebright had given him in returning the hundred loan.

It was like Providence-at least. Luck.

"Have a try," whispered the new spirit that was dominating him "Have a try while the thing's warm; don't try for more than five hundred; if you get that, drop it and go."

He rose from the table and crossed over to the Casino, in front of which the pigeons were strutting in the evening sunlight. He stood to look at them.

Then he went up the steps.

The rooms were pretty empty and, having obtained counters for his nine hundred francs, he took his seat at the table on the left and watched the play for a minute or two.

Then, reaching over, he placed a hundred francs on Number 33.

The ball span and Number 33 turned up.

That evening at nine o'clock Sebright, sitting in the hall of the Alexandra and smoking a cigar, saw a figure entering by the swing glass doors.

It was Johnson.

Johnson came towards him; and as he came Sebright knew instinctively what had happened, and chuckled. His mind, unlike the mind of the other, was constructed to hold hate. Johnson had tried to bar his path back to respectability, would have done so if he could. Sebright could have forgiven a blow, but not that.

Johnson took a chair at his table. His face was white and his teeth seemed more prominent than ever.

"I HAVE had a misfortune," said he. "I went in to look at the tables and, as a matter of fact, I was induced to play—  I have lost all the money I had with me."

"How much?" asked Sebrlght. "A considerable sum."

He didn't say that the thousand belonging to the firm was gone In a ghastly attempt to recapture the money he depended on for travelling and hotel expenses.

If he had made a clean breast of the business Sebright's attitude might have been different —perhaps.

"In fact," continued he, "I have no money to take me home, let alone to Genoa. You've got to see me out of this."

"Oh, have I?" replied the other "Now look here, let's have this matter clear. You'd have broke me if you could. I'm a hard man when my back's up, but I'll do one thing for you that you wouldn't have done for me. I'll keep my mouth shut. You can tell the firm you couldn't go on to Genoa because you were robbed. I'll say nothing, but as to lending you money or giving you money-not a sou."

"Very well," said Johnson, "whatever happens will be on your head."

Sebrlght turned and left the lounge and went up to his room.

He reckoned Johnson would be all right. He had his watch and chain and luggage and a diamond ring, he could cable home for money ; but up in his room, when he reached it, those words of Johnson's came back to him: "Whatever happens will be on your head."

Hard as he was he began to relent.

He had satisfied his desire for revenge; after all— after all.

He left his room and came down-stairs to the lounge— but Johnson had gone. He did not know what hotel he was staying at— never had thought to ask. He stood for a moment in perplexity, then he got his hat and came out and wandered through the streets, down by the Casino, by the sea— not a sign of the man he was seeking.

He returned to his hotel feeling rather disturbed.

He would have felt more disturbed had he been able to follow the foot-steps of the other, now making for La Condamine and his hotel, and had he been able to read his thoughts.

Suicide. That was the only way out-but how? A razor— his safety razor blade would do it— ugh!— no other way. "Tell the firm you were robbed." Yes, but how get home to tell them? Trapped like a rat in this place where suicide seemed to be a natural act.

Now Johnson, before committing suicide, would have padded the hoof to Calais, begging his bread, and swum the Channel after, and maybe it was that natural disinclination towards the heroic that found him ten minutes later in the private room of the proprietor of his hotel, pouring out his position before the stout and kindly little Monsieur Bonnard.

"But, Monsieur," put in the latter, "what you ask is impossible. To lend you money to pay my bill and also to return to your home is beyond me. It is not done. You have lost thus large sum, the Casino will know that— well, there remains for you only the viatique. It is quite simple, I will help you."

Then Johnson, frozen with horror at the fat man's cold-blooded suggestion, yet capable of speech and the indignation that inspires so many letters from travellers to the newspapers, turned on the other and gave him his opinion of Monte Carlo and its methods, till the inn-keeper, suddenly taking his meaning, as a man takes a bullet, fell back in his chair and laughed and cried, so broken up with the accusation of the other that he promised a thousand-franc note for travelling expenses, and told his accuser to let the bill stand.

"For I see now you are a true Englishman, Monsieur," said he, "and Englishmen always pay their debts."

__________________

11: Did Kressler Kill His Wife?

The Strand Magazine, Jan 1922

Chronicle (Adelaide) 11 March 1922

THE BOAT TRAIN was drawing into Victoria, and Kressler, seated in the corner of a smoking carriage and strapping a bag, was finishing a conversation about orchids. The party of the second part in this conversation, a stout little man looking bored and stiff, was exchanging a travelling cap for a bowler, trying to arrange his thoughts in a fitting manner to meet London after a fifteen years' absence in India, and, at the same time, not to appear rude.

'Of course,' said Kressler, 'all those variations taking the forms of insects and beetles and so on are due simply to modifications of the pieces of the floral envelopes. The envelopes are constructed irregularly upon a ternary type and have three exterior and three interior pieces. The exterior pieces are less brightly colored than the interior, and the two lateral ones are often of a somewhat different form from the other. If I had a pencil and bit of paper I could explain it better.'

'It don't matter,' said the little man, hurriedly. 'I take your meaning. Well, Here we are at last.' He let the window down on the platform side and, as the train came to a standstill, hailed a porter. Kressler did the same.

'Not that,' said Kressler. 'I'll take that myself.'

He referred to a parcel in the rack overhead, a brown canvassed parcel that bore the stamp of the east as well as the initials 'J.K.'

When his luggage had been arranged on and about two taxis, Kressler got into the first, disposed the J.K. parcel on one of the front seats, tipped the porter half a crow, and said:— '26a, Pont-street.'

Kressler was forty-seven years of age, a lean, tanned, nervous individual with a heavy moustache and the eyes of a fanatic;  he had one idea with a double string, and one bobby— the Orchidaceae and the Coleoptera. His glasshouses at Kniveton, down in Bucks, covered acres; his town house at 26a, Pont-street had almost the atmosphere of a glasshouse, due to the heating of a great conservatory at its back; a conservatory where choice specimens of the terrestrial ophrydeae of Pleurothallis, Cattleya, Vanilleae, Maxillaria Cypripelum, and other marvels held court and received old pre-war German professors from Tubingen, orchid fanatics from America, men from Kew.

His collection of beetles was unique. Men laughed at Kressler for diverting part of his great wealth into the collection and cultivation of these forms; had he taken up with race-horses, or broken himself over theatres, they would have reckoned him sane enough, but for a man to devote his life to beetles and orchids! Maybe they were right, seeing that Kressler devoted to these things an ambition that might have made him Prime Minister, had it been properly coupled with his will-power and wealth— seeing also that he was married to a charming little fluffy-headed woman whom he left now and then for months and months, whilst he was off on one or his mad slants in pursuit of his heart's desire. He was just back now from the Solomon islands by way of India, after an absence of nine months.

The cabs stopped at No. 26a, Pont-street. Kressler ran up the steps, rang, and was admitted by Burden. Burden, though, of the breed of the old English side-whiskered butler, had still something floral about him, caught, maybe, from his environment. In form he suggested a bulb; his color was even more florid than the interior pieces of Maxillaria Cypripedium.

'Got my wire?' asked Kressler.

'Yes, sir,' replied Burden, taking his master's hat and making to take the parcel he carried.

'Don't bother,' said Kressler. 'Where's your mistress?'

'The mistress said she'd be back before you came, sir. She went to the New Burlington Art Club reception.'

'Tea-party thing?' asked Kressler.

'Yes, sir, I believe so.'

Kressler looked at his watch: It pointed to ten minutes past five.

'Well,' he said, 'you can tell her I'm the library when she comes. See to my luggage, and have those cases of specimens put somewhere dry.'

He crossed the hall, and Burden slipping before him, opened the door of the library. It was a pleasant room with a window firing upon the conservatory. On the entry table lay a pile of letters. Letters, circulars, seed catalogues, bulb catalogues; a monstrous pile that had already been dealt with by his secretary.

Kressler pointed to the letters.

'Shove those on the side table,' said he. Then, placing the parcel he carried on the table before him, he sat down and drew a penknife from his pocket whilst Burden dosed the door.

Kressler opened the penknife and began carefully to rip the sewing of the canvas cover. This done, and the cover removed he came upon a layer of dried moss, bound around with thin strips of bamboo. Something of the sun and mystery of the tropics teemed to emanate from the vaguely scented bundle which Kressler now began to work upon with his knife, dividing the bamboo strips and tearing the moss apart till he reached the core— a huge bronze-colored beetle, the wing edges bright as gold, brilliant as when alive, owing to the  preservative properties of the barea moss.  Gathering the moss together, he threw the canvas cover into the fireplace. Then, turning to the table, he sat down before the beetle.

There were plenty of beetles in the packing-cases that Burden was unshipping from the taxis, but there was no beetle like this for beauty and strangeness, either in the packing-cases or the whole known world. He repacked the thing carefully in the moss, placed it on top of a bureau by the window, and, taking his seat on a chair to rest, he fell into a momentary reverie.

He was again the sunlight of the south, smelt again the perfume of the forests, the heady, dank, dreamy smell of liantasse in swinging cables, cassi in golden flower, vanilla beans, and earth that, like a red magician, lurked behind the gorgeous arras, building trees, twisting vine cables, painting flowers, globing fruit, creating insects of the strangest pattern.

The door opened, and to the dreamer thus engaged little Mrs. Kressler came in. She wore a broad-brimmed hat and she held the programme of the New Burlington Art Club in her hand.

ii

'MARY!' cried Kressler, rising to meet and kiss her.

'I knew I'd be late,' said she. 'I left in time but the taxi broke down and I had a dispute and— oh, John, how brown you are! Let me look at you in the light —brown as a coffee-berry, and so tired-looking. Have you had tea?'

No. you. she had. Over the teacups in the dining-room she had ordered an egg to be boiled for his tea— she told him the kitchen chimney at Kniveton had taken it into its head to smoke; how the Lacys were going to be divorced, how Uncle George's rheumatism was, and how much she had paid a new modiste for the gown she was wearing— one-fifth of what Paquin would charge. John listened, wiping the tea from his long moustache, and interested, despite himself, and the fact that she was not talking about orchids or the Coleoptera. Nine months in the wilder places of the earth give one an appetite for things homely and simple, and the doings of the great— even of the greatest, would have had but little appeal for Kressler, who found such interest in the doings of the sweep at Kniveton and the misdoings of the Laceys.

After tea they went to the drawing-room, where she played for him whilst he smoked a cigarette, then they had dinner, and after dinner they 'phoned for the electric brougham and went to the Gaiety.

Going to bed, Kressler peeped into the library to see that the beetle was all right; he did not lock it away, it wanted plenty of air after its journey, dry warm air, such as that of the library. He fetched a newspaper and folded it into a sort of mattress so that the air might get into the underside of his treasure; then having smoked or last cigarette, he went to bed.

The most extraordinary thing about the Kresslers, or perhaps the most ordinary thing, was the fact that Mm. Kressler existed in a different world from her husband. They lived together, laughed walked; talked and ate together, but they didn t' think together. This little woman, who had something of the comfortable appearance  of dormouse, had scarcely an idea of the ambitus or object of Kressler's activities; he went sometimes to foreign places to collect specimens, his orchid houses were the finest in England, he was very proud of them— this she knew nor searched for further knowledge, content with the fact that he was a good if sometimes absent, husband, never bothering about her commonplace doings, and allowing her seven hundred a year for pin-money.

So it came about that next morning at nine o'clock and just after her husband had left the house for Kew on important business, Mrs. Kressler, floating into the library and seeing some dirty-looking moss lying on an old newspaper on the bureau and some canvas in the grate, called the housemaid, who was dusting the hall, and told her to remove them.

iii

KRESSLER came home for luncheon at with him at one o'clock, bringing Professor Skeines with him.

Mrs. Kressler was out, attending a sale.  Skeines' conversation was about as interesting as the contents of a bulb catalogue to the uninitiated, but Kressler seemed to enjoy it even though it was not all about orchids.

He listened, with seeming interest, whilst Skeines pulled Professor Pullman's monograph on the Hexandria to pieces, pointing out with devilish derision his inclusion amongst the Lilianceae of a rush that had no place there— with seeming interest, for suddenly in a pause of the talk he prized Skeines from his subject as one prizes a limpet from a rock and fastened him on to the Coleoptera.

'And now I'll show you something worth seeing," said Kressler, rising from the table. He left the room, leaving the door ajar, and old Skeines. pouring out another glass of Madeira, heard him cross the hall to the library. Then he heard the voice of Kressler crying aloud for Mary, whoever Mary might be, and the voice of a female making answer—

'The missus told me to throw it out, sir.'

Skeines pricked his ears; a long silence followed the simple announcement. Then came Kressler's voice—

'Did you to throw it out?'

'Yes, sir; that and some old stuff that was in the grate.'

'Told— you— to-throw—it out! Where to—? What! Which!  Where the— where did you throw it?'

'All the rubbish goes into the dustbin,

'All the rubbish— but this was not rubbish!  Cant you understand—  the only golden stag in the world— Great Scot! Where s the dustbin?'

'In the area, sir, but it will have been emptied by this.'

'Emptied, where?'

'Into the dust-cart, sir.'

'What dust-cart?'

'The one that comes ever day, sir.'

'Where does it come from?'

'I don't know, sir.' 'Great Scot! Great Scot!— where's Burden?'

'The missus sent him to Harrods, sir, to match some Japanese lamp shades.'

'Lamps, lamp shades!— Great Scot! Does the cook know? Run down and ask her quick; tell her what's happened— quick!"

Old Skeines, vastly interested, and withal amused as one at a tragic play where the acting is perfect, poured himself out another glass of Madeira and sat listening to the uneasy footsteps in the hall.

Skeines was unmarried, and his always fair estimate of his own wisdom was not diminished either in volume or intensity by the domestic tragedy unfolding to his ears. He thought of the Lilium Skeinesensi which a foolish wife might have boiled, or taken it for an onion. Of his essay on the relation of the stamen to the calyx as determining the poisonous nature of certain plants of which matrimony might have made jam-pot lids. Then suddenly came the voice of Mary.

'Please, sir. the cook says the dustman called at twelve as usual and she doesn't know where he comes from, but it's the London County Council does the work, she believes, and—'

'Where's my hat?'

'Here, sir.'

Skeines heard the hall door opened, a passing taxi being hailed, Kressler's voice crying 'Spring Gardens,' and the hall door shut. He was not annoyed at being forgotten in this matter by his host— he knew him too well. He finished the Madeira, smoked a cigarette, and then he, too, departed.

iv

IT WAS not till four o'clock on the following, day that Kressler returned home for good. After definite knowledge of the fruitlessness of his quest had come the recognition of defeat and a feeling of abandonment. He had dined at his club, reviewing— as he ate the food he could not taste— the men he had interviewed, high officials and dustmen; the things he had seen, from dust carts to dust destructors; and the great fact that his quest was hopeless. He drifted into the Alhambra, and returned home at one o'clock in the morning. He listened to the easy breathing, speaking of the sleep of the just, that came from his wife's bedroom; then he stole off to his own room, and after an early breakfast next morning, started for Richmond, where Skeines lived.

He did not want to meet his Wife. He dreaded what he might say. He recognised that it was not all her fault, not her fault that she had been born with a mind destitute of interest in the things that really mattered, a commonplace, frivolous mind— yet he did not want to meet her. He did not want to think of her. If she had destroyed the thing in a temper he might have forgiven her more easily than he could forgive her for this passionless, stupid crime, born of want of interest In his aspirations and doings.

Luncheon with Skeines and a blow In the park, however, had a cooling effect, and by the time of his return home, about four o clock, he was not only able to think calmly about his wife, but he was actually anxious to meet her. To meet her and punish her by telling her exactly what she had done, and in language that a child could understand.

'The mistress is in the drawing-room, sir,' said Burden.

She was. Placid and content. Tea had Just been brought in, and as Kressler entered she was in the act of pouring out a cup, calm, and evidently without any sense of special wrong-doing.

'John,' said Mrs. Kressler, as though suddenly remembering, 'I'm so sorry. Mary tells me that old thing you left in the library and that old canvas in the strata oughtn't to have been thrown out. I told her to—'

'I know,' said Kressler. 'It was a beetle — there's no use in bothering about It — two lumps, please.' He took up his cup and sat down, and Mrs. Kressler, nothing loth, turned the conversation in another direction. She knew nothing of the wild incidents of yesterday; Mary had simply said that the master had seemed put out. He still seemed put out; so she started to draw him away from himself with light gossip, and with such apparent success that she was surprised when, tea being over. Kressler,  returning to the subject like the Biblical dog, said—

'I want to talk to you, Mary, about that thing— sit down here beside me on the sofa. I want to tell you the story of it so that you may see what it meant to me.'

'Yes, dear.' said Mrs. Kressler. Fetching the half-knitted jumper she was at work on, she sat down beside him on the broad, comfortable sofa, and he began.

v

'YOU remember, or maybe you don't remember, that before starting I had engaged a collector to meet me at Rangoon.'

'I remember something about that,' said Mrs. Kressler, 'because you got so angry with me when I asked you what he was going to collect.'

'If I got angry,' said Kressler, 'it was simply because the fact was obvious that the expedition being in search of new specimens of certain endogenous plants grouped under the name Orchidaceae and certain new forms of life, we were going to collect those, if possible. Well, I met this man it Rangoon— Simmonds was his name. I had engaged him on good credentials; an hour's conversation with him confirmed them. Here was no hired collector— would you mind putting those knitting needles. aside, my dear, their movements rather interrupt me— here was no man paid for doing a job; here was a man with a passionate attachment to his subject, a man whose life had been spent in the wilder places of the world in pursuit of science.

'He was a remarkable man, even in personal appearance, not unlike Burden in figure and face, if one can imagine Burden with an intellect and some inches shorter in stature; but the thing that struck me most was his enormous head. It was very large, quite enormous, making him a subject of ridicule, indeed, to boys and dull-witted persons. He had already obtained for me an option upon a schooner of sixty tons, the Madras, owned by a Dutch gentleman of the name of Papenhayne, resident in Rangoon. Having inspected her, I signed the contract for a year's hire. A week later we had obtained our crew, and the provisions and water having been brought on board, we started, shaping our course for Borneo.

'One might ask me. "Why pass the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, those well-known haunts of the orchid?" and I would reply, "Over-done.  Robbed by innumerable collectors of the rarer specimens, these islands, small in area, are over-done." Simmonds well knew that, and led by his sagacity, we discarded the obvious, steering, as I said, for Borneo.

'Reaching Sarawak, we put in to Igan, which is situated on a bend of the Rejang River. Between here and Muka we made our hunting ground, and here, led by Simmonds, I secured a rich harvest. Half the contents of those packing-cases. Think of it. In that small tract of country disdained by collectors I secured all those, simply because I was led by a man of knowledge and genius.'

'It's something, like shopping, isn't it?' said Mrs. Kressler. 'Sometimes in side streets you find shops that are much better and cheaper than the big shops— if you know the ropes.'

'Just so,' said Kressler, pleased at this sudden flash of intelligence in his spouse. 'Simmonds knew the ropes, as you put it, and, having exhausted this piece of country we re-embarked and set sail for Sandal Wood Island, in the Sunda group. It is quite a small island, but very rich in Its flora and fauna, and strangely neglected by collectors, and having secured a fairly good haul we left for Mallicollo, in the New Hebrides, stopping there only for water, and leaving the next day for a small island to the south which Simmonds had marked down, and where our luck still held good. We spent a fortnight there, and on the eve of our departure for Suva Simmonds made a proposition to me.

'It seems that somewhere about a year before a Dutchman named Van Home had given him information of the possibilities of Malaita, in the Solomon Islands. Van Horne was a collector, and he had marked down a special bay to the west of Malaita where the woods were extraordinarily rich.

'The only difficulty was the natives. The natives of Malaita are headhunters to a man; crafty, subtle, and sly, they are the most dangerous people in the Eastern world. Civilisation has never really touched them. They are cannibals, but they kill really less for food than for the strange passion that has come down to them from immemorial times, the passion for securing and collecting heads. Head lust, one might call it.

'Well, Simmonds proposed to me that we should sail for Malaita. and, risking the natives, explore the woods spoken of by Van Horne. Such was his devotion to me that, though he was only my paid agent, who could have chosen safe places, he put every personal consideration aside— you, quite appreciate that fact, don't you?'

'Yes— go on,' said Mrs. Kressler, nestling close to him as if protection against the head-hunters. 'I quite see they'd want to get his head, wouldn't they?— you said it was so big.'

'I wasn't thinking of that— I meant risk of life. He was ready to risk his life for my sake and for the sake of the objects of our search. You see that clearly?'

'Yes, quite.

'Well, I accepted his suggestion, after due consideration, and next day we set sail for Malaita, favored by fine weather, and in due course we arrived at the bay indicated by Van Horne. It was a narrow bay. protected by a reef and backed by dense groves of cocoanuts, pandanus, bread-fruit and other tropical trees, but sign of natives there was none. Everything seemed in our favor, and then, all of a sudden, bad luck came, for on the morning after our arrival I was troubled by an attack of fever. I must have taken it at Mallicollo. However that may be, it quite prostrated me, and, despite large doses of quinine. I was helpless and unable to land. Then it was that Simmonds showed himself again in his true colors. He determined to go ashore alone, taking with him two kanakas we had picked up at Mallicollo. I pointed out to him the risk attending the landing of such a small party, but he was quite determined, and I was too weak to argue with him. So he went, taking provisions sufficient for three or four days, an automatic pistol, and the collecting box which he always carried slung across his shoulder by a strap.

'On the evening of the next day one of the kanakas returned, hailing the ship from the beach. A boat put off for him, and he came on board bearing a note from Simmonds. The note briefly stated that he had discovered what he called the wonder of the world, the golden stag he called it— a beetle absolutely unknown to science. He gave a short description, and finished by saying that he was pushing farther into the woods, and would return on the following day. You can fancy my feelings. The fever quite left me. I was myself again. My appetite came back, and that night I slept soundly, though dreaming, indeed, the most splendid dream, in which I walked with my friend amongst groves where the flora was of almost impossible beauty. Next day I could scarcely rest, watching the beach for his return; but evening came and passed, and night fell without a sign of him. Next morning was the same. No sign; the day passed and night was falling when a hail from the beach reached us, but it was not Simmonds.

'It was Hamua, the second kanaka, returned without his master. When we got him on board he was too exhausted to speak; then, after a while, when we had given him some food and brandy, he recovered enough to be able to tell his tale.

'He said that shortly after leaving us they had struck a part of the forest where Master with the big head— that was the name he employed, speaking in the native— had expressed great joy over an insect which he had collected, and placed it in his in box. He had sent the other kanaka back with a note to me, and then he and Ramua had pushed on, seeking more things but finding little of importance, though, indeed, the forest was filled with plants and, insects not inferior in looks to the one which had given his master such delight.

'Of course, I knew at once the truth, that Simmonds. as so often happens after a big find, had struck the commonplace again, and, spurred by his first success, and pushed on farther and farther. Ramua's narrative bore me out. Simmonds had indeed pushed on, making towards the north so as to avoid the hills, and that night, as they slept, he and Ramua had been seized by natives, bound, and carried captive to a village situated in a clearing and close to the shore.

'Ramua on the way had managed to loosen his bonds, and, struggling free of them, had broken away and escaped. He could not tell what the natives had done to Simmonds, whether they had killed him or whether he still lived. He had made his way back to the ship by that beast instinct common to primitive man, and he declared, on being questioned, that he could find the village again if I cared to send a relief expedition and take him as a guide.

'Of course, I determined on that course of action at once. There were seven of us. Myself, Masters, the captain of the schooner, three sailors, one of whom acted as bo'sun, and the two Kanakas. We had four repeating rifles and four revolvers on board, and plenty of ammunition; these we collected, with enough provisions to last us four days, and, having given Ramua six hours in which to rest himself and sleep, we started just as day was breaking beyond the hills.

'We landed without opposition or difficulty, and, leaving a man behind to take the boat back to the schooner and keep watch, we struck inland, led by Ramua, through a forest where the cable lianas swung overhead, and the tree tops, moving in the land breeze that had just sprung up, showed the sky lit with morning.  As the light grew stronger I could see what a paradise for the collector this was likely to be, but, with my mind filled as it was with the fate of Simmonds, I was blind to the possibilities around me I had but one idea, to push on..

'At noon we halted far a rest and some food, and two hours later we resumed the march, Ramua still leading with the unerring instinct of a dog, till we reached a part of the forest where only bread-fruit grew, interspersed with great patches of the Mammee apple.

'Here Ramua called a halt and whispered that we were within earshot of the village.

'It was just sundown and darkness was coming through the trees. He said that our plan was to wait a few hours till the moon rose, then, the village being asleep, we could prospect the place, free Simmonds if he were still alive, perhaps without giving the alarm, of, it necessary, attack the place with better chance of success in the moonlight than we would have now that dusk was full upon us. He said that if they intended killing Simmonds they would have done so by this. We fell in with his plan and, lying down, rested ourselves whilst darkness came on and the forest turned black with night.

'Presently a fain green light began to glow above us. It was the light of the rising moon. It grew stronger, and, as it grew, the whisper came from Ramua that it was time for us to move. I ordered the men to look to their arms, see that their spare ammunition was all right, and walk softly; then, following Ramua in single file, we moved off.

'It was easy going, and the ground, covered by a growth of low fern between the Mammee apples and the bread-fruit tracts, gave no sound to our footsteps. Ten minutes passed, then, Ramua halting, we spread out and, peeping through the bushes, saw the native village in its clearing, the moon full upon the grass-thatched huts and, full in the moonlight in the open space around which the huts were grouped, a little fire burning and sending its smoke to the sky.

'Three sticks in the form of a tripod were placed over the fire and from them something hung on a string, twirling in the smoke. Beside the fire squatted an old man feeding the flickering flames with dried leaves and bits of tinder, the smoke rising in volumes at every handful so that sometimes the thing that was being smoked was invisible. Not another soul was in sight; the village slept well and soundly, and the reason of its sleep was evident in the embers of a greater fire just dying out and the bones around it. The village was gorged.

'Ramua, who was beside me, plucked my sleeve, pointed out the old man by the fire and whispered: "Devil-devil doctor." Then he held up a finger and whispered, "Wait!"

'He rose, slipped away through the trees, and presently returned with something in his hands. It was a fathom of tough ground liana as thick as whipcord. Then, holding up his finger again, he glided away. Presently he reappeared in the full moonlight, crossing the open space like a ghost, towards the old man, approaching him from behind.

'The devil-doctor heard and saw nothing. Then suddenly the liana was round his neck, twisted tight, and he was lying on the ground kicking, and, in a moment, dead. Not a cry had broken the stillness of the night to alarm the village, nothing but just the faint sound of the old man's brief struggle that might have been the sound of a bush pig in the undergrowth.

'Then Ramua removed the thing that was hanging from the tripod and picked up something that lay beside the body of the devil-doctor, something that shone in the moonlight. It was Simmonds' collecting box— the other thing, which he had removed from the tripod, was Simmond's head.

'Coming back to us bearing these things one in each hand, he whispered us to follow him, and striking through the trees we left the sleeping village behind us, reaching the beach as dawn was breaking and setting sail an hour later. We buried the remains of my friend at sea, and the golden stag for which he had risked his life— for which he gave his life— went to a London dustbin. To a London dust destructor; that is all I wanted to tell you— now you know.'

Kressler paused, but Mrs. Kressler said nothing. The cruel fatality of the whole business seemed to have stricken her dumb as she sat there, her head reclining against his shoulder.

Kressler, half-shocked with the effect of his revelation, looked down at her face— she was asleep!

____________________

12: The Lady Detective

Land (Sydney) 24 Dec 1926

THE CHIEF of the Criminal Investigation Department was absent on business, so Miss Struthers was shown into Inspector Donnison's room.

Inspector Donnison rules at New Scotland Yard in the absence of the chief, and in the absence of both the reins are held by Inspector Freyberger. What these three men do not know about the heart of man, London and crime would make a. very small and very uninteresting book; yet they are often at fault, and. just at the moment of this story they, were seriously so.

The case puzzling them at this moment, briefly presented, was as follows:

Lady Hilltoun, of Ashby-de-la-Zouche, wife of Lord Hilltoun, the brewer, numbered four days ago among her most cherished possessions a cream-coloured pug-dog and a blue diamond. The latter, in size, lustre and beauty, far surpassing the famous Hope diamond now in the possession of Monsieur Hahib, was worth anything between sixty and eighty thousand pounds. The pug was worth, perhaps, a. ten-pound note. Item, his; name was Bellerby.

The Hilltouns had no town house. They put up at Long's, or "Jubber's," as it is known to the initiated, whenever business or pleasure brought them to London, and six days before the whole family— that is to say, Lord Hilltoun, Lady Hilltoun, and Bellerby— had arrived in the metropolis and taken up their residence at the Bond Street caravanserai.

Now, Lord Hilltoun had a relative, a nephew, an impoverished but volatile gentleman known amongst the nights clubs and the "jeunesse doree" of London by the name of Bobby Tailor. Mr. Tailor's impoverishment, did not appear in his clothes, or on his face, or in his actions. He had no money at all, nor visible means of support; yet he was always well-dressed; always well-fed, always jolly. As far. as one could see, this pleasant and entirely irresponsible person existed on the reputation of thirty thousand pounds squandered when he came of age, an intimate knowledge of everything connected with the turf, and his own exuberant personality.

Lord Hilltoun tolerated Mr. Tailor, and four mornings ago— it was, to be precise, the City and Suburban day— Bobby, beautiful as Smallbridge could make him, with a gardenia in his coat, called at Long's to pay his respects to his uncle and aunt before departing for the race.

Lord Hilltoun, an early bird, was out; Lady Hilltoun received her nephew, and this is the story told by her to Inspector Freyberger a few hours later: -

"I had put the diamond in my purse; I intended taking it to Hunt and Roskell to be re-set. I meant to take it yesterday, but Bellerby was unwell. One of the servants took him to the kitchen, and I find now that one of the cook people gave him the remains of a chicken. Only for that the diamond would be safe in Hunt and Roskell's hands instead of stolen. I came into the room where Mr. Tailor was; the diamond was in my hand— yes, of course it was in the purse, and the purse was in my hand. I placed the purse on the table. I was speaking to Mr. Tailor, when an assistant, from my dressmaker's came with it message. I just went into the corridor for a moment to speak to the girl; then I returned, and I found Bellerby highly agitated, and snapping and snarling at Mr. Tailor. He said, goodbye to me and hurried off, and I was for at least ten minutes trying to soothe Bellerby. Then I glanced at the table, and you may imagine my horror to find the purse gone. No one else was in the room. Of course, he has taken it. Bellerby saw him— the angel saw him, and tried to tell me. Didums, Bellerby," and so forth.

Now, the bother to the police consisted in the limitations imposed. On the evidence before Them they would have at once arrested Mr. Tailor. But this, course of action was vetoed by Lord Hilltoun. The diamond was to be recovered without the disgrace of a prosecution.

Damnatory as was Lady Hilltoun's statement, the actions of Mr. Tailor were more so, for on the City and Suburban night he went over to Paris with a. detective at his heels, put up at the Ritz, visited Longchamps next day, betted profoundly and profusely, lost a pot of money, and came back to London; dined at the Carlton, and retired to rest at his rooms in Pall Mall Place, where he found Inspector Freyberger waiting to see him.

"Accuses me of stealing her diamond!" cried Bobby, foaming with indignation and rage. "What diamond? In her purse— why, bless my soul, I'll have the woman indicted for libel! Her dog?— yes, the brute tried to bite me because I tried to make it jump over my stick."

"Yes, yes, my dear sir," said Freyberger, "but will you please tell me where you got that fifteen thousand francs you lost yesterday at Longchamps?"

"So I've been followed, have I?" howled Bobby, now quite mad with anger. "Where did I get that fifteen: thousand francs? Where did I get these?" flinging a wad of notes on the table. "Ask Jim Cater, of Sackville Street. I got them out of my own brains, when I backed Hard-up for the Gatwick Selling Plate and Noah's Ark for the City and Sub. in a double; event. Look at the notes, take their numbers, smell them. Diamonds! Do you take me for a thief?"

He had spoken the truth. Cater admitted the transaction. There was; no proof that Bobby had attempted to sell the stone. Besides, in the wise mind of Freyberger, Bobby did not figure as a thief. Lady Hilltoun, whatever else she might be; was obviously sincere in her charge. What, then, could have become of the diamond?

"I wonder, could that dog have swallowed it?" said Longhurst, one of the men on the case.

"He'd have to swallow the purse, too," said Freyberger.

The case stood like this on the morning when to Inspector Donnison, who was drafting a report of a forgery case, and to Freyberger, who was writing a private! letter at a side table, Miss Struthers was announced.

She was rather small, very dark, pretty, about twenty-five years of age, and immaculately yet plainly dressed.

Donnison, who knew that the newcomer could never have passed the net that protects the high officials of New Scotland Yard without some powerful credentials, rose and bowed.

"I have the pleasure of speaking to Inspector Donnison, I believe?" said Miss Struthers. "The gentleman whom I saw at the bureau downstairs ordered me to be shown up to you when I presented my letter of introduction; it is addressed to the Director of the Criminal Investigation Department, but, as he is absent, I have much pleasure in handing it to you."

Donnison took the letter, motioned Miss Struthers to a seat, and Freyberger rose from his chair.

"If the lady's business is private...." said he.

"Don't, please," said Miss Struthers, "don't disturb yourself for me; my business is only just business."

Freyberger bowed to this cryptic utterance, and resumed his writing.

Donnison read the letter. It was a simple letter of introduction, addressed by the American Ambassador to the Director of the Criminal Investigation Department.

"And what is it in my power to do for you?" asked Donnison, as he replaced the letter in its envelope.

"Well, to be short," said Miss Struthers, who spoke with a very slight American accent, "I'm afraid I must be a bit. long. To begin with, I'm American, born in New Hampshire. My father was Struthers the chess player, and I suppose I inherit some of his instincts. I don't play chess, but I exercise my talents, such as they are, in another way. I took up detective work in the States, and I have served under Tennison. I have a-sister to support, and the climate out there did not suit her; it was killing her, in fact, and we were advised to try England. England suits her all right; the only question is, do we suit England?"

"I am sure there can be no question about that," said Donnison gallantly, and wondering what point the girl with luminous eyes could be driving at.

"Oh, I don't know," said Miss Struthers. "It remains to be seen. Well, not to waste your time, I came over here with my sister some time back, took an office in Newcastle Street, Strand, and started in business as a private inquiry agent. I've come to you to-day armed with that letter of introduction to know if you can put any business in my way."

"I beg your pardon," said Donnison, aghast at the query.

"Business," said Miss Struthers. "'If you communicate with Tennisons they will speak for me, and Tennisons don't waste words."

"But, my dear lady," said Donnison, "such a thing would be quite beyond the bounds of possibility. We have our own staff of detectives, our organisation is complete and rigid "

"Rigid— yes, that's just it," said Miss Struthers rather gloomily; "and that is the fault of most of your English institutions. Rigidity is all very well; in a bicycle or a crowbar, but it does not make for efficiency in an institution. Don't you employ women in your work at all?"

"No," said Donnison; "we are quite content with men."

"Contentment in an institution," said Miss Struthers, "is all very well where the institution is an almshouse or a home of rest, but in a big public office: it generally indicates— um."

"Even if we were flexible enough in our rules to allow of the employment of women," said Donnison, smiling; indulgently, "I, for one, would not advocate the change, for— and I am! speaking quite impersonally— I have never yet met the woman who could; carry a really difficult and important! case successfully to its termination." '

"You never met a woman who could?" asked Miss Struthers, smothered fire in her eye.

"Never."

"Um—well, you have met one this morning. Dear me, I believe I am blowing my own trumpet. Well, no matter, I have already wasted seven minutes of your valuable time, I only; want four more. You know that in my capacity as a private inquiry agent? I hear things. Well, I have heard of the loss of Lady Hilltoun's blue diamond. You have been trying to find it for the last four days; all your men; have been on the affair. Have they succeeded?"

"This is a case—" began Donnison, suddenly losing his urbanity and rising from his chair.

"That a woman has brought to a successful termination," finished Miss  Struthers, taking a purse from her pocket, and from the purse a blue diamond, the size of a hazel nut.

"It is Lady Hilltoun's. She is waiting outside in her motor-car. She just asked me to bring the thing in and show it; to you to prove that it has been recovered all right. I expect she is pretty well ashamed of the business, and that is why she did not come up herself, or send for one of your men."

"I must congratulate her on the recovery of the stone," said Donnison, looking rather crestfallen. "May I ask how the thing came about?"

"If you will look at that letter from our Ambassador," said Miss Struthers, "you will see that it is dated a month ago. When I got it I said 'There is no use my taking it till I can produce with it some token of my ability.' Well, yesterday afternoon a gentleman of the name of Tailor called at my office. He was labouring very much under the influence of excitement, and slightly under the influence of champagne, but his grievance was real. He told me his story, and I agreed to take his case up and see what I could do.

" 'What sort of a woman is Lady Hilltoun?' I asked him.

" 'She's not such a bad sort of woman,' he replied, 'when she is not accusing people of stealing diamonds. Writes poetry for the magazines, and that sort of thing, you know; goes in for women's rights, runs ragged schools, and all that kind of tomfoolery.'

" 'Have you a letter of hers?' I asked, 'or, at least, any of her handwriting?'

"He produced a note she had written to him on coming to town, inviting him to luncheon. I examined the handwriting and drew my conclusions.

" 'Well,' I said, .'I am busy to-day, but I will call on her to-morrow and see what I can do.'

"This morning, only a few hours ago, I called a cab and drove to Liong's Hotel. I  asked to see Lady. Hilltoun, and gave the servant my card. I was, shown into an ante-room, and waited and waited. At last I got tired of waiting, and rang the bell. A few minutes later I was shown into her ladyship's private sitting-room, and her ladyship was seated at a bureau writing.

" 'Come in,' she said.  'I will attend to you in one minute. Take a seat.'.

"The Daily Wire was on one chair, a pug-dog on another chair, a bundle of magazines on another chair, a dispatch box on another chair. I took my seat on the Daily Wire, and looked around me— you know, a person's room tells more o£ their character than their face, in some ways.

"Presently her ladyship finished writing, and rose to greet me.

"She is a large, loose-limbed, expansive, untidy woman, with a faraway look in, her eyes; one of the women who are always doing great things that somehow or other never get done.

" 'Ah!' she said, 'you are no doubt from the Superintendent of the Confederated Society of Women Helpers?'

"A woman, you see, who jumps to conclusions.

" 'No,' I replied.  'I am a private detective deputed by Mr. Tailor to inquire into the loss of your diamond.'.

" 'A woman detective,' said she. 'How interesting!' And she would have kept me half an hour talking about my position in life, for she takes a deep interest in women's work; but I was in a hurry, and brought, her to the point and kept her there till she had explained the affair from her point of view.

" 'So,' I said, 'the thing resolves itself into this. Your purse was left alone with Mr. Tailor and the dog. One or the other must be the thief; the dog is out of the question— then it must be Mr. Tailor. Yet that man is innocent, I am pretty well sure, for I have some knowledge of men.'

" 'I did not accuse him,' she replied, 'until I had searched everywhere— under the table, on the mantel—'

" 'But see here,' said I; 'you say you left the purse on the table, certainly,. Why, then, did you search under it, and on the mantel, and so on?'

"'To make sure,' she replied. 'I searched everywhere. The thing was gone, and there is only one person, who can have it.'

" 'You searched everywhere?' said I.

" 'Everywhere.'

" 'Now, tell me this— did you look in your pocket?' This brought her up all standing, as the sailors say.

" 'No,' she replied after a pause, 'but of course it could not be there.'

" 'What dress were you wearing that morning?'

"'A-black crepe de Chine.'

" 'Oh, well, can you find me that dress?'

"She led me to the bedroom, and opened a wardrobe; the, dress was there. I put my hand into the pocket of it, and pulled out the purse.

"Now," finished Miss Struthers, "there was nothing very cute in the thing. Any woman who knows women would have done just as I did. She remembered putting the purse on the table. The work girl from her dressmaker's was announced; instinct made her put the purse in a safe place; she put it in the nearest— her pocket. But she did the act automatically, and so it left no mark on her memory. Mind you, instinctive and automatic acts are committed twice as frequently by women as by men.

"Well, there you are. Now, after that, won't you admit that a woman, just because she has the instincts of a woman, laying aside her brains, has her place in detective work, and that I'm worth trying?"

"I'm afraid," said Donnison, "as I said before, the rigid—"

"Well, be as rigid as you like," said Miss Struthers, rising to go, and holding out her hand, "but don't be frigid. Good-day."

________________

Mynheer Amayat, head of the Tavas Agency in Dutch colonial era Sandabar, Java, is effectively a detective in a private security firm. There are a number of Amayat tales. (Fictional Sandabar appears to be based on Surabaya in east Java.)

13: The Heller Robbery

The Strand Magazine, May 1929 (original title "Kohn".)

Voice (Hobart) 25 February 1933

FROM Palawan to Sandalwood Island and from Achin to Papua, the land seems to have been all smashed up with a geological hammer and strewn broadcast about the sea. Great chunks like Borneo, and Sumatra and Java give a fictitious appearance of organised solidity, to the stretch of the globe two thousand miles broad by a thousand miles long.

They take the mind off the lesser islands, almost infinite in number, that mark and break the blue of the seven seas: the Mindoro Sea, the Sulu Sea, the Celebes Sea, the Banda Sea, the Java Sea, the Flores Sea, and the Arafura Sea. Islands of all shapes and sizes and of the strangest shapes, as, for instance, Celebes, which consists of a small proportion of land so disposed as to make two vast gulfs. Gulfs, bays, run-ways, reefs and all sorts of bolt-holes give to the man herd, pursued and; with the power of sail or steam at his service, a big chance against the man who is pursuing.

The Tavas Agency could tell you about that.  Amayat, who has chased robbers and murderers from Cambodia to Timor Laut, told me a little, and he told me it in reference to a question very personal to himself.

I ONCE committed a robbery (said Mynheer Amayat). I don't mind telling you about it. First of all it was many years ago, when I was young and impressionable. Secondly, the gates are closed between then and now; lastly, when you have heard my story I think you will condone the offence. The curious part of the business and the thing that lent piquancy to it was the fact that my offence was committed when I was in pursuit of criminal.

The Anglo-Dutch Bank at Macassar had been broken into, and the burglar; a young man by name of Heller, had killed. the night watchman and escaped with a large amount of money in English and Dutch notes; it was murder according to law, but it was not cold-blooded assassination; there had been a fight between Heller arid the .watchman, from the effects of which the latter had died after  having given a full description of the man who killed him.

I was asked to take up the case after Heller. I had fixed in my mind every little detail about him.  He was  tall, thin, and the photograph they showed me of him I registered in. my memory. The tracing of the money would be a difficult matter, for he would no doubt have got rid of it through Chinese sources; but the tracing of Heller, considering his height and the fact that , I knew his face, was simplicity itself, or so it seemed to me; arid that made me cocksure of myself.

I was young, it was my first big case; and, I was soon taken down. I got on his track. I found after ten days' inquiry that he had probably taken passage to Singapore. It was before the days of wireless, but of course I cabled a full description of him to the British police at Singapore, and followed on  by the next ship; but; would you believe my absolute stupidity? Of the two ships by which he might have gone to Singapore, one stopped at Batavia, and I failed to ascertain that fact and warn the Batavian police. It might be said for me that the stoppage at Batavia was due to a special cargo call, and not on .the schedule of sailings; all the same, I ought to have made absolutely sure by inquiring at the shipping office as. to whether, the schedule had been altered or riot. I failed in that microscopic attention to detail without which ; defective work cannot be of the first order.

The hint of Singapore had come to me from a letter Heller had written to a friend before the murder. When I drew Singapore blank, as the English fox-hunters say, I at once suspected that the apparently innocent letter was a blind, and that the man who showed it to me was in the swim with Heller: that they had discovered the Batavia stoppage and had arranged the robbery to take place just before the. ship sailed.

I went to Batavia and found indications that Heller had been there and gone. The man answering his description had sailed for Saigon over a week before, and as a ship was sailing I took passage. Saigon is French, and I did not notify the French police. I preferred working on my own. In any event, my. cable would have been too late to enable them to catch him on landing; and that being so a clumsy police hunt, through the town might simply have scared him into hiding or made him bolt, covering his traces. It seemed to me that he would feel himself pretty secure in Saigon and pause there to take breath. I found I was partly right. He . had been, there, but he had not stopped, or only for a few days.

This story I am felling you has less to do with the pursuit of Heller, than myself, the pursuer, and my act— or, to put it frankly, my theft of a large sum of money.

I will not dwell on the pursuit of Heller from Saigon, or only sufficiently long to indicate its difficulties, dangers, and disappointments. You have seen a minnow when frightened darting about in a pond. Well, the movements of this man might be compared with those of a minnow. Now I lost him; now, following a description that evidently applied to him, I was on his track again. Once at Kupang in Timor I was almost certain of him, but by pure ill luck I failed to make good. Yet the dice were loaded against him, for not only did he not know for a certainty that he was being followed, but also, if he had, he would not have known me as his pursuer; yet I knew him from his marks. This fact, which gave me the advantage over him, did not add to my peace of mind; it was like a grit in the eye of my self esteem.

At Kupang I came face to face with failure: I definitely lost touch with him and my money was run out all but a few pounds. That meant I would be detained at. Kupang till I could communicate with the man at Sandabar, Tavas, with whom I was working as partner, and the submarine cable in those days did not make connection with Sandabar. Things going like this, I broke away from tradition and  logic and the path of the material and flung myself on chance.

There was a gambling room in Hooft Street, and there I went. The game was roulette. I had about four pounds,  calculating, guilders in English money, and down I sat to try my luck.

I won, I lost, and I won again. I raised the four pounds to fifty, and sank it to ten. I left off after a breathless moment, when my capital, having; shrunk to two. pounds, reached twenty. I said to myself: "You have got to stop here or your heart will give out."

It was like that. The temperature was one hundred, degrees and the electric fans only stirred the hot around and round. The croupiers were drinking brandy neat. Outside it was hotter, if anything, and the moon hanging over the town and wharves seemed to radiate heat.

I had a room at the best hotel, but I could not go back and face the heat there; I came on to the wharves and sat on a crate, looking at the shipping and trying to fancy that there was a cool, wind from the sea. There were other people trying to do the same, and among them the skipper of a little schooner, the Itarig, anchored not far from the wharf.  Moller was his name.

He said that the Itarig was like an oven and the cockroaches were climbing on deck for a breath of air, so he thought it was time to. go ashore for a bit. He was a Hamburg man, and without letting him know, who I was I told him of my adventure in the gambling room and how I had turned four pounds into twenty, enough to get me back to Sandabar.

"Oh! you're going to Sandabar?" said he. "Why, I'm going to Seutang; that's close by, at least only a short journey. I could give you a passage on my schooner cheaper than the mail boat, and there's not a mail boat out west for a week at least, and I start to-morrow. I have only one passenger, and I could make shift to take two for there's an empty bunk in the cabin. See here," he said; "I've got an idea. You have twenty pounds; which is my price for taking you to Seutang. I'll take you for ten, and we will go up to the roulette shop with the other, ten and try our luck, sharing the profits— the place is open all night."

"And if I lose?" said I.

"If you do," said he; "your passage is ensured anyhow— but you won't lose; for it seems from what you told me that your luck is in."

Well, I agreed. It would pass the time, and to tell the truth the idea appealed to the gambler in me. He lives in every man, and is most useful when under subjugation, for without the gambling instinct men would risk nothing in business. But cards and roulette are not legitimate means fertile exercising of this instinct, and I may say that after that night I never used them again. We went to Hooft Street, and in ten minutes I had lost my ten pounds.

"You have ten pounds more," said Moller, "and I'll stand in with you; it's only your food I'll be out of pocket over, and I'll take you free to Seutang if you lose."

I played again, and in half an hour I was left without a penny.

We came back to the wharf. Fortunately for me, Moller was straight and a man of his word, but my position was a very unpleasant one, to say the least of it. I had reserved nothing in case of, defeat. I was thrown entirely on the charity of Moller; I had not even money to buy tobacco or a drink. I could not pay my hotel bill. It was a complete and full lesson to what the gambler in a man will do to him if not checked, and I have never forgotten it.

An hour before sunrise we were, joined on the wharf by the other passenger who had arranged to go on the Itang, a tall young man by name of Kohn. He had no luggage except a bottle of whisky, and as we put off on the, boat it seemed to me that Fate, who had been playing me all sorts of tricks in the last two months, had reserved her last and most surprising trick till now, when I was being rowed off destitute in company with a half-tipsy beachcomber to the dirty old schooner lying out there in the anchorage— destitute, for I was unable to fetch my luggage from the hotel, where I owed a bill, I had no means to pay.

On board Kohn got into his bunk with his whisky bottle, and an hour-after sunrise, with the wind blowing from the land, we put out.

THE ITANG had a Malay, crew she had also a full complement of cockroaches; the food was bad, but I could not grumble. I had bought and paid for the position with my own stupidity. I recognised that, and I would have resigned myself to the position even without irritation only for Kohn. I got to hate Koln, and that hatred had a most curious psychological foundation. If he had been a bully or a brute; or unpleasant in his ways, it would have been different, but, on the contrary, he was an easy-going man, wishing to be pleasant and insisting on chumming-up with me; he seemed perfectly unconscious of the fact that I wished to keep to myself, and he would come and yarn and talk and tell me about his life just as though we were equals, and just as though I were a wastrel like himself. Though He had no luggage, he had money enough to buy drinks from Moller, and tobacco. He offered me tobacco, and though I craved for it, I would not take it from him, and had to pretend to be a non-smoker. You can fancy that did not make me love him any the more.

Moller and he got on all right, despite the fact that Moller hinted once or twice to me that he suspected Kohn had made Kupang too hot for him and was sailing outside the Law.

"However," said Moller, "that's no business of mine. He's a good fellow, and we've' got to take men as we find them in these seas, and times are too had for a shipmaster to smell at cargoes— I reckon he's no worse than many of us— but between you and me I believe it's not want of money that made old man Kohn choose the Itang instead of the mail steamer."

And he was right.

My bunk in the cabin was opposite to that of Kohn, and one night, or rather one morning, just as dawn was lighting the cabin through the sky-light, I opened my eyes and there was Kohn on his elbow with a wallet in his hand. It was full of bank notes, and he was going over them. I watched him. Then he closed the wallet and put  it under his pillow and lay down. Yes, Moller was right.

However that may be, Kohn was destined to put me wrong in my opinion of him; for a few days later, and within a day of Seutang, he did me a service.

I was standing by the starboard fail, which was not more than knee high, when through some fault of the helms-man or shift of the wind the main boom. swung to starboard and sent me overside. I could not swim and I would have drowned under the eyes of the Malays but for Kohn, who sprang into the sea after me and brought me safe to the ship's side,

Now I am coming to the crux of my story. If you have not guessed it, Kohn was most certainly Heller, the man I was after. The man I had been pursuing here and there, the man who had given me the slip— or so I thought— at Kupang. You can fancy my surprise that night when he came along with his bottle of whisky and when I recognised him by his height and by his resemblance to his photograph, but I was not quite sure of him. Or I should rather say I was certain in my mind, but against that certainty things were arguing, as, for instance the fact that he was taking passage to Seutang— that is to say, flying back towards the zone where his crime had been committed. Also the fact that he was without luggage, for Heller was a clever man and no clever man leaves himself without luggage if he has money in his pocket. However, I was certain enough on the matter to have arrested him there that night and would have done so no doubt, only for the fact of my dubious position without money and owing my hotel bill; also for the fact that I could arrest him at Seutang in much more convenient circumstances. But the situation was strained, boxed up with him alone on that small ship, having to. accept his companionship as an equal, sure that he was the criminal I was after, and vexed that he had fallen into my arms, not from my own sagacity, but just as a gift from chance. Of course that wallet full of notes had dispelled my last doubt about him, and I had made up my mind to arrest him without hesitation directly we landed.

Then came the blow. He had saved my life. That knocked everything to pieces. I could not hand over to the executioner a man to whom I owed the fact that I was alive. Yet I had a-duty to perform to myself and to Society, and this is how I tried to perform it. We landed on the quay at Seutang. I was not without money; though I have told you I was penniless I still had a watch and chain and a ring; these I sold to Moller before leaving the ship for the sum of five pounds, and with that sum in my. pocket I said to Kohn,

"We have neither of us any luggage and we can't put up at any place like this."

"That is true," said he, laughing. "I left my luggage at Kupang, for I was in a hurry; let's go and buy a bag apiece and some truck to put into it, and then we'll find some place to put up and have a few drinks."

We went to the shop of a Jew near the quay and bought what we wanted then we got a room at a sailors' boarding-house and left our bags there, then we went to an inn and had drinks, I and this man whom it was my duty to hand over to the Law and the  executioner. I have a strong head for alcohol, but all the same l could not have kept pace with Kohn if I had not pretended to drink even with him by often emptying my glass into a spittoon or on to the floor. I had determined to save his life. Yes, but I had also determined to do my duty as far as; I could and secure for the Anglo-Dutch Bank the money he had robbed them of, or, at least, as much of it as was in his wallet!

I recognised, that I could not tell them my story without putting them on the track of Kohn; no, but I would send it to them anonymously and so salve my conscience, not only for my failure as regards justice, but also for the terrible mess I had made of the whole affair. I would have to admit failure, and of course the Tavas agency in which I was partner with Mynheer Tavas would suffer loss of prestige!  Well, there was no use in grumbling; the mess was made, and the only thing now was to wipe it up as best one could.

And this is how things happened. After a long and to me horrible day, at ten-o'clock at night I got my companion home to the sailors' boarding-house. I could have robbed him of his wallet easily in the street, but that was not my plan.

Tipsy as he was before he crawled into bed, he secured his coat, and, taking the wallet from it, put it under his pillow. Then, when he was asleep and safe as a man under chloroform, I abstracted the wallet and took a note out at random. It was for fifty guilders. That would do. He would not be left destitute.

I took a leaf from my pocket-book and wrote on it with a  pencil:

"Providence has saved you from the hangman by a miracle. Beware. Lead a better life."

I folded it up with the note and put it under the pillow I left the room.

It was easy to leave the house, which did not close till two in the morning; then I found myself in the streets of Seutang. Seutang, as I have told you, is only a short distance from Sandabar; the distance is some thirty miles, and there is a railway .between them.   But there was no train till six in the morning, and till then I had to pass the time how I could, with the stolen wallet in my pocket and my mind engaged on many things— amongst others, speculations on what Mynheer Tavas would say when I turned up next, morning with my story.

Mynheer Tavas died some few years ago leaving me the sole control of the business. He was a fat little, man with an eye quick and bright as the eye of a bird, and he had just taken his place behind, his desk and was opening the morning letters when I came in.

"Ah, there, you are," said Mynheer Tavas, just as though I had returned from a walk. "Well, what success have you had?"

"Look at me," said I. "Look at my clothes— my luggage I had to leave behind at Kupang; I have had to sell my ring, and watch. For two months since starting on the hunt I have been going without a stop from Singapore to Batavia and from Batavia to Saigon and from Saigon to Timor— but I caught him!"

Mynheer Tavas sprang from his chair.

"You have caught him! Caught Heller!"

"Yes," I replied, "but I had to let go of him."

Mynheer Tavas sat down again in his chair.

"Kindly give me a clear statement of this business," he said. "I cannot understand it in the least."

Then I told him the whole story.

"Well," he said when I had finished, "that is an very interesting, but you did not catch Heller, for the very good reason that I caught him myself. A week after you had started on your wild-goose chase I determined to look into the case, for it seemed to me on consideration that this gentleman was far too clever to trap himself on board any ship with the hunt hot on his traces. In fact, he had not left Macassar. He was there, disguised arid hidden by a  friend. I found him, arrested him, he confessed, and is in prison.

"Now what did you do? Went to Singapore, found nothing. Went to Batavia, found a man answering the description of Heller had left for Saigon; went to Saigon, found nothing at first because you refused to ask the French police for help; were driven back to the wretched shift of inquiring about a man answering to the description of Heller. Tall, wasn't he? Sandy-haired, wasn't he? With a prominent nose? and all that. Why, once you start on that game you will find nine out of ten people have seen the man you are looking for— that's a cardinal fact of the human mind, which is mostly compounded of error and hallucination. You have been chasing the description of Heller through the islands. And when you came on a man reasonably like him your human mind conceived itself that you had got the man."

"But," said I; "I would have sworn by the photograph."

"Never swear by a photograph," said Tavas. "Besides, you did not even take the photograph with you, the police showed you his photograph and it is in their possession still. You carried with you the memory of a photograph. Give me that wallet; have you examined the notes?"

"No," I said.  "I kept them intact for you to see."

He opened the wallet. The notes, whose numbers had nothing to do with the Heller robbery, amounted to some four hundred and fifty pounds in Dutch money— and I had stolen them from the man who had saved my life!

We sent an agent to Seutang to make private inquiries. Kohn had left the. sailors' boarding-house early and had not returned; he had evidently said nothing about being robbed. Possibly he was a rogue, and perhaps took warning from my pencilled message; possibly he was an innocent man and drowned himself in the harbour in despair at his loss— I never will know. The notes are still in our office safe; they have been there thirty years. A strange business, which taught me many things about my work, and amongst them never again to commit robbery even for the best of all possible reasons.

__________________

14: The King of Maleka

Smith's Magazine June 1918

CONNART had started in life with a fine, open, believing disposition, and with that disposition for his chief asset he had entered the world of business. At thirty he had lost nearly everything but his heart, yet it was stolen from him, also, by one Mary Bateman of Boston, a quiet-looking little woman, endowed with common sense, a few thousand dollars and a taste for travel. It was this taste, combined with a slight weakness of the lungs, that induced Connart to go into the Pacific trade, also a legacy, from an English relation, amounting to some two thousand pounds odd, which enabled him to make the new start in business without calling on his wife's capital.

Dobree of San Francisco gave him the pitch. Connart had the qualities of his defects. Men robbed him, but they liked him. Men are queer things. Dobree, in business, was a very tough person indeed, quite without any finer feelings, and never giving a cent or a chance away, yet, taking a liking to Connart, he gave him a house, a go-down, and the chance of success on this Island, by name of Maleka, for nothing.

"I had a station there up to six months ago," said Dobree, "but I'm getting rid of my copra interests. You can have the house, charter a schooner and fill up with trade and go down there, it's a good climate and will suit your wife. You won't make a fortune, but you won't do badly if you stick to your guns and don't let the Kanakas get the weather gauge on you. There's only one man there, Seedbaum is his name, he's a tough customer by all accounts, but there's copra enough for two— I know a schooner you can have, the Golden Gleam; she's owned by old Tom Bowlby. I've got a fellow at a station on Tomasu, that's a hundred and fifty miles west of Maleka. There's a cargo waiting shipment there. Bowlby can drop you and your stuff at Maleka, then pick up my cargo at the other place. You won't have your copra ready for some months and you can make arrangements with him to come back for it. You might make arrangements to work in future with Bowlby, he's a straight man. You might work with him as partner."

It was easy to be seen that Dobree was not only giving things away, but going out of his course to make things smooth. Connart felt glowingly thankful.

"It's more than good of you," said he, "but it seems to me you will lose over this, for a location like that is worth money."

"So are cigars," said Dobree, "but if I give a box of cigars to a friend he doesn't complain that the gift is worth money. D——n money," continued this money-grubber, "it's worth nothing but the fun of making it—well, will you take your cigars, or shall I give the box to someone else?"

Connart said no more. In three weeks' time the Golden Gleam, which was lying at the wharves, had taken her cargo of all the multitudinous things that go by the name of "trade," and one bright morning, tacking against the wind from the sea, she left the Golden Gate behind her.

Mrs. Connart stood on deck, watching bald Tamalpais across the blue, scudding sea of the wake.

When you go to the Pacific Islands you die to all the things you have known, but you are at least sure that you are going to heaven— if you avoid the low islands.

Mrs. Connart knew the first fact. Down below in her cabin she carried with her the relics of the life she would no longer lead, down to a well-worn riding habit and a whip that would most likely never touch horse again, but she was not despondent, quite the reverse.

You may be sea-sick in a Pacific schooner, bucking against the swell and bending to the north-west trades, you may be mutinous, or angry, or tipsy, but despondency, that low fever of cities and civilisation, has no place out there.

"You ain't feelin' the sea, ma'am?" said Captain Bowlby, ranging up alongside of her.

"No," said she, "I'm a good sailor."

"I bet you are," said the captain.

Bowlby had a keen eye for ships and women. He had taken a liking to Mrs. Connart at first sight. She had a steady eye and sure smile that pleased him, and some days later, alone with Ambrose the mate, he voiced his opinions.

"Looks like a mouse, don't she? Well, there ain't no mouse about her barring her look. She's one of them quiet sorts that'd back-chat a congressman if she was put to it, or take a lion by the tail if it was makin' for one of her kids. I bet she's rudder and compass both to Connart. She and he fit as if they was welded. Did you ever take notice that there's chaps you meet that're only half men till they get a woman that fits them clapped on to them? If she don't fit they go under the first beam sea they meet; if she do, weather won't hurt them."

Ambrose concurred. He was a concurring individual, with few opinions of his own on any matters outside his trade.

"I reckon you're right," said he, "though I don't know much about women— I never had the time," he finished, apologetically.

ii

THEY RAISED Maleka at six o'clock one brilliant morning, and by nine it had developed before them, mountainous and green, showing, through the glasses, the blowing foliage, torrent traces and the foam on the barrier reef.

To Connart and his wife there seemed something miraculous in the unfolding of this island from the wastes of the blue and desolate sea. They had pictured this new home often in their minds, but they had pictured nothing like this. It had been waiting for them all their lives, and it seemed to them now that the souls of all the pleasant places they had ever seen or dreamed of were waiting to greet them on that summer-girdled reef.

As they passed the break and entered the lagoon the true island beach of blinding white sand showed its curve lipped by the emerald waters, and through the foliage came glimpses of the white houses of the little town.

"Look," said Mrs. Connart, wide-eyed and drawing deep breaths as if to inhale the strangeness and beauty of the scene before her, "there are people on the beach, natives, and look at the canoes."

"There's a boat pushing off," said Connart, "and a big fellow in a striped suit in her."

"That's Seedbaum," said Captain Bowlby; "wonder what he wants, comin' to inspect— gin, likely."

The anchor fell, waking the echoes of the woods, and the Golden Gleam, swinging to the tide that was just beginning to steal out of the lagoon, lay with her nose pointing to the beach whilst the boat came alongside, and the man in the striped suit scrambled on board.

He was a big man, with bulging eyes, a shaved head, and feet encased in worn-out tennis shoes. The suit seemed made of flannelette.

Mrs. Connart at first sight took a profound dislike to this individual.

Seedbaum— for Seedbaum it was— saluted Bowlby, gave him good-day, cast his eye at the strangers and opened up.

"I knew you before you made the anchorage," said he, "dropped in for water, I suppose."

"No, I've water enough till I fetch Tomasu," replied Bowlby, "I've brought some trade."

"Trade," said Seedbaum, offering a cigar. "Well, I don't mind taking some prints and knives off you at a reasonable price. I'm full up with canned goods and tobacco, still— at a reasonable figure—"

"The trade's not mine," said Bowlby, lighting the cigar. "It belongs to the new trader— that gentleman there, Mr. Connart's his name, let me make you known. Mr. Connart, this is Mr. Seedbaum."

"Glad to make your acquaintance," said Connart.

Seedbaum, fingering an unlit cigar, stared at Connart.

"Well, this gets me," said he. "Why, Dobree cleared his last man out for good, there's not business enough in this island for two— that's flat— what'd he want sending you for?"

"He didn't send me," replied Connart.

"Then," said Seedbaum, "what brought you here, anyway?"

"I think," said Mrs. Connart, "this ship brought us here— and, excuse me— do you own this island?"

Seedbaum stared at her, then his glance fell before that quiet, unwavering gaze, and he turned to Bowlby.

"Well," said he, "it's none of my affair if the whole continent of the States comes here to find copra— if it's to be found— but it seems to me this is a pretty dry ship."

"Come down below," said Bowlby.

They went below and the pop of a beer-bottle cork followed upon their descent.

"Oh, what a creature!" said Mrs. Connart. "George, why is it that humanity alone produces things like that?"

"I don't know," said Connart, "but I wish humanity had not produced it here."

Seedbaum came on deck again mollified by beer. Despite the set-down he had received he nodded to the new-comers as he went over the side, and as they watched him being rowed ashore, Bowlby, leaning on the rail, spat into the water and spoke.

"I didn't much trouble tellin' you of that chap on the way out," said Bowlby. "There's no use in meetin' troubles half way, and there's not an island in the hull Pacific you won't find trouble of some sort in. If you go in for Pacific tradin' there's two things you have to face, cockroaches and men. I've kept the old Gleam pretty free of 'roaches by fumigatin', but you can't fumigate islands. If you could I reckon you'd see more rats with hands and feet takin' to the water than's ever been seen since the Ark discharged cargo. Seedbaum'd be one of them, but you have his measure now and you'll know enough to go careful with him. Wiart, the last man that was here, got on all right with him. You see, they were pretty much of a pair, and it's my belief they were hand in glove, as you might say, but I reckon you won't have much use for a glove like that. Well, I'll get you ashore now to see your house and I'll help to fix it up for you. We'll begin gettin' the cargo ashore to-morrow."

He ordered a boat to be lowered and they rowed ashore.

Never, not even in dreamland, had Mrs. Connart experienced anything so strange as that stepping on shore from the bow of the boat run high and dry on the shelving beach, never anything like the touch of land after the long, long weeks of seafaring, and the sights, the sounds, the perfumes all new, belonging to a new life to be lived in a new world.

The white houses set in a little garden at the far end of the village pleased her as much as the place. Her house is almost as much as her husband to a woman, for, to a woman a house implies so much more than to a man. There are good houses and bad houses, crazy houses exhibiting the folly of their builders in stucco turrets or mad chimney pots, and stupid houses without character or proper sculleries and sinks. The house at Maleka, though small and possessing few rooms, was cheerful and had a pleasant personality of its own, but it did not possess a stick of furniture. Mrs. Connart with the prescience of a woman and assisted by the advice of Bowlby, had brought with them from San Francisco articles of furniture not to be obtained in the islands, unless at a ruinous cost. Mats, cane chairs and hammocks could be obtained from the natives. All the same, there had been furniture in the house and it was gone. Dobree had given them a list of things and amongst them was an article on which Mrs. Connart had, woman-like, set her heart. "One red cedar chest, four foot six by three foot," was its specification.

"But who can have taken them?" said she, as they stood in the empty front room, after a tour of inspection. "There was crockery ware, besides, and oh, ever so many things, and Mr. Dobree was so kind. He would not take a penny for them. You remember, George, he said: 'When I give a friend a box of cigars I don't take the bands off them, whatever is there you can have'— and now there's nothing!"

"Maybe the Kanakas have taken them," said Bowlby.

"Or Seedbaum," said Connart.

"As like as not," replied the captain. "He seems to look on the blessed place as his. He told me down in the cabin he reckoned he was king of Maleka, and that all the Kanakas jumped to his orders as if he was king. He's got a clutch on the place, there's no denying that, and he manages to keep missionaries away somehow or 'nother. I'm afraid you're going to have trouble with that chap."

"I'm not afraid of him," said Connart. "I've got a revolver and can use it if worst comes to the worst."

"Oh, it's not revolvers I'm thinkin' of," said the captain, "it's trickery; he'd trick the devil out of his hoofs and then make gelatine of them, would Seedbaum; have no trade dealin's with him; take my advice, just stick to the Kanakas."

"Let's go and ask him, right now, if he knows where the things have gone to," said Mrs. Connart.

"Well, that's not a bad idea," said Bowlby. "He's sure to lie; anyhow, it'll clear matters."

Seedbaum's house was a substantially built coral-lime-washed building, with a broad verandah in which hung a cage containing a parrot, the garden was neat and well-tended, and the whole place had an air of quiet prosperity, neatness and order, as though the better part of the owner's character were here exhibited for the general view.

Seedbaum was seated on the verandah, reading a San Francisco paper obtained from Bowlby.

Seeing them approach he rose to greet them.

"I've come to ask you about the furniture in our house," said Connart. "There were quite a lot of things left by the last man, and I have a list of them, but everything has gone, been taken away— do you know anything of the matter?"

"I don't know anything of what you call furniture," said the other. "Wiart sold me his sticks when he left for fifty dollars, and a bad bargain it was."

"He sold you them?"

"Yes."

"But they belonged to Mr. Dobree."

"Oh, did they; well, Dobree will have to dispute that with Wiart. Wiart said they were his."

"Have you his receipt?"

"Lord, no, there was no receipt in the matter. I handed him over the dollars and he handed me over the rubbish. It was a favour to him."

"Was there a cedar-wood chest?" asked Mrs. Connart.

"There was. It's in my house now, there; you can see it through the door."

Through the open door which gave a view of the front room Mrs. Connart saw the object of her desire. It was a beauty, solid, moth-defying, with brass corners and brass handles. It was hers by all right, and Seedbaum had tricked her out of it. She spoke:

"That chest is mine," said she. "Mr. Dobree gave it to me, it was his property, and Mr. Wiart had no right to sell it."

"Well," said Seedbaum, "he sold it, and if there's any trouble over it, it will be between Dobree and Wiart, and Wiart was going to Japan, so he said when he left here, so Dobree had better go to Japan and have it out with him."

Mrs. Connart turned.

"Come," said she to the others, "there is no use talking any more to this person. I will write to Mr. Dobree."

They turned away and Seedbaum sat down again to read his newspaper.

"That's what I said," spoke Bowlby. "Monkey tricks; you see how he's placed; Wiart's gone Lord knows where, and Pacific Coast law don't run here. The way for you to do is to lay low and fetch him in the eye unexpected, somehow, though if you take my advice you'll give him a wide offing. There's no use in fightin' with alligators; better leave them be. Hullo, what's that?"

They turned.

Seedbaum had come out of the verandah.

A passing native had drawn his ire for some reason or another, and the redoubtable Seedbaum was storming at him. Then he kicked the native, and the latter, a big, powerful man, turned and ran.

"The coward!" said Mrs. Connart.

"I expect that chap ain't a coward," said Bowlby. "He's just 'feared of Seedbaum. I reckon there're some curious things in nature. I've seen a whole ship's company livin' in terror of a hazin' captain. They could have hove him overboard and swore he fell over—for the after guard was as set against him as the fo'c'sle—but they didn't. Just let themselves be driv' like sheep and kicked like terriers. It's the same with the Kanakas on this island, I expect."

"He's got a personal ascendancy over them," said Connart.

"I reckon he's got something like that," said Captain Bowlby.

iii

IN A WEEK they were settled down, and a few days later, the cargo having been landed and stored, the Golden Gleam took her departure.

They went down to the beach to see her off; they watched her topsails vanish beyond the reef, and they returned, feeling very much alone in the world. A good man is warmth and light even to the souls of sinners. Captain Bowlby was illiterate; his language was free; he was not a saint, but he was a good, human man right through. The sea turns out characters like this just as she turns out shells. It is a pity that they have to cling to the ocean and the beaches; the cities want them.

"I feel just as if I had lost a near relation," said Mrs. Connart.

"Well, we'll have him back soon," said her husband. "It's up to us now to get the copra to give him a cargo."

Next morning the new trader began business by laying out a selection of goods on the verandah of his store. Mrs. Connart, who knew something of the Polynesian dialects and who had the art of picking up unknown tongues, had already got in touch with the Kanakas; they charmed and pleased her, especially the children, and wherever she went she was greeted by friendly faces. It seemed to her that the population of this island, leaving out Seedbaum, her husband and herself, consisted entirely of children, children of different sizes and different ages, but children all the same.

Returning that day from a long walk in the woods she found Connart smoking a pipe on the verandah of their house. He looked rather depressed.

"I can't make it out," said he; "there's no trade doing."

"Maybe they don't know you have started in business yet."

"Oh, yes, they do; lots of them have passed and seen the store open; they've turned to look at the goods, and they seemed attracted, but they went on."

"Well, give them time," said she.

"Look," said Connart, "there's copra going to Seedbaum's; they're trading with him, right enough."

Mrs. Connart watched the copra bearers, but said nothing.

In her heart she felt that Seedbaum was moving against them by some stealthy means. At first she thought that it might be possible he had worked upon the native mind and induced the Kanakas to put a taboo upon the newcomers, but she dismissed this idea at once. There was no taboo. The Kanakas were not a bit afraid of either her or her husband, on the contrary, there was every evidence of friendliness.

"Well," she said that night, when the store was closed for the day without a knife or a stick of tobacco changing hands, "there's nothing to be done till we find out why they are acting so. It's that creature, I am sure. He began by robbing me of my beautiful cedar-wood chest, and he's going on to rob you of your chances in business. Well, let him beware. I'm Christian enough not to wish to hurt him, but I'm Christian enough to believe there's a power that punishes the wicked, and he's wicked. I knew him for a wicked man directly he came on board the ship."

"He keeps to himself, and that's one good thing," said Connart; "but I don't see how he can stop the natives from trading with us."

"I don't, either, but I know he does," said she.

The next day passed without business being done, and the next.

"We may as well shut up shop, it seems to me," said Connart. "How would it be if you spoke to some of these people and asked them what is the matter?"

"I've thought of that," said his wife, "and I held off because— because— oh, I don't know, it seems sort of indelicate to ask people why they don't come to one's store. I'll do it to-morrow morning first thing. One mustn't let one's feelings stand in the way when one's living is concerned."

"I wish we had never come here," said he, "for your sake."

"Never come here?" she cried. "Why, I wouldn't for the earth have gone anywhere else! I love the place and I love people, and what are difficulties? Why, difficulties are the main excitement in life. If life wasn't an obstacle race, it would be a very flat affair. George, we have got to beat that man, and I'm going to, you wait and see."

He kissed her and blessed her, and they sat down that night to a game of cribbage, Seedbaum and the wickedness of the world forgotten.

Next morning after breakfast Mrs. Connart went out. She passed through the village and on to the beach, brilliant in the morning light, breeze-blown and filled with the murmurs of the reef; some natives were pulling in a net and she watched them, chatting to them and playing with the children who had come down to secure the little fish. Then she had a talk with a woman who was standing by, a woman dark and straight as an arrow, a woman mild-eyed and with a voice sweet as the sound of running water.

Leaving her, Mrs. Connart passed to a man who was engaged in mending an outrigger of one of the canoes hauled up on the beach; she had a talk with him.

Then she returned, walking slowly and thoughtfully to the house, where she found her husband.

"George," said she. "I am right. It is that Creature. The people hate him, but they are afraid of him. It seems absolutely absurd, but it is so. He holds them in a spell. He kicks them and beats them, but they are not afraid of that. It's just him."

"Good Lord," said Connart, "why on earth don't they rise against him, and tell him to go to the devil; he's only one man, anyway."

"I don't know," said she. "It's a mystery of human nature. He's the tyrant type, and it's always been the same in the world; there's some sort of magnetism in that type that keeps folk under. History is full of that. It's the soft man and the kindly man and the good man that's assassinated, but tyrants seem to go free. He's what he said he was, the king of this place— well, we must see what we can do to pull him from his throne. I wish there were more whites here."

"That's the bother," said Connart.

Next morning they found a basket of fruit on their verandah, a gift from some unknown person. It was as though the Kanakas, afraid to show their sympathy and friendliness openly for the strangers, had done it in this manner. But no one came to trade.

That night two chickens, some sweet potatoes and another basket of fruit were deposited in the same place.

"And we can't thank them," said Mrs. Connart; "but I believe these haven't all come from one person. I think it's everyone here— they all like us. Oh, George, isn't it maddening that we can't have them openly our friends, just because of that Beast!"

"It is," said George.

Now at eleven o'clock that morning, Mrs. Connart, seated on the verandah and engaged on some needle-work, noticed a little native girl, who, pausing at the garden gate and seeming undecided, at last picked up courage, opened the gate and came towards the house.

Connart was in the house, going over some accounts, when his wife ran in to him.

"George, come at once," cried she; "such a dreadful thing— they've risen against Seedbaum and they are killing him somewhere in the woods, and they want us to go and see!"

"Good Lord!" cried he, "killing him! Want us to go and see! Are they mad?"

He picked up his hat and came out on the verandah, where the pretty little native girl was waiting, a flower of the scarlet hibiscus in her hair and calm contentment in her eyes.

"I can't quite make out all she says," said Mrs. Connart; "but I can make out her meaning."

"You'd better stay here," said he, "whilst I go; there may be trouble."

"I am not afraid," she replied. "Come on, we may be too late."

They followed the child.

"Tell her to hurry," said Connart.

"She says we need not hurry," replied she; "as far as I can make out they are only going to kill him— I expect they have him a prisoner somewhere; well, much as I hate him, I am glad we will be able to save him."

"That depends on how the natives take it," said he.

The child led them from the road by a path trod by the copra gatherers, a path running through the wonderland of the woods, a green gloom where the soaring palms shot upwards through a twilight roofed with moving shadows and sun sparkles.

They reached a glade where a number of natives were seated in a circle. Above them and swinging by a cord from two trees was hanging a little disk about half the size of a tambourine; the disk was made of cane, and so constructed as to leave a small hole in the centre. An old native woman seated under the disk was clapping her hands and repeating something that sounded like an incantation. Every pair of eyes in the whole of that assembly was fixed upon the disk.

The child whispered something to Mrs. Connart. Then she turned from the child and whispered to her husband.

"It's only witchcraft. That's a soul trap. They are waiting for a fly to pass through the hole in that thing. If it does, then Seedbaum will die."

"Good heavens," murmured Connart, with a half-laugh. "Why, the fellow hasn't any soul— not enough to furnish out a fly."

They watched patiently for ten minutes. There were plenty of flies; they rested on the little tambourine, crawled round its edge, but not one went through the hole.

"Come," whispered Connart.

They withdrew, taking the path back.

"It's pathetic," murmured she.

"It's damned foolishness," he repeated. "They trade with him, and let him kick them, and then go on with that nonsense. If they refused him copra, they would bring him to his senses quick enough."

"Anyhow they hate him," said she.

"Much good that is," he replied.

iv

NOW IT CAME about that the soul trap— turning out a dead failure, since not a single fly went through the hole— instead of destroying Seedbaum, fixed him on a pedestal more secure than that which he had hitherto occupied.

He was indestructible, and the power which he exercised over the native mind threatened to be as indestructible as himself.

However, vengeance was coming. Retribution for all the wrongs he had committed, his swindlings, brutalities and beatings.

It came in this wise:

One afternoon Mrs. Connart, seated on the verandah and reading The Moths of the Limberlost, heard the cries of a child.

Right in front of the house, King Seedbaum was beating a native child for some fault or fancied disrespect towards his royal highness, cuffing it and cuffing it, whilst the squeals of the cuffed one affronted the heavens and the ears of all listeners.

Now, to touch a child or dog or cat in Mrs. Connart's presence was to raise a devil. White as death she rushed into the house and white as death she rushed out again. She held her riding-whip, a Mexican quirt, ladies' size, but horribly efficient in energetic hands.

Seedbaum saw her coming, couldn't understand, caught the first lash on his right arm and along his back— he was wearing the pyjama suit— and his yell brought the village flocking and Connart running from a field where he was laying out some plants.

He saw the quirt lashing over Seedbaum's shoulder, across his legs, and across the back, for the King of Maleka was now running, running and pursued for ten yards or so whilst the quirt got one last blow in.

Then he had his wife in his arms, and she was weeping.

"Did he touch you?" cried Connart.

"No— it was a child," she gasped. "Beast! Look, he has run into his house."

The street was filled with a crowd that all through the beating had remained spell-bound. Now it broke up into knots and small parties, all talking together excitedly.

Connart, with his arm around his wife, drew her into the house.

She sat down on a couch and laughed and sobbed. She was half hysterical, but not for long.

"I couldn't help it," she said. "I would do it again. It's not because of us— but because he was beating a child."

"Brute!" said Connart. "I'll go down now and give him more. I want to have it out with him right now." He turned to the door. She caught him.

"No," she cried, "he's had enough. He won't do it again. Listen, what's that?"

From away in the direction of Seedbaum's house came a sound like the swarming of angry bees, also shouts.

They rushed to the door and saw Seedbaum. Seedbaum with fifty people round him, and every person trying to beat him at the same time.

"Good God," said Connart, "you've taught them the trick— they'll kill him."

"He's got away," cried Mrs. Connart.

Seedbaum, breaking from the crowd, was making up the street, the whole village was after him; he passed the Connarts' house and headed for the woods where he disappeared. Then his pursuers drew off, and, rushing to the house of Connart, swarmed at the railings, shouting and waving and laughing, whilst Mrs. Connart interpreted.

"They say he'll never come back to the village again," said she, "for they'll kill him if he does; that he'll have to live in the woods. Oh, George! I'm frightened— what will be the end of it all?"

THE END was a whale ship that came into the lagoon. Seedbaum, living in the woods and supported by the generosity of the Connarts, was given notice by the three chiefs of the island, Matua, Tamura and Ratupea by name, that if he did not go away in the whale ship he would be killed before the next ship arrived. And he went.

He was almost friendly with the Connarts, in return for their food and protection, at the last, and as the natives would allow him to take nothing with him, he had to leave everything behind him, including the red cedar-wood chest, which thus came back to its rightful owner.

He did not even threaten the natives with governmental retribution; he knew he was done and placed out of court by his own conduct.

But the thing that always remained with Connart out of this affair was the fact that a population of active and vigorous people would still have been down-trodden by a merciless tyrant but for a little, quiet, calm-eyed woman, who had unconsciously and just from an uprising of her own spirit, "shown them the trick."

Spirit— after all, what else is there in the world beside it?

___________________

15: Kadjaman

The Popular Magazine, 7 Aug 1921

RAY'S little son was playing with the big Siberian pup in the door-way. From where I sat I could see the child and the dog, and beyond them and framed by the door opening the pine-clad mountains cutting the blue sky of summer, and beyond these Omstjall, the snow peak and grandfather of the glacier that takes its name.

Kray has given up hunting these five years and is now manager of the Sellagman Salmon Canning Company, at least he looks after the fishing and the canning and gets two thousand dollars a year for the job, while I expect the real manager, the man who looks after the New York office and the prospectuses and so forth, gets ten— maybe more. [I don't know, neither does Kray, neither does he care. He says he has hunted everything in his time but the dollar, and that a free life in the open air is all he wants now that he has done with hunting and got married. He was sixty-seven years old when he married and didn't look more than fifty, so he says; he doesn't look more than fifty to-day, at a little distance.

He has hunted everywhere and shot everything and he started his business at twenty so that when he married he had been at the job nearly fifty years. That is a long time, for a year in the wilds is longer than a year in a city and the risks are greater.

Said Kray, looking at the child and the pup: "Olaff takes after his mother, don't he? Same flax-colored hair coming. First I thought he was going to be darker, but it's coming true enough. Scandinavian flax, there's no other color like it. Gets on with the pup, don't he? I saw the old dog lickin' them both yesterday same as if Olaff was hers, too. I've sent her off to the Skagga fjord till the autumn."

"The big Siberian dog I saw here last?"

"Yes, the mother of that pup. I've sent her off till the autumn. Olaff will be bigger then."

"But why did you send her off—because she was treating Olaff as if he were her pup?"

"Well, not exactly," said Kray, ''and yet maybe that was a bit of the reason. But mainly I expect it was something that happened years ago that rattled me; thirty years ago it was when I was with Becconi in Borneo on the exploring job. He was after minerals and if he'd stuck to them in his drinks as well as his prospectin' he'd have pulled through; but the whisky did him. I'd been out East with a chap called Milner hunting, and we struck Sarawak coast. Milner was going home from there, and I was paid off with a bonus. I could have gone back with him to England, and maybe would only for this chap Becconi who happened along while we were waiting at Bintulu for a boat.

"Boats in those days weren't plentiful along the coast, and you didn't often know where they were going when they came, but as long as they took you somewhere else it didn't much matter. That's how we were placed at Bintulu when out of the sea haze one day a little paddle-wheel boat came snortin' and tied up to the rotten old wharf where the Sea Dyak children used to sit fishing when they weren't playing head- hunting with wooden parangs.

"The Tanjong Data was the name of the boat, and she was bound for Rejang and Kuching and ports beyond with a mixed cargo and a big monkey for the Dutch government that had been caught somewheres to the north of the Tubao River. The Tanjong had blown a cylinder cover off or something, and she lay at Bintulu a week for repairs and while she was repairing and taking more cargo I was often on board talking to the captain and Becconi, who had come by her and was sticking on board till the last minute, seeing that his cabin was a sight more comfortable than shore quarters. The monkey interested me a lot, for in ail my shooting I'd never come across the big monkeys much, and this chap was big. He must have weighed all of two hundred pounds, and he was turning gray with age. He was what the Dyaks call a Mayas Kassa, which means an orang-utan, with a face like a full moon, I'm not joking. There are three kinds of orang-utans; the Mayas Kassa, the Mayas Rabei, and the Mayas Tjaping, but the Kassa takes the bun for beauty. I never did see such a face. It was like nothing so much as a full moon broadened out, same as you see it when the moon's rising through a bank of mist and in thé middle of it two eyes and a nose, to say nothing of the mouth. That was what the monkey was like, and they had him in a cage close to the engine-room hatch, and he'd sit there the day long, scratching himself and talking to himself, his eyes traveling about round the decks as if he was watching something passing, and sometimes he'd look up at you, but he'd never meet your eye square, at least not for longer than the flick of a snapshot shutter.

"Taking him altogether he was near five feet in height and his chest looked as thick as a tree as he sat there scratching the fur on it, his hands were as big as hams; and I reckon he could have taken two ordinary men and knocked their heads together same as if they'd been two rag dolls.

"Becconi took a lot of interest in the chap, too, and we'd sit under the double awning they'd rigged aft of the funnel and have our drinks and watch Kadjaman, for that was his name, given him because he was caught at Kadjaman, which is north of Fort Bellaja near the Tubao River. Becconi, when he had the whisky in him, would stand up for Kadjaman having a soul of his own, same as a man; but if the whisky was out, and maybe a touch of liver on him, he'd be the other way about. I used to use the monkey on him for fun, or to see the state of his health, and then Kadjaman would sit watching us and pretending not to.

"We didn't know that he'd been at work of nights, when the whole of Bintulu and the chaps on board were snoring. He'd worked on the cage bars, loosening them by degrees and little by little, so that the time might come when one big pluck could rip them out.

"No, sir, we didn't know that or we couldn't have sat there sucking our cheroots and bug juice and talking about. monkeys having souls.

ii

"NOW I MUST tell you that Milner had a servant, Tuan Marop by name, and Tuan had his child with him, a little chap of six or so, named Ting. Mrs. Tuan had been dead over a year, and he'd brought Ting down to Bintulu to leave him there while he accompanied Milner on his expedition. Ting and Kadjaman had struck up a friendship of sorts. The child would talk to the brute in the Dyak lingo and Kadjaman would scratch himself and talk back in orang-utan. I tell you it was talking.

"You've seen a child talking to a dog— you've heard Olaff talking to that pup; well that was the sort of thing, only Ting wasn't a soft little chap like Olaff. Ting was a Dyak, Sarabas Dyak, with a hundred generations of head hunters behind him, and what he was saying to Kadjaman didn't seem popsy-wopsy talk from what I could gather, though I didn't know a word of his lingo.

"I asked Becconi to ask Tuan to listen and report, and Tuan said Ting wasn't talking Dyak, but the monkey language. Seemed to think it a joke, but he was in dead earnest, all the same. There is a monkey language as sure as there's anything else in this world, and what they say to each other, Lord only knows, but they say a lot, and Ting seemed to have picked it up same as children do with foreign languages. Tuan said that the Dyak children, now and again and once in a hundred years, so to speak, could pick out what the monkeys were saying when they held their jamborees in the forest, but he'd never seen or heard of a child talking to a monkey before like Ting did, for the reason that the Dyaks didn't keep monkeys in cages and so the children hadn't a chance. He seemed proud of the fact, same as if Ting had taken a prize at college.

"So things went on like that till the Tanjong Data had done tinkering at her cylinder covers, and the day before leaving came, with the docks all of a clatter with fruit cases for down coast and rolls of matting and boxes of tobacco and Lord knows what else and the niggers all bug house with being driven and getting in each other's way.

"Then, coming along four o'clock in the evening, when things had settled down and the breeze was rising, Becconi and I were sitting in deck chairs talking and saying good-by to Milner and the captain. Tuan had brought us up some tea which the steward had made for us, and Ting was playing near the gangway by himself. All of a sudden, swish! the bars of the cage went, and Kadjaman was out.

"I was sitting with my back to the cage, and when I turned I saw Kadjaman on the deck, a cage bar in his fist, and the bar was in the act of dashing a nigger's brains out. It was all as sudden as that. I didn't wait to see more. It was every man for himself, and I had no charter to clear the decks of the Tanjong Data of orang-utans armed with five-foot iron bars; besides I hadn't my gun with me. I guess if I'd had a popgun even, I wouldn't have taken a nose dive into the Bintulu River like I did. A man's courage lies in his gun often enough —unless he's fronting a moral duty, which I wasn't. I just dived and got to the other bank and watched.

"Every one had skipped from that deck either overboard or through the saloon hatch and there was Kadjaman with his bar in his fist, a free man, so to say, soul or no soul. He was pretty busy, too. He wanted more blood, it seemed, but he was afraid of going below for it, afraid of traps, so he smashed away at the saloon skylight cover, beating the brass rods of it to knots. Then he beat the starboard rail; in fact, he gave that steamer the biggest thrashing of her life. Maybe it was his having been kept in a cage six months that was coming out, or maybe it was just his own nature; but he did take it out of that old hooker. He near beat the cockroaches out of her, and you can fancy that the, chaps hidden in the cabin had a lively time expecting him down the saloon companionway.

"However, all of a sudden, he let up. I could see him standing sniffing the air as if he smelt danger. He stood like that for half a tick and then he stooped down and picked up something from the deck and threw it over his arm like a sack. Same moment he made a jump for the gangway and next he was on the bank.

"I saw now what he was carrying— and heard it, too— it was Ting. The child had been playing on the deck as I told you and hadn't got below with the others. Maybe he'd sat admiring the ways of his friend, but that's as may be; the fact was he was now shouting murder or what sounded like it in Dyak and Tuan was responding.

"Tuan had found a cheese down below, and, before the monkey had made twenty yards, he was on deck and after him to recover his property. Becconi and Milner, who'd armed themselves, were after Tuan to lend a hand, and there was I stuck on the opposite bank only able to look on.

"On the flat Kadjaman was nowhere, but once he'd got among the trees he was the whole of the circus and the elephant.

"Just by the river there, the undergrowth's so thick you can't go more than a yard in a precious long minute. You should see it; wait-a-bit thorns three inches long, python lianas that twine about and knot themselves just like snakes, ground tangle that gets you just by the ankle. That's what the goin's like, and Kadjaman was up in the branches. I don't know how he got along with Ting, swinging himself from branch to branch. I expect Ting clung to him for safety and so saved trouble and gave him the free use of both arms.

"Anyhow he got away— got clear away, leaving Tuan lamenting and the rest of them pretty well spent. Then they came back, and I met them, having swum the river, and we went back on board, and you should have seen that deck—the rail bent and skylight hashed and lashed so's to look like nothing, and a dead nigger on the planks with a hundred thousand flies on his head like a buzzing turban.

"Tuan had come back with us. He'd altered in color a bit, but otherwise he seemed same as ordinary. He knew quite well there was no use chasing any more after Kadjaman, yet all the same he got his discharge from Milner that night, and he went off with a blowgun. That was all the weapons he wanted, so he said, but he didn't catch Kadjaman.

iii

"NEXT MORNING the Tanjong Data started with Milner on board, leaving us in that God-forsaken place face to face with the mosquitoes. Havana mosquitoes are bad, but these chaps laid over them, striped brutes like tigers. Then there were the Sanut tingal pala ants; these chaps bite you and hang on with their teeth like bulldogs; if you pull them off they leave their heads behind. A cheerful place, with nothing to listen to but the rainy noise of the palm leaves, shaken by the wind and the howling of Dyak songs from the village, and nothing to see but the Bintulu coming down to the sea between banks of trees that seemed crowding one another into the river.

"There are parts of the Bintulu where no man could make a landing on the banks, by reason of the tangle of growth, vines and whatnots; but at Bintulu it's been cleared, though in those days it was bad enough within half a mile of the town.

"Becconi wasn't going to start for three days, so I had my work cut out killing time and mosquitoes. I'd sit sometimes by the river watching the gunfish by the hour. You'd see them prospecting along the bank, and then when they'd marked down an insect sitting on a leaf, they'd take aim and spit, letting fly a jet of water aimed sure as a rifle bullet. Then I'd sometimes watch the Dyak girls going about, the rummiest sight, in their brass arm rings and leg wear, and sometimes I'd sit and talk to Tuan, for Becconi had taken him on as a servant.

"He didn't talk English bad, and at first I tried to comfort him about Ting, till I found out he wasn't needing any. It wasn't that he hadn't been fond of the child, but it was just that he seemed to reckon Ting dead. Not corpsed, but dead to him and his tribe. I had some talks with Tuan on the business then and afterward, and he told me that the big monkeys took off Dyak children now and then and sometimes the children were got back after they'd been living a year or two with the monks, and that they weren't any use; they weren't humans any more. Tuan, though he didn't know anything much more than the difference between the two ends of a blowgun, said all men had been monkeys once, but so long ago that man had forgotten, and if a child was to go and live in the trees with the monkeys he'd revert to the old times in a year or two, and not twenty or fifty years would fetch him back.

"I thought he was talking through his hat, but out in India, since then, I've seen the truth of what he said. You've heard of wolf children? Wolves are always carrying off children; some they eat and some they don't, and the ones they don't they bring up as wolves, and the children take to it and go on all fours and, after a year or less they're fixed, can't ever get back to be men. Why, they had a wolf child in the Secundra Missionary Asylum and kept it there till it grew up to a man over thirty. It died somewhere about '95, and it never learned to speak, couldn't do more than run about on all fours and snarl. Rum, isn't it?

"Meanwhile Becconi was getting the lads together for his expedition, and he wasn't finding it an easy matter, for in those days Sea Dyaks weren't anxious for payment much except in human heads, and even heads were sometimes pretty much at a discount. The head-hunting chaps have got a bad name, but they weren't so black as they were painted. They weren't always rushing about, either, hunting for heads. It was mostly when they were in love and wanted to give a girl a present that they went hunting, or when they had a down on a chap and wanted to do him in. Becconi's crowd, that he managed to collect at last, were head hunters to a man, but I'd sooner trust myself alone with any one of them than with a New York tough— a long sight.

"We started on a Saturday at dawn, crossing the Bintulu and striking toward the Tatan River. I've said Becconi was after minerals and so he was, but his main proposition was gold. Down along south of the eastern ports he'd heard stories of a gold river somewhere in Sarawak north of the Rejang, and he carried the idea in his head, and I suppose that was what made him strike south from the Bintulu.

"We had with us Tuan and half a dozen of the Sea Dyaks and provisions for a month, and we hadn't more than crossed the river and gone a few yards when the trees closed behind us, shutting out the sound of the village and cutting us off from the morning sun as a closed door might. I've never got used to the jungle, that's to say the real thing, and it's 1py Opinion it is not the place for a man. It's a kind of old glass house where the beginnings of life come from, and it's my opinion it has outlived its uses and would be as well done away with. Maybe I'm prejydiced, having done near all my hunting in the open. Anyhow, that Saturday morning I wasn't in any too high spirits. If I could have broke my contract and turned back I wouldn't, though, bad as I wanted to, because-I'd taken a liking to

Becconi, and I had my misgivings as to his pulling through without a white man's help. "I've hinted he drank. We took a good stock of liquor with us, but it went under my eye. That was one of my conditions, and I knew if he was left alone with it the jungle would soon have done with him.

"We struck a big stretch of soggy ground where Nipah palms grew and nothing else. I'm just going to give you a sniff of that hell place they call the jungle in Borneo, and I can't begin it better than by saying we hadn't gone more than five hundred yards from the river when we struck this swamp. It wasn't a true swamp, either. It was solid enough in bits, and you'd be going along saying, 'It's all right now,' when your foot would go, sucked down, and you'd pull it out with a pound of black mud like treacle sticking to your boot. We went along mostly clinging to the palms that grew along the solid tracts and gave us a lead.

Then, when we'd passed the swamp we found ourselves before the Big Thorn. That's what the Dyaks called it, a big patch of wait-a-bit thorn we had to cut our way through, and it took us the whole day to do that.

"Then when we camped on a bit of high ground the black ants raised objections, and the black ants of Borneo sting like wasps.

"I give you that as a sample of twenty- four hours in the jungle. You didn't get swamp all the time nor wait-a-bit thorn all the time, but you got lots of other things not much better, and it was always that infernal glass-house damp heat and smell. It's the smell that gets you, not a bad smell, mind you, but just the smell of a glass house— only more so.

"Then at the end of a week we struck a rival prospector. It was the rummiest meeting. He was a chap by name of Havenmouth. He'd shoved east with an expedition from Maka, crossing the Balinean River, and he'd found the gold. But he was dying. I never did see such a skeleton. The jungle fever or something like that had done for him, and he said he'd been living on quinine and whisky, but that he didn't care as he'd found the gold. It was in a little stream to the nor'east. He said there was dead loads of it, even though the stream was so small.

"He said that little stream must have been washing its gold for ages to make us rich. There he lay with his hands like a skeleton's and his face like a skull painted with fever, handing us out all that talk; and then he showed us a sample of gold grains he'd taken from the stream.

"Sure enough some of them were as big as split bullets. Then he died with a whoop, and we buried him. But the bother was, he died before he could give us the exact location by compass. He hadn't got it written down, for we searched him and his effects; he'd been carrying it in his head. He'd given us the gold grains, though.

"Well, that was the worst present a man ever got. Havenmouth had said: 'It isn't more than twenty miles way back there,' and that was the string that tied us to the circle, for we went wandering round like the Egyptians in the wilderness, round and round, hunting for that darned stream for months and months. You wouldn't believe it, unless you'd been there, how that thing held us. I'm not overset on money, but it held me, same as when you draw a chalk line round a hen and put her nose to it, she's held.

"We struck streams, all sorts of little tributaries of the Rejang and the Tatan, and we struck mud turtles and spitting fish and water lizards and snakes, but we struck no gold. Becconi was so full of the business that he forgot his wanting to drink. And so it went on for more than three months, till one day the madness lifted from us, and we saw that we were done. We'd got to get back to Bintulu and get back prompt, for we were near done for grub.

"I'd managed to shoot a good deal, and we had the remains of Havenmouth's store. Still, all the same, we'd got to get back; and over the fire that night, when we'd come to the decision to clear out, Becconi had his first drink for a long time. We were sitting there smoking and talking when all of a sudden from the dark outside the firelight comes a whistle and Tuan gives a jump where he sat. Then he whistles between his fingers as if in answer and out. of the dark comes a chap crawling along with his hair over his eyes. He creeps up to Tuan, and they begin to talk. Then Tuan comes to us and tells us the news. One of the Dyaks, a fish trapper that had done a journey up the Tatan on some business of his own had come on Kadjaman's house.

"That's what Tuan told us with a straight face, but we didn't laugh, for we knew what he meant. The orangs build houses of sorts away up in the trees. They haven't walls or roofs or lavatory accommodation; they're just platforms built between two branches and furnished with bundles of brushwood and leaves. This fishing Dyak was a blood relation of Tuan's. He knew Ting, and he knew of the carrying off, and a month before, going along through the forest by the river and chancing to look up he saw Kadjaman's platform away up in a tree.

"He wouldn't have took any more notice, monkey houses being common, only for a face looking down at him out of the leaves. He saw at once it was Ting's face, and he called out, thinking the child might come down. Instead of that Ting went up the remainder of the tree like a flash and hid on the platform.

"He marked the place and then he'd set out to hunt for Tuan and us. He'd seen us start from Bintulu and he knew the direction we'd gone; but how he found us after a month's hunt—well, search me! But find us he did.

"Tuan having got the yarn, said it was necessary for him, now that he had the indication, to drop everything else and get his child back. He said he couldn't lead us any longer till he had that matter settled, and Becconi agreed that it was only right and proper to get the child back and said he'd wait there with the whisky while Tuan and myself made the journey and fetched the goods. The place was only a day's journey from where we were. I agreed. I judged he couldn't kill himself with the whisky in two days and that if he did it'd maybe be a mercy for him, and taking my gun I followed Tuan and the fisher Dyak, striking in the direction of the Tatan.

"It was less than a day's journey, and when we got there it wasn't above ten o'clock in the morning, and there, like as if a chap had hoisted a mattress and stuck-it between two of the branches, away up in a big tree, we saw Kadjaman's house; but there wasn't a sign of the owner nor of Ting. We didn't go to knock at the door. We all sat down in the undergrowth which hid us while giving us a view of the premises above, and there we waited. I didn't know what Tuan proposed to do to get the child back, but I did know one thing, he was going to get it back now he'd found the address. I reckoned he'd kill Kadjaman and then climb for the child; but I was wrong as it turned out.

"I nodded off to sleep, for I was bone tired with the journey, and I'd been dozing maybe an hour when Tuan joggled me awake. I looked up and there was Ting crawling along a branch twenty foot up, following in the track of a big monk that was Kadjaman's twin brother if it wasn't himself. You could see at a glance that the child had joined up with the monkey folk in the three months he'd been with them.

"But I wasn't bothering about that, I was watching Tuan, Tuan had his blowgun with him. It was a better weapon and twice as deadly as a Colt's automatic. It was death itself, for the dart was poisoned. Tuan was standing up and leaning back with the gun to his lips. Up above, against the sprinkling light through the leaves, Kadjaman made a target as big as a barn door and not more than twenty-five feet off and Tuan with that infernal gun could hit the middle of a sixpence somewhere about the same distance. So there didn't seem much chance for the monkey, did there?

"Well, all of a sudden I heard the 'phut' of the blowgun, and right on it Ting, up in the branches, let a squeal out of him and I saw he'd been hit, hit right in the neck where the big vein is and where the poison of the dart would act quickest.

"Then he came tumbling, kicking, and catching at twigs, bang into the bushes, dead as Pharaoh's aunt. Tuan gave the body a stir with his foot to see if it was dead all right, and finding it so was satisfied. He didn't bother about Kadjaman, though he could have killed him easy enough. He'd got his son back, anyhow, and stopped him from going lower than he'd gone. You see he wasn't a chap to believe in Tarzan of the Apes or Mowgli, seeing that he knew what the jungle is and what monkeys are, and what men can become.

"Tuan wasn't a popsy-wopsy father by no means, but I've often thought it's chaps like Tuan, stuck by nature in the door in old days, that's stopped humans from backsliding into beasts— but maybe I'm wrong."

_____________________

16: The Queen's Necklace

Popular Magazine 20 Oct 1918

JUST before the war I was in Paris, and, happening to be in the Rue de la Paix, I called on my friend Leverrier. He was a jeweler in a large way of business, but to-day is temporarily serving as cook somewhere in the Argonne until such time as he can be a jeweler again.

I met him first in Biarritz seven or eight years ago, and we at once became friends, for our tastes were sympathetic, and it was often a wonder to me that a man who loved an out-of-door life and all that goes with it in the form of movement and adventures could live cooped up in the Rue de la Paix, year in, year out, with little relaxation and no change to speak of.

That day I called upon him I happened to mention this fact. We were seated in the office at the back of his shop and there in the midst of ledgers and papers and an atmosphere prosaic as the atmosphere of a bank he told me this story.

"WELL," said he, "it may seem a trifle dull, this life of mine, but I assure you there are moments in the life of a jeweler when he gets all the excitement and action he requires, especially when his stock is worth a couple of million francs, with a couple of thousand jewel thieves in Paris; men, moreover, who have made a fine art of their business. I could tell you a good many stories to prove my point, but I will content myself with one, just to show you that the word business covers more things than profit and money changing. It was my first adventure in life, all my future turned on it and in a most curious way.

"My father was a small jeweler in Marseilles. He died when I was twenty-one years of age. I was an only child, my mother had passed away some years before, and I was alone in the world. I had big ideas. I saw quite clearly that a small business is eternal labor and little profit, and that if I wished to live a full life I must strike out, take my fortune and my courage in both hands, and risk everything to gain everything.

"I collected all my available cash, some sixty thousand francs, and, still continuing in business with the aid of one assistant, I crouched waiting to spring on Fortune should she come in sight.

"She came.

"Just at that time occurred the sale of the Polignac jewels. I attended it. On the second morning of the sale and just before the luncheon hour a necklace of opals was put up, the most lovely work of art, fire opals, some of large size, and set with small brilliants; but it was less the value of the stones that attracted me than the workmanship of the whole. You may guess my surprise when the bidding started at only fifteen thousand francs and the three succeeding bids only raised it to eighteen thousand. But the fact of the matter was that opals just then were out of favor. There is nothing more curious than the fashions that come and go in precious stones, diamonds always excepted. Opals are, as you know, considered unlucky, and just then there had been a murder case or a divorce case or something of that nature in which opals had figured, so I suppose the grande dames of Paris and London were not buying; at all events, the big dealers present were absolutely unenthusiastic. Then I came in, and the sight of a young and enthusiastic bidder seemed to hearten the others, for they put the price up on me till twenty-eight thousand francs was reached. At thirty thousand francs the hammer fell and the necklace was mine.

"Now, only a week before the sale I had read in a paper— the Echo de Paris, no less— that the Queen of Spain had a passion for opals, and it was that paragraph in my head, no less than the beauty of the article at auction, that had made me keen on the purchase. I had, in fact, resolved that, if I could buy it, I would endeavor, by hook or by crook, to sell it to her majesty, not so much for the profit as for the sale, for let me tell you that the fortune of a jeweler lies often at the back door of a palace, if he can once slip in, and that the history of the Rue de la Paix is, in part, the history of the Tuileries during the Second Empire, and the histories of the courts of London, Vienna and Berlin.

"Well, I had my necklace at the cost of half my available capital, and it only remained with me now to make the sale. I wrote to the chamberlain of the Spanish court stating the facts and got no reply to my very civil letter though I waited a month. Then I cast about me for other ways to forward my scheme, but without success, and several Spaniards whom I knew, so far from encouraging me, gave me to understand that of all courts in the world the court of Spain is the most exclusive and the most difficult to manipulate.

"Well, there I was with my hands tied and my necklace round my throat, so to speak, and my thirty thousand francs lying unproductive. Many people would have given the thing up, but I am very tenacious by nature. Once I get hold of a plan I stick to it like one of those dogs you English keep for setting upon bulls and, in fact, I would not be defeated.

"It occurred to me, suddenly, to apply to our deputy, Monsieur Villenois, a blackbearded southerner, a man from Tarbes, who might have stood for the portrait of Daudet's Numa Roumestan. I interviewed him, and he listened to my story with interest. He became enthusiastic as though it were an affair of his own.

" 'The Queen of Spain is now at Biarritz,' said he. 'Go there, my dear Monsieur Leverrier, with your necklace and wait. I will obtain a letter of introduction from our foreign minister and forward it to you at your hotel.' He refused to be thanked, all but embraced me, dismissed me with the highest hopes— and forgot me. He was not a scoundrel, simply a man who could not refuse; one of those genial southern souls, all sunlight, and to whom a promise signifies nothing.

"Well, I put up at an hotel in Biarritz and I saw her majesty often at a great distance, but I did not see the promised letter from my deputy.

"There were some pleasant people in the hotel and among them there was an old gentleman, Don Pedro Gommera, with whom I struck up a close acquaintanceship. He was, as it afterward turned out, the owner of a rubber estate on the Amazon, a man very wealthy, but of the type of the old buccaneers. It was this in him, perhaps, that pleased me; he was different from others, and in our conversations he talked of the wilderness of the Amazon, of his life there; of the rubber workers who, though paid, were practically his slaves; and in such a manner that I seemed listening to the voice of Cortez himself.

"Bold spirits attract one another, and one day, still waiting for my deputy's letter, I told him of my intended attack on her majesty of Spain and of the necklace. It interested him and he asked to see it, as he was a connoisseur of jewels, and I unfortunately, or rather fortunately, acceded to his request.

"I kept the casket containing the thing in a tin box, and the tin box in my valise, and my valise in my bedroom. We went up to my room and there, opening the valise, I produced the necklace with which he at once fell in love. He was completely fascinated, just as a man is fascinated by a beautiful woman, and I could tell without any word of his, but just by the manner in which he held it and hung over it, the effect it had produced on his mind. But he said nothing much till that night after dinner when he approached me in the smoking room where I was smoking a cigar.

"He sat down beside me; and after talking for a while on various Objects he came to the point.

" 'I have been thinking of that necklace you showed me,' said he, 'and if you will excuse me for talking to you on business, I should like to purchase it.'

" 'Ah, monsieur,' I replied, 'nothing would give me greater pleasure than to do business with you, but, unfortunately, it is not for sale, or only to one person— and her name you know.'

" 'I would point out to you, monsieur,' said he, 'that when I take a thing into my head money to me is no object. Name your price.'

" 'And I would point out to you, monsieur,' I replied, 'that when I take a thing into my head money is no object. I wish to sell this article to her majesty, not so much for the sake of the money she will pay me as for the sake of a business introduction to the court. I hope yet to be jeweler to the court of Spain; yet, leaving all that aside, there is the fact that I have set before myself an object to be attained, and I have never yet desisted once I have started on a journey toward an object.'

" 'You are an obstinate man,' said he.

" 'No, monsieur, a tenacious one,' I replied, 'and as that is not a bad description of your own character, if my instinct for physiognomy is not at fault, you can sympathize with me.'

" 'You refuse to sell?'

" 'Absolutely, monsieur.

" 'Very well,' said he, 'let us say no more on the matter.'

"He left Biarritz next day, and the day following going to my portmanteau I found it unlocked. I opened it, and found the tin box containing my treasure gone.

"It was like a blow in the stomach.

"I had left the portmanteau locked, of course. That was what I told myself. Then doubt assailed me. Had I omitted to lock it in putting back the necklace, and had Don Gommera noticed the fact? That he was the thief was a fact of which I had an instinctive surety, based on the instinctive knowledge that nothing at all would stop this man from attempting to obtain any object upon which he had set his mind. As I knelt holding the lid of the portmanteau open and looking at the contents something drew my eye. It was an envelope, an ordinary envelope with the name of the hotel on the back, bulky but unsealed. I took out the contents and found notes on the Bank of France for the sum of forty thousand francs. Not a word, not a line, just the notes in an unsealed envelope.

"Despite my rage and mortification, I could have laughed. There was something so childlike and primitive in the whole business, so rascally and yet so ingenuous. I seemed to see before me more fully the character of the man— a man who dared all the risks of burglary, a man who did not hesitate to steal, yet a man who disdained taking a jeweler's goods without paying for them. He would have cut my throat, perhaps, to obtain what he craved for— yet have left the payment in notes on my person.

"The thought of applying to the police occurred to me, but I dismissed it. First of all, he was no common criminal, he was an hidalgo, but not of our day, and I had that much fine feeling that the thought of dragging him and his white beard and his noble manner into the dirt of a common police court was repugnant to me. He had treated me as an equal, and I did not see myself standing before him as the figure of a prosecuting tradesman.

"Secondly, he had robbed me not of a necklace, but of an object in view. He had gained his object, I had lost, for a time, mine. No, it was a question of man to man, not of jeweler and thief.

"I packed my portmanteau and started back for Marseilles, and the day after my arrival I called upon Chardin.

"You may not have heard of Chardin. He is the inquiry agent employed by all the great business houses of Marseilles; his office is in the Rue Noailles and he has sub-agencies everywhere. Give him a week and he will tell you all things about any man from the name of his dentist to the number of his shoes. In less than a week Chardin placed before me all I wanted to know, the exact address of my man and how to reach it. Also, Chardin told me that Don Pedro Gommera had departed for home by the last boat, and that if I took the next boat, which started in eight days' time, I would arrive on his heels. So far, so good, but what an address that was! The Estate of Flores, on the left bank of the river Amazon, and a thousand miles from its mouth, enough to daunt any man as it did me for the space of a day and a half.

"For a day and a half I held off, but I was young, my will was strong, and that something which makes for adventure was in me.

" 'Will you let distance beat you?' I asked of myself, and the answer came on the question, 'No.' There was also something else, I do not know what, something like the tide which leads men along to fortune, and whose ripples men sometimes hear by a finer sense than that which brings us the sound of the dinner gong. I felt that I was doing the right thing— and then, again, beyond that, I felt that if I allowed this old man's will the victory I would start in life handicapped by the sense of defeat and the knowledge that another man's will was Stronger than mine. So I packed my traps, I left my business with my assistant, and started.

"Ma foi, that wonderful journey! It burns still in my mind like a blue jewel, first the ocean that seemed to turn to a deeper indigo each day, and then the vast river and the tropical forests that hide its banks. I took passage up it in a Royal Mail steamer, a great white boat that seemed built for deep-sea service, but none too big for the Amazon where the Mauretania herself might navigate even a thousand miles from the mouth.

"And the forests forever and forever lining the banks, and the birds flying above the forests— birds that yelped like dogs and birds of all colors from snow to flame. It seemed a strange place for a man to come in search of a lost necklace!

"The Flores plantation where I had arranged to be put off was well known to the captain and officers of the ship, also Don Pedro Gommera who seemed to be a character. They had many stories about him, of his wealth and the number of tons of rubber Flores put out each year, and so forth. Hearing I was going on a visit to him, they declared that I would be treated royally, and so I hoped, but I had my doubts. I only wanted to be treated fairly, to receive back my necklace and, if possible, the expenses of my journey.

"Once in our conversations at Biarritz the old man had said that some day I must pay him a visit on his estate. I determined in my mind to take that cue, to be absolutely courteous, and to win my necklace back with a laugh, so to say— Well, man proposes and God disposes, as you shall hear.

"At breakfast one morning the captain told me that I had better get my belongings together as in the course of an hour or so we would be off Flores, and at eleven o'clock, standing on the deck with my belongings beside me, the plantation came into view with golden fields and native houses and a great wharf like a deep sea harbor wharf alongside of which we came and tied up.

"The stoppage was made not entirely on my account, for there was some cargo to be discharged at the plantation. I watched the wharf-side crowd of colored men as I waited for the gangplank to be lowered, and as I watched, there, sure enough, came a figure through the crowd, the figure of a tall old man clad in white wearing a Panama and smoking a cigar. The crowd parted before him as he came, just as the Red Sea parted before Moses. It was Don Pedro Gommera.

"Was he surprised when, stepping from the gangway, I saluted him, bag in hand? I don't know. I can only say he showed nothing of surprise, and when I told him I had come to pay my promised visit he seemed charmed, called porters to collect my luggage and then, having boarded the steamer for a moment to speak to the captain about the cargo consigned, to him, came off again, apologizing for the delay, inquiring as to whether I had had a pleasant journey, and all with such an air of having expected me, such warmth, such courtliness, that confusion seized me as much as it could seize a jeweler with a grievance, a tradesman who had been wronged and had come over four thousand miles to have his wrongs redressed. But not for long. As he led me off toward a large, low, white house set beyond tree ferns and surrounded with a miraculous garden, where palmistes waved against the sky and butterflies like blossoms chased each other over flowers more brilliant and lovely than jewels, I became myself again, or, rather, I became that self which contact with the personality of my courtly host engendered in me, for it is perfectly true that one takes one's color from one's companions, and that a man of true stateliness and good form diffuses his qualities as a lamp diffuses its light or a flower its perfume.

"You may laugh to hear me talk so of Don Pedro Gommera— ah, well, if you had met him, you would know exactly what I mean, and if you had met him in his home on the banks of the Amazon you would know even better.

"The house where he led me was verandaed so that nearly every room on its two floors gave upon a veranda space, it was shadowed by vast trees and surrounded by a tropical garden—a garden where one might, lose oneself in broad daylight—a garden where one came upon marble seats set in coigns of shadow and before vistas of tree-fern alleys and views, now giving one the picture of the forest's heart, and now of the broadly flowing Amazon.

"The house itself was furnished with the simplicity that is born of warm climates and, when I had been shown to my room by a manservant, I returned to the veranda where I had left my host. There, while we sat in rocking-chairs and talked, another servant made his appearance bearing a large silver tray on which was' a bowl of crushed ice, glasses, decanters containing rum, liqueurs and lime juice, cigars and cigarettes.

"The tray, having been placed on a table beside us, we helped ourselves to its contents and the conversation turned to my voyage and far-away Europe.

" 'It is difficult,' said Don Pedro, 'for European people to understand the life out here, simply, monsieur, because the life out here is so different from the life of Europe. There civilization holds sway and the old laws of the different countries, Being the products of centuries of experience and practice, work of their own accord, so to speak, smoothly and meeting every requirement that may turn up. The crimes are all tabulated and the punishments. It is like the contents of a shop. If a man wishes to invest in murder, let us say, he knows the price he may be expected to pay, but here I am the Law, and on this estate justice is my caprice. For, if a man were to murder another, his punishment would lie entirely in my hands, and I might hang him or shoot him or imprison him in a dungeon or let him off, as my fancy chose."

" 'You are, in fact, king,' said I.

" 'I am, in fact, king— absolutely.'

" 'I am just a tradesman;' I went on, 'and though I may have been intended for higher things than the life of cities, fate has placed me where I am.'

"He laughed.

" 'Do not run down tradesmen,' said he. 'They were the first adventurers. I myself am a tradesman of a sort since I sell the rubber for which I pay my laborers. To me, men are men and the worth of a man is to me everything, his position in life nothing. I am so placed that I can look on things like that, unblinded by the false views that make up civilization.'

"Just then a voice, clear, golden, sweet as the voice of a bird, full as the voice of a woman, came to us from the trees; the rear foliage shook, parted, and disclosed the form of a girl, the most lovely, wild, entrancing vision that ever fell on the sight of mortal man.

"Lightly attired as a Greek of old days, almost barbaric, with raven hair moist as though from a bath in some lagoon of the river, and red gold bangles upon her perfect arms, she stood with hands spread out in astonishment at the sight of a stranger.

"Around her neck and resting on her snow-white bosom adding a last touch to the strangeness of the picture, lay a string of blazing opals.

"My necklace.

"You can fancy the situation.

" 'My daughter,' said the old man quietly, and then to the vision: 'Juanita.'

"She came toward him and they spoke together in Spanish. He introduced us with a few words as she hung beside him gazing at me with the eyes of a forest creature, eyes luminous and deep and dark, friendly— yet destructive to peace of mind.

"Then she vanished into the house.

"Then he turned to me.

" 'Monsieur,' said he, 'you are a connoisseur in gems, what do you think of my daughter's necklace?'

" 'Senor,' replied I, 'I did not see the necklace you speak of. I saw nothing but the beauty of the Queen of Flores.'

"He bowed. As for me, I almost spoke the truth for I was in love.

"As for the necklace, it was never spoken of again during my stay at Flores. It had reached the destination I had designed for it. It was worn by a queen. It is still worn by a queen— my wife."

"Ah, you married, then—"

"We married. At first, the King of Flores refused the idea of such a union, not on account of my position so much as of the fact that he did not want to lose her. But she prevailed. She brought with her a dot of a million francs, and when I declared my intention of carrying on the only business I knew and my conviction that no man ought to live on his wife's money, he agreed.

" 'Go forward,' he said, 'but do big things, start in Paris, and for a beginning I will lend you what money you want at an interest of five per cent.' So I came to the Rue de la Paix.

"You see, he was a great man. So much above the littleness of life that he saw no discredit in the word shop. So great that he did not hesitate to buy by force the object he wanted, or to hand over to me through reason the object he wished to keep.

"Civilization would have called him a brigand, but civilization could not have understood this man of a larger and simpler day."

____________________

17: The Story of Gombi

The Popular Magazine, 7 Feb 1922

PATRICK SPENCE, a real, old Anglo-Irish gentleman, who would have cut your throat had you called him a liar, died not long ago at the age of eighty-six and had a bottle of port with his dinner the day before he took off. Those were Cassidy the old butler's words. Cassidy said the master was as sound as a bell and walking along by the rhododendron bushes to have a look at the new wing they were adding to the stables when he sprang into the air, cried, "Got me by glory!" and fell flat, just as a buck falls when a bullet takes it through the heart. A fit end for a big-game hunter you will say. A fit, anyhow, the doctors said.

The ancestral home of the Spences, The Grange, Scoresby, Lincolnshire, stands half a mile from the road. You reach it by an avenue of chestnuts, and in Patrick's time when the door opened you found yourself in a hall hung with trophies of the chase; the whole house was, in fact, a museum. Never in any man had the passion for collection burned more acutely than in the owner of The Grange, or shown itself in a more extravagant fashion. Here you found lamps upheld by pythons, door handles cut from rhinoceros horn, tables topped with hippopotamus hide, skins and masks everywhere of everything from black buffalo to Burchell's zebra. In the long corridors where the hartebeest heads faced the elands and Grant's gazelle grinned at Bohm's zebra, black bears upheld the electric standards— black bears and apes.

The place was a mausoleum. To walk those corridors at night and alone required a fairly steady nerve, especially when the wind of Lincolnshire was howling outside like a troop of lost hyenas. There were envious men who said that three fourths of this collection had been bought and paid for, but that is the way of the world. No man ever dared to say it to the owner's face.

I was staying at a village ten miles from Scoresby and twelve from The Grange, when one day I met the old gentleman, whom I had known in London, and he invited me to a day's fishing in the stream that runs past The Grange to join the Witham. We had good sport, but toward the end of the day the rain began— the rain of Lincolnshire driving across the fens, drenching, disastrous, dismal. Spence insisted on my staying for dinner and the night; he gave me a rig-out which included a Canadian blanket coat and a pair of slippers and a dinner of the good old times, including a cod's head served with oyster sauce and a capon the size of a small turkey.

Afterward we sat by the hall fire and talked, the light from the burning logs striking here and there, illuminating horns and masks and giving a fictitious appearance of life to the snow leopard crouching as if to spring at me from behind the door.

"Are those slippers comfortable?" asked Spence, filling his pipe from the tobacco jar— one of his infernal trophies, a thing made out of a cross section of elephant shin bone drilled out, for the leg bones of elephants have no marrow.

"Quite, thanks."

"I got 'em in a queer way, didn't pay a cent for them, either." The cherry-colored cheeks of the old gentleman sucked in and he made the pipe draw against its will. Then, safely in the clouds, he went on. "Not a cent, though they cost me the lives of several men and near three hundred pounds of good ivory."

"Mean to say you gave three hundred pounds of ivory for these old slippers?"

"Well. I'll tell you," said he. "It was such a mixed business. I'll have to give you the whole story if you are to understate it, and first of all I must tell you that though my yarn has to do with Africa those slippers weren't made in Africa.

"You've been to Cape Town, haven't you? —and Durban and away up to Pretoria by rail, maybe— and you've passed thousands of square miles of country that I've seen crawling with game in my time— quagga, gnu, rhinoceros, lion— all gone now, not enough left to feed an aasvogel. Yes, I've seen that country when it was only to be compared to the country south of the Orange toward Cape Town—one big game preserve. And it was on my second visit to it that the things happened I am going to tell you of.

"I was hunting with Tellemark, a Swede, I think he was, or Norwegian, I forget which, and we were traveling south of the Limpopo and close on to Portuguese territory; we had a regular caravan— four ox wagons, half a dozen horses, and about forty Kafirs; and we'd had good hunting, waterbuck, buffalo, rhino and giraffe, but little elephant. However we were getting into the elephant country— a big rolling country, broken by thick bush and mimosa trees, with great clumps of forest sweeping away west where you could see the giraffes grazing against the trees, looking like toy giraffes taken out of a Noah's ark.

"The place was thick with game. I've seen what looked like a moving cloud shadow miles away— it was a herd of springboks, thousands of them. I have seen twenty rhinoceros in five square miles of that country, and buffalo by the hundred. But one day I saw something stranger than all these. We had rounded a big clump of trees on our second day after entering this country, when we came upon an elephant. He was lying down, dead, a great brute thirteen feet to the shoulder, with ears six foot from tip to lobe, and tusks weighing, we guessed, close on three hundred pounds. The heaviest tusks ever taken in Africa weighed four hundred and fifty, so you may guess we were on to a pretty good thing. But the strange part of the show wasn't the elephant but the chaps that had killed him. Pygmies—little chaps not five foot high.

"As far as I can make out there are several tribes of Pygmies lingering about in the African forests, and dying out so quick that to-day they are there and to-morrow they are gone. This lot we struck were evidently the stump end of some tribe worn down just to twenty or thirty members; they had killed the elephant on the edge of the forest and they were on him like flies. The trunk and feet had been cut off and the stomach cut open with a big stick stuck to keep it so; half the tribe was inside the elephant and half on top and round about. But when they saw us they dropped everything and made off, running for the woods— reminded me of a lot of sparrows flying from a cat; but one chap failed to get away, he tripped on something, fell flat on his face, and before he could get on his hands and knees, I had him.

"He kicked and fought, but only from fright, and after a while he quieted down and Tellemark gave him some sugar. You should have seen his face when he tasted the sugar! It didn't seem a bad face, either, round and chubby. And that and the small size of him, together with his plumpness and the bow and arrow he had dropped, made us call him Cupid. The bow was the smallest I have ever seen, not a foot from tip to tip. The arrows were wrapped round with a piece of hide—kind of an attempt at a quiver; there were dozens of them, not thicker much than knitting needles, and without barbs.

"We thought at first that the arrows were used for killing small birds, but our Kafirs knew different; they pointed to the elephant and, sure enough, there was an arrow sticking in the great ear of the brute, and three or four more sticking in the skin. They were poisoned arrows, and what the poison could have been, Lord knows, but something pretty powerful, for a rifle couldn't have done the business better. We gave the arrows back to the chap, and the bow, expecting to see him make off to the woods after the others. Not he. The first fright over and seeing that we weren't dangerous, he hung on, staring at the wagons; it was plain he had never seen anything on wheels before, and when Tellemark got one of the wagons on the move for a few yards to show him how it was done, he cried out like a bird chirruping, and laughed with one hand on his pot-belly till the laughter took the pair of us and doubled us up. But the Kafirs didn't laugh; didn't seem to see anything funny in him at all; and they didn't call him Cupid; they called him Gombi.

"Our head man said he was no good, belonged to a bad lot and that we had better get rid of him. But Gombi had his own ideas about that. He seemed to have attached himself to us as a stray dog does and he hung round while the boys were taking the tusks, chirruping to himself and dodging about looking at this and that till the funniest feeling got hold of me that he wasn't human but some sort of being from another world that had come across humans for the first time and was taking stock of them. But I hadn't long to think about him, for all of a sudden round us the air was becoming filled with a stench worse than I ever smelled before.

"It was the elephant. The thing had been new killed and warm when we struck it and now it was going like this, decomposing right under our eyes, for great blisters were rising on the skin—and I won't go into, details. "The poison has done that," said Tellemark. "Looks like it," said I. "Let's shift and get beyond the wagons. The Kafirs won't mind." We got away beyond the wagons and lay down on the wire grass watching the boys at work and Gombi hopping round them. Right up above them was a vulture waiting till we had cleared off. I watched him coming down and going up again. Sometimes you couldn't see him at all, then he showed like a pin point, then he'd get bigger, then smaller.

"Now a vulture even when he is so high as to be beyond sight can see the body of a dwarf antelope, let alone an elephant, so this chap wasn't coming up and down to prospect; it was sheer impatience, hunger. And I was thinking how full of hunger that sky was when Tellemark shifted his position, and looking up I saw a bull rhino that had broken out of the thick stuff on the forest edge and was coming toward us moving quick, but unflurried. The wind was coming with him so he couldn't scent us and being half blind he couldn't see us. Two rhinoceros birds were with him, but they weren't on his back, they were flying about here and there, following him, and they didn't seem alarmed. That's funny, isn't it, for if those birds had been on his back when he was standing still or moving very slowly they would have cried out at once at the sight of us. Seems to me sometimes as if the animal and bird world is driven by clockwork, not sense. Then, other times, it seems as though there were a big genius behind their movements. Anyhow, the rhino came along unwarned and Tellemark let him get within thirty yards before he dropped him with a shoulder shot, dead as mutton.

"The boys working on the tusks had been looking on, so had Gombi; and when the dwarf saw old pongo graveled like that he came running for all he was worth, skipping round the dead brute, plugging his finger in the bullet wound and sucking it same as a child might with a pie. And then, when he'd done with the rhino, he fastened on to the rifle, looking down the barrels, sniffing at them and evidently connecting the smell with the smell of powder in the air. Then he examined the locks, as interested as a magpie with a marrow bone.

"When he'd done he seemed to have come to the conclusion that a Purdy eight-bore was a weapon he would like to have further acquaintance with, for he pointed to the elephant, then to the gun, then to himself and then away to the west. Then he opened and shut the hand that wasn't holding the bow, about a dozen times. What he said was clear enough. There were many elephants to the west and he would lead us to them if we would take the gun and shoot them.

ii

"BETWEEN the wood clump and the one to the west there was maybe five miles of country rolling and dipping, broken here and there with euphorbia and mimosa trees. When we'd taken the tusks of the elephant and some of the rhino meat, we determined to shove right across and camp near the other woodside; first of all the elephant was getting more punch in its perfume; second, we wanted to put a considerable distance between ourselves and those confounded Pygmies, and third, Cupid was evidently in earnest when he gave us the news of elephant herds to the west.

"We hadn't given much thought to the dwarf's sign language, and as we started we expected to see him go off back to his friends who were, no doubt, watching us from the trees. Not a bit. He had stuck to us for keeps, as the Yankees say, and when I look back and think how that little chap stuck to us and followed us, it seems to me that there was a bit of Christopher Columbus and Leefe Robinson mixed up with the rest of his character. For it was plain as paint he'd never seen white men or guns before.

"He kept along with us right in our tracks like a dog, evidently thinking we had fallen in with his proposition about the elephant hunting, and he wasn't far wrong. We had, in a way, without knowing it. For next morning when we were holding a hunt council, Tellemark, seeing that Gombi was still hanging about, waded right in with the proposition that we'd take the chap for guide— use him as a dog, so to speak, to find the game. I thought our native boys would buck against it, but our head man seemed to have lost his grudge against the chap; got used to him, I suppose, and didn't put up any difficulties. That settled it. Leaving the main camp under our head man's brother, we started, twelve in all, not counting Gombi, with provisions enough for a week, though we didn't expect to be more than three days.

"We went along the wood belt due west for half a day, then the forest took a big bend and as we turned it, just about three in the afternoon, we came on great wads of chewed bowstring hemp lying about, and the trees alongside of us looked as if a hurricane had stripped them of their leaves and broken their branches. Elephants are vegetarians and there's not a vegetable they won't eat from an acacia tree to a cabbage; they'll beat small trees down and eat them clear of leaves and bark, and they'll simply skin big trees, besides reaching up with their trunks and stripping the branches. Fortunately the wind had wandered round and was blowing from the west; for a moment after sighting the chewed hemp Gombi gave us a sign to halt. We saw nothing, but this little chap had eyes like a vulture and he saw away far ahead of us a movement in the treetops at one particular spot as if a wind was tossing them and then we knew there was a herd of elephants in the forest just there, feeding and shaking the trees.

"It took us an hour to get within shot. They weren't feeding in the forest itself, but in a great bay among the trees; a fairish big herd, bulls, cows, and calves, some of the calves not more than a week old, little pinkish beggars, not bigger than a Newfoundland dog. We dropped two bulls, and when we'd taken their tusks and had supper that night, Gombi had fairly put his clutch on us and we were ready to follow him anywhere.

iii

"IT'S A funny thing, but if we had come upon a poisonous snake we would have killed it right away without a thought. Yet coming upon a creature like Gombi, more poisonous than a snake and a lot more criminal, seeing he had invented and made his own poison, we let him live and even took him as a guide—like fools. And next day, listening to his sign talk and making out that if we followed him and struck right through the woods he could lead us to another hunting ground, we followed him.

"First we struck a great acacia belt and then we came on nsambyas and plantains mixed with cottonwood. The big lianas began to swing themselves across the trees and ground lianas to trip us, but the worst was to come, and it came about six hours after we had entered the trees. We struck a long patch where the nipa palms grew, springing like rockets out of the mud, and where you couldn't take a step without sinking over ankle, then over knee, then to the middle. When you pulled your foot out there was a pound of black mud sticking to it. But Gombi didn't mind. He knew that place by instinct and piloted us along till he reached firm ground, stretching like a road across the bad places and on we went till we hit the same thing again.

"When we camped that night we had three of those long stretches behind us, crossed by roads that only Gombi knew. That was a nice position, wasn't it, for a lot of sane men to get themselves into and instead of tying him up and making him lead us back we let him share our meat and listened to more of his sign talk, telling us that a few hours more march would bring us out next day where there were elephants to be found more than he could number.

"Next day when we woke up he was gone— clean gone. Tellemark and I had done sentry duty during the night, not trusting the boys, but we had heard nothing and seen nothing. He must have slipped away like a snake and it came to me, like a blow over the heart, that we were lost men. Instinct told me that this beast, intending to destroy us for some reason of his own, would do his work thoroughly, and I was right. We had a compass with us and after swallowing our food we started still west, guessing that the forest wouldn't last forever in that direction. But what's the good of a compass when it only leads you to a bog patch? We hadn't been half an hour on the march when we hit one just as bad as the ones over which Gombi had piloted us; worse, for we couldn't find a road across anywhere.

"There was a big fallen tree just there and I sat down on it. I was knocked out for the moment. I sat there pretending to be thinking, but I was thinking about nothing, except that we were done. That was against reason, for it was clear that by searching we might be able to find those three roads again that would lead us back east, and where there's half a chance no man has a right to give in. But the truth was my imagination had been seized by Gombi. His picture stood before my mind as a thing that was all cunning and evil— that and the picture of ourselves in his toils.

"Then at last I got a clutch on myself and as I came out of the doldrums a big idea struck me, big enough to make me laugh, it seemed so luminous and good.

" 'What's the matter?' asked Tellemark.

" 'The nipa palms,' said I. 'They only grow in the boggy places and they'll show us where the firm ground begins.'

" 'But see here,' said Tellemark. 'Those roads weren't more than twenty feet wide and the palms seemed just as thick there.'

" 'Bother the roads,' said I. 'Those long mud stretches don't run forever north and south. We've got to get round them not across them. Let's strike on till we reach the palms and then strike north for choice till the palms give out.'

"He saw my meaning at once, and we started due east, returning on our tracks.

"We hadn't gone more than a few hundred yards when suddenly one of the boys looked at his arm— something was sticking from it. It was one of those infernal knitting-needle-arrows that had struck him and struck without causing the least pain. It had come from the thick growth to the right and Tellemark and I without stopping to look at the boy plunged right in, chasing here and there, beating the bush and firing our rifles on chance. Not a sign of anything. When we got back the chap was dead.

"It took about twelve seconds for that poison to do its work.

iv

"NOW you'll see plainly enough that this new development had made matters ten times worse. Yet instead of that depressing me it bucked me like a glass of brandy. Sitting there on the log and thinking of those bog patches round us like traps I'd been down out of sight in the blues; but now I was as full of life and energy as a grig. Had to be, for the boys, stampeded by fright, tried to break. Tellemark and I had our work cut out kicking and gun-butting them so that at the end of two minutes they were as frightened of us as of Gombi. If we hadn't done that they'd have run in every direction, north, south, east and west, and some would have been bogged and the rest starved and we with them, for they were throwing the provisions away. We stopped all that and made them shoulder the bundles and shoulder the tusks. It may seem funny to you that we should bother about the tusks, seeing the position we were in; but if we had abandoned that ivory just then we would have lost half our hold over the boys; they'd have seen that Gombi had rattled us.

"We struck the nipa palms after half an hour or so and turned north, Tellemark leading, while I brought up the rear, each of us with our guns ready to shoot the first man that bolted and both of us full up with the knowledge that somewhere in the trees Gombi was tracking us and only waiting his chance.

"We had frightened him evidently by chasing and firing through the bushes, for the whole of that day we heard no more from him. We made good way and got clear at last from the infernal nipa palms into a great tract of cottonwoods and nsambyas.

"Lord! it was like getting out of prison. We knew we had got to the stump end of the bogs and, fuming due east, we reckoned an eight-hour tramp or so would bring us out somewhere into the open where we had left the main camp.

"Tellemark and I figured it out as we went. Four hours due east, was our idea, and four hours due south. We were right as it afterward turned out, but we had reckoned without the dark. A couple of hours after we had turned east it came on and we had to camp in a little glade, eating our supper in the last of the daylight and then lying down. We daren't build a fire and we put out no sentries. If Gombi were laying round, sentries were no use against him in that black dark and he was the only thing we feared. We lay spread about, the boys pretty close together and Tellemark and I apart from them and side by side.

"We talked for a bit as we lay there, speaking almost in a whisper, and then we lay quiet, but we couldn't sleep. The boys slept like logs. They thought themselves safe in the dark, no doubt.

"As for myself I felt certain that beast was lurking somewhere near and that he would be up to some trick, though what I couldn't say. I lay listening for sounds and heard plenty. Away off, miles away it seemed, I heard the cry of a lion. Not the questing cry, but the cry of a lion that has fed; then I heard the rooting of a bush pig. Then, somewhere in the forest, maybe a mile away, a tree went smash. You often hear that and there is no other sound like it. Some great cottonwood or euphorbia going rotten for years had suddenly tumbled.

"After that things got pretty silent till suddenly there came a little sound that made my heart jump— something different from any other sound.

" 'Thr-rub-b!'

"I couldn't be sure, but I could have sworn it was the sound of a taut string suddenly relaxed. I waited. Then after a while it came again.

" Thr-rub-b!'

"I drew my head close to Tellemark's and whispered, 'Is that the sound of a bow?'

" 'Yes,' he whispered.

" 'Shall we fire?' I asked him, and he whispered back, 'No, we'd stampede the boys— chap's shooting on chance: Don't move.'

"I took his meaning. Gombi had marked us down. Afraid of firing when there was light enough to chase him by, he was shooting blind in the hope of bagging some of us— maybe getting the lot. He'd hit nothing as yet evidently.

"I lay still and said my prayers and the thing went on. Five or six times that bow went; then it stopped. A minute passed, ten minutes.

"I whispered to Tellemark, 'He's gone,' and the whisper came back, 'Not he— changing his position.'

"I felt things running down my face— sweat drops. Far away off in the woods came a cry; it was the cry of a hyena; then silence shut down again. Not a sound, till suddenly—but farther away now—came the noise of the bow.

" 'Thr-rub-b!' and after it, right over my head, something passed through the air. 'Whitt!' An arrow had missed me by inches. I whispered to Tellemark. 'Shall we fire?' and the whisper came back, 'No. Don't know where he is. Flash would give him our position—stampede boys. Chance it.'

"It went on. No more arrows came near. Then it stopped. The beast was evidently changing his position again. A minute passed and then suddenly out of the dark there came a muffled crash followed by a squeal and silence. I listened, the sweat running into my eyes, and there came a new sound close beside me. It was from Tellemark. He seemed in convulsions. I thought one of the poisoned arrows must have got him, he was shaking and choking. I clutched him by the shoulder but he shook himself free.

" 'I'm all right,' he whispered. 'I'm only laughing— oh, Lord, can't you see, that chap's fallen into an elephant trap.' Then he went off again. It wasn't laughter so much as hysterics, sheer hysterics from the snapping of the tension and the relief.

"Tellemark had an ear that could tell the meaning of any sound, and by the sound he had heard he could tell the truth as plainly as though he had seen Gombi treading on the bush covering of an elephant trap and its collapse. Now that he had told me, I could see it too. After a while, when he had quieted down, I asked him should we rouse the boys and get the beast out, and he whispered 'No, can't do it in the dark. Leave him till morning and get to sleep.'

"I heard him give a few more chuckles as he turned about, then I heard him breathing quietly and next minute I was asleep myself. I slept for hours and when I awoke it was just before dawn. Tellemark had stirred me up. 'Smell that?' he whispered.

"I did. Then the truth broke upon me and I lay there in the dark thinking of Gombi's work and waiting for day to show how many he had got. Then as the day broke I could see, lying there among the others who were soundly asleep, the swollen bodies of three of the boys, each with an arrow sticking somewhere in him. The bite of the arrow's hadn't been enough to wake them.

" 'We've got to get those chaps away before the others see them,' said Tellemark. We did—into the woods far to leeward. When we returned, we could see in the stronger light arrows sticking here and there in the trees, arrows that had missed their mark. We broke them off carefully, and flung them away lest the boys should see them. Then we located the pit with its broken cover. Then, and not till then, we kicked the boys awake and before they had time to look round told them Gombi was in the pit.

"Tellemark had peeped down and seen that it was unstaked, and then began a powwow as to how we should get the creature out.

"All sorts of suggestions came from the beys, one fellow wanted to catch a wild cat and lower it tied by the tail, the cat would catch Gombi and we'd drag both up. Not a bad idea either, only we hadn't a wild cat. Then I solved the business by jumping down myself. He showed no fight and we had him out in a tick and he bothered the world no more.

"That's all; we got back to camp all right, only we forgot the tusks in our excitement, nearly three hundred pounds of ivory.

"Those slippers," finished the collector of trophies, "are made of Gombi's skin. Allenby, of Bond Street, made them for

By his look of expectancy I guessed at once that I was not the only man he had trapped into wearing those slippers while listening to that tale. But the howl of disgust he was waiting for never came— and he never forgave me, I think. The story ought to end here, but it doesn't. For the chief protagonist is not Gombi but Patrick Spence.

It remains only to ask and answer the debated question— does the gun like the fishing rod breed liars?

At the great sale after Sir Patrick's death I bought those slippers for four and sixpence and sent them to a high authority, with a simple question and a stamped telegraph form. The reply came promptly next day.

"Absolutely not. Lamb skin."

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18: The End of the Road

Popular Magazine, 20 Aug 1921

IN THE YEAR 1913 I was on a walking tour in Italy. If you want to see a country you must walk through it. Speed blinds, and every one traveling over four miles an hour wears goggles.

I had no special destination. Rome lay behind me and before me autumn and the Apennines; no luggage except a knapsack, no worries, no letters to follow me.

If you want to see a country you must not only walk through it, but walk through it alone. Then it talks to you without interruption. You must have no worries to join in the conversation, no present but that which lies around.

So, day after day, with no companions but the vineyards and olive groves, the hills and the blue sky and the berry-brown country folk, Italy became a reality for me; and the fact is that Italy, despite the railways and the doings of Marconi, is still the Italy that the Borgias knew— the same passions, the same blue skies, the same people; though maybe outwardly altered a bit. It has the same fleas, also, I should imagine, to judge from my experience of the taverns where I put up at nights.

One evening before sundown a turn of the road brought me to an inn, a solitary building, standing on the right-hand side of the way, with not another house in sight, and placed there as though in defiance of custom.

Buildings have for me almost as much personality as people. .There are houses that repel, houses that attract and houses that leave me absolutely indifferent. This old inn standing there in its naked loneliness seized my imagination at once. Repelled me, yet attracted me. Over the door, in vague blue letters almost burned out by the sun, appeared the words Osteria del Sole; on a long bench to right of the door an old man was seated enjoying the afternoon warmth, and by his side was a black cat.

I asked for the landlord and he told me that he was the landlord, giving his full name as one gives a visiting card— Alfredo Paoli. With a half flask of Chianti to help the conversation we sat and talked in the warmth of that delightful sunset. We talked of Italy and the grape harvest and the taxes, and a reference to Garibaldi brought out the old fellow's age. He was eighty-five. Then, when I discovered that the town for which I was making lay more than six English miles away, he proposed that I should stay at his inn for the night.

"You are welcome," said he, "and the place is clean as you will see for yourself. This is not an ordinary inn, and we who live here do not set ourselves out to entertain travelers except-those who stop for a glass of wine, but your conversation pleases me, and I like you for yourself."

NOW THAT invitation in that lonely place to a traveler-on foot and with money in his pocket might have savored of robbery and murder to a suspicious mind. But I am not suspicious by nature, and old Paoli was plainly and evidently a person who wanted to rob and murder no one.

All the same he robbed me of a night's sleep and murdered my rest.

I agreed to his suggestion. He rapped on the bench with an empty glass and called out "Giovanna!" A woman's voice replied from the house, and in a moment Giovanna appeared at the doorway in the last rays of the sunset, a woman bent with age and incredibly wrinkled.

He ordered supper, and "the room" to be prepared for a guest, and then, Giovanna vanishing, relapsed into conversation. about Garibaldi.

ii

LATER THAT evening as we sat on the bench before the door, he told me his story, or rather the story of his youth. He spoke with the detachment of a man telling another man's story, as though age had made him indifferent to all personal things, and yet with the vividness of an artist in words stirred by an interested audience and warmed by wine.

"I was born in Perugia," he said. "A different city from the Perugia of to-day. My father was an antique dealer— his shop situated at the top of that steep street leading from the Piazza del Papa to a Piazzetta from where you can get a good view of the Umbrian Hills.

"His shop, at the top of this street, was in a bad position for business you will say. But my father was not a man to spread his net in a bad position; he reckoned to get as customers all the visitors— and they were many— who climbed the street to see the view. His family consisted of only two sons, myself and Arturo. We were twins, alike both in faces and dispositions; but Arturo was the more adventurous spirit and, having a passion for the sea, he became a sailor, while I, the eldest by some fifteen minutes, fell into the antique business as assistant to my father.

"That business requires a great deal of knowledge both of men and things, for who knows anything of tapestry who knows nothing of St. Florent of Saumur— or of bronzes who knows nothing of Gallien? But all knowledge is useless without the flair. This my father had and this in some measure I possessed. Things cried out to him their worth, and the most skillful forgery could have made itself known to him in the dark. Now why was this so? Very simply, because he had descended from generations of men who had dealt with art, both as artists and dealers. Old Italy lived in him, as in me. Old Italy with its passions and, alas! its power of hatred. So things went on till I had reached my twenty-second year.

"Then one day my life changed. One day in the Via dei Bontempi I met a girl.

"Now I had met this girl many times before. She was, indeed, distantly related to my family, and lived in a street close to where is now the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele. Her name was Giovanna Batista. She was of Genoese extraction, blonde, like so many of the Genoese women, and very beautiful. Hers was the beauty of a spring morning— the beauty of youth.

"Yet, though I knew her, it seemed to me that till that day I had never met her before. Though I had recognized her beauty it had never given me more than a passing thought. But to-day she looked at me differently. She had, in fact, suddenly chosen me. Just one glance of her eyes and her beauty fell on me like an avalanche, and I was hers. A moment before if I had heard of her death it would have left me almost unmoved.

"But I said nothing that day to her. I was like a man who has suddenly found a treasure in the street and who hides it under his cloak and hurries home with it.

"Next day I met her again, and again her eyes told me what I dared scarcely believe. I was new to the business. I did not know what to do. Alone with her in some country place I could no doubt have brought things to a conclusion very quickly, and almost without speaking, but, as I was, there in Perugia, there was nothing for me left but to call at the house where she lived or tell her of my love for her in the street— in cold blood! Anything seemed easier than that, and so I let things drift. And then she left Perugia.

"She had only gone away for a holiday of a month, but her leaving nearly killed me, and increased my love for her tenfold, if that were possible. Every place where I had seen her became for me a place of torture, and, at night, under a moon, full as it is now, I would stand on the opposite side of the way before her house, torn between sorrow, hope and passion. Surely love is a madness!"

He ceased for a moment to drink, and as he raised his glass in the light of the great broad moon, the old woman's croaking voice came from some room in the interior of the inn.

"Alfredo, the hour is late."

He laughed, called out to her to be still and leave him to his own affairs, and went on:

"Love had so completely taken me and eaten me that I was not more than the shell of a man. I had no head for business, nor eyes for art. I quarreled with my father, who could not make out what was wrong with me, and I lost five hundred lire over a deal on a spurious bronze that was palmed off on me by a trader from Florence.

"If  things had gone on like this, I would have left Perugia and my home and business. But one day I recovered. Giovanna returned to Perugia and seemed to set all the bells ringing and the whole town en féte. I had news of her return through my relations. I met her in the street and I no longer delayed. I told her of my love for her, and she listened with head half turned away, then she turned to me and looked me in the eyes and smiled. She was mine.

"After that I was a new man. My prospects were good, and there was no opposition from Giovanna's parents; we would meet of an evening and stroll outside the town, always in the same direction, toward a grove which was a veritable lover's walk, filled as it was with paths leading nowhere. Here we would sit on a fallen tree trunk we had made our own, not minding if the weather was cold, and talk of the future, of our love for one another, and of the hundred nothings that make up the conversation of lovers.

iii

"WE WERE to be married in the summer. And meanwhile came Carnival.

"In those old days Carnival was perhaps a more joyous affair even than now. There was more joy in the old world, I think, than in the new. Men forgot their businesses and women their houses and children their toys. King Carnival ruled them all and made them forget even Lent.

"it was the last evening of Carnival, and I was to meet Giovanna at a selected spot near the Duomo. She had chosen a Spanish costume, and as for myself I had chosen a suit of motley and a crimson mask.

"Now mark how things happen in life.

"My father, who had not been very well for some time, remained at home that day. Knowing of his ill health and wishing to be in touch with him without returning home, I had given him the places where I could be found at certain hours. I would be at my friend Manfridi's at noon, I would be in such-and-such a place at two o'clock, and at ten minutes to six I would be at the Fonte Maggiore close to the Duomo to meet Giovanna. You would have said that this last appointment would have found me at the place before the time, and yet I was late.

"The clock at Manfridi's house was slow. There were many robbers about, that year, and I had left my watch at home rather than trust it among the crowd of Carnival, and, as a result, when I finally reached the Fonte Maggiore the bells were striking. I had not heard the quarter chime, and I could scarcely believe my ears at hearing the hour strike nor my eyes when they did not show me Giovanna.

"Then I knew. I had offended her. She had come and, not finding me, had gone away. If I had thought for a moment, I would have seen the impossibility of a young girl waiting there by the Fonte Maggiore alone, and I could have put the blame entirely upon myself. Instead, anger and bitterness filled my heart.

"I knew for a fact that Giovanna, for all her soft ways and looks, had a temper sharp as steel. I stood there looking about me filled with this thought and the anger of a disappointed man. People were passing, all making for the Corso, all talking, laughing and with an air of festivity and enjoyment that increased my anger and irritation till it seemed to flow against the whole world. I crossed the way and entered a wine shop. Here I took my seat and called for drink, heedless of the other drinkers.

"I did not notice a dark, slim man seated at a table near by. I drank. In those days a very little wine was sufficient for me. I had not a good head for the drink, but this evening it seemed to me that were I to drink a tun, it would not drown my wits; and I was not drinking wine but Lambec. It was a Gambrinus— Lambec laced with cognac.

"Men talk of magicians, but where will you find a magician like to alcohol? In ten minutes I had passed from anger to a sort of despair and from that to recklessness. Then of a sudden I had all but forgotten Giovanna. I was talking to the thin, dark man who had recognized me and who spoke to me by name. He was an art dealer from Pisa. I had seen him at my father's shop, and he had called there that day to do business despite Carnival time, but could not gain admittance owing to my father's illness.

"He had several things to dispose of at a marvelously low price— things most likely the product of some robbery received by him and dangerous to traffic within Pisa. We had often customers like this. It was not our business to inquire into other men's morals or the morality of their transactions, and as long as we did not suspect them to be robbers themselves, we took their goods.

"He had with him, this man Bodini, a cross of pure gold studded with small stones, a pair of earrings, and a dagger of Florentine work with a silver hilt. He offered them and told me the price. I had not that amount of money with me, but that did not matter to Bodini; our business was as good as a bank and our name good for a thousand times the amount he asked for— which was seventy lire for the cross and earrings and twenty for the dagger. I placed the jewelry in my bosom, and the dagger in its sheath I placed in the single pocket that the costume maker allowed a fool. Then Bodini took his departure and, just as though a cord had snapped, I plunged back into trouble and misery of mind. I left the tavern.

"The lights were now springing alive and the stars breaking out overhead. The noise of the Carnival rose through the evening like the sound of a sea.

"I stood undecided. Should I go to Giovanna's house on the chance of finding her there? Then still undecided I turned toward the Corso. Perugia seemed mad that evening. The spirit of Carnival had flared up like the flame of a lamp, all sorts of conditions of people went to make up the mob into which I now plunged, but they were all in the same condition of mind—gay to the point of madness. Bullfighters jostled fools and Pierrots soldiers. In the crush I half forgot Giovanna for a moment and, carried along by the stream, I acted the part of Folly though I had forgotten my jester's bauble.

"Then, of a sudden, the crowd parting slightly before me, I saw Giovanna.

"She was with a man. Their backs were toward me, they could not see me, though I could almost have touched them. He wore the coat of a Pierrot and a false nose tied behind the ears; taking advantage of the crush, his arm was about her waist. They were laughing. The sound of the last trumpet could not have stricken me as that sight did.

"Now, in my dealings with Giovanna, I had always forgotten one thing, and that was the fact that I was not the only man in Perugia. She had chosen me from a score of lovers and that fact had made me forget the score. I remembered them now.

"The dagger in my pocket jumped into my hand. A moment more and it would have been plunged in the back of the Pierrot, but that moment did not come. A horse, loose and garlanded, came racing down the Corso, the crowd swayed and rushed back carrying me with it, and separating me from my revenge.

"Giovanna and her companion were nowhere to be seen. They had been swallowed up by the crowd.

"You can fancy my position— rage in my heart and a dagger in my hand— jostled by laughing fools— carried hither and thither against my will. But my will was strong, and, though unable to command the movements of the people around, it enabled me to return the dagger to my pocket, to grip the situation with my teeth as you may say, and to regain my calm. I resigned myself to the situation and, though now I could have escaped from the crowd, which had thinned, I let myself drift with the stream.

"Then I had my reward. Close to the Via Piccolo Umberto I saw my quarry. I saw Giovanna and her Pierrot. I came upon them so suddenly that I could have counted the hairs on the back of her neck or untied the tape that held his false nose to his face, yet my hand did not fly to the dagger in my pocket. I was cooler now, I could wait my time, and do my business without running the risk of death by the executioner.

"I followed them along the Via Piccolo Umberto. They never once turned, so interested were they in one another. But, one moment, monsieur—"

He rose and took the empty wine flask and went into the house. I heard him lighting a lamp and poking about, and then I heard his voice asking Giovanna what she had done with the key of the cellar, and Giovanna's voice replying that it was on its nail by the door.

The old woman seemed angry at being disturbed, and I could hear her grumbling. What an hour to be sitting up talking! Had he no sense— and with his rheumatism drinking with strangers like that? And he was telling her that his rheumatism was his own and that if he chose to feed it no one had any right to interfere. Then he came back with a wicker-covered flask and, taking his seat, continued:

"I followed them along that street and then through another leading in the direction of her home.

"Then they entered the street where she lived, and right before her door they parted. Hiding across the way, I could not believe my eyes. True it was dark, and there were few about, yet it was known in the whole quarter, nay in all Perugia, that she and I were engaged to be married; and here, a few months before our wedding and for a trifling offense on my part, she was saying good night to a stranger, a man who had placed his arm round her waist, a man she had picked up in the Carnival. I saw their heads pressed together, and I heard the kiss. He had removed his false nose to enable him to kiss her, and now she was tying it on again for him.

"They were laughing, then they parted. She went into her house and he turned down the street walking swiftly, gay, and whistling a tune.

"I let him get thirty paces ahead, and then I slipped after him. In those few moments while hiding in a dark entry and watching the parting of those two, I had tried them in my own mind, judged them, and it was now for me to carry out the sentence of the judge. The man with the false nose had to die, the woman with the false heart had to die. But the man first.

"It was quite easy for me to kill him right there in the street. But were I to do so, I would be captured to a certainty, and then the woman would escape. You see my point, monsieur."

He uncorked the flask as he spoke and poured out the wine with a hand as steady as the hand of a young man, albeit the moonlight, now strong almost as the light of day, showed the metacarpal bones separately and distinctly as though it were the hand of a skeleton.

"You see my point, monsieur. careful, I had to treasure my life till my revenge was complete, and my revenge could not be complete till Giovanna had paid as well as he.

"Meanwhile I followed. My gentleman had picked up a jester's bauble from somewhere and now as he went he used it, striking here and there on the backs of folk with the bladder, laughing and jesting as he went, unconscious of the jester who was following in his footsteps armed with a dagger.

"He seemed to draw mirth and attention to himself just as a magnet draws iron. Girls, young men, old men, clowns, harlequins, monks, all had a word or a laugh for him or a handful of confetti. No one had a word or a laugh for me, eclipsed by his gayety and content to follow.

"Then my gentleman, not content with his affair with Giovanna, must seize upon another girl, taking her by the waist and whirling her off into a restaurant by the Corso. Several of her companions followed, but that made no difference to him. He had plenty of money and meant to spend it, and in a moment the Asti Spumante was flowing. "You can see me outside, with death in my heart, watching the merrymakers and drinkers. I could not see my man's face for his back was turned toward me, but I could see that he was the life and soul of that party.

"Then it broke up and they all left, departing this way and that, he alone and taking the Via Andria Doria.

"It was there I did the deed. The street was deserted, there was no one to watch; it was so dark between the lamps that as I seized him by the shoulder, I could only see his face as a whiteness, something without form, something to destroy. I was mad. The whole events of the day and evening had come to a point. My love for Giovanna, my jealousy, my hatred— and under all the alcohol working like a serpent. He struggled with me, something stung me in the left shoulder as we fought, it was a knife he had drawn and which he dropped on the pavement as I drove my dagger through his heart.

"He fell and lay at my feet, a white heap. The dagger was still in his body, but I thought nothing of that, my only idea was to hide him.

"Now that was the strangest thing, for my mind was made up to kill Giovanna and then myself. So why should I wish to hide him, why should I trouble to hide him? I do not know, I only know that the mind of man is beyond the comprehension of man, and that in moments of great trial and tragedy it works in ways of its own.

"I dragged the body to the entry of a court and propped it up half sitting in a doorway. There in the half light given by an oil lamp swinging from the wall it looked like a man drunk who had fallen asleep. Then I walked off, marking the court and where it lay, in my mind, and went home to change to my ordinary clothes— for I had now to meet Giovanna— and then die, and I had no mind to die in motley. I was careful not to wake my father.

"Then I went quickly to Giovanna's house, knocked and was admitted. Her family were still out, keeping up the last of the Carnival, but Giovanna was at home, and had not retired yet. After a moment's waiting she came down.

"I was standing in the room into which I had been shown—standing by the table facing the door. She came in and looked at me in surprise.

" 'Why have you come back?' she asked. 'And so changed?'

"I laughed out loud and looked at her and said not a word.

"Then she drew back and I saw that she was frightened. But what a strange thing is expression. It was driven in upon me at once that her fear was not of the consequence of her infidelity to me. I saw at once that her dread was that I had been drinking or had gone wrong in my mind. I had no weapon, only my hands, but they were strong enough. I looked at her.

"I said, 'What was his name?' She answered, 'Whose name?' I laughed. I said again, 'Where did you pick him up?' She answered, 'Who?' This enraged me and I said, 'Who? Why, the man who left you at this door not an hour ago.' She answered, 'I have met no man this evening but yourself.' I saw at once that she spoke the truth, yet I had seen what I had seen with my own eyes. There could be only one meaning to the business, some man must have impersonated me.

"I said so, and she laughed me to scorn.

"'You were with me,' said she, 'and you alone, dressed as a Pierrot, with a false nose which you took off when you met me by the Fonte Maggiore.'

" 'But God in Heaven!' I cried, 'I did not meet you there. I was late for the appointment and you were gone.'

"I saw that she either believed me a liar or mad. I felt mad indeed, just then. I found myself doubting my own mind. Had all this been a dream?

"I stood without speaking, feeling absurd, my eyes fixed on the floor. Then I thought of the man in the dark entry leaning against the door with the dagger in his heart, and at that recollection, as though a hand had been placed on each of my shoulders turning me, I turned, rushed to the door of the room, and left the house.

"I had entered that house to kill Giovanna, I left it half crazed, balked of my purpose, not knowing what to do.

"Then I found myself at my own door.

"The house was still in darkness, as before. But as I turned the key in the lock and entered, I heard my father's voice calling to know if it was me. He was lying in bed in his own room at the right of the passage, and as I entered I saw him there on his pillows propped up, a shaded lamp beside him and a book on his knees.

"'Ah, it is you,'" said he. 'Where is Arturo?'

"You will remember that I said I had a twin brother, a sailor, as like to myself as one pea is like another.

" 'What do you mean?' I asked. 'Arturo is at sea.' Even as I said the words a fear like the hand of death seized my heart.

" 'Arturo returned to-day,' said my father, 'seeking you. I told him he would find you at the Fonte Maggiore at six o'clock where you were due to meet Giovanna.'

"Then I sat down beside the bed and, leaning an elbow on it, I said to my father:

" 'I was late in reaching the Fonte Maggiore. Arturo got there before me. Giovanna mistaking him for me spoke to him and he, knowing that she must be my fiancée, and, for a jest, did not undeceive her. He was wearing a false nose and spending his money like a sailor. He saw her to her house, still keeping the jest up, and then when he had left her he made for home, reckoning to meet me and have the laugh on me. He did not know that I was following him, thinking him a stranger, with rage devouring me—'

"My father suddenly, as though a bullet had struck him, gave a leap on the bed and cast the book to the floor.

" 'What are you saying?' he cried. 'Where is Arturo?'

" 'Dead!' I replied, 'with my dagger in his heart.'

"I said the words as though I were repeating them from some other person's lips. I was quite calm. I could not seize what had happened at all with my real mind.

"Yes— that is the whole affair. They did scarcely anything to me, the pity of it was so great. I told the whole story just as I have told it to you.

"Then I married Giovanna. We went to Pisa to live; that was many years ago. So we have gone through the world never prospering greatly, coming at last to this.

"Well, at the end of the road what does it matter?"

We finished the wine and he showed me to my bedroom, and then lying awake and watching the white bars of moonlight on the bare wall of the room and listening to the wind in the olive trees, I could hear Giovanna's grumbling voice— "Well, you have come to bed at last. A nice thing, truly, keeping me awake like this."

________________

19: The Gold Bar

Blue Book, April 1934

THE sun was setting to the tonking of church bells, the smell of Spanish cigarettes and the occasional notes of a guitar. There were other smells and other sounds, but less important, less racy of the city of Sulphurous Pleasures and of the Plaza del Sol.

I think that is still the name of the great square near the cathedral, where the vultures strut and waddle, and Perrira's cafe, if it still exists, casts the shadow of its awning on the marble-topped tables, at one of which this evening Carlin was seated smoking a panetela and taking in the other guests; men in Panama hats, bearded men; Mexicans all the way down from the border, extraordinary Jews, Christians no man could place, a few store clerks from the business houses of the city, and Perrira's pet monkey— a spidery brute that went about from table to table on the lookout for drinks and cigar-ends.

Carlin was not a bit happy; it wasn't so much that he was down, if not out, as far as money went, or that he was disappointed in the business that had brought him here: it was just the crowd at the tables; their unknown types depressed him, these men remote from his world as Martians, or the vultures strutting in the plaza, or the monkey. He was surrounded by a loneliness more desolating than the loneliness of the desert or the sea.

A man came along pushing his way between the crowded tables, big and burly, with a jovial red clean-shaved face, hat tilted back, and an unlit cigar between his teeth; He was looking for a seat, and seeing Carlin's table and an unoccupied chair, took it with half a word of apology and drummed on the table with his fingers for the waiter. Then, without preamble, and as though he and Carlin were old acquaintances, he struck up talk:

"Hot as a stewpan, aint it? It's the flagstones take the heat, and let it out— Say, what are you havin'? Have one on me? What have you been havin'? Gin and tonic. Hi, there, Antonio Alonzo what's-your-name, two gins and toniques— same as the gentleman has been havin'; pronto, look alive-o! Darn, yellow slug—it's the same with all these Jack Spaniards; they want windin' up."

He lit his cigar and tilted back in his chair. He had been here three days trying to do some business, and failing; the Spaniards were so slow and cautious, they'd sniff a proposition and turn it over till there was no life left in it, and then they'd tell you to come back tomorrow; his name was Simon Dare, home town Quincy.

Carlin concurred in all this gentleman said regarding the city and its ways and its folk. He too. had been trying to do some business with regard to a mine; he had come with letters of introduction from Silbermeyer of San Francisco to the president of the Trentino Company, had wasted nearly a week, only to find there was nothing to be done.

"Cost me five hundred dollars to come, reckoning the hotel expenses; and it will cost me another to go back," said Carlin.

"Well, it's lucky you have the five hundred dollars to take you back," said Dare. "Many a chap has been stranded here with less an' had to work his way out of the durned place through the fo'-c'stle. Funny, me meeting you, and us two in the same fix. Me? I'm going to El Paso down the coast tomorrow. I'm going to mule-back it; it's only a three days' ride, and if you'd like, to hire a mule and come along with me, I might be able to put you in the way of something at El Paso. I'm going on along there about a concrete proposition— if there is nothing doing, you could ship from there cheaper than here. There's always coasters going up north from El Paso besides the regular mails."

It seemed to Carlin that there might be something in this: he liked the other, and was hungry for friendship; and when Mr. Dare proposed that they should go and dine together at the Cafe Madrid, each paying his own expenses, he fell in with the idea at once.

THE Cafe Madrid was,— perhaps still is,— one of the finest on the South American seaboard. There is a lot of money spent there, but it is unconventional in some ways; for instance, to dine there, you are not necessarily expected to wear evening clothes, as at the Presidio. Many of the guests did, and Dare as they ate pointed out several well-known figures at the different tables. That man with the pointed black beard was Alvarez, the banker; and the fellow with the girl who was wearing a flower in her hair, was Lopez, the chief man of the Peruvian tobacco company; he was married, but the girl was not his wife. The man at the table beyond, dining all alone, was Gomez; he had a funny history (commercial), but he was not alone in that peculiarity.

It struck Carlin that if his companion had only been four days here, he had a pretty wide and extensive knowledge of the inhabitants, but he did not remark on the fact or give it a second thought: this jovial and warm-hearted man had captured his fancy— so much so, that presently he began to talk about himself, his past and his prospects. He had been pretty unfortunate in business in Liverpool, England— trading in timber till the MacLarens had gone bust and knocked him completely off his feet; he had been forced into bankruptcy, but managed to pay his creditors ten shillings on the pound, and. had got his discharge— when an aunt died and left him money which was enough to clear himself with the creditors and leave a few hundred over.

"But see here, man," cut in Dare, "hadn't you got your discharge?"

"Yes," said Carlin.

"Then what in the nation did you want paying your money to those guys for?"

"What guys?"

"The creditors. Your slate was wiped clean."

"Maybe, according to law," said Carlin, "but not in my mind. I owed them the money just the same, discharge or no discharge; it was like a grit in my eye. Besides, I wanted to feel that no man could call me a bankrupt."

"Well, you take the bun! " said Dare. "And after you'd paid them—"

"I heard of a chance in San Francisco; five hundred wasn't any good for starting again in Liverpool, so I pushed out. It was five hundred and fifty really, and the fifty brought me across. I started in shell in a small way, with the man who had asked me to come out; and we were getting along all right when the bottom dropped out of shell. There was a slump in mother-of-pearl— it had gone out of fashion somehow or another, and the wharves and godowns were crammed with shell. We cleaned up just on the margin with no debts, only our money lost. That was eight months ago, and I got a job and saved enough to come down here .after this mine proposition which has turned out a dud."

"Well, it aint every day you meet Probity in a pair of breeches," said Dare. "Here's my respects to you! All the same and without offence, I'm thinking you'd make more money in Barnum's show as an exhibit of Virtue than you'll make in Frisco in a business way; but that's your lookout. Well, what do you say about El Paso tomorrow?"

CARLIN had been turning this business over in his subconscious mind, and had decided on it: it was as cheap to get back to San Francisco from there as from Lima; and according to Dare, there was the possibility of some business turning up.

"I'll come," said he. "There's only the question of my luggage. It only amounts to a suitcase and a rug. Still, you  said we'd have to go on mule-back—"

"Could you get your stuff into a couple of saddle-bags?" asked Dare.... "That's right— and you say the suitcase isn't worth more'n a few dollars, so you can buy another at El Paso. You're staying at the Bolivar? Well, I'll tell you, I'll call there for you tomorrow sunup, and take you to Gomez's yard. He's the chap that hires and sells horses and mules. You'd better buy, and sell again at El Paso— won't cost you more than twenty dollars."

"Right," said Carlin.

A LITTLE after sunrise, Carlin having paid his hotel bill the night before, they were at the yard where Gomez buys, sells or lets for hire, horses, mules, burros, anything with four legs that can be ridden or driven, bar oxen. Half an hour later they were on the outskirts of the city heading north, the mules going well and the sun hot on the land and on the great beach that runs from Lima and Callao to Truxillo and beyond.

Gomez had not only supplied the mules, but for an extra few dollars their old saddles and trappings, water-bottles and a couple of bundles of dried grass to be held in reserve for the animals. The night before Dare had bought some provisions; and they would be able to get stuff on the way, except in the region of the sands. Dare had spoken of this region of the sands, and Carlin had got it into his head that it was just a short bit of desert to be crossed. But the sands when reached disclosed themselves not as a desert to be crossed but a beach to be held to. On one side the Pacific falling in ruled and rhythmic breakers, an occasional sea-bird flying in the blazing light above the spindrift and spray; on the other, dunes and levels of sand, an occasional vulture floating in the blue far above. Behind vanished Lima and Callao; in front the sands and sea-foam consumed in the far distance by a haze where all was lost.

Occasionally, it is true, they came upon an oasis where sea-grass put up a fight for life and where the mules could have a feed and so save the bundles of fodder; and occasionally they came upon a stream of fresh water that had worked a runnel for itself, the last remains of a river that had traveled for hundreds of miles to find the sea.

All the same, the waterless Sahara would have had a less depressing effect on the mind of Carlin than this blinding beach with its eternal thunder, fume and desolation. Nothing ever came here from the sea except driftwood brought south by the current; nothing from the land except the wind from the far mountains, nothing from the sky but the vulture in the blue yet ever ready to drop.

Once Carlin, looking up attracted by a remote cry, saw a condor with motionless wings, yet moving with speed toward the distant hills; and once, far ahead, they saw the ghost of a city in the gauze-blue distance— a mirage that might have been Lima, Truxillo, who could tell— before it flickered and went out, leaving the desolation untouched, a desolation so complete that one might have imagined no other travelers had ever trodden this coast road to the city of El Paso del Sur.

Before noon on the second day of their journey, however, they met with another traveler who had been waiting the chance of their coming for days, weeks—possibly months.

THEY had made a detour to avoid a patch of dangerous sand that Carlin's mule avoided. Dare's mule, defective some way in smell or instinct, would have kept on; and they were talking of this difference in the animals when Carlin's eyes were attracted by something ahead, white like a spread of mushrooms or the contents of a laundry-basket tossed here and there. When they reached the spot, they found bones; a spread of bones strewn over a space twice or thrice the area of an ordinary dining room floor.

"Only one man and a horse," said Dare, pointing to a human skull and the skull of a horse. "It's the vultures have spread them—torn off the clothes; look at those rags." He dismounted and picked up the human skull. The parietal bone on the left side showed a hole; the bone on the opposite side was nearly blown away. The owner of the skull had been shot.

"Murder or suicide," said Dare. He went to the skull of the horse and examined it. "Murder! " He nodded. "It's been shot too— look at the forehead bone. First the man, then the gee to stop it from tellin'."

"He might have shot it first, then shot himself," said Carlin.

"Might, but not probable."

Carlin went to an old saddle that was lying among the bones and tossed it over with his foot; then he turned to a brown saddle-bag lying near it and turned out the contents: some clothes, a linen coat, a pair of socks, a waistcoat wrapped round something heavy and hard. He unwrapped it, and a block of yellow metal as big as a brick fell on the hard sand with a thud.

Dare picked it up.

"Gold!" said he. "Good gosh! A gold bar, by all that's lucky."

"Gold!" said Carlin. "You sure?"

"Yep. Feel of it— smell it!" Dare handed it over, and Carlin with the weight of it in his hand, felt a thrill never before experienced. It was like touching Fortune herself.

They sat down on the sands to talk of this business, the bar between them. It was Carlin's find, but he would not have found it had not Dare brought him along on this traverse. "We'll go half and half," said he. "The only bother to me is if the chap has been murdered—"

"Yes?"

"Well, isn't it up to us to give information ?"

"Good Lord! " said Dare. "It's Peru —besides, it's maybe a year ago, maybe more. I couldn't tell the age of these bones at first, but I can guess it now; they're dried out. Look!" He picked up a rib and snapped it. "They've been sanded over and sanded over, them and the trappings; a wind up from Chile would cover them, same as you shook sugar over a puddin'; a wind down from Ecuador would strip 'em again; that's the way of it. I reckon they have been more than half the time hidden; that's why the bag hasn't been tampered with. Besides, any spigotties traveling along here wouldn't have touched this place, anyhow. Superstitious. They have a saying: 'Where one man falls, another may trip,' or somethin' like that. But we aren't superstitious, are we?"

He picked up the bar and fondled it, feeling its delicious weight; then they rose and stowed it in Carlin's saddle bag, and rode on their way, still talking of the matter.

DARE was undoubtedly right. They had struck an old story, and telling it to the Peruvian authorities would not do much good. What could they say? "We found the bones of a man and a horse in the sands on our way here, and we think there may have been foul play: the bones were very old."

That story would not move one cocked-hatted gendarme to raise a finger in the matter, much less a foot.

If they told about the gold, there would surely be endless trouble, to say nothing of the fact that it would be taken from them. No, their course was clear; either say nothing about it, or fling the thing away.

"I know a chap at El Paso," said Dare. "He'll give us two-thirds of the value in coin. We've got to lose a bit over it, anyhow, and that won't hurt us much, since we paid nothing for it."

At sunset they made their camp by simply hobbling the mules.

It was windless weather, and as they ate their supper seated on the warm sands, they had for companion the Pacific Ocean breaking only a hundred yards away, the sinking sun looking at them over the water and gilding the mountains of Peru, above which the western sky was deepening and darkening with the rising night.

Carlin took the first watch; for the mules, even though hobbled, could not be left unattended; when half the night was through, he awoke Dare, lay down with his head on a sand pillow, and was asleep at once....

When he awoke, the stars were near gone and the east beginning to get light.

He found himself alone.

Dare was gone, and one of the mules. Carlin's saddle-bag, which had contained a few clothes, some provisions and the gold bar, was gone. He had dropped to sleep with it lying beside him, and it was gone. He rose to his feet.

The beach away north and south was visible in the strengthening daylight.

Nothing moved on it or gave sign of life except the waddling white-gray form of a gull.

The mule was standing near by with its head down. It was unhobbled. Well, the thing was clear enough. Dare had played a dirty trick and made off with the bar— a damnably dirty trick, for he had unhobbled his companion's mule, trusting that it would wander away leaving Carlin without food and depending on what water he could get on the beach.

The big burly good-natured-looking man had suddenly turned into this. Only among human beings is such a metamorphosis possible.

CARLIN went to the mule, standing head down as if tired, and took the bridle. A long piece of cord was tied to the bridle-ring and lay trailing on the sand; it was the lead which Gomez had supplied in case one of them wished to go on foot and turn his animal into a led mule.

It was clear enough that Dare had not contented himself with unhobbling the animal; he had taken it off with him, leading it. Yet here it was, returned. What was the meaning of that?

Had he released it, or had it broken away from him?

Having found that the food in the saddle-bag was untouched and the water-bottle still half full, Carlin mounted.

The sun's brow was just rising above the horizon, lighting the sands, and Carlin, as he sat in the saddle before starting, followed with his eyes the hoof-marks visible on the sand.

They told the whole story:

The hoof-prints of Dare's mule showed striking down toward the sea edge to get to the harder sands, the hoof-prints of the led mule close and a bit behind. Carlin followed.

On the hard sands the prints pointed north toward El Paso. That was enough; he turned north, and letting the mule take its own gait, rode along by the singing sea, the rising sun on his right cheek, and on his left side the stalking, far-flung shadow of himself and his mount, like the shadow of a man on a dromedary.

AS he rode, he turned things over in his mind.

They might have been worse. His money was intact, simply because he had it in his pocket; it would have been impossible to have taken it without awakening him; he had food enough, and water and a mount. What would have been his position if the mule had not returned to him? By what miracle had it returned? Had Dare released it for some reason, or had it broken away from him? Even if so, why had it returned?

He could find no answer....

But half an hour later, feeling hungry, he stopped, dismounted, and undoing the strapping of the saddle-bag, put his hand in and felt something hard and heavy that was not the tin of sardines or bread he was searching for. He took it out: it was the gold bar.

There was nothing strange in the business. He had put it there yesterday evening, strapped the bag and gone to sleep with the bag beside him. Dare had simply slung the bag where it belonged and gone off, leading the mule. So fixed had been Carlin's mind on the loss of the gold and Dare's evasion, that he had not divided the idea of the gold and the robber. He had never dreamed that the bar might still be in the saddle-bag; his subconscious mind had showed it in the personal possession of Dare. Well, here it was, anyhow, miraculously returned; and so excited was Carlin, that he put it back into the bag and did up the strappings again without bothering about food. His hunger had vanished for the moment; and mounting again, he rode on.

Gold had him in its miraculous power. The bar of yellow metal, back in his possession, gave him strength. It seemed to him that the energy of ten men had suddenly been injected into his veins.

The filing was his. Dare, after what he had done, could have no claim on it. He visualized a meeting with Dare, and what he would say to him, and if need be do to him, should they meet; he strained his eyes ahead on the chance of sighting him; but in the distance before him lay nothing but the sands and the long white line of the foam of the sea....

He had fallen into a reverie, from which he was suddenly aroused by the mule coming to a halt.

Right in front of him lay something on the sands. It was Dare's hat. He could not be mistaken, for its owner had plucked yesterday a sprig of sea-lavender and stuck it in the band— and there was the sprig. Carlin urged the mule forward, but the mule refused to move; it seemed afraid of the hat. He got down and leading it by the bridle, brought it forward a few steps, but it backed and plunged and set its legs, sweating and - evidently in fear. Then Carlin knew: The sands just beyond the hat were slightly paler than those on his side. He picked up a piece of coral rock lying by his foot, and flung it just beyond the hat. It was swallowed almost instantly, as though thrown into water, and the greedy quicksand as it closed on its prey, pursed up and settled like a small mouth smacking its lips after a bonne bouche.

Now the whole thing was clear: Dare, riding in the dark under the last of the stars, had blundered on this place. His mule had no sand sense; but leaving that aside, the darkness alone would be accountable for the disaster.

The led mule had broken away and returned on its tracks to the camping-place. That was all.

Yards, maybe fathoms, under that yellow sunlit surface lay the man who had betrayed his friend, left him maybe to starve, for a piece of gold; there to lie till the Last Trumpet— if ever that sound could reach him in such a place.

IT was seven weeks later, into the office of Mr. Silbermeyer in Fourth Street, San Francisco, that Carlin came.

"That business," said Carlin, "turned out no use. I've come back. I haven't much left after paying my passage; but on the ship I met a man who has put me up to what I believe is a good thing: it has to do with nitrates. I want a thousand dollars to go into it, and I want you to lend me that thousand—here's my security."

He took the gold bar from his pocket and handed it over.

SILBERMEYER took the thing and handled it and fondled it and felt its delightful weight. He was worshiping— worshiping the only god worshiped by all men in all times honestly and devotedly.

"I found it by an extraordinary accident on the seacoast away down in Peru," said Carlin. "It is mine entirely. No one else has any claim to it— you must take my word for that,"

"Your word," said Silbermeyer, "is as good as your bond. I know all about that Liverpool business, and I know your record here. Yes, I will lend you a thousand dollars on it."

"There is only one thing," said Carlin. "It must remain in my possession, where it will be just as secure as though locked in your safe; and you have my word that should this venture fall through and the thousand dollars be lost, I will return it to you. All that sounds funny; but you will understand it when I say that this thing to me is more than a mascot: it is strength and energy— it is gold. I could sell it to lots of people ; but then I would have to part company with it, and it is my partner. We are Carlin, Gold & Co.; and the very touch of my partner, the knowledge, even, that he is in my pocket or my safe, at my side, even though he is pawned to you, will give me pep and kick and success."

"He is your mascot?"

"No, any old thing can be a mascot— yes, in a way a mascot, but the greatest of all mascots. Gold!"

Mr. Silbermeyer laughed. He understood.

"Here," he said, "take your partner. Yes, I will lend you a thousand dollars oh him. I put him into your integrity as I would put him into my safe: you will succeed. Pay me whenever you like."

Three months later Carlin paid him hack; that was on June 1st, 1909.

On January 2nd, 1933 (last year), Carlin, the fourth richest man in the State of California, had Fontenelle, a high official of a national bank, to dinner. The two men were old and fast friends, and after dinner, and warmed by a bottle of priceless Tokay, old Mr. Carlin— he was sixty-six— told the story of the gold bar to his companion. He told it fully, and for the first time: told of the meeting with Dare, the finding of the bar, the death of Dare, the loan from Silbermeyer. "And this is if," said he, getting up and unlocking a safe that stood in a corner of the room, a safe so cunningly constructed that a burglar carelessly— or indeed in any way—handling it, would first be shot, then electrocuted, to the sound of bells ringing all over the house. He took from a bag of violet velvet the precious bar, and handed it to Fontenelle —who weighed it, examined it, took it to the window and pondered over it, and then, while Carlin was helping himself to a cigar, took a knife from his pocket and scratched it. He came back from the window, and putting the bar on the table, sat down.

"You said Silbermeyer lent you a thousand dollars on that bar?" asked he.

"Yes," said the other, lighting a cigar. "Well, he didn't, really: he lent it on your character, on your known honesty, Carlin— that's what he lent it on. Otherwise he would have had it tested. The thing is a dud— one of the old gold-bricks swindlers used to palm off. I've seen 'em before— solid lead with ten dollars' worth of plating on it."

THE old gentleman took this badly.

It was not the shattering of a mascot that troubled him, for a dud brick would be just as good, in the strange world of mascots, as a bent sixpence or an elephant's-tail hair. What worried him was the disturbance of his sense of values. Gold appeared to him suddenly, and rightly, as having no value except in the world of imagination; it seemed to him, and rightly, that if all the gold in the world were turned suddenly into lead, it would not matter a button, so long as men imagined the lead to be gold; and this, by extension, seemed to apply to all property values.

The fact, pointed out to him by Fontenelle, that his fortune was not founded on a lump of lead, but on the gold of his commercial integrity— since Silbermeyer would not have lent a penny on the brick without testing it, had it been brought to him by a doubtful character— this fact left him cold; it did nothing to counteract the unpleasant feeling that all wealth is of the nature of a dream. An unpleasant feeling— at least for a multi-millionaire who has labored to earn his millions.

_______________

20: Maru

A Dream of the Sea

Popular Magazine, 20 Sep 1921

THE night was filled with vanilla and frangipanni odors and the endless sound of the rollers on the reef. Somewhere away back amid the trees a woman was singing, the tide was out, and from the veranda of Lygon's house, cross the star-shot waters of the lagoon, moving yellow points of light caught the eye. They were spearing fish by torchlight in the reef pools.

It had been a shell lagoon once, and in the old days men had come to  Tokahoe for sandalwood, now there was only copra to be had and just enough for one man to deal with. Tokahoe is only a little island where one cannot make a fortune, but where you may live fortunately enough if your tastes are simple and beyond the lure of whisky and civilization.

The last trader had died in this paradise, of whisky— or gin— I forget which, and his ghost was supposed to walk the beach on moonlit nights, and it was apropos of this that Lygon suddenly put the question to me: "Do you believe in ghosts?"

"Do you?" replied I.

"I don't know," said Lygon. "I almost think I do, because every one does—  oh, I know, a handful of hard-headed supercivilized people say they don't, but the mass of humanity does. The Polynesians and Micronesians do. Go to Japan, go to Iceland, go anywhere and everywhere you will find ghost believers."

"Lombroso has written something like that," said I.

"Has he? Well, it's a fact, but all the same it's not evidence, the universality of a belief seems to hint at reality in the thing believed in— yet what is more wanting in real reason than tabu. Yet tabu is universal. You find men here who daren't touch an artu tree because artu trees are tabu to them, or eat turtle or touch a dead body. Well, look at the Jews, a dead body is tabu to a Cohen, India is riddled with the business, so's English society— it's all the same thing under different disguises.

"Funny that talking of ghosts we should have touched on this, for when I asked you did you believe in ghosts I had a ghost story in mind and tabu comes into it. This is it."

And this is the story somewhat as told by Lygon:

SOME FIFTY years back when Pease was a pirate bold and Hayes in his bloom and the topsails of the Leonora a terror to all dusky beholders, Maru was a young man of twenty. He was son of Malemake, King of Fukariva, a kingdom the size of a soup plate, nearly as round and without a middle, an atoll island in short; just a ring of coral, sea-beaten and circling, like a bezel, a sapphire lagoon.

Fukariva lies in the Paumotus or Dangerous Archipelago where the currents run every way and the trades are unaccountable. The underwriters to this day fight shy of a Paumotus trader, and in the '60's few ships came here, and the few that came were on questionable business. Maru, up to the time he was twenty years of age, only remembered three.

There was the Spanish ship that came into the lagoon when he was only seven. The picture of her remained with him, burning and brilliant, yet tinged with the atmosphere of nightmare, a big topsail schooner that lay for a week mirroring herself on the lagoon water while she refitted, fellows with red handkerchiefs tied round their heads crawling aloft and laying out on the spars. They came ashore for water and what they could find in the way of taro and nuts, and made hay on the beach, insulting the island women till the men drove them off. Then, when she was clearing the lagoon, a brass gun was run out and fired, leaving a score of dead and wounded on that salt, white beach.

That was the Spaniard. Then came a whaler, who took what she wanted and cut down trees for fuel and departed leaving behind the smell of her as an enduring recollection, and lastly, when Maru was about eighteen, a little old schooner slung in one early morning.

She lay in the lagoon like a mangy dog, a humble ship, very unlike the Spaniard or the blustering whale man— she only wanted water and a few vegetables and her men gave no trouble; then, one evening, she slunk out again with the ebb, but she left something behind her— smallpox. It cleared the island, and of the hundred and fifty subjects of King Malemake only ten were left— twelve people in all, counting the king and Maru.

The king died of a broken heart and age, and of the eleven people left three were women, widows of men who had died of the smallpox.

Maru was unmarried, and as king of the community he might have collected the women for his own household. But he had no thought of anything but grief— grief for his father and the people who were gone. He drew apart from the others and the seven widowers began to arrange matters as to the distribution of the three widows. They began with arguments and ended with clubs, three men were killed and one of the women killed another man because he had brained the man of her fancy.

Then the dead were buried in the lagoon— Maru refusing to help because of his tabu— and the three newly married couples settled down to live their lives, leaving Maru out in the cold. He was no longer king. The women despised him because he hadn't fought for one of them and the men because he had failed in brutality and leadership. They were a hard lot, true survivals of the fittest, and Maru, straight as a palm tree, dark-eyed, gentle, and a dreamer, seemed, among them, like a man of another tribe and time.

He lived alone, and sometimes in the sun blaze on that great ring of coral he fancied he saw the spirits of the departed walking as they had walked in life, and sometimes at night he thought he heard the voice of his father chiding him.

When the old man died Maru had refused to touch the body or help in its burial. Filial love, his own salvation, nothing would have induced Maru to break his tabu.

It was part of him, an iron reef in his character beyond the touch of will.

ii

ONE MORNING, some six weeks after all this marrying and settling down, a brig came into the lagoon. She was a blackbirder, the Portsoy, owned and captained by Colin Robertson, a Banffshire man, hence the name of his brig. Robertson and his men landed, took off water, coconuts, bananas, and everything else they could find worth taking. Then they turned their attention to the population. Four men were not a great find, but Robertson was not above trifles. He recruited them, that is to say, he kicked them into his boat and took them on board the Portsoy, leaving the three widows, grass widows now— wailing on the shore. He had no finer feelings about the marriage tie, and he reckoned they would make out somehow. They were no use to him as labor and they were ill-favored. All the same, being a man of gallantry and some humor, he dipped his flag to them as the Portsoy cleared the lagoon and breasted the tumble at the break.

Maru, standing aft, saw the island with the white foam fighting the coral and the gulls thrashing around the break, saw the palms cut against the pale aqua marine of the sky line that swept up into the burning blue of noon, heard the long rumble and boom of the surf on the following wind and watched and listened till the sound of the surf died to nothingness, and of the island nothing remained but the palm tops, like pin heads above the sea dazzle.

He felt no grief. But there came to him a new and strange thing, a silence that the shipboard sounds could not break. Since birth the eternal boom of the waves on coral had been in his ears, night and day and day and night, louder in storms but always there. It was gone. That was why, despite the sound of the bow wash and boost of the waves and the creak of cordage and block, the brig seemed to have carried Maru into the silence of a new world.

They worked free of the Paumotus into the region of settled winds and accountable currents, passing atolls and reefs that showed like the thrashing of a shark's tail in the blue, heading northwest in a world of wind and waves and sky, desolate of life, and, for Maru, the land of Nowhere.

So it went on from week to week, and, as far as he was concerned, so it might have gone on forever. He knew nothing of the world into which he had been suddenly snatched, and land, which was not a ring of coral surrounding a lagoon, was for him unthinkable.

He knew nothing of navigation, and the brass-bound wheel at which a sailor was always standing with his hands on the spokes, now twirling it this way, now that, had for him a fascination beyond words, the fascination of a strange toy for a little child, and something more. It was the first wheel he had ever seen and its movements about its axis seemed magical, and it was never left without some one to hold it and move it— why? The mystery of the binnacle into which the wheel-mover was always staring, as a man stares into a rock pool after fish, was almost 'as fascinating.

Maru peeped into the binnacle one day and saw the fish, something like a star fish that still moved and trembled. Then some one kicked him away, and he ran forward and hid, feeling that he had pried into the secrets of the white men's gods and fearing the consequences.

But the white men's gods were not confined to the wheel and binnacle. Down below they had a god that could warm them of the weather, for that day at noon, and for no apparent reason, the sailors began to strip the brig of her canvas. Then the sea rose, and two hours later the cyclone seized them. It blew everything away and then took them into its calm heart where, dancing like giants in dead, still air and with the sea for a ballroom floor, the hundred-foot high waves broke the Portsoy to pieces.

Maru alone was saved, clinging to a piece of hatch cover, half stunned, confused, yet unafraid and feeling vaguely that the magic wheel and little trembling fish god had somehow betrayed the white men. He knew that he was not to die, because this strange world that had taken him from his island had not done with him yet, and the sea, in touch with him like this and half washing over him at times, had no terror for him, for he had learned to swim before he had learned to walk. Also his stomach was full, he had been eating biscuits while the Portsoy's canvas was being stripped away, and though the wind was strong enough almost to whip the food from his hands.

The peaceful swell that followed the cyclone was a thing enough to have driven an ordinary man mad with terror. Now lifted hill high on a glassy slope the whole wheel of the horizon came to view under the breezing wind and blazing sun, then gently down— sliding the hatch cover would sink to a valley bottom only to climb again a glassy slope and rise again hill high into the wind and sun. Foam flecks passed on the surface, and in the green sun-dazzled crystal of the valley floors he glimpsed strips of fucus floating far down, torn by the storm from their rock attachments, and through the sloping wall of glass up which the hatch cover was climbing he once glimpsed a shark, lifted and cradled in a ridge of the great swell, strange to see as a fly in amber or a fish in ice.

The hatch cover was sweeping with a four-knot current, moving with a whole world of things concealed or half seen or hinted at. A sea current is a street, it is more, it is an escalator— a moving pavement for the people of the sea. Jellyfish were being carried with Maru on the great swell running with the current, a turtle broke the water close to him and plunged again, and once a white, roaring reef passed by only a few cable lengths. He could see the rock exposed for a moment and the water closing on it in a tumble of foam.

iii

FOR A DAY and a night and a day and a night the voyage continued, the swell falling to a gentle heave, and then in the dawn came a sail, the mat sail of a canoe like a brown wing cut against the haliotis-shell colored sky.

In the canoe was a girl, naked as the new moon. Paddle in hand and half crouching, she drove the canoe toward him, the sail loose and flapping in the wind. Then he was on board the canoe, but how he got there he scarcely knew, the whole thing was like a dream within a dream.

In the canoe there was nothing, neither food nor water, only some fishing lines, and as he lay exhausted, consumed with thirst and faint with hunger, he saw the girl resetting the sail. She had been fishing last evening from an island up north and blown out to sea by a squall, had failed to make the land again, but she had sighted an island in the sou'west and was making for it when she saw the hatch cover and the brown, clinging form of Maru.

As he lay half dead in the bottom of the canoe he watched her as she crouched with paddle in hand.

But before they could reach it a squall took them, half filling the canoe with rain water, and Maru drank and drank till his ribs stood out, and then, renewed, half rose as the canoe, steered by the girl, rushed past tumbling green seas and a broken reef to a beach white as salt, toward which the great trees came down with the bread fruits dripping with the new fallen rain and the palms bending like whips in the wind.

iv

TALIA, that was her name, and though her language was different from the tongue of Maru, it had a likeness of a sort. In those days that little island was uncharted and entirely desolate but for the gulls of the reef and the birds of the woods, and it was a wonderland to Maru, whose idea of land as a sea-beaten ring of coral was shattered by woods that bloomed green as a sea cave to the moonlight, high ground where rivulets danced amid the ferns and a beach protected from the outer seas by a far flung line of reefs. Talia to him was as wonderful as the island, she had come to him out of the sea, she had saved his life, she was as different from the women of the Paumotus as day from night. A European would have called her beautiful, but Maru had no thought of her beauty or her sex. She was just a being, beneficent, almost divorced from earth, the strangest thing in the strange world that Fate had seized him into, part with the great heaving swell he had ridden so long, the turtle that had broken up to look at him, the spouting reef, the sunsets over wastes of water and the stars spread over wastes of sky.

He worshiped her, in his way, and he might have worshiped her at a greater distance only for- the common bond of youth between them and the incessant call of the world around them. Talia was practical. She seemed to have forgotten her people and that island up north and to live entirely in the moment. They made two shacks in the bushes, and she taught him island wood-craft and the uses of berries and fruit that he had never seen before, also when to fish in the lagoon; for, a month after they reached the island, the poisonous season arrived and Talia knew it; how, who can tell? She knew many things by instinct, the approach of storms, and, when the poisonous season had passed, the times for fishing, and little by little their tongues, that had almost been divided at first, became almost one, so that they could chatter together on all sorts of things and she could tell him that her name was Talia, the daughter of Tepairu, that her island was named Makea, that her people had twenty canoes, big ones, and many little ones, and that Tepairu was not the name of a man but a woman. That Tepairu was queen or chief woman of her people, now that her husband was dead.

And Maru was able to tell her by degrees of what he could remember, of the old Spanish ship, and how she spouted smoke and thunder and killed the beach people, of his island and its shape — he drew it on the sand, and Talia, who knew nothing of atolls, at first refused to believe in it thinking he was jesting— of his father who was chief man or King of Fukariva, and of the destruction of the tribe. Then he told of the ship with the little wheel— he drew it on the sand— and the little fish-god; of the center of the cyclone where the waves were like white dancing men, and of his journey on the hatch cover across the blue heaving sea.

They would swim in the lagoon together right out to the reefs where the great rollers were always breaking, and out there Talia always seemed to remember her island, pointing north with her eyes 'fixed across the sea dazzle as though she could see it and her people and the twenty Canoes beached on the spume white beach beneath the palms.

"Some day they will come," said Talia. She knew her people, those sea rovers, inconsequent as the gulls. Some day for some reason or none one of the fishing canoes would fish as far as this island or be blown there by some squall. She would take Maru back with her. She told him this.

The thought began to trouble Maru.

Then he grew gloomy. He was in love. Love had hit him suddenly. Somehow and in some mysterious manner she had changed 'to a girl of flesh and blood. She knew it, and at the same moment he turned for her into a man.

Up to this she had had no thought of him except as an individual, for all her dreams about him he might as well have been a palm tree, but now it was different, and in a flash he was everything. The surf on the reef said "Maru," and the wind in the trees, "Maru," and the gulls fishing and crying at the break had one word— "Maru! Maru! Maru!" "

hen one day, swimming out near the bigger break in the reefs, a current drove them together, their shoulders touched and Maru's arm went round her, and amid the blue laughing sea and the shouting of the gulls he told her that the whole world was Talia, and as he told her and as she listened the current of the ebb like a treacherous hand was drawing them through the break toward the devouring sea.

They had to fight their way back, the ebb just beginning would soon be a mill race, and they knew, and neither could help the other. It was a hard struggle for love and life against the enmity against life and love that hides in all things from the heart of man to the heart of the sea, but they won. They had reached calm waters and were within twenty strokes of the beach when Talia cried out suddenly and sank.

Maru, who was slightly in front, turned and found her gone, she had been seized with cramp, the cramp that comes from overexertion, but he did not know that; the lagoon was free of sharks, but, despite that he fancied for one fearful moment that a shark had taken her.

Then he saw her below, a dusky form on the coral floor, and he dived.

He brought her to the surface, reached the sandy beach, and carrying her in his arms, ran with her to the higher level of the sands and placed her beneath the shade of the trees. She moved in his arms as he carried her, and when he laid her down her breast heaved in one great sigh, water ran from her mouth, her limbs stiffened, and she moved no mere.

Then all the world became black for Maru. He knew nothing of the art of resuscitating the drowned. Talia was dead.

He ran among the trees crying out that Talia was dead, he struck himself against tree boles and was tripped by ground lianas. The things of the forest seemed trying to kill him, too. Then he hid among the ferns lying on his face and telling the earth that Talia was dead. Then came sundown and after that the green moonlight of the woods, and suddenly sleep, with a vision of blue, laughing sea and Talia swimming beside him, and then day again and with the day the vision of Talia lying dead beneath the trees. He could not bury her. He could not touch her. The iron reef of his tabu held firm, indestructible, unalterable as the main currents of the sea.

He picked fruits and ate them like an animal and without knowing that he ate, torn toward the beach by the passionate desire to embrace once 'more the form that he loved, but held from the act by a grip ten thousand years old and immutable as gravity or the spirit that lives in religions.

He must not handle the dead. Through all his grief came a weird touch of comfort. She had not been dead when he carried her ashore. He had not touched the dead.

Then terrible thoughts came to him of what would happen to Talia if he left her lying there. Of what predatory gulls might do. He had some knowledge of these matters, and past visions of what had happened on Fukariva when the dead were too numerous for burial came to him, making him shiver like a whipped dog. He could, at all events, drive the birds away without touching her. Without even looking at her, his presence on the beach would keep the birds away. It was near noon when this thought came to him. He had been lying on the ground, but he sat up now as though listening to this thought. Then he rose up and came along cautiously among the trees. As he came the rumble of the reef grew louder and the sea wind began to reach him through the leaves, then the light of day grew stronger, and, slipping between the palm boles, he pushed a great breadfruit leaf aside and peeped, and there on the blinding beach under the forenoon sun more clearly even than he had seen the ghosts of men on Fukariva, he saw the ghost of Talia walking by the sea and wringing its hands.

Then the forest took him again, mad, this time, with terror.

Away, deep in the woods, hiding among the bushes, springing alive with alarm at the slightest sound, he debated this matter with himself and curiously, now, love did not move him at all or urge him. It was as though the ghost of Talia had stepped between him and his love for Talia, not destroying it but obscuring it. Talia for him had become two things, the body he had left lying on the sand under the trees and the ghost he had seen walking on the beach. The real Talia no longer existed for him except as the vaguest wraith. He lay in the bushes facing the fact that, so long as the body lay unburied, the ghost would walk. It might even leave the beach and come to him.

This thought brought him from his hiding place. He could not lie alone with it among the bushes, and then he found that he could not stand alone with it among the trees, for at any moment she might appear wringing her hands in one of the glades, or glide to his side from behind one of the tree boles. He made for the Southern beach.

He felt safe here. Even when Talia had been with him the woods had always seemed to him peopled with lurking things, unused as he was, to trees in great masses; and now released from them and touched again by the warmth of the sun he felt safe. It seemed to him that the ghost could not come here. The gulls said it to him, and the flashing water, and as he lay down on the sands the surf on the reef said it to him. It was too far away for the ghost to come. It seemed to him that he had traveled many thousand miles from a country remote as his extreme youth, losing everything on the way but a weariness greater than time could hold or thought take recognition of.

Then he fell asleep, and he slept while the sun went down into the west and the flood swept into the lagoon and the stars broke out above. That tremendous sleep, unstirred by the vaguest dream, lasted till the dawn was full.

Then he sat up, renewed as though God had remade him in mind and body.

A gull was strutting on the sands by the water's edge, its long shadow strutting after it, and the shadow of the gull flew straight as a javelin into the renewed mind of Maru. Talia was not dead. He had not seen her ghost. She had come to life and had been walking by the sea wringing her hands for him thinking him drowned. For the form he had seen walking on the sands had cast a shadow. He remembered that now. Ghosts do not cast shadows.

"Talia! Talia! Talia!"

He passed the bushes where he had hidden, and the ferns. He heard the sound of the surf coming to meet him, he saw the veils of the leaves divide and the blaze of light and morning splendor on the northern sands and lagoon and sea.

He ran to the place where he had laid her beneath the trees. There was still faintly visible the slight depression made by her body, and close by, strangely and clearly cut, the imprint of a little foot.

Then he knew.

The sand was trodden up and on the sand, clear cut and fresh, lay the mark left by a beached canoe and the marks left by the feet of the men who had beached her and floated her again.

They had come— perhaps her own people— come, maybe, yesterday, while he was hiding from his fears debating with his tabu— come, and found her and taken her away.

He plunged into the lagoon, and, swimming like an otter and helped by the outgoing tide, reached the reef. Scrambling on to the rough coral, bleeding from cuts but feeling nothing of his wounds, he stood with wrinkled eyes facing the sea blaze and with the land breeze blowing past him out beyond the thundering foam of the reef to the blue and heaving sea.

Away to the north, like a brown wing tip, showed the sail of a canoe. He watched it. Tossed by the lilt of the swell it seemed beckoning to him. Now it vanished in the sea dazzle, now reappeared, dwindling to a point to vanish at last like a dream of the sea, gone, never to be recaptured.

"AND Maru?" I asked of Tyson. "Did he ever—"

"Never," said Lygon. "The islands of the sea are many. Wait." He struck a gong that stood close to his chair, struck it three times, and the sounds passing into the night mixed with the voices of the canoe men returning from fishing on the reef.

Then a servant came oh to the veranda, an old, old man half bent like a withered tree.

"Maru," said Lygon, "you can take away these glasses— but one moment, Maru, tell this gentleman your story."

"The islands of the sea are many," said Maru like a child repeating a lesson. He paused for a moment as though trying to remember some more, then he passed out of the lamplight with the glasses.

"A year ago he remembered the whole story," said Lygon.

But for me the whole story lay in those words, that voice, those trembling hands that seemed still searching for what the eyes could see no more.

____________________

21: Magic

Popular Magazine 12 Jul 1920

IN TILAFEEAA there lived two young men, Tauti and Uliami by name, and brothers in all things but birth. Tilafeaa is a high island, very large, and many ships come there for copra and turtle and beche de mer, and at night you can see the reef alight with the torches of the fish spearers, and there is a club where the white captains and the mates from the ships meet with the traders to drink and talk.

The town is larger than the town here at Malaffii, but more spread, with trees everywhere, and between the houses, artus and palms and bread fruit, so that at night the lights of the town show like fireflies in the thick bush.

Tauti's house Jay near the middle of the great street, near to the church, while the house of Uliami was the last in all that street but one, a pleasant house under the shadow of the true woods and close to the mountain track that goes over the shoulder of Paulii and beyond.

It was at the house of Uliami that these two chiefly met, for Uliami was the richer man and his house was the pleasanter house and he himself was the stronger of the two —not in power of limb but in person. You will have noticed that, of two men equal in the strength of the body, one will be greater than the other, so that men and women will come to him first, and he will be able to get the better price for his copra, and in any public place he will find more consideration shown to him.

It was so with Uliami. He was first of these two as he might have been the elder brother, and, though first, always put himself last, so great was his spirit and love for Tauti. When they went fishing together, though he caught more, it was always Tauti that brought home the heaviest basket. The ripest fruit was always for Tauti, and once, at the risk of his own, he had saved Tauti's life.

As for Tauti, he was equally fine in spirit. Though Uliami might fill his basket the fullest, he always tried to contrive that in the end Uliami had the better fish and fruit, and once he, too, had risked his life to save a man—and that man was Uliami.

Now since these two were inseparable and had given in spirit the life of the one for the life of the other, nothing, you will say, could separate them but Death which separates all things.

ii

ONE DAY Tauti, coming up alone from the fishing and taking a byway through the trees, came across a girl crouched beneath the shelter of a bread fruit whose leaves were so great that one of them could have covered her little body.

It was Kinei, the daughter of Sikra the basket maker, and she was stringing flowers which she had plucked to make a chaplet. He knew her well, and he had often passed her; she was fourteen, or a little more, and had for nickname the "Laughing One," for she was as pleasant to look at as the sunshine through leaves on a shadowed brook. She was so young that he had scarcely thought of her as being different from a man, and she had always, on meeting him, had a smile for him, given openly as a child may give a pretty shell in the palm of its hand.

But to-day, as she looked up, she had no smile for him. He drew near and sat down close to her and handed her the flowers for her to string. Then, as he looked into her eyes, he saw that they were deep as the deepest sea, and full of trouble.

He made inquiry as to the cause of the trouble and Kinei, without answering him, looked down. He raised her chin and, looking at him full, her eyes filled with tears. Then he knew. He had found Love, suddenly, like a treasure, or like a flower just opened and filled with dew.

On leaving her that day he could have run through the woods like a man distracted and filled with joy, but, instead he sought his own house, and there he sat down to contemplate this new thing that had befallen him.

Now, in the past, when any good had come to Tauti, no sooner was it in his hand than he carried it to Uliami to show; and his eyes now turned that way. But, look hard as he would, he could not see Uliami, for there was now no one else in the world for him but Kinei.

He could not tell his news, but hid it up, and when Uliami met him and asked him what was on his mind, he replied "Nothing." And so things went on, till one day Uliami, walking in the woods, came upon Kinei with Tauti in her arms.

He would sooner have come upon his own death, for he, too, had learned to love the girl, but his love for her had made him as weak as a maiden and as fearful as a child in the dark of the high woods, when there is no moon. Love is like that, making some men bold as the frigate bird in its flight, and some timorous as the dove, and the strongest are often the weakest when taken in the snare.

Uliami, having gazed for two heartbeats, passed away like a shadow among the trees and sought his own house and sat down to consider this new thing that had come to him. Any bad fortune of the past he had always carried to Tauti to share it with him, and his eyes turned toward Tauti now, but not with that intent.

At first, and for some time covering many days, he felt no ill will—no more than a man feels toward the matagi that blows suddenly out of a clear sky, driving him off shore to be drowned.

Then came the marriage of Tauti to Kinei, and a year that passed, and a son that was born to them.

And then slowly, as the great storms rise, the storm that had been gathering in the heart of Uliami rose and darkened, and what caused that storm was the fact that Tauti, in his happiness, had forgotten their old-time bond of brotherhood, and was so happy in his wife and his little affairs that Uliami might as well not have been on that island.

Tauti had robbed him not only of Kinei but of himself; Kinei had robbed him not only of herself but of Tauti— and they were happy. But the storm might never have burst, for Uliami was no evil man, had he not one day discovered that Kinei was no longer faithful to Tauti. She was of that sort, and the devil, who knows all things, did not leave the matter long to rest, but took Uliami by the ear and showed him the truth.

Now what the devil does to a man that man does often to another. Uliami showed Tauti the truth, and in such a manner that Tauti struck him on the mouth.

"So be it," said Uliami, wiping his mouth. "All is ended between us, and now I will kill you— not to-day, but to-morrow, and as sure as the sun will rise."

Tauti laughed.

"There are two to that game," said he. "As you say, all is ended between us, and to-morrow I will kill you as sure as the sun will set."

Then they each went their ways, not knowing that their words had been overheard by Sikra, the father of Kinei, who had been hiding in the bushes by the path where they had met.

iii

THIS SIKRA was only a basket maker and knew only one trade, but for all that he was the wisest man on that island, and the most cunning, and the most evil. And Sikra said to himself, "If these two men kill one another over Kinei and her conduct, all may be discovered openly which is now known only secretly and to a few."

He went to the lagoon edge, and there, in the shelter of the canoe houses, he sat down, and, with his hands before him, began contemplating the matter, twisting the facts, this way and that, with the fingers of his mind, just as the fingers of his body had been accustomed to twist the plaited grass, this way and that, into the form of his baskets.

He knew that this thing was a death feud, and that by the morrow's sunset one of the two men would be no longer alive, unless they were separated and one taken clean away from that island. But more than that, he said to himself, "Of what use is there in taking one away, for if Tauti is left he will maltreat my daughter and search more deeply into this matter and bring more confusion upon us. And if I were to kill Uliami to-night in his sleep, as has just occurred to me, would not the deed be put down to Tauti, who, in trying to free himself, might in some way bring the deed home to me? And if I were to kill Tauti, might not the same thing happen?"

Thinking so, his wandering mind crossed the lagoon to the two ships there at anchor— a schooner and a brig— and both due to leave by the flood of the morrow's dawn. It was then, with the suddenness of the closing of a buckle, that a great thought came to Sikra, making him laugh out loud so that the echoes of the canoe house made answer.

He rose up and, leaving the beach, made through the trees in the direction of Tauti's house. There, when he reached it, was Kinei, seated at the doorway. He knew, by this, that Tauti was not at home, and so, nodding to his daughter, he withdrew, making along that street toward the sea end where presently he met his man leaving the forge of Tomassu, the smith, who makes and mends in iron things and sharpens fish spears and knives. Tauti had a knife in his girdle, and, noting it, Sikra drew him aside into the lane that goes through the bushes of mammee apple, past the chief trader's house to the far end of the beach.

Here he stopped, when they had passed beyond earshot of the trader's house, and, placing his finger on the breast of the other, says he:

"Tauti, what about that knife you were having sharpened just now at the forge of Tomassu?"

"To-morrow," said Tauti, "I have to kill a pig."

"You are right," said Sikra. "He is a pig. I heard you both when you were talking on the path, and I heard the name he gave my daughter, and I saw you strike him. But you will not kill him to-morrow."

"But why?" asked Tauti.

"Because," said Sikra, "he has left the island."

Tauti laughed, disbelieving the other.

"Since when," asked he, "has Uliami taken wings?"

"An hour ago," replied Sikra. "I rowed him over to the schooner that lies there in the lagoon; most of the crew were ashore getting fruit, and the rest were asleep, and the captain and his mate were at the club drinking, and the hatch was open and Uliami crept on board and hid himself among the cargo. His lips were white with fear."

"But Uliami is no coward," said the other.

"Did he return your blow?" asked the cunning Sikra.

"That is true," replied Tauti, "but hiding will not save him. I have sworn his death and my hatred is as deep as the sea. I will go on board the schooner now and tell the captain what sort of cockroach lies hidden in his ship; and when they bring him out I will kill him."

"And then the white men will hang you," said Sikra. 'Child that you are, will you listen to me?"

"I listen," said Tauti.

"Well," said Sikra, "you go aboard the schooner now and become one of the crew. They are in need of hands, as, indeed, is also that brig that lies by her. Then in a day or less, when Uliami knocks to be let out, you will be on board and on some dark night, or peradventure at the next port the schooner reaches, you can do the business you have set your heart to."

Now this counsel fell in not only with Tauti's desire for blood, but also with his wish to be shut of that island for a while and the wife who had betrayed him.

He thought for a moment on the matter, and then he fell in with the idea of Sikra, and, not even returning to his house, just as he was, let himself be led to the far end of the beach, where Sikra, borrowing a canoe, rowed him to the schooner, whose captain was right glad to have him, being, as Sikra had stated truly enough, short of hands.

iv

SIKRA, having got rid of one of his men, paddled back ashore, and, waiting till dark bad nearly fallen, took himself to Uliami's house. Here he found Uliami seated with a fish spear across his knees and a whetstone in his hands; a knife that had just been sharpened lay beside him.

"You are busy?" said Sikra, "but your labor is useless, for the man you would kill has flown. Hiding in the bushes I heard all that passed between you and Tauti. He has left the island for fear of you and has crept on board the brig that lies at anchor in the lagoon. With the help of a friend who is one of the crew, he has hidden himself in the hold with the cargo.

"Then," said the other, and almost in the words Tauti had used, "I will row off to the brig and tell the captain what sort of reptile has hidden in his hold, and when they drag him forth I will kill him."

"And the white men will hang you," said Sikra. "Child, listen to the words of Sikra, who is old enough to be your father. Go on board the brig pretending nothing, become one of the crew, and then, when Tauti knocks to be let out, you can have your way with him some dark night, or peradventure, at the first port the ship touches at. I wish to be shut of him as a son-in-law for many reasons, but I do not want him killed on this island."

Uliami brooded for a moment on this, Then he rose, and, taking only the knife, followed the other to the beach.

It was now dark. When they reached the side of the brig the captain was called, and glad enough he was to get a new hand and willing to pay three dollars a month, which is better pay by a dollar than what they were giving on the plantations— and paid in dollars, not trade goods.

Uliami climbed on board, and then Sikra put back ashore, where he sat on the beach for a while, looking at the lights of the two ships and holding his stomach with laughter. Then he made for the house of Tauti and beat Kinei, and took possession of all the belongings of her husband. Next day he went to the house of Uliami and took the best of the things there, assured in his mind that neither Tauti nor Uliami would ever get back to that island again.

v

NOW WHEN a man finds himself in his grave he may like it or not, but he cannot get out; and so it is with a ship.

Uliami presently found himself in the fo'c's'le of that ship where the hands were having their supper by the light of a stinking lamp, and so far from eating, it was all he could do to breathe.

Neither did the men please him, being different from the men he had always met with. There were men from the Solomons, with slit ears and nose rings; and there were men from the low islands, whose language he could scarcely understand; and he would have been the unhappiest man in the world, just then, had it not been for the thought of Tauti so close to him hidden among the cargo and fancying himself safe.

At the same time, on board the schooner, Tauti was in the same way, wishing himself in any other place, but upheld by the thought of Uliami hiding from him, yet so close.

Then, with an empty belly, but a full mind, Uliami turned in, to be aroused just before break of day by the mate. On deck he was put to haul on ropes to raise the sails, and on the deck of the schooner, lying close by, he might have seen, had there been light, Tauti hauling likewise.

Then he was put to the windlass which pulls in the chain that raises the anchor, and as the sun laid his first finger upon Paulii the anchor came in and the brig, with the tide and the first of the land wind, drew toward the reef opening and passed it. Uliami, looking back, saw Tilageaa standing bold from the sea and the reef and the opening with the schooner passing through it, and he wished himself back for a moment, till the remembrance of Tauti came to him and the picture of him hidden there among the cargo.

He reckoned that he would knock to be let out as soon as the ship told him by her movement that she was well on her voyage, and, being on the morning watch, he managed to keep close to the cargo hatch with his ears well open to any sound. At first the straining and creaking of the masts and timbers confused him, but he got used to these, but he heard no sound. An hour might have gone by when a new thought came to Uliami. He would lay no longer waiting for the other to make a move, but go straight to the captain and tell him that a man was hidden there under the hatch, for he was more hungry for the sight of Tauti's face and the surprise on it at their meeting than a young maiden is for the sight of her lover.

At that moment the captain himself came on deck and began to look at the sun, holding to his face a thing so strangely formed that Uliami would have laughed, only that laughter and all gay thoughts were now as far from him as Tilafeaa.

The captain was a big man with a red face, and when he had done looking at the sun, and when he heard what Uliami had to say, he swore a great oath, and, calling to the mate, he ordered the tarpaulins to be taken off the hatch and the locking bars undone, and then the hatch was opened, but there was no man there.

Then the captain kicked Uliami, and the mate kicked him, and at that very time, or near it, they were kicking Tauti on board the schooner for also giving them were that a man was hidden in the cargo.

Of a truth these two, who had set out so gaily to kill one another, were receiving payment through the hands of Sikra; each of these men had seized the devil by the tail and they could not let go, and here he was galloping over the world with them, from wave to wave, like a horse over hurdles, for the brig and the schooner, though separated by many leagues, were going in the same direction.

vi

THEY PASSED islands, and there was not an island they passed that did not make Uliami feel as though he had swallowed Paulii and it had risen in his throat.

As first, and for many days, he noticed in his ears a sound which was yet not a sound. Then he knew it was the sound of the reef that had been in his ears since childhood, but had now drawn away and gone from him, leaving only its memory. The food displeased him, and the work and the faces of his companions, and he would have given his pay and all he possessed for a sniff of the winds blowing from the high woods, or a sight of the surf on the shores of Tilafeaa.

He had only one companion— his anger against Tauti. He saw now that he had been served a trick, and put the whole matter down to the wiles of the other, little thinking that it was Sikra who had played this game against them both.

vii

ONE DAY the brig, always butting like a tam against the blue sky and empty sea, gave them view of a mountain' and land, stretching in the distance from north to south as though all the islands of the ocean had been drawn and joined together making one solid piece.

Then presently, as they drew in, Uliami saw a break in the land near the mountain. They told him it was the Golden Gate and the city of San Francisco where all the rich men in the world lived, but he had little time to listen to their tales. For they were now on the bar, and the brig was tumbling this way and that, and the mate and captain cursing and kicking those in the way, and giving orders to haul now on this rope, now on that.

Uliami had been used to swearing and cursing on board that brig, but, when they got to the wharf, what he heard overpassed all he had heard in that way, as though all the curses in the world, like all the men, and all the houses, and all the ships, had come to roost at that spot.

But Uliami did not mind. He was filled with one great desire— to go ashore to see for himself the great houses and the rich men and the new things to be seen. Next morning when the crew were paid and he had received five dollars as his pay, he joined up with Sru, a man from the low islands, who had been friendly to him on the voyage, and the pair, crossing the plank, set their feet on the wharf, and Sru, landing, made for the first tavern. That was the sort of man Sru was, old in the ways of harbors and ports, and with a liking for rum. But Uliami had no stomach for drink and, presently, he left the other and found himself in the streets round the dockside.

It was very windy here and his thin coat and trousers flapped around him as a flag flaps on its staff, and the dust blew with the wind in great clouds. And, just as things touched by a wizard change and alter, so the mind of Uliami began to wither in him, for here there were no rich men to be seen, only dirty children playing their games, and there was not a child that did not see in him a man new to the place.. They called after him, ridiculing him, and the houses were not proper houses set in gardens, but all of a piece and evil-looking beyond words.

Then pursuing his way he found himself in a broader street where cars ran without horses and where there were so many people that no one noticed him.

And that was the most curious thing that had happened to him yet, for at Tilafeaa every one had a nod or a smile or a word for every one else, but here the people all passed along in two streams, rapidly, like driven fish, with not a word for each other, nor a look nor a smile, so that, in all that crowd, Uliami felt more alone than in the woods yet not alone— for here were men and women, almost in touch, by the hundred and the thousand.

Then the shops took him where the traders exposed their goods, not in the open but behind windows of glass, each ten hundred times bigger than the window of glass in the church at Raupee. But the goods exposed were things, many of them, which he had never seen before, and they caused no desire in his mind, only distress and more loneliness, till he came to a shop where great bunches of bananas hung just as though they had been new cut down from the trees at Tilafeaa.

Here he hung, disregarding the other fruit exposed, and with tears filling his eyes, till the man of the shop spoke to him roughly, asking him what he wanted and bidding him be gone.

viii

NOW at Tilafeaa the day was always cut out in pieces, with things to do in each piece, and on board the brig it was the same, but here the day was all one, with nothing to do but walk from street to street, among people blind to one another and always hurrying like leaves blown by a wind.

Uliami stood a while at a corner and watched these people, and it seemed to him, now, that they were each, like the cars that went without horses, or the boats in the bay that went without stern or side wheels, driven by some purpose that no man could see.

He felt that it was no good purpose that made men disregard one another and push one another aside and be blind to a stranger as though he were a ghost they could not see. He felt sick at heart, for even the sun had changed and here its light fell on nothing good. The great buildings and the little, it was all the same, they were equally hard with the hardness that lay in the faces of the people.

It was on noon when, wandering like a lost dog, he found himself in a most dismal place passing along by a great wall. Beyond the wall lay a building reaching the skies with chimneys that smoked and fumed, and here in the lane lay refuse and old empty tins and such truck with the sun shining on them and the light of it turned to mournfulness and desolation. Turning a corner of this lane he came face to face with Tauti, whose ship had come in to the bay only the morning before, and who, like Uliami, had been wandering hither and thither, like a lost dog.

Each man had still his knife in his girdle, and thus they stood facing one another, as they had stood when they parted last, in the woods of Tilafeaa. And surely, for a killing, no place was better suited than this, where there was no one to watch or take notice or care except the devil of desolation lurking in that lane, which of all places in the city seemed his truest home.

For a moment, as they stood, all things were shattered around them; everything wiped away but themselves, and their minds sprang back to the point of anger as a bow springs back to the straight, and who knows what might have happened between these two, but at that moment from the great building there came a howl like the voice of the whole city howling out in pain because of its own desolation.

It was the voice of the horn that is blown at midday for the work people, and as Tauti and Uliami looked round them in fear and wonder it seemed to them the voice of the dust, and the high walls and the streets, and the rubbish on the ground, and the hard-faced people on the foot walks. When it ceased, and they faced one another again, they were no longer alone, for that voice had reached Tilafeaa, and the high woods had come trooping to its call right across the sea, and they were standing as they had stood when they parted last in the company of the trees and amid the beauty of the flowers, and all anger had passed from their hearts where there was nothing now but the grief of exile and love.

Surely that was magic greater than the magic of the pictures that move, or the machines that speak, and surely places are the true gods that rule over man, for the voice of the city had brought an island from a thousand leagues away, and the island had brought love to Tauti and Uliami.

No man could have reconciled these two.

But Tauti died. Before ever he could get back to Tilafeaa a fever took him. It was many years ago.

I am Uliami.

___________________

22: Luck of the Templetons

World's News (Sydney)  17 May 1941

TAHITI— look at your map— lies north of the Dangerous Archipelago in the Eastern Pacific.

When people want to visit the South Sea Islands they generally go to Tahiti, or worse still, Honolulu— and generally they grumble.

This was the case with Beatrice Cran, a post-war girl with a home at Sydenham, a job in the city, and two hundred pounds suddenly left her by an uncle, also with a desire for travel and to see as much of the world as is possible to be seen for a hundred and eighty pounds inclusive.

The best of a holiday, very often, is the fun of projecting it, and the best of adventure literature, if you have imagination, is on the shelves of the shipping  companies; and to be had for nothing by just calling at the offices of the Dollar Line, the C.P.R., the Nederland, and the dozen other companies that, in a world half-crazy with money worries, somehow draw a large percentage of their profits from tours.

The Cran girl found before her, as on a bargain counter, the Amazon, the Dutch East, Tahiti, all within her means, to say nothing of short pieces and remnants, marked Tunis £35, Athens and the Isles of Greece £68 10s, &c.

Disdaining these, she chose Tahiti; and, being very pretty— dark with violet grey eyes— and a good dancer and mixer, enjoyed herself immensely on the voyage.

But Tahiti disappointed her. It was beautiful, nothing could well be more beautiful than this land of flame trees and hibiscus, with the blue sea washing the barrier reef and Moorea an amethystine, ghost away in the distance. But it was not the "South Sea Islands."

Papeete was a French town. French as Toulon and fitted out with cafes, movies, motor cars, and- bearded men. Just like a little Paris.

'The hotel was a French hotel, and, sitting in the lounge listening to the Jazz band, the waving palm trees beyond the doorway said to you, "Cannes."

No; this was not the South Sea Islands, and on the verandah, on the second evening of her stay, she said so quite definitely to Templeton, a lean, dark individual with luminous eyes, whom she had picked up on1 the dance floor.

He was a trader and he agreed.

"It's different at Namoa," said he. "That's the place I come from—oh, it's nearly a thousand miles away from here, and it's almost unspoiled. I'm in copra in a small way. It's only in the small islands you find things at all as they used to be— small places that the soap companies haven't gobbled and where only a schooner comes once in a way."

"It must be lonely," said she.

"Beastly," said he.

Then they went back to the dance floor. But she dreamed of him that night, he and his island where only schooners came.

He was delightfully simple and nice; bronzed and clean; lonely, too, and in this noisy hotel like a quiet bird from the sea in a cage full of parrots.

Also, his crowning charm was an attitude of mind and body that seemed to  imply that nothing ever mattered to him; the attitude of a Chinese quietist; a prince  without cares of State; an albatross adrift oh the trade wind.

Next day she was in love with him, and on the day after he was quietly  asking her  to marry him.

She declared, that it was quite impossible; that she was poor, just a tripper and due to leave with the others on the, Tuesday following.

He said that money did not matter, that he had enough for two; that at Namoa; useless as a tall hat. Also, that leaving aside the money he earned as a trader, he had some five hundred, a year owing to a lucky investment in Consolidated Tin Mines, so that if she did not like Namoa they could go somewhere else. Also that he could not lose her now that he had found het, the only thing in the whole world worth finding and keeping.

They were married a week later.

A bold , jump, literally into the blue.

The Mary McGregor — Templeton's schooner, or, rather, the schooner owned by Blane and Curry, of San Francisco, for whom he did business—was clean, like everything else that had to do with him, the weather was good, and the voyage a delight.

It all seemed like the beginning of Paradise, till the morning when, hailed from the cross trees, Namoa came out of the blue; far hills that spoke of recent rains, the smoke of a cliff torrent, and sands and waving palms.

An island like Namoa, when you came on it after weeks of vacant sea, always gives you the idea of conjuring. Out of nothing has come this beautiful thing, so complete, so full of life; and loveliness. To the girl it was almost unbelievable, as were the colors, so striking after the monotony of the blue days.

And the brown people on the dazzling white beach, all waiting to watch the Mary McGregor coming through the opening of the reefs, and the outrigger canoe that met them on the emerald waters of the lagoon, flashing paddles, flashing teeth of the rowers and broad, smiles of welcome.

That was the pleasantest surprise of all. Welcome was everywhere, on the faces of the copra gatherers, fisherfolk, and even the kanaka children who helped to pull the boat up on the sands. Something that told the girl that her husband was better than a great man— he was loved.

The trader's house, with its broad verandah, set back midst the trees and with a view of the reefs and violet sea beyond; with its Japanese matting and cane rockers, Madeira chairs and general atmosphere of holiday and ease said at once to the heart "Home."

So did Kisi, the little kanaka maid, and Kiusi, the old kanaka woman who did the cooking, and Tori, the dog, leaping around Templeton as he took his seat in a rocker and a cigarette from his case.

"Well," said he to his wife. "What do you think of it all?"

"It's beyond thinking," said she, "it's a dream."

There were no servant worries as we know them. Yet inside of a week Kisi had tried to poison her master's wife, in a harmless sort of way, with a lump of washing soda put in her, tea to make her sick, which it did.

The girl was torn with a, profound jealousy of this woman who had absorbed Templeton's affection. Sexual jealousy? Not a bit. Dog jealousy.

She was reprimanded and sent home to her mother. When she was brought back after a week of howling and hunger-striking, the incident was over.

The kanaka mind, as disclosed by Kisi, Kiusi, Sipi, the man who brought fowls and eggs from the village beyond the bluff, Sru, the net-mender who sat on the beach the whole day long in a sun hot enough to fry an egg, was a continual source of interest to Beatrice Templeton.

There was also on that beach an old Frenchman, the only other white man within a thousand miles, except Bloom the German trader away over on the northern side.

His name was D'Ombreval. He lived in a little palm-thatched house near the bluff and had been there long before the coming of Templeton he had a little garden which he cultivated, was always dressed in tussore silk with a panama hat, and when he took the sun of a morning, carried a gold-headed cane. He was one of those amazing people you find sometimes in the islands. When he passed Beatrice on the first morning of their meeting, off went the hat, and, with a courtly bow, on went Monsieur D'Ombreval.

Not a word. Just homage to a woman, to women in general— absolutely French.

"Oh, that's old D'Ombreval," said Templeton, when she questioned him later. "He's a harmless old thing, quite harmless, but maybe a bit touched. He called on me when I first came, but didn't seem to want to go on with the business. I think, maybe, he's had some upsets in life that drifted him here years ago and here he's stuck; he sometimes gets letters by the mail, and he evidently has enough money, though five bob a week would keep him the way he's living here."

"Poor old thing," said the girl.

"Most likely he will call as a matter of ceremony now that you are here," said Templeton with a grin, and actually a day or two later this thing happened.

Beatrice was unfortunately out and so was her husband.

They were, in fact, over at the village of Sipi the fowl-seller, and on a business to do with eggs. They had taken their luncheon with them in a basket, and coming back towards evening along the sea road, that comes sloping down from the bluff, they had sat down within sound of the waterfall to look at the view and breathe the air soft with the sea, and filled with the perfume of distant vanilla and near growing hibiscus.

The sea was lovely, and the reefs and the beach, and so was life in that moment, seated there between the fuming of the torrent and the lullaby of the reefs.

No, Beatrice wanted nothing more than this savage loneliness that could yet be so tender in the twilight, in the late afternoon and in the early morning.

Then, on returning home, she found that M. D'Ombreval had been. It was as though society had stretched out a derisive hand to pluck at her sleeve.

She laughed.

They returned the call a few days later, but he was out, and during the months to follow the position was as before, courtly salutation on chance meetings, but no advance towards intimacy.

A month or two later, one morning at breakfast. Templeton, who had received a mail by the brigantine that had arrived at dawn and was lying hove-to outside the reefs, said, as though referring to some ordinary matter, "Consolidated Tins have gone bust."

He folded the letter that had brought the news and put it under the jar containing wild honey, going on with his breakfast as though nothing much had happened.

Beatrice was shocked. Her lips trembled.

"But," said she, "all your money—"

"I know." he said; "it's a nuisance."

Then he went on. "I never spent all my income from them; there's a couple of thousand in the bank, and we need not touch it. Why, I can save half the money I make here— living costs nothing— still, it's a nuisance."

The shock of the disaster, after the first moment or two, caused a rebound; actually, after breakfast and whilst she helped Kisi in household matters, she felt a curious new joyfulness.

To tell the truth Namoa, like a sweet fruit, was all the better for this touch of acidity, also she had a new object in life, to help save money for the man she loved. Enthusiastic plans filled her mind, plans to keep hens instead of buying eggs, plans to write stories and try to sell them— all sorts of plans. Active and busy in the house, her mind was free of care, but when she put on her bathing dress and came down to the lagoon to bathe, a strange thing happened!

The familiar beach, the glory of the trees, the azure water— all these were not quite the same.

The bursting of Consolidated Tins had done something to them— What?

She did not know it in the least, but the fact is, that the place you can leave at will, though it is a joy and a delight, may become a prison if you are tied to it. With a sure income of five hundred a year, they had wings of a sort; depending almost entirely on trade earnings here, they were tied. She did not recognise this fact immediately, or only indirectly, in the vague shadow of a shadow that had stolen over lagoon and beach and sea.

But as time wore on the shadow deepened, and it affected Templeton as well as herself. As a matter of fact, his contentment here had always centred round the fact of his liberty. Here life was restricted, monotonous even at times, but the love for the place had always smoothed things over for his mind.

The fact that he would have either to stay here and make his living, or go to some other place to make his living, was enough to bring Namoa into the world of hard fact. It had become a workshop, and that feeling started his revolt against it, and encouraged his plans for leaving and starting in business at San Francisco with the small capital remaining to him. Plans and dreams subject to revision by Providence and its strange creation, Monsieur D'Ombreval.

Monsieur D'Ombreval had not been seen on the beach for some days, and one morning Kisi gave the news that "Missie Ombeille" was not well.

Templeton promptly called on the old gentleman, and found him in bed in a bare room; whose furniture consisted only of the, bed where the sick man was lying, two chairs, a table, and a sea chest. He was being waited on by Nalia, the old woman who looked after him, and he was quite approachable. He was no longer M. D'Ombreval of the beach and panama hat. Just a sick old man, friendly as always, but with his reserve gone, and grateful for the visit and a chat.

He thought he had overdone his strength in a walk over the bluff; it was nothing, it would pass off. No, he did not want for medicine, he had all the drugs he wanted in that chest, quinine, and so forth; and how was Madame?

When Templeton came back with all this, Beatrice promptly had a chicken killed— they had begun to keep hens— and converted it with her own hands into broth. Not water in which a chicken had been boiled, but the very essence of a chicken and its sustenance. This she herself took to the old gentleman, and from that moment she became a sort of district nurse, calling twice or three times a day on her patient, and sometimes sitting for an hour with him, talking.

He could talk English perfectly. His mind was very simple and delightfully childlike, and out of his surely innocent past he found conversation about little things to do with a Paris that has vanished, and a France unscarred by the Great War— but never a word did he say of what had brought him to Namoa or of why he preferred to keep to himself in the strange manner that had made him such a peculiar yet taking figure in the limited landscape of the island.

He seemed to be getting better until one night when Nalia came running down the beach with the news that her master was dying. He had sent for them, and they found him half-sitting up in bed.

A miraculous moon nearly at the full was floating above reef and beach, and it filled the room with light.

M. D'Ombreval did not look as though he were dying, nor did he hint of the fact by word of mouth, but Beatrice knew. He had grown wonderfully younger, and his vitality seemed doubled since her visit to him at five o'clock.

He asked them to be seated. Then he told them to draw their chairs closer up to the bed, "So we will be more like a family party," said he, "and you will be able to hear me better, which is important, for I have to tell you about myself, else perhaps you will not do what I want you to do. Also, it is good for me to tell about myself at this moment. I, who have been silent and friendless for many years,

"The past comes to me by thinking, but it comes even closer by telling, and I wish it closer to me now.

"Many years ago I came to the Islands. I was a pearl buyer. You know that we French own the Paumotan Archipelago, all atolls and many of them pearling grounds, but we do not own the grounds. Unlike many other nations we have respected the right of the natives, and to them alone belongs the right to fish for the oysters, and to make profit out of the shell and pearls they find. There are, of course, abuses. The buyers who come each season make hard bargains with the fishermen, get them into debt, and impose on their cupidity and childishness.

"Yes, but they are not all Frenchmen, the buyers; they are Jews, Chinese, what you will. I lived at Papeete all the year. It was different from what I hear it is now, more simple, and life was pleasant. I was devoted to business and my garden. I lived very simply and amassed wealth, not a great amount, but still sufficient, yet I had little money in the bank, only pearls. I had the sure feeling— which proved right— that pearls, of all gems, would never depreciate in value, that money, however well invested, was liable to shrink like the magic skin described by our great writer Balzac; but that no financial disaster could disturb the quiet beauty of these gems of the sea, or their value.

"So I continued in life, adding to my store, like the bee who makes honey, never to profit by it.

"Then, one day the world grew different. She was a girl of the islands. I can see her still as I saw her that first day of our meeting on the, old copra road from which you can see the blue water that stretches to Moorea.

"Very beautiful— so beautiful that she has never left me; and when, perhaps, you have thought, seeing me walking alone, that I was walking alone, it was not so; she was with me. For she was also so good, without which beauty does not last in the mind.

"We were to be married, but not before I returned from the islands, where the pearling season was opening.

"I went, and as the schooner took me out, I saw her far off, so small, so small, where she had promised to wave goodbye to me on the old copra road by the flame tree where we had first met.

"Then I could see her no more.

"We were bound for Arafura lagoon; it is one of the largest of the atolls that make up the pearling islands. We had half a dozen pearl buyers on board besides myself, and by all accounts the season promised to be a good one, both for the fishermen and the buyers. Shell was fetching high prices in those days, and I determined to speculate in shell as well as pearls. This I did, and was extraordinarily fortunate, managing to sell the cargo of last year shell, which I had bought on landing, within a day or two of the purchase, clearing a good profit without trouble, and as you may say at the stroke of a pen.

"Also, I was very lucky in my pearls. As I always paid a fair price and dealt fairly with the divers, I had a reputation for being honest, and so out-of-the-way things were brought to me. In this way I had obtained a very large baroque pearl, whose value was not, as we may say, written on it; a thing that, well-mounted, might bring a good price; a thing that one of two ordinary buyers would cry down and try to obtain for a dollar or two.

"Well, as I was saying— as I was saying— yes— in this way the pearlers had got to trust me, and this season two of them brought me a very beautiful gem of fifty grains, which they had found in partnership; there were other things, too, and altogether this season, proved the luckiest I had known.

"Then I returned in the schooner to Papeete. I had reserved the great white pearl as a present for my bride, but she did not meet me on the quay when I arrived, nor did I find her in the house of her mother, nor did I find her in the cemetery where they took me to look at her grave.

"Yes. Life can be terrible, and for me there was no more use in trade or profit. I came to Namoa, and here I have been since then; but not alone.

"Although I did not find her in the cemetery. I found her in my heart— she remains for me, from all my life, the one thing that has not withered."

M. D'Ombreval sank back on his pillows as though to rest for a moment and contemplate some strange yet satisfactory thing, some phantasm half clothed in reality.

Then he drew from beneath the coverlet of the bed something that he had been holding all the time close to his side. It was a square-shaped parcel done up in native cloth and tied with a strip of coconut sennit.

He handed it to Templeton.

"The thing," said M. D'Ombreval, "that I asked you to do before telling you my little story, is simple— just to keep this parcel and to open it when I am no more."

The old gentleman died towards noon of the next day, with all his senses about him, in a dignified manner that hardly cloaked a subdued gaiety— the gaiety of a child on the eve of an excursion.

They buried him in the little cemetery amidst the trees, and on returning to the traders' house Templeton, remembering the parcel, took it from the shelf where he had placed it and undid the coverings.

It was a tin cash box. Opening the lid they found cotton wool, and on the wool a piece of paper covering with writing, which ran:

This is the last Will and Testament of Jean Paul D'Ombreval. Having no relatives in the world I leave to dear Mr. Templeton and his wife this box and all it contains; of the money remaining to me in the Bank of Léfarge at Papeete I ask them to distribute it among the poor.

May they be happy in their married life, happy as I see them here now.

Signed,

JEAN PAUL D'OMBREVAL.

Witnessed: JOHN ADAMS, Missionary.

JAMES BRIAN, Ship Master.

Dated, June 5th, 19—

That date was a month old. It coincided with the arrival of the missionary schooner that had called for a couple of days' stay.

Templeton, stirring the wool with his fingers, disclosed a pearl. The box was filled with pearls, arranged in layers between layers of wool.

Eight layers with forty pearls to each— a fortune.

These pearls must have long exercised the mind of M. D'Ombreval. Money in the bank. Oh, it is easy enough to leave that to the poor— to strangers, but these children of his heart, carrying all his memories, these things that he had brought with him to share his voluntary exile, it was not easy to leave them for the benefit of strangers.

To Beatrice the joy of this sudden revelation of wealth all their own was made even pleasanter by the thought that gratitude had nothing to do with the gift— nor chicken broth.

The old gentleman had just taken a fancy to her— and he had always liked her husband, that was all.

The Mary McGregor was due to make her seasonal call, and one day, a week after the death of M. D'Ombreval, she came, developing like a white spirit out of the blue, changing, on nearer approach, to a creation of man, and ending up as a ratty old schooner with anchor down inside the reefs.

The Templetons had arranged to return in her to Papeete. Templeton, then, could easily arrange for a new man to be sent to take over the station. They were leaving Namoa and for good. They would never, return. They knew that quite well. Once civilisation and society had them in hand they would not return.

And now that they were free to go, now that Namoa was no longer a prison, the island, the sea, and the reefs resumed their lost charm, and the island folk their simple fascination.

The night before the morning of departure Templeton found his wife seated on a corded box— crying. She had been sniffing all day. She said she was crying about nothing, and, leaving her to the job, he went out and walked on the beach in the starlight.

The whole village was on the beach to see the schooner start, and even copra gatherers from the village beyond the bluff; but the crowd was in no way larger than that which usually gathered for the departure of the schooner, nor did it exhibit the slightest regret in seeing her go. Nor did Beatrice and her husband. They had discovered at the last moment that, the wealth that made it easy for them to go made it equally easy for them to stay.

They would go at the next sailing of the schooner, or the next, if it pleased them; meanwhile, they would cling a bit longer to this little last bit of the Golden Age, before returning to the Age of Brass.

That was several years ago, and I hear that, despite their wealth, they are clinging to it still— or, rather, that it is still happily clinging to them.

That is why I have called this story "The Luck of the Templetons."

____________________

23: The Ten-Franc Counter

Munsey’s Magazine Feb 1926

OF ALL places in the modern European world Monte Carlo is the most fascinating. It is most beautiful when seen from a distance as I see it now from my window in Bordighera with the sun full upon it; as I will see it this evening after dark, a spray of coloured lights, winked at by the far revolving light of Cap Ferrat.

Monte Carlo, as I sit smoking at night, sometimes reminds me of a beautiful woman— perhaps because of the necklace effect of the lights— and Cap Ferrat of the attitude of the world to her. The world winks at Monte Carlo and her doings; she is beautiful, she is fascinating, she makes men lose their heads; like all the great loved women of the past she has her private graveyard; she is detestable, which is part of her charm, and she ought long ago to have come under the hands of Monsieur Diebler, or whoever it is that has taken his place.

But there is no Diebler who deals with cities or towns; a town may be a murderer, like Monte Carlo, and a State a confederate, like Monaco, but there is no law to bring them to book, no punishment as yet, not even the mild punishment of reform.

Of course you will understand that I am writing of the tables, that conglomeration of roulette basins— little whirlpools that are yet capable of sucking a man's soul down into the drain-pipes of perdition.

To show you the power exercised by this suction I am going to tell you the story of Madame Bertaux, and that the powder of instruction may be properly balanced by the jam of amusement I am going to give it to you in its full detective dress as it was told to me by one of the international detectives who are always hunting this coast for international crooks. He was an elderly man with a Kalmuck type of face, yellow as old ivory from cigarette smoking, and he told me the yarn to exhibit the powers of M. Henri, of the Paris Sûreté— and for another reason.

Have you ever heard of the case of Madame Bertaux? he asked. Ah, well, she was an old lady who lived in the house of a M. Jacob in the Rue Paradis at Monte Carlo. The house was too large for M. Jacob, so he let the upper part as a flat to Madame Bertaux, a wealthy woman who had kept the old Phocée, a restaurant on the Rue de la Cannebière, of Marseilles. The lady never went out; she was afflicted with some malady of the back that prevented her from walking, and also an eczema that was most disfiguring; she had neither the power nor the desire to go into society, and yet she had the woman's craving for dress and adornment quite unimpaired.

She was very proud of her jewels, which were, in fact, very fine and worth a considerable sum of money. She was never happier than when dressing herself in them— rings, bracelets, brooches, ear-rings and so on— and when she was not wearing them she had the box containing them by her bed or couch so that she could touch them and see them. She also kept in her possession a good deal of loose cash.

All this exercised the mind of M. Jacob, and several times he pointed out to her the danger of valuables kept in a house in such a manner.

'Oh, nobody knows,' said she, 'only Rosalie, and she is safe. Who would bother coming to rob an old woman like me? Besides, I'd be able to defend myself against them if only by screeching for help. And,' she said, 'they amuse me, which they wouldn't if they were locked up in the bank; and I don't want to be told my business, not even by you, M. Jacob.' In fact, they might have fought, only that he knew her queer ways and that she was an invalid, and refused to get angry with her.

Well, one evening Madame Bertaux was found with her head battered in and her jewels gone. The case was left.

The window was open. There were marks on a drain-pipe close to the window showing where a man had evidently crawled up; otherwise there were very few marks at all, and the room was not disturbed, though from a drawer in an escritoire by the door ten louis in gold had been taken, pre-war money treasured by the old lady and tied in a handkerchief. She had in her possession a roll of notes of the value of ten thousand francs; they had not been touched.

There were no finger-marks anywhere. I was at déjeuner in the Hotel de Paris with M. Henri that morning when the Chief of Police of Monaco was shown in to us. He came about a certain person who has no connection with this story, and when he had done his business he mentioned the murder in the Rue Paradis. You know the police mind thinks in the form of reports, and this good gentleman, once he had set his speech machine going, gave us a complete précis of the details of the business, everything but the exhibits, in fact.

'We arrested a young man, Coudoyer, lover of the servant Rosalie, this morning,' he finished. 'We found in his pockets very little money, but in his box at the inn where he is employed, an old-fashioned watch which belonged to the dead woman, and which he said had been given to him long ago by the servant Rosalie, who had it as a present from Madame Bertaux. It's all pretty plain.'

He went into more details about M. Jacob, the owner of the house, Madame Bertaux, and so forth, till Henri cut him short.

'Did you find any finger-marks?' asked Henri.

'No,' said the Chief.

'And this young man, Coudoyer, what is he like?'

'Oh, quite a simple person,' the Chief answered him. 'Just a waiter, and with a good record, the last person in the world you'd suspect of doing a thing like this.'

'There were no finger-marks, which shows an expert was at work,' said Henri, 'and you have arrested Coudoyer?'

'On suspicion,' said the other, 'and on finding that watch in his trunk.'

'Yes,' said the Paris man; 'but the thing you didn't find was finger-marks, yet a woman had been murdered and furniture handled by the murderer. Your judgment must be wrong about Coudoyer; he must be no simple person, but an expert criminal; either that, or you have arrested the wrong man.'

That seemed pretty conclusive, but the Monaco man didn't get enthusiastic over it; he seemed rather to resent Henri's deductions, which cast a shadow on his own intelligence.

'We must go by what we find,' said he. 'We searched very thoroughly for finger-marks on all surfaces possible, even to the table legs, even to a ten-franc Casino counter lying on the floor by the bureau. We may not be equal in intelligence to Paris, but we are thorough.'

That was a hit at Henri, for it was after the botching of the Jondret affair in Paris, which, however, wasn't Henri's doing; however, the little man took it up and swelled out his chest. You've never seen Henri? Well, he's a little man with a pointed beard, and when he gets in a temper he puffs himself out— like that…

'Yes, you seem to be thorough,' said he. 'You actually find a ten-franc Casino counter on the floor, and then you arrest a resident of Monte Carlo, or at least an employee, for you know well that employees are not allowed in the Casino. Now, tell me,' said Henri, 'didn't it hit you at once that the ten-franc counter must have been dropped by the murderer and no one else?'

'How do you mean?' said the other.

'This way. It wasn't the old lady's if your statement about her is correct, for she never went out; it isn't Rosalie's, and it isn't Coudoyer's, for they are employees and can't use the Casino; it isn't M. Jacob's, because he is, as you said, a resident engaged in business, and can't use the Casino. It must evidently have belonged to a person who was neither of these people, who was neither Madame Bertaux nor M. Jacob nor Rosalie nor Coudoyer, some person other than any of these people who are known to have used Madame Bertaux's room or been connected with it; it most evidently belonged to a stranger, a fifth person, and a person, moreover, who has or had the entry to the Casino.'

'A moment,' said the Chief. 'That argument seems tempting; but suppose Coudoyer had that counter in his possession at the time of the murder and dropped it by accident? It is not impossible for a waiter to acquire a Casino counter; it might have been given to him, it might have been picked up by him, it might have come into his possession in several different ways.'

'Just so,' said M. Henri; 'but the most probable way for it to come into his possession would be through the Casino. In these cases we must move in the direction pointed out by the finger of Probability; in our work there is no certainty, otherwise there would be little work for us to do. I take it, then, the probability is that a person who had been playing at the Casino, and who had a counter left over, forgotten in his or her pocket— a thing that often happens, I assure you— paid a visit to the rooms of Madame Bertaux, and through accident dropped and left behind the counter.

'Now, what does that prove? Very little, you will say, yet to me it seems that here is evidence not without value.

'We can say, to begin with, that it is highly probable the counter was dropped neither by Coudoyer nor Rosalie nor M. Jacob, none of whom have the entrée to the Casino, nor Madame Bertaux, who was an invalid, but by someone else. Madame Bertaux had no friends. I understand from you that neither M. Jacob nor Rosalie knew of any visitors. Therefore the counter must have been dropped by a visitor who came in secret, or at least in a manner which drew the attention of no one in the house.

'A curious thing for anyone to pay a visit like that. Now, when we come across anything strange or curious in this world, time or common sense will often put in our hands a solution quite simple.

'There would be something curious in the secret conduct of this stranger if he came for a good and not for an evil purpose. We, in fact, find the old lady murdered, and we say to ourselves: "Here is the fruit of the purpose that inspired our stranger— there is nothing curious in the matter at all. He came in secret to murder her."

'"There is nothing curious in the matter at all." That is the motto that every detective ought to take; every baffling crime seems at first sight to have something curious in its texture or make-up; but that is not so; in nearly every case the seeming strangeness is an illusion due to scanty or muddled evidence.'

'Well,' said the Chief of Police, 'what you say seems just, and if we could find the man who owned the counter your argument would bear heavily against him. We fancy we have found him in Coudoyer. Well, seeing you have taken an interest in this business, why not give us the benefit of your experience? Come and examine the chief parties in the affair for yourself, and look at the room.'

'I will do that with pleasure,' said M. Henri.

We left the hotel and went straight to the Rue Paradis. The body had been removed, but the room was in just the same state as when the tragedy was discovered. It was a pleasant, sunlit room on the first floor, with a window opening upon a small balcony. M. Henri went first to the balcony and inspected the drain-pipe by which the assassin had climbed; then he returned and stood with his hands behind his back looking at the room. Opposite the window there was a sofa, and by the window was the armchair in which the invalid had been sitting when she was attacked.

Small objects of furniture stood about, including a fragile table bearing a vase of flowers; on another table stood the jewel-box, empty.

M. Henri, having inspected all these things individually, asked that Rosalie, the maid, should be called. The girl, when she came into the room, did not strike me very favourably. She was pretty, but pert-looking, shallow, just the tool one might fancy a scoundrel would easily handle. I confess, when I saw her, my belief in the innocence of Coudoyer was not increased.

'Tell me,' said M. Henri, 'what were you doing last night at nine o'clock?'

'I have already told Monsieur the Inspector,' replied she. 'I was with a friend.'

'She was with Coudoyer,' put in the Chief. 'Several people saw them together at twenty minutes to nine; after that no one saw them together. Her story is that they walked about together. She returned at half-past nine, after the crime had been discovered.'

'That will do,' said M. Henri, and he dismissed Rosalie. Then he turned to the Chief. 'Give me the girl's story,' said he, 'as she told it to you.'

'There was very little more,' replied the other. 'She parted, so she said, with Coudoyer at the corner of the Rue Marcell at twenty minutes past nine. He went for a walk by himself and returned home at ten.'

'And the murder was committed at nine?'

'Yes.'

'Who discovered the body?'

'M. Jacob. He was seated downstairs, reading, at nine o'clock, when he fancied he heard a cry. He thought it was from the rooms above, and then he fancied it was from the street. He went on reading, but felt, somehow, uneasy, went upstairs and knocked at the old lady's door, got no answer, and opened the door. Then he telephoned for the police.'

'Tell me,' said M. Henri, 'why haven't you arrested that girl as well as Coudoyer?'

'She's as good as arrested,' replied the other; 'she can't escape, and we are just letting her play about for a few days. Coudoyer had accomplices. None of the jewellery has been recovered, with the exception of that old watch which he swore was given him by Rosalie, who had it as a present from the old lady.'

'Let's have a talk with M. Jacob,' said Henri.

We went to the flat below, and found M. Jacob in. A middle-sized, prosperous-looking, elderly person, greatly disturbed by the tragedy of the night before. He told us all he knew. He had never heard of the gift of the watch to Rosalie, though, indeed, as he pointed out, it was little likely that he should have heard of it, for though he was on good terms with the old lady and often went up to have a chat with her, a little affair of that sort would scarcely be mentioned between them.

'You never saw or heard of a Casino counter in her possession?' asked Henri.

M. Jacob was greatly astonished at the question: the police had not told him of the finding of the counter. No, he had never seen one in the possession of the old lady, it was the most unlikely thing for her to have, and no one else in the house would possess such a thing. Then we took our departure, to visit Coudoyer, who was held at the police department under arrest.

He was a pale-faced individual, with restless, shifty eyes. He did not impress me favourably; but, still, I would never judge a man by his appearance.

He told a tale substantially the same as that given by the servant Rosalie. He protested that his character was good, that his employers could speak well of him, that he was engaged to be married to Rosalie—and would a man about to marry commit a crime like that?

He said that he had never been even on the steps of the Casino.

He admitted that it was possible to pick up a counter dropped by some gambler in the café where he served, or in the street, but stated emphatically that he had not done so.

Yes, the watch, that was the only thing they had against him, but it had been given him by the girl; he could not prove this, because Madame Bertaux was dead, but it was a fact. Then, half unwillingly, but evidently speaking the truth, he said that he believed, or had strong suspicion, that Rosalie was not faithful to him; that she had a 'young man' other than himself. But he could give no name; the thing was a suspicion based on something she had mentioned.

That was what he had to say both on his own account and in answer to questions. When he was removed, the Chief turned to M. Henri.

'Now,' said he, 'you have seen all the important people in connection with this case, and here is a diagram showing the position in which the body was when found. What's your opinion?'

'I haven't any fixed opinion just yet,' said M. Henri, 'but from what I have seen I believe that man will be convicted. Monte Carlo never guillotines, so he will not pay the extreme penalty, and after a while it is possible he may regain his freedom.' A strange sort of speech, to which the Chief listened with a half-smile.

'And what about Rosalie?' he asked.

'I can't say anything about her,' replied Henri. 'I'm only telling the fortune of Coudoyer.'

'You would make your fortune as a fortune-teller,' said the Chief; 'you speak so convincingly.'

'I believe I could make money at that business,' replied the other; 'and legitimately, for my fortune-telling would be based on circumstance and character. I say Coudoyer may regain his freedom, for the simple reason that in my belief Coudoyer is innocent. Mind you, that is only a belief.'

'And you base it—?'

'On the ten-franc counter, and on Rosalie's "young man," the existence of whom I half believe in.'

'That eternal counter!'

'Yes, that eternal counter— and other things that it seems to have revealed to me.'

'What are they?'

'I cannot tell you; you would say, "Oh, this is nonsense!" and besides, to let daylight in on half-formed ideas tends to shrivel them; and besides, to talk is fatal in a case like this: walls have ears, ideas have wings. I believe the murderer is now walking about Monte Carlo; I believe this climber of drain-pipes and assassin of old ladies fancies himself secure, but that, at a whisper, a breath of air, he would take measures which would prevent him ever from being caught. But this I will do if you like: I will lend you Malmaison, of the Paris Sûreté; he is not in very good health, and a change to the sunny South will do him good. He will come here, of course, as a private individual; nobody knows him here; and if he is successful the credit will go to you, for he is not longing after notoriety.'

You may be sure the Chief did not hesitate to accept this offer; it was all to the good and nothing to pay, for Paris and Monte Carlo are very necessary to one another and often lend mutual assistance without the exchange of a franc.

So it was settled.

After that and for a long time I heard nothing more. My business took me to Vienna and Rome. I heard, indeed, that Coudoyer and the girl had been condemned, both to imprisonment, and for life. Henri had prophesied truly, though he had not included the girl in his forecast. Then one day, and in pursuit of my business, I returned to Monte Carlo, only to find that the man on whose tracks I had been travelling had doubled back and been arrested at Milan. I was pretty much disgusted. I had committed a fault; he had got wind of me, and my reputation would suffer.

Being what you call at a loose end that evening, I went to the Casino. I don't care for music or plays, but people always interest me, especially the Casino crowd, and there I went; and scarcely had I made the tour of the rooms when whom should I find but Malmaison.

He was dressed to represent the part of a well-to-do business man, but I could not mistake him. I must tell you about Malmaison— that he is the most self-obliterating person in the world. In Paris he adopts a disguise; his name is unknown, never published in the papers; that is why he is so deadly. Here in Monte Carlo his best disguise was to be his real self.

I knew him, but then I am in the inner circle. Our eyes met, and I saw at once that I was not to speak. Then he turned from the table, and as he turned I saw the hand which was behind his back close twice.

I followed him slowly as he walked away, followed him through the room, stopping occasionally to look at the play, followed him outside, past Ciro's, and along a road leading to the Rue Paradis. Here he stopped, and we spoke to each other. Henri must have told him of my knowledge of the Bertaux affair, for he began to speak of it at once.

'And it is fortunate I met you to-night,' said he, 'for things have come to a crisis. I believe I have got my man; indeed, I could have pointed him out to you in the room where he was playing. He did not see me, I only got a glimpse of him, but to-night I expect he will re-visit the house where the murder took place and where I have taken rooms.'

'Taken rooms?' said I.

'Yes,' he said. 'Madame Bertaux's flat was to let; people weren't anxious to rent it just after the crime, so M. Jacob, who owns the place and lives below, let it to me. I have been there a good while watching the Casino and the strangers who have come to Monte Carlo. I had to wait a good while, but I found my man— and my woman.'

'Who was the woman?'

'Rosalie— she was justly condemned.'

'And the man—?'

'Was her young man, a rival to Coudoyer.'

'And to-night,' I said, 'you expect him to re-visit the scene of the crime. What bait have you put out for him?'

'You'll see,' said Malmaison.

We had reached the door, and he opened it with a latch-key. The door of M. Jacob's flat was closed.

'You haven't told M. Jacob?' said I.

'Not a word,' he replied. 'I believe in Henri's motto, which is "Be dumb." He believes I am just a prosperous rentier, and as I pay my rent in advance he doesn't bother about anything else. Why should I tell him?'

He led the way up, and I found myself again in Madame Bertaux's room; but very different it looked now, with cigar and cigarette boxes about and glasses and other signs of good cheer.

Malmaison made me take the arm-chair, then he opened the window and left it standing half open.

'You expect him to come through the window?' said I.

'Let us expect nothing,' said he. 'I believe in Henri's idea that not only ought one to be dumb, but that, given a true theory, too many brains in the know may set up ether vibrations warning the criminal. However, a sketch of how the case stands up to a certain point will do no harm.'

He offered me a cigar and went on:

'I came here on seemingly an impossible task, but M. Henri had given me an idea of how to set to work. It was only during the last few days, however, that the truth became quite evident. The criminal is first of all and above everything else a gambler; the crime was committed to recoup his gambling losses. He has a cousin who runs an hotel here. A very shady man, this cousin. He it was, I suspect, who turned the stolen jewellery into money; a worse man, perhaps, than the actual murderer, who was urged by Play and the Devil to commit his crime.'

As Malmaison talked and as I looked at him, noticing his good clothes, his large watch-chain and the rings on his fingers, the idea came to me that the bait he had put down to catch the assassin was himself, and it gave me a very queer sensation, the thought that through that open window the tiger might suddenly appear. However, I said nothing, and he went on:

'The criminal has two addresses here. One is the hotel owned by his cousin. He doesn't stay there; he has a house of his own, a pleasant little house which he picked up cheap and where he lives free of taxes, the only drawback being that when he wants to play at the Casino he can't, owing to the fact that he's a resident employed in a bank. He is also a man with a certain power over women, and so it came about that Rosalie fell under his spell.

'Now you will see how things conspired to bring this man to his undoing. He has a brother very like himself who travels in wine for Meyer and Capablanca, of Bordeaux.

'This brother, when he visits Monte Carlo, stops at the cousin's hotel and plays at the Casino, and one fine day it occurred to the criminal, who was then only a bank cashier, to drop into the Casino under the brother's name and giving the address the brother had always given. The chief difference between the two men was the fact that the brother wore glasses. So you see it was quite an easy matter to buy a pair of glasses, and, handing the brother's card over the counter, gain admittance— or use his ticket for the season.

'Well, there you are: a man well-to-do and comfortable, yet sucked by the whirlpool of the tables— drawn into the net. Most likely the first time he went in under the guise of his brother he thought it would be the last; he just went in to see the play and have a flutter. Then the passion grew. Or it may be that he was a gambler at heart with a passion full grown to be satisfied— who knows? One can only say that the tables took him and turned him into a murderer, and that Henri jumped to the fact that the man who dropped that ten-franc counter might be a resident who played at the Casino under disguise.'

Malmaison rose and held up a finger.

'Here he is,' said he.

I could hear a far-away step in the silent street outside.

Malmaison closed the window.

'Why do you close the window?' I asked.

'I only left it open to let in a footstep,' said he. 'Come, this gentleman will enter boldly by the front door, if I am not mistaken. Quick!'

I took my hat and followed him downstairs to the hall, where we stood waiting while the footsteps paused outside. The hall light was on. We heard the noise of the key in the latch; the door opened, and a man entered. It was only M. Jacob.

I pitied Malmaison. I felt like a man watching a play which has suddenly broken down, a hunter who hears the footsteps of a tiger and finds them to be the footsteps of a lamb.

'Good evening, monsieur,' said Jacob when he saw Malmaison.

'Good evening,' replied the other. 'I was just going to show my friend out. How fortunate we have met, for my friend wished to ask you some questions concerning real estate in Monte Carlo.'

'Come into my room,' said M. Jacob, 'and we can talk.'

He opened the door of his flat and we entered the sitting-room, where he put on the light and offered us cigarettes, which Malmaison refused.

'Monsieur Jacob,' said he whilst we took seats, 'excuse my asking, but how much money did you make playing at the Casino to-night?'

The murderer rose to his feet at this terrible question, the full weight of which he had not quite realised. He knew he was caught, but not how seriously.

'Ah!' said he— 'a spy of the bank!'

'No,' said Malmaison, 'I have nothing to do with the bank of which you are cashier. I am a police officer in search of a certain ten-franc counter which was dropped—'

He did not finish the sentence. Jacob had made a dash for the door.

The struggle did not last a minute.

It wasn't much, for I had managed, seeing the truth, to seize Jacob from behind. We found the glasses in his pocket and a large number of banknotes which he had won that night. At the Bureau of Police, where we brought him, he was told that his cousin, the hotelkeeper, had confessed to the whole business; this was an untruth, but it served, for in his anger he rounded on the cousin and told how he had disposed of the jewels. Both men received life sentences. He rounded on Rosalie, the girl who had begun by stealing the antique watch as a present for Coudoyer and ended by assisting M. Jacob in his plans, the girl who had not given him away simply because she would have had to give herself away too, and who took her condemnation and sentence without a word, knowing she would do herself no good through freeing Coudoyer; feeling perhaps jealous that Coudoyer should escape whilst she had to suffer. Women are strange things.

I have told you the story for two reasons. First of all, it is interesting as it shows the methods of M. Henri. He seized directly on the really essential thing, the counter. When he mentioned the counter to M. Jacob he saw at once what I did not see, that Jacob was the man who had dropped it, saw it by some subtle signal in the man's manner. Also, it seemed to him that the drain-pipe by which the assassin was supposed to have climbed was too fragile to support a grown man, and that the marks on it were 'artificial.'

When he sent Malmaison to Monte Carlo he told him to watch Jacob and, if possible, to secure the rooms left vacant by the death of Madame Bertaux.

Now, if Jacob had been a really clever man he would never have gone to the Casino again after the finding of that counter by the police, but, lulled to security by the conviction of Coudoyer and the girl, and little dreaming how that counter had talked to Henri, instead of destroying those fatal glasses he put them on and walked into the trap.

It was the finding of those glasses on him that really broke him down and saved a long trial by inducing him to confess.

The other reason for my telling you this story is to show you the pull of the tables and exhibit to you the men who run them as what they are, men who for the sake of profit sacrifice men to the Demon of Play.

The Demon kills a man every day on an average at Monte Carlo, kills him by his own hand and sends his soul to perdition. And what shall we say of the men who do not commit suicide yet are ruined; of their wives and children?

I am no priest; my business in life is the taking of criminals— criminals— criminals, but what shall we say of the men who are licensed by society to kill for gain?

Are they so much better than M. Jacob?

He crossed and put another cigarette-end on the pile in the ash-tray.

I did not answer his question. I was looking through the open window and the balmy night at the jewelled necklace of Monte Carlo, and the far-off light of Cap Ferrat winking across the sea.

End

Table of Contents

- 1: The Vengeance of Mynheer Van Lok
- 2: The Man From Sulu
- 3: Under the Flame Trees
- 4: Bully Beef
- 5: The Damoclean Sword
- 6: Wild Ducks
- 7: The Face at the Window
- 8: The Case of Mrs. Mencken
- 9: The Snuff-box of  M. de Sartines
- 10:  Turn About
- 11: Did Kressler Kill His Wife?
- 12: The Lady Detective
- 13: The Heller Robbery
- 14: The King of Maleka
- 15: Kadjaman
- 16: The Queen's Necklace
- 17: The Story of Gombi
- 18: The End of the Road
- 19: The Gold Bar
- 20: Maru
- 21: Magic
- 22: Luck of the Templetons
- 23: The Ten-Franc Counter