It was quite dark when the launch crept up to the dock. There seemed to
be no lights on the island. A queer sort of a place. And what was that
spectral object that resembled a crazy derrick? Rutherford turned an
electric flash upon it.
Suddenly a figure darted forward out of the dark and fell at the
Captain’s feet. It was Tsuda. He uttered at first a high-pitched oriental
lamentation. But a sharp word brought him to his feet, and he stood there
before them with bowed head. Clearly it was not a joyous welcoming.
“What’s the matter?” asked the Captain, his voice low and commanding. The
poet and dreamer were now wholly merged in the dynamic man of action.
“Evil come upon us!” Tsuda cried, his nervous brown hands writhing.
“Well, don’t let’s have any of your bizarre but redundant embroideries
now, Tsuda. What do you mean by evil?”
“Death,” said Tsuda between his teeth.
It was all very weird, with the dark, and the mysterious background of
tropical vegetation. But the sky was gradually growing lighter, and in a
little while the moon would be up.
“Who is dead?” demanded Utterbourne sharply.
“It is the wife of the Kami....”
“Mrs. King—!” This was one of those rare occasions when the man of many
shrouds found himself betrayed into a really spontaneous exclamation. He
added quickly: “When did it happen?”
“About a week ago, Captain.”
“But how?”
“Just fell sick of watching,” replied Tsuda simply, and with the faintest
suggestion of reproach in his voice, as though he would like delicately
to fix a slice of the responsibility on the shoulders of his inquisitor.
And Utterbourne, though he ignored the reproach, seemed to comprehend.
“My God,” he said very softly, under his breath. But already his mind was
grappling with possibilities, some of which might be realities, beyond
this fact. “Where’s King?” he asked with the former terseness.
Tsuda hesitated, as though delicately loath to be the bearer of so much
ill news. “The White Kami,” he muttered at length, “lies—gn—in a trance,
Captain. We can’t rouse him much any more. Yet sometimes he cry out about
the ogres. They are still go on, you know, yes _sir_, even if Raikō—”
“That’s enough!” exclaimed Utterbourne almost savagely, though still in a
very low voice. “I tell you it’s no time for your prattle about the gods.
Where is King?”
“In the great house, Captain.”
“What do you mean by saying he’s in a trance? Do you mean—opium?”
“Sss,” replied Tsuda, and was still.
Captain Utterbourne thrust out his hands and gripped Tsuda’s arms—felt
the man tremble in his clutch.
“If all this isn’t the truth, let’s have it now. Otherwise it will go
hard with you later.”
Utterbourne was a man who, when a situation seemed perfectly simple,
could make it appear obscure and devious, but who, if a situation was
full of doubt and mystery, could speak out bluntly from the shoulder.
“No, no—the truth!” cried Tsuda. “By all the shrines of Shinshū...!”
And in a moment he added: “The White Kami is fall on evil ways, Captain.”
“And Mrs. King?”
“We bury her—gn—near the temple, on holy ground with the rest that have
die.”
A stillness followed, then Utterbourne asked:
“What are those lights moving along there through the trees?”
Tsuda replied: “Every night send up offering to the temple for the soul
of Wife-of-the-Kami. She fall sick of watching, but now the gods are good
to her,” he murmured cryptically.
There was a dead silence. The breathing of all the group was faintly
audible.
Jerome, at the first words concerning Stella, had turned very pale.
What this talk of a kami was he couldn’t fathom. But he had known with
the vividness of lightning that the wife of the Kami meant Stella, and
that Stella was dead. He felt dazed. For anything but this he had been
prepared. Now he seemed completely cut adrift, and could scarcely think.
It seemed a new vortex in his life. Half an hour ago this would have
seemed impossible, but now he felt himself carried away by a rush of
emotion he could not understand. Married and happy, Stella could never
have meant more to him than a troubled dream; dead of unhappiness, she
took possession of his heart and wrung it.