I dined that night at Lockerbie's. There was no Mrs. Lockerbie, and it
was a man's party. Follet was there, of course, and Schneider, too, his
teeth and his clothes whiter than the rest of ours. I was surprised to
see Schneider, for Lockerbie had suspected the Teuton of designs on his
very privately and not too authentically owned lagoon. Lockerbie did a
fair business in pearls; no great beauties or values among them, but a
good marketable cheap product. But no one held out very long against any
one on Naapu.
Schneider was drunk before he ever got to Lockerbie's that night. It was
part of the Naapu ritual not to drink just before you reached your
host's house, and that ritual, it soon became evident, Schneider had not
observed. I saw Lockerbie scowl, and Follet wince, and some of the
others stare. I could not help being amused, for I knew that no one
would object to his being in that condition an hour later. The only
point was that he should not have arrived like that. If Schneider had
had anything resembling a skin, he would have felt about as comfortable
as Mother Eve at a woman's club. Lockerbie's scowl was no joke; and
Follet had a way of wriggling his backbone gracefully.--It was up to me
to save Schneider, and I did. The honor of Naapu was nothing to me; and
by dint of almost embracing him, I made myself a kind of absorbent for
his worst breaks. It was not a pleasant hour for me before the rest
began to loosen up.
In my eagerness to prevent Lockerbie from insulting his guest, I drank
nothing, myself, after the first cocktail. So it came to pass that by
the time I could safely leave Schneider to the others, I found myself
unwontedly incarnating the spirit of criticism.
They were a motley crowd, coalesced for the moment into a vinous
solidarity. Follet spat his words out very sweetly; his poisonous grace
grew on him in his cups. Lockerbie, warmed by wine, was as simple--and
charming--as a wart-hog. Old Maskell, who had seen wind-jammer days and
ways and come very close, I suspected, to piracy, always prayed at least
once. Pasquier, the successful merchant who imported finery for the
ladies of Naapu, rolled out socialistic platitudes--he was always
flanked, at the end of the feast, by two empty chairs. Little Morlot
began the endless tale of his conquests in more civilized lands: all
patchouli and hair-oil. Anything served as a cue for all of them to dive
into the welter of their own preoccupations. Just because they knew each
other and Naapu so well, they seemed free to wander at will in the
secret recesses of their predilections and their memories. I felt like
Circe--or perhaps Ulysses; save that I had none of that wise man's
wisdom.
The reward of my abstinence, I found, was to be the seeing home of
Schneider. It would have come more naturally to Follet, who also lived
at Dubois's, but Follet was fairly snarling at Schneider. French Eva's
name had been mentioned. On my word, as I saw Follet curving his spinal
column, and Schneider lighting up his face with his perfect teeth, I
thought with an immense admiration of the unpolished and loose-hung
Stires amid the eternal smell of tar and dust. It was a mere discussion
of her hair, incoherent and pointless enough. No scandal, even from
Schneider. There had been some sense, of a dirty sort, in his talk to
me; but more wine had scattered his wits.
I took Schneider home, protesting to myself that I would never be so
caught again. He lurched rather stiffly along, needing my help only when
we crossed the unpaved roads in the darkness. Follet went ahead, and I
gave him a good start. When we reached the hotel, Ching Po surged up out
of the black veranda and crooked his arm for Schneider to lean upon.
They passed into the building, silently, like old friends.
A stupid indisposition housed me for a little after Lockerbie's feast. I
resented the discomfort of temporary illness, but rather liked being
alone, and told Joe to refuse me to callers--even the Maürs, who were
more like friends and neighbors than any one else in the place. My own
affairs should not obtrude on this tale at all; and I will not go into
them more than to say that I came to the end of my dosing and emerged
upon the world after three days. The foolish thought came to me that I
would have a look at French Eva's hair, of which little Morlot had
spoken in such gallant hiccoughs.
The lady was not upon her veranda, nor yet in her poultry-yard, as I
paced past her dwelling. I had got nearly by, when I heard myself
addressed from the unglazed window.
"Monsieur!"
I strolled back, wondering if at last I should be invited to hear the
gramophone--her chiefest treasure. The mass of hair spread out of the
crude opening in the bamboo wall, for all the world like Rapunzel's. I
faced a great curtain of black. Then hands appeared and made a rift in
it, and a face showed in the loose black frame.
"Monsieur, what is the German for 'cochon'?"
My German is scanty, and I reflected. "'Schweinhund' will do, I think,"
I answered after consideration.
"A thousand thanks." The face disappeared, and the hair was pulled after
it.
I waited. I could hear nothing distinctly, but in a moment Schneider
came running quickly and stiffly down the creaky ladder from the door.
He saw me--of that I am sure--but I did not blame him for not greeting
one who had doubtless been giving aid and comfort to the enemy. I
squatted on the low railing of French Eva's compound, but she herself
was not forthcoming. After ten minutes I heard a commotion in the
poultry yard, and found her at the back among her chickens. Her hair was
piled up into an amazing structure: it looked as if some one had placed
the great pyramid on top of the sphinx.
"Do you need my further services?"
She smiled. "Not in the least. But I like to speak to animals, when
possible, in their own language. It saves time." By way of illustration,
she clucked to a group of hens. She turned her back to me, and I was
dismissed from her barefoot presence.
Stires was my logical goal after that, and I found him busy with the
second mate of a tramp just in from Papua and bound for the Carolines.
After the man had gone, I informed Stires of the episode. For a man who
had damned Schneider up and down for making presents to a lady, Stires
reacted disappointingly.
"He got his, eh?" was all he said.
"Evidently. You don't seem to be much affected."
"So long as she's shipped him, that's all right," he drawled.
"I can't make out what your interest in the matter is," I suggested.
"Sure you can't," Stires began to whistle creakily, and took up some
nameless object to repair.
"How long is Schneider staying round these parts?"
"Not long, I guess. I heard he was leaving on the Sydney packet next
week."
"So you're only up against Follet?" I pressed him.
"I ain't up against anybody. Miss Eva'll settle her own affairs."
"Excuse me." And I made the gesture of withdrawing.
"Don't get het up under the collar," he protested. "Only I never did
like this discussing ladies. She don't cotton to me for some reason. I'm
free to say I admire her very much. I guess that's all."
"Nothing I can do for you, then?"
Stires lighted a pipe. "If you're so set on helping me, you might watch
over Ching Po a little."
"What is he up to?"
"Don't know. But it ain't like him to be sitting round idle when there's
harm to be done. He's got something up his sleeve--and a Chink's
sleeve's big enough to hold a good-sized crime," he finished, with a
grim essay of humor.
"Are these mere suspicions on your part, or do you know that something's
up?"
"Most things happen on Naapu before there's been any time for
suspicion," he rejoined, squinting at his pipe, which had stopped
drawing. "These folks lie low and sing little songs, and just as you're
dropping off there's a knife somewhere.--Have you heard anything about
the doings up yonder?" He indicated the mountain that rose, sharply cut
and chasmed, back of the town.
"Trouble with the natives? No."
"This is the time o' year when the heathen begin to feel their oats.
Miss Eva, she's interested in their superstitions. They don't usually
come to anything--just a little more work for the police if they get
drunk and run amuck. The constabulary is mostly off on the spree. They
have gods of wood and stone up in the caves yonder, you know. But it's
always a kind of uneasy feel to things till they settle down again."
I leaned against a coil of rope and pursued the subject. "But none of
the people you and I are interested in are concerned with native orgies.
We are all what you might call agnostics."
"Speak for yourself, sir. I'm a Methodist. 'Tain't that they mix
themselves up in the doings. But--well, you haven't lived through the
merry month of May on Naapu. I tell you, this blessed island ain't big
enough to hold all that froth without everybody feeling it. Just because
folks don't know what's going on up yonder it kind of relaxes 'em. I
don't say the Kanakas do anything they shouldn't, except get drunk, and
joy-ride down waterfalls, and keep up an infernal tom-toming. But it
sort of gets on your nerves. And I wouldn't call Naapu straitlaced,
either. Everybody seems to feel called on to liquor up, this time o'
year. If it isn't one pretext it's another. Things folks have been kind
of hesitating over, in the name of morals, they start out and perform,
regardless. The authorities, they get worried because a Kanaka's spree
lands him, like as not, in a blackbirder. Mighty queer craft hang round
at this season. There ain't supposed to be anything doing in these
blessed islands that ain't aboveboard, but 'tisn't as though the place
was run by Americans."
"And I am to watch Ching Po? Where does he come in?"
"I wish't I knew. He makes money out of it somehow. Dope, I suppose. Old
man Dubois ain't his only customer, by a long shot."
"Ching Po isn't likely to go near French Eva, is he? They don't speak,
I've noticed."
"No, they don't. But that Chink's little ways are apt to be indirect.
She's afraid of him--afraid of the dust under her feet, as you might
say."
Stires puffed meditatively at his pipe. Then a piratical-looking
customer intervened, and I left.
Leisurely, all this, and not significant to the unpeeled eye. And then,
within twenty-four hours of the time when I had left Stires, things
began to happen. It was as if a tableau had suddenly decided to become a
"movie." All those fixed types began to dash about and register the most
inconvenient emotions. Let me set down a few facts diary fashion.
To begin with, when I got up the next morning, Joe had disappeared. No
sign of breakfast, no smell of coffee. It was late for breakfast at
Dubois's, and I started out to get my own. There were no eggs, and I
sauntered over to French Eva's to purchase a few. The town looked queer
to me as I walked its grassy streets. Only when I turned into the lane
that led to French Eva's did I realize why. It was swept clean of
natives. There weren't any. Not a stevedore, not a fisherman, not a
brown fruit-vender did I see.
French Eva greeted me impatiently. She was not doing business,
evidently, for she wore her silk dress and white canvas shoes. Also, a
hat. Her face was whiter than ever, and, just offhand, I should have
said that something had shaken her. She would not let me in, but made me
wait while she fetched the eggs. I took them away in a little basket of
plaited palm-fronds, and walked through the compound as nonchalantly as
I could, pretending that I had not seen what I knew I had seen--Ching
Po's face within, a foot or two behind the window opening. It startled
me so much that I resolved to keep away from Stires: I wished to digest
the phenomenon quite alone.
At ten o'clock, my breakfast over, I opened my door to a knock, and
Follet's bloodshot eyes raked me eagerly. He came in with a rush, as if
my hit-or-miss bungalow were sanctuary. I fancied he wanted a drink, but
I did not offer him one. He sat down heavily--for all his
lightness--like a man out of breath. I saw a pistol-butt sticking out of
his pocket and narrowed my eyes upon him. Follet seldom looked me up in
my own house, though we met frequently enough in all sorts of other
places. It was full five minutes before he came to the point. Meanwhile
I remarked on Joe's defection.
"Yes," he said, "the exodus has begun."
"Is there really anything in that?"
"What?" he asked sharply.
"Well--the exodus."
"Oh, yes. They do have some sort of shindy--not interesting to any one
but a folk-lorist. Chiefly an excuse, I fancy, for drinking too much.
Schneider says he's going to investigate. I rather wish they'd do him
in."
"What have you got against him--except that he's an unpleasant person?"
By this roundabout way Follet had reached his point. "He's been trying
to flirt with my lady-love."
"French Eva?"
"The same." His jauntiness was oppressive, dominated as it was by those
perturbed and hungry eyes.
"Oh--" I meditated. But presently I decided. "Then why do you let Ching
Po intrude upon her in her own house?"
"Ching Po?" He quivered all over as if about to spring up from his
chair, but he did not actually rise. It was just a supple, snake-like
play of his body--most unpleasant.
"I saw him there an hour ago--when I fetched my eggs. My cook's off, you
see."
Still that play of muscles underneath the skin, for a moment or two.
Then he relaxed, and his eyes grew dull. Follet was not, I fancy, what
the insurance men call a good risk.
"She can take care of herself, I expect," he said. They all seemed surer
of that than gentlemen in love are wont to be.
"She and Ching Po don't hit it off very well, I've noticed."
"No, they don't." He admitted it easily, as if he knew all about it.
"I wonder why." I had meant to keep my hands off the whole thing, but I
could not escape the tension in the Naapu air. Those gods of wood and
stone were not without power--of infection, at the least.
"Better not ask." He bit off the words and reached for a cigarette.
"Does any one know?"
"An old inhabitant can guess. But why she should be afraid of him--even
the old inhabitant doesn't know. There's Dubois; but you might as well
shriek at a corpse as ask Dubois anything."
"You don't think that I'd better go over and make sure that Ching Po
isn't annoying her?"
Follet's lips drew back over his teeth in his peculiar smile. "If I had
thought he could annoy her, I'd have been over there myself a short time
ago. If he really annoyed French Eva any day, he'd be nothing but a neat
pattern of perforations, and he knows it."
"Then what has the oldest inhabitant guessed as to the cause of the
quarrel?" I persisted. Since I was in it--well, I hate talk that runs in
circles.
"She hasn't honored me with her confidence. But, for a guess, I should
say that in the happy time now past he had perhaps asked her to marry
him. And--Naapu isn't Europe, but, you know, even here a lady might
resent that."
"But why does she let him into her house?"
"That I can't tell you. But I can almost imagine being afraid of Ching
Po myself."
"Why don't you settle it up, one way or the other?" I _was_ a newcomer,
you see.
Follet laughed and took another cigarette. "We do very well as we are, I
think. And I expect to go to Auckland next year." His voice trailed off
fatuously in a cloud of smoke, and I knew then just why I disliked him.
The fibre was rotten. You couldn't even hang yourself with it.
I was destined to keep open house that day. Before Follet's last
smoke-puff had quite slid through the open window, Madame Maür, who was
perpetually in mourning, literally darkened my doorway. Seeing Follet
she became nervous--he did affect women, as I have said. What with her
squint and her smile, she made a spectacle of herself before she panted
out her staccato statement. Doctor Maür was away with a patient on the
other side of the island; and French Eva had been wringing her hands
unintelligibly on the Maürs' porch. She--Madame Maür--couldn't make out
what the girl wanted.
Now, this was nothing to break in on me for; and Madame Maür, in spite
of her squint and her smile, was both sensible and good--broke,
moreover, to the ridiculous coincidences and unfathomable dramas of
Naapu. Why hadn't she treated the girl for hysterics? But I gathered
presently that there was one element in it that she couldn't bear. That
element, it appeared, was Ching Po, perfectly motionless in the public
road--no trespasser, therefore--watching. She had got Eva into the house
to have her hysterics out in a darkened room. But Ching Po never
stirred. Madame Maür thought he never would stir. She couldn't order him
off the public thoroughfare, and there was no traffic for him to block.
He was irreproachable and intolerable. After half an hour of it, she had
run out across her back garden to ask my help. He must go away or she,
too, would have hysterics. And Madame Maür covered the squint with a
black-edged handkerchief. If he would walk about, or whistle, or mop his
yellow face, she wouldn't mind. But she was sure he hadn't so much as
blinked, all that time. If a man could die standing up, she should think
he was dead. She wished he were. If he stayed there all day--as he had a
perfect right to do--she, Madame Maür, would have to be sent home to a
_maison de santé_.--And she began to make guttural noises. As Félicité
Maür had seen, in her time, things that no self-respecting _maison de
santé_ would stand for, I began to believe that I should have to do
something. I rose reluctantly. I was about fed up with Ching Po, myself.
I helped Madame Maür out of her chair, and fetched my hat. Then I looked
for Follet, to apologize for leaving him. I had neither seen nor heard
him move, but he was waiting for us on the porch. He could be as
noiseless on occasion as Ching Po.
"You'd better not come into this," I suggested; for there was no staying
power, I felt, in Follet.
He seemed to shiver all over with irritation. "Oh, damn his yellow soul,
I'll marry her!" He spat it out--with no sweetness, this time.
Madame Maür swung round to him like a needle to the pole. "You may save
yourself the _corvée_. She won't have you. Not if any of the things she
has been sobbing out are true. She loves the other man--down by the
docks. _Your_ compatriot." She indicated me. Her French was clear and
clicking, with a slight provincial accent.
"Oh--" He breathed it out at great length, exhaling. Yet it sounded like
a hiss. "Stires, eh?" And he looked at me.
I had been thinking, as we stood on the steps. "How am I to move Ching
Po off?" I asked irritably. It had suddenly struck me that, inspired by
Madame Maür, we were embarking on sheer idiocy.
"I'll move him," replied Follet with a curious intonation.
At that instant my eye lighted again on the pistol. "Not with that." I
jerked my chin ever so slightly in the direction of his pocket.
"Oh, take it if you want it. Come on." He thrust the weapon into my
innocent hand and began to pull at my bougainvillea vine as if it were
in his way. Some of the splendid petals fluttered about Madame Maür's
head.
We reached the Maürs' front porch by a circuitous route--through the
back garden and the house itself--and paused to admire the view. Yes, we
looked for Ching Po as if we were tourists and he were Niagara.
"He hasn't moved yet." This was Madame Maür's triumphant whimper.
Inarticulate noises somewhere near indicated that French Eva was still
in sanctuary.
Follet grunted. Then he unleashed his supple body and was half way to
the gate in a single arrow flight. I followed, carrying the pistol still
in my hand. My involuntary haste must have made me seem to brandish it.
I heard a perfectly civilized scream from Madame Maür, receding into the
background--which shows that I was, myself, acquiring full speed ahead.
By the time Follet reached the gate, Ching Po moved. I saw Follet
gaining on him, and then saw no more of them; for my feet acting on some
inspiration of their own which never had time to reach my brain, took a
short cut to the water front. I raced past French Eva's empty house,
pounding my way through the gentle heat of May, to Stires's
establishment. I hoped to cut them off. But Ching Po must have had a
like inspiration, for when I was almost within sight of my goal--fifty
rods ahead--the Chinaman emerged from a side lane between me and it. He
was running like the wind. Follet was nowhere to be seen. Ching Po and I
were the only mites on earth's surface. The whole population,
apparently, had piously gone up the mountain in order to let us have our
little drama out alone. I do not know how it struck Ching Po; but I felt
very small on that swept and garnished scene.
I was winded; and with the hope of reaching Stires well dashed, my legs
began to crumple. I sank down for a few seconds on the low wall of some
one's compound. But I kept a keen eye out for Follet. I thought Stires
could look out for himself, so long as it was just Ching Po. It was the
triangular mix-up I was afraid of; even though I providentially had
Follet's pistol. And, for that matter, where was Follet? Had he given up
the chase? Gone home for that drink, probably.
But in that I had done him injustice; for in a few moments he debouched
from yet a third approach. Ching Po had evidently doubled, somehow, and
baffled him.
I rose to meet him, and he slowed down to take me on. By this time the
peaceful water front had absorbed the Chinaman; and if Stires was at
home, the two were face to face. I made this known to Follet.
"Give me back my pistol," he panted.
"Not on your life," I said, and jammed it well into my pocket.
"What in hell have you got to do with it?" he snarled.
"Stires is a friend of mine." I spoke with some difficulty, for though
we were not running, we were hitting up a quick pace. Follet was all
colors of the rainbow, and I looked for him to give out presently, but
he kept on.
"Ching Po, too?" he sneered.
"Not a bit of it. But they won't stand for murder in open daylight--even
_your_ friends."
We were very near Stires's place by this time. There was no sign of any
one in the yard; it was inhabited solely by the familiar rusty monsters
of Stires's trade. As we drew up alongside, I looked through the window.
Stires and Ching Po were within, and from the sibilant noise that
stirred the peaceful air, I judged that Ching Po was talking. Their
backs were turned to the outer world. I pushed open the door, and Follet
and I entered.
For the first time I found myself greeted with open hostility by my
fellow countryman. "What the devil are you doing here?" I was annoyed.
The way they all dragged me in and then cursed me for being there! The
Chinaman stood with his hands folded in his wicked sleeves, his eyes on
the ground. In the semi-gloom of Stires's warehouse, his face looked
like a mouldy orange. He was yellower even than his race
permitted--outside and in.
"If I can't be of any service to you or Miss Eva, I should be only too
glad to go home," I retorted.
"What about her?" asked Stires truculently. He advanced two steps
towards me.
"I'm not looking for trouble--" It seemed to me just then that I hated
Naapu as I had never hated any place in the world. "She's having
hysterics up at Madame Maür's. I fancy that's why we're here. Your
yellow friend there seems to have been responsible for the hysterics.
This other gentleman and I"--I waved a hand at Follet, who stood, spent
and silent, beside me--"resented it. We thought we would follow him up."
How much Ching Po understood of plain English, I do not know. One always
conversed with him in the pidgin variety. But he certainly looked at
peace with the world: much as the devil must have looked, gazing at
Pompeii in the year '79.
"You can do your resenting somewheres else," snapped Stires. "Both of
you."
"I go," murmured Ching Po. He stepped delicately towards the door.
"No, you don't!" Follet's foot shot out to trip him. But the Chinaman
melted past the crude interruption.
"I go," he repeated, with ineffable sadness, from the threshold.
The thing was utterly beyond me. I stood stock-still. The two men,
Follet and Stires, faced each other for an instant. Then Follet swung
round and dashed after Ching Po. I saw him clutch the loose black sleeve
and murmur in the flat ear.
Stires seemed to relent towards me now that Follet was gone. "Let 'em
alone," he grunted. "The Chink won't do anything but tell him a few
things. And like as not, he knows 'em already, the--" The word indicated
his passionate opinion of Follet.
"I was called in by Madame Maür," I explained weakly. "Ching Po wouldn't
leave the road in front of her compound. And--Miss Eva was inside,
having hysterics. Ching Po had been with her earlier. Now you know all
I know, and as I'm not wanted anywhere, I'll go. I assure you I'm very
glad to."
I was not speaking the strictest truth, but I saw no reason to pour out
Madame Maür's revelations just then upon Stires's heated soul. Nor would
I pursue the subject of Follet.
Stires sank down on something that had once been an office-chair. Thence
he glowered at me. I had no mind to endure his misdirected anger, and I
turned to go. But in the very instant of my turning from him I saw
tragedy pierce through the mask of rage. The man was suffering; he could
no longer hold his eyes and lips to the expression of anger. I spoke to
him very gently.
"Has Miss Eva really anything to fear from that miserable Chinaman?"
Stires bowed his head on his hands. "Not a thing, now. He's done his
damnedest. It only took a minute for him to spit it out."
"Will he spit it out to Follet?"
"You bet he will. But I've got a kind of a hunch Follet knew all along."
"I'm sure he didn't--whatever it is."
"Well, he does by now. They must be nearly back to the ho-tel. I'm kind
of busy this morning"--he waved his hand round that idle scene--"and I
guess--"
"Certainly. I'm going now." I spared him the effort of polishing off his
lie. The man wanted to be alone with his trouble, and that was a state
of mind I understood only too well.
The circumstantial evidence I had before me as I walked back to my own
house led inevitably to one verdict. I could almost reconstruct the
ignoble pidgin-splutter in which Ching Po had told Stires, and was even
now telling Follet. The wonder to me was that any one believed the
miserable creature. Truth wouldn't be truth if it came from Ching Po.
Yet if two men who were obviously prepossessed in the lady's favor were
so easily to be convinced by his report, some old suspicions, some
forgotten facts must have rushed out of the dark to foregather with it.
French Eva had been afraid of the Chinaman; yet even Follet had
pooh-poohed her fears; and her reputation was--or had been--well-nigh
stainless on Naapu, which is, to say the least, a smudgy place.
Still--there was only one road for reason to take, and in spite of these
obstacles it wearily and doggedly took it.
Joe, of course, was still absent; and though I was never more in need of
food, my larder was empty. I would not go to Dubois's and encounter
Follet and Ching Po. Perhaps Madame Maür would give me a sandwich. I
wanted desperately to have done with the whole sordid business; and had
there been food prepared for me at home, I think I should have
barricaded myself there. But my hunger joined hands with a lurking
curiosity. Between them they drove me to Madame Maür's.
The lady bustled about at once to supply my needs. Her husband was still
away, and lunch there was not in any proper sense. But she fed me with
odd messes and endless cups of coffee. Hunger disappeared leaving
curiosity starkly apparent.
"How's Eva?" I asked.