IN WHICH A GENTLEMAN PAYS HIS DEBT
The first thing I saw on entering the room was my beach-comber. For
the rushlight, which was the cabin's sole illuminant, stood on a
soap-box beside the couch on which the outcast lay. Dressed in a
shrunken and dirty cotton suit, he was propped up against the rough mud
wall, a grimy and threadbare wrap thrown across his knees. Despite the
awful stuffiness of the place, he shivered beneath this ragged
coverlet, although his face and chest glistened with perspiration.
Once upon a time, I judged as I measured him with my eye, he must have
been a fine figure of a man. Though now coarse and bloated, with white
and flabby flesh, it would easily be seen that he was tall beyond the
ordinary with the narrow hips of the athlete. His eyes were deeply
sunk in his head; and in them flickered wanly that strange, restless
light which one sees so often in the faces of those whom Death is soon
to claim. Even amid the ravages which under-nourishment, drink and
drugs had made in his features, the influence of gentle birth might yet
be marked in the straight, firm pencilling of the eyebrows and the
well-shaped aquiline nose. I thought the man looked dreadfully ill and
I noted about nose and mouth that pinched look which can never deceive.
The whole shack appeared to consist of the one room in which I found
myself. It was pitiably bare. A table on which stood some
unappetising remnants of food was set against the wall beneath the
unglazed window which faced the sick man's couch. A broken stool and a
couple of soap-boxes, one furnished with a tin basin and a petrol can
of water, completed the furniture.
"There's a bar to go across the door," said a weak voice from the
corner where the sick man lay; "would you be good enough to put it
down? I don't want us to be disturbed...."
He cast an apprehensive glance at the window. I fitted the rough beam
across the door and approached the couch. It was merely a bed of maize
stalks.
"You're very ill, I'm afraid," I said pulling over one of the boxes and
seating myself by the Englishman. "Have you seen a doctor?"
The vagrant waved his hand in a deprecatory manner.
"My dear fellow," he said--and again I noted the refinement in his
voice,--"no sawbones can help _me_. I never held with them much
anyway. Luisa got paid to-day--she washes at Bard's, you know (it was
she who told me you were here)--and so I've got some medicine...."--he
touched a little pannikin which stood on the floor at his side--"it's
all that keeps me alive now that I can't get the 'snow!'"
I recognised the name which the drug traffic gives to cocaine.
The sick man was rent by a spasm of coughing.
"It's paradoxical," he gasped out presently, "but the more I take of my
life-giving elixir here the quicker the end will come. All I live for
now, it seems to me, is to shorten as much as possible the intervals
between the bouts."
I've seen something in my time of the cynical resignation of your
chronic drunkard. So I wasted no good advice on the poor devil, but
held my peace while he swallowed a mouthful from the pannikin at his
elbow.
"You went out of your way to do me a good turn once, Okewood," he said,
setting the vessel down and wiping his mouth on his soiled sleeve. "I
know your name, you see. I made some inquiries about you before they
ran me out of San Salvador. You got a D.S.O. in the war, I think?"
"They gave away so many!" I said idiotically. But that sort of remark
always engenders an idiotic reply.
"No, no," he insisted. "Yours was one of the right ones, Okewood; I
can see that by looking at you. You're the real type of British
officer. And, although you may not think it to see me now, I know what
I'm talking about. You fellows had your chance in the war and by Gad,
sir, some of you took it...."
I knew he was an army man and said so.
He nodded.
"Cavalry," he answered. "You might be in the cavalry, too, by your
build!"
I told him I was a field-gunner--or used to be, and then I asked him
his name.
He smiled wanly at that.
"No names, no court-martials!" he quoted.
He drank from his pannikin again.
"Call me Adams!" he said.
There was a moment's silence. The sick man moved restlessly on his
rustling couch and I heard his teeth rattle in his head. Outside, the
pulsating life of the negro quarter shattered the brooding stillness of
the tropical night. The sound of low, full-throated laughter, mingling
with the jangling of guitars, drifted up from the lane.
"Broken as a major," the sick man said abruptly. "A bad business,
very. Yes, they jailed me over it. And when I came out it was to find
every man's hand against me. It's been against me ever since! Ah,
it's a bad thing to make an enemy of England! When I think of the
humble pie I've eaten from some of these blasted counter-jumping
finnicking consuls of ours along this coast only to be thrown out of
doors at last by their Dago servants! Once go down and out in England,
and God help you! You'll never come back! Ah! it's not your own folk
who'll lend you a hand then. It's the humble people, like Luisa here
on whom I sponge, who keeps me, Okewood, who is proud to keep me...."
His voice quavered and broke. Tears welled up in his sunken eyes. One
hates to see a man break down, so I looked away. And the beachcomber
went to his pannikin for solace.
"That day at the calaboose at San Salvador," he said presently, "I
wanted to tell you who I was. Twenty-five years ago I buried my real
name. But what you did for me.... well, it was a white thing to do. I
wanted to say to you: 'Race tells, sir! You have helped one of your
own breed and upbringing.' It shall be written in our family records
that 'Such-a-one (meaning myself) of Blank in the County of So-and-So,
being in sore distress in the hands of the foreigner, was succoured by
the chivalrous intervention of Major Desmond Okewood.'"
He sighed, then added:--
"But I doubt if you would have understood my meaning!"
I found myself becoming extraordinarily interested in this grotesque
wastrel who, though sunk to the lowest depths a man may touch, managed
to cling so desperately to his pride of birth.
The outcast spoke again.
"I mustn't waste your time. But it's so rare to find one of my own
world to talk to. Listen to me, now! You stood up for me at San
Salvador and in return.... You're not a rich man, Okewood?"
I laughed.
"I have to work for my living, Adams," I answered.
"Good, good! Then you will appreciate the more the fortune I am going
to put in your way. An Eldorado to make you rich beyond the dreams
of...."
He broke off, racked by a terrible fit of coughing. The spasm left him
weak and gasping.
His talk about fortunes and the rest made me think he was a trifle
light-headed. So I made to rise from my seat.
"You're talking too much," I said soothingly. "I think I'll leave you
now and come back another day!"
But the beach-comber thrust out a hand--such a thin and wasted
hand!--and clutched my sleeve. He could not speak for the moment, but
he cast me a despairing look eloquent in its appeal to me to stay.
"A fortune," he gasped out when his breath began to come back to him.
"I'll make you rich! I want to show my gratitude to the man who knows
what is due to a.... a.... a gentleman!"
He fell back with livid face. I raised his head and held the pannikin
to his lips. It was half full of some terrible-looking, dark-brown
liquor. He drank a little, then lay back with closed eyes. He lay so
still that, with his sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, you might have
taken him for a corpse.
In a little while he was better and spoke again.
"Okewood," he said--and this time his voice was hardly above a whisper,
"I believe I know where treasure's hid. For more than a year now I've
carried my secret round with me, for the chance to get back there,
waiting to find the partner I could trust. And now Fate (with whom
I've quarrelled all my life) has played me a dirty trick to finish up.
I've found my partner when it's too late for me to share!"
He relapsed into silence again. His head drooped and his eyes were
closed so that for the moment, I thought he had fainted. But presently
he asked abruptly:--
"Have you ever heard of Cock Island?"
"Cock Island?" I repeated. "No, I don't think so. Where is it?"
"In the Pacific, about 400 miles out at sea. Many months ago--the
summer after the Armistice it was--I was serving before the mast in a
Dutch schooner--the _Huis-ten-Bosch_, her name was. I signed on at
Papeete to run to Callao with a cargo of copra. The crew were all
Kanakas, natives, you know, except for one other man who signed on with
me--Dutchey, they called him. We were on the beach together in
Tahiti...."
His fit of weakness seemed to have passed and his voice grew stronger
and his eyes brighter as he proceeded with his tale.
"Well, something went amiss with our fresh water supply," he went on,
"so we laid off at Cock Island to replenish our casks. It was a jolly
little place--you know the sort of thing, all wavy coconut palms and
wooded peaks running up steeply from the fore-shore. And, of course,
the very dickens of a surf bar. The skipper sent me and Dutchey with a
gang of Kanakas to fill up with water. We found a way in through the
bar and having landed, set the Kanakas to work to fill the casks at a
fine spring of water, cold and clear, which fell from the hillside.
Then Dutchey and I had a look round.
"I had asked our old man--the captain, you know--about Cock Island. He
had told me that, according to the Sailing Directions, it was
uninhabited. Therefore, as Dutchey and I were pushing our way through
the undergrowth to get to the high central upland, we were a bit taken
aback to come upon a grave in a clearing.
"It was a regular grave cut out of the rough grass with a mound and a
cross all shipshape and proper. The cross, which was merely two bits
of stout deal lashed together with wire, was a bit weatherbeaten and
polished smooth by the sand blown against it. It had no inscription.
Against the cross a small mirror was propped up, while in front of it
stood a bottle half embedded in the earth. The bottle contained some
writing on a piece of folded oil-silk."
"We used to bury fellows that way in France," I remarked. "One stuck
the name and particulars on a piece of paper and shoved it in a bottle
until they had time to put a cross up, don't you know?"
"I had no idea what this was," said the beach-comber, "the writing was
a fearful scrawl and rather faint at that. I couldn't make head or
tail of it. I just slipped it into my pocket, meaning to have a look
at it another time. While I had been examining the grave, the fellow
with me, the man we called Dutchey, had been rooting about in the
clearing. Presently he emerged from behind a bush with a whole
collection of junk which he laid on the ground at my feet. There was
an old newspaper, a piece of dirty packing paper and a cigar-box.
"He was a queer chap, this Dutchey. We never could quite make him out.
Personally, I thought he wasn't all there. He spoke very rarely but,
when he opened his lips, he talked some kind of German-American double
Dutch. He was very taciturn; the sort of man you know, who gives no
confidences and invites none. That was really what attracted him to me
when we chummed up on the beach at Papeete. We went through a rough
time there together, too!...."
The sick man broke off musingly. Then the cough took him again and it
was some minutes before he resumed speaking.
"Dutchey laid all this junk out in front of me rather like a dog
bringing you a stick you've thrown it. Then he said:--
"'Dat bunch o' toughs from San Salvador bin here!'
"Dutchey's conversational bursts generally opened enigmatically and I
knew from experience that it was no use interrupting him to ask for
enlightenment. One could only hope it might come in due course.
"Dutchey lifted up the newspaper.
"'De _Heraldo_ of San Salvador of nineteen eighteen--you see de date
March Seventeen?'
"He raised up the piece of wrapping paper.
"'You savvy Jose Garcia's store at San Salvador?'
"(I should say I did, Okewood. He was the swine that jugged me over
his rotten bill!)
"'Dis from Garcia's store! You see de name printed on it?'
"Finally he picked up the cigar-box and opening it displayed a row of
mouldy cigars with a yellow band.
"'Black Pablo!' he said.
"'How do you mean, Dutchey?' I asked.
"'Dere ain't but the one man in San Salvador smoke dese ceegyars,' he
answered, 'and dat's Black Pablo. Jose Garcia smuggles dem in express
for him. Dis sure is fonny!'
"He broke into a fit of laughter, dribbling a good deal.
"'Dis um de l'il island!' he exclaimed and went off again.
"'But who is Black Pablo?' I demanded. 'Is he the head of this gang?'
"'Is he.... hell?' cried Dutchey. 'Dere ain't no one amounts to a row
o' beans since El Cojo come along. Black Pablo, Neque, Mahon....
dere's not one of them dawg-gorn four-flushers dare open deir face when
El Cojo's round. Dey shoot off deir mouth to me 'bout deir l'il
island. Pretty goddam mysterious 'bout it, too. No blab to Dutchey,
dey say. El Cojo won't have it. But Dutchey knows. Blarst me
sowl....'
"Dutchey had a great flow of language. And he let it rip as he told me
the way he meant to crow over El Cojo and his gang when he got back to
San Salvador."
Adams had warmed to his story and a little red had crept into his
cheeks. He was an excellent _raconteur_ and he seemed to enjoy
reproducing the extraordinary lingo of his friend Dutchey.
"We rowed over to the ship again," he resumed, "and as soon as I had a
moment alone I had another look at the writing on the oilsilk. But I
could make nothing of it. I thought I'd keep it, though, just for
luck, so I strung it round my neck and forgot all about it until one
day in the calaboose at San Salvador I overheard a very curious
conversation. Can you reach the pannikin? Thanks!"
The outcast drank and wiped his mouth on the back of his dirty white
cuff.
"You know the way they lock one up in these Dago jails--all in a common
room together. Well, a day or two after I got in I was sitting on the
floor with my back against the wall taking a bit of a siesta when
suddenly I heard the name 'Neque.' I recollected at once that Dutchey
had spoken of 'Neque' as one of El Cojo's gang because once, years ago,
I had a Spanish pal whose nickname was 'Neque'--I used to play polo
with him in Madrid--and the name was familiar to me.
"I opened my eyes and saw two of the prisoners sitting on the floor
within a yard of me talking together in Spanish. Everybody else was
asleep. The one whom I discovered to be Neque was a young fellow of
about twenty-five, very slim and wiry. His companion was a dark man
with a yellow face, a broken nose, and a patch over one eye. I closed
my eyes quickly again and pretended to be asleep.
"'Such accursed luck!' the younger man said, 'five hundred thousand
dollars in gold and you and I will not be there to share it!'
"'_Caraco_!' replied the fat man, 'but who shall say it is there?'
"'Imbecile!' exclaimed Neque. 'I was with El Cojo when he examined the
Kanaka. Did not this Kanaka sail in the ship which brought the
foreigner and the gold to Cock Island? He was one of those, this
Kanaka, who survived the influenza sickness that swept the vessel. He
told El Cojo--I, Neque, heard it with my own ears--how the foreigner
was landed alone with the gold, how he remained by himself on the
island for two days and how, when the Kanakas rowed in from the ship to
fetch him, they found him with death on his face--the mauve death, you
and I have seen it, per Dios, eh? And the boxes of gold gone! The
foreigner gave them a bottle with a writing in it, bidding them swear
that they would put it on his grave or he would haunt them. Then he
died and the Kanakas buried him and having placed this object on the
grave as he had ordered, fled from the island in the ship!'
"The fat man spat.
"'Who shall believe a Kanaka?' he said contemptuously.
"'The foreigner was the only white man with these natives,' argued
Neque. 'They feared him and they did as he bade them lest his spirit
should torment them. Besides the grave has been seen on the island
since....'
"At that the fat man woke up and became interested.
"'Never!' he exclaimed in astonishment.
"And then Neque told him of a conversation El Cojo had had with a 'mad
seaman,' in whom it was not difficult to recognise Dutchey, who had
landed with a companion from a Dutch schooner and had seen the grave
and on it a bottle. The other man, the 'loco' (madman) had said, had
taken out of the bottle a piece of writing.
"'This other man,' questioned his companion. 'Who was he?'
"'An Inglez,' replied Neque, 'but the mad seaman did not know his name
and had not seen him since they had landed.'
"At that the fat man spat again.
"'Bah!' he said, 'these _locitos_ are cunning. There was no _Inglez_.
The mad seaman has that writing which tells where the gold lies as sure
as men call me Black Pablo....'
"The name brought back to me Cock Island in a flash; I seemed to see
Dutchey, with his puzzled, woe-begone expression, holding a handful of
mouldy cigars, the cigars that Jose Garcia imported for Black Pablo.
And looking at the fellow with his single eye and his hideous twisted
nose I couldn't help feeling glad, my friend, that he doubted my
existence...."
The beach-comber stopped and looked at me. Then he thrust a lean hand
inside the bosom of his ragged jacket.
"You've now heard the tale for what it's worth, Okewood," said he, "and
here's that dead man's message! Take good care of it! It may mean a
fortune for you!...."
He pulled out a greasy package which hung on a cord round his neck. He
unfastened the cord and handed me a flat, narrow parcel. I was going
to open it; but he stayed my hand.
"Not here," he enjoined in a low whisper. Then, with a wistful smile,
he added:--
"I'm afraid it's a dangerous present I'm making you, old man!"
"Why do you say that?" I demanded.
The sick man turned his head and looked at the unglazed window
protected only by a pair of rough-carpentered wooden shutters. In the
street outside someone was lightly thrumming a guitar. Now and then
came the sound of soft laughter. Otherwise the negro village had sunk
to rest. All was still without and the plaintive chords resounded
distinctly through the hot night.
"A week after I was shipped from San Salvador," he said, "they found
Dutchey's body in the dock with a noose round his neck. Poor old
Dutchey who never harmed anybody! Listen!"
The rich, full-throated tenor voice, which I had heard as I was
following Doña Luisa through the negro quarter, suddenly burst into
song quite close at hand. On a sad and plaintive melody it sang with a
liquid enunciation which made every chord distinct:--
"_Se murio, y sobre su cara
"Un panuelito le heche
"For que no toque la tierra
"Esa bocca que yo bese!_"
The beach-comber held up his hand as the melody died away on a minor
key.
"It is time for you to go!" he whispered. "The door over there,
opposite the one by which you came in, leads to the yard at the back.
Cross the yard, take the path through the plantation, bear always to
the right and you will strike the main road to the docks. Go as
quietly as you can and don't dawdle on the way.... Ah!"
Again the singer in the lane sent his plaintive melody soaring to the
stars. He chanted his little verse through once more. Feebly, the
sick man beat time with his hand.
"He's been singing on and off all the evening, Okewood," he murmured.
"Always the same song. I Englished it while I was waiting for you.
Listen!"
In a soft, quavering voice he whispered rather than sang:--
"_She died and on her face
I laid a napkin fine
Lest the cold earth should touch
Those lips I pressed to mine...._"
"Ah!" he sighed as the song died away and silence fell on us once more;
"when the hour strikes for me, Okewood, there'll be no one, except,
maybe, old Mammie Luisa there, to lay a pretty thought like that in my
coffin!"
He held out his hand.
"Now go!" he bade me. "And good luck go with you!"
I took his proffered hand.
"I will come again and see you, Adams," said I. "I expect you'll want
to hear what I've made of the message!"
He was looking at me whimsically.
"No, Okewood," he said, shaking his head, "I'm thinking we shan't meet
again!"
I was thinking the same; for, in truth, the man looked at death's door.
The unseen singer had attacked another verse.
"_Mir a si seria bella...._"
The opening words came resonantly to me as I quietly stole from the
room. At the door I turned for a last look at the beachcomber. The
candle was guttering away and its trembling light illuminated only the
pinched, worn features and the sombre, suffering eyes. The grossness
of that broken body was mercifully swallowed up in the shadows. To and
fro across the candle's feeble gleam the hands moved in cadence with
the song....