MYNHEER MULLER'S DREAM
The Dutch gun-boat _Prins Lodewyk_, a terror to evil-doers in the Java
and Celebes seas, steamed smartly up Bulungan Bay and swung into
anchorage a quarter of a mile below the assemblage of junks and Malay
proas clustered at the mouth of Bulungan River. She carried a new flag
below her ensign, the resident's flag. As she swung around, her guns
barked a double salute, first to the flag and then to the resident.
Peter Gross and his company were come to Bulungan.
The pert brass cannon of the stockade answered gun for gun. It was the
yapping of terrier against mastiff, for the artillery of the fortress
was of small caliber and an ancient pattern. Its chief service was to
intimidate the natives of the town who had once been bombarded during an
unfortunate rebellion and had never quite forgotten the sensation of
being under shell-fire.
Peter Gross leaned over the rail of the vessel and looked fixedly
shoreward. His strong, firm chin was grimly set. There were lines in his
face that had not been there a few weeks before when he was tendered and
accepted his appointment as resident. Responsibility was sitting
heavily upon his shoulders, for he now realized the magnitude of the
task he had so lightly assumed.
Captain Carver joined him. "All's well, so far, Mr. Gross," he observed.
Peter Gross let the remark stand without comment for a moment. "Ay,
all's well so far," he assented heavily.
There was another pause.
"Are we going ashore this afternoon?" Carver inquired.
"That is my intention."
"Then you'll want the boys to get their traps on deck. At what hour will
you want them?"
"I think I shall go alone," Peter Gross replied quietly.
Carver looked up quickly. "Not alone, Mr. Gross," he expostulated.
Peter Gross looked sternly shoreward at the open water-front of Bulungan
town, where dugouts, sampans, and crude bark canoes were frantically
shooting about to every point of the compass in helter-skelter
confusion.
"I think it would be best," he said.
Carver shook his head. "I don't think I'd do it, Mr. Gross," he advised
gravely. "I don't think you ought to take the chance."
"To convince an enemy you are not afraid is often half the fight," Peter
Gross observed.
"A good rule, but it doesn't apply to a pack of assassins," Carver
replied. "And that's what we seem to be up against. You can't take too
big precautions against whelps that stab in the dark."
Peter Gross attempted no contradiction. The ever increasing concourse of
scantily clad natives along the shore held his attention. Carver scanned
his face anxiously.
"They pretty nearly got you at Batavia, Mr. Gross," he reminded, anxiety
overcoming his natural disinclination to give a superior unsolicited
advice.
"You may be right," Peter Gross conceded mildly.
Carver pushed his advantage. "If Ah Sing's tong men will take a chance
at murdering you in Batavia under the nose of the governor, they won't
balk at putting you out of the way in Bulungan, a thousand miles from
nowhere. There's a hundred ways they can get rid of a man and make it
look like an accident."
"We must expect to take some risks."
Perceiving the uselessness of argument, Carver made a final plea. "At
least let me go with you," he begged.
Peter Gross sighed and straightened to his full six feet two. "Thank
you, captain," he said, "but I must go alone. I want to teach Bulungan
one thing to-day--that Peter Gross is not afraid."
While Captain Carver was vainly trying to dissuade Peter Gross from
going ashore, Kapitein Van Slyck hastened from his quarters at the fort
to the _controlleur's_ house. Muller was an uncertain quantity in a
crisis, the captain was aware; it was vital that they act in perfect
accord. He found his associate pacing agitatedly in the shade of a
screen of nipa palms between whose broad leaves he could watch the trim
white hull and spotless decks of the gun-boat.
Muller was smoking furiously. At the crunch of Van Slyck's foot on the
coraled walk he turned quickly, with a nervous start, and his face
blanched.
"Oh, _kapitein_," he exclaimed with relief, "is it you?"
"Who else would it be?" Van Slyck growled, perceiving at once that
Muller had worked himself into a frenzy of apprehension.
"I don't know. I thought, perhaps, Cho Seng--"
"You look as though you'd seen a ghost. What's there about Cho Seng to
be afraid of?"
"--that Cho Seng had come to tell me Mynheer Gross was here," Muller
faltered.
Van Slyck looked at him keenly, through narrowed lids.
"Hum!" he grunted with emphasis. "So it is Mynheer Gross already with
you, eh, Muller?"
There was a significant emphasis on the "_mynheer_."
Muller flushed. "Don't get the notion I'm going to sweet-mouth to him
simply because he is resident, _kapitein_," he retorted, recovering his
dignity. "You know me well enough--my foot is in this as deeply as
yours."
"Yes, and deeper," Van Slyck replied significantly.
The remark escaped Muller. He was thrusting aside the screen of nipa
leaves to peer toward the vessel.
"No," he exclaimed with a sigh of relief, "he has not left the ship yet.
There are two civilians at the forward rail--come, _kapitein_, do you
think one of them is he?"
He opened the screen wider for Van Slyck. The captain stepped forward
with an expression of bored indifference and peered through the
aperture.
"H-m!" he muttered. "I wouldn't be surprised if the big fellow is Gross.
They say he has the inches."
"I hope to heaven he stays aboard to-day," Muller prayed fervently.
"He can come ashore whenever he wants to, for all I care," Van Slyck
remarked.
Muller straightened and let the leaves fall back.
"_Lieve hemel, neen, kapitein_," he expostulated. "What would I do if he
should question me. My reports are undone, there are a dozen cases to be
tried, I have neglected to settle matters with some of the chiefs, and
my accounts are in a muddle. I don't see how I am ever going to
straighten things out--then there are those other things--what will he
say?"
He ran his hands through his hair in nervous anxiety. Van Slyck
contemplated his agitation with a darkening frown. "Is the fool going to
pieces?" was the captain's harrowing thought. He clapped a hand on
Muller's shoulder with an assumption of bluff heartiness.
"'Sufficient unto the day--' You know the proverb, _mynheer_," he said
cheerfully. "There's nothing to worry about--we won't give him a chance
at you for two weeks. Kapitein Enckel of the _Prins_ will probably bring
him ashore to-day. We'll receive him here; I'll bring my lieutenants
over, and Cho Seng can make us a big dinner.
"To-night there will be schnapps and reminiscences, to-morrow morning a
visit of inspection to the fort, to-morrow afternoon a _bitchara_ with
the Rajah Wobanguli, and the day after a visit to Bulungan town. At
night visits to Wang Fu's house and Marinus Blauwpot's, with cards and
Hollands. I'll take care of him for you, and you can get your books in
shape. Go to Barang, if you want to, the day we visit Rotterdam--leave
word with Cho Seng you were called away to settle an important case.
Leave everything to me, and when you get back we'll have _mynheer_ so
drunk he won't know a tax statement from an Edammer cheese."
Muller's face failed to brighten at the hopeful program mapped out by
his associate. If anything, his agitation increased.
"But he might ask questions to-day, _kapitein_--questions I cannot
answer."
Van Slyck's lips curled. His thought was: "Good God, what am I going to
do with this lump of jelly-fish?" But he replied encouragingly:
"No danger of that at all, _mynheer_. There are certain formalities that
must be gone through first before a new resident takes hold. It would
not be good form to kick his predecessor out of office without giving
the latter a chance to close his books--even a pig of a Yankee knows
that. Accept his credentials if he offers them, but tell him business
must wait till the morning. Above all, keep your head, say nothing, and
be as damnably civil as though he were old Van Schouten himself. If we
can swell his head none of us will have to worry."
"But my accounts, _kapitein_," Muller faltered.
"To the devil with your accounts," Van Slyck exclaimed, losing
patience. "Go to Barang, fix them up as best you can."
"I can never get them to balance," Muller cried. "Our dealings--the
rattan we shipped--you know." He looked fearfully around.
"There never was a _controlleur_ yet that didn't line his own pockets,"
Van Slyck sneered. "But his books never showed it. You are a
book-keeper, _mynheer_, and you know how to juggle figures. Forget these
transactions; if you can't, charge the moneys you got to some account.
There are no vouchers or receipts in Bulungan. A handy man with figures,
like yourself, ought to be able to make a set of accounts that that
ferret Sachsen himself could not find a flaw in."
"But that is not the worst," Muller cried despairingly. "There are the
taxes, the taxes I should have sent to Batavia, the rice that we sold
instead to Ah Sing."
"Good God! Have you grown a conscience?" Van Slyck snarled. "If you
have, drown yourself in the bay. Lie, you fool, lie! Tell him the
weevils ruined the crop, tell him the floods drowned it, tell him a
tornado swept the fields bare, lay it to the hill Dyaks--anything,
anything! But keep your nerve, or you'll hang sure."
Muller retreated before the captain's vehemence.
"But the _bruinevels_, _kapitein_?" he faltered. "They may tell him
something different."
"Wobanguli won't; he's too wise to say anything," Van Slyck asserted
firmly. "None of the others will dare to, either--all we've got to do is
to whisper Ah Sing's name to them. But there's little danger of any of
them except the Rajah seeing him until after the _Prins_ is gone. Once
she's out of the harbor I don't care what they say--no word of it will
ever get back to Batavia."
His devilishly handsome smile gleamed sardonically, and he twisted his
nicely waxed mustache. Muller's hands shook.
"_Kapitein_," he replied in an odd, strained voice, "I am afraid of this
Peter Gross. I had a dream last night, a horrible dream--I am sure it
was him I saw. I was in old de Jonge's room in the residency
building--you know the room--and the stranger of my dream sat in old de
Jonge's chair.
"He asked me questions, questions of how I came here, and what I have
done here, and I talked and talked till my mouth was dry as the marsh
grass before the rains begin to fall. All the while he listened, and his
eyes seemed to bore through me, as though they said: 'Judas, I know
what is going on in your heart.'
"At last, when I could say no more, he asked me: '_Mynheer_, how did
Mynheer de Jonge die?' Then I fell on the ground before him and told him
all--all. At the last, soldiers came to take me away to hang me, but
under the very shadow of the gallows a bird swooped down out of the air
and carried me away, away into the jungle. Then I awoke."
Van Slyck broke into scornful laughter.
"_Mynheer_, you had enough to worry about before you started dreaming,"
he said bluntly. "If you're going to fill your head with such
foolishness I'll leave you to your own devices."
"But, _kapitein_, it might be a warning," Muller cried desperately.
"Heaven doesn't send ravens to cheat such rogues as you and I from the
gallows, _mynheer_," Van Slyck mocked. "We might as well get ready to
meet our new resident. I see a boat putting off from the ship."