the slight creak of the broad bedstead had sounded very loud to him. He
turned round apprehensively and waited for her to move, but she did not
stir. While he looked at her, he had a vision of himself lying there
too, also fast asleep, and--it occurred to him for the first time in his
life--very defenceless. This quite novel impression of the dangers of
slumber made him think suddenly of his revolver. He left the bedroom
with noiseless footsteps. The lightness of the curtain he had to lift
as he passed out, and the outer door, wide open on the blackness of
the veranda--for the roof eaves came down low, shutting out the
starlight--gave him a sense of having been dangerously exposed, he could
not have said to what. He pulled the drawer open. Its emptiness cut his
train of self-communion short. He murmured to the assertive fact:
“Impossible! Somewhere else!”
He tried to remember where he had put the thing; but those provoked
whispers of memory were not encouraging. Foraging in every receptacle
and nook big enough to contain a revolver, he came slowly to the
conclusion that it was not in that room. Neither was it in the other.
The whole bungalow consisted of the two rooms and a profuse allowance of
veranda all round. Heyst stepped out on the veranda.
“It's Wang, beyond a doubt,” he thought, staring into the night. “He has
got hold of it for some reason.”
There was nothing to prevent that ghostly Chinaman from materializing
suddenly at the foot of the stairs, or anywhere, at any moment, and
toppling him over with a dead sure shot. The danger was so irremediable
that it was not worth worrying about, any more than the general
precariousness of human life. Heyst speculated on this added risk. How
long had he been at the mercy of a slender yellow finger on the trigger?
That is, if that was the fellow's reason for purloining the revolver.
“Shoot and inherit,” thought Heyst. “Very simple.” Yet there was in his
mind a marked reluctance to regard the domesticated grower of vegetables
in the light of a murderer.
“No, it wasn't that. For Wang could have done it any time this last
twelve months or more--”
Heyst's mind had worked on the assumption that Wang had possessed
himself of the revolver during his own absence from Samburan; but at
that period of his speculation his point of view changed. It struck him
with the force of manifest certitude that the revolver had been taken
only late in the day, or on that very night. Wang, of course. But why?
So there had been no danger in the past. It was all ahead.
“He has me at his mercy now,” thought Heyst, without particular
excitement.
The sentiment he experienced was curiosity. He forgot himself in it: it
was as if he were considering somebody else's strange predicament. But
even that sort of interest was dying out when, looking to his left, he
saw the accustomed shapes of the other bungalows looming in the night,
and remembered the arrival of the thirsty company in the boat. Wang
would hardly risk such a crime in the presence of other white men. It
was a peculiar instance of the “safety in numbers,” principle, which
somehow was not much to Heyst's taste.
He went in gloomily, and stood over the empty drawer in deep and
unsatisfactory thought. He had just made up his mind that he must
breathe nothing of this to the girl, when he heard her voice behind him.
She had taken him by surprise, but he resisted the impulse to turn round
at once under the impression that she might read his trouble in his
face. Yes, she had taken him by surprise, and for that reason the
conversation which began was not exactly as he would have conducted it
if he had been prepared for her pointblank question. He ought to have
said at once: “I've missed nothing.” It was a deplorable thing that he
should have let it come so far as to have her ask what it was he missed.
He closed the conversation by saying lightly:
“It's an object of very small value. Don't worry about it--it isn't
worth while. The best you can do is to go and lie down again, Lena.”
Reluctant she turned away, and only in the doorway asked: “And you?”
“I think I shall smoke a cheroot on the veranda. I don't feel sleepy for
the moment.”
“Well, don't be long.”
He made no answer. She saw him standing there, very still, with a frown
on his brow, and slowly dropped the curtain.
Heyst did really light a cheroot before going out again on the veranda.
He glanced up from under the low eaves, to see by the stars how the
night went on. It was going very slowly. Why it should have irked him he
did not know, for he had nothing to expect from the dawn; but everything
round him had become unreasonable, unsettled, and vaguely urgent, laying
him under an obligation, but giving him no line of action. He felt
contemptuously irritated with the situation. The outer world had broken
upon him; and he did not know what wrong he had done to bring this on
himself, any more than he knew what he had done to provoke the horrible
calumny about his treatment of poor Morrison. For he could not forget
this. It had reached the ears of one who needed to have the most perfect
confidence in the rectitude of his conduct.
“And she only half disbelieves it,” he thought, with hopeless
humiliation.
This moral stab in the back seemed to have taken some of his strength
from him, as a physical wound would have done. He had no desire to do
anything--neither to bring Wang to terms in the matter of the revolver
nor to find out from the strangers who they were, and how their
predicament had come about. He flung his glowing cigar away into the
night. But Samburan was no longer a solitude wherein he could indulge in
all his moods. The fiery parabolic path the cast-out stump traced in the
air was seen from another veranda at a distance of some twenty yards. It
was noted as a symptom of importance by an observer with his faculties
greedy for signs, and in a state of alertness tense enough almost to
hear the grass grow.
CHAPTER TEN
The observer was Martin Ricardo. To him life was not a matter of
passive renunciation, but of a particularly active warfare. He was
not mistrustful of it, he was not disgusted with it, still less was he
inclined to be suspicious of its disenchantments; but he was vividly
aware that it held many possibilities of failure. Though very far from
being a pessimist, he was not a man of foolish illusions. He did
not like failure, not only because of its unpleasant and dangerous
consequences, but also because of its damaging effect upon his own
appreciation of Martin Ricardo. And this was a special job, of his own
contriving, and of considerable novelty. It was not, so to speak, in his
usual line of business--except, perhaps, from a moral standpoint, about
which he was not likely to trouble his head. For these reasons Martin
Ricardo was unable to sleep.
Mr. Jones, after repeated shivering fits, and after drinking much hot
tea, had apparently fallen into deep slumber. He had very peremptorily
discouraged attempts at conversation on the part of his faithful
follower. Ricardo listened to his regular breathing. It was all very
well for the governor. He looked upon it as a sort of sport. A gentleman
naturally would. But this ticklish and important job had to be pulled
off at all costs, both for honour and for safety. Ricardo rose quietly,
and made his way on the veranda. He could not lie still. He wanted to
go out for air, and he had a feeling that by the force of his eagerness
even the darkness and the silence could be made to yield something to
his eyes and ears.
He noted the stars, and stepped back again into the dense darkness.
He resisted the growing impulse to go out and steal towards the other
bungalow. It would have been madness to start prowling in the dark on
unknown ground. And for what end? Unless to relieve the oppression.
Immobility lay on his limbs like a leaden garment. And yet he was
unwilling to give up. He persisted in his objectless vigil. The man of
the island was keeping quiet.
It was at that moment that Ricardo's eyes caught the vanishing red
trail of light made by the cigar--a startling revelation of the man's
wakefulness. He could not suppress a low “Hallo!” and began to sidle
along towards the door, with his shoulders rubbing the wall. For all he
knew, the man might have been out in front by this time, observing the
veranda. As a matter of fact, after flinging away the cheroot, Heyst
had gone indoors with the feeling of a man who gives up an unprofitable
occupation. But Ricardo fancied he could hear faint footfalls on the
open ground, and dodged quickly into the room. There he drew breath, and
meditated for a while. His next step was to feel for the matches on
the tall desk, and to light the candle. He had to communicate to his
governor views and reflections of such importance that it was absolutely
necessary for him to watch their effect on the very countenance of the
hearer. At first he had thought that these matters could have waited
till daylight; but Heyst's wakefulness, disclosed in that startling way,
made him feel suddenly certain that there could be no sleep for him that
night.
He said as much to his governor. When the little dagger-like flame had
done its best to dispel the darkness, Mr. Jones was to be seen reposing
on a camp bedstead, in a distant part of the room. A railway rug
concealed his spare form up to his very head, which rested on the
other railway rug rolled up for a pillow. Ricardo plumped himself down
cross-legged on the floor, very close to the low bedstead; so that Mr.
Jones--who perhaps had not been so very profoundly asleep--on opening
his eyes found them conveniently levelled at the face of his secretary.
“Eh? What is it you say? No sleep for you tonight? But why can't you let
me sleep? Confound your fussiness!”
“Because that there fellow can't sleep--that's why. Dash me if he hasn't
been doing a think just now! What business has he to think in the middle
of the night?”
“How do you know?”
“He was out, sir--up in the middle of the night. My own eyes saw it.”
“But how do you know that he was up to think?” inquired Mr. Jones. “It
might have been anything--toothache, for instance. And you may have
dreamed it for all I know. Didn't you try to sleep?”
“No, sir. I didn't even try to go to sleep.”
Ricardo informed his patron of his vigil on the veranda, and of the
revelation which put an end to it. He concluded that a man up with a
cigar in the middle of the night must be doing a think.
Mr. Jones raised himself on his elbow. This sign of interest comforted
his faithful henchman.
“Seems to me it's time we did a little think ourselves,” added Ricardo,
with more assurance. Long as they had been together the moods of his
governor were still a source of anxiety to his simple soul.
“You are always making a fuss,” remarked Mr. Jones, in a tolerant tone.
“Ay, but not for nothing, am I? You can't say that, sir. Mine may not be
a gentleman's way of looking round a thing, but it isn't a fool's way,
either. You've admitted that much yourself at odd times.”
Ricardo was growing warmly argumentative. Mr. Jones interrupted him
without heat.
“You haven't roused me to talk about yourself, I presume?”
“No, sir.” Ricardo remained silent for a minute, with the tip of
his tongue caught between his teeth. “I don't think I could tell you
anything about myself that you don't know,” he continued. There was a
sort of amused satisfaction in his tone which changed completely as he
went on. “It's that man, over there, that's got to be talked over. I
don't like him.”
He, failed to observe the flicker of a ghastly smile on his governor's
lips.
“Don't you?” murmured Mr. Jones, whose face, as he reclined on his
elbow, was on a level with the top of his follower's head.
“No, sir,” said Ricardo emphatically. The candle from the other side of
the room threw his monstrous black shadow on the wall. “He--I don't know
how to say it--he isn't hearty-like.”
Mr. Jones agreed languidly in his own manner:
“He seems to be a very self-possessed man.”
“Ay, that's it. Self--” Ricardo choked with indignation. “I would soon
let out some of his self-possession through a hole between his ribs, if
this weren't a special job!”
Mr. Jones had been making his own reflections, for he asked:
“Do you think he is suspicious?”
“I don't see very well what he can be suspicious of,” pondered Ricardo.
“Yet there he was doing a think. And what could be the object of it?
What made him get out of his bed in the middle of the night. 'Tain't
fleas, surely.”
“Bad conscience, perhaps,” suggested Mr. Jones jocularly.
His faithful secretary suffered from irritation, and did not see the
joke. In a fretful tone he declared that there was no such thing as
conscience. There was such a thing as funk; but there was nothing to
make that fellow funky in any special way. He admitted, however, that
the man might have been uneasy at the arrival of strangers, because of
all that plunder of his put away somewhere.
Ricardo glanced here and there, as if he were afraid of being overheard
by the heavy shadows cast by the dim light all over the room. His
patron, very quiet, spoke in a calm whisper:
“And perhaps that hotel-keeper has been lying to you about him. He may
be a very poor devil indeed.”
Ricardo shook his head slightly. The Schombergian theory of Heyst had
become in him a profound conviction, which he had absorbed as naturally
as a sponge takes up water. His patron's doubts were a wanton denying
of what was self-evident; but Ricardo's voice remained as before, a soft
purring with a snarling undertone.
“I am sup-prised at you, sir! It's the very way them tame ones--the
common 'yporcrits of the world--get on. When it comes to plunder
drifting under one's very nose, there's not one of them that would keep
his hands off. And I don't blame them. It's the way they do it that sets
my back up. Just look at the story of how he got rid of that pal of his!
Send a man home to croak of a cold on the chest--that's one of your tame
tricks. And d'you mean to say, sir, that a man that's up to it wouldn't
bag whatever he could lay his hands in his 'yporcritical way? What was
all that coal business? Tame citizen dodge; 'yporcrisy--nothing else.
No, no, sir! The thing is to extract it from him as neatly as possible.
That's the job; and it isn't so simple as it looks. I reckon you have
looked at it all round, sir, before you took up the notion of this
trip.”
“No.” Mr. Jones was hardly audible, staring far away from his couch. “I
didn't think about it much. I was bored.”
“Ay, that you were--bad. I was feeling pretty desperate that afternoon,
when that bearded softy of a landlord got talking to me about this
fellow here. Quite accidentally, it was. Well, sir, here we are after a
mighty narrow squeak. I feel all limp yet; but never mind--his swag will
pay for the lot!”
“He's all alone here,” remarked Mr. Jones in a hollow murmur.
“Ye-es, in a way. Yes, alone enough. Yes, you may say he is.”
“There's that Chinaman, though.”
“Ay, there's the Chink,” assented Ricardo rather absentmindedly.
He was debating in his mind the advisability of making a clean breast of
his knowledge of the girl's existence. Finally he concluded he wouldn't.
The enterprise was difficult enough without complicating it with an
upset to the sensibilities of the gentleman with whom he had the honour
of being associated. Let the discovery come of itself, he thought,
and then he could swear that he had known nothing of that offensive
presence.
He did not need to lie. He had only to hold his tongue.
“Yes,” he muttered reflectively, “there's that Chink, certainly.”
At bottom, he felt a certain ambiguous respect for his governor's
exaggerated dislike of women, as if that horror of feminine presence
were a sort of depraved morality; but still morality, since he counted
it as an advantage. It prevented many undesirable complications. He did
not pretend to understand it. He did not even try to investigate
this idiosyncrasy of his chief. All he knew was that he himself was
differently inclined, and that it did not make him any happier or safer.
He did not know how he would have acted if he had been knocking about
the world on his own. Luckily he was a subordinate, not a wage-slave but
a follower--which was a restraint. Yes! The other sort of disposition
simplified matters in general; it wasn't to be gainsaid. But it was
clear that it could also complicate them--as in this most important and,
in Ricardo's view, already sufficiently delicate case. And the worst of
it was that one could not tell exactly in what precise manner it would
act.
It was unnatural, he thought somewhat peevishly. How was one to reckon
up the unnatural? There were no rules for that. The faithful henchman
of plain Mr. Jones, foreseeing many difficulties of a material order,
decided to keep the girl out of the governor's knowledge, out of his
sight, too, for as long a time as it could be managed. That, alas,
seemed to be at most a matter of a few hours; whereas Ricardo feared
that to get the affair properly going would take some days. Once well
started, he was not afraid of his gentleman failing him. As is often the
case with lawless natures, Ricardo's faith in any given individual was
of a simple, unquestioning character. For man must have some support in
life.
Cross-legged, his head drooping a little and perfectly still, he might
have been meditating in a bonze-like attitude upon the sacred syllable
“Om.” It was a striking illustration of the untruth of appearances, for
his contempt for the world was of a severely practical kind. There was
nothing oriental about Ricardo but the amazing quietness of his pose.
Mr. Jones was also very quiet. He had let his head sink on the rolled-up
rug, and lay stretched out on his side with his back to the light. In
that position the shadows gathered in the cavities of his eyes made
them look perfectly empty. When he spoke, his ghostly voice had only to
travel a few inches straight into Ricardo's left ear.
“Why don't you say something, now that you've got me awake?”
“I wonder if you were sleeping as sound as you are trying to make out,
sir,” said the unmoved Ricardo.
“I wonder,” repeated Mr. Jones. “At any rate, I was resting quietly!”
“Come, sir!” Ricardo's whisper was alarmed. “You don't mean to say
you're going to be bored?”
“No.”
“Quite right!” The secretary was very much relieved. “There's no
occasion to be, I can tell you, sir,” he whispered earnestly. “Anything
but that! If I didn't say anything for a bit, it ain't because there
isn't plenty to talk about. Ay, more than enough.”
“What's the matter with you?” breathed out his patron. “Are you going to
turn pessimist?”
“Me turn? No, sir! I ain't of those that turn. You may call me hard
names, if you like, but you know very well that I ain't a croaker.”
Ricardo changed his tone. “If I said nothing for a while, it was because
I was meditating over the Chink, sir.”
“You were? Waste of time, my Martin. A Chinaman is unfathomable.”
Ricardo admitted that this might be so. Anyhow, a Chink was neither
here nor there, as a general thing, unfathomable as he might be; but a
Swedish baron wasn't--couldn't be! The woods were full of such barons.
“I don't know that he is so tame,” was Mr. Jones's remark, in a
sepulchral undertone.
“How do you mean, sir? He ain't a rabbit, of course. You couldn't
hypnotize him, as I saw you do to more than one Dago, and other kinds
of tame citizens, when it came to the point of holding them down to a
game.”
“Don't you reckon on that,” murmured plain Mr. Jones seriously.
“No, sir, I don't, though you have a wonderful power of the eye. It's a
fact.”
“I have a wonderful patience,” remarked Mr. Jones dryly.
A dim smile flitted over the lips of the faithful Ricardo who never
raised his head.
“I don't want to try you too much, sir, but this is like no other job we
ever turned our minds to.”
“Perhaps not. At any rate let us think so.”
A weariness with the monotony of life was reflected in the tone of this
qualified assent. It jarred on the nerves of the sanguine Ricardo.
“Let us think of the way to go to work,” he retorted a little
impatiently. “He's a deep one. Just look at the way he treated that chum
of his. Did you ever hear of anything so low? And the artfulness of the
beast--the dirty, tame artfulness!”
“Don't you start moralizing, Martin,” said Mr. Jones warningly. “As far
as I can make out the story that German hotel-keeper told you, it seems
to show a certain amount of character;--and independence from common
feelings which is not usual. It's very remarkable, if true.”
“Ay, ay! Very remarkable. It's mighty low down, all the same,” muttered,
Ricardo obstinately. “I must say I am glad to think he will be paid off
for it in a way that'll surprise him!”
The tip of his tongue appeared lively for an instant, as if trying for
the taste of that ferocious retribution on his compressed lips. For
Ricardo was sincere in his indignation before the elementary principle
of loyalty to a chum violated in cold blood, slowly, in a patient
duplicity of years. There are standards in villainy as in virtue, and
the act as he pictured it to himself acquired an additional horror
from the slow pace of that treachery so atrocious and so tame. But
he understood too the educated judgement of his governor, a gentleman
looking on all this with the privileged detachment of a cultivated mind,
of an elevated personality.
“Ay, he's deep--he's artful,” he mumbled between his sharp teeth.
“Confound you!” Mr. Jones's calm whisper crept into his ear. “Come to
the point.”
Obedient, the secretary shook off his thoughtfulness. There was a
similarity of mind between these two--one the outcast of his vices, the
other inspired by a spirit of scornful defiance, the aggressiveness of
a beast of prey looking upon all the tame creatures of the earth as its
natural victim. Both were astute enough, however, and both were aware
that they had plunged into this adventure without a sufficient scrutiny
of detail. The figure of a lonely man far from all assistance had
loomed up largely, fascinating and defenceless in the middle of the sea,
filling the whole field of their vision. There had not seemed to be any
need for thinking. As Schomberg had been saying: “Three to one.”
But it did not look so simple now in the face of that solitude which was
like an armour for this man. The feeling voiced by the henchman in his
own way--“We don't seem much forwarder now we are here” was acknowledged
by the silence of the patron. It was easy enough to rip a fellow up or
drill a hole in him, whether he was alone or not, Ricardo reflected in
low, confidential tones, but--
“He isn't alone,” Mr. Jones said faintly, in his attitude of a man
composed for sleep. “Don't forget that Chinaman.” Ricardo started
slightly.
“Oh, ay--the Chink!”
Ricardo had been on the point of confessing about the girl; but no! He
wanted his governor to be unperturbed and steady. Vague thoughts,
which he hardly dared to look in the face, were stirring his brain in
connection with that girl. She couldn't be much account, he thought. She
could be frightened. And there were also other possibilities. The Chink,
however, could be considered openly.
“What I was thinking about it, sir,” he went on earnestly, “is
this--here we've got a man. He's nothing. If he won't be good, he can be
made quiet. That's easy. But then there's his plunder. He doesn't carry
it in his pocket.”
“I hope not,” breathed Mr. Jones.
“Same here. It's too big, we know, but if he were alone, he would not
feel worried about it overmuch--I mean the safety of the pieces. He
would just put the lot into any box or drawer that was handy.”
“Would he?”
“Yes, sir. He would keep it under his eye, as it were. Why not? It is
natural. A fellow doesn't put his swag underground, unless there's a
very good reason for it.”
“A very good reason, eh?”
“Yes, sir. What do you think a fellow is--a mole?”
From his experience, Ricardo declared that man was not a burrowing
beast. Even the misers very seldom buried their hoard, unless for
exceptional reasons. In the given situation of a man alone on an island,
the company of a Chink was a very good reason. Drawers would not be
safe, nor boxes, either, from a prying, slant-eyed Chink. No, sir,
unless a safe--a proper office safe. But the safe was there in the room.
“Is there a safe in this room? I didn't notice it,” whispered Mr. Jones.