The Butterfly Returns
Trevor rose from his knees to find Joyce at the doorway.
He could see that she was pale and trembling.
“Is anything the matter?” she asked.
He controlled himself with an effort.
“Nothing much,” he declared firmly. “Mai-Heng’s met with an accident.
D’you mind just slipping down the passage to the back entrance and
calling for an orderly.”
She hesitated.
“Where is Mai-Heng?--I don’t see him.”
Trevor bit his lip.
“Of course you can’t see him,” he returned with some irritation. “I’ve
got him here--on the floor behind the table--and the lamp’s gone
_phut_.”
“I’ll bring you a light.”
“Don’t bother now, please. I’ll fix that while you’re away.”
She came a step towards him, peering fearfully into the darkness.
“Mr. Trevor, if there’s been an accident, surely I can do something
for the poor fellow. I’m used to nursing, you know.”
He took her by both arms and pushed her gently from the room on to the
verandah, closing the door after him.
“I hate to seem to order you about, Miss Standen; but I want one of
Armourer’s men at once.”
“Is he unconscious?”
“Yes.”
She stood for some seconds regarding him steadily, then went slowly
towards the head of the passage. She turned suddenly, a faint smile
hovering on her lips.
“You’ll have to go,” she declared. “I can’t speak a word of Malay.”
He made a noise with his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
“I hadn’t thought of that. All right, you stop here--and mind, I don’t
want you to go into that room. Mai-Heng was never an over-clean
specimen of humanity--and as he is now he might easily frighten you.
Will you promise?”
“Very well.”
He could see that she gave her consent reluctantly, and feared, from
the troubled look behind her dark eyes, that she had already her
suspicions as to the actual state of affairs.
He was on his way back from the men’s quarters when a piercing scream
broke upon the stillness of the Eastern night.
He completed the rest of the distance at breakneck speed.
In the passage-way he cursed himself for an abject idiot. One of a
score of ghastly things might have occurred in his absence, and his
only sane line of action under the circumstances should have been to
have taken her with him.
He was considerably relieved to discover her half fainting in a chair,
staring as if hypnotised at something on the wall beyond the
lamplight.
He bent over her.
“It was you who screamed?”
She nodded.
“You opened that door.”
She began talking rapidly, excitedly.
“No, no, I didn’t even go near the room. I stood quite still just
where you had left me, trying to regain my nerve. I was frightened,
horribly frightened; the shadows frightened me… the awful silence…
everything. Presently I gritted my teeth and forced myself to do
something. I remembered that the others should be on their way back
and walked to the rail to look for them. The moon had gone in, and
there was nothing there but blackness. You can _feel_ the blackness
out here. I heard a voice--your voice, shouting something, and decided
to go and meet you. As I passed the lamp an enormous insect fluttered
down from the ceiling and circled round it. There had been scores of
things flying there before, but they all vanished when _it_ came.
Something made me stop. I saw its outline at first and thought it was
a huge moth; and then I realised it was a butterfly--and saw that it
was red! I just flopped back into the first chair I could find and
screamed at the top of my voice.”
He turned his head sharply.
“A red butterfly!” he muttered hoarsely. “You must be mistaken. They
don’t fly at night, you know, even out here.”
She pointed at the wall.
“I tell you I saw it quite plainly. It was the creature you told me
about--the one my father described this afternoon. It’s over there
now--don’t you see it?”
She clutched at his arm and a cold sensation passed down his spine.
He had never quite understood until that moment how peculiarly
contagious fear was. With Mai-Heng lying there and the memory of
something unpleasant brushing his cheek, Armourer’s bungalow had
suddenly become a house of horrors. For a matter of moments he
remained rooted to the spot, an invisible--yet impassable--barrier
between him and the far wall.
The approach of the magistrate’s men brought him to his senses and he
cast a sidelong glance at Joyce, praying that this momentary lapse had
passed unnoticed.
The two black soldiers shuffled on to the verandah buttoning up their
coats and looking profoundly uncomfortable. One of them carried a
lamp.
“Go into the _Tuan-Hakim’s_ room,” Trevor commanded. “You will find
Mai-Heng there. Carry him out by the other door and put him in any
shed that happens to be empty. Cover him up with a blanket or
something.”
The fact that Joyce did not understand Malay had its advantages.
The men saluted and passed into the darkness, leaving the door ajar.
Trevor shut it deliberately.
He heard them moving about inside, a volley of startled exclamations
and fragments of a prolonged consultation that ensued almost
immediately after. One of them said something about a blanket and a
door opened somewhere.
A remark from the girl roused him to action.
“It’s crawling up the wall,” she cried. “Look!”
His glance fell upon the butterfly net that Gholam-Singh had made for
the professor. He plucked it from the shelf upon which it lay and
hooked a small chair through the living-room doorway.
Joyce was on her feet now.
“Do be careful,” she implored.
“I mean to be,” he said between his teeth; “but, in case I miss,
hadn’t you better go in to Mrs. Battiscombe? You’d be safer there.”
The colour had come back to her cheeks, and in the light from the lamp
she looked infinitely beautiful.
“I’m not afraid--now,” she told him, “and I want to be of use, if I
can. Don’t send me away.”
Trevor reflected.
“All right,” he said at length. “There’s Armourer’s tennis racquet
over there in the corner. Swipe at it with that if it flies towards
you.”
He placed the chair a couple of feet from the wall and mounted it.
Joyce possessed herself of the racquet and watched breathlessly.
The insect had crawled into the angle the ceiling made with the wall,
a position that presented difficulties. She removed the shade from the
lamp and the creature showed up clearly against the woodwork. She
could plainly discern the thin black body, the fat fleshy wings and
the long antennæ that moved restlessly.
It was the green eyes of the thing, however, that were disconcerting
Trevor. They seemed to be surveying his every movement with an
interest that was at once almost human and distinctly inhuman. He was
aware of a sense of fear, a feeling of acute nausea and an unpleasant,
pungent odour.
To the girl it seemed countless ages before he brought back his arm
and the net with it, remained motionless, as if taking careful aim,
and brought the frame of the contrivance against the boarding.
The uppermost edge of the frame scraped against the ceiling and Trevor
hit a couple of inches too low on the wall. A fraction of the body
remained imprisoned for a fleeting second, and before he could make
the necessary movement to ensure his capture the insect had struggled
free and fluttered off into the night.
“Damn!”
Not knowing why, Joyce laughed.
“Rotten luck!” she commented.
He stepped from the chair, regarding the net ruefully.
“A jolly bad shot,” he insisted. “I might have known the ceiling would
baulk me. Where’s it gone now?”
She pointed into the darkness.
“Out there.” She contrived to speak easily. “Anyhow, you’ve driven it
away.”
He put the chair back in its place and threw the net on to the table.
“There is that consolation, I suppose; but I was a blithering idiot to
miss, all the same. Must have lost my nerve at the critical moment.”
He unstoppered the decanter.
“Ugh! The thing smelt horribly!”
“Smelt?”
“Yes--worse than a stink-bug, if you’ll excuse the expression. Won’t
you have something to drink? I’m sure you want it.”
She shook her head.
“No, thank you very much. I’m afraid the smell of the whisky would
upset me more than that of the butterfly.”
He poured out three fingers and looked up.
“There’s some wine knocking about somewhere.”
“Don’t bother to look for it, please. I really don’t want it. The only
thing I ask is not to be left alone. Look at the dogs. When you went
into the bedroom I put Mick back in the chair--and neither of them has
moved a hair. Do sit down. I want to talk to you.”
Trevor smiled.
“The Oracle is ready,” he said, “and there is absolutely no charge!”
Joyce frowned.
“That was the crimson butterfly,” she declared.
“I believe so.”
She bent forward.
“Was it that that caused Mai-Heng’s _accident_?”
Trevor emptied his glass. When he looked up at her again his face was
flushed.
“You ought to go in for law,” he said; “you’d make a charming and
efficient barrister!”
“But you haven’t answered my question.”
He racked his brains for an evasive reply.
“I don’t think it wise for any of us to jump to conclusions until
we’ve had a look at Mai-Heng in the morning.”
“You didn’t send for a doctor.”
“No, because there isn’t one available at the moment.”
She looked straight into his eyes.
“Mr. Trevor, why take such elaborate precautions to try and deceive
me? Why didn’t you let me help you with Mr. Armourer’s servant?--why
were you so anxious to keep me from that room? I have all my senses,
you know, and a woman’s intuition thrown in. I know that Mai-Heng is
dead--and that he died as Mr. Moberly died this afternoon. It’s true,
isn’t it?”
The assistant rubbed his chin.
“Mai-Heng is dead,” he admitted, “but as to how he met his end--that’s
a doctor’s affair, not mine. D’you mind if we discuss something else.”
“Not in the least; but I should like to say just one thing. I’m out
for the defence of my sex now, Mr. Trevor. When you told me about the
other affair you seemed inclined to associate Mrs. Battiscombe with
the crimson butterfly.”
“Did I?”
“Well, you did, didn’t you? You told me that the _ju-ju_ theory was
all nonsense, but the male in you wouldn’t allow you to exonerate Mrs.
Battiscombe entirely from blame. Now this second tragedy proves her
innocence conclusively. Her ornament--which you found near Mr. Moberly
when he died--could not possibly have been near that wretched
Chinaman.”
Trevor was conscious of a tremendous inward struggle.
“No,” he conceded lamely, “it couldn’t, could it?”
At that moment one of Armourer’s men appeared at the opening and
stood, his hands clasped behind him, waiting for someone to notice
him.
“What is it?” demanded Trevor.
The native came forward.
“It is this, _Tuan_,” he stammered. “When we carried Mai-Heng away we
did not see it; but we felt it as we put him down. It was fixed
between the fingers.”
Joyce, bending forward excitedly, saw a ruby ornament on a gold chain
pass from the soldier’s grubby brown hand to Trevor’s palm.