“Hanson,” said Sir John Sweetling, “you are leaving to me all
arrangements for the removal of Smith.”
“I am,” said Hanson. “In fact, I would sooner know nothing about it.”
“Well, the time’s getting very near.”
“It is.”
“In connection with the--er--removal of Smith, I should like to take
Mast fully into our confidence. We have the committee this morning, and
Pryce won’t be there. I’ve heard from him. It is my belief that you are
right, and that Pryce cares for nothing but Hilda Auriol, and won’t
come here again. You and Mast and myself will make a solid triumvirate.”
“Very well,” said Hanson. “I don’t think there’ll be any harm in it.”
So Sir John Sweetling unfolded this scheme to Mast, and outlined the
horrible part which Mast himself would be expected to play in it. But
he put the best appearance on it, as he did upon everything.
“Smith is a traitor,” said Sir John, sternly. “He owes everything
to us. Before we came, he owned practically nothing but unsaleable
land. Now he is established as a trader, and is doing really well.
Suddenly he throws us over. Why? Simply because he thinks that with
Lechworthy as a partner he will be able to screw a little more money
out of it for himself. He betrays us all to Lechworthy, and I consider
even now that disaster may come of it. For that crime--there is no
other word for it--the punishment is death, and it will be for you
to administer the punishment. It’s rough-and-ready justice perhaps,
but it is justice. When a coloured native race and a white race live
together on an island, the natives must be made to take their proper
position; the penalty for treachery must be sharp and sudden if it is
to act as a deterrent. I’m speaking of principles which are tried and
sound--principles that have helped to build up the Empire. Hanson is
fully with me. The lesson must be given, if only as a salutary warning
to the other natives.”
“I’m to do this?” asked Mast, staring stupidly. “That was what you
meant--that I was to kill Smith?”
“Precisely. The work of a public executioner is unpleasant work, though
of course no moral responsibility attaches to it. The responsibility
rests with Hanson and myself, who discussed the man’s case and decided
what was to be done with him. Of course if you find yourself too shaky
and nervous, we must get another man for the work. But you’ve made a
good many protestations, Mast. Precisely because it is unpleasant work,
you ought to accept it and to be glad of a chance of repairing the
injury you have done to the members of this club.”
“I shall do it,” said Mast, doggedly. “But I don’t see how it repairs
anything. I don’t see how it helps us at all.”
It was only then that Sir John spoke of the certainty that a disputed
succession would follow upon the death of Smith, and of the use that
the exiles would be able to make of it. It was so much better to
represent Smith’s death as a punishment for a past crime than as a
murder for a future advantage.
Mast remained spiritless and rather sullen. He was a little stunned at
finding what was required of him. He had liked Smith--had been rather
intimate with him at one time.
“There’s no other way?” he asked.
Sir John became a little impatient. “That’s all been talked out. Look
here, Mast, if your promises were so much hot air, and you’re too
frightened to do what you said you would, own up at once and waste no
more of our time.”
Mast scowled. “On the day that Lechworthy leaves Faloo the King will
die,” he said. “I shall kill him. Does that satisfy you?”
“Quite.”
“Well, I want to think it over. I needn’t wait for this damned
committee meeting, need I?”
“Of course you must wait. Pryce is away, and we must have three for the
look of the thing. It won’t take twenty minutes.”
At the meeting Sir John read out Soames Pryce’s brief letter. “Well,
now,” he said, “what do you think, Hanson?”
“Nothing to be done,” said Hanson, stolidly. “Read and noted, that’s
all. In Pryce’s absence we needn’t go through a farce of winding-up. We
can’t call a general meeting of the members yet, because we can’t yet
put before them the alternative scheme (of which Pryce knows nothing)
to which the majority of the committee are agreed.”
“That is so,” said Sir John. Mast nodded assent.
There was a meeting of three other men on the island that morning. The
King and Lechworthy had walked out together just beyond the garden of
the King’s house, when a little man came running along the road towards
them. The King recognised him at once as the new member of the Exiles’
Club. Pentwin had been presented to the King on landing. Now members of
the Exiles’ Club knew that they were not wanted in the neighbourhood of
the King’s house; moreover, the King reflected that one of these men
had already attempted Lechworthy’s life. The King was suspicious.
Pentwin took off his hat and bowed profoundly to the King. Might he
be permitted? He wished to speak privately with Mr Lechworthy. He had
business of importance with him.
“I think you haven’t,” said the King, bluntly. Lechworthy looked from
one to the other with mild surprise.
The little man was not in the least offended. “Oh, but I can prove that
to Mr Lechworthy’s satisfaction,” he said smiling, and dived one hand
into his pocket.
In a flash the King’s revolver was out, and covering him. “No, you
don’t,” said the King.
Pentwin stepped back a pace. “It’s all right, sir,” he said
apologetically, “it’s only papers.”
He drew an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Lechworthy. Smith
toyed pensively with his revolver.
From the envelope Lechworthy drew a visiting-card printed in blue. It
bore the name of Mr Henry Parget. On the left-hand corner was printed
“Criminal Investigation Department, Scotland Yard.” The envelope
contained two other papers, and Lechworthy glanced quickly through them.
“Quite correct apparently,” he said. “I don’t think, sir, there is
anything to fear. This gentleman really has business with me, and I
shall be glad to talk it over with him.”
“You may assure yourself that I carry no weapons of any kind,” added
the man from Scotland Yard who had passed as Pentwin.
The King did assure himself thoroughly--he had searched men before.
“You must understand,” he said, “why I am so careful, Mr Pentwin. My
friend, Mr Lechworthy, has already been shot at by one of the white
men here; the man who did it is dead.”
“Quite natural that you should be careful, sir,” said Parget, smiling.
“And now may I get on to my business?”
“Certainly. You will take him up to the house, Mr Lechworthy? That’s
right. And send one of the boys with him when he goes, will you? You
see, Mr Pentwin, a stranger wandering alone there would be shot at
once; I am careful for you as well as for Mr Lechworthy.”
The King strode off down the road with a rapid and yet graceful gait.
“Now, then, Mr Parget,” said Lechworthy, “keep close to me and you’ll
be all right.”
They turned and entered the garden.
“Grand place this, sir,” said Parget, looking round him. “I’ve seen
nothing like it in my life before. The King of this island seems a
pretty active man--bit suspicious too.”
“You mustn’t mind that, Mr Parget.”
“I don’t,” said Mr Parget, “I’d sooner be suspected wrongly than
rightly any day. I suppose, sir, you have very little difficulty in
guessing why I am here.”
“None,” said Mr Lechworthy, “but I am wondering a little how it was
that Scotland Yard came to send you.”
“Well, sir, to tell the truth, it was a bit of luck. You may have heard
of Pentwin’s Popular Bank.”
“I’ve seen his advertisements; we’ve always refused them in my paper.”
“And quite right too; the thing was obvious. Well, this chap Pentwin
seems to have realised that he’d come to the end of it, and he made his
preparations for leaving. But he had to skip before the preparations
were quite finished; in fact our men were into his house only twenty
minutes after he’d left. A batch of letters came for Pentwin, and we
took the liberty of opening and reading them. One was from a Mrs Wyse,
widow of a man whom we wanted and never got. It seems he came out here
and committed suicide here. Well, Mrs Wyse was a friend of Pentwin’s--a
friend and perhaps a bit more. That letter was full of references to
the Exiles’ Club, mentioned Sweetling’s name, told Pentwin how to make
his application and send his subscription, and gave him his route to
the island. There was another letter of introduction enclosed. If those
letters had come one post earlier, there’s not a doubt that Pentwin
would have been safe in Faloo by now, and Scotland Yard would have been
none the wiser.”
They had reached the house, and Lechworthy pushed forward a deck-chair.
“Sit down, won’t you?” he said.
“Not sorry to,” said Parget. “I’ve been on my feet for three hours,
waiting for the chance to have a word with you. Well, as I was saying,
it was thought worth while to look into this Exiles’ Club, if only on
Sweetling’s account. We’ve wanted Sweetling for years and wanted him
badly. He was the Hazeley Cement swindle, as you may remember, and the
Tarlton Building Company, and a lot more.”
“I do. In fact I wrote about him.”
“And I daresay you were pretty severe with us for letting him get
away--no matter, we bear no malice. The public says nothing when we
hit, but it makes a lot of fuss when we miss. Well, I was told off
for this job. I’d got Mrs Wyse’s letter. I’d only got to call myself
Pentwin, and follow her instructions, and it was all plain sailing.
And a pretty haul I’ve made. There’s Sweetling my-lording it over
everybody; Hanson, who killed his girl; Mast--a nasty case; Fellowes,
who sold the secret explosive; Lord Charles Baringstoke, who forged his
uncle’s name. Trimmer, of the Cornish coal fraud--a whole lot of back
numbers nicely bound together.”
“It’s all very well,” said Lechworthy, “it’s all very well, but you
can’t touch those men. Faloo is independent, and has no extradition
treaty with Great Britain.”
“Very likely,” said Parget, with a laugh. “I’m not going to touch them.
All I’ve got to do is to report. I’m only a subordinate officer at
present. The rest will be for my chiefs to settle, and if they don’t
find some way of dealing with this cock-sparrow of an island, I’m a
Dutchman.”
“Now to come to the point; what do you want with me, Mr Parget?”
“I require you to assist an officer in the execution of his duty. I’m
in a hole. They made all the arrangements for me to get here, but
they left it to me to get away again the best way I could. Now if I
tried for a passage on Smith’s schooner, it wouldn’t do. I’ve paid my
subscription, and if I were Pentwin, Faloo would be the only place
for me. Why should I want to go? They’d smell a rat. That man Hanson
isn’t any too satisfied with me; he tried a bit of cross-examination
last night, and though I kept my end up I don’t like it. What I’ve
got to do is to disappear. There’s been a case of that before. There
was a chap called Duncombe who got too fond of a native girl that was
already--well--appropriated. He went out one fine night and he didn’t
come back. Everybody at the club knows that he was killed. So I talk a
deal about the native girls up at the club. I’ve the reputation of a
Lothario. Sir John Sweetling has given me a good dressing-down about
it already. As a matter of fact I’ve had nothing to do with these
wenches. I’ve got a girl at home and wish I was safe back again with
her. But that’s where it is, you know. If I go out one night, and don’t
come back, and leave all my luggage behind me, including two or three
letters to Pentwin and Pentwin’s pocket-knife with his name and address
on it, then even Hanson will have no doubt that I was Pentwin, and that
I have been speared or knived by a jealous man.”
“Very likely. But what will you do really, Mr Parget? How does my help
come in?”
“The night I disappear will be the night after the _Snowflake_ has
come back. You’ll send a note privately to the skipper that I shall
be coming aboard. I’ve learned to work a native canoe all right. On
the _Snowflake_ I shall lie low until you’re ready to sail. Nobody but
the King knows that I’ve spoken with you, for at the club I’ve always
professed to be scared of going near the King’s house, and I gather
that the King has nothing more to do with men from the club nowadays.
Besides, I fancy a word from you would keep him quiet. And then--well,
I should ask you to lend me some clothes, take me to Tahiti, and say
nothing to anybody. I pay for what I have, of course, and after Tahiti
I can manage for myself.”
“Very well. I’ll do all that for you.”
“Thank you very much. And I’m sorry to give so much trouble. The luck’s
with me to find a gentleman like you touring these islands just now.”
“That’s all right. But I doubt if you’ll make as big a scoop out of it
as you think.”
“You mean the extradition? Oh, that will be arranged somehow.”
Mr Lechworthy was not thinking of extradition at all. He was thinking
that owing to his participation in the King’s scheme of a native Faloo
the exiles already had their warning, and long before Scotland Yard
had got its gun to its shoulder the birds would have flown far out
of range. But he said nothing of this to Parget at present; it might
possibly make a yarn for a dull evening on the _Snowflake_.
“Of course,” added Parget, “I needn’t remind you, sir, that all I’ve
said has been said in confidence. Not one word--”
“I assure you, Mr Parget, that I have no inclination to say a word.
I shall not even mention the matter to my niece until we are all
aboard the _Snowflake_. Your instructions to me will be carried out
absolutely.”
“And when does the boat get in?”
“The King thinks that with luck it might be here to-morrow or the day
after.”
“I’ll keep a look-out. Thank you again, sir.”
Lechworthy himself escorted the little man back to the garden entrance.
Parget saw the natives with their rifles and seemed a little puzzled.
“What does the King want all those men up here for? Where’s the danger?
What’s he afraid of?”
“I can’t tell you,” said Lechworthy. “In fact, I don’t know. But I have
noticed that the King never does anything without a reason, and it is
generally a pretty good reason.”
“Well,” said Parget, “they’re the finest set of natives I’ve seen yet
anywhere. I shan’t be round here again. We meet on the _Snowflake_. _Au
revoir_, Mr Lechworthy.”
“_Au revoir_,” echoed Lechworthy, mechanically.
There is a kind of insolence in _au revoir_, a confidence in the
future. Neither man ever saw the other again.
Lechworthy wandered back to the house. He was deep in thought. From
the dark hidden pool, where Tiva and Ioia were bathing together, came
a burst of musical laughter. On the verandah he found Hilda, with
the wreath of white flowers that Ioia had brought her in her dark
hair; Soames Pryce stood on the steps below looking up at her, saying
something in a low voice to which she listened with happiness.
Lechworthy’s mind was preoccupied, not only with his dream of a native
Faloo, but with this Parget, this scrap of London that met him suddenly
in the Southern Seas. He admired the courage and resource of the man,
as much as he hated his profession--necessary of course, lamentably
necessary, but scarcely ennobling and foreign to that way in which
Lechworthy had come to regard all sinners. Obviously Parget had heard
nothing of the impending dissolution of the club, and Lechworthy, who
did not know that this was a secret reserved for the committee, was
rather puzzled that Parget had not heard. On the _Snowflake_ he would
expound to Parget the scheme for a native Faloo, and his fears that the
members of the club had got to hear of it and would now disperse. Of
course Scotland Yard might still be able to close its hand on them--or
might not. Lechworthy smiled placidly. Those fibres of his being which
had made him a great Christian were curiously interwoven with those
other fibres which had made him a successful man of business.
Not only was Lechworthy’s mind preoccupied. There was another reason
why he could not read the story in Hilda’s eyes. He was absolutely
blind to all sex romance. Every engagement among his wide circle of
friends and acquaintances came to him as a surprise, though it were
a foregone conclusion to the rest of the circle. He had found many
interests in life and absorbing interests outside the realm of sex
romance. Hilda, doubtless, would be married one day, but the day was
always very vague and very far away. Hilda had determined that her
uncle was to be told nothing at present. On the _Snowflake_ she would
tell him all, and slowly win him over. She would make him see that her
happiness was here with her lover--not in Europe without him. At Tahiti
she expected to part from her uncle, and to remain there until the
_Snowflake_ brought Pryce to her.
“You see, dear,” she said, “just at the beginning of things one wants
to shut out all the rest of the world, even one’s nearest relatives
and people to whom one is devoted. In London that can never be. If
our engagement had been the normal product of a London season, you
would have had to take me to see people, and I should have had to take
you to see others, and it would have been all congratulations, and
interference, and horrors of that kind. Here, thank heaven, that can be
avoided. We will avoid it.”
To everything Pryce agreed. “It isn’t that I don’t know, Hilda. I do.
I know I have no right to accept such a sacrifice as you make. I know
that nobody can think that I’ve been straight about this. It can’t
be helped. It doesn’t matter. Since last night, down by the pool,
it’s seemed to me as if since the world began only one thing has ever
mattered. Oh, it’s too good--too good to happen. Your uncle will insist
on carrying you off to England, and he will be right too.”
“He would try to do that if he were an ordinary man with a conventional
set of views. He would not succeed, because I am of age and in this--in
this alone--I will not be controlled at all. But he is not an ordinary
man. He is as broad in some of his views as he is narrow in others. He
has little respect for social conventions, and he is losing some of
his respect for the law. He thinks nobody beyond reclamation--except
the ritualists and a few politicians. He has had the courage of his
opinions all his life; whatever his convictions have been, right or
wrong, he has always acted on them. Then, again, he trusts me as well
as he loves me. If I tell him that I know where my happiness is, he
will believe me, and he loves me too much to refuse it.”
They talked a long time together that morning. Yet still, when all was
said, Pryce was haunted by the same thought. It was like a dream of
unearthly beauty, such as before he had never even imagined, a dream to
which the awakening must come.
That evening the wind fell absolutely. The _Snowflake_ would
undoubtedly be delayed. The air was hot and still, and over the pool in
the garden there hung a steamy vapour. All living things in the island
were strangely silent. The night before the flying-foxes had screamed
and squabbled round the house. But to-night everything was silent, as
if waiting peacefully for some event.
When they all came out on the verandah after dinner, the silence seemed
to oppress them so that they spoke in lower tones than usual. The King,
as if to break the spell, ordered Tiva and Ioia to make music, but
their song had a wild sorrow in it.
“What music is that, Tiva?” asked Hilda, who sat deep in the shadow.
Tiva answered abstractedly in her native tongue. The King translated, a
little impatiently: “She says that it is the music of this night. She
talks much nonsense.”
There were a few moments of silence and then Lechworthy took his briar
pipe from his mouth and fired a calm point-blank question.
“Doctor, what was it like, living with all those bad men at the club?”
“With some of them,” said Pryce, meditatively, “one forgot that they
were bad men at all. Some were weak rotters, but I’ve found men just as
weak against whom, thanks to their circumstances, the law had never a
word to say. I suppose the fact is that the bad are not always bad and
the good are not always good; and for the sake of society the law has
to make a distinction which sometimes has no basis in fact.”
“You do not surprise me,” said Lechworthy. “You rediscover an old
truth, that we are all sinners--God forgive us.” He sucked diligently
at his pipe for a few seconds, and resumed: “It’s struck me sometimes
that, even from the point of view of society, a man with habitual bad
temper, or a man who drinks hard, or a man who won’t work, or a man who
gambles with money that his family needs, may, though the law lets him
go free, do more harm than some who have robbed or even murdered.”
Pryce, who had gone to bed earlier than usual that night, had been
asleep for an hour when he was awakened by a touch on the shoulder.
“Come outside,” said the voice of King Smith. “Quietly--as quickly as
you can.”