him--the customary welcome at Lol Raman's. For even among the byways a
resort must have its features, though it boast no cafe chantant and hang
no battery of conscientious nudes. In the warm, clammy evenings when the
fog crept up from the river marshes it was nothing unusual for Lol
Raman--whoever or whatever he might be--to entertain as many as a dozen
patrons in his garden on the hill. They gathered about his tables and
admired his pet orang-utan, they smoked his cigarettes and more
particularly they fortified themselves with his private stock, which was
arrack. A very potent safeguard against the seasonal fever is arrack,
being country spirit of a golden tint and undisciplined taste. But Lol
Raman's owned a private recipe, and hither came the initiated--traders,
wanderers, officials of the island government, officers of passing
tramps. Here they came, and here they often remained until their friends
bore them away again, thoroughly safeguarded to the point of
petrifaction.
Nivin might have explained these matters, but he had omitted so to do,
and Tunstal's was the sheer delight of discovery.
"_Stengah_," he observed, reaching for the bottle. "_Manti dooloo!_"
The waxen gentleman looked a trifle more intelligent than an eggplant.
Evidently his island Malay was not up to the classical standard. Tunstal
tried him in fragmentary Dutch to the same effect and with the same
result.
"Damn it--I say I want more and never mind taking that bottle away!"
The manikin's face opened.
"Oh, sure. Three dolla' hap'."
On being paid in Singapore silver he vanished into space once more while
Tunstal philosophized.
"Too bad about the simple native that has no use for a tourist!"
The garden had fallen to a drowsy hush. Within its four walls only the
great red ape stayed to do the honors, and he had subsided, applying
himself seriously now to the cigarette industry. He sat cross-legged,
workmanlike, with a bobbing of his ugly head and a ridiculous curling
tongue above the delicate task. Selecting a leaf of the natural weed and
adding a pinch for filler, he would somehow twist the spill and nip
under the ends with flying fingers. Curious fingers he had--long and
black and muscular--sinister talons that yet were nimble enough to trick
the eye. It was amazing to watch him. As if a fiend from the pit had
been trained to do featherstitch!
* * * * *
Tunstal watched for a time and drank for a time and chuckled like a
parrot over sugar. The adventure suited him; it developed well. There
was promise in it of something different, something quite local and
tropic indeed.
A smooth exhilaration began to crawl through his veins, a heightened
sense of power and perception. He found a special charm in each detail
about him, each to be separately savored. The sunlight, he noted, was
singularly rich and fluid. The yellow lights in his glass seemed to wink
with recondite confidences. A tender spray of vanna showered its tribute
of orange stars upon him; some glorious rose-pink rhododendrons drooped
seductively toward his shoulder. He reached to reap them, and at that
moment--the leaves parted and he saw the girl....
If the event had only transpired a trifle later, as the bard so nearly
says, it would never have transpired at all. Two glasses more of the
golden arrack, one glass even, and the subsequent proceedings could
hardly have interested Mr. Tunstal or anybody else, except possibly
Nivin--Nivin, who had laid his innocent plot to that end. So narrow is
the margin of trouble! He should have blinked at the lovely vision and
slept peacefully safeguarded beside the square-faced bottle until
carried thence aboard the steamer and gone on to tell another
globe-trotting yarn. But he was just a snifter short on that potent and
undisciplined drink. And here was the girl.... "By jing!" breathed Mr.
Tunstal.
Truly by any standard East or West, she was very fair. Of her face he
marked only the oval, the delicate bisque-tinted skin that shames mere
white, and the straight brows, not too broad for a tight-drawn casque of
hair. A striped sarong clipped her waist below the jutting front of her
little green jacket, and he saw the soft swell at her throat and the
fine, free swing of lines as she leaned forward, startled,
downward-looking. An alluring and timely apparition!
Tunstal thought so--to call it thinking. "You pippin," he remarked as he
pulled himself to his feet by the table. He fumbled at his helmet with
some confused notion of beginning gallantly, but it fell from his
fingers, and he stood flushed and staring. "You pippin!" he said again.
She belonged in this garden, in the checker of light and shadow and
exotic color, slender like a young bamboo and rounded as a purple
passion fruit. She belonged with the whole affair. She was just the
thing he had been waiting for. He took an unsteady step, and another.
She made no move. She still regarded him as he stayed, swaying. Through
the play of sun-threaded foliage she seemed even to smile, provocative,
as if to mock him for hesitating on his cue; and at that he lost his
head altogether--what was left him. Thrusting aside shrubs and creepers,
he reached for her as he had reached to pluck the rhododendron.
"D'you--d'you come seeking me, m'dear?" he stammered fatuously. "Come
right along, then, you beauty--and gie's a kiss, won't you?"
He did not do it well--in fact by the time he arrived at the gesture he
did it very badly.
* * * * *
Smoking-room audiences that had hung upon the fervid tales of Tunstal,
globe-trotter; his fellow passengers, instructed in speed by the
same--they must have felt somehow cheated if they could have seen him
then. They must have suspected the sad, sad dog, a wolf for theory but a
pug for practice, whose snap and dash in outlandish parts had been
harmless enough after all. There is a technique to such affairs. Even
arrack cannot supply the deficiencies of the amateur--as Tunstal was,
and as he presently knew himself to be....
He recognized her. His arms were about the lithe figure, drawing her
close when he became aware of the clean-carven cameo face so near him.
She was the girl of the cinnabar boat, the girl that had glanced upward
from the evil decks. Yet the shock of discovery was not his chief
reaction, neither amazement at her presence in the garden and her
changed attire. He was looking into her eyes.
They were wide and brown, deep as grotto pools, and strange, with a hint
of obliquity alien to him by untold centuries. But he could read--as
they blazed into his own--he could read their language. Terror was there
and bewilderment. But pride too--pride of soul like the chill purity of
mountain peaks. And from that height she feared and loathed him, the
brutish creature of another race who dared to lay his defiling and
incomprehensible touch upon her.
These things he saw while he stooped, while his lips pressed her bud of
a mouth. For he kissed her. After a fashion he did kiss her--though
the fume was clearing from his brain as haze lifts on the channel,
though he understood how abhorrent was this caress unknown to
Orientals--beginning to feel pretty much ashamed of himself.... But a
bit too late.
The same instant she broke away from his hold, spurning him, and as he
reeled a bunch of hairy great fingers closed on the back of his neck.
He screamed once and clutched a stout, hanging creeper and clung there
while his cry throttled down to a gasp. Behind him he could hear the
click of steel links; before him the sunlight swam. Helpless as a kitten
nipped by the scruff, he fought for life.
Because the chain was fastened high and because the beast was yoked
between the shoulders he had come within the grip of only one murderous
paw, which was mere luck. But through a long moment while his blood beat
thick and his eyeballs started from their sockets he knew the agony of
those that die by the garrote. A claw tough as a metal ring dug into his
flesh, working for a firmer span, gathering the cords and muscles,
tightening slowly. He could only stare at vacancy and dance upon the air
and clench the creeper that brought down around him a little snowstorm
of flower petals from the quaking branches overhead.
The creeper held. So did not his collar when the eager fingers shifted
and found a purchase whereby the half of his coat was stripped like a
husk of corn. At the sudden release he lost footing....
He was like one overtaken in a nightmare, too faint and clogged to will
an effective movement for escape. With safety a matter of inches he
floundered on the verge, entangled by vines and grasses, tugging madly
at his hip. And the nightmare was very close, a horror not to be faced,
a red fury with gigantic arms that came flailing and picking at him and
tearing his clothes to ribbons as he groveled!
It lasted until the ape took a trick from the man, swung up on a liana,
and from the vantage caught him about the body with his feet. Then
Tunstal's revolver came free. Crushed in that dreadful embrace, he began
to shoot!
When he stood up above the quivering heap and looked about him he was
alone. After the frenzy of his struggle the silence dropped in upon him
like a ram. The walks were empty, the thickets were quiet, the house at
the end of the inclosure seemed deserted. He turned to the spot where he
had seen the girl. She was gone. He turned toward the gates. They had
been closed. He ran stumbling and flung against them and found they had
been locked as well. No one came, no one called. And the garden drowsed
in the warmth of a forenoon brilliant, heavy-scented, tropical!...
The last Tunstal remembered was raving back and forth within those four
walls with a useless gun in his fist and the pitiless sun beating upon
his head.
* * * * *
There is no tradition of the mercantile marine that provides for
following the fortunes of travelers who step ashore to enjoy the scenery
or other benefits. But a traveler who carries an important letter of
credit and a through passage ticket may present something of an
exception. In the early evening of the _Lombock's_ stay at the port by
the river mouth her first mate found time and occasion for a cryptic
word with her captain. And the captain was exceeding wroth, for the
_Lombock_ would finish her landing on the ebb and he had no mind to miss
a tide.
"Who d'y'say? Him? Not back yet, d'y'say? Well, what's that to me? Have
I got to drynurse every glorified pup of a globe-trotter that takes a
sanctified notion to soak hisself?"
Nivin explained at some length.
"To hell with all passengers!" wished the captain then, a man of
strictly professional temper. "Here's this little rat Van Goor been
devilin' me all day about the grub we fed his blessed coolies in the
'tween-decks. He says he'll lose a week's labor off the lot before
they're fit for work.... Well, go on, go on. If your blighter's such a
fool as you say, you better go get him. But I'll not wait past
midnight--mind that. And I wish you joy of the job."
So Nivin came ashore at dusk to wander through the same streets and
alleys to which he had directed another's erring steps at dawn.
* * * * *
He sought a handsome young stranger in a suit of cream-colored silk and
a dove-gray helmet with peacock puggree. Drunk, probably. Even very
drunk. Possibly violent and uproarious--this was Nivin's fear. More
likely to be fever-proofed and solidified--this was Nivin's hope. Had
any seen such a wonder? None had, though a boatman remembered landing
the white tuan from the _Lombock_, and there was plain testimony that he
had purchased a bottle of arrack for three dollars and a half Singapore
silver. Beyond that point the trail evaporated. Apparently the person of
Alfred Poynter Tunstal had dissolved in local liquor.
It was the hour of lamp lighting when the mate arrived at Government
House to lay his quest before a genial and elephantine official in white
ducks who was by way of being an acquaintance and who beamed upon him
from the step. "You los' somebody? Here? My dear fallow, do you sink you
are in Calcutta or Kowloon? Nosing happens here to sailormen or whoever.
Why, zis is not even semicivilize', wizout one coffee shop!... Unless,
of course, he actually injuries ze people."
"Ah," said Nivin.
"In zeir pride," added De Haan reflectively.
"And if he did?"
De Haan smoothed a glossy beard with a deliberate hand the size of a
spade. He was controller in a district of some tens of thousands of
brown population and long had been, and his father before him.
"If he did--I cannot say," he answered. "In such affairs we always
remember zese folk haf been alife in ze land a few years before us. Who
shall say? But it would be somesing fitting--mos' fitting and
op-propriate. Zere was once a man came to steal liddle stone pictures
from old temples in ze hills. He wanted ze heads for souvenirs, you
see?" He rocked complacently. "I haf seen his head, nicely smoked. Which
was alzo a souvenir."
But he met Nivin's melancholy gaze and his tone changed.
"You tell me you los' your frien' at Lol Raman's? Haf you been to look?"
"Three times. There's no trace. I found a servant who sold the lad
drink; no more."
"Come wit' me, zen," said the controller. "And do not half such trouble
at heart. We will find him. He is only schleeping off zat fever cure."
They searched high and low, among the terraces and through the water
front where De Haan questioned all manner of natives: stolid,
self-possessed little men who looked him between the eyes at
answering--but they found no nook wherein Tunstal might be slumbering,
nor any clue, and Nivin's lean jaw lengthened.
"Your fren' was come alone?" asked De Haan, puzzled.
"Alone and early. There wouldn't likely be any other customer at that
time. No witnesses."
"It is all right now--do not be tragic. Nosing of ze kind could be. We
will see ze garden again."...
But all they saw was no aid to the case. They entered the garden of Lol
Raman to find it disposed as usual, inviting the evening trade. Paper
lanterns swung among the trees like phosphorescent fruits and drew a
myriad fluttering moths. As if the glow had drawn them too, a few
visitors lounged at ease about the tables, sipping and murmuring
languidly. Some of the _Lombock's_ passengers were there, notably a
smallish man with shiny skin and bulbous eyes, glittering and predatory,
who bowed effusively to De Haan and received a cool nod. Gliding here
and yon, and jiggling a tray to serve the general need, went a
waxen-faced manikin. Glasses shone and sparkled. White garments showed
fresh and span. And farther back, amid the shadows under the big palm,
could be seen the vague figure of the presiding genius of the place, the
huge red ape, huddled in the attitude of meditation.
"All ze same, hey?" said De Haan. "Still we remain a liddle. Perhaps we
hear somesing. And you, my dear fallow, drink zis."
He chose a table in the arbor near a magnificent rhododendron and poured
a measure of golden yellow liquid from a ready bottle, and the mate had
need of the same. Nivin was paying the penalty just then for
unprofessional weakness and the mellower streak of his nature, as those
of his type have often to pay here below. He remembered that he alone
had guided Tunstal. He could not acquit himself for whatever ill had
befallen. And he remembered something else--another evil he had done
nothing to check that day--the passage of the cinnabar boat with her
ruddy devils and suspected errand....
"What is ze matter wit' zat beast?" rumbled De Haan, frowning over his
shoulder. "He don' yell good to-night. He acts like sick. And alzo he
haf no roll' us yet one single cigarette. Yet here is plenty tobacco
too--"
With his foot he pushed within the circle of the chain a little lacquer
box and a packet of leaves, but when he turned again the kindly
official saw that his attempt to set up a diversion had failed. Nivin
looked leaner and more leathery than ever, and his eyes had lighted with
an almost fanatic gleam which was only partly due to arrack--that
potential drink. "It's no use, Mister Controller," he said. "And I thank
you for meaning well. But you can't keep from me that something awful
has happened to the boy I sent from the _Lombock_ so free and careless."
De Haan squirmed through all his thick bulk. "Don' speak so wit' a pain,
my dear fallow," he urged. "I do not admit it. We haf yet to see."
"I can see. You try to tell me certain crimes are spared you here. I
take it you mean such deviltry as grows where foreigners have rotted a
native country?"
"Yes," said De Haan.
"And that's true; they do rot it. I always thought this place was clean,
just as you claim, because so few whites pass through--a plain, decent,
wholesome race that keeps its self-respect and harms none till trod
upon."
"Yes."
Nivin leaned across at him. "But the rotters are in. They're at their
slimy work, grubbin' for profit through muck. And after that what's to
be trusted?"
"What do you mean?" demanded De Haan.
"Such people as that rat Van Goor over there--" He jerked a thumb toward
the bulbous-eyed man.
"We watch zem. Zat is what we are here for. Meanwhile zey bring
development. If zey misbehave, we sling zem out quick."
"And the coolies they bring--scum of the earth. Do you watch them?"
"Of course."
"And you never caught them yet at their slave trade planted right in
the heart of your people?"
* * * * *
De Haan stiffened in his chair. "What are you trying to say? Zis is fool
talk of ze river."
"Native women sold into slavery to the cinnabar mines to hell and death.
Soul traffic, the fine flower of civilization. Here in these lovely
islands!"
"I tell you it can't be!"
"The boats, man. The cinnabar boats. Can you answer for their trade up
and down and about--transporting commodities to supply the gangs?"
"We inspect every one of zem here, at ze water front. Zere is nosing nor
anywhere to hide such doings. You, zat speak to the shame of our
people--prove it if you can!"
"What if I could?" cried Nivin.
"What if you could?" De Haan doubled his hands before him, the kind of
big, white, capable hands that deliberately and quietly have molded the
most successful and the least troublesome colonial empire in the world.
"What if you could? By Godd, we would take ze man who did it and break
him in liddle pieces! Can you prove it? Speak now and let me hear your
proof. By Godd, I tell you zis is my gountry--our gountry, our people!
Not dirt, but men and women. Not chattels, not slaves; not--not--"
There broke a sharp click and rattle of steel links. They turned at the
sound. Under the big palm the red-haired ape had started into vehement
life, bouncing at his leash....
Nivin had fallen back into his chair again, silenced, baffled, for he
had no proof to give. De Haan still held the pose of challenge, glancing
over his shoulder. Both of them watched the ungainly creature reeling in
the shadows; both of them observed the gestures by which he seemed to
solicit their attention.
He had taken a leaf of the raw tobacco and adding a pinch for filler
was trying to twist the spill. And he could not. It became evident to
them that he could not. The fingers moved painfully, trembling....
Curious fingers he had, stumpy and thick and clumsy as if covered with
ragged gloves, wholly unequal to the delicate task.
* * * * *
Slowly Nivin levered his lank frame out of the chair and moved a pace
like a somnambulist and stood staring at those fingers. He straightened
and transfixed De Haan. "Where's your police?" he whispered.
"Guns--soldiers--something--!"
"What? What is it?"
Nivin stood braced like a man at the edge of a precipice.
"To hold this place."
De Haan looked around over the patch of lighted garden into the banks of
shrubbery and further dim tree shapes.
"I hold zis place," he said simply, bulking big and broad. "I am here.
None of my people will harm us now, whatever zey may haf done, whatever
you may mean. And zen--?"
Without a word Nivin stepped into the circle about the palm, stepped up
to the crouching, sinister captive, flung an arm about him and seemed to
wrestle. A knife wrought swiftly in his hand with little flashes.
"_N-n-not--not--not monkeys!_" burst a broken voice, sobbing with
eagerness to top the phrase.
And in the fantastic glow of paper lanterns stood Alfred Poynter
Tunstal, surely the strangest figure to which a dapper and sophisticated
seeker after truth was ever reduced, with a face blackened and
unrecognizable like a hideous caricature and slashed across by the raw
wound of his recent gag, clad, head to heel, in the plastered red hide
of a monstrous orang-utan, the true jungle man!
So he stood to give testimony and make atonement for various things.
"Not monkeys!" he gasped hysterically. "_I_ thought so--_I_ thought they
were--and they made a monkey out of me!"
He swayed and straightened in Nivin's grip.
"I killed their ape. I put the touch of dishonor on a brown skin. And
they served me proper for it--proper. But I've got the proof you
want....
"All day I've been sitting there, under that tree. The man--the man who
bought those cinnabar girls--he came to talk business.
"It's true. He gets those girls in starving villages. They engage for
service; that's all. They don't know--don't understand--till too
late.... Three of them now in that house back there waiting shipment!
Blind victims--an incidental side line to Lol Raman!"
"Who?" thundered De Haan!
A long, hairy arm shot out accusing.
"That greasy little cur over there. Van Goor, the agent. _Stop him!_"
The controller stopped him. "Zis," he observed, "zis is mos'
op-propriate!"...
* * * * *
And Alfred Poynter Tunstal, recovering as he went, continued his journey
eastward as soon and as fast as ever he could make it until East became
West again. He brought home few records of his travels, and, curiously,
he had not collected a single globe-trotting tale of wickedness and
mystery. But one result of his voyaging was marked. He carried a
scar--acquired in some slight accident--which ran from each corner of
his mouth in a thin line and which transformed his original cheerful
chubbiness into an expression quite grim and taciturn. He had lost his
cherubic smile.
JETSAM
It is likely that at some time in his extreme youth Junius Peabody was
introduced to those single-minded creatures, the ant and the bee.
Doubtless he was instructed in the highly moral lessons they are
supposed to illustrate to the inquiring mind of childhood. But it is
certain he never profited by the acquaintance--indeed, the contemplation
of such tenacious industry must have afflicted his infant consciousness
with utter repugnance. By the time he was twenty-seven the only living
thing that could be said to have served him as a model was the
jellyfish.
Now the jellyfish pursues a most amiable theory of life, being harmless,
humorous, and decorative. It derives much enjoyment from drifting along
through the glitter and froth, as chance may direct. It does no work to
speak of. It never needs to get anywhere. And it never, never has to go
thirsty. But some day it may get itself stranded, and then the poor
jellyfish becomes an object quite worthless and fit only to be shoveled
out of sight as soon as possible--because it lacks the use of its legs.
Thus it was with Junius Peabody, who awoke one morning of his
twenty-eighth year on the roaring coral beach at Fufuti below
Bendemeer's place to find that all the chances had run out and that the
glitter had faded finally from a prospect as drab as the dawn spread
over a butternut sea before him....
Mr. Peabody sat up and looked about from under a corrugated brow and
yawned and shivered. His nerves had been reduced to shreds, and even the
fiercest heat of tropic suns seemed never to warm him, a symptom
familiar enough to brandy drunkards. But he had had such awakenings
before, many of them, and the chill that struck through him on this
particular morning was worse than any hang-over. It was the soul of
Junius Peabody that felt cold and sick, and when he fumbled through his
pockets--the subtle relation between the pockets and the soul is a point
sadly neglected by our best little psychologists--he uncovered a very
definite reason. His last penny was gone.
Under the shock of conviction Mr. Peabody sought to cast up the mental
log, in the hope of determining where he was and how he came to be
there.