"Not that I have heard."
Silence fell again, and they walked out on to the road. Pools of
afternoon rain still lay here and there in the depressions, but Joicey
took no heed of them, and splashed on, staining his white trousers with
liquid mud.
"By the way," he said, clearing his throat as though his words stuck
there, "have you heard anything more in connection with the
disappearance of that boy you were talking of the other evening?"
Hartley did not reply for a moment, and just as he was about to speak,
Mrs. Wilder's car passed, and Mrs. Wilder leaned forward to smile at the
Head of the Police; a small buggy followed with some more friends of
Hartley's, and then another car, and the road was clear again.
"I believe I am on the right track, but I don't like it, Joicey. I'm
damned if I do."
"Why not?"
"It comes too close to home,"--Hartley spoke with a jerk. "A hateful
job--I thought I'd tell you--" He spoke in broken sentences, and his
words affected the Banker very perceptibly.
"Can't you drop it?"
Joicey came to a standstill, and his voice was lowered almost to a
whisper.
"I wish to Heaven I could, but it's a question of duty,"--he could
hardly see Joicey's face in the gathering gloom. "I suppose you guess
what I'm driving at, Joicey, though how you guess, I don't know."
"I think I'll say good night here, Hartley,"--the Banker's voice was
unnatural and wavering. "I can't discuss it with you. It's got to be
proved," he spoke more heatedly. "What have you got? Only the word of a
stinking native. I tell you it's monstrous." He stopped and clutched
Hartley's arm, and seemed as though he was staggering.
"What has come over you, Joicey; are you ill?"
"I'll sit down here for a moment,"--Joicey walked towards a low wall.
"Sometimes I get these attacks. I'm better after they are over. Better,
much better. Leave me here to go back by myself, Hartley. You need have
no fear, I'm over it now; I'll rest for a little and then go my way
quickly. Believe me, I'd rather be alone."
Very reluctantly, Hartley quitted him. He felt that Joicey was ill, and
might even be beginning the horrible phase of "breaking up," which comes
on with such fatal speed in a tropical climate. He went back after he
had gone a mile along the road, but Joicey was no longer there. It was
too late to think of going to the Club, for the road that Joicey and
Hartley had followed led away from the residential quarter of Mangadone,
and he disliked the idea of going back to his own bungalow and waiting
through the dismal hour that lies across the evening between the time to
come in and the time to dress for dinner.
Had there been a friendly house near, Hartley would have gone in on the
chance of finding someone at home, but as there was not, he made the
best of existing circumstances and took his way along the road towards
his own bungalow. He could not deny that his walk with Joicey had only
served to depress his spirits, and he was sorry to think that his friend
was so obviously in bad health. The world seemed an uncomfortable place,
full of gloomy surprises, and Hartley wished that he had a wife to go
back to. Not a superb being like Mrs. Wilder, who was encircled by the
halo of High Romance, but just an ordinary wife, with a friendly smile
and a way of talking about everyday things while she darned socks.
Somewhere in his domestic heart Hartley considered sock-mending a
beautiful and symbolic act, and yet he could not picture Mrs. Wilder
occupied in such a fashion.
A man with a wife to go back to is never at the same loose end as a man
who has no need ever to be punctual for a solitary meal, and Hartley
walked quickly because he wanted to get clear of his depression, rather
than for any reason that compelled him to be up to time.
The gathering darkness drew out the flare over the city, and, here and
there, lamps dotted the road, until, turning up a short cut, he was into
the region of trams once more. The lighted cars, filled with gay Burmese
and soldiers from the British Regiment, and European-clad, dark-skinned
creatures of mixed races, looked cheerful and encouraged to better
thoughts. Hartley crossed the busy thoroughfare below the Pagoda steps
and went on quickly, for he recognized the outline of Mhtoon Pah on his
way to burn amber candles before his newly-erected shrine. He was in no
mood to talk to the curio dealer just then, and he avoided him carefully
and plunged down a tree-bowered road that led to the bridge, and from
the bridge to the hill-rise where his own gate stood open.
It pleased him to see that lamps were lighted in the house, and he felt
conscious that he was hungry, and would be glad of dinner; he made up
his mind to do himself well and rout the tormenting thoughts that
pursued him, and to-morrow he would see Francis Heath and have the whole
thing put on paper once and for all. He even whistled as he came along
the short drive and under the portico, where a night-scented flower
smelt strong and sweet. His boy met him with the information that there
was a Sahib within waiting. A Sahib who had evidently come to stay, for
a strange-looking servant in the veranda rose and salaamed, and sat down
again by his master's kit with the patience of a man who looks out upon
eternity.
Hartley hardly glanced at the servant. Visitors, tumbling from anywhere,
were not altogether unusual occurrences. Men on the way back from a
shoot in the jungles of Upper Burma, men who were old school friends and
were doing a leisurely tour to Japan and America, men of his own
profession who had leave to dispose of; all or any of these might arrive
with a servant and a portmanteau. Whoever it was, Hartley was
predisposed to give him a welcome. He had come just when he was wanted,
and he hurried in, a light of pleasure in his blue eyes.
Near the lamp, a book of verses open on his knee, sat Hartley's
unexpected guest. He was slim, dark, and vital, but where his arresting
note of vitality lay would have been hard to explain. No one can tell
exactly what it is that marks one man as a courageous man, and another
as a coward, and yet, without need of any test, these things may be
known and judged beforehand. The man whose eyes followed the lines:
"They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep"--
was as distinctive as he well could be, and yet his face was not
expressive. His dark, narrow eyes were dull, and his finely-cut features
small and perfect, rather than bold and strong; his long hands were the
hands of a woman more than those of a man, and his figure was slight to
boyishness.
When Hartley let his full joy express itself in husky, cheery words of
surprise, his visitor said very little, but what he did say was spoken
in a pleasant, low voice.
"Coryndon," said Hartley again. "Of all men on earth I wanted to see you
most. You've done what you always do, come in the 'nick.'"
Coryndon smiled, a languid, half-amused gleam of mirth.
"I am only passing through, my job is finished."
"But you'll stay for a bit?"
"You said just now that I was here in the 'nick'; if the nick is
interesting, I'll see."
"I'll go and arrange about your rooms," said Hartley, and he appeared
twice his normal size beside his guest, as a St. Bernard might look
standing by a greyhound. "We will talk afterwards."
Coryndon watched him go out without change of expression, and, sliding
back into his chair, took up his book again.
"They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep."
Coryndon leaned back and half closed his eyes; the words seemed potent,
as with a spell, and he called up a vision of the forsaken Palace where
wild things lived and where revels were long forgotten--solitude and
ruin that no one ever crossed to explore or to see--with the eyes of a
man who can rebuild a mighty past. Solitude in the halls and marble
stairways, ruin of time in the fretted screens, and broken cisterns
holding nothing but dry earth. Nothing there now but the lion and the
lizard, not even the ghost of a light footfall, or the tinkle of glass
bangles on a rounded arm.
Coryndon had almost forgotten Hartley when he came back, flushed and
pleased, and full of a host's anxiety about his guest's welfare.
"I hope you haven't been bored?"
"No," said Coryndon, touching the book, "I've been amusing myself in my
own way," and he followed Hartley out of the room.
XI
SHOWS HOW THE "WHISPER FROM THE DAWN OF LIFE" ENABLES CORYNDON TO TAKE
THE DRIFTING THREADS BETWEEN HIS FINGERS
Very probably Hartley believed that he knew "all about" Coryndon; he
knew at least, that the Government of India looked upon him as the best
man they had to unravel the most intricate case that murder or forgery,
coining or fraud of any sort, could tangle into mysterious knots.
Coryndon had intuition and patience, and once he undertook a case he
followed it through to the ultimate conclusion; and so it was that
Coryndon stood alone, a department in himself, possibly aided by the
police and the shadower, but capable of discovering anything, once he
bent his mind to the business of elucidation.
Beyond the fact that he had been born somewhere in a jungle clearing in
Upper Burma, and that at ten years old he had gone to India to a school
in the Hills, then had vanished for years to reappear in the service of
the Government, his story was not known to anyone except himself. No one
doubted that he had "a touch of the country" in his blood. It displayed
itself in unmistakable physical traits, and his knowledge of its many
tongues and languages was the knowledge that first made him realize
that his future career lay in India.
Colonel Coryndon, his father, died just as the boy was leaving school,
and left him a little money; just enough to keep him from the iron yoke
of clerkship, and to allow of his waiting for what he wanted. Behind his
dark eyes lived a brain that could concentrate with the grip of a vise
upon any subject that interested him, and he puzzled his masters at his
school. Coryndon was a curious mixture of imagination and strong common
sense; few realize that it is only the imaginative mind that can see
behind the curtain that divides life from life, and discern motives.
He saw everything with an almost terrible clearness. Every detail of a
room, every line in a face, every shop in a street he walked through,
every man he spoke with, was registered in his indelible book of facts.
This, in itself, is not much. Men can learn the habit of observation as
they can train their minds to remember dates or historical facts, but,
in the case of Coryndon, this art was inherent and his by birth. He
started with it, and his later training of practising his odd capacity
for recalling the smallest detail of every day that passed only
intensified his power in this direction. With this qualification alone
he could have been immensely useful as a secret agent, but in addition
to this he had also his other gift, his intuition and power of altering
his own point of view for that of another man, and seeing his subject
through the eyes of everyone concerned in a question.
His nervous vitality was great, and there were plenty of well-educated
native subordinates who believed him gifted with occult forces, since
his ways of getting at his astonishing conclusions were never explained
to any living soul, because Coryndon could not have explained them to
himself.
His identity was well known at Headquarters, but beyond that limit it
was carefully hidden from the lower branches of the executive, as too
wide and too public recognition would have narrowed his sphere of
action. As Wesley declared the whole world to be his parish, so the
whole of Asia was Coryndon's sphere of action, and only at Headquarters
was it ever known where he actually might be found, or what employment
occupied his brain. He came like a rain-cloud blown up soundlessly on
the east wind, and vanished like morning mists, and no one knew what he
had learnt during his silent passing.
Men with voices like brass trumpets praised and encouraged him, and men
who knew the dark byways of criminal investigation were hardly jealous
of him. Coryndon was a freak, an exception, a man who stood beyond
competition, and was as sure as he was mysterious. He was "explained" in
a dozen ways. His face, to begin with, made disguise easy, and the touch
of the country did much for him in this respect. He had played behind
his father's up-country bungalow with little Burmese boys and talked in
their speech before he knew any English; the Bazaar was an open book to
him, and the mind of the native, so some men said with a shade of
contempt, not too far from his own to make understanding impossible.
Besides all this, there were those other years, after he left the school
under the high snow ranges, when Coryndon had vanished entirely, and of
these years he never spoke. And yet, with all this, Coryndon was
unmistakably a "Sahib," a man of unusual culture and brilliant ability.
He had complete powers of self-control, and his one passion was his love
of music, and though he never played for anyone else, men who had come
upon him unawares had heard him playing to himself in a way that was as
surprising as everything else about Coryndon surprised and astonished.
He had dreamed as a boy, and he still dreamed as a man. The subtle
beauty of a line of verse led him into visionary habitations as fair as
any ever disclosed to poet or artist. He could lose himself utterly in
the lights and shadows of a passing day, while he watched for a doomed
man at the entrance of a temple, or brooded over painted sores and cried
to the rich for alms by a dusty roadside; a very different Coryndon to
the Coryndon who looked at Hartley across the white cloth of the round
dinner-table.
The truth about Coryndon was that he read the souls of men. Mhtoon Pah
had boasted to Hartley that he read the walk of the world he looked at,
but Coryndon went much further; and as Hartley talked about outward
things, whilst the Boy and the _Khitmutghar_ flitted in and out behind
them, carrying plates and dishes, his guest was considering him with a
quiet and almost moonstruck gravity of mind. He knew just how far
Hartley could go, and he knew exactly what blocked him. Hartley was tied
into the close meshes of circumstance; he argued from without and worked
inward, and Coryndon had discovered the flaw in this process before he
left his school.
When they were alone at last, Hartley pushed his chair closer to
Coryndon and leaned forward.
"One moment." Coryndon's voice was lowered slightly, and he strolled to
the door.
"Boy," he called, and with amazing alacrity Hartley's servant appeared.
"Tell my servant," he said, speaking in English, "that I want the cigar
tin."
"Do you believe he was listening?"
"I am sure of it."
Hartley flushed angrily, and he was about to speak when Coryndon's man
came into the room, salaaming on the threshold, carrying a black tin.
"Would you like a little stroll in the garden?" said Coryndon. "It would
be pleasant before we sit down," and Hartley followed him out.
"Did you bring any cigars down?"
Hartley spoke for the sake of saying something, more than for any
reasonable desire to know whether Coryndon had done so or not, and his
reply was a low, amused laugh.
"In ten minutes Shiraz will do a little juggling for your servants," he
said placidly. "There are no cigars in the tin. I hope you didn't want
one, Hartley? He will probably tell them that I am a new arrival,
picked up by him at Bombay. Whatever he tells them, they will find him
amusing."
A misty moonlight lighted the garden with a soft, yellow haze, and the
harsh rattling of night beetles sounded unusually loud and noisy in the
silence.
"You said that you had just finished a job?"
"I have, and now I am on leave. The Powers have given me four months,
and I am going to London to hear the Wagner Cycle. I promised myself
that long ago, and unless something very special crops up to prevent me,
I shall start in a week from now."
They took another silent turn.
"Did your last job work out?"
"Yes. It took a long time, but I got back into touch with things I had
begun to forget, and it was interesting. Shall we go back into the
house?"
"Come in here," said Hartley, taking his way into the sitting-room. "I
have some notes in my safe that I want you to look at. The truth is,
Coryndon, I'm tackling rather a nasty business, and if you can help me,
I'll be eternally grateful to you. It has got on my nerves."
Coryndon bowed his head silently and drew up a chair near the table. All
the time that Hartley talked to him, he listened with close attention.
The Head of the Police went into the whole subject at length, telling
the story as it had happened, and leaving out, so far as he knew, no
point that bore upon the question. First he told of the disappearance of
the boy Absalom, the grief and frantic despair of Mhtoon Pah, and his
visit to Hartley in the very room where they sat.
"He was away from the curio shop that night, you say?"
"Yes, at the Pagoda. He is building a shrine there. His statement to me
was that he went away just after dark, and the boy had already left an
hour before."
Coryndon said nothing, but waited for the rest of the story, and, bit by
bit, Hartley set it before him.
"Heath saw Absalom, and admitted it to me," he said, pulling at his
short, red moustache. "Even then he showed a very curious amount of
irritation, and refused to say anything further. Then he lied to me when
I went to the house, and there is Atkins' testimony to the fact that he
is paying a man to keep quiet."
"Has the man reappeared since?"
"Not since I had the house watched."
Coryndon's eyes narrowed and he moved his hands slightly.
"Next there is the very trifling evidence of Mrs. Wilder. It doesn't
count for much, but it goes to prove that she knows something of Heath
which she won't give away. She knows something, or she wouldn't screen
him. That is simple deduction."
"Quite simple."
"Now, with reference to Joicey," went on Hartley, with a frown. "I don't
personally think that Joicey knows or remembers whether he did see
Heath. My Superintendent swears that he did go down Paradise Street on
the night of the twenty-ninth, but Joicey is ill, and he said he wasn't
in Mangadone then. He has been seedy for some time and may have mixed up
dates."
"You attach no importance to him?"
"Practically none." Hartley leaned back in his chair and lighted a
cheroot.
Coryndon touched the piece of silk rag with his hand.
"This rag business is out of place, taken in connection with Heath."
"I don't accuse Heath, Coryndon, but I believe that he _knows_ where the
boy went. The last thing that was told me by Mhtoon Pah was that the
gold lacquer bowl that was ordered by Mrs. Wilder was found on the steps
of the shop. Though what that means, the devil only knows. Mhtoon Pah
considers it likely that the Chinaman, Leh Shin, put it there, but I
have absolutely nothing to connect Leh Shin with the disappearance, and
I have withdrawn the men who were watching the shop."
"Interesting," said Coryndon slowly.
"Can you give me any opinion? I'm badly in need of help."
Coryndon shook his head, his hand still touching the stained rag idly.
"I could give you none at all, on these facts."
Hartley looked at him with a fixed and imploring stare.
"In a place like this, to be the chief mover, the actual incentive to
disclosing God knows what, is simply horrible," he said in a rough,
pained voice. "I've done my share of work, Coryndon, and I've taken my
own risks, but any cases I've had against white men haven't been against
men like the Padré."
Coryndon gave a little short sigh that had weariness in its sound,
weariness or impatience.
"What you have told me involves three principals, and a score of
others." He was counting as he spoke. "Any one of them may be the man
you are looking for, only circumstances indicate one in particular. You
are satisfied that you have got the line. I could not confidently say
that you have, unless I had been working the case myself, and had
followed up every clue throughout."
Hartley got up and paced the room, his hands deep in the pockets of his
dinner jacket.
"I am convinced that Heath will have to be forced to speak, and, I may
as well be honest with you--I don't like forcing him."
Coryndon was not watching his host, he was leaning back in his chair,
his eyes on a little spiral of smoke that circled up from his cigarette.
"I wish that damned little Absalom had never been heard of, and that it
was anybody's business but mine to find him, if he is to be found."
If Coryndon's finely-cut lips trembled into an instantaneous smile, it
passed almost at once, and he looked quietly round at Hartley, who still
paced, looking like an overgrown schoolboy in a bad mood.
"I wish I could help you, Hartley, but I have not enough to go on. As
you say, the case is unusual, and it makes it impossible for me to
advise." He got up and stretched himself. "There is one thing I will
do, if you wish it, and, from what you said, you may wish it; I will
take over the whole thing--for my holiday, and the Wagner Cycle will
have to wait."
Hartley came to a standstill before his guest.
"You'll do that, Coryndon?"
"The case interests me," said Coryndon, "otherwise, I should not suggest
it." He paused for a moment and reflected. "I shall have to make your
bungalow my headquarters; that is the simplest plan. Any absences may be
accounted for by shooting trips and that sort of thing. That part of it
is straightforward enough, and I can see the people I want to see."
"You shall have a free hand to do anything you like," said Hartley. "And
any help that I can give you."
Coryndon looked at him for a moment without replying.
"Thank you, Hartley. Our methods are different, as you know, but when I
want you, I will tell you how you can help me."
He walked across the room to where two tumblers and a decanter of whisky
stood on a tray, and, pouring himself out a glass of soda water, sipped
it slowly.
"Here are my notes," said Hartley, in a voice of great relief. "They
will be useful for reference."
Coryndon folded them up and put them in his pocket.
"Most of what is there is also in my official report."
Coryndon nodded his head, and, opening the piano, struck a light chord.
After a moment he sat down and played softly, and the air he played came
straight from the high rocks that guard the Afghan frontier. Like a
breeze that springs up at evening, the little love-song lilted and
whispered under his compelling fingers, and the "Song of the Broken
Heart" sang itself in the room of Hartley, Head of the Police. Where it
carried Coryndon no one could guess, but it carried Hartley into a very
rose-garden of sentimental fatuity, and when the music stopped he gave a
deep grunting sigh of content.
"I'll get some honest sleep to-night," he said as they parted, and ten
minutes afterwards he was lying under his mosquito-curtains, oblivious
to the world.
Coryndon's servant, Shiraz, was squatting across the door that led into
the veranda when his master came in, and he waited for his orders. He
would have sat anywhere for weeks, and had done so, to await the
doubtful coming of Coryndon, whose times and seasons no man knew.
When he was gone, Coryndon took out the bulky packet of notes and
extracted the piece of rag, which he locked carefully away in a
dispatch-box. He then cleared a little space on the floor, and put the
papers lightly over one another. Setting a match to them, he watched
them light up and curl into brittle tinder, and dissolve from that stage
into a heap of charred ashes, which he gathered up with a careful hand
and put into the soft earth of a fern-box outside his veranda door. This
being done, he sat down and began to think steadily, letting the names
drift through his brain, one by one, until they sorted themselves, and
he felt for the most useful name to take first.
"Joicey, the Banker, is a man of no importance," he murmured to himself,
and again he said, "Joicey the Banker."
It was nearly dawn when he got between the cool linen sheets, and was
asleep almost as his dark head lay back against the soft white pillow.
XII
SHOWS HOW A MAN MAY CLIMB A HUNDRED STEPS INTO A PASSIONLESS PEACE, AND
RETURN AGAIN TO A WORLD OF SMALL TORMENTS