became inquisitive, and wished to hear the details of the crime for
which his new friend had so wrongfully suffered. He looked so evil, so
greasy, and so utterly loathsome that he seemed to fascinate the Burman,
who rocked himself about and moaned as he related the story of his
wrong. His words so excited the ghoulish interest of his listener that
his bloated body quivered as he drank in the details.
"And so ends the tale of his great evil; he that was my friend," said
Coryndon, rising from his heels as he finished his story. "The hour
grows late and there is no comfort in the night, since I may not find
oblivion." He passed his hand stupidly over his forehead. "My memory is
lost, flapping like an owl in the sunlight; once the road to the house
by the river lay before me as the lines upon my open palm, but now the
way is no longer clear."
"I have said that it is closed to-night, so none may enter. There is a
password, but I alone know it, and I may not tell it, friend of an evil
man."
"There are other nights," whined the Burman, "many of them in the
passing of a year. When I have the knowledge of thee, then may I seek
and find later." He rubbed his knees with an indescribable gesture of
mean cringing.
The Chinese boy drank from the bottle and smacked his lips.
"Hear, then, thou convict," he said in a shrill hectoring voice. "By the
way of Paradise Street, along the wharf and past the waste place where
the tram-line ends and the houses stand far apart. Of the houses of
commerce, I do not speak; of the mat houses where the Coringyhis live, I
do not speak, but beyond them, open below to the water-snakes, and built
above into a secret place, is the house we know of, but Leh Shin is not
there for thee to-night, as I have already spoken."
He felt in the pouch at his waist for a rank black cigar, which he
pushed into his mouth and lighted with a sulphur match.
"Who fries the mud fish when he may eat roast duck?" he said, with a
harsh cackle that made the Burman start and stare at him.
"_Aie! Aie!_ I do not understand thy words." The Burman's face grew
blank and he went to the door.
"Neither do you need to, son of a chained monkey," retorted the boy,
full of strong liquor and arrogance. "But I tell thee, I and my mate,
Leh Shin, hold more than money between the finger and the thumb,"--he
pinched his forefinger against a mutilated thumb. "More than money,
see, fool; thou understandest nothing, thy brain is left along with thy
chains in the Island which is known unto thee."
"Sleep well," said the Burman. "Sleep well, child of the Heavens, I
understand thee not at all," and with a limp shrug of his shoulders, he
slid out of the narrow door into the night.
Coryndon gave one glance at the sky; the dawn was still far off, but in
spite of this he ran up the deserted colonnade and walked quickly down
Paradise Street, which was still awake and would be awake for hours.
Once clear of the lessening crowd and on to the wharf, he ran again;
past the business houses, past the long quarter where the Coringyhis and
coolie-folk lived, and, lastly, with a slow, lurking step, to the close
vicinity of a house standing alone upon high supports. He skirted round
it, but to all appearances it was closed and empty, and he sat down
behind a clump of rough elephant-grass and tucked his heels under him.
His original idea, on coming out, had been merely to get into touch with
Leh Shin, and make the way clear for his coming to the small, empty
house close to the shop of the ineffectual curio dealer, and now he
knew, through his fine, sharp instinct, that he was close upon the track
of some mystery. It might have nothing to do with the disappearance of
the Christian boy, Absalom, or it might be a thread from the hidden
loom, but, in any case, Coryndon determined to wait and see what was
going to happen. He was well used to long waiting, and the Oriental
strain in his blood made it a matter of no effort with him. Someone was
hidden in the lonely house, some man who paid heavily for the privacy of
the waterside opium den, and Coryndon was determined to discover who
that man was.
The night was fair and clear, and the murmur of the tidal river gentle
and soothing, and as he sat, well hidden by the clump of grass, he went
over the events of the evening and thought of the face of Leh Shin's
assistant. Hartley had spoken of the bestial creature in tones of
disgust, but Hartley had not seen him to the same peculiar advantage.
Line by line, Coryndon committed the face to his indelible memory,
looking at it again in the dark, and brooding over it as a lover broods
over the face of the woman he loves, but from very different motives. He
was assured that no cruelty or wickedness that mortal brain could
imagine would be beyond the act of this man, if opportunity offered, and
he was attracted by the psychological interest offered to him in the
study of such a mind.
The ripples whispered below him, and, far away, he heard the chiming of
a distant clock striking a single note, but he did not stir; he sat like
a shadow, his eyes on the house, that rose black, silent, and, to all
appearances, deserted, against the starry darkness of the sky. He had
got his facts clear, so far as they went, and his mind wandered out with
the wash of the water, and the mystery of the river flowed over him; the
silent causeway leading to the sea, carrying the living on its bosom,
and bearing the dead beneath its brown, sucking flow, full of its own
life, and eternally restless as the sea tides ebbed and flowed, yet
musical and wild and unchanged by the hand of man. Coryndon loved moving
waters, and he remembered that somewhere, miles away from Mangadone, he
had played along a river bank, little better than the small native
children who played there now, and he saw the green jungle-clearing, the
red road, and the roof of his father's bungalow, and he fancied he could
hear the cry of the paddy-birds, and the voices of the water-men who
came and went through the long, eventless days.
Even while he thought, he never moved his eyes from the house. Suddenly
a light glimmered for a moment behind a window, and he sat forward
quickly, forgetting his dream, and becoming Coryndon the tracker in the
twinkling flash of a second. The inmates of the house were stirring at
last, and Coryndon lay flat behind his clump of grass and hardly
breathed.
He could hear a door open softly, and, though it was too dark to discern
anything, he knew that there was a man on the veranda, and that the man
slipped down the staircase, where he stood for a moment and peered
about. He moved quietly up the path and watched it for a few minutes,
and then slid back into the house again. Coryndon could hear whispers
and a low, growled response, and then another figure appeared, a Sahib
this time, by his white clothes. He used no particular caution, and came
heavily down the staircase, that creaked under his weight, and took the
track by which Coryndon had come.
Silhouetted against the sky, Coryndon saw the head and neck of a
Chinaman, and he turned his eyes from the man on the path to watch this
outline intently; it was thin, spare and vulture-like. Evidently Leh
Shin was watching his departing guest with some anxiety, for he peered
and craned and leaned out until Coryndon cursed him from where he lay,
not daring to move until he had gone.
At last the silhouette was withdrawn and the Chinaman went back into the
house. He had hardly done so when Coryndon was on his feet, running
hard. He ran lightly and gained the road just as the man he followed
turned the corner by Wharf Street and plodded on steadily. In the
darkness of the night there are no shadows thrown, but this man had a
shadow as faithful as the one he knew so well and that was his companion
from sunrise to sunset, and close after him the poor, nameless Burman
followed step for step through the long path that ended at the house of
Joicey the Banker.
Coryndon watched him go in, heard him curse the _Durwan_, and then he
ran once more, because the stars were growing pale and time was
precious. He was weary and tired when he crept into the compound outside
the sleeping bungalow on the hill-rise, and he stood at the gate and
gave a low, clear cry, the cry of a waking bird, and a few minutes
afterwards Coryndon followed Joicey's example and cursed the _Durwan_,
kicking him as he lay snoring on his blanket.
"Open the door, you swine," he said in the angry voice of a belated
reveller, "and don't wake the house with that noise."
Even when he was in his room and delivered himself over to the
ministrations of Shiraz, he did not go to bed. He had something to think
over. He knew that he had established the connection between Joicey the
Banker and the spare, gaunt Chinaman who kept a shop for miscellaneous
wares in the dark colonnade beyond Paradise Street. Joicey had a short
memory: he had forgotten whether he had met the Rev. Francis Heath on
the night of the 29th of July, and had imagined that he was not there,
that he was away from Mangadone; and as Coryndon dropped off to sleep,
he felt entirely convinced that, if necessary, he could help Joicey's
memory very considerably.
XIV
TELLS HOW SHIRAZ, THE PUNJABI, ADMITTED THE FRAILTIES OF ORDINARY
HUMANITY, AND HOW CORYNDON ATTENDED AFTERNOON SERVICE AND CONSIDERED THE
VEXED QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT.
The day following Coryndon's vigil outside the lonely house by the river
was dull and grey, with a woolly sky and a tepid stillness that hung
like a tangible weight in the air. Its drowsiness affected even the
native quarter, but it in no way lessened the bustle of preparations for
departure on the part of Coryndon, who ordered Shiraz to pack enough
clothes for a short journey, and to hold himself in readiness to leave
with his master shortly after sunrise the following day. His master also
gave him leave to go to the Bazaar and return at his own discretion, as
he was going out with Hartley Sahib.
It was about noon, when the sun had struggled clear of the heavy clouds,
that Shiraz found himself in the dark colonnade locking an empty house
behind him with his own key, and, being a stately, red-bearded follower
of the Prophet, with a general appearance of wealth and dignity, he
walked slowly until he came to the doorway of Leh Shin's shop. His step
caused the Chinaman to look up from the string bed where he lay, gaunt,
yellow and unsavoury, his dark clothes contrasting with the flowing
white garments of the venerable man who regarded him through his
spectacles.
"The hand of Allah has led me to this place," said Shiraz in his low,
reflective tones. "I seek for a little prayer-mat and a few bowls of
brass for my food; likewise, a bed for myself, and a bed of lesser value
for my companion. Hast thou these things, Leh Shin?"
Leh Shin went into his back premises and returned with the bowls and the
prayer-mat.
"The bed for thyself, O Haj, and the bed of lesser value for thy friend,
I shall make shift to procure. Presently I will send my assistant, the
eyes of my encroaching age, to bring what you need."
"It is well," said Shiraz, who was seated on a low stool near the door,
and who looked with contemplative eyes into the shop.
Leh Shin huddled himself on to the string couch again, and the slow
process of bargain-driving began. Pice by pice they argued the question,
and at last Shiraz produced a handful of small coin, which passed from
him to the Chinaman.
"I had already heard of thee," said Leh Shin, scratching his loose
sleeves with his long, claw-like fingers. "But thy friend, the Burman,
who spoke beforehand of thy coming, and who still recalls the mixture of
his opium pipe, I cannot remember." He hunched his shoulders. "Yet even
that is not strange. My house by the river is a house of many faces,
yet all who dream wear the same face in the end," his voice crooned
monotonously. "All in the end, from living in the world of visions,
become the same."
Shiraz bowed his head with grave courtesy.
"It was also told to me that you served a rich master and have stored up
wealth."
"The way of honesty is never the path to wealth," responded Shiraz, in
tones of reproof. "So it is written in the Koran."
Leh Shin accepted the ambiguous reply with an unmoved face.
"Thy friend is under the hand of devils?"
He put the remark as an idle question.
"He is tormented," replied Shiraz, pulling at his beard. "He is much
driven by thoughts of evil, committed, such is his dream, by another
than himself; and yet the _Sirkar_ hath said that the crime was his own.
The ways of Allah are veiled, and Mah Myo is without doubt no longer
reasonable; yet he is my friend, and doth greatly profit thereby."
"Ah, ah," said the Chinaman, placing a hubble-bubble before his guest,
who condescended to shut the mouthpiece in under his long moustache,
while he sat silently for nearly half an hour.
"Dost thou sell beautiful things, Leh Shin?" he asked. "I have a gift to
bestow, and my mind troubles me. The Lady Sahib of my late master
suffered misfortune. She was robbed by some unknown son of a jackal, and
thereby lost jewels, the value of which was said to be great, though I
know not of the value of such things."
Leh Shin curled his bare toes on the edge of his bed and looked at them
with a great appearance of interest.
"Was the thief taken, O son of a Prophet?"
"He was not. I have cried in the veranda, to see the Lady Sahib's
sorrow, and I have also prayed and made many offerings at the Mosque,
but the thief escaped. Now that my service with the Lord Sahib is
finished, and as he has assisted my poverty with small gifts, I would
like to make a present to the Lady Sahib. Some trifling thing, costing a
small sum in rupees, for her grief was indeed great, and it may avail to
console her sorrow."
"For which sorrow thou, also, wept in the veranda," added Leh Shin.
"The Lady Sahib had many bowls of lacquer, some green, some red, some
spotted like the back of a poison snake, but she lacked a golden bowl,
and, should I be able to procure one for a moderate price, it would add
greatly to her pleasure in remembering her servant, for, says not the
Wise One, 'a gift is a small thing, but the hand that holds it may not
be raised to smite.'"
Shiraz, all the time he was speaking, had regarded the Chinaman from
behind his respectable gold-rimmed spectacles, and he noticed that Leh
Shin did not seem to care for the subject of lacquer, for his face
darkened and he stopped scratching.
"I deal not in lacquer," he said quickly. "Neither touch thou the
accursed thing, O Shiraz. Leave it to Mhtoon Pah, who is a sorcerer and
whose lies mount as high as the topmost pinnacle of the Pagoda." The
Chinaman's lips drew back from his teeth, and he snarled like a dog. "I
will not speak of him to thee, but I would that the face of Mhtoon Pah
was under my heel, and his eyeballs under my thumbs."
"Yet this golden bowl has been in my thought," the voice of Shiraz
flowed on evenly. "And I said that here, in Mangadone, I might find such
an one. Thou art sure that lacquer is accursed to thine eyes, Leh Shin?
That thou hast not such a bowl by thee, neither that thy assistant, when
he seeks the bed for myself and the lesser bed for my friend, could not
look craftily into the shop of this merchant, and ask the price as he
passeth, if so be that Mhtoon Pah has such a bowl to sell?"
Leh Shin spat ferociously.
"There was a bowl, a bowl such as you describe, O servant of Kings, and
I thought to procure it, for word was brought me that Mhtoon Pah had
need of it, and I desired to hold it before him and withdraw it again,
and to inspire his covetousness and rage and then to sell it from my own
hand, but he leagues with devils and his power is great, for, behold,
Honourable Haj, the bowl that was mine was lost by the man from the seas
who was about to sell it to me. Lost, in all truth, and after the lapse
of many days, Mhtoon Pah had it in his shop, and sold it to the Lady
Sahib."
"The hands of a man of wealth are more than two," said Shiraz
oracularly.
"Nay, not so, for all thy learning, Pilgrim from the Shrine of Mahomet.
The hands of this merchant, at the time I speak, were as my hands, or
thine," he held out his claws and snatched at the air as though it was
his enemy's throat. "For his boy, his assistant, the Christian Absalom,
who served him well, and whom Mhtoon Pah fed upon sweets from the
vendor's stall, was suddenly taken from him, and has vanished, like the
smoke of an opium pipe."
Shiraz expressed wonder, and agreed with Leh Shin that sorcery had been
used, shaking his head gravely and at length rising to his feet.
"The shadows lengthen and the hour of prayer draws near. It is time for
the follower of the Prophet to give a poor man's alms at the gate of the
Mosque, and to pray and praise," he said. "Thy assistant tarries, Leh
Shin; let him go forth with speed and place my purchase in thy keeping,
since I met thee in a happy hour, and shall return upon the morrow from
the _Serai_, where it is Allah's will that I pass the night in peace."
Walking with a slow, regular pace, he left the native quarter, and
taking a tram, got out on the road below the bungalow where Hartley's
servant waited in the veranda.
"Thy Sahib has cursed thy beard and thine age, and says that he will
replace thee with a younger man if thy dealings in the Bazaar are of
such long duration."
"Peace, owl," said Shiraz. "The Sahib can no more travel without my
assistance than a babe of one day without his mother. Presently, when
the Sahib has drunk a peg, he will return to reason."
"The Sahib is not within; he has but now gone out once more, asking
from my Sahib for the loan of a prayer-book. Doubtless, there is a
_Tamasha_ at the 'Kerfedril,' and Coryndon Sahib goes thither to pray."
"I shall place the buttons in his shirt, and recover an eight-anna piece
from the floor, which the master dropped yesterday, to deliver to him
when he shall return. Seek to be honest in thy youth, my son, for in
later life it will repay thee."
Hartley's boy had not been mistaken when he heard Coryndon ask for a
prayer-book and saw him go out on foot. The small persistent bell
outside St. Jude's Church was ringing with desperate energy to collect
any worshippers who might feel inclined to assemble there for evensong,
and the worshippers when collected under the tin roof numbered nearly a
dozen.
It was a bare, barn-like Church, for the wealth of the Cantonment had
flowed in the direction of the Cathedral. The punkah mats flapped
languidly, and the lower part of the church was dark, only the chancel
being lighted with ungainly punkah-proof lamps, and the two altar
candles that threw their gleam on a plain gold cross, guttered in the
heat. A strip of cocoa-nut matting lay along the aisle, and the chancel
and altar steps were covered in sad, faded red. The organist did not
attend except on Sundays or Feast Days, and the service was plain,
conducted throughout by the Rev. Francis Heath.
Coryndon took a seat about half-way up the nave, and when Heath came
into the church, he watched him with interest. He liked to watch a man,
whom it was his business to study, without being disturbed, and Heath's
face in profile, as he knelt at the reading desk, or in full sight as he
stood to read the lesson, attracted the fixed gaze of, at least, one
member of the small congregation. There was no sermon and the service
was short, and as he sat quietly in his place, Coryndon wondered what
frenzied moment of fear or despair could have driven this man into the
company of Joicey and Mrs. Draycott Wilder, unconscious perhaps of their
connection with him, but linked nevertheless by an invisible thread that
wound around them all.
Beyond the fact that he had seen Mrs. Wilder, he had not taken her under
the close observation of his mental microscope. She stood on one side
until such time as he should have need to probe into her reasons for
silence, and he wondered if Hartley was right, and if, by chance, the
earnest face of the clergyman, with its burning, stricken eyes, had
appealed to her sympathy. Could it be so, he asked himself once or
twice, but the immediate question was the one that Coryndon gave his
mind to answer, and just then he was forming an impression of the Rev.
Francis Heath.
He looked at his hands, at his thin neck, at the hollows in his cheeks
and the emotional quiver at the corner of his mouth, and he knew the man
was a fanatic, a civilized fanatic, but desperately and even horribly in
earnest. A believer in torment, a man who held the vigorous faith that
makes for martyrdom and can also pile wood for the fires that burn the
bodies of others for the eventual welfare of their souls.
Unquestionably, the Rev. Francis Heath was a man not to be judged by an
average inch rule, and Coryndon thought over him as he listened to his
voice and watched his strained, tempest-tossed face. Whether he was
involved in the disappearance of Absalom or not, he recognized that
Heath was a strong man, and that his ill-balanced force would need very
little to make him a violent man. It surprised him less to think that
Hartley attached suspicion to the Rector of St. Jude's than it had at
first, and he left the church with a very clear impression of the
clergyman put carefully away beside his appreciation of Leh Shin's
assistant. He had caught just a glimpse of the personality of the man,
and was busy building it up bit by bit, working out his idea by first
trying to fathom the temperament that dwelt in the spare body and drove
and wore him hour after hour.
The Rev. Francis Heath had paid some Chinaman to keep silence, but
though he might pay a Chinaman, he could do nothing with his own
conscience, and it was with a hidden adversary that he wrestled day and
night. Coryndon's face was pitiless as the face of a vivisecting
surgeon. Had she known of his mission, Mrs. Wilder might have beaten her
beautiful head on the stones under his feet, and she would have gained
nothing whatever of concession or mercy.
Atkins and the Barrister were dining with Hartley that night, and as
Coryndon never cared to hurry over his dressing, he went at once to his
room and called Shiraz.
"All is well, my Master," said Shiraz, in a low voice. "But it would be
wise if the Master were to curse his servant in a loud voice, since it
is expected that he will do so, and the monkey-folk in the servants'
quarter listen without, concealing their pleasure in the Sahib's wrath."
When the proceedings terminated and Coryndon had accepted his servant's
long excuse for his delay, the doors were closed, Shiraz having first
gone out to shake his fist at Hartley's boy.
"Thus much have I discovered, Lord Sahib," said Shiraz, when he had
explained that the house was in readiness and the necessary furniture
bought and stored temporarily at the shop of Leh Shin, the Chinaman.
"There is an old hate between these two men, he of the devil shop, and
the Chinaman, a hate as old as rust that eats into an iron bar."
Coryndon lay back in his chair and listened without remark.
"Among many lies told unto me, that is true; and again, among many lies,
it is also true that he had not, neither did he ever possess, the gold
lacquer bowl, on the subject of which my Master bade me question him. He
knows not how Mhtoon Pah found it, but he believes that it was through a
sorcery he practised, for the man is as full of evil as the chatti
lifted from the brink of the well is full of water."
Coryndon smiled and glanced at Shiraz.
"And you think so also, grandson of a Tucktoo, for though you are old,
your white hairs bring you no wisdom."
"I am the Sahib's servant, but who knoweth the ways of devils, since
their footprints cannot be seen, neither upon the sand of the desert nor
in the snows of the great hills?"
"Did he speak of Absalom?"
"He told me, Protector of the Poor, that the boy, though of Christian
caste, was to Mhtoon Pah as the apple of his eye, and that he fed him
upon sweets from the vendor's stall. Let it be said, for thy wisdom to
unravel, that therefore Leh Shin felt mirth in his mind, knowing that
the heart of his foe was wrung as the _Dhobie_ wrings the soiled
garment."
Shiraz fell silent and looked up from the floor at the face of his
master, who got up and stretched himself.
"Is my bath ready, Shiraz?"
"All is prepared, though the _pani walla_, a worker of iniquity, steals
the wood for his own burning; therefore, the water is not hot, and ill
is done to the good name of Hartley Sahib's house."
When he was dressed he strolled into the drawing-room, and sat down at
the piano, playing softly until Hartley came in.
"Shall you be away long, do you suppose?" he asked, looking with
interest at Coryndon's smooth, black head.