from a nest of bats sounded like ghostly laughter. His prayer had drawn
power to his aid, out of the unknown place where the gods live, and
loosed it in response to his cry. He was only Leh Shin, a poor Chinaman
who kept a miserable shop in the native quarter and an opium den down
where the river water choked and gurgled at night, but he felt that he
had touched something in the terrible shadows, and once more he beat the
stones together, his face pouring with sweat. As the noise echoed up
again, the last candle fell dying into a yellow pool of melted wax, and
went out with an expiring flicker; and Leh Shin beat his hands against
the darkness that shut upon him like a wall. He sprang to his feet and
ran, and as he went wings seemed to bear down behind him. There was
terror alive in the Joss House, and before that terror he fled panting
and trembling, fearful that hands would close upon his black garments
and drag him back, holding him until he went mad. As he made for the
door he fancied he saw a shadowy form move in the gloom and clear his
path, and it added the last touch of panic to his mind.
He leaned against an outer pillar for support, and gradually the noise
of the street drew him back again to reality and to the solid facts of
life once more. He had been badly scared, for in some cases when nothing
that can be expressed in words takes place, an infinitely greater thing,
that no words can express, has occurred mentally. To Leh Shin's
bewildered mind it was clear that he had actually felt a Joss breathe
upon him, and that he had heard its footsteps follow him across the
marble floor; the Joss who had shaken the curtains and extinguished the
candles.
Still bewildered, Leh Shin crossed the courtyard and sat down on the
kerb; his head swam and he felt along his legs with shaking hands. A
belated fruit seller went by, and he bought a handful of dates, stuck on
a small rod and looking like immense beetles, and as he ate his
confidence in life gradually returned. The Joss was at a safe distance
in his house and there was the street to give courage to his heart; the
street where men walked safe and secure, and where a worse fear than the
fear of death did not prowl secretly.
After a little while, he got up from the stifling dust and walked slowly
on. The streets flared with lights and the gold letters painted large on
signboards in huge Chinese characters shone out, making a brave show.
There were open restaurants where he could have gone in, and there were
houses of entertainment, hung with paper lanterns, that invited passers
with a sound of music, but Leh Shin continued his mechanical walk,
having another purpose in his mind.
He turned out of the lighted glare of the shops and struck along a back
alley, where one street lamp gave the sole illumination, and stopping at
a low, arched door cut deep in a wall, he knocked and was admitted.
Inside the entrance was another door heavily clamped with iron, which
gave admission down a long, narrow passage to a room beyond. It was a
small room, not unlike a prison, with heavy iron bars against the
corridors, and it was quite bare of furniture except for two deal
tables, around which a crowd of men stood playing for money with
impassive faces and greedy, grasping hands. There was no mixture of race
among the men who gambled; they were all Chinese, most of them clad in
indigo-blue trousers and tight vests, though some of them wore white
shirts and rakish straw hats. The young men had close-clipped hair and
looked like clever bull-terriers, but the older men wore long pigtails
wound round their heads in black, rope-like coils. The noise of dominoes
thrown out by the man who held the bank and the rattle of dice were
almost the only sounds in the room.
Under one table there was a small shrine, where a diminutive Joss
presided over the fortunes of Chance, but Leh Shin did not go to it as
was his usual habit before he began to play. He even eyed it uneasily
and kept at the further end of the room.
He played with varying success for an hour, for two hours, and the third
hour was running out before he shuffled off down the close passage, his
scanty winnings tied in the corner of a rag stuffed into his belt, and
was let out through the heavily barred doors into the street. The
alley-way was deserted, and Leh Shin went down the kennel into the open
place with the walk of a man who has something definite to do. A beggar,
who had been sitting huddled under the wall of a house opposite, craned
his neck out of the shadows, and followed him quickly.
Leh Shin had passed this last hour deliberately, so as to bring himself
to some appointed place neither earlier nor later than he desired to
get there, and Coryndon woke to the excitement of the chase again as he
followed along the Colonnade. It was easy to walk quickly under the roof
that ran from the entrance down to the turn that led into Paradise
Street, and Leh Shin did not even pause as he passed his own doorway but
made on rapidly until he came out at the far end. The hour was very
late, and the street silent. A drop in the temperature had driven the
sleepers who usually preferred the open to the closeness of walls,
within, and the whole double row of houses slept with gaping windows and
open doors.
Mhtoon Pah's curio shop was entirely closed. Every window had outer
shutters fastened, and no gleam of light showed anywhere, up or down the
high narrow front. When Leh Shin stopped in front of the doorway the
beggar sat down opposite to him a little further down the street, his
head bowed on his bosom. He watched Leh Shin prowl carefully round and
climb with monkey-like agility from the rails to the window-ledge, where
he peered in through the shutters, raising a broken lath to see into the
interior.
Coryndon watched him with intent interest. The night was moonless, he
knew that if a match were struck in the interior of the shop it would
shine through the raised lath, and it was for that sight that his eyes
strained and ached with intense concentration. The patience of the
Chinaman made Coryndon feel that he was watching for something definite
to happen, and at length a yellow bar cut suddenly across the dark.
Coryndon's heart beat so loud that he feared its sound might be heard
across the narrow street, and he gripped his hands together. The curio
shop was no longer dark, for someone had come in with a lamp; Coryndon
crept forward, his eyes on the Chinaman, who had slipped back on to the
ground and had raced up the steps, beating against the door violently.
"Come out, father of lies, come out and speak with me. I have news of
thy Absalom."
The beggar was at the foot of the steps now, close beside the dancing
image, who smiled and called his attention to the rigid figure of Leh
Shin.
"So thou hast news for me, unclean one? Of this shall the police hear
full knowledge two hours after dawn. Where hast thou hidden the body of
the boy who was the light of mine eyes, who was ever eager and honest in
business?"
"Thou knowest, traitor," said the Chinaman, his voice hoarse with
passion, "what is dark unto others is clear unto me. Have I not the tale
of thy years written in the book of my mind?"
For a moment there was dead silence, and then a voice full of smooth
malice and cruelty made answer to Leh Shin.
"Get thee to thy bed, fool."
"I wait," Leh Shin's voice cracked and trembled, "and when the hour that
is already written for thy destruction comes like the night-bat, it is
_I_ who shall proclaim it to thee; thus I have demanded, and thus it
shall fall out."
"O fruitful boaster, O friend of many years, thy words cause me great
mirth. Get thee to thy kennel, lest I do indeed come forth and twist thy
vulture's neck."
A laugh of scorn was the only response to Mhtoon Pah's threat, and the
Chinaman turned and came down the steps.
"Alms, alms," whined a sleepy voice. "The poor are the children of the
Holy One. I am blind and I know not the faces of men. Alms, alms, that
thy merit may be written in the book."
"Ask of him that is in that house," said Leh Shin, pointing to the curio
shop. "Strike him with thy pestilence that his fatness fall from him and
his bones melt, and I will give thee golden rewards."
The secret passion of the words was so intense that the beggar was
silenced, and Leh Shin passed on. He went from Paradise Street to a
small burrow near the Colonnade, and turned into a mean house where the
paper lantern still burned in token that the owners were awake. It was
quite clean inside, and divided into large cubicles. In each cubicle was
a table, covered with oilcloth, at the head of which was placed a red
lacquer pillow and a little glass lamp that gave the only light needed
in the long, low room. On the tables lay Burmen and Chinamen, some rigid
in drugged sleep, and some smoking immense pipes with small, cup-like
receptacles that held the opium. The proprietor was alert and wakeful as
he flitted about, an American cigarette between his lips, in this
strange garden of sleep.
"I am weary," said Leh Shin. "Let me rest here."
"It is great honour," replied the small, wizened old man, with the
laugh. "What of thine own house by the river?"
"My limbs fail me. To-night my assistant supplies the needs of those who
ask, for I had a business."
"And I trust thy business hath prospered with thee?"
Leh Shin stretched himself out on a table near the door.
"I await the hour of prosperity,"--he twisted a needle in the brown mass
that was offered to him and held it over the lamp. "Evil are the days of
a life whilst an old grudge burns like hot charcoal in the heart."
"It is even so," agreed the proprietor, and he hurried away from the
noose of talk that Leh Shin would have cast around him.
The beggar, having followed Leh Shin as far as the opium den, returned
along the Colonnade and knocked at the door of the house where Shiraz
waited anxiously for his master.
"Is my bath prepared, Shiraz? I must wash before I sleep, and I shall
sleep late."
Coryndon was weary. No one who has not watched through hours of strain
and suspense knows the utter weariness of mind and body that follows
upon the long effort of close attention, and he fell upon his bed in a
huddled heap and slept for hour after hour, worn out in brain and body.
XVII
TELLS HOW CORYNDON LEARNS FROM THE REV. FRANCIS HEATH WHAT THE REV.
FRANCIS HEATH NEVER TOLD HIM.
When Coryndon sat up in his bed, and recalled himself with a jerk from
the drowsiness of night to the wakefulness of broad daylight, he called
Shiraz to give to him instructions.
After dark, his master told him, he was going to return to the
Cantonments, and during his absence there were some matters which he had
decided to leave unreservedly in the hands of Shiraz. He was to
cultivate his acquaintance with Leh Shin, the Chinaman, worming his way
into his confidence and encouraging him to speak fully of the old hatred
that was still like live fire between him and the wealthy curio dealer.
Revenge may or may not take the shape and substance of the original
wrong done, and the limited intelligence of the Chinaman would suggest
payment in the same coin, so it was necessary for Coryndon to know the
actual facts of the ancient grudge. Further than this, Shiraz was to go
to the shop of Mhtoon Pah, and discover anything he could in the course
of conversation with the Burman.
"Mark well all that is said, that when I return it may be disclosed to
mine eyes through thy spectacles," he concluded, tying the ragged ends
of his head-scarf over his forehead.
He went down the staircase with a slow, dragging step, leaning on the
rail of the Colonnade when he got out into the street, and halting, with
a vacant stare, outside the shop of Leh Shin.
"So thy devils have not yet caught thee and scalded thee with oil, or
burned thee in quicklime?" jeered the boy, as he watched a coolie sweep
out the shop.
He was chewing a raw onion, and he swung his legs idly, for there was
nothing to do, and, on the whole, he was glad to have the mad Burman to
bait for half an hour's entertainment.
"The sickness is heavy upon me, my legs are loaded as with wet sand, and
my mouth is parched like a rock in the desert," whined the Burman
plaintively.
"Nay, nay, not _thy_ legs, and _thy_ tongue. The legs and the mouth of
the evil man, thy friend, O dolt."
The Burman shook his head stupidly.
"The will of the Holy Ones is that I shall recover, and my friend has
said that I shall go a journey. I go by the terrain this night at
sunset."
"Whither doth he send thee, unclean one?"
The Burman smiled with a sudden look of cunning.
"That is a word unspoken, and neither will I tell it. Thy desire to know
what concerns thee not is as great as thy fatness."
With a doggedness that is often part of some forms of mania, the Burman
squatted in the dust, and under no provocation could he be induced to
speak. After midday he indicated by lifting his fingers to his mouth
that he intended to go in search of food; having worked Leh Shin's
assistant into a state of perspiring wrath by the simple process of
reiterating in pantomime that he was dumb. It must be admitted that
Coryndon got no small amount of pleasure out of his morning's
entertainment, and he doubled himself up as though in pain as he dragged
himself back to the house.
The vanished beggar's tracks were entirely obliterated, and when the
Burman went off in a _gharry_ in company with Shiraz, the whole street
knew that he was being sent away on a secret mission of great
importance.
To know something that other people do not know is to be in some way
their superior. It is a popular fallacy to believe that we all of us are
gifted with special insight. The dullest bore believes it of himself,
but when it comes to the possession of an absolute fact superiority
becomes unmistakable, particularly in circumscribed localities, and Leh
Shin's assistant remembered how the sudden dumbness of the crazy Burman
had irked his own soul. He told a little of what he professed to know,
and having done so, refused to admit more, and so it was current in the
Bazaar that the friend of the rich Punjabi was gone to receive money
paid for jewels, and that the place of his destination was known only to
Leh Shin's assistant, who, having sworn on oath, would by no means
divulge the name of the place.
Even Leh Shin, who awoke late, appeared interested, and asked questions
that made the gross, flabby boy think hard before he replied; and the
mystery that attached itself to the departure of the Burman lent an
added interest to Shiraz, who returned after the usual hour of prayer at
the Mosque, and paced slowly up the street, meditating upon a verse from
the Koran. The evening light softened and the shadows grew long, making
the Colonnade dark a full hour before the street outside was wrapped in
the smoky gloom of twilight and the charcoal fires were lighted to cook
the evening meal, and by the time that the first clear globes of
electric light dotted Paradise Street Coryndon was back in his room and
dressed ready to go out to dinner.
Hartley received the wanderer with enthusiasm, and began at once by
telling him that he had an invitation for him which was growing stale by
long keeping. Mrs. Wilder was giving a very small party and both the
Head of the Police and his friend were invited.
"I accepted definitely for myself, and conditionally for you," said
Hartley cheerfully. "Now I will ring up Wilder and tell him that the
prodigal has reappeared, and that you will come."
Coryndon submitted to the inevitable with a good grace; it was one of
his best social qualifications, and arose from a keen sensitiveness that
made it nearly impossible for him ever to disappoint anyone. He had
hoped for a quiet evening, when he might expect to get to bed early and
have time to think over every tiny detail of his time in the Mangadone
Bazaar; but as this was not possible, he agreed with sufficient alacrity
to deceive his kind host.
His face was drawn and tired, and his eyes were heavy; he noticed this
as he glanced into his glass, but after all it did not matter. His
social importance was small, and for to-night he was nothing more than
an adjunct of Hartley, a mere postscript put in out of formal
politeness. He was not going in order to please Mrs. Wilder--though, as
she appeared on his mental list of names, she had her place in the
structure that filled his mind--but to please Hartley. Any time would
have done for Mrs. Wilder, she was but a cypher in the total, but if he
had begged off to-night he would have had to hurt Hartley. Coryndon
could never get away from the other man's point of view; it dogged him
in great things and in small, and he was obliged to realize Hartley's
pleasure in seeing him, and his further pleasure in carrying him off to
a house where he himself enjoyed life thoroughly. Coryndon could as
easily have disappointed a child, or been cruel to a small, wagging
puppy as to Hartley in his present mood.
He knew that he would have to shut the door upon his dominating thought,
unless something occurred to open it during the evening. Women liked to
play with fire, and he wondered if Mrs. Wilder would show any
inclination to fiddle with gunpowder, but he hardly expected that she
would, though she had played some part in the extensive drama that
reached from Heath's bungalow to the Colonnade in the Chinese quarter,
leaving a gap between that his brain struggled with in vain.
It was like the imaginable space between life and death, where both
conditions existed, and one was the key to the other. Something was
lacking. One small master touch wanting to lay the whole thing bare of
mystery. Coryndon's weary eyes reflected the state of his mind. He felt
like an inventor who is baffled for the lack of a tiny clue that makes
the impossible natural and easy, or a composer who hears a refrain and
cannot call it into birth in clear defiant chords. To think too much
when thought cannot carry the mind over the limiting barrier is to spend
substance on fruitless effort, and Coryndon deliberately shut the door
of his mind and put the key away before he started out with Hartley.
The night was clear as the two men went off together hatless through the
soft moonlight. Neither Coryndon nor Hartley talked much as they walked
by a short cut across the park to the Wilders' bungalow, a servant
carrying a lantern going before them like a dim will-o'-the-wisp; the
yellow lamplight paling into an ineffectual blur against the clear
moonlight.
"I think it is only ourselves," said Hartley after a long pause. "You
are looking a bit done, Coryndon, so you'll be glad if it isn't a late
night."
Coryndon agreed, and conversation flagged again. They crossed the road,
turned up the avenue and were lost in the shadows of the trees, coming
out again into a white bay of light outside the door.
Everyone, man or woman, who is endowed at birth with a sensitive nature
is subject to occasional inrushes of detachment that without warning cut
him off from realities for moments or hours, converting everyday matters
into the consistency of dream-life. It was through this medium that
Coryndon saw Mrs. Wilder when he came into the large upstairs
drawing-room. It would have annoyed her to know that she appeared
indefinite and shadowy to his mind, just as it annoyed Alice when she
was told that she was only "Something in the Red King's dream," but
Coryndon could not help his sensations. Mrs. Wilder was smiling with her
careless, easy, confident smile, and yet he saw only an unaccounted bit
of the puzzle, that he could not fit in. She was dressed in the latest
fashion, and talked with a kind of regal amiability, but nevertheless,
she was not a real woman, a real hostess, or a positive entity; she was
vague, and the touch of her floating personality added to the baffled
sensation that drained Coryndon's mind of concentrated force, and made
him physically exhausted.
Wilder had something to say to Hartley, and Coryndon handed himself over
like a coat or an umbrella to Mrs. Wilder, who, he knew, was placing a
low valuation upon him, and was already a little impatient at his lack
of vitality. She was calling him a bore, behind her fine, hard eyes, and
having exhausted Mangadone in a few sentences, wondered what sort of
bore he really was. There were golf bores, fishing bores, and shooting
bores, but Coryndon hardly appeared to belong to any of those families,
and she began to suspect him of "superiority," a type of bore aggressive
to others of his cult. Mrs. Wilder did not tolerate a type to which she
herself undoubtedly owned to some slight connection, and she gave up all
effort to awaken interest in the slim, weary young man, who looked
half-asleep.
"Mr. Heath ought to be here directly," she said, in her loud, clear
voice. "Draycott, don't forget to ask him to say grace."
If she had got up and taken Coryndon by the shoulders and shaken him,
the effect could not have been more marked and sudden. All the dull
feeling of detachment cleared off at once, and he knew that his senses
were sharp and acute; his bodily fatigue fell away, and as he moved in
his chair his eyes turned towards the door.
"I wish he would hurry," growled Wilder, a prey to the pessimism of the
half-hour before dinner. "He is inexcusably late as it is."
As though his words had summoned the Rev. Francis Heath, footsteps
mounting the staircase followed Wilder's remark, and the clergyman came
into the room. Immediately upon his coming, conversation became general,
and a few moments later the party was seated round a small table kept
for intimate gatherings, and placed in the centre of the large
teak-panelled room. An arrangement of plumbago and maidenhair, and pale
blue shaded candles casting a dim light, carried out the saxe blue
effect that Mrs. Wilder had evolved with the assistance of a ladies'
paper that dealt with "effective and original table decoration."
In spite of Mrs. Wilder's efforts, assisted as they were by Hartley,
conversation flagged for the first two courses. Heath was not exactly
awkward, but he was conscious of the fact that he and Hartley had had an
unpleasant interview, buried by the passing of a few weeks, but by no
means peaceful in its grave. There was just a suggestion of strain in
his manner, and he was evidently carrying through a duty in being there
at all, rather than out for pleasant society.
Coryndon observed him carefully, particularly when he talked to his
hostess. If she was helping to screen him, the clergyman was too honest
not to show some sign of gratitude either in his manner or in his
deep-set eyes, and yet no such indication was evident. Coryndon
disassociated his mind from the history of the case, and saw austerity
flavoured with a near approach to disapproval. Judging by externals, the
Rev. Francis Heath held no very exalted opinion of his hostess.
"She has done nothing for him," he said to himself. "If obligation
exists, it is the other way round," and he proceeded to watch Mrs.
Wilder's manner towards her clerical guest with heightening interest.
Usually she was very sure of herself, more especially so in her own
house, and surrounded with the evidences of her husband's official rank.
When Mrs. Wilder talked to the poor, insignificant Padré who could be of
no real social assistance to her, she changed her manner, the manner
that she directed pointedly towards Coryndon, and became quelled and
softened.
Mrs. Wilder, propitiatory and diffident, was, Coryndon felt, Mrs. Wilder
caught out somehow and somewhere; perhaps on the night of the 29th of
July, and as he considered it, Coryndon knew that the shoe was on a much
smaller foot than Hartley had measured for it, and that the secret
understanding between Heath and Mrs. Wilder was one-sided in its
benefits.
Hartley had recounted the story of the fainting fit as a landmark by
which he remembered where he was himself, and, adding this fact to what
he observed, Coryndon put Mrs. Wilder on one side and mentally drew a
red-ink line under her total. He knew all he needed to know about her,
and she had no further interest for his mind. He talked to her husband
when once he had satisfied himself definitely, and as dinner wore on the
atmosphere became more genial and less strained than when it had begun.
"By the way," said Wilder carelessly, "was it ever discovered how that
fellow Rydal got clear of the country?"
He spoke to Hartley, but Heath, who had been talking across the table to
Coryndon, lost his place, stumbled and recovered himself with
difficulty, and then lapsed into silence. Hartley had a few things to
say about Rydal, but chief among them was the astounding fact that he
had dodged the police, who were watching the wharves and jetties, and,
so far as he knew, the man had never left Mangadone.
"Do you suppose that he got away disguised?"