natural instinct when he threw aside the chase and capture of Mhtoon Pah
and burst into the cellar-room. It was small and close, and smelt of the
foul, fruity atmosphere of mildew. The ceiling was low, and crouching in
one corner was a small boy, clad only in a loin-cloth, who stared at
them and screamed with fear.
"The Chinamen, the Chinamen!" he shrieked. "Mhtoon Pah, the Chinamen."
"Absalom," the name came to Coryndon's lips, as he stood staring at him.
"My God, it must be Absalom."
He had spoken in English before he had time to think, and he turned to
see if his self-betrayal had struck upon the confused brain of Leh Shin,
but Leh Shin knew nothing and saw nothing but the face of the boy his
enemy loved. He had placed the lamp on the floor and was feeling for his
dagger, his eyes fascinated and his lips working soundlessly.
Coryndon caught him by the shoulder and snatched his knife from his
hand.
"Fool," he said. "Wouldst thou ruin all at the end? Listen closely and
attend to me. Now is the moment to cry for the police. Thine enemy is in
a close net; show me swiftly the way by which I may go out of this
house, and sit thou here and stir not, neither cry out nor speak until
thou hearest the police. By the way I go out will I leave the door open,
and some will enter there, and others at the front of the house."
He turned to look at the boy, who pointed at the Chinaman and continued
to shriek for Mhtoon Pah. It was no moment for hesitation, though
Coryndon's thoughts went to the shop and the front door. By that door
Mhtoon Pah might already have escaped, but even allowing for this, there
was time to catch him again. He followed the way pointed out by the
shaking hand of Leh Shin.
"If thou fail in aught that I have told thee, or if the boy escape or
suffer under thy hand, then is thine end also come," he said, as he
stood for a moment in the aperture that led into a waste place at the
back of the house; and then Coryndon ran through the night.
The rain had come on, teeming, relentless rain that fell in pitiless
sheets out of a black sky. The roads ran with liquid mud and the stones
cut Coryndon's bare feet, but he ran on, his lungs aching and his throat
dry. It is not easy to think with the blood hammering in the pulses and
the breath coming short through gasping lungs, but Coryndon kept his
mind fixed upon one idea with steady determination. His object was to
get into the house unnoticed, and to awake Hartley without betraying
himself to the servants.
Hartley's bungalow was closed for the night, and the _Durwan_ slept
rolled in a blanket in a corner of the veranda. Coryndon held his
sobbing breath and crept along the shadows, watching the man closely
until the danger zone was passed, and then he ran on around the sharp
angle of the house and dived into Hartley's room. In the centre stood
the bed, draped in the ghostly outlines of white mosquito-curtains, and
Coryndon walked lightly over the matted floor and shook the bed gently.
Hartley stirred but did not wake, and Coryndon called his name and
continued to call it in a low whisper. The Head of the Police stirred
again and then sat up suddenly and answered Coryndon in the same low
undertone.
"Get into your clothes quickly, while I tell you what has happened,"
said Coryndon, sitting low in the shadow of the bed, and while Hartley
dressed he told him the details shortly and clearly.
The bungalow was still in darkness, and, with a candle in his hand to
light him, Hartley went into his office and rang up the Paradise Street
Police Station. When he came back Coryndon was standing looking through
a corner of a raised chick.
"The _Durwan_ is awake," he said, without turning his head. "Call him
round to the front, otherwise he may see me."
"Come on, come on, man," said Hartley impatiently, "there is no time to
lose."
Coryndon turned and smiled at him.
"This is where I go out of the case," he said. "I shall be back in time
for breakfast to-morrow," and without waiting to argue the point he
dived out into the waning darkness of the night, leaving Hartley looking
helplessly after him.
XXIV
IN WHICH A WOODEN IMAGE POINTS FOR THE LAST TIME
Before the Burman left Leh Shin in charge of Absalom, he had pinned the
Chinaman by the arms and spoken to him in strange, strong words that
scorched clear across the chaos in his mind and made him understand a
hidden thing. The fact that this man was not a mad convict, but a member
of the great secret society who tracked the guilty, almost stunned the
Chinaman, who knew and understood the immense power of secret societies.
Mhtoon Pah might be driving wildly along a road leading out of
Mangadone, and though one old Chinaman and a mad Burman could not stop
him, the long arm of police law would grab and capture his gross body.
Leh Shin sat quite still, content to rest and consider this. Telegrams
flashed messages under the great bidding of authority, men sprang armed
from stations in every village, the close grip of fate was not more
close than the grasp of the awakened machinery of justice, and in the
centre of its power Mhtoon Pah was helpless as a fly in the web of a
spider.
"He travels fast, and fear is sitting on his shoulder, for he travels
to his death," he repeated over and over, swaying backwards and
forwards.
He had an opium pellet hidden somewhere in his clothes, and he found it
and turned it over his tongue; weariness and sleep conquered the pain,
and Leh Shin sat with his head bent forward in heavy stupor. From this
condition he awoke to lights and noises and the sound of a file working
on iron.
The police had come and Hartley was bending over the boy, talking to him
kindly and reassuring him as far as he could. Upstairs, the heavy thud
of blows on the outer door of the shop echoed through the house with
steady, persistent sound.
Dawn had come in real earnest, and the street, but lately returned from
the excitements of the feast at the Pagoda, was thrilled by a new and
much more satisfying sensation. Three blue-coated, leather-belted
policemen were on the top of the steps that led to the door of the curio
shop, forcing it in. The heavy bolts held, and though the padlocked
chain hung idle, the door resisted all their efforts.
Hartley was down in the cellars, and his way through to the shop was
blocked . . . blocked by the inner door which was also closed from
inside, and somewhere within was Mhtoon Pah. He was very silent in his
shop. No amount of hammering called forth any response, and even when
the door gave way and the bolt fell clattering to the ground, he did not
spring out.
People had sometimes wondered at the curious destiny of the wooden man.
He had been there so long and had done his duty so faithfully. In rain
or shine alike, he had always been in the street, eternally bowing the
passers up the steps. Americans had tried to buy him, and had wished to
take him home to point at other free and enlightened citizens, but
Mhtoon Pah refused all offers of money. The wooden man was faithful to
him, and he in his turn was, in some way, faithful to the wooden man. He
had been there when Mhtoon Pah was a clerk and had indicated his rise,
he had seen him take over possession of the shop, and he had been
witness to many trivial things, and now he stood, the crowd behind him,
and pointed silently again. It seemed right for him to point, but it was
grotesque that he still smiled and bent forward.
The closed gates of the dawn opened and let in the sun, and the pale
yellow light ventured across the threshold where the policemen hung
back, and even the crowd in the street were silent. The light fell on a
thousand small things that reflected its rays; it fell on a heavy carved
box drawn across the further entrance, on the swinging glass doors of
the open silk cupboard, on bowls of silver and bowls of brass, and it
fell full on the thing that of all others drew the horrified eyes of the
watchers.
Mhtoon Pah, the wealthy curio dealer, the shrine builder, the friend of
the powerful, hung from a beam across the centre of the low ceiling, and
Mhtoon Pah was dead, strangled in a fine, silk scarf. Fine, strong silk
made only by certain lake-dwellers in a wild place just across the Shan
frontier.
Perhaps the destiny which Shiraz believed a man may not escape, be he as
fleet as a flying stag, had caught up with him, and it was not without
reason that the image had pointed at something not there years ago, not
there when youth was there, and hope and love, and when Leh Shin had
lived and been happy there, but to come, certainly and surely to come.
* * * * *
Hartley and Coryndon sat long over their breakfast. Coryndon's face was
strained and tired, and heavy lines of fatigue were marked under his
dark eyes.
"The boy was not in a condition to give any lucid explanation when I
brought him back," said Hartley, "so I left him until we could both hear
his story together." He called to his Bearer and gave instructions for
the boy to be brought in.
Coryndon nodded silently; his eyes lit up with interest and all his
listlessness vanished as he watched the door.
Following Hartley's Bearer, a small, thin boy came into the room,
dressed in a white suit, with a tight white pugaree folded round his
head. He shrank nervously at every sound, and when he salaamed to
Hartley and Coryndon his face worked as though he was going to burst
into tears.
"You have nothing to be afraid of," said Hartley kindly. "Just tell the
whole truth, and explain how it was that you came to be shut up in the
curio shop."
The boy's eyes grew less terrified, and he began to speak in a low,
mumbling voice. He began in the middle of the account, and Hartley
gently but firmly pushed him back to the beginning.
"Start with the story of the lacquer bowl," he said, talking very slowly
and clearly. "We want to hear what happened about that first."
The mention of the subject of lacquer threw Absalom once more into a
state of panic, but as his story progressed he became more sure of
himself, and looked up, forgetting his fear in the excitement of having
a really remarkable story to tell, that was listened to by Sahibs with
intent interest.
In tearful, stumbling words he admitted that he and Leh Shin's assistant
had been friends, and that those evil communications that corrupt not
only good manners but good morals had worked with disastrous results
upon him. With his brown knuckles to his protruding eyes, he admitted,
further, that he had stolen the gold lacquer bowl from the drugged and
drunken seaman, and that Leh Shin's assistant had plundered him of more
than half his rightful share of the profit. What remained over, he
protested, he intended to give to the "Missen," testifying to the fact
that his conscience was causing him uneasiness and that his natural
superstition made him adopt means, not unknown to other financiers, of
squaring things by a donation to a charitable object.
He went on to explain that Mhtoon Pah had required him to come back late
by an unfrequented alley, from where his master himself had admitted him
into the basement of the shop. There was nothing altogether unusual
about this, it appeared, as Mhtoon Pah was very strange in his ways at
times. He cooked his own food for fear of poison, and was constantly
suspecting some indefinite enemy of designs upon his life. What was
unusual was the fact that he had been taken at once into the small cell,
and that, once there, Mhtoon Pah had behaved like a madman.
Absalom could recall no coherent account of what the curio dealer had
told him. He had spoken to him of murder, and told him that the Chinamen
in the Quarter, headed by Leh Shin, were looking for him to kill him,
and that, for his safety, he must remain hidden away. Mhtoon Pah told
him that he would protect him, and that he would produce evidence to
have Leh Shin hanged, and that once he was dead he would then emerge
again, but not until then. He told him how Chinamen killed their
victims, and his fears and terrors communicated themselves to the boy,
who delivered himself up to bondage without resistance.
For weeks Absalom dragged out a miserable existence, loose when Mhtoon
Pah was in the shop, but chained to the wall whenever he went out, and
only for an hour after midnight was the boy ever allowed to emerge into
the dark, waste garden at the back of the house. The rest of the time
was spent in the cell, and Absalom broke into incoherent wailing as he
called Hartley and Coryndon to witness that it had been a hard life.
As the end of his story approached, Absalom grew more dramatic and
quoted the parting words of Mhtoon Pah before he went out to attend the
_Pwé_ at the Pagoda.
"I leave thee in fear," said he, "for thou art the apple of my eye, O
Absalom, and when I am gone some calamity may befall. From whence it
comes I know not, but as men look at the heaped clouds behind the hills
and say, 'Lo, it will soon fall in rain,' so does my heart look out and
observe darkness, and I am ill-satisfied to quit this house."
His words rang in the mind of the boy, shut into the stifling darkness
below the ground, and he remembered that he cried out for help, not once
but over and over again, and that his cries were eventually answered by
the voice of Leh Shin, who had called him a child of vipers and
threatened to enter and break him against the wall as he would a
plantain. After that Absalom had refrained from crying out, and had
waited silently expecting the door to open and admit Leh Shin and his
last moment simultaneously. Upon the silence came the sounds of
scuffling and hoarse cries, and it seemed to Absalom that Leh Shin had
called out that he had already cut the heart from his ribs, and was
about to force it down Mhtoon Pah's throat, and then nothing was very
clear until voices and lights roused him from stupor to fresh terror and
alarm.
He knew that the door had been unlocked and that a light travelled in,
held by a strange Burman, and that his terror of Leh Shin had made him
see things strangely, as though from a long way off; until, at the last,
the police had come and knocked the chain off his leg, and someone had
told him that his master was dead and had been found hanging in the
shop.
Absalom's face quivered and he began to whimper.
"And now my master is dead, and never in Mangadone shall I find such
another who will care for me and give me the pleasant life in Paradise
Street."
Hartley handed the boy some money.
"Take him away," he said to the Bearer. "You have told your story very
well, Absalom."
He looked across at Coryndon when the room was empty, but Coryndon was
fiddling with some crumbs at the edge of the table.
"Madness is the real explanation, I suppose," he said tentatively.
"Madness and obsession."
"Obsession," echoed Coryndon. "That word explains almost every
inexplicable act in life." He took up a knife and held it level on his
palm. "There you have the normal condition, but once one end swings up
you get Genius and all the Arts, or madness and crime and the obsession
of one idea: one definite, over-mastering idea that drives every force
harnessed to its car."
He got up and stretched his arms, and walked out through the veranda
into his room, where Shiraz was folding his clothes and laying them in
an open portmanteau. The old servant stood up and made a low salaam to
his master.
"When the sun is down the wise traveller hurries to the Serai," Coryndon
said to him. "I leave to-night for Madras, Shiraz, and you with me."
"The end of all things is just, Huzoor," replied the old man, a strange
light of reflection in his dim pebble-like eyes. "Is it not written that
none may rise so high, or plunge so deep, that he does not follow the
hidden path to the hidden end? For like a wind that goes and returns
never, or the shadow of a cloud passing over the desert, is the destiny
of a man."
GLOSSARY
_Almirah_ A press
_Babu_ A clerk
_Butti_ Lamp
_Charpoy_ Bed
_Chota haziri_ (Little breakfast) Early morning tea
_Dhobie_ Washerman
_Durwan_ Watchman
_Ghee_ Butter
_Gharry_ Cab
_Gaudama_ Buddha
_Htee_ Topmost pinnacle
_Hypongyi_ Priests
_Inshallah, Huzoor_ God give you fortune, Prince
_Joss_ A god
_Khitmutghar_ Footman
_Loongyi_ Petticoat
_Napi_ Rotten fish
_Nats_ Tree spirits
_Pani walla_ Water carrier
_Pwé_ Feast
_Serai_ Rest house
_Sirkar_ Government
_Syce_ Groom
_Tamasha_ A show
_Thakin_ Master
_Topi_ Hat