FIRST STEPS
Forward on the promenade deck of the _Poonah,_ in the shadow of the
bridge, Amber stood with both elbows on the rail, dividing his somewhat
perturbed attention between a noisy lot of lascar stewards, deckhands,
and native third-class passengers in the bows below, and the long lines
of Saugor Island, just then slipping past on the starboard beam.
On either hand, ahead, the low, livid green banks of the Hooghly were
closing in, imperceptibly constricting the narrow channel through which
the tawny tide swirled down to the sea at the full force of its ebb.
Struggling under this handicap, the _Poonah_ trembled from stem to
stern with the heavy labouring of the screw, straining forward like a
thoroughbred, its strength almost spent, with the end of the race in
sight. Across the white gleaming decks, as the bows swung from port to
starboard and back again, following the channel, purple-black shadows
slipped like oil. A languid land-wind blew fitfully down the estuary,
in warm puffs dense with sickly-sweet jungle reek. The day was hot and
sticky with humidity; a haze like a wall of dust coloured the skies
almost to the zenith.
It was ten o'clock in the morning; Calcutta lay a hundred miles up the
river, approximately. By evenfall Amber expected to be in the city,
whether he stuck by the steamer until she docked in the port, or left
her at Diamond Harbour, sixty miles upstream, and finished his journey
by rail. At the present moment he hardly knew which to do; in the
ordinary course of events he would have gone ashore at Diamond Harbour,
thereby gaining an hour or two in the city. But within the last
eighteen hours events had been diverted from their normal course; and
Amber was deeply troubled with misgivings.
Up to the day that the Poonah had sailed from Tilbury Dock, London,
from the time he had left Quain among the sand-dunes of Long Island, he
had not been conscious of any sort of espionage upon his movements.
That gaunt and threatening figure which he had seen silhouetted against
the angry dawn had not again appeared to disturb or trouble him. His
journey across the Atlantic had been uneventful; he had personally
investigated the saloon passenger lists, the second and third cabins
and the steerage of the _Lusitania,_ not forgetting the crew, only to
be reassured by the absence of anybody aboard who even remotely
suggested an Indian spy. But from the hour that the _Poonah_ with its
miscellaneous ship's company, white, yellow, brown, and black, had
warped out into the Thames, he had felt he was being watched--had
realised it instinctively, having nothing definite whereon to base his
feeling. He was neither timorous nor given to conjuring up shapes of
terror from the depths of a nervous imagination; the sensation of being
under the surveillance of unseen, prying eyes is unmistakable. Yet he
had tried to reason himself out of the belief--after taking all
sensible precautions, such as never letting the photograph of Sophia
Farrell out of his possession and keeping the Token next his skin, in a
chamois bag that nestled beneath his arm, swinging from a leather cord
round his neck. And as day blended into eventless day, he had lulled
himself into an uneasy indifference. What if he were watched? What
could it profit any one to know what he did or how he did it, day by
day? And with increasing infrequency he had come to question himself as
to the reason for the spying on his movements.
Possibly the fruitlessness of any such speculation had much to do with
his gradual cessation of interest in the enigma. He was not credulous
of the power of divination popularly ascribed to the Oriental; he was
little inclined to believe that the nature of his errand to India had
been guessed, or that any native intelligence in India knew or
suspected the secret of Sophia Farrell's parentage--Rutton's solicitude
to the contrary notwithstanding. The theory that he most favoured in
explanation of the interest in him was that it had somehow become known
that he bore with him the emerald. It was quite conceivable that that
jewel, intrinsically invaluable, was badly wanted by its former
possessors, whether for the simple worth of it or because it played an
important part in the intrigue, or whatever it was, that had resulted
in Rutton's suicide. For his own part, Amber cared nothing for it; he
had christened it, mentally, the Evil Eye--with a smile to himself;
nonetheless he half-seriously suspected it of malign properties. He was
imaginative enough for that--or superstitious, if you prefer.
He would, however, gladly have surrendered the jewel to those who
coveted it, in exchange for a promise of immunity from assassination,
had he known whom to approach with the offer and been free to make it.
But he must first show it to Dhola Baksh of the Machua Bazaar. After
that, when its usefulness had been discharged, he would be glad of the
chance to strike such a bargain....
Such, in short, had been his frame of mind up to eight o'clock of the
previous evening. At that hour he had made a discovery which had
diverted the entire trend of his thoughts.
Doggott, ever a poor sailor, had been feeling ill and Amber had excused
him early in the afternoon. About six o'clock he had gone to his
stateroom and dressed for dinner, unattended. Absorbed in anticipations
of the morrow, when first he should set foot in Calcutta and take the
first step in pursuit of Sophia Farrell, he had absent-mindedly
neglected to empty the pockets of his discarded clothing. At seven he
had gone to dinner, leaving his stateroom door open, as was his
habit--a not unusual one with first-cabin passengers on long
voyages--and his flannels swinging from hooks in the wall. About eight,
discovering his oversight through the absence of his cigarette-case, he
had hurried back to the stateroom to discover that he had been
curiously robbed.
His watch, his keys, his small change and his sovereign purse, his
silver cigarette-case--all the articles, in fact, that he was
accustomed to stuff into his pockets--with one exception, were where he
had left them. But the leather envelope containing the portrait of
Sophia Farrell was missing from the breast-pocket of his coat.
From the hour in which he had obtained it he had never but this once
let it out of his personal possession. The envelope he had caused to be
constructed for its safe-keeping during his enforced inaction in
London. He had never once looked at it save in strict privacy, secure
even from the eyes of Doggott; and the latter did not know what the
leather case contained.
Thus his preconceived and self-constructed theory as to the extent of
The Enemy's knowledge, was in an instant overthrown. "They" had seized
the very first relaxation of his vigilance to rob him of that which he
valued most. And in his heart he feared and believed that the incident
indicated "their" intimacy not alone with his secret but with that
which he shared with Colonel Farrell.
Since then his every move toward regaining the photograph had been
fruitless. His stateroom steward, a sleek, soft Bengali boy who had
attended him all through the voyage with every indication of eagerness
to oblige him, professed entire ignorance of the theft. That was only
to be expected. But when Amber went to the purser and the latter
cross-examined the steward in his presence, the Bengali stuck to his
protestations of innocence without the tremor of an eyelash. In fact,
he established an alibi by the testimony of his fellow-stewards.
Further, when Amber publicly offered a reward of five guineas "and no
questions asked" and in private tempted the Bengali with much larger
amounts, he accomplished nothing.
In the end, and in despair, Amber posted a notice on the ship's
bulletin-board, offering fifty guineas reward for the return of the
photograph to him either before landing or at the Great Eastern Hotel,
Calcutta, and having thereby established his reputation as a mild
lunatic, sat down to twirl his thumbs and await the outcome,
confidently anticipating there would be none. "They" had outwitted him
and not five hundred guineas would tempt "them," he believed. It
remained only to contrive a triumph in despite of this setback.
But how to set about it? How might he plan against forces of whose very
nature he was ignorant--save that he guessed them to be evil? How could
he look ahead and scheme to circumvent the unguessable machinations of
the unknown?... His wits, like wild things in a cage, battered
themselves to exhaustion against the implacable bars of his
understanding.
For the thousand-and-first time he reviewed the maddeningly scanty
store of facts at his command, turning them over and over in his mind,
vainly hopeful of inferring a clue. But, as always, he found his
thoughts circling a beaten track of conjecture.... What dread power had
hounded Rutton, forth from the haunts of his kind, from pillar to post
of the world (as he had said) to his death among the desolate dunes of
Long Island? What "staggering blow against the peace and security of
the world" could that or any power possibly strike, with Rutton for its
tool, once it had caught and bent him to its will? What fear had set
upon his lips a seal so awful that even in the shadow of death he had
not dared speak, though to speak were to save the one being to whom his
heart turned in the end? To save his daughter from what, had he
voluntarily renounced her, giving her into another's care, forswearing
his paternal title to her love, refusing himself even the cold comfort
of seeing her attain to the flower of her womanly beauty as another's
child? What--finally--was the ordeal of the Gateway of Swords, and what
could it be that made the Gateway of Death seem preferable to it?
For the thousand-and-first time Amber abandoned his efforts to divine
the inscrutable, to overcome the insurmountable, to attain to the
inaccessible, but abandoned them grudgingly, grimly denying the
possibility of ultimate failure. Though he were never to know the dark
heart of the mystery, yet would he snatch from its pythonic coils the
woman he had sworn to save, the woman he loved!
And while the black steamer with the buff super-structure toiled on,
cleaving its arduous way through the turbulent yellow flood between the
contracting shores of the Sunderbunds, while the offshore wind buffeted
Amber's cheeks with the hot panting breath of Bengal, his eyes, dimmed
with dreaming, saw only Her face.
So often of late had he in solitude pondered her photograph, striving
to solve the puzzle of her heart that was to him a mystery as
unfathomable as that which threatened her, that he had merely to think
of her to bring her picture vividly before him. He could close his eyes
(he closed them now, shutting out the moving panorama of the river) and
see the girl that he had known in those few dear hours: the girl with
eyes as brown as sepia but illumined by traces of gold in the
irides--eyes that could smile and frown and be sweetly grave, all in
the time that a man needs to catch his breath; the girl with the
immaculate, silken skin, milk-white, with the rose-blush of young blood
beneath; with lips softly crimson as satin petals of a flower, that
could smile a man into slavery; the girl to contemplate whose adorably
modelled chin and firm, round, young neck would soften the austerity of
an anchorite; in whose hair was blended every deep shade of bronze and
gold....
Something clutched at his heart as with a hand of ice. He could never
forget, dared not remember what he could not believe yet dared not
deny. To him, reared as he had been, the barrier of mixed blood rose
between them, a thing surmountable only at the cost of caste; the
shadow of that horror lay upon his soul like ink--as black as the
silhouetted rails and masts and rigging of the _Poonah_ on her dead
white decks. He could win her heart only to lose his world. And still
he loved, still pursued his steadfast way toward her, knowing that,
were he to find her and his passion to be returned, death alone could
avert their union in marriage. He might not forget but ... he loved.
With him the high wind of Romance was a living gale, levelling every
obstacle between him and the desire of his heart.
This is to be borne in mind: it was the man's first love. Theretofore
the habits of a thinker had set his feet in paths apart from those of
other men. Pretty women he had always admired--from a discreet
distance; that distance abridged, he had always found himself a little
afraid of and dismayed by them. They were the world's disturbing
element; they took men's lives in the rosy hollows of their palms and
moulded them as they would. While Amber had desired to mould his own
life. The theme of love that runs a golden thread through the drab
fabric of existence had to him been an illusion--a hallucination to
which others were subject, from which he was happily, if unaccountably,
exempt. But that had been yesterday; to-day....
In the afternoon the _Poonah_ touched at Diamond Harbour, landing the
majority of her passengers. Amber was among those few who remained
aboard.
When the steamer swung off from the jetty and, now aided by a
favourable tide, resumed her progress up the river, he replaced his
notice on the bulletin-board with one offering a hundred guineas for
the return of the photograph before they docked in the port of
Calcutta; the offer of fifty guineas for its return to the Great
Eastern Hotel remained unaltered.
His anticipations were not disappointed; positively nothing came of it.
All afternoon the _Poonah_ plodded steadily on toward the pall of smoke
that hemmed the northern horizon. The reedy river banks narrowed and
receded, gorgeous with colour, unvaryingly monotonous, revealing
nothing. Behind walls of rank foliage, dense green curtains almost
impenetrable even to light, the flat and spongy delta of the Ganges lay
decorously screened. If now and again the hangings parted they
disclosed nothing more than a brief vista of half-stagnant water or a
little clearing, half-overgrown, with the crumbling red brick walls of
some roofless and abandoned dwelling.
In the lavender and gold and scarlet of a windless sunset, Calcutta
lifted suddenly up before them, a fairy city, mystic and unreal with
its spires and domes and minarets a-glare with hot colour behind a
hedge of etched black masts and funnels--all dimmed and made indefinite
by a heavy dun haze of smoke: lifted up in glory against the evening
sky and was blotted out as if by magic by the swooping night; then
lived again in a myriad lights pin-pricked upon the dense
bluish-blackness.
The _Poonah_ slipped in to her dock under cover of darkness. Amber,
disembarking with Doggott, climbed into an open ghari on the landing
stage and was driven swiftly to his hotel.
As he alighted and, leaving Doggott to settle with the ghariwallah,
crossed the sidewalk to the hotel entrance, a beggar slipped through
the throng of wayfarers, whining at his elbow:
"Give, O give, Protector of the Poor!"
Preoccupied, Amber hardly heard, and passed on; but the native stuck
leech-like to his side.
"Give, hazoor--and the mercy of God shall be upon the Heaven-born for
ten-thousand years!"
Now "Heaven-born" is flattery properly reserved for those who sit in
high places. Amber turned and eyed the man curiously, at the same time
dropping into the filthy, importunate palm a few annas.
"May the shadow of the Heaven-born be long upon the land, when he shall
have passed through the Gateway of Swords!"
And like a flash the man was gone--dodging nimbly round the ghari and
across Old Court House Street, losing himself almost instantly in the
press of early evening traffic.
"The devil!" said Amber thoughtfully. "Why should it be assumed that I
have any shadow of an intention of entering that damnable Gateway of
Swords?"
An incident at the desk, while he was arranging for his room, further
mystified him. He had given his name to the clerk, who looked up,
smiling.
"Mr. David Amber?" he said.
"Why, yes--"
"We were expecting you, sir. You came by the _Poonah_?"
"Yes, but--"
"There's a note for you." The man turned to a rack, sorting out a small
square envelope from others pigeon-holed under "A."
Could it be possible that Sophia Farrell had been advised of his
coming? Amber's hand trembled slightly with eagerness and excitement as
he took the missive.
"An Eurasian boy left it for you half an hour ago," said the clerk.
"Thank you," returned Amber, controlling himself sufficiently to wait
until he should be conducted to his room before opening the note.
It was not, he observed later, superscribed in a feminine hand. Could
it be from Quain's friend Labertouche? Who else?... Amber lifted his
shoulders resignedly. "I wish Quain had minded his own business," he
said ungratefully; "I can take care of myself. This Labertouche'll
probably make life a misery for me."
There was a quality in the note, however, to make him forget his
resentment of Quain's well-meant interference.
"My dear Sir," it began formally: "Quain's letter did not reach me
until this afternoon; a circumstance which I regret. Otherwise I should
be better prepared to assist you. I have, on the other hand, set afoot
enquiries which may shortly result in some interesting information
bearing upon the matters which engage you. I expect to have news of the
Fs. to-night, and shall be glad to communicate it to you at once. I am
presuming that you purpose losing no time in attending to the affair of
the goldsmith, but I take the liberty of advising you that to attempt
to find him without proper guidance or preparation would be an
undertaking hazardous in the extreme. May I offer you my services? If
you decide to accept them, be good enough to come before ten to-night
to the sailors' lodging house known as 'Honest George's,' back of the
Lal Bazaar, and ask for Honest George himself, refraining from
mentioning my name. Dress yourself in your oldest and shabbiest
clothing; you cannot overdo this, since the neighbourhood is
questionable and a well-dressed man would immediately become an object
of suspicion. Do not wear the ring; keep it about you, out of sight.
Should this fail to reach you in time, try to-morrow night between
eight and ten. You would serve us both well by _burning_ this
immediately. Pray believe me yours to command in all respects."
There was no signature.
Amber frowned and whistled over this. "Undoubtedly from Labertouche,"
he considered. "But why this flavour of intrigue? Does he know anything
more than I do? I presume he must. It'd be a great comfort if.... Hold
on. 'News of the Fs.' That spells the Farrells. How in blazes does he
know anything about the Farrells? I told Quain nothing.... Can it be a
trap? Is it possible that the chap who took that photograph
recognised...?"
The problem held him in perplexity throughout the evening meal. He
turned it over this way and that without being able to arrive at any
comforting solution. Impulse in the end decided him--impulse and a
glance at his watch which told him that the time grew short. "I'll go,"
he declared, "no matter what. It's nearly nine, but the Lal Bazaar's
not far."
In the face of Doggott's unbending disapproval he left the hotel some
twenty minutes later, having levied on Doggott's wardrobe for suitable
clothing. Dressed in an old suit of soft grey serge, somewhat too large
for him, and wearing a grey felt hat with the brim pulled down over his
eyes, he felt that he was not easily to be identified with his
every-day self--the David Amber whose exacting yet conservative
"correctness" had become a by-word with his friends.
Once away from the Great Eastern he quietly insinuated himself into the
tide of the city's night life that tirelessly ebbs and flows north of
Dalhousie Square--the restless currents of native life that move
ceaselessly in obedience to impulses so meaningless and strange to the
Occidental understanding. Before he realised it he had left
civilisation behind him and was breathing the atmosphere, heady and
weird, of the Thousand-and-One Nights. The Lal Bazaar seethed round him
noisily, with a roaring not unlike that of a surf in the hearing of him
who had so long lived separate from such scenes. But gradually the
strangeness of it passed away and he began to feel at home. And ere
long he passed in a single stride from the glare of many lights and the
tumult of a hundred tongues to the dark and the quiet hush of an alley
that wormed a sinuous way through the hinterland of the bazaar. Here
the air hung close and still and gravid with the odour of the East,
half stench, half perfume, wholly individual and indescribable; here
black shadows clung jealously to black and slimy walls, while lighter
ones but vaguely suggestive of robed figures glided silently hither and
yon; and odd noises, whispers, sobs, sounds of laughter and of rage,
assailed the ear and excited the imagination....
At a corner where there was more light he came upon a policeman whose
tunic, helmet, and truncheon were so closely patterned after those of
the London Bobby that the simple sight of them was calculated to revive
confidence in the security of one's person. He inspected Amber shrewdly
while the latter was asking his way to Honest George's, and in response
jerked a white-gloved thumb down the wide thoroughfare.
"You carn't miss it, sir--s'ylors' boardin'-'ouse, all lit up and
likely with a row on at the bar. Mind your eye, guv'nor. It ayn't a
plyce you'd ought to visit on your lone."
"Thanks; I've business there. I reckon to take care of myself."
Nevertheless it was with a mind preyed upon by forebodings that Amber
stumbled down the cobbled way, reeking with filth, toward the
establishment of Honest George. Why on earth should Labertouche make an
appointment in so unholy a spot? Amber's doubts revived and he became
more than half persuaded that this must be a snare devised by those
acute intelligences which had instigated both the theft of the
photograph and that snarled mock-benediction of the mendicant.
"I don't like it," he admitted ruefully; "it's so canny."
He stopped in front of a building whose squat brick facade was lettered
with the reassuring sobriquet of its proprietor. A bench, running the
width of the structure, was thick with sprawling loafers, who smoked
and spat and spoke a jargon of the seas, the chief part of which was
blasphemy. Within, visible through windows never closed, was a crowded
barroom ablaze with flaring gas-jets, uproarious with voices thick with
drink.
One needed courage of no common order to run the gauntlet of that rowdy
room and brave the more secret dangers of the infamous den. "You've got
to have your nerve with you," Amber put it. "But I suppose it's all in
the game. Let's chance it." And he entered.
Compared with the atmosphere of that public-room a blast from Hell were
sweet and cooling, thought Amber; the first whiff he had of it all but
staggered him; and he found himself gasping, perspiration starting from
every pore. Faint with disgust he elbowed his way through the mob to
the bar, thankful that those about him, absorbed in the engrossing
occupation of getting drunk, paid him not the least heed. Flattening
himself against the rail he cast about for the proprietor. A blowsy,
sweating barmaid caught his eye and without a word slapped down upon
the sloppy counter before him a glass four fingers deep with
unspeakable whiskey. And he realised that he would have to drink it; to
refuse would be to attract attention, perhaps with unpleasant
consequences. "It's more than I bargained for," he grumbled, making a
pretence of swallowing the dose, and to his huge relief managing to
spill two-thirds of it down the front of his coat. What he swallowed
bit like an acid. Tears came to his eyes, but he choked down the cough,
and as soon as he could speak paid the girl. "Where's the boss?" he
asked.
"Who?" Her glance was penetrating. "Oh, he's wytin' for you." She
nodded, lifting a shrill voice. "Garge, O Garge! 'Ere's that Yankee."
With a bare red elbow she indicated the further end of the room.
"You'll find 'im down there," she said, her look not unkindly.
Amber thanked her quietly and, extricating himself from the press round
the bar, made his way in the direction indicated. A couple of billiard
tables with a small mob of onlookers hindered him, but by main strength
and diplomacy he wormed his way past and reached the rear of the room.
There were fewer loafers here and he had little hesitation about
selecting from an attendant circle of sycophants the genius of the
dive--Honest George himself, a fat and burly ruffian who filled to
overflowing the inadequate accommodation of an armchair. Sitting thus
enthroned in his shirt-sleeves, his greasy and unshaven red face
irradiating a sort of low good-humour that was belied by the cold
cunning of his little eyes, he fulfilled admirably the requirements of
the role he played self-cast.
"'Ere, you!" he hailed Amber brusquely. "You're a 'ell of a job-'unter,
ain't you? Mister Abercrombie's been wytin' for you this hour gone.
'Know the w'y upstairs?"
His tone was boisterous enough to fix upon Amber the attention of the
knot of loafers round the arm-chair. Amber felt himself under the
particular regard of a dozen pair of eyes, felt that his measure was
taken and his identification complete. Displeased, he answered curtly:
"No."
"This w'y, then." Honest George hoisted himself ponderously out of his
arm-chair and lumbered heavily across the room, shouldering the crowd
aside with a high-handed contempt for the pack of them. Jerking open a
small door in the side wall, he beckoned Amber on with a backward nod
of his heavy head. "Be a bit lively, carn't you?" he growled; and
Amber, in despite of qualms of distrust, followed the fellow into a
small and noisome hallway lighted by a single gas-jet. On the one hand
a flight of rickety steps ran up into repellent obscurity; on the other
a low door stood open to the night.
The crimp lowered his voice. "Your friend's this w'y." He waved his fat
red hand toward the door. "Them fools back there 'll think you're
tryin' for a berth with Abercrombie, the ship-master. I 'opes you'll
not tyke offense at the w'y I 'ad to rag you back there, sir."
"No," said Amber, and Honest George led the way out into a small,
flagged well between towering black walls and left him at the threshold
of a second doorway. "Two flights up, the door at the top," he said;
"knock twice and then twice." And without waiting for an answer he
lurched heavily back to his own establishment.
Amber watched his broad back fill the dimly-lighted doorway opposite
and disappear, of two minds whether or not to turn tail and run.
Suspicious enough in the beginning, the affair had now an exceeding
evil smell--as repulsive figuratively as was the actual effluvium of
the premises. He hung hesitant in doubt, with a heart oppressed by
those grim and silent walls of blackness that loomed above him. With
feet slipping on slimy flags he might be pardoned for harbouring
suspicions of some fouler treachery. The yawning mouth of the narrow
doorway, with the blackness of Erebus within, was deterring at its
best; in such a hole a man might be snared and slain and his screams,
though they rang to high Heaven, would fall meaningless on mundane
ears. Honest George's with its flare of lights and its crowd had been
questionable enough....
With a shrug, at length, he took his courage in his hands--and his
life, too, for all he knew to the contrary--and moved on into the
blackness, groping his way cautiously down a short corridor, his
fingers on either side brushing walls of rotten plaster. He had
absolutely nothing to guide him beyond the crimp's terse instructions.
Underfoot the flooring seemed to sag ominously; it creaked hideously.
Abruptly he stumbled against an obstruction, halted, and lighted a
match.
The insignificant flame showed him a flight of stairs, leading up to
darkness. With a drumming heart he began to ascend, counting twenty-one
steps ere his feet failed to find another. Then groping again, one hand
encountered a baluster-rail; with this for guide he turned and followed
it until it began to slant upwards. This time he counted sixteen steps
before his eyes, rising above the level of the upper floor, discovered
to him a thin line of light, bright along the threshold of a door. He
began to breathe more freely, yet apprehension kept him strung up to a
high tension of nerves.
He knuckled the door loudly--one double knock followed by another.
From within a voice called cheerfully, in English: "Come in."
He fumbled for the knob, found and turned it, and entered a small,
low-ceiled chamber, very cosy with lamplight, and simply furnished with
a single chair, a charpoy, a water-jug, a large mirror, and beneath the
latter a dressing-table littered with a collection of toilet gear,
cosmetics and bottles, which would have done credit to an actress.
There was but a single person in the room and he occupied the chair
before the dressing-table. As Amber came in, he rose; a middle-aged
babu in a suit of pink satin, very dirty. In one hand something caught
the light, glittering.
"Oah, Mister Amber, I believe?" he gurgled, oily and affable. "Believe
me most charmed to make acquaintance." And he laughed agreeably.
But Amber's face had darkened. With an oath he sprang back, threw his
weight against the door, and with his left hand shot the bolt, while
his right whipped from his pocket Rutton's automatic pistol.
"Drop that gun, you monkey!" he cried sharply. "I was afraid of this,
but I think you and I'll have an accounting before any one else gets in
here."