Part 16

“My dear kid, I suppose that I’ve asked for this by over-valuing your powers of discrimination! Just as a tip, though, I may pass on to you the information that even the clown in the circus is apt to draw the line at playing the giddy fool over his mother. I might add, moreover, that my fertile imagination would balk at inventing any one as delightful as the lady who did me the honour to be mine.”

Ledyard, flushed to the bone, met the ironic gaze with considerable dignity.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “As you imply, I’m a tasteless fool.”

“And so you’re in excellent company!” his host assured him. “I will now rapidly descend from the ancestral high-horse and prove to you, strictly as a matter of penance, that I am not invariably a liar. If you’ll wait just half a shake, I’ll present you to Biddy, ninth Duchess of Bolingham.”

He vanished into the room at the back with a reassuring gleam over his shoulder at young Ledyard’s startled countenance, and was back in rather less than half a shake with a shabby black case in his hands. He put it carefully on the table between them, touched a spring, and stepped with a low bow.

“There!” he announced. “Madame Biddy, the American kid with the freckles--you know the one. Mr. Bill Ledyard from Ohio, the Duchess of Bolingham--from Ireland.”

Out of the black velvet frame there smiled, wicked and joyful, a tiny vision of gold and ivory and sapphire. The head, with its froth of bright curls, lightly tilted--the nose tilted, too--and the lips tilted, too--there she sat laughing down the years, gay as a flower, reckless as a butterfly, lovely as a dream.

“Buffets and insults and three inimitable step-children and four incomparable sisters-in-law--and then some artist chap came along and painted her like this!” The Honourable Tony leaned over, touching the gauzy folds of the dress with a light and caressing finger. “She’s a bit incredible, after all, you know! They were going to crush all that life and laughter clear down into the earth, and away she went dancing through their fingers into the dust that was just a flower garden to her. She’s more alive this minute than they’ll ever be in all their everlasting stale lives. Ah, Biddy darlin’, look at you now after flirtin’ with the fine young man from America, and you with the blessed saints to teach you wisdom all these weary long years.”

Ledyard stared down at her, young and awed and tongue-tied.

“She’s--she’s the prettiest thing that I ever saw--honestly.”

“Oh, prettier than that, young Bill. She’s the prettiest thing that ever lived--or ever died. And she was such a lovely little lunatic herself that we get on famously. We know what a joke it all is, don’t we, Biddy? God be praised, we even know when it’s on us. There now, back you go, mavourneen, while Mr. Billee Ledyar’ and I start out hunting for another lady. Bill, take a look across the _kampong_ at the sun while I hunt up my helmet--if it’s lower than Bhakdi’s roof you’d better be off. It goes down like a rocket in these parts, once it gets started.”

Young Ledyard flung open the great wooden door that had barred out the heat, and a little breeze came dancing in, barely stirring the strange glossy leaves that clustered about the ladder-like steps. The sky was blue as steel; behind the black shadow of the Sultan’s residence there were livid streaks--the world was silent and alien as a dream. He shivered strongly, and stepped back into the room.

“The sun’s set,” he said. “There’s someone coming across from that shack you call a palace.”

The Honourable Tony strolled leisurely out of his bedroom.

“Ghundi!” he commented after a brief inspection. “The incomparable Ghundi.”

“Who the devil’s Ghundi?”

“He’s my head boy, William, and the delight of my soul; the only honest man I ever knew, saving your presence. I’ve taught him English, and he’s taught me considerably more than that--oh, considerably. What tidings, Ghundi?”

The bronze statue saluted with a grave and beautiful precision.

“Master, the Great One says that the white woman stays. Let your friend return down the waters without her.”

The Honourable Tony lifted his brows.

“Stays with the Great One, Ghundi?”

“With the Great One, Master.”

The Honourable Tony glanced pensively at the dark bulk of the palace.

“So much for that!” he murmured gently. “Bear my compliments to the Great One, Ghundi. Is all in readiness at the beach?”

“The raft waits, Master. Go swiftly, or your friend will stumble in the night.”

“Excellent advice! Latch the door after you, and on your way, William; I’ll come as far as the beach. No, this way. The air feels cool as water, doesn’t it? Smell that breeze; it’s straight down from the jungle.”

“It smells of poison,” cried young Ledyard fiercely. “The whole place is rank with it--it’s crawling. Calvert--Calvert, come back with me. I swear I’ll never let you regret it; I swear----”

“And here we are. Gad, we’re just in time if you want to tell the raft from the river. In you go, my lad, and off you go. Lord love you for coming!”

“Calvert, I won’t--I’m not going.”

The Honourable Tony laid his hands lightly and strongly on the boy’s shoulders, pushing him relentlessly toward the water.

“My dearest kid, don’t be an ass. If you stayed one minute longer, you’d ruin the best memory of my life. I mean it. Off with you.”...

He stood with one arm flung up in a reassuring gesture of farewell until the bamboo raft with its sandy-haired occupant vanished around the dim curve of the river. The night was falling with the velvet precipitation of the tropics--even while he stood its dark mantle was about him; new perfumes stole from its folds, troubling and exquisite, and one by one its jewels shone out--the small, ruddy fires of the _kampong_, an occasional lantern swinging hurriedly by and, square by square, the distant windows in the Sultan’s residence, flashing aggressive as a challenge. He lowered his arm somewhat abruptly. Very gay to-night, the Sultan’s residence; gayer than was its wont--gay as for some high festivity. The imperial Bhakdi was not greatly given to such prodigal display of oil and tallow; his mentor eyed the illumination critically, and then, with the old indifferent shrug, swung leisurely off through the blackness toward the shadow deeper than the surrounding shadows that was home. He ran lightly up the crazy steps, felt for the latch--and drew back his hand as sharply as though he had touched hot coal. He had touched something more startling than any coal; the groping fingers had closed on emptiness. The latched door was open.

“Ghundi!” His voice cut sharply into the dark space that a few minutes before had been a room, green-cushioned, white-matted, commonplace, and serene. “Ghundi!”

Silence--haunted and ominous. The Honourable Tony leaned against the door frame and addressed the shadows.

“Of course, this is frightfully jolly! I’d have laid out a mat with welcome drawn up all over it if I’d had the faintest notion of what was in store for me--though that would have been a bit superfluous, come to think of it! You seem to have managed nicely without any mat at all. I hope you’ve made yourself quite at home?”

Silence. The Honourable Tony did not move, but he raised his voice.

“Mrs. Potts! I say, I hope you’ve made yourself quite at home?”

From the hushed depths came a small, frantic commotion.

“Ah, be qui-_yet_!” The desperate whisper came toward him in a rush. “Be qui-_yet_, I do implore!”

“Oh, my dear girl, come now! Silence may be golden, and all that--and naturally I’m enormously flattered at finding you lurking around the corners of my humble abode, but before we do away with the human voice entirely, why not have a go at straightening out one or two minor matters? The first being just precisely what in the devil you’re doing here instead of on Ledyard’s boat?”

“Meestaire Honable Tonee, on my knees I pray to you, be more quiyet! Lissen, lissen, come more close. I tell you evairy thing. No, come more close. Do not let them see--do not, do not let them hear. Ah--ah--more sof’, more still! So!”

Out of the blackness the suppliant whisper drew him like a taut thread--nearer, nearer--he stumbled over something small and yielding, swore and laughed in the same quick breath, and felt two fluttering hands clutch at him, closing over his wrist in frantic protest.

“No, no, do not laff--hush, do not laff, I say.”

“Well, but what in _hell_?” inquired the Honourable Tony, softly enough to satisfy even his exigent audience. “No, I say, drop it, there’s a good little lunatic! I’m after the matches; they’re on this table somewhere----”

“Honable Tonee--lissen--eef one of those matches you should light, we die.”

“Oh, we do, do we? Well, death will be a blessed relief for one of us and a just retribution for the other. Why hasn’t someone killed you for using that simply frightful stuff long before this, Daisy?”

“What stuff ees that? Ah, ah, Honable Tonee, I am a-frighten to die; I am a-frighten!”

“But after all, that hardly alters the merits of the case, now does it? Though even death doesn’t seem to quite expiate the crime! Do you bathe in it?”

“But in _what_? Lissen--I tell you, lissen----”

“Lissen yourself, my child; it’s I who am going to tell you. Apparently you’ve had no guidance whatever so far, but precisely here is where you acquire a guardian angel. Daisy, little girls have been boiled in oil for less than using one drop of the noxious fluid in which you are drowning.”

“No, I do not onnerstan’--no, but lissen, I beg, I pray--you mus’ hide me, Honable Tonee, you mus’ hide me fas’ before he come to keel us both.”

“Hide you?” The Honourable Tony yielded to unregenerate mirth above the terrified murmurs of protest. “My dear Potts, you might precisely as well ask a thimble to hide a perfume factory! Actually, you know, when I was clean over there by the door, it fairly bowled me off my feet.”

“Hush--oh, hush--eet ees my pairfume?”

“It is indeed--it most emphatically is.”

“You could know eet from that door?”

“I could know it from the far edge of the _kampong_.”

“Then they fin’ me--then, oh, they fin’ me!”

At the sick terror of that small wail the Honourable Tony stirred.

“I say, you’re not really frightened, are you?”

“I am vairy frighten’ to die,” his visitor told him simply. “You are not?”

“Well, I’d be jolly well let down, I can tell you! It would upset my schedule no end; so if it’s all right with you we might go on living for a bit.”

“But that I think we cannot do,” said the small, chilled whisper.

“The deuce you say!” commented the Honourable Tony pensively. He swung himself up onto the table, and sat staring into the darkness for a minute, his head cocked on one side, swinging his long legs over its edge. “Look here, suppose we stop entertaining each other and bag a few of the blood-curdling facts. What do you say to diving in again at the beginning of all the small talk, and telling me just exactly what you’re doing trotting into my humble dwelling and turning it into a cross between a madhouse and a cemetery? The woman’s touch, so long lacking, what? Do stop crying; nothing in the whole world’s worth crying about like that--not even that infernal perfume!”

“I cry becaus’ vairy greatly I am afraid,” she explained gently. “An’ vairy greatly I am sorry that I bring to your poor abode such pain an’ grief an’ danger. I make you all excuse; I did not know wair else to go--no, truly, truly I did not know----”

“But why in the name of grief didn’t you go to the boat?”

“Honable Tonee, eet was gone, eet was gone!”

“Oh, rot! The boat was here until a few minutes ago. Look here, my dear child, if you’re trying any of your little tricks on me, I can save you any amount of time and trouble by tipping you off to the fact that you’re heading straight for a wash-out. This whole performance looks most frightfully dodgy and I’m beginning to be pretty fairly fed up. From brother Manuelo on----”

The limp bundle shivering quietly beneath his fingers shivered more deeply still, and sighed.

“About Manuelo, that was a lie.”

“Well, it’s gratifying to have my worst suspicions confirmed, naturally! But of all the confounded cheek----”

“Eet was jus’ a lie that Manuelo he was my brothair. Manuelo, he ees the belove’ of my heart.”

“The devil he is!” The Honourable Tony’s voice was edged with mild interest. “And may I ask why the brotherly transformation?”

“What ees that?”

“Why the lie, Daisy?”

“Because men, too well do I know them. Ah, ah, too well! Eef I say to Meestair Ledyar’, to that black devil out from hell, to your own self, Honable Tonee, that eet ees tryin’ to save the belove’ of my heart that I go crezzy in my haid and die two thousan’ death from terror, you think they lissen to me then? You think they help me then? Well, me, I think not.”

“And me, I think not, too!” agreed the Honourable Tony promptly. “Quite a student of human nature, in your quiet way, aren’t you, Daisy? I say, do let’s have some light on this! I don’t think that Manuelo would fancy it for a moment if he knew that we were all huddled up here in the pitch-black whispering things at each other.”

“Manuelo, one thousan’ time he have tell me eef he fin’ me with a man alone, he cut the heart out from our body.”

“Perhaps it’s all for the best that he’s going to remain in the tin mines,” suggested the Honourable Tony philosophically. “No cloud without a silver lining, what? However, I’m going to humour Manuelo to the extent of seeing that we have all the light that a large lamp can cast over what I trust is going to prove a brief interview. Do stop whimpering, there’s a good child!”

“Honable Tonee, thees lamp you mus’ not light. See, no longer I cry--no longer I make one soun’--only thees lamp you mus’ not light. No, wait, you do not onnerstan’----”

“You’re putting it conservatively, Daisy!”

“Wait, then, I tell you--all I make clear--but no light. Eef there is a light, he know you are here; eef he know you are here, he know that I, too, am here--an’ eef he know I, too, am here, then we die. That ees clear now?”

“Well, frankly, it still leaves a bit to be desired. One or two minor gaps--who is it that’s going to slay us when he comes to the conclusion that we’re both here, Daisy? Manuelo?”

“No, no, no--Manuelo, I tell you, he dyin’ in those tin mines.”

“Oh--well, then, candidly, you have me. If it isn’t Manuelo, my mind is a perfect blank as to who would profit by doing away with us. Unless--you haven’t misled me about Mr. Potts, have you?”

“Ah, what now?”

“Mr. Potts is still dead?”

“Honable Tonee, eet ees not well to mock--eet ees not well to laff! He was dead like I say; eet ees not good to mock the dead.”

“He has my abject apologies. But that brings us back to the murderer.”

“Murderair?”

“By all means--the cove who’s going to dash in and dispose of us if I light the lamp.”

“Honable Tonee, you know well eet ees he, that mos’ accurse’ black devil of all black devils to whom I pray to save my Manuelo.”

“Daisy, it can’t be our royal Bhakdi that you’re referring to in these unmeasured terms?”

And suddenly she clung to him, weeping abjectly through her clicking teeth.

“No, no, nevair say hees name--nevair spik it! Wair ees there I can be hid--wair ees there I can be hid far away? I am a-frighten to die--Manuelo--ah-h--Manuelo!”

The Honourable Tony felt for the small, untidy silken head in the darkness, patting it with deft but reluctant fingers.

“My dear kid, if it’s Bhakdi who’s been frightening you into this state, it’s a good deal simpler than one, two, three to straighten it out. Tell you what: you curl up in this wicker chair--there, put your head back, and take a long breath--and I’ll stroll over to the royal residence and put the fear of God and England into the little blighter. Don’t howl; it’s going to be absolutely all serene, I swear----”

But at that the soft convulsion of weeping deepened to mysterious vehemence.

“No, no, nevair stir--nevair--nevair! He mus’ not know I come here; he mus’ not know I have see you--eef he know that, you die----”

“Daisy, you’ve been running in too much to the cinemas. What you need is a good stiff dose of ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ ‘Off with his head’, what? My good child, the little bounder eats out of my hand--either or both. He----”

“No, no, no, he keel you,” the frantic, obstinate little voice stammered in desperate urgency. “That he tell to me--that he say to me--he keel you.”

“But in the name of the Lord, why?”

“Becaus’ I tell to heem that if once more he lay on me hees black an’ dirty han’s I go to you for help. Ah, Maria, hees han’s--ah, Manuelo, Manuelo!”

“Daisy--Daisy, this is all simply too good to be true; no, honestly, I’m wrenching my mind out of its socket trying to believe you. You’ll swear he said that he’d kill me? But why? Why?”

“Becaus’ ovair me he ees gone crezzy.” The tear-sodden whisper was charged with mournful pride. “Ovair me he ees gone crezzy mad. He tell to me that he marry with me--that the jewels from hees las’ two wive he give to me for prezzens----”

The Honourable Tony yielded to another gale of delighted mirth.

“Well, upon my word, you couldn’t ask for anything fairer than that! Why not accept?”

“Hush--hush--more still! You have forgot Manuelo?”

“To be entirely candid, my child, I had forgot Manuelo. It’s delightful to know that you haven’t, however! Well, but then how in the world did you get here?”

“I have jump out from a window.”

“From a---- Daisy, you’re making this up!”

“No, no--for why, for why should I make thees up, Honable Tonee? Lissen, he have lock me up in a great ogly room, until I come back into my sense, he say, becaus’ so bad I cry an’ scream, an’ cry an’ scream--lissen, so then I jump from out that window. Ah, ah, Dios, eet was too high, that window; my haid eet ache, my haid eet ache so bad, while I have crawl an’ crawl through all the black--but that boat he was gone away, Honable Tonee, an’ me, I am a-frighten till I die, becaus’ I do not know wair to go. Lissen, I am a mos’ bad girl--I bring to you danger an’ worry, but my haid eet hurt, and I do not know wair----”

“My dear Daisy, you knew exactly.” The Honourable Tony administered a final reassuring pat, and swung off from the table. “You showed really extraordinary judgment, not to go into the matter of taste. This is Liberty Hall, my priceless child; you should feel entirely at home with practically no effort. Before you settle down definitely, however, we might run over our lines in case the Imperial Bhakdi takes it into his head to drop in on us before we’ve worked out any very elaborate campaign for Liberty and Manuelo, the heart’s belove’. D’you think he’s liable to dash over before I could hunt up Ghundi and a sampan, and head you down stream?”

“No, no--no, no, no--do not leave me! No, I die when you shall leave me!”

“Oh, come!” remonstrated the Honourable Tony blithely. “That’s spreading it on fairly thick, you know--I don’t believe that Manuelo would pass over that kind of thing for a minute. Look here, I’ll be back before you can get through Jack Robinson----”

“No! No!”

It was indecent for any living creature to show such abject terror, more like a tortured and frenzied kitten than a sane human being. The Honourable Tony shrugged his shoulders.

“Oh, it’s quite all right with me, you know! I simply thought if the little beggar was roving about it might be tidier and simpler to get you out of the way--though it would be any amount jollier if you were around, naturally. We could do something nice with a screen--or there’s the other room; on the whole, that has more possibilities. By Gad, we can get some simply stunning effects, with practically no trouble at all. I’ve an automatic in there.”

“Ah-h-h!”

“My dear kid, don’t go off like that again, or I won’t let you put a finger on it. In the extremely remote event that I am dragged kicking and screaming from the scene of action, however, you could do some very amusing tricks with it, including potting our imperial friend. Are you a good shot, Daisy?”

“No, no--what you say now? Do not let heem come; do not let heem--no thing could I shoot--no thing----”

“Well, there’s one thing that any duffer in the world can shoot,” said the Honourable Tony soothingly. “There’s absolutely no use shaking like that; not as long as any stupid little girl in the world can shoot herself! It’s a simply ripping pistol, Daisy.” He put one arm about her, light and close, and she relaxed against it with a strange, comforted little moan. “So that’s that; of course there’s not half a chance in a thousand that the little beggar won’t grovel all over the place; I’ll tell him that if he lays one finger on a British subject, I’ll take jolly good care that England turns it into an international matter----”

“Oh, for that, he does not care!”

“How do you mean, doesn’t care?”

“No, for Englan’ he does not care--no, not that! When I say to heem that great Englan’ will protec’ me, he laff right out an’ say, ‘Englan’, bah!’”

“Oh, he said that, did he?” inquired the Honourable Tony grimly. “Well, that’s not a pretty thing for any fat little Sultan to say.” He grinned suddenly into the darkness. “‘Englan’, bah!’ Come to think of it, I’ve murmured something fairly like it myself once or twice. But then I’m not a fat little Sultan; I happen to be an Englishman! Daisy, will you swear not to howl if I tell you something?”

“What now?”

“Well, now it begins to look as though things were going to happen. There’s a fair-sized cluster of lights bearing down this way from the royal imperial palace at a good fast clip, and I’m rather inclined to think that it’s time for little girls that have heart’s beloveds in the mines to be trotting off to a more secluded spot. How about it?”

“Yes, yes, I go.” There was a strange and touching docility in the small voice. “Wair now do I go, Honable Tonee?”

“Here--this way--where’s your hand? Quiet, now; sure you aren’t going to howl?”

“No; no.”

“That’s right; here’s the door--nothing in the world to howl about, naturally. Wait, and I’ll find you a chair; or you can curl up on the bed if you’d rather. That comfortable?”

“Oh, that--that is mos’ comfortable.”

“Good. Now for God’s sake, emulate the well-known mouse! The revolver’s on the table. No--no--don’t touch it now. Oh, Lucifer, that perfume! It’ll be our ruin--a headless jackass could smell it in Singapore. Here, let’s have your handkerchief--quick! Steady on there. We’re about to receive callers, Daisy!”

There was the sound of feet on the rickety steps--the sound of hands at the outer door. The Honourable Tony bent down swiftly; kicked off one shoe--the other--ripped off the white linen coat and the blue silk scarf, and strode leisurely across the threshold of his bedroom door with his head on one side and his hands in his pockets.

“What in the devil?” he inquired amiably of the bronze statue standing in the pool of light at the head of the stairs. The statue stirred, and behind it other lights gleamed and danced in darkness. “Oh--it’s you, Ghundi! What’s the row?

“Master, the Great One bids that you bring the woman and come swiftly to the palace.”

“Bring what woman?” inquired the Honourable Tony, lazily diverted. “I say, Ghundi, the Great One hasn’t been having a go at that brandy again, has he?”

The statue did not move but in the pool of light its eyes shone, eloquent and imploring.

“Master, jests will not serve you now. She was seen to enter here by the little son of the head-beater. The Great One says to make all haste.”