Chapter 3

"Well, I won't keep you." Hartley touched the pony's quarters with his whip. "I'm sorry I missed Heath, as I wanted to see him about something rather important."

"I'll tell him," said Atkins, cheerfully, "and probably he'll look you up at your own house."

"Will he, I wonder?" thought the police officer, and he set to work upon the treadmill of his thoughts again.

There is nothing in the world so tantalizing, and so hard to bear, as the conviction that knowledge is just within reach and that it is deliberately withheld. Heath stood between him and elucidation, and the more firmly the clergyman held his ground, and the more definitely he blocked the path, the more sure Hartley became that he did so of set purpose.

"But _why_, _why_?" he asked himself, as he drove through the Cantonment towards Mrs. Wilder's bungalow.

Atkins got off his bicycle and handed it over to his boy as he arrived at the dreary entrance.

"The Padré Sahib is out?" he said, in his brisk, matter-of-fact tones.

"The Padré Sahib is upstairs," said the boy, with an immovable face; and Atkins went up quickly.

"Hallo, Heath, I met Hartley just now, and he said you were out."

Heath looked up from a sheet of paper laid out on the writing-table before him.

"I did not feel up to seeing Hartley," he said, a little stiffly. "It is not a convenient hour for callers, so I availed myself of an excuse."

"He told me to tell you that it was rather a pressing matter that brought him here, and I said that I would give you his message, and that you would probably go round to see him."

"You said that, Atkins?"

His face was so drawn and unnatural that Atkins looked at him in surprise.

"I suppose I was right?"

"If Hartley wants to see me," said Heath, in a loud, angry voice, "or if he wants to come bullying and blustering, he must write and make an appointment. I have every right to protect myself from a man who asks personal and most impertinent questions."

"Hartley, impertinent?" Atkins' eyes grew round.

"When I say impertinent, I mean not pertinent, or bearing upon any subject that I intend to discuss with him."

The Rev. Francis Heath got up and walked towards the window, turning his back upon the room.

"I don't mix in social politics," said Atkins, soothingly. "But at the same time, I can't understand you, Heath. What the devil does Hartley want to know?"

The clergyman caught at the curtain and gripped it as he had gripped the back of his chair at the Club.

"Never ask me that again, Atkins," he said, in a low, hoarse voice. "Never speak to me about this again."

Atkins retreated quickly from the room; there was something in the manner of the Rev. Francis Heath that he did not like, and he registered a mental vow to let the subject drop, so far as he, a lieutenant in His Majesty's Royal Engineers, was concerned, and never to allude to it, either for "fear or favour," again.

IV

INTRODUCES THE READER TO MRS. WILDER IN A SECRETIVE MOOD

Draycott Wilder was a man who hoarded his passions and concentrated them upon a very few objects. His work came first, and his intense ambition, and after his work, his wife. She was the right sort of wife for a man who put worldly success first, and through the years of their marriage had helped him a great deal more than he ever admitted. Clarice Wilder was beautiful, and had a surface cleverness combined with a natural gift of tact that made her an admirable hostess. She could talk to anybody and send them away pleased and satisfied with themselves, and she had made the best of Draycott for a good number of years. She had married him when marriage seemed a big thing and a wonderful thing, and her country home in Devonshire a small, breathless place where nothing ever happened, and where life was one long Sunday at Home, and Draycott, back from the East, had appeared as interesting as a white Othello.

For a time she received all she needed out of life, and she threw herself into her husband's promotion-hunger; understanding it, because she, too, wanted to reign, and it gave her an inexplicable feeling of respect for him, for Clarice knew that had she been born a man, she, too, would have worked and schemed and pushed herself out into the front of the ranks. She combined with him as only an ambitious woman can combine, and she supplied all he lacked. It filled her mind, and she never awoke the jealousy that lay like a sleeping python in the heart of Draycott Wilder. It was when they were in India that Clarice, for the first time, lost her grip and allowed her senses to get the better of her common sense, and she became for a brief time a woman with a very troublesome heart. Hector Copplestone, a young man newly come to the Indian Civil Service, was sent to their Punjaub station. He made Mrs. Wilder realize her own charm, he made her terribly conscious that she was older than him, he made her anxious and distracted and madly, idiotically in love with him. She forgot that there were other things in life, she put aside ambition for a stronger temptation, and she did not care what Draycott thought or supposed.

No one ever knew what happened, but everyone guessed that Wilder had made trouble. They left India under the same cloud of silence, and they reappeared in Mangadone to outside eyes the same couple who had pulled together for successful years of marriage; and if some whisper, for whispers carry far in the East, came after them, no one regarded it, and the Copplestone incident was considered permanently closed. Draycott Wilder was the same silent man who was the despair of his dinner partners, and Clarice had her old brilliancy and her old way of making men pleased with themselves; and though some people, chiefly young girls, described her as "hard," she represented a centre of attraction, and her one mad year was a thing of the past.

Among the men who went to the terraced house in its huge gardens, she always particularly welcomed Hartley, the Head of the Police. He never demanded effort, and he had a good nature and a flow of small talk. Nearly every woman liked Hartley, though very few of them could have said why. He had fair, fluffy hair and a pink face; he was just weak enough to be easily influenced, and he fell platonically in love with every new woman he met without being in the least faithless to the others. Mrs. Wilder had a corner in her heart for him, and he, in return, looked upon Mrs. Wilder as a brilliant and lovely woman very much too good for Draycott. He did not know that he took his ideas from her whenever she wished him to do so; Mrs. Wilder, like a clever conjurer, palmed her ideas like cards, and upheld the principle of free will while she did so, and if she had desired to impress Hartley with fifty-two new notions he would have left her positive in his own mind that they were his own.

Thus, Clarice Wilder may be classed as that melodramatic type that goes about labelled "dangerous," only she had the wit to take off the label and to advertise herself under the guise of a harmless soothing mixture.

The bungalow in which the Wilders lived was an immense place, standing over a terraced garden beautifully planted with flowers. Steps, covered with white marble, led from terrace to terrace, and down to a jade-green lake where water-lilies blossomed and pink lotus flowers floated. Dark green trees plumed with shaded purple flowers accentuated the massed yellow of the golden laburnums. The topmost flight of steps led up to the house, and was flanked on either side with variegated laurel growing in sea-green pots, and the red avenue, that took its lengthy way from the main road, curved into a wide sweep outside the flower-hung veranda.

Hartley arrived at the house just as Mrs. Wilder was having tea alone in the big drawing-room, and she smiled up at him with her curious eyes, that were the colour of granite. Without exactly knowing what her age was, Hartley felt, somehow, that she looked younger than she was, and that she did not do so without some aid from "boxes," but he liked her none the less for that, and possibly admired her more. He sat down and asked her how she was, and, as he looked at her, he wondered to think that she had ever fainted. Clearly, she was the last woman on earth who could be accused of Victorian ways, and to see her in her white lace dress, dark, distinguished, and perfectly mistress of her emotions, was to be bewildered at the memory. She treated the question with scant ceremony, and remarked upon the fact that the night had been hot, and that everyone had felt it.

"I've got an excellent reason for remembering the date," said Hartley reflectively. "By the way, wasn't Absalom, old Mhtoon Pah's assistant, once a dressing-boy or something in your establishment?"

"He was, and then he went sick, and took to this other kind of work."

"He was quite honest, I suppose?"

"Perfectly honest," said Mrs. Wilder, with a slight lift of her eyebrows, "and a nice little boy. I hope that question doesn't mean that you are professionally interested in his past?" she laughed carelessly. "I am quite prepared to stand up for Absalom; he was the soul of integrity."

Hartley put down his cup on the table.

"The boy has disappeared," he said, talking with interest, for the subject filled his mind.

"But when, and how? I saw him quite lately."

Hartley's round, China-blue eyes fixed upon her.

"Can you tell me when you saw him?"

"One night--evening, I should say--I was out riding and I passed him going towards the wharf, not towards the wharf exactly, but to the houses that lie out by the end of the tram lines."

"What evening? I wish you could remember for me."

"It was the night of my own dinner-party."

"Then that was July the twenty-ninth?"

Mrs. Wilder looked at him, and bit her lip.

"Was it the twenty-ninth?" Hartley repeated the question.

"Probably it was, if you say so. I told you just now that I had Burma head. But where has Absalom gone to?"

Hartley took up his cup again and stirred the spoon round and round.

"Forgive me for pelting you with questions, but did you see Mr. Heath that evening?"

"Now, what _are_ you trying to get out of me, Mr. Hartley? Did Mr. Heath tell you that he had seen me?"

Hartley stared at his feet.

"Heath has got Burma head, too, and won't tell me anything. It might help his memory if you were able to say whether you had seen him or not that evening."

Mrs. Wilder's fine eyes glittered into a smile that was not exactly mirthful or pleasant.

"I don't see that I can possibly say one way or another. I often do . . . I often do see him going about the native quarter when I ride through, but I do not write it down in my book, so it is quite impossible for me to say."

"Anyhow, you saw Absalom?"

"Oh, yes, I saw the boy. What a persistent man you are, and you haven't told me a word yourself."

"Absalom was to have got a gold lacquer bowl that you ordered from Mhtoon Pah?"

"Quite correct," laughed Mrs. Wilder with more of her usual manner. "That old Barabbas has never sent it to me yet, either. I ordered it a month ago. I love lacquer because it looks like nothing else, and particularly gold lacquer."

"Well, all I can tell you is that Absalom had an order from Mhtoon Pah to get the bowl the next morning, if it was to be got, and he went away as usual the night of the twenty-ninth, and never appeared again. Heath saw him, and you saw him, and that is pretty nearly all the evidence I can collect."

"Evidence?" Mrs. Wilder's voice had a piercing note in it.

"Yes, evidence. You see the only way to trace a man is to find out exactly who saw him last, and where."

"Ah, I see. You find out what everyone was doing, and where they were, and you piece the bits in. It's like a jig-saw, and how very interesting it must be."

Hartley laughed.

"Not what the other people were doing exactly, but where they were. It is something to know that you saw the boy, but I wish you could remember if you saw Heath."

Mrs. Wilder got up and walked to the window.

"I do hope he will be found. Did he take my lacquer bowl with him?"

"He had not got it," said Hartley, in his steady, matter-of-fact voice.

"Are you _worried_ about it?" She turned and looked across the room. "Why should you be? If Absalom has chosen to leave, I really don't see why he shouldn't be allowed to go in peace."

"I don't know that he did _choose_ to leave; that is just the point."

He was longing to ask her another question about Heath, and yet he did not like to press her.

"Here are some callers," she remarked, and then, with a short laugh, "I wonder if they were out and about that evening. If you go on like this, Mr. Hartley, you will make yourself the most popular man in Mangadone. Take my advice and let Absalom come back in his own way. Perhaps he is looking for my bowl." She turned her head and glanced at some cards that the bearer had brought in on a tray. "Show the ladies in, Gulab."

In a few minutes the room was full of voices and laughter, and Mrs. Wilder became unconscious of Hartley. She remained so unconscious of him that he felt uncomfortable and began to wonder if he had offended her in any way. He looked at her from time to time, and when he got up to go she gave him her hand as though she was only just sure that he was really there.

The disappearance of Absalom was taking strange shapes in his mind, and he had so far come to the conclusion that Heath knew something about Absalom, and his visit to Mrs. Wilder added the puzzling fact to his mental arithmetic that Mrs. Wilder knew something about Heath. It was one thing to corner Heath, but Heath standing behind Mrs. Wilder's protection, became formidable.

Yet it was not in the Cantonment that Hartley expected to find any clue to the vanished Absalom: it was down in the native quarter. Down there where the Chinese eating-houses were beginning to fill, and where the night life was only just awaking from its slumber of the day, was where Absalom, the Christian boy, had last been seen, and it was there, if anywhere, that he must be searched for and found.

What possible connection could there be between an upright, Godly man who went his austere way along the high, cold path of duty, and a woman whose husband was madly grasping at the biggest prize of his profession? What link could bind life with life, when lives were divided by such yawning gulfs of space and class and race? To connect Mrs. Wilder with Heath was almost as mad a piece of folly as to connect Absalom with the clergyman, and yet, Hartley argued, he had not set out to do it. Something that had not begun with any act or question of his had brought about the junction of the ideas, and he felt like a man in a dark room trying to make his way to the window, and meeting with unrecognizable obstacles.

The small tinkle of the church bell attracted his attention, and, following a sudden whim, he went into the tin building and sat down near the door. Mr. Heath did not look down the sparsely-filled church as he read the evening service, and he prayed with an almost violent fervour. Certainly to-night the Rev. Francis Heath was praying as though he was alone, and the odd imploring misery of his voice struck Hartley.--"To perceive and know the things that we ought to do, and to have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same."

Heath's voice had broken into a kind of sob, the sound that tells of strain and hysteria, but what was there in Mangadone to make a respectable parson strained and hysterical?

V

CRAVEN JOICEY, THE BANKER, FINDS THAT HIS MEMORY IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED

Just as Draycott Wilder stood high in the eyes of the Powers that govern the Civil Service of India, so, too, in his own way, was Craven Joicey, the Banker, a man with a solid reputation. If you build a reputation solidly for the first half of a lifetime, it will last the latter half without much attention or care, and, contrariwise, a bad beginning is frequently stronger than any reformation, and stronger than integrity that comes too late.

Joicey had begun well, and had, as the saying goes, "made his way." He was a large, heavy man, representative in figure and slow and careful of speech. He kept the secrets of his bank, and he kept his own secrets, if he had any, and was a walking tomb for confidences not known as "tender." No one would have attempted to tell him their affairs of the heart, but almost anyone with money to invest would go direct to Craven Joicey. He had no wife, no child, and, as far as anyone knew, no kith or kin, and he had no intimate friends. He had one of those strange, shut faces; a mouth that told nothing, eyes that were nearly as expressionless as the eyes of Mhtoon Pah, and he had no restless movements. A plethoric man, Joicey, a man who got up and sat down heavily, a man who looked at his business and not beyond it, and never troubled Society. He probably knew that Heath lived in Mangadone, that was if Heath banked with him; otherwise, he might easily not have known it.

He knew of the Wilders. He knew what Draycott Wilder owned, and he knew that Mrs. Wilder had a very small allowance of her own, paid quarterly through a Devonshire bank, but more than this he neither knew nor wished to know of them, and he never went to their house.

Joicey had not "worn well"; there was no denying that sweating years of Burmese rains and hot weathers had made him prematurely old. His thick hair was patched with white, and his face was flabby and yellow. Craven Joicey was one of those men, who, if he had died suddenly, would have made people remember that they always thought him unhealthy-looking. There was nothing, romantic, exciting, or interesting about him; his mind was a huge pass-book, and his brain a network of facts and figures. He played no games, went only seldom to the Club, and knew no one in the place better than he knew Hartley, which was little, but at any rate Hartley dined once or twice in the year with him, and he occasionally dined in return with the Head of the Police.

Hartley was so occupied with his trouble of mind on the subject of Absalom that he very nearly forgot that he had invited Joicey to dinner the following Saturday. The police had discovered nothing whatever, and he had received another visit at his house from the curio dealer. Mhtoon Pah, in a condition bordering upon frenzy, stated that when he had stood on his steps in the morning, intending to go to the Pagoda to offer alms to the priests, he had noticed his wooden effigy and gone down to look closer at him. The yellow man pointed as was his wont, but over the pointing hand lay a rag soaked in blood.

Mhtoon Pah, immense and splendid in his silk, had given forth wild noises as he produced the rag, noises that reminded Hartley irresistibly of the trumpeting of elephants, but they were terrible to hear.

"It is enough," he said, his face quivering. "This is the work of the Chinamen. They slit his veins, _Thakin_, they are doing it slowly. The _Thakin_ can understand that Absalom still lives, his blood is fresh and red, it is not dead blood that runs like treacle, it is living blood that spouts out hot, and that steams and smokes. _Thakin_, _Thakin_, I cry for vengeance."

"I'm doing all I can, Mhtoon Pah," said Hartley, desperately. "I can't go and arrest Leh Shin on suspicion, because there isn't a vestige of suspicion attached to the man."

"Not after this?" Mhtoon Pah pointed to the rag that lay loathsomely on the table.

"That may be goat's blood, or dog's blood; we can't say it is Absalom's," objected Hartley. "Leave the horrid thing there, Mhtoon Pah, and I will have it analysed later on."

Mhtoon Pah gasped and beat his breast.

"He was a good boy, he attended the Mission with regularity, and they are doing terrible things. They wind wires around the finger-nails and the toe-nails until they turn black and drop off. You do not know these Chinamen, _Thakin_, as I know them. Have you seen the assistant of Leh Shin?"

Hartley wished that he had not; he frequently wished that he had never seen that man.

Mhtoon Pah bent near the Head of the Police and spoke in low, sibilant tones:

"He is a butcher's mate, _Thakin_. He is a slayer of flesh. He kills in the shambles. Oh, it is true. I saw him slit the mouth of a dog with his knife for his own mirth--"

"Swine!" said Hartley.

"Why he left there and went to live with Leh Shin is unknown. He has secrets. He knows the best mixtures of opium, he knows--"

"I don't want to hear what he knows."

"He knows where Absalom is."

"You only think that," said Hartley, roughly. "It is a dangerous thing to make these assertions. It is only your idea, Mhtoon Pah."

The Burman groaned aloud and held the rag between his hands.

"Put that down," said Hartley. Mhtoon Pah's very agony of desire to find the boy was almost disgusting, and he turned away from the sight. "There is no use your staying here, and no use your coming, unless there is more of this devil's work," he pointed to the blood-stained cloth. "Leave the thing here, and I will see what the doctors have to say about it."

"_Thakin_, _Thakin_," said Mhtoon Pah. "The time grows late. My night's rest is taken from me, and the Chinaman, Leh Shin, walks the roads. I saw him from my place at sunset. I saw him go by like a cat that prowls when night falls and it grows dark. He passed by my wooden image of a dancing man, and he touched him as he passed--" he gave a despairing gesture with his heavy hands. "Oh, Absalom, Absalom, my grief is heavy!"

"He will be either found or accounted for," said Hartley, with a decision and firmness he was far from feeling, and Mhtoon Pah, with bent head, went away out of the room.

The rain that had held off all day began to come down in pitiless torrents, blown in by the wind, and fighting against bolts and bars. It ruffled the muddy waters of the river, ran along the kennels of the Chinese quarter, drove the inhabitants of Paradise Street indoors and soused down over the Cantonment gardens, and battered on the travelling carriage of Craven Joicey, that came along the road, a waterproof over the pony's back and another covering the _syce_, and Joicey sat inside the small green box, holding the window-strings under his heavy arms.

Joicey was not a cheerful companion, and in his present mood Fitzgibbon, the Barrister, would have suited Hartley better; but he had asked Joicey, and Joicey was on his way, thinking about Bank business in all probability, thinking of money lent out at interest, thinking of careful ledgers and neat rows of figures, and certainly not in the least likely to be thinking of the Chinese quarter, or of a person of so small account, financially, as Absalom, the Christian native. The river or the ships or the back lanes of Mangadone might swallow a thousand Absaloms and make no difference to the Bank, and therefore none to Craven Joicey.

Absalom, that shadow of the night, had gone to heaven or hell, and left no bills behind, and it is by bills that some men's memories are recorded. He was only another grain of red dust blown about by the wind of Fate, and though the Rector of St. Jude's might consider that, having been marked by the sign of the Cross, he was in some way different from the rest, neither Craven Joicey nor Clarice Wilder could be expected to take very much heed of the fact.