Part 13

"It is all right now--do not be tragic. Nosing of ze kind could be. We will see ze garden again."...

But all they saw was no aid to the case. They entered the garden of Lol Raman to find it disposed as usual, inviting the evening trade. Paper lanterns swung among the trees like phosphorescent fruits and drew a myriad fluttering moths. As if the glow had drawn them too, a few visitors lounged at ease about the tables, sipping and murmuring languidly. Some of the _Lombock's_ passengers were there, notably a smallish man with shiny skin and bulbous eyes, glittering and predatory, who bowed effusively to De Haan and received a cool nod. Gliding here and yon, and jiggling a tray to serve the general need, went a waxen-faced manikin. Glasses shone and sparkled. White garments showed fresh and span. And farther back, amid the shadows under the big palm, could be seen the vague figure of the presiding genius of the place, the huge red ape, huddled in the attitude of meditation.

"All ze same, hey?" said De Haan. "Still we remain a liddle. Perhaps we hear somesing. And you, my dear fallow, drink zis."

He chose a table in the arbor near a magnificent rhododendron and poured a measure of golden yellow liquid from a ready bottle, and the mate had need of the same. Nivin was paying the penalty just then for unprofessional weakness and the mellower streak of his nature, as those of his type have often to pay here below. He remembered that he alone had guided Tunstal. He could not acquit himself for whatever ill had befallen. And he remembered something else--another evil he had done nothing to check that day--the passage of the cinnabar boat with her ruddy devils and suspected errand....

"What is ze matter wit' zat beast?" rumbled De Haan, frowning over his shoulder. "He don' yell good to-night. He acts like sick. And alzo he haf no roll' us yet one single cigarette. Yet here is plenty tobacco too--"

With his foot he pushed within the circle of the chain a little lacquer box and a packet of leaves, but when he turned again the kindly official saw that his attempt to set up a diversion had failed. Nivin looked leaner and more leathery than ever, and his eyes had lighted with an almost fanatic gleam which was only partly due to arrack--that potential drink. "It's no use, Mister Controller," he said. "And I thank you for meaning well. But you can't keep from me that something awful has happened to the boy I sent from the _Lombock_ so free and careless."

De Haan squirmed through all his thick bulk. "Don' speak so wit' a pain, my dear fallow," he urged. "I do not admit it. We haf yet to see."

"I can see. You try to tell me certain crimes are spared you here. I take it you mean such deviltry as grows where foreigners have rotted a native country?"

"Yes," said De Haan.

"And that's true; they do rot it. I always thought this place was clean, just as you claim, because so few whites pass through--a plain, decent, wholesome race that keeps its self-respect and harms none till trod upon."

"Yes."

Nivin leaned across at him. "But the rotters are in. They're at their slimy work, grubbin' for profit through muck. And after that what's to be trusted?"

"What do you mean?" demanded De Haan.

"Such people as that rat Van Goor over there--" He jerked a thumb toward the bulbous-eyed man.

"We watch zem. Zat is what we are here for. Meanwhile zey bring development. If zey misbehave, we sling zem out quick."

"And the coolies they bring--scum of the earth. Do you watch them?"

"Of course."

"And you never caught them yet at their slave trade planted right in the heart of your people?"

* * * * *

De Haan stiffened in his chair. "What are you trying to say? Zis is fool talk of ze river."

"Native women sold into slavery to the cinnabar mines to hell and death. Soul traffic, the fine flower of civilization. Here in these lovely islands!"

"I tell you it can't be!"

"The boats, man. The cinnabar boats. Can you answer for their trade up and down and about--transporting commodities to supply the gangs?"

"We inspect every one of zem here, at ze water front. Zere is nosing nor anywhere to hide such doings. You, zat speak to the shame of our people--prove it if you can!"

"What if I could?" cried Nivin.

"What if you could?" De Haan doubled his hands before him, the kind of big, white, capable hands that deliberately and quietly have molded the most successful and the least troublesome colonial empire in the world. "What if you could? By Godd, we would take ze man who did it and break him in liddle pieces! Can you prove it? Speak now and let me hear your proof. By Godd, I tell you zis is my gountry--our gountry, our people! Not dirt, but men and women. Not chattels, not slaves; not--not--"

There broke a sharp click and rattle of steel links. They turned at the sound. Under the big palm the red-haired ape had started into vehement life, bouncing at his leash....

Nivin had fallen back into his chair again, silenced, baffled, for he had no proof to give. De Haan still held the pose of challenge, glancing over his shoulder. Both of them watched the ungainly creature reeling in the shadows; both of them observed the gestures by which he seemed to solicit their attention.

He had taken a leaf of the raw tobacco and adding a pinch for filler was trying to twist the spill. And he could not. It became evident to them that he could not. The fingers moved painfully, trembling.... Curious fingers he had, stumpy and thick and clumsy as if covered with ragged gloves, wholly unequal to the delicate task.

* * * * *

Slowly Nivin levered his lank frame out of the chair and moved a pace like a somnambulist and stood staring at those fingers. He straightened and transfixed De Haan. "Where's your police?" he whispered. "Guns--soldiers--something--!"

"What? What is it?"

Nivin stood braced like a man at the edge of a precipice.

"To hold this place."

De Haan looked around over the patch of lighted garden into the banks of shrubbery and further dim tree shapes.

"I hold zis place," he said simply, bulking big and broad. "I am here. None of my people will harm us now, whatever zey may haf done, whatever you may mean. And zen--?"

Without a word Nivin stepped into the circle about the palm, stepped up to the crouching, sinister captive, flung an arm about him and seemed to wrestle. A knife wrought swiftly in his hand with little flashes.

"_N-n-not--not--not monkeys!_" burst a broken voice, sobbing with eagerness to top the phrase.

And in the fantastic glow of paper lanterns stood Alfred Poynter Tunstal, surely the strangest figure to which a dapper and sophisticated seeker after truth was ever reduced, with a face blackened and unrecognizable like a hideous caricature and slashed across by the raw wound of his recent gag, clad, head to heel, in the plastered red hide of a monstrous orang-utan, the true jungle man!

So he stood to give testimony and make atonement for various things.

"Not monkeys!" he gasped hysterically. "_I_ thought so--_I_ thought they were--and they made a monkey out of me!"

He swayed and straightened in Nivin's grip.

"I killed their ape. I put the touch of dishonor on a brown skin. And they served me proper for it--proper. But I've got the proof you want....

"All day I've been sitting there, under that tree. The man--the man who bought those cinnabar girls--he came to talk business.

"It's true. He gets those girls in starving villages. They engage for service; that's all. They don't know--don't understand--till too late.... Three of them now in that house back there waiting shipment! Blind victims--an incidental side line to Lol Raman!"

"Who?" thundered De Haan!

A long, hairy arm shot out accusing.

"That greasy little cur over there. Van Goor, the agent. _Stop him!_"

The controller stopped him. "Zis," he observed, "zis is mos' op-propriate!"...

* * * * *

And Alfred Poynter Tunstal, recovering as he went, continued his journey eastward as soon and as fast as ever he could make it until East became West again. He brought home few records of his travels, and, curiously, he had not collected a single globe-trotting tale of wickedness and mystery. But one result of his voyaging was marked. He carried a scar--acquired in some slight accident--which ran from each corner of his mouth in a thin line and which transformed his original cheerful chubbiness into an expression quite grim and taciturn. He had lost his cherubic smile.

JETSAM

It is likely that at some time in his extreme youth Junius Peabody was introduced to those single-minded creatures, the ant and the bee. Doubtless he was instructed in the highly moral lessons they are supposed to illustrate to the inquiring mind of childhood. But it is certain he never profited by the acquaintance--indeed, the contemplation of such tenacious industry must have afflicted his infant consciousness with utter repugnance. By the time he was twenty-seven the only living thing that could be said to have served him as a model was the jellyfish.

Now the jellyfish pursues a most amiable theory of life, being harmless, humorous, and decorative. It derives much enjoyment from drifting along through the glitter and froth, as chance may direct. It does no work to speak of. It never needs to get anywhere. And it never, never has to go thirsty. But some day it may get itself stranded, and then the poor jellyfish becomes an object quite worthless and fit only to be shoveled out of sight as soon as possible--because it lacks the use of its legs.

Thus it was with Junius Peabody, who awoke one morning of his twenty-eighth year on the roaring coral beach at Fufuti below Bendemeer's place to find that all the chances had run out and that the glitter had faded finally from a prospect as drab as the dawn spread over a butternut sea before him....

Mr. Peabody sat up and looked about from under a corrugated brow and yawned and shivered. His nerves had been reduced to shreds, and even the fiercest heat of tropic suns seemed never to warm him, a symptom familiar enough to brandy drunkards. But he had had such awakenings before, many of them, and the chill that struck through him on this particular morning was worse than any hang-over. It was the soul of Junius Peabody that felt cold and sick, and when he fumbled through his pockets--the subtle relation between the pockets and the soul is a point sadly neglected by our best little psychologists--he uncovered a very definite reason. His last penny was gone.

Under the shock of conviction Mr. Peabody sought to cast up the mental log, in the hope of determining where he was and how he came to be there.

The entries were badly blurred, but he could trace himself down through Port Said, Colombo, Singapore--his recollections here were limited to a woman's face in a balcony and the cloying aroma of anisette. He remembered a stop at Sydney, where he made the remarkable discovery that the Circular Quay was completely circular and could be circumnavigated in a night. After that he had a sketchy impression of the Shanghai race meeting and a mad sort of trip in a private yacht full of Australian sheep-something--kings, perhaps; tremendous fellows, anyway, of amazing capacity. And then Manila, of course, the place where he hired an ocean-going tug to urge a broken date on the coy ingénue of a traveling Spanish opera company. And then Macao, where he found and lost her again, as coy as ever, together with his wallet. And after that the hectic session when he and a Norwegian schooner captain hit the bank at fan-tan and swore eternal friendship amid the champagne baskets on the schooner's decks under a complicated moon. It was this same captain who had landed him finally--the baskets having been emptied--at the point of a boot on the strand where now he sat. So much was still quite clear and recent, within range of days.

Always through the maze of these memoirs ran one consistent and tragic motive--a dwindling letter of credit, the fag end of his considerable patrimony. It had expired painlessly at last, the night before if he could trust his head, for there had been a noble wake. He recalled the inscrutable face of the tall white man behind the bar who had cashed it for him after a rate of exchange of his own grim devising. And he recalled, too, a waif bit of their conversation as he signed the ultimate coupon.

"You can date it Fufuti," suggested Bendemeer, and spelled the name for him.

"And where--where the devil is Fufuti?" he asked.

"Three thousand miles from the next pub," said Bendemeer, with excessively dry significance.

The phrase came back to him now....

"In that case," decided Junius Peabody, aloud, "--in that case there's no use trying to borrow car fare, and it's too far to walk. I'm stuck."

Some one sniffed beside him, and he turned to stare into a face that might have been a distortion of his own yellow, haggard image.

"Hello," he said--and then, by natural sequence: "say, you don't happen to have a flask anywhere handy about you--what?"

His neighbor scowled aggrievedly.

"Do I _look_ like I 'ad a flask?"

The belligerent whine was enough to renew the identity of the mangy little larrikin whose couch on the sand he had shared. The Sydney Duck, they called him: a descriptive title which served as well as any. Junius did not like him very well, but he had lived in his company nearly a week and he had long forgotten to make effective distinctions. Brandy is a great democrat.

"It's my notion I'm going to have the fantods," explained Junius. "I need a bracer."

"My word, I could do with a nip meself just now," agreed Sydney. "'In't y' got no more credit with Bendemeer?"

Peabody made an effort.

"Seems to me I was thrown out of Bendemeer's last night. Is that right?"

"You was, and so was me and that big Dutchman, Willems--all thrown out. But it was your fault. You started playin' chuck farthin' among his bottles with a bunch of copper spikes.... I never see a man 'old his liquor worse."

"Well, I paid for it, didn't I?" inquired Junius, without heat. "And I believe you had your share. But what I'm getting at is--if he threw me out the credit must be gone."

This was simple logic and unanswerable. "Maybe y' got something else he'll tyke for th' price," suggested Sydney. "Damn 'im--'e's keen enough to drive a tryde!"

* * * * *

Junius went through the form of searching, but without any great enthusiasm, nor was Sydney himself notably expectant--a fact that might have seemed to argue a rather sinister familiarity with the probable result.

"I did have some cuff links and things," said Peabody vaguely. "I wonder what's become of them."

"I wonder," echoed Sydney. As if some last possible claim upon his regard had been dissipated, he let his lips writhe in mockery. "Ah, and that's a pity too. You got to learn now what it means bein' on the beach and doin' _without_ drinks--'cept as you kin cadge them off'n 'alf-caste Chinymen and such. You won't like it, you won't."

"Do you?" asked Junius.

"Me? I'm used to it. But, Lord, look at them 'ands! I'll lay you never did a day's work in your life."

"Did you?" inquired Junius Peabody equably.

"Garn!" retorted Sydney with a peculiarly unlovely sneer. "W'y, you don't know yet what you've come to, you don't. 'Jaimes, fetch me me mornin' drawft!'--that's your style. Only there 'int no Jaimes no more, and no drawfts to be 'ad. Ho!... You're only a beachcomber now, mytey. A lousy beachcomber! And you needn't expect me to do none of your beggin' for you, for I won't--no fear!"

Junius observed him with attention, with rather more attention than he could remember having bestowed upon any specific object for a long time. He examined the features of the Sydney Duck, the undue prominence of nose and upper lip, the singularly sharp ridge of the whole front face--whittled, as it might have been; the thin, pink ears and the jutting teeth that gave him something of the feeble ferocity of a rat. And with new perception he saw Sydney Duck, not only as an unpleasant individual but as a type, the fitting comrade and associate for such as he.

"It's a fact," said Junius Peabody; "I've fallen, pretty low."...

* * * * *

He looked out again upon that unprofitable dawning. To right and left stretched the flat, dim monotony of the beach, lined in misty surf and hedged with slim palms like a tufted palisade. From behind drifted the smokes from scores of homely hearths. Down by Tenbow Head the first pearling luggers were putting out under silver clouds of sail. Sea and land stirred once more with the accustomed affairs of busy men, but here between land and sea was the fringe of things, the deserted domain of wreckage and cast-off remnants. Here lay a broken spar half buried in the sand, part of the complex fabric that once enabled some fair ship to skim the waves. And here among the kelp and the bodies of marine animals he saw the loosened staves of a barrel limply spread and upthrust like the fingers of some dead giant, with an empty bottle near by as if fallen from that slack grip. And here, lastly, he was aware of Junius Peabody, also on the beach, washed up at the far edge of the world like any other useless bit of jetsam: to stay and to rot.

"Pretty low," said Junius Peabody.

But Sydney took no offense, and seemed, on the contrary, to extract a certain degree of pleasure from the other's recognition of his lot.

"Oh, it 'in't so bad," he declared, with a quite human impulse to reverse the picture. "There's easy pickin' if you know 'ow. Nobody starves 'ere anyw'y, that's one thing. No nigger will let a man starve--a soft lot of flats that w'y, the niggers. Often you fall in with a weddin' or a birthday or somethin'; they're always 'avin' a feast and _they_ don't care who comes--they 'in't proud. Then you got nobody aharryin' of you up and down and askin' you wot for, that's a comfort--my word! And once in a while there's sure to be a new chum come along with a bit of brass--some flat who's willin' to stand the drinks."

"Like me," suggested Junius.

"Oh, there's plenty like you," nodded the Sydney Duck. "It's the pearlin' brings 'em, though it 'in't so soft as maybe they think, you see. When they're stony they mostly tyke a job till they find a chance to get aw'y again--that's if they're able to do anything at all."

For the first time in his life, probably, Junius Peabody considered his accomplishments with a view to estimating their value in the open market.

"I once won the fancy diving event at Travers Island," he said. "And I used to swim the four-forty in a trifle over six minutes."

"That must 'a' been several seasons back," grinned Sydney.

"Not so many," said Junius slowly. "I forgot to add that I was also an excellent judge of French brandy."

He got to his feet and began to divest himself of the spotted remains of an expensive white silk suit.

"What's the gyme now?"

"Morning bath. Have you had yours yet?"

The Sydney Duck laughed, laughter that was strangely unmirthful and so convulsive that Junius blinked at him, fearing a fit of some kind.

"You're a rare 'un," gasped the Sydney Duck. "I seen a good few, I 'ave, but none as rare as you. Mornin' bawth--and 'ave I 'ad mine yet!... On the beach at Fufuti!" He waggled his hands.

"Well, if it seems so queer as all that why not blow yourself?" offered Junius with perfect good nature. "You can't tell, you might like it. Come along."

"Garn!" snarled the other.

So Junius turned away and walked down the strand alone. Outward the ground swell broke and came rushing in with long-spaced undulations, and as he stood at the verge, shrinking in his nakedness, the east flamed suddenly through its great red archway and turned all the world to tinted glory. Fair across to him was flung a shining path. It seemed as if he had only to step out along that straight way of escape, and for an instant he had a yearning to try. Never in his life had he followed a single course to a definite end, and what could be better now than to choose one at last, to follow, to go on following--and not to return.

* * * * *

He looked down at his body and saw as a revelation the pitiful wasting of his strength--how scrawny he was of limb, how bloated about the middle, and his skin how soft and leprous white. He made an ugly figure under the clear light of the morning, like the decaying things around him, where the carrion flies were beginning to swarm in the sun. And there came upon him then a sudden physical loathing of himself, a final sense of disaster and defeat.

"If I could only begin again--" thought Junius Peabody, and stopped and laughed aloud at the wish, which is old as folly and futile as sin. But he had no relief from laughter either, for it was the same he had just heard from the Sydney Duck, a sort of hiccup. So he stopped that too and strode forthright into the wash....

Something flung against his shin and tripped him. He sprawled awkwardly from a singular impact, soft though quite solid. He could see the object floating on the next wave and was curious enough to catch it up. It was a rough lump of some substance, a dirty grayish-brown in color, the size of a boy's football. The touch of it was rather greasy.

Junius stayed with the trove in his hands and the tingling of an odd excitement in his mind. His first instinct rejected the evidence. He had a natural suspicion that events do not happen so. But while he brought to bear such knowledge as he owned, facts read or heard, he found himself still thrilled.

There was a sound from the shore and the Sydney Duck hurried up behind him to the edge of the water, both hands clawed, his little eyes distended.

"You've got it!" He took two steps after a retreating wave, but the next drove him hopping. It was strange to see the fellow drawn by a frantic eagerness and chased again by the merest flicker of foam, lifting his feet as gingerly as a cat.

"What have I got?" asked Junius, standing at mid-thigh where the surf creamed in between them.

"It's the stuff! Chuck it over--wha-i-i!" Sydney's voice rose to a squeal as a frothing ripple caught his toes.

Junius came wading shoreward, but he did not relinquish the lump when the other felt and paddled it feverishly, babbling.

"Look at that--look at that! All smooth an' soft--an' kind of slimy, like. Oh, no, we 'in't struck it fair rich this time, nor nothin'--oh, _now_!... Mytey, I tell you--by Gaw', I tell you it's the real stuff!"

"But oughtn't there be an odor--a perfume?"

"Not yet--not while it's fresh. That comes after. And any'ow, what else could it be--'ey?"

Junius shook his head.

"'Ere, I'll show you, you poor flat!" The larrikin raged about like a man in a strong temper. "Where's a nail? Gimme a nail, a long nail, or a piece of wire--'ell, I'll show you!"

He snatched up a strip of planking from the sand and wrenched a rusty spike from it. With swift jerky gestures he gathered a few dry chips and splinters, whipped a match, and set them alight. In this brief blaze he heated the spike and then applied it to the lump. It sank smoothly, leaving a little melted ring around the hole.

"Ambergris!" he yelped. "Worth near two pound an ounce, right 'ere in Fufuti.... And the 'arf of it's mine," he added, with a startling shift to the most brazen impudence.

Junius regarded him, incredulous.

"What? That's wot! Wasn't I here? 'In't I been pallin' along of you? It's a fair divvy. W'y, damn your soul," he screamed in a sudden febrile blast of fury, "you don't think you're goin' to 'og my 'arf an' all!"

"_Your_ half!" repeated Junius. "Huh--nothing small about you, is there? Why, you weren't anywhere near when I found it. Didn't you pass up the swim?"