Quaffing a couple of glasses of raw absinthe, I filled a flask, pulled on a pair of riding-boots and a raincoat, and pushed out onto the veranda. The wind had not increased greatly in force, but the lightning and thunder were flashing and crashing almost simultaneously overhead, and the first big drops of rain were beginning to spatter. The moon was hidden behind a dense pall of black cloud, so that it was by the incessant flicker of the lightning that I sized up the three saddle-horses tied at the side of the driveway and picked the rangy waler of the Chief as the likeliest rough-weather beast. I had no compunction to taking him, as the bunch would be breaking away anyhow as soon as the sagging bottom of the cloud overhead dropped its contents on them. I preferred not to have my own saddle-horse left standing in the town if it could be avoided. There would be enough tell-tale posts on the course I was going to try to negotiate without deliberately planting another one.
The cane fields in the valley were glistening with the opening volleys of the rain as I spurred across the clearing, stabbing the night with silver gleams in the lightning flashes as the bayonets of massed troops throw off the rays of the sun. The wind was behind me as far as the main road; then side-on, but broken by the wall of the thick-growing trees. I put the waler at top speed, anxious to cover all the distance possible while the footing was good. I was halfway to town before the storm let go in real earnest, and from then on it was about as much of a swim as a ride, especially after the hillsides began to spill off on the lower levels. My mount was a sensible beast, evidently no stranger to tropical cloudbursts. He took the initiative readily when I ceased to urge him, and kept plugging right on through the storm at a good steady business-like jog. Nothing but my good fortune in getting a jump on the rain prevented my going out in this first lap of my race, as all of the four bridges I had to cross must have washed away within a very few minutes from the time I put them behind me. Indeed, one of the two horses I had left in the driveway, after both had broken away as I had anticipated, was drowned in trying to flounder through an open crossing.
The worst of the terrific downpour was over as I rode into the town, but the wind—as was to be expected—was blowing with increased force. Everyone had been driven indoors by the rain, so that it was in an empty street I dismounted and left my horse, knowing that he would be pawing at his own stable door within a very few minutes. The rest of the way to the landing I covered on foot. As I had feared, the creek was empty of launches. I would have to see what could be done at the Burns, Phillip offices, which, busy with manifests and other odds and ends of business incident to an imminent steamer sailing, were still lighted up. It was an alternative I was very reluctant to resort to, as I had been hoping that my visit to Captain Tancred might be managed on the quiet. Just as I turned to go a red light, bobbing past the outer end of the jetty, caught the tail of my eye, and, on the off chance that it might be a craft I could hire, I held on at the steps. Smartly handled in the nasty cross-lop, a small but powerful steam launch bumped in alongside the landing stage.
"Can I get you to take me off to the Mambare?" I demanded of the uniformed youth who came bounding up the steps.
"Glad to do it, sir. This is her launch," was the cheery reply. "Just in for clearance papers. Be back in a jiffy. Climb aboard and make yourself comfy in the cabin." Then, as an apparent afterthought: "You're sailing with us, aren't you? Can't take off visitors at this hour. No way to get back. Getting under way at midnight." He had so little doubt that I was a belated passenger, perhaps delayed by the rain, that my nod was quite sufficient to reassure him. Five minutes later we were shoving off for the run back to the line of lights where the Mambare tugged at her moorings.
The sea was white with foam outside the jetties, but with waves and wind almost dead astern the sturdy little launch made very comfortable weather of it. It was by no means as bad as it had been coming in, said the young officer, who turned out to be a freight clerk. As the gangway was already raised and the launch had to come in anyway, we remained aboard her and were hoisted right up and swung in to the chocks on the Mambare's boat-deck. My companion hurried at once to his office to go over his pouch of papers, while I, locating it without asking anyone for directions, went forward to the Captain's cabin under the bridge.
The faint shadow of constraint on Captain Tancred's face as I entered disappeared the instant his ready mind divined I had come to him for help. "So they're after ye at last, lad," he said, sympathy and satisfaction queerly blended in his deep voice. "Weel, noo, tell me a' aboot it. I ken we'll be findin' a way oot for ye."
I told him all that he needed to know as quickly as possible, making a point, however, of omitting to state that the man I wanted him to smuggle away to the Islands had confessed to committing the outrage upon Hartley Allen. "Slant" was an old friend of "Choppy's," and I felt sure that the latter, far from being a witting party to helping the man who had attacked him escape from justice, would undoubtedly lend every aid to placing him where he would receive his just deserts. Luckily, the quixotic old Scot was not a man to ask searching questions. He was plainly disappointed that it was not I who was fleeing the law, but there was ready consolation in the fact that a friend of mine, in very sore straits, might be saved from being torn to pieces by a pack of bloodhounds if he was picked up at a certain point on the north coast before morning.
We located the cove of the old sugar mill on the chart without difficulty, and in his bulky volume of "Sailing Directions" found the comforting assurance that it afforded especially good shelter in a northerly blow. There was no surf, it was stated, and the shore was almost steep-to. This was all in our favour. He was sailing at midnight, the Captain said. The hurricane was central over the New Hebrides, so it was only the tail of it flirting across the Great Barrier—nothing he would dream of sticking in harbour for. Doubtless he would be able to find an excuse to heave-to off the cove, while I piloted the launch in to get our man. Then, if I didn't care to return and take a pleasure voyage with him to Insulinde and the Straits, I could drop off and make the best of my way home.
The Captain had just finished telling me how he had made a point of bringing his old launch crew with him from the Utupua—"the lads I use for speshul wark, ye ken"—when the freight clerk who had brought me off entered the cabin with a number of papers and letters. On the top of the pile was a red envelope marked "Rush." "Choppy" tore the letter open at once. The up-flop of his grizzled side-burns at the sudden flexing of the jaw muscles at their roots gave me warning of the coming jolt.
"We'll nae be gettin' under wa' the nicht, Ryerson," he said quietly to the freight clerk. "Will ye be sae guid as to bid the Chief an' the Mate to step this wa'. Mair carga the morrow," he added by way of explanation. To the Chief Engineer, when he came, the Captain merely countermanded an order for steam on the capstan at seven bells, and warned him to keep the pressure in the boilers high for fear the steamer might part a mooring cable if the wind increased. The Mate he ordered to be ready to handle a consignment of silver bullion and ingot copper that would come in a tug from the Moresby as soon as she arrived from the south in the morning. He also told him to have the crew of the steam launch called away at once, so as to put "yon gentleman" ashore as quickly as possible. If the Mate was lively about it, "Choppy" suggested, he might find that the fires of the launch had not yet been drawn from her trip to the landing. If so, that would save time in getting up steam.
Not until all of this was ordered did he turn to me with: "The de'il's ain luck, lad. Nae gettin' awa' afore eight bells, noon, the morrow. Shipment frae Broken Hill catchin' up wi' us in the Moresby."
"That means that the game's up and you're sending me back because there's no hope of doing anything?" I asked in dismay.
"Nae, nae, lad," he soothed. "No' so fast. Just a wee bit o' a shift o' program, that's a'. True I'm sendin' ye ashore in the launch, but when she comes back I'm hopin' tae find oor mon in yer place. Do ye ken noo wha' I'm drivin' at?"
"Do you mean to send the launch all the way round from here?" I demanded in astonishment; "and then to keep him aboard here in the harbour for ten or twelve hours before you sail? Isn't that asking for trouble both ways? Even if the launch stands up against the gale outside, aren't you done for if they come off from town and make a search of the steamer?"
Old "Choppy's" blue eyes twinkled merrily at the latter suggestion. The police never did seem to have any luck in searching his ships, he laughed. As for the launch—it was new, its engine was unusually powerful, and it would have "Pisco" at the wheel. "Pisco," he explained, was a Chilean who had been with him for years, and had never been known to fail at a pinch. He thought that combination ought to win out. I didn't mind a bit of slap-banging off the point, did I? That settled it. If he was willing to risk his own launch and his own career to save my friend, it was not for me to hang back. Fifteen minutes later we had been lowered over the side and were rounding under the Mambare's fine clipper bows into the teeth of the gusty norther. It had been agreed that I should pilot "Pisco" to the rendezvous and deliver my man into his care. "Choppy" undertook to do the rest.
What the hard-bit old sea-dog had characterized as a "bit o' slap-banging" off the point proved to be a frontal attack upon as ruffianly a bunch of headseas as it was ever my lot to face in anything smaller than a ninety-ton schooner. Stoutly built and over-engined as she was, the launch was quite equal to the task of driving her nose through the waves, but—not being built for submarine service—proved a dismal failure at getting rid of the solid green water that deluged her as a consequence. Knot by knot, cursing fluently in picturesque roto Spanish the while, "Pisco" rang down the engine, until finally the pugnacious little craft ceased tunnelling the bases of the seas and contented herself with boring neat round holes in their curling crests. By this method she shipped no more water than her scuppers could put back where it came from. The only fear now was that enough spray might splash down her squat funnel to quench the fires, and to minimize the chances of this, the resourceful "Pisco" made the lookout stand so that his broad chest would receive and deflect the heaviest rushes of the threatening flood. Fortunately, the distance to be run head-on to the seas was comparatively short. Once round the point the alteration of course brought the wind and the waves on the starboard beam, and though she now just about rolled her side-lights under, it was fairly quiet going compared to the buffeting outside.
I gave "Pisco" his course for the first leg in by the lights of the big sugar central, and then, as we opened up the inner bay, gave him a bearing on the notch—barely guessable against the overcast west—where the old cartroad grade pierced the brow of the cliff. The clouds were racing overhead and the baffling cross-gusts on the surface would have made it bad business for a sailing craft. But for a launch the task was a comparatively simple one. The loom of the old mill was discernible against the darker opacity of the cliff at a couple of hundred yards, and the right-angling lines of the pier at half that distance. As the latter was sure to have been built of the eternally-lasting jarra, I knew that it would be as solid and serviceable as the day it was abandoned.
I had not thought it best to risk dampening Captain Tancred's enthusiasm by confessing that I thought it was a good ten-to-one against my man's turning up at the rendezvous. Indeed, I could see no grounds whatever for hoping that Ranga had shaken the pursuit—already at his heels—and won through to the appointed place. Nothing short of a miracle could have compassed it, I told myself. It was on the off chance that the miracle had been wrought that I was keeping my promise.
"'Bout half a point to sta'boa'd, Tuan. Way nuf now! Steady!" That deep rumbling voice from the darkness was a welcome surprise. "Pisco," heeding the quiet directions, brought his launch alongside the broad solid flight of steps as neatly as he would have laid her up to the Mambare's gangway in broad daylight.
Ranga was coming down the steps—with a slowness which I attributed to the fact that they were probably very slippery—when I heard a thud on the deck behind me, such a sound as a heavy, soft bundle thrown down from above might have made in striking. A second or two later there was an ejaculation of astonishment somewhere aft, probably from "Pisco," I thought, as the words were Spanish. I did not try to puzzle out the purport of them at the moment, as my attention was occupied with Ranga, who seemed to be hesitating at the last moment about coming aboard. Twice or thrice he drew back his foot from the rail, as though uncertain of his balance. And when the great bulk of him finally did surge forward, it was with a lurch that took all my strength to check it and prevent his reeling on across the narrow bow and over the other side. He steadied himself slowly, with a great intake of breath. "Sorry—make trouble,—Tuan. Now—I go aft."
"I am leaving you here, Ranga," I said quickly, for I was getting nervous about a movement of lights I had observed along the flume in the rear of the big sugar mill. "Captain Tancred will look after you on the steamer, and put you off wherever you want to go. He also has some money for you. Good luck!"
The big fellow took a long shuddering breath, and when he spoke it was as though he had rallied himself from a spell of faintness by sheer force of will. "Some day, Tuan—I pay you back—for all you do. So long." He turned with painful deliberation and started to edge along aft. I was a bit surprised that he had not grasped my extended hand, but could not be sure that he had been aware of it in the dark. It did not occur to me until afterwards that he had not used his own hands on the rail of the stairway in descending, and that he had seemed to shoulder his way back to the cockpit rather than to grope. I waited until his swaying shoulders ceased to blot the blinking of the phosphorescent seas astern, and then swung off to the stairs.
"All clear!" I called softly to "Pisco," as I felt the solid step underfoot. "Shove off when you're ready. Buena fortuna!"
It was doubtless "Pisco's" ejaculation in Spanish a few moments before, lurking in the back of my mind, that prompted me to speed the spirited coxswain in his own tongue. On the heels of that "Buena fortuna!" the words he had spoken flashed up in my memory. "Cristo! Porqué la muchacha?" It could hardly have been a sarcastic dig at Ranga's hesitancy in stepping aboard, I reflected as I mounted the slippery—astonishingly slippery—steps. He would not have expressed it quite that way in that case. A sudden slip in a slimy patch at the head of the steps put an end to conjecture for the moment, and when I regained my feet the answer was written across the cabin doorway of the turning launch. The lamp inside had—purposely—been turned very low, and the blurred silhouette of the figure that came groping out to where Ranga had collapsed on a cockpit transom might easily have been that of any one of old "Choppy's" true and tried launch crew. But wet amber silk reflects a deal of light, and there was only one peacock shawl in the world—or in that neck of the world at least.
CHAPTER XVII
DOWN THE FLUME
The lights had disappeared from the flume as I turned to go, and, rather than take the chance of another fall, I decided to use my small electric torch in finding a solid footing. The lacquered crimson reflection of the fluttering disc of light instantly revealed the cause of the slipperiness I had encountered. The whole end of the pier was criss-crossed with thick trails of blood, with great spreading pools here and there where, whoever shed it, had stood or sat. The blood on my hands and raincoat, where they had come in contact with Ranga's reeling frame, proved beyond a doubt that he was badly hurt. That explained his unsteadiness on his feet, and also the fact that he had avoided shaking hands with me. Very likely, indeed, his hands were unfit to use. Tired to the verge of exhaustion though I was, my blood leaped at the thought of the battle royal the splendid fellow must have fought—and won. I was expecting to come upon traces of the fight at any moment as I picked my way in past the ruined mill to the foot of the old grade leading to the top of the cliff.
As I left the planking of the pier behind two sets of footprints appeared in the wet, firm earth of the path at the side of the road. Both were made by bare feet, but the larger ones—plainly Ranga's—were broken and irregular, and saturated with blood. There could be no doubt that his feet, like his hands, were frightfully torn. The small prints pressed very close to the side of the large, indicating that Rona was either supporting the wounded giant or being supported by him. From the fact that the smaller impressions were deeply indented, I figured that the former was the case—that she was helping him. The girl, evidently, was not badly hurt—perhaps not at all.
Where the path I was following joined the bridle-road at the brink of the cliff, the trail of blood turned off down the foot of the flume toward the big sugar mill. The battle royal must have been fought somewhere in the depths of the dense tropical growth that filled the rocky fissure in the cliff followed by the flume. What grim secret the black hole held would have to wait for the coming day to reveal. My way home led in the opposite direction, and there was some question in my mind as to whether or not I had the strength for the full course.
Fortunately for me the flume had been built along ridges and high ground, so that the trail following it had not been exposed to heavy flooding in the torrential rains of the early evening. I found it hard and firm underfoot for the most part, and by no means hard to follow without resorting to my electric torch. It would have been very easy going had I not been so nearly all in, but even as it was, by using my absinthe sparingly as I had done while painting, I managed to keep plugging steadily on toward home.
At one time something very near a panic seized me for a while, when the thought flashed through my mind that the great quantity of Ranga's blood soaked up by my boots and my clothes would undoubtedly leave a trail that Rawdon's hounds, should they chance to nose into it, would be quite justified in mistaking for that of the Malay himself. Even if I succeeded in holding the beasts off with my revolver, my presence there, and in such a state, would call for a lot of explaining. If the Chief once became suspicious, I told myself, it would undoubtedly upset my plans to get Ranga away, to say nothing of involving both myself and Captain Tancred in a serious scrape. I was in a miserable state of funk until the cheering thought entered my head that Ranga had probably killed not only the dogs, but probably Rawdon and the Chief as well. That reflection reassured me immensely, and, buoyed in mind and body, I trudged on confidently to the foot of the waterfall.
I had noticed from time to time along the way that the flume, in its less inclined stretches, was overflowing its sides. The reason for this became evident when I reached the intake, at the side of the pool under the falls, where I discovered that the gate, usually only partly raised, was wide open. A flow of more than double the normal was rushing out of the rain-swollen stream and into the flume.
I was too tired to speculate upon how this might have happened. It was touch-and-go with my tottering knees all the way up the steep, slippery path to the top of the cliff; but, with three or four breathing spells and the last of my absinthe, I managed it, and came out at last upon the greensward rimming the bathing-pool under my bedroom window. It was comparatively quiet here, now that the roar of the falls was deadened by distance, which was doubtless the reason that I heard for the first time a racket from the other side of the plantation that must have been going on right along. It was rather a lucky thing that I did hear that noise before I turned in. Had I not done so, it is hardly likely that it would have occurred to me that it might be a wise precaution to remove my boots before entering the house, and then to strip off and burn carefully in the kitchen range everything that I had been wearing. It was all I could do to keep awake until the irksome job was over, but, since it was evident from the ki-yi-ing and cursing that was floating down the wind that Ranga had not made a clean sweep of Rawdon and his pack, I reckoned that it well might be the means of preventing unpleasant complications.
My arduous climb up from the old sugar mill had served a useful purpose in one respect. The hard physical exercise had sweated the poison of the absinthe out of my system and relaxed the near-to-breaking tension my nerves had been under for thirty-six hours. I fell into a good normal hard-workingman's sleep the moment the mosquito-net closed behind me. And the best of it was that, when a pandemonium outside awakened me a little after sun-up, I tumbled out upon my feet in full possession of all my faculties. This was a mighty fortunate circumstance, for the rather delicate situation with which I was confronted called for something better on my shoulders than the usual "absinthe-holdover" head.
Harpool and Rawdon, it appeared, had experienced a beastly night. Losing a hot scent that had been picked up at the foot of the waterfall immediately after leaving the bungalow, they had been forced to take refuge in one of the labour villages during the deluge. Dragged out by the bloodthirsty Rawdon before the rain had ceased to fall, they had spent the night "working" the fringes of the bush in the hope of stumbling upon the trail of the elusive fugitive. The net result of this was the drowning of two more hounds and the driving of the baffled bushranger to the verge of distraction. Returning, dead beat, in the early dawn, they had encountered, at the intake of the flume, a scent so strong that even the paprika-dosed noses of Suey's victims followed it readily. Swarming up the cliff in full cry, the hunt came on to whirl in a mad war dance round the bungalow and put a period to my morning slumbers.
The maniacal Rawdon was the worst difficulty, and I honestly believe that only the Chief's restraining presence saved me from the necessity of winging him with a revolver bullet to prevent his setting fire to the bungalow. That "bloody wombat" had dodged him once from that shack and he wasn't going to take chances on its happening again. The Chief and I finally induced him to leave his "ring of death" intact round the bungalow and come in and search for himself. That gave me a chance for a quiet word with Harpool, whom I did not want to have push on to town for fear he would start a search that might extend to the Mambare. Indeed, he admitted he was afraid that his man might have doubled back to Townsville and got off to the Singapore boat, which had doubtless sailed at midnight. He had lost a badly-wanted counterfeiter a fortnight ago that way. The skippers never seemed very keen to co-operate in a search of their ships. Too many little smuggling games of their own probably.
I suggested to Harpool that he have a bath, a change of clothes—my togs were about his size—and a snack of early breakfast. Afterwards—since his horse was gone—I would drive him down in my trap. In the meantime he could ring up the Police Station and give any orders he thought desirable by 'phone. (This latter suggestion I made in full knowledge of the fact that the line must be down for over a mile. I had seen myself where uprooted trees were responsible for wide hiatuses.) If it was in any way possible without arousing his suspicions, it was my intention to detain Harpool until I was sure the Mambare had sailed.
The Chief fell in with my suggestion readily, and felt so much bucked up after a bath and a couple of whiskies-and-soda that he did not appear seriously upset when the telephone turned an irresponsive ear to him. Like the straightforward gentleman he was, he accepted at once my assurance that Ranga had not entered the house again, and took no hand in Rawdon's wild scrimmages, which carried him from cellar to garret with no other result than the brushing of a bit more of the bloom off "Honeymoon Bungalow" with the soles of his hobnailed boots. Madder than ever after his vain search, he surlily refused my invitation to remain for a cup of the coffee that his Chink friend of the night before was already preparing in the kitchen, and slogged off down the road, followed by three draggled hounds and two cursing helpers. I was a good deal cheered by the thought that it was unlikely that any of them would be getting through to town, without swimming, for another twelve hours at least.
Before he left Rawdon turned over to the Chief the little piece of red rag he had been using to put the dogs on the scent with. It was at this time that Harpool told me of "Squid" Saunders' suggestion, and of the visit to the schooner in search of a clue. I did not tell him that I recognized the rag as one which Ranga had used to wrap his little Malay flute in, and that it had undoubtedly been left there the morning the big fellow helped carry Hartley Allen to the quarantine launch. It was interesting, however, to know that Ranga was absolutely guiltless of the outrage to which he had confessed. I thought I could just conceive how a well-guarded passion for the girl might have prompted that chivalrous attempt to shield her from suspicion; but why had Rona herself committed the ghastly crime?—and how? It was many months before I was to have an answer to those questions, and they came from the lips of the last person from whom I could have expected them.
Direct and straightforward as ever, Harpool was visibly impressed by my suggestion that Ranga had probably remained hidden near the fall until the pursuit had passed, and after returning to the bungalow and finding it dark, had retraced his steps and adopted the desperate expedient of trying to escape the dogs by riding down the flume. That reminded him that they had found the gate of the intake closed when they first reached it, and that it had occurred to him at the time that the fugitive might have done this so that he could walk down the bottom of the flume without risk of being carried away by the water. This would account for the patch of scent the hounds found at that point. The Chief said that he was for pushing along the path by the flume, but that Rawdon scouted his theory, insisting that their man had jumped back into the water and gone on wading downstream. The hound-master had carried his point, but, to be on the safe side, they had ratcheted up the gate to its full aperture and turned a stream down the flume heavy enough, he was afraid, almost to carry the sugar mill into the sea. And that reminded me (though, obviously, I could not speak of it) that I had not heard the roar of the mill's machinery when I paused at the brow of the cliff. There was no doubt it was hung up for some reason. Was it possible that Ranga had made his escape after coasting right down into the crushing gear? But of course not. He would never have been able to get away unpursued, even if he had survived.
I welcomed for two reasons Harpool's suggestion that we ride down the flume and investigate as soon as breakfast was over. It would keep him away from town until the Mambare had sailed for one thing, and, for another, it would give me a chance to fathom the mystery that lay at the end of that trail of blood leading down into the rift in the cliff. It seemed probable to me that both Rona and Ranga, after the former had overtaken him—probably at the foot of the fall—had started down the flume on foot. Whether there would be any indications of what had befallen when the water overtook them remained to be seen.
The gate was still wide open when we rode along beside the intake, but halfway down to the coast we met a man from the mill who said that he was going up to shut the flow off so that a break near the lower end could be repaired. The wires were down from the storm, he said, making it impossible to 'phone directions to the plantation office. The break was a bit of a mystery, he added. Flume opened right out. There were indications that some large animal—perhaps a bullock—had been carried down—probably washed in at the upper end while the stream was at flood. Funny part of it was, though, that there was no trace to be found of the bullock below the break. Must have been washed right on into the sea.
Harpool pushed on eagerly after hearing that significant piece of news, and we reached the head of the first steep pitch at the top of the cliff some minutes before the water had ceased to flow. As I did not care to have the Chief discover the trail of blood leading down to the sea for a while yet, I proposed that we tie our horses here and walk down the top of the flume on a narrow board that evidently had been placed there for the use of workmen when repairs were necessary. It proved ticklish going—both on account of the incline and the elevation,—but nothing to trouble seriously a man with a sure foot and a steady head. Harpool, who was up first, led the way, I following closely.
If the power of the flying bolt of water in the bottom of the flume had been impressive on the occasion of my first visit, it was a vast deal more so now, both on account of the greatly increased volume of flow and because of my certain knowledge that a human being—perhaps two of them—had gone down that chute, where I had been assured that a team of bullocks could not hold a man—and survived.
The foot-wide board on which we were walking was nailed to the left side of the flume. The top of the right side was a rough line of unplaned two-inch pine planks. Harpool had only taken a step or two when he brought up short with an exclamation of surprise and horror. "Look at that top board on the other side!" he shouted; "raw, red meat all the way from here right out of sight round the bend at the bottom!"
I looked, shuddered, shuffled my feet uncertainly, and brought my staring eyes back to the precarious footing. "Push on!" I implored quaveringly; "my head's beginning to swim as it is."
The roar of violently falling water came to my ears as we rounded the bend at the lower end of the steep incline, and just ahead was the break. The whole right or seaward side of the flume had opened out and the flood was pouring to the rocks below in a spreading forty-feet-high cataract. The ghastly smear along the top ran on unbroken, right out to the end of a loose plank, which was kicking spasmodically under the impulse of the released stream of water shooting under it. The Chief, pointing to a ragged fragment of bloody cuticle, wedged in a joint of the line of boards on which we were standing, delivered himself of what I believe was his only approximately correct diagnosis of any feature of the whole affair.
"The fact that piece of skin and toe-nail were torn off on this side of the flume directly opposite the bulge," he said, "would seem to indicate that the brake our man made of his right arm flung over the top plank of the other side must have finally brought him to a stop here. Then he must have doubled up crosswise of the flume, with his feet against the place where that skin is torn off and his back against the end of that plank that is sprung loose. When he straightened out that great rack of bone and muscle of his something had to give way, and it seems to have been the flume. Probably the force of the water, where his body deflected it against the side, was of some help; but it must have come jolly near to staving in his ribs where it drove into him at right angles."
"Perhaps it did," I said. "We can't tell till we find him." I was not anxious to hurry up the search by any means; but I felt that it would be better to move on to a place where I could grow dizzy without the risk of plunging forty feet onto a pile of broken rocks. The Chief, with ready consideration, hastened forward, and my faintness passed quickly when I felt the solid floor of the crushing level of the mill beneath my feet.
It appeared that they had knocked off early the previous evening for want of cane. At the time, the superintendent said, he thought the flume had been carried away by flood water. He had only evolved the bullock theory when he went out at daylight and found the blood and meat smeared along the planks. The bullock must have got wedged in finally, he thought, and the water had piled up behind it and sprung out the side. They had not found the carcass yet, but, as there was a very sharp slope down to an in-reaching neck of the cove, it was not impossible that the rush of water had rolled it right on into the sea. Neither Harpool nor myself thought it worth while to ask him if he had found any bullock's hair among the "meat."
Going down through the silent mill to reach a lower level before doubling back to the foot of the flume, a weird sort of sputtery peeping caught my ear while we were traversing the boiling-room. Something vaguely familiar in the sound caused me to trace it to its source behind one of the big vats. The virtuoso proved to be a lanky Australian sugar-boiler, whiling away the idle hour blowing across the holes in a queer little bamboo flute. One of the blacks had found it in the last run of the bagasse—the crushed cane—a while ago, he explained. Someone must have dropped it in the flume. Funny thing that it had been so slightly crushed in coming through the rollers. He gave it to me readily when I told him that I was a collector of primitive musical instruments. Said he had a much better one—made in Germany and all bound with brass—in his home in Maryborough. I took it on the off chance that I might some day be able to give it back to Ranga. I knew how greatly he was attached to it, and, since flutes like that were only made in one little pile-built village on the coast of Ambon, how hard a time he would have to replace it.
I played up the superintendent's "washed-into-the-sea" theory for the Chief's benefit as long as I could, but finally he circled round and hit the double trail of footprints that led down to the end of the old pier. The idea that Ranga had ridden the flume alone was so firmly rooted in his mind however, that he agreed at once with my suggestion that the smaller prints must have been made by an idle boy from the hung-up mill, who had perhaps trailed the blood on his own account, in the hope of getting the bullock meat. As I myself had made a point of keeping on the grass to the side of the path, my trail of the night was not discovered.
"The poor devil must have thrown himself over here and been finished by the sharks and 'gators," Harpool shouted up to me from where, at the foot of the steps of the old pier, he stood beside the black-filmed pool that had drained from Ranga's wounds as he steadied himself for a few moments before lurching over to the bow of the launch. The Chief also said something more about coming back with a boat next day and searching the beach for anything that might remain. I didn't follow him very closely, for, just at that moment, a trim clipper bow slid out past the end of the southern point. Knowing a certain old brass-cylindered spy-glass would be training landward from the bridge that followed, I opened and closed my arms swiftly in a surreptitious wave of farewell. Good old "Choppy" must have been standing very close to the whistle-cord, for his reply came instantly. The wind carried the toots that must have sprung from the heart of two woolly steam-puffs in the opposite direction, but I caught the message just the same. "All's well!" was what old "Choppy" signalled in answer to my wave. His "puff-puff" talk was a deal easier to understand than his English.
I was no longer in Australia when the Mambare returned from her maiden voyage to Singapore, so her skipper's report came to me in Paris by letter. He had put both of my friends ashore in Macassar, he said, safe, sound and comfortably heeled for "siller." He had become much attached to both of them in the course of the voyage, and couldn't thank me enough for putting him in the way of giving them a bit of a lift. He trusted I wouldn't fail to command him whenever another opportunity of the kind presented itself.
The night that I sent Rona and Ranga off from the pier of the old sugar mill in the Mambare's launch marked the beginning of one of the strangest and most picturesque friendships the Islands ever knew; picturesque in the striking background the strongest and most terribly-scarred man in the South Pacific made for the hauntingly appealing beauty of the most interesting woman, and strange—more than passing strange—in that there was none who could say that their relations were ever other than those of mistress and servant.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE MASTERPIECE
The third day after the Mambare sailed found me southbound for Sydney, with Paris as my ultimate objective. The thought that a striking—possibly a great—picture might be painted about the face I had already done came to me the first time I threw back the veiling rug and encountered poor Allen's terror-haunted eyes staring back into my own. In deciding to finish the work in Paris I missed whatever chance I might have had of doing something really worth while. That I did finally complete a picture that was striking, arresting—something to set the tongues of the art world wagging for many a day—was due to the effort I had already made—The Face.
With small chance of being able to do anything for Hartley Allen—at that time believed to be permanently insane,—there was no reason for my remaining longer in Townsville. As nothing that the good Chief of Police had learned—or ever did learn, so far as I know—was calculated to connect me with his failure to run Ranga to earth, he, naturally made no objection to my leaving. The whole affair was a complete mystery to him. The disappearance of Rona was rated only as a minor mystery. The amusing part of it was that it never occurred to the dear man to connect the two. The last thing that I fixed my glass upon as my southbound boat steamed out of the harbour was a confused mass of wreckage, blurring darkly against the mangroves a few miles north of the town. It was all that the late storm had left of the grounded labour schooner, Cora Andrews.
Missing the P. & O. boat by twenty-four hours at Melbourne—too late to overtake it by train to Adelaide,—I found the next sailing was a Messageries Maritime steamer. Rather than wait a week for the next Orient liner, I booked for the French boat. This was all against my better judgment, especially in the light of the fact that I had work ahead. The one most effective influence I had known in keeping my use of absinthe at a point where it was not entirely beyond my control was the scathing if unspoken contempt of men of my own race for another of that race addicted to the insidious Latin habit. The nearest thing to a clean break-away I had ever made up to this time came after a stony-faced Cockney steward on a transatlantic Cunarder, who had put my whisky-drunken cabin-mate to bed one night as a matter of course, slammed the door with a snort when he surprised me pouring absinthe into cracked ice the following afternoon. In France, in French colonies, on French steamers—wherever the tri-colour flapped, in short—that restraining contempt was non-existent. There one found palliation, indulgence, even encouragement. That was the reason I had always become so abject a slave of the "Green Lady" during my sojourns in Paris, in Algiers, in Saigon, in Noumea. With no one to remind me of my shame, I forgot it, sinking ever lower and lower the while. This time, it had been my plan so to occupy myself with work on my picture in Paris that I should be able to keep my absinthe appetite just about where I had managed to hold it during the last six months in Kai and Australia. It is quite possible I might have kept to this program had I caught the P. & O. from Melbourne, or had the sense to wait for another British boat. As it was, five weeks of dolce far niente were too much for me. By the time we reached Suez, I was seeing so green that the desert banks of the Canal looked like verdant lawns to me, and at Marseilles they took me straight from the ship to the hospital, pretty well all in mentally and physically. As my case presented some interesting complications of malaria and tropical anaemia, the doctors took a good deal of interest in it. Under the circumstances, I was dead lucky to get out of their hands at the end of a month.
Thoroughly disgusted with the world in general and myself in particular on the day I was discharged from the hospital, it was a toss-up for a few hours as to whether I should jump out for the Islands by the first boat, or push on to Paris. That I finally plumped for the latter was due more to the fact that there was no east-bound sailing for a couple of days, than to any faith that remained in my ability to get on with the picture. Considering all this, it seems to me that the effort I finally did pull myself together for was fairly creditable in its results.
It was The Face itself—after I had unpacked and set up the canvas in a studio that a former friend kindly placed at my disposal—that was responsible for finally jolting me into action. Even at the end of ten weeks, Hartley Allen's tortured features seemed as real to me as on the night I had finished transferring them from my burning brain to the canvas. It struck me then—as it seemed to strike the public later—as the nearest thing to flesh and blood ever flicked off the tip of an artist's brush; and I felt that I had only to daub in some kind of an ensemble around it to have a work that would at least give Parisian art circles something to talk about for a while.
It seemed to me that the most effective thing to do would be to make Allen, lashed to the schooner's wheel, the central and dominating figure on the canvas, and to have the other figures the creatures of his imagination—the phantoms conjured up by his reeling brain. These would include Bell, Rona, Ranga and a background of plague-stricken niggers. It was not to be—as we had planned the "Black-birder"—an attempt to portray some incident of the voyage. The "phantoms" were to be done in greys and blues, filmy and indistinct, to differentiate them from the solider flesh of the maniac tied to the wheel. It was not an uneffective conception, had I been up to carrying it out—which I wasn't.
By a remarkable coincidence, as I have already mentioned, The Face was in exactly the right place to fit into the ensemble I had planned. This was a good omen and I derived no little encouragement from it. Fearful of the effect that terror-stricken gaze might have upon my models, I stuck an opaque square of paper over the distorted features, with the intention of leaving it there until the rest of the picture was finished. This was a wise precaution, as the sequel proved.
The model whom I chanced to secure to pose for Allen's figure was an especially fortunate choice. He had recently finished spending six or eight hours a day lashed to a hollow canvas cross in connection with a mural decoration at some cathedral—Sacré Cœur, I believe it was,—so he stood up rather well under the strain being triced to the property steering-gear I had contrived to borrow from the Folies-Bergère, where the "marine" revue in which it had figured was just over. Considering the fact that I had never done anything but seascapes and was notably weak in anatomy, my work on this figure was far from being as bad as might have been expected. It was not seriously out of drawing, and, even with The Face covered up, one was conscious of an unmistakable suggestion of agony in the tensely-strained limbs and back-drawn torso. From the artistic side, I would undoubtedly have done better to have trimmed down my canvas and limited the picture to this single figure. This, however, never occurred to me until a long time afterwards. At the moment, my mind was quite incapable of running away from the track on which I had started it.
Although I knew that one of the things that must have been in Hartley Allen's mind was Bell's face, as he had described it to me—pain-twisted, with the lower lip bitten clean through, and a bar of light from the cracked binnacle slashing across it,—I could not bring myself to attempt to dramatize the sufferings of my friend. (Indeed, even at that time I had a guilty feeling that I was not doing the decent thing in using that of Allen in a picture to be exhibited to the public.) All that I did in Bell's case, therefore, was a back view of a huddled figure, sitting on the rail of the cockpit, with a half-empty whisky bottle rolling on the deck behind. It was not destined to draw much attention or comment one way or the other, for which I was duly thankful.
Ranga, as a consequence of being unable to find a model that would do him justice, I finally omitted. Rona came near to elimination for a similar reason, but in her case fortune, in the end, was more kind. It may be remembered that there was a so-called Hindu dancer leading the Oriental ballets at the Comique about this time. She was really an Eurasian half-caste—the daughter of a British "Tommy" and a Mahratta girl, born in Poona. With little of Rona's beauty of face and winsomeness of manner, she was still possessed of the same flaming temperament and a figure that might have been poured from the same mould. It was the lithe, sinewy, serpentine shape of her that caught my eye when I chanced to drop in at the Comique for a matinée of Marouf, and (as she was still a few strokes short of the crest of the wave of popularity on which she rode for the next season or two), I had little difficulty in persuading her to give me a few sittings. She insisted she was doing it for art's sake, but it was really vanity that brought her into line. Also, as transpired shortly, she had a very sharp weather eye for the main chance. In any event, the picture proved both her immediate making and her ultimate undoing. The advertising she got out of the fact that her living, breathing likeness had been painted into the most talked-about picture at the spring Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts doubled and trebled her salary several times in the course of the next year. But it was also a reproduction of that same picture in a Vienna art journal that was directly responsible for luring to Paris the young Serbian ex-prince who chopped the girl to pieces with a curved Arabian scimitar—a part of her dancing toggery—as she was dressing to go on at a gala night of Aïda.
It had been my original intention to paint Rona issuing from the companionway, just as Allen had seen her rush out on the morning Bell died. This, however, was far from meeting with the approval of Keeora (that was what she called herself at the time; it was only in her hey-day that she was known as Kismeta), who insisted upon breaking in full length or not at all. I was so sodden with absinthe by this time, so sick of the whole job, so anxious to get quit of it for good, that I raised no objections. The flighty thing proposed a sort of near-aerial posture on the deck-house that was something like a cross between the wing-footed Mercury and one of Puck's getaways in Midsummer Night's Dream. Rather than lose the girl outright, I let her have her own way. Steadied by two or three convenient guy-wires and puffing contentedly at one of my hemp-doped cigarettes, she held her painful pose with a fortitude truly Oriental. I can see yet the queer little heart-shaped pucker that dented the muscle-knotted calf of her leg when she swung up to the tips of her toes.
I fancy it must have been a certain appeal the audacious minx made to my physical senses that prodded on my flagging energies. Everything that was left in me I devoted to making her absurd conception effective on its own account. To make it so as an integral part of the picture was, of course, out of the question. It is still a matter of a good deal of wonder to me that I succeeded as well as I did. The pirouetting figure on the Cora's deck-house might just as well have symbolized Peter Pan, or The Spirit of Spring, as Rona Rampant; but the fact remained that it was exceedingly pleasing to the eye. In this connection I thought an American tourist—from somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line by his accent—expressed himself rather well. I overheard the remark on my first and only visit to the Salon. "If that little filly doan leave off kickin' up so neah them buck niggahs," he drawled, "things ah suah fixin' fo' a lynchin' pa'ty. By cracky, if she doan look good enuf to eat!"
It was "them big buck niggahs" that were responsible for bringing my labours to a sudden end. I had managed to round up a half-dozen hulking Senegambians from the docks at Havre to pose for my plague-stricken Solomon Islanders, and for the first two or three days things went very well. I was striving for a sort of Doré-esque effect, by painting a tangled bunch of blacks writhing in the half-light of the shadowed waist of the schooner. The lazy brutes found lolling round on the studio floor a deal more congenial work than humping cotton bales, and I was getting on very encouragingly considering my wretched condition, when one of the prying rascals, taking advantage of a moment when my back was turned, turned down a corner of the patch that hid the face of the man lashed to the wheel. What damage was wrought was inflicted on such flimsy furniture as chanced to be in a direct line of flight from the "models' throne" to the door. Fortunately, the canvas was well to one side. The Senegalese, it seems, have a raw, red terror of the "Evil Eye."
That little episode brought to an end my work with models. I simply blocked in my plague-stricken blacks in a rough sort of way and let it go at that. The effect was hardly as crude as one would think. The remark of the Southern gentleman I have quoted proved that a man not unfamiliar with niggers could at least distinguish of what the tangle in the waist was intended to be made up.
I have definite recollection of only one further occasion on which I tried to work. The interval in which I had anything approximating command of my normal faculties had dwindled to a half-hour or so in the afternoon, and I quickly found that I was utterly unable to concentrate my mind sufficiently for connected effort even then. On the occasion I have mentioned, I knocked off dead after discovering that I was trying to decorate Keeora's brow with the wreath of maiden's hair fern that had crowned the aviating "Green Lady" in her flight of the night before. I chucked in my hand complete after that, and had the whole monkey-show packed off to the Selection Committee. As might have been expected, the picture nearly caused a riot in that temperamental bunch of "pickers," but, in the end, The Face won the day with them, just as it did with the public.
Of the furore created by "Hell's Hatches" in the Salon it will hardly be necessary for me to write. Most of the excitement it stirred up was traceable to the haunting horror of the face of the wretch tied to the wheel; the rest was due to its name, which only suggested itself to me at the last moment. Perhaps the fact that everyone was baffled from the outset in trying to discover the motif of the bizarre thing also contributed to the impulse of the whirlpool of morbid curiosity with which it was engulfed. And who could blame them for failing to discover any connection between a tied-up maniac, a hunched-up drunkard, a kicking-up dancer and a bunch of tangled-up niggers? The avalanche of surmises would have been highly diverting had not my sense of humour already fallen a victim to the apathy that was rapidly settling upon my mind and body.
My outstanding recollection of the whole affair is of a highly effective by-play staged by that keen little publicist, Keeora, who had become a bit piqued over the slowness of the Press to broadcast the identity of the lady dancing on the deck-house. Utterly indifferent, I had avoided the Grand Palais not only on the opening day of the Salon, but also during the week that followed, when it was reported that the Avenue Alexander III was at times blocked with the throngs striving to get within sight of the most intriguing picture shown in years. My telephone was disconnected; telegrams and letters by the stacks lay unopened; a pile of newspapers were unread. Growing more sullen and sodden day by day, I had eyes for nothing but the green bottle at my elbow and the constantly replenished glass of cracked ice by its side. All the rest of the world was one soft, verdant tunnel—nothing else. I had been drinking steadily for days, afraid to face the reaction that must inevitably follow the first break in the continuity of the flow of the life-saving trickle of green.
In a way, I suppose, it is Keeora I have to thank for the fact that, when I finally left my room in the Continental, it was to be headed for the Grand Palais instead of to La Morgue. I am quite convinced that nothing short of the violent eruption of hysteria that soulful lady brought off outside my door would have induced me to open it, and probably no one else in Paris could have been equal to just that kind of an outburst. In passionate French-Cockney, Keeora told how, after failing for days to reach me by 'phone and telegraph, she had at last come in person to bear me to the Salon to share with her our common triumph. That didn't move me greatly, but when she swore that she was going to stay until she "jolly well croaked, G'bly'me," unless I let her in, something inside of my head snapped and I gave way. (I always was like that with hysterical women.) When I opened the door I discovered that she was dressed in some Mogul princess sort of a rigout, and accompanied by an Italian Marchesa and two or three lesser satellites. Between them and my valet they got me dressed and down to a waiting carriage.
To get away from the mob at the main entrance, they took me around to the Avenue d'Antin side of the Grand Palais, where Keeora pointed out with glee that the Salon of the Société des Artistes Français, which had opened a week or two previous to that of the Beaux-Arts outfit, was almost deserted. "Et tout, mon cher Monseer W'itney, por raison de—de la grand success de 'Aykootillys don fur.'"
"And what might they be?" I asked dully, rather fancying some new sort of epidemic had broken out.
"Madame means to say 'Ecoutilles d'Enfer,'" began the Marchesa politely; "eet—eet ees—"
"Eat your bloomin' 'at!" cut in the lady impatiently, indignant that anyone could be so stupid as to have her Parisian interpreted to him. "Don't you twig me, old cock? That's wot them French Jo'nnys calls 'Ell's 'Atches."
The picture was extremely well hung, both for position and light; though whether this had come about as a consequence of a reshuffle after it had turned out to be the main drawing card, I did not learn. There was a roped-off area in front of it, and through this a number of perspiring attendants were feeding the crowd, working hard with tongue and hand to keep the chattering line in motion. Keeora called my attention to a woman who had fainted and was being carried out on a stretcher. "Bowls 'em over just like that right along," she giggled. "Six of 'em squealed and keeled back just w'ile I was 'angin' on 'ere yustidy. But it ain't me wot gets 'em," she hastened to explain; "it's that crazy bloke at the w'eel, wiv 'is bloomin' eyes borin' right through your chest an' raspin' up an' down your spine. Don't see wot you wanted to put 'im in for any'ow."
At a word from Keeora's sedulous satellites, the attendants opened up a line through the mob and cleared a space in front of the picture. Then, assuring herself with a critically comprehensive glance that the setting was all correct, she rushed in, threw her arms around my neck, kissed me smackingly on both cheeks, French-fashion, and began declaiming in her best Parisio-Whitechapel how I had earned her undying gratitude and affection (mon amours eternel) in making her the central figure in the greatest work of art of modern times. It was all extremely well done—from Keeora's standpoint, that is. She had a solid phalanx of reporters massed in the background, as a consequence of which, after the next morning, there was no chance for anyone to remain longer in ignorance of the fact that the nymph hot-footing around the coamings of "Hell's Hatches" was Keeora of the Comique. The following Saturday the management came round voluntarily to her hotel with a new contract worth several thousand francs a week to their rising danseuse orientale.
For myself, groggy in head and knees as I was, the experience was rather trying. Breaking away from her stranglehold at the first opportunity, I told Keeora to keep her "eternel amours" for those who wanted them, and bolted. There was some pretence at pursuit, but, with the real magnet drawing in the other direction, I finally managed to elbow clear. Hailing a cab in the Champs-Elysées, I returned to my hotel.
But the interruption, as I have said, was a fortunate one. It checked my downward slide dangerously near the point where a crash was due. I was far from being out of the woods yet, but the interval of comparative lucidity had given me enough courage to try to pull up. Unloading all the firearms I had about my suite and giving them to my man, I told him to go away for the night and not to return until noon of the following day. Then, as restrainedly as I could, I drank during the first three or four hours of the evening, before allowing myself to go to sleep. The crisis—the dread reaction I had feared to face—I knew would come on awakening in the morning. It arrived on schedule—two hours of teetering on the edge of hell and cursing myself for putting the guns beyond my reach. Even with the absintheteur's notorious dread of cold steel, I fingered Hartley Allen's Portuguese throwing-knife a long time before mustering up the courage to drop it out of the street window. That gave me a new idea, and I held lengthy debate with myself about following the knife to the pavement. If I had been on the fourth floor instead of the second, I might have tried it. As it was, fifteen feet to a glass marquee didn't look good enough. But at last I won through—just. It was a sorry looking figure that shivered back at me from the mirror after I had got up my nerve to ring for a pot of black coffee at seven; but I was off the toboggan, at any rate, with my face set unflinchingly toward the one place in the world where I felt there was at least a fighting chance for me to pull up again. I had arrived at the end of the day of which I had dreamed so long—"My Day," I had called it. Paris had come fawning to my feet—and brought me Dead Sea Fruit. I was going back to work out my own salvation in the Islands.
I had a rather trying time of it, getting packed up and away on such short notice; but I simply did what I could and let the rest go. Putting Paris behind me was the thing. It took all that was in me to do it, but I caught the Brindisi Express from the P.L.M. station that night.
My last act before leaving the hotel was to sign a paper brought there by a well-known art dealer, with whom I had talked by 'phone earlier in the day. It authorized him to sell to the highest bidder a painting in oil known by the name of "Hell's Hatches," delivery to be made immediately after the closing of the spring Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. It also provided that he should receive a liberal commission for his services. It must have been something like a month later that he collected ten per cent. on three hundred thousand francs less about five hundred paid some second-rate artist for executing a slight alteration in one of the figures. It was a petty Sultan from Morocco (high card with Keeora at the moment) to whom the picture was knocked down after a spirited run of bidding with an Irish distiller and a Chicago soap-maker. The buyer's only condition was that the man lashed to the wheel should be changed to a burnoused Arab. That would tend to give the picture an atmosphere more in keeping with his desert palace, he said; also, he wanted the efrangi's face covered up. The eyes made him jumpy.
CHAPTER XIX
AFTER ALL
I had not planned by what route I should go to the South Seas, and it was only because an Orient-Pacific liner chanced to be the most convenient connection at Brindisi that I went by Australia instead of by India and Singapore. I was rather glad, on the whole, that I was going to have an opportunity to learn something at first-hand of Hartley Allen—or, Sir Hartley, as he had become since I left Australia. That much I had been able to gather from an item I had read in The Times shortly after my arrival in Paris. This stated that Sir James Allen, Bart., Agent in London for New South Wales, had just died of pneumonia. Being without male issue, it was understood that the title would pass to his younger brother, formerly a well-known racing man, and more recently in the public eye through his heroic action in navigating a labour schooner full of plague-stricken blacks through the Great Barrier Reef to Queensland.
Nothing was said in the local item of the outrage aboard the Cora Andrews, but the day following a dispatch from Sydney stated that Sir Hartley Allen was recovering his health and strength at a sanitarium in the interior, from which, however, it was not expected that he would be in a condition to be discharged for several months. The shock to his nervous system from the mysterious attack upon him in Townsville three months previously had been so great that only time could obliterate the traces of it. He had not yet been allowed to see any of his old friends, but the correspondent affirmed on good authority that Sir Hartley's reason, so long despaired of, had been fully regained.
From the fact that the attack was still spoken of as "mysterious," I took it that Allen, for some reason of his own, had refrained from revealing the identity of the person who had left him to die lashed to the wheel of the Cora. What that reason might be, was one of the things I hoped to learn when I should see him in Australia.
Hartley Allen was still in a sanitarium in the Blue Mountains, I learned on my arrival in Sydney, but of late there had been little news of him. He was believed to be getting stronger, slowly but surely, though no hope was held out that he would appear in the saddle again for at least another season. It was unlikely that I would be permitted to see him, but there would be no harm in trying. I should, of course, communicate with his physicians, not with Allen himself.
By a lucky chance, in wiring the head of the institution where Allen was under treatment, I stated that I was a former friend of his from the Islands. A reply arrived the same day, telling me to come on at my earliest convenience. The eminent nerve specialist in charge of the case drove down to meet me at the train. It was very fortunate indeed, he said, that I had mentioned in my telegram that I had known Sir Hartley during his residence in Melanesia. He had failed, very stupidly, to recognize my name as that of the famous artist who was about to paint Sir Hartley's picture when the attack upon him occurred. As a consequence, he was about to wire a refusal to my application, when he recalled that news from the Islands was the one thing in which his patient had shown any great interest. Accordingly, he had asked Sir Hartley himself if he cared to see a certain Roger Whitney, lately arrived in Sydney. The eager interest manifested by his patient was the most encouraging symptom the latter had shown since his mind had cleared. If I would carefully refrain from introducing any subject calculated to excite Sir Hartley nervously, he was confident that my visit would be productive of nothing but good. It was even possible, should it prove convenient to me, that he would want me to remain for several days. Sir Hartley was quite sound in brain and body. What he needed was increased vigour of both, and to this end he would have to develop a greater interest in living than he had yet shown. It was just possible there was something on his mind....
After leaving my coat and bag in the reception-room, the doctor led me out across a bright solarium. We would find Sir Hartley out of doors, he said, probably playing polo. He seemed to hate the very thought of having a roof over him, even to sleep under. It was a strange sight that met my eyes as we came round the corner of the veranda. In the shade of a grove of blue-gums and stringy-barks a wooden horse had been erected, saddled with a light pigskin, and provided with snaffle and curb reins running back from the angling bit of board that served as "head." Astride the saddle, in the famous short-stirruped "Slant" Allen seat, booted, spurred, and in immaculate whites, slashing smartly at grass-stained and dented bamboo-root balls that were alternately tossed in and chivied by a pair of bare-footed youngsters, was a familiar figure. Save for the white hair (which I had already seen) and the absence of the former coat of tan, he did not, from a distance, appear greatly changed. It was not until his eyes met mine at close range that I was conscious of the weary listlessness which, like a bed of ashes, smothered the coals of his old fire.
Allen had just poked away the first of two successively thrown balls in a sweet-running dribble, and sliced off the other in a sharp-angling "belly cross," when he raised his eyes and caught sight of the doctor and me coming down the steps. Swinging a bit uncertainly out of the saddle, he came toddling in a swaying childlike trot across the grass. His grip was firmer than I had expected, and the thought flashed through my mind that this was the very first time I had ever shaken hands with him.
"I've been wondering when you were going to turn up, Whitney," he exclaimed eagerly. "There's something I've been waiting to talk to you about." He spoke in generalities while the doctor lingered, saying that he had given up his old idea of returning to the Islands, and that, instead, he was hoping to get away before long to a back-blocks station he owned and ride the boundaries for a year or two. But when the specialist, evidently assured that his experiment was getting under way properly, quietly excused himself, Allen led me over to the wooden horse and launched at once into a subject which had doubtless occupied his mind for many days. From ancient habit he leaned, as he spoke, now on the hollow pigskin of his "pony," now on the flexible Malacca handle of his polo mallet.
"You're the only man in the world I can talk to about this now, Whitney," he said with a queer new quaver of weakness in his voice. "I suppose that's because you're the only person I ever talked to about it—before. I take it, Whitney, that you had no great difficulty in making up your mind as to who was responsible for—for my night of contemplation on the Cora?"
"Well," I began evasively, "I had such grave doubts about Ranga's guilt that I went to some little trouble to get him away. Mostly old 'Choppy' Tancred's work, though."
"Good old 'Choppy'!" said Allen with an appreciative grin; "on hand at the right time as usual." Then, with serious interest: "But the girl—how did she manage to get clear?"
"Just turned up and helped herself to a place in the launch I was sending Ranga off in," I replied, a bit worried at my failure to lead the conversation away from subjects "calculated to excite Sir Hartley nervously."
"And you were also convinced of her innocence, I suppose," he said, eyeing me with a strange smile across the leather-bound handle of his mallet.
"On the contrary," I answered; "I knew that she was guilty. I had taken your throwing-knife away from her the same night. I knew that Ranga was quite innocent, even though the police, through a silly ball-up, tracked him down with their dogs."
"Then why did you let the girl go?" he pressed.
"Because I thought I knew Rona well enough," I replied evenly, "to feel sure that she wouldn't have done—what she did, unless she was convinced in her own mind that she had a good reason for it." It was a stiff jolt for a sick man, that; yet, for the life of me, I couldn't have made an evasive answer.
But there was a smile of untold relief on Allen's face as he leaned over and laid his hand on my arm. "You were right, Whitney," he said in a voice that trembled with the depth of its fervour. "You were right. She did have good reason. I ought to have seen it all along."
"I don't quite understand," I said, greatly puzzled. "Do you mean that all you told me about your—your having nothing to do with Bell's death was not true?"
"Not at all," he replied, with unexpected vigour. "Everything that I told you that afternoon at the Australia was true—according to my understanding of the moment, I mean. But later my understanding broadened a bit, you must know. A chap doesn't spend a night tied up alone with the spirits of three or four white men, and Gawd knows how many blacks, without coming to comprehend some things that have eluded him before. I didn't go all the way off my chump till well along toward morning, you see; and I was broadening my understanding all the time."