The Man from Sulu and other stories E-Book

Henri De Vere Stacpoole

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

1: The Vengeance of Mynheer Van Lok
2: The Man From Sulu
3: Under the Flame Trees
4: Bully Beef
5: The Damoclean Sword
6: Wild Ducks
7: The Face at the Window
8: The Case of Mrs. Mencken
9: The Snuff-box of M. de Sartines
10: Turn About
11: Did Kressler Kill His Wife?
12: The Lady Detective
13: The Heller Robbery
14: The King of Maleka
15: Kadjaman
16: The Queen's Necklace
17: The Story of Gombi
18: The End of the Road
19: The Gold Bar
20: Maru
21: Magic
22: Luck of the Templetons
23: The Ten-Franc Counter

Leseprobe

THE MAN FROM SULU

and other stories

H. De Vere Stacpoole

© 2024 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782385747909

Contents

1: The Vengeance of Mynheer Van Lok

2: The Man From Sulu

3: Under the Flame Trees

4: Bully Beef

5: The Damoclean Sword

6: Wild Ducks

7: The Face at the Window

8: The Case of Mrs. Mencken

9: The Snuff-box of M. de Sartines

10: Turn About

11: Did Kressler Kill His Wife?

12: The Lady Detective

13: The Heller Robbery

14: The King of Maleka

15: Kadjaman

16: The Queen's Necklace

17: The Story of Gombi

18: The End of the Road

19: The Gold Bar

20: Maru

21: Magic

22: Luck of the Templetons

23: The Ten-Franc Counter

1: The Vengeance of Mynheer Van Lok

The Strand Magazine, June 1934

Sun (Sydney) 19 May 1940

MYNHEER ANDREAS VAN LOK, having finished his morning correspondence, lit a cigarette and glanced at the time, left his office, and went into the brilliancy of Hooft-street. It had been raining during the early hours, then fog had followed on the rain, clearing to leave the blue Javanese sky unstained by any trace of mist or cloud, and the great sea city of Sandabar burning in the sun.

Andreas turned to the left in the direction of Woeverman's bar. The street was crowded. Javanese, Sumatrans, Chinese, Malays, Europeans, all contributed to the colored and moving picture; a chattering crowd whose voices were mixed with the creak of ox-carts, the hum of the electric trams, shouts of ricksha men and the toot of motor-horns.

As he turned into Woeverman's the bellow of a ship's siren lifted itself from the wharves, passed over the city and came back faintly echoed from the hills. It came from the Rotterdam-Lloyd mail boat preparing to cast off and bound for Tandjong Priok and Holland.

Woeverman's was crowded. It was the hour before lunch and the crowd was mainly composed of business men talking rubber, cotton, tea, cacao and scandal. The air was blue with cigar smoke and three bar-tenders were busy, the rattle of the cocktail-shakers mixing with the drone of the electric fans. Andreas, a man with a black pointed heard, passed along from group to group; he seemed to know everyone, also he seemed looking for someone. He was looking for Hendrick Hartmann, and he found him at the far end of the bar, glass in hand, and just about to drink.

"Ah, there you are," said Andreas. "I have been looking for you."

The two men formed a striking contrast when standing together. Andreas short and dark, plain almost to ugliness and forty if an hour. Hartmann young, tall, fair-haired, good-looking. Andreas hard-faced, almost morose. Hartmann gay and debonair. Yet these two, then, so different one from the other, were the closest friends; had been so for several years, sharing many things in common, and one vice— the love of practical joking. It was Andreas who generally designed the traps, Hartmann who constructed and set them, and it may he said of the victims that they were generally objectionable people who deserved trapping.

All the same and taking it at its best, practical joking is a cruel form of sport and brings little real credit to its known practitioners. But these jesters were clever enough never to be caught, and the cleverness was nearly always the cleverness of Andreas.

"What's up?" asked Hartmann.

"Nothing much," replied the other. "Only that fool Koenig has annoyed me."

"What's he done?"

"Oh, a lot of things, but this thing is personal to me; something I don't care to talk about even to you— but you know Koenig."

"Yes," said Hartmann, "silly old swine; forget him— what's yours?"

Koenig was Chief of Police, one of those well-meaning men who so often make blunders— such as his blunder in raiding Jaar's night club when it was stuffed full of high-class business men not with their wives and families— but though a blunderer at times, pretty harmless, and it surprised Hartmann to notice the venomosity in the tone and manner of the other.

In fact Andreas this morning seemed quite changed, filled with a repressed bitterness that seemed to poison his mind towards all things, even making him look coldly on his companion, at least so Hartmann thought. He refused a drink. He had a touch of liver; then looking at his watch, he said: "Come along down to the 'Constantia' and have lunch with me. I've got an idea and I want you to help me out with it."

"Right," said Hartmann, "and what's the idea?"

"I'll tell you later on," said Andreas.

The "Constantia" beyond Harlem Avenue faces the sea, and you can lunch on the verandah in full view of the Indian Ocean; fleet fishing prahus out from Mayal or Tandjong Lupar, junks dreaming along, less sailing than seeming to move on the slow drift of time.

Andreas smoked cigarettes, refusing food and watching the other eat, talking. of trade and trivial matters and little by little losing his frozen manner; exchanging it for a queer sort of gaiety, subdued as though checked by some overmastering thought.

"Well," said Hartmann as he lit a cigarette after the meal, "and what's the idea you wanted to tell me about?"

"Koenig," replied the other.

"But Koenig is not an idea."

"No, but my idea has to do with Koenig. I am going to play a joke on him and I want your help."

"Good," said Hartmann. "And what's the joke?"

"The idea came to me," said Andreas, "from that shooting case he made such a blunder about last year, arresting the wrong man."

"Yes."

"I remembered that yesterday, it's wonderful how old facts sometimes turn up just when they are wanted, and how things fit in, for the old fool is giving a garden reception tomorrow."

"I know, I've got an invitation."

"Yes, you are one of his friends. Well, you must go, but get there late. It's for four o'clock, you must get there at five."

"That's easily done."

"The rest is just as easy. You must go alone, that is essential, and don't go in by his front gate; you know that the garden of his bungalow, like those of all the bungalows on De Ruyter-avenue, has a back gate opening on the Wild Park; you must come through the Wild Park from Grotius-street and through the back gate, and, this is the essential thing, apologise for coming in that way. You can say you were in a hurry as you had to come from Grotius-street, where you were delayed on business."

"Well, that's easy enough, but I don't see the point."

"No, but Koenig will when I spring my joke on him."

"Can't you tell me the joke?"

"No," said Andreas, "because there is a woman mixed up in it, and I haven't her leave to tell you— yet."

"All right," said Hartmann, "I don't mind; The only bother to me is that we have always done our little japes without being found out, except in the case of that cat we sent to Mynheer Voss, and now this means simply declaring the thing openly as ours— and, of course, I'm sure to make an enemy of Koenig."

"Does that matter? Besides, you won't. I'll take all the blame of the business, it's worth it— you'll simply die— simply die."

Andreas shook with mirth at the jest concealed and impossible to be revealed till the right moment.

"Right," said Hartmann, looking at his watch. "I'll do what you want, and now I must be off, as I have an appointment to meet."

Then off he went, light-heartedly, ignorant as a child of the strange business which he had promised to assist in.

Hartmann had permanent rooms in the "Herrenhaus," the German-run hotel which stands on the upper level beside the Van Haanen's Club. He had no servant worries, or wife worries, or family worries, and few business worries. That is perhaps why he took life as a joke and why he put on so readily the fool's cap of the jester, or, rather, why he was so ready to put it on the heads of others. He had never experienced the unpleasant sensation of wearing it himself, and he was unconscious of the fact that he sometimes ran that risk, according to the rule: "He who jests with others must expect others to jest with him."

This morning, after breakfast, sitting in the deep verandah and smoking a cigarette, life seemed very good indeed; the "Herrenhaus" and Van Haanen's are two of the highest placed buildings in Sandabar, and from where he sat he could see the whole new moon crescent of the city, the coast from Cape Mayal to Cape Tomai. the wharves with their long line of warehouses, the yellow funnels of a Nederland boat, and beyond all these, stretching, to be lost in haze, the luminous blue of the Indian Ocean.

He had dealt with his mail; a letter from a woman, a receipted bill from a tailor, circulars and a card inviting him to dinner with Mynheer Pel, the President of the Estates Union.

This invitation brought to mind Koenig's invitation for that afternoon and his promise to Andreas. He had scarcely thought of it last night, but now, clear-headed, at ease, and gazing at the good world before him. the recollection of it vaguely worried him. He liked to be "hail fellow well met" with all men. He liked to be, what he was, popular. Though the mischievous spirit in him loved a practical joke, it had never brought him into bad odor, simply because he had never been discovered, or only once.

But this, as he had said yesterday, was an open business, Koenig being turned into a fool would be partly his work— Andreas had said he would take any blame attached to the business—still.

There was another point, Andreas's manner. Even the light and easy-going mind of Hartmann had recognised that. It exhibited the hatred of a man who earnestly hated another, and it hinted that this business might in some way do Koenig real injury if Andreas hated him like that — not a pleasant thought.

Up to this he had always known Andreas as a pretty hard nut and a bad man to cross, but a friend who would stick to you in business as in pleasure; a good companion when not suffering from liver or fits of moroseness, but deadly to an enemy — that was Andreas.

The last quality had never divorced itself from the others till now, nor called for consideration. One or two instances came to Hartmann's mind exhibiting Andreas's attitude towards personal enemies; they were not pleasant. Cardross had been ruined. Oh, it wasn't altogether the fall in rubber, of which he had only a small holding, it was the enmity of this man who could hate so well and who evidently hated Koenig.

"Put not out your hand in any way to help the hatred of another man against another man."

This old Dutch saying was unknown to Hartmann; all the same, its spirit was talking to him. He wished he hadn't consented to engage in this stupid business. Why not back out of it before It was too late? It would be quite easy to ring up Andreas on the phone.

Would it?

Yes, easy enough if it were to talk of ordinary affairs, but not so easy if it were to say:

"Andreas, I have been thinking of that business about Koenig. I'd rather not join in it."

Hartmann could see Andreas's face closing up, and he could hear the sharp question:

"Why?"

A question difficult to answer because it was difficult to say the truth:

"I'm afraid for old Koenig and my own reputation. You have evidently a frightful down on him. I would much prefer that you conducted your quarrel with Koenig without my assistance."

That would mean a break with Andreas and it might mean the conversion of him into an enemy. Hartmann had always accepted him as a friend. Now, for the first time, he had to consider the acceptance of him as an enemy. He did not like the idea at all; the idea of setting against himself that mind intricate and dark and capable of such ill-will as it had shown towards Koenig, was not a pleasant idea.

Well, what was to be done? He could not think of any way out of the business. After all, the thing he was required to do was so trivial, was it worth making any unpleasantness about it?

At twelve o'clock he left his rooms and went into Van Haanen's. There he met Mynheer Van Buren, Mynheer Pel, and several other worthies; at one o'clock he had luncheon, and at half-past two he went up to the card room. As it was a Saturday, the room was full. The card room at Van Haanen's is divided into two parts. A room with half a dozen small tables for bridge and a room devoted to baccarat.

Hartmann stood watching the baccarat for half an hour or so.

Subconcsciously working, his mind had suddenly decided not to go to Koenig's party, and to excuse himself to Andreas by simply saying, "Awfully sorry, old chap, but I was playing baccarat at Van Haanen's and my watch let me down. It stopped at four, and then I found it was too late to get to Koenig's by the time you told me."

He was an adept at constructing little social fibs of this sort— excuses to avoid unpleasantnesses. He took his place at the baccarat table.

At first the luck was not with him but after a while it changed, it came favorable, and, except as variable flaws, held.

At half-past five he had won six thousand three hundred gulden, and being a cautious player salted his experience; he decided to stop, well pleased with himself. He had avoided a dull party, avoided giving offence to Andreas, and had pocketed a good sum of money.

He come out of the card room at down the stairs to the hall. Van Haanen's is a woman's club as well as a man's, only the two sexes kept apart like oil and water— almost, for though no woman ever goes to the upper rooms sacred to the men, the men often invaded lower rooms which form the women's quarters— when invited. Men go there and have tea with their wives or other men's wives, to play bridge; never to dine, for there is no dining or luncheon room as on the floor above.

As Hartmann crossed the hall towards the entrance door he met a woman who was coming in.

It was Andreas's wife, a blonde girl with blue eyes, exquisitely dressed in silk and Chiramen, who had just stepped out of her car, which was waiting at the door.

"Have you seen Andreas?" she asked.

"No," replied Hartmann, "he's not in the club. Where have you come from?"

"Koenig's— such a dull affair. I expected to see you there and I expected Andreas would turn up when he'd done with the office, but he didn't— what have you been doing?"

"Playing baccarat; I've been here all day. Have you had tea?"

"Yes," said she, "at least cocktails— come in, I want to talk to you."

She led the way in. There were few women about, Koenig's garden party having drained the place; they passed through the reading-room and on to the broad verandah that fronts the city and sea; here they sat down and the wife of Andreas, having chosen a cigarette from her case and lit it, leaned back in her chair. She seemed thoughtful and to have something on her mind, and as she sat brooding he told her of the joke Andreas had proposed to play on Koenig.

"I am rather worried," said she, "about Andreas."

"How?"

"You remember the night before last. We thought he had gone to Tuboi."

"You said he had gone there."

"I know— and perhaps he did, perhaps it was my amah's mistake; she said to me next morning, 'I saw the master last night; he walked in the garden.' "

Hartmann was silent for a moment. He felt vaguely disturbed.

"But surely," said he at last, "surely—"

"It may have been the amah's mistake," said she, "but all the same I have noticed a difference in him. I know he has had money worries. I am afraid we are in a bad way financially, but it's not that— it's me; at least, I think so. I always told you he was jealous about me— and other men."

"Yes," said Hartmann.

All this was decidedly unpleasant. The woman before him had fascinated him, but the fascination had been fading for some time; distaste was threatening his regard for her. Looking at her now, he felt irritated and at fault. Andreas had always seethed to him a complaisant husband, despite what she had said about his jealousy; anyhow, unsuspicious, and the idea that he was not only suspicious, but that he had been spying on them came as a distinct shock.

"Of course," she went on, "I suppose all men are subject to jealousy, but Andreas is not an ordinary man and I feel very uneasy."

"Why?"

"I don't know. It's him. And if he has found out things and is saying nothing— that's what makes me uneasy. To think of him brooding and working in the dark and then maybe suddenly—"

"Yes?"

"I don't know— it's like the silence before a thunderstorm."

Her uneasiness communicated itself to him by her voice and manner even more than by her words. Then, trying to shake the feeling off:

"Perhaps," said he, "what is really wrong with him— I mean, if you think his manner has changed— is money worries, you said he was worried—"

"Oh, it's more than worries," said she. "Our affairs, and I tell it to you though I would tell it to no one else, are in a very bad state, as far as I can see. He's been speculating in rubber; as far as I can see, we are broke."

Here was another pleasant idea for Hartmann to contemplate; leaving Andreas and jealousy aside, he could not desert this woman financially if she applied to him for help; even if she didn't apply and he knew that she was in poverty he would have to try and help her, and if Andreas made trouble in the courts there would be damages on top of all.

"And the thing that frightens me," she went on, "is the state his mind may be in if he knows anything really about us— I mean that and the money worry together may make him desperate. If he goes to his lawyers—"

"Don't," said Hartmann. "Why suppose things— besides, there is no evidence; native servants are not believed even if they talk, and— well, there's no use meeting troubles half-way."

He left her at the club and went back to his rooms. He was for the first time in many years seriously put out. Andreas's suggested joke on Koenig took on a new complexion. Was it possible that it had nothing to do with Koenig, that it was. some dodge for the manufacture of extra evidence?

Grotius-street. Andreas had told him to say he had been delayed by an interview in Grotius-street.

Why?

He could not tell, but the question added to his mind disturbance. Life had been so easy and pleasant and luck had always been with him. He reckoned that he did not count one enemy among all the people he knew, they were all his friends; he was popular and the knowledge that he was universally liked was part of his mental atmosphere, feeding his self-respect and sense of well-being— and now this hint of trouble.

The trouble whose other name is "Disclosure." Yes, he had been a fool, and his folly and its possible consequences could not be made less or lightened by any excuse he had to offer if Andreas set the law to work. The plea that "the woman tempted me" has never lessened the effect of the fall.

Still, there was luck, the luck that had always been with him, and this was a lucky day. The banknotes won at baccarat told him that; and they did not tell him a lie.

AT SEVEN O'CLOCK, just as Hartmann was preparing to go out to dine at the "Constantia," a servant knocked at his door with the announcement that sergeant of police Harneck wished to see him.

Followed Harneck, a bull-necked man, looking half strangled in the collar of his white tunic. Mynheer Koenig wished to see Mynheer Hartmann and to see him at once on urgent business, the police car was at the door. Would Mynheer Hartmann kindly come— where to? Police headquarters.

"Certainly," said Hartmann, wondering what old Koenig could possibly want with him, and at such short notice, also a wee bit disturbed in mind; though Koenig was a friend, he was chief of the Law Executive, and this had something to do with law on the very face of it. Still, he knew himself to be beyond the law both in business and private affairs— except in the case of the woman who had been troubling his mind. That was something by which the law might touch him, but not through the hand of Koenig, which had only to do with criminals.

So he thought, during the short drive to police headquarters, which are situated in Hooft-street. Following Harneck, he passed through the main doorway, along a passage, to a room barely furnished with two chairs, a table, and a spittoon. Harneck, asking him to wait, went out and shut the door, and Hartmann waited.

He waited five minutes, then he grew impatient and a bit irritable. Bringing him here in such a hurry, and then calmly making him wait like this! He would go out and investigate. He came to the door, but the handle would not turn, it was evidently a dummy; also, he noticed, what he had noticed before but without mental comment, that the door had a grille in it.

He came back to the table and sat down. This was most evidently a waiting-room designed not for honest men, but criminals, to wait in, and as he sat considering this fact, and despite Reason, who told him that he had nothing to fear, the sweat came out on the palms of his hands.

He had nothing to fear from Koenig or the criminal law, and yet, somehow, he was afraid, and the fear seemed to emanate from the disturbing interview he had had that day with the wife of Andreas; it had cast a stain on the serenity of his life, it had conveyed a threat of the possibility of trouble, more than the possibility, if the amah was not wrong when she said, "The master was here last night; he walked in the garden."

To Hartmann, just now, it was as though something, unseen but deadly, were creeping towards him in the dark, something that might be Andreas, something that at any moment might pounce.

The door opened and Harneck appeared.

"Come with me, please," said Harneck, and Hartmann noted that he had omitted the word "Mynheer."

Chief of Police, Justus Til Koenig, was seated before his desk table examining some papers when the visitor was brought in. Koenig was a heavily built, semi-bald old gentleman of the Bismarck type, but without the eagle glance; in fact, he looked not unlike a waxwork portrait of the Great Chancellor, done by an inferior hand and rather botched at that.

He bowed to Hartmann stiffly and asked him to take the chair which stood at the opposite side of the table. Harneck did not leave the room. He stood close to Hartmann and during the interview did not stir.

"You were a friend of Mynheer Andreas Van Lok?"

It was funny to hear Koenig saying that as though they hadn't all played cards , together at the club. Still, he was on his official perch.

"I am his friend," said Hartmann. "What about it?"

"At a quarter past five, to-day." said Koenig, "Park Inspector Kempfer, going through the Wild Park which lies at the back of my garden, and to which I have a right of entrance through a gate, had his attention drawn to something lying on one of the paths. The body of a man. The body of Andreas Van Lok, who had been murdered."

"What!" cried Hartmann. "Andreas!"

Koenig held up his hand. "Park Inspector Kempfer found him lying on the ground, stabbed in the neck, a knife was lying close to him, there were signs of a struggle; he was still breathing when Kempfer found him, but unconscious. The murderer must have done his work at five or a little after, in the opinion of Dr. Strench."

Hartmann listened, horrified.

"This is the knife," said Koenig, taking a native dagger with a shagreen handle out of a cupboard box on the table. ''There are no finger prints obtainable, because shagreen does not lend itself to that. Have you ever seen that knife before?"

"Never," said Hartmann. his eyes on the knife. "There is on the shagreen a mark very small but clearly indicating the letter 'H' scratched with some sharp instrument."

"Yes," said Hartmann, examining the knife handle, "that is so."

He placed the knife on the table while Koenig took a paper from the box. It was a letter addressed to him and posted early that morning.

"I received this at noon," said Koenig. "It is from Andreas Van Lok. It says: 'Excuse me if I am late for your show to-day, as my friend Hartmann has asked me to meet him on important business at five o'clock, but I will come along—"

"Never," cried Hartmann. "I never asked him to meet me."

"He goes on to say," continued Koenig, "that he will bring you along with him, as the place of your meeting was quite close to my house— in the Wild Park."

Hartmann moistened his lips. The thing that had been crawling towards him had sprung.

Koenig took a letter from the box.

"We found this on the dead man's body. It is an anonymous letter received by him a week ago, judging by the postmark. Read it." He handed it to Hartmann, who read:

"Your wife is playing the fool with Hartmann. Keep your eyes open for your own sake— and hers."

It was a genuine letter, and evidently the cause of Andreas's suspicions. Yes, he had walked in the garden that night beyond any manner of doubt, this man of darkness.

Hartmann put the letter on the table. Then he said to Koenig:

"I had better tell you all I know. This is a bad business, but different from what you think. I never asked Andreas Van Lok to meet me in the Wild Park; but yesterday, he asked me to come late to your party, not by the front gate but by the gate opening on to the Park. I was to apologise to you for coming that way owing to the fact that I had been delayed by an appointment in Grotius-street, and had to take the short cut through the Park."

"Yes?"

"That was all I had to do."

"Why did he ask you to do this?"

"It was to be part of a practical joke he wanted to play on you."

"What sort of joke?"

"I don't know."

Koenig glanced at Harneck as though to say: "Just listen to that!"

Then to Hartmann: "Is that all the explanation you can give?"

"No, it's only the beginning. Though he would not tell me what the joke was I could see that he was filled with animosity which I thought was against you. I know now it was against me. He would not accept a drink nor would he eat with me. I agreed to do what he asked; it was such a simple thing, but this morning my mind turned against the business, it seemed to me that owing to his seeming hatred of you it might have bad consequences and I did not wish to be mixed up in it, so I determined not to go to your party and to excuse myself to Andreas by saying that my watch had stopped "

"If you did not come to my party," cut in Koenig, "where then did you go?"

"Nowhere. I came to my decision at Van Haanen's. I was there from before luncheon till six, and was playing baccarat at five, the time you say this crime was committed."

"Have you witnesses?"

"Oh, half a hundred; also six thousand gulden I won at play."

"That is fortunate for you," said Koenig, "if enquiry confirms what you say. Your theory, then, is that this man committed suicide, which is possible, as he could have inflicted the wound on himself, and did so in a way that would implicate you."

"I have no theory to offer, only facts, but I think, leaving everything else aside, that he killed himself owing to financial reasons, and being determined to die by his own hand would, have made it appear that he had died by mine. He hated me on account of his wife."

"Had he reason to?"

"Koenig," said Hartmann, "I am not talking in the presence of the Chief of Police and this officer, but in the presence of two Dutch gentlemen. When I say I cannot answer your question you will understand that I have no right to answer it as it involves a woman who is not here and who will suffer enough, God knows, through the death of this man who was her husband.

"That anonymous letter which would have helped to destroy me if I had fallen in with his plans, would, if published, only add to her suffering. It has done harm enough— let it be burnt."

"I will take note of what you suggest," replied Koenig.

BUT THOUGH Hartmann was not destroyed, it would be a grave mistake to imagine that Andreas failed altogether in his revenge. The man who escapes with his life from a fire is never quite the same; imagination of what might have happened tends to torment him at times. It is worse with the man, innocent of murder, who has escaped the ignominy and death of a felon, by chance.

For Hartmann, Andreas still walks in the garden, still wanders in the Wild Park; still whispers on the wind, "Suppose— yes, just suppose, you had done what I asked you to do?"

A question that has to be answered by imagination.

2: The Man From Sulu

The Windsor Magazine December 1932

Sun (Sydney) 1 June 1941

THE blue sea that they call the Gulf of Tonkin showed to starboard the far-off hills of Hainan; to port nothing but its azure desolation and a junk. Eight bells had just struck and the Man from Sulu, whose deck chair was next to mine, handed me over a number of the Pacific Magazine, which he had been reading.

"You know," he said, "I wish I could write. I've just read a yarn there— island setting and all that— and, well, I could give them a story that beats it hollow."

I proposed a cocktail, which he accepted, also a big Van Maurick cigar, under whose influence his mind, like an oyster, opened, and I got the yarn. It here follows, put in my own words.

WHEN THE Chinks erupted and did the Captain in, Seldon was on the bridge and Havilland in the chart-room. The Chinese steersman, who had only been waiting for the signal, dropped the wheel, whipped out a knife and went for Seldon, who ducked, dashed into the chart-room, secured the old man's automatic pistol, turned, and shot the Chink through the stomach. The Chinaman fell with his head inside the chart-room door, and the man with the automatic finished him off with a bullet through the brain, and then came running out, followed by Havilland.

They came to the after canvas of the bridge and looked over.

The Nan Shan had an all Chink crew, and the deck was swarming with Chinamen. The fellows had come up from the engine-room and stokehold; two of them were in the act of heaving the body of the Captain overboard, others were getting the boats ready for launching, and the rest were bringing up mats and mats of rice from below and ripping them open.

They were after the opium. Two thousand pounds' worth of Canton opium smuggled in the rice had been the secret of the captain of the Nan Shan and his mate, Seldon. The secret had escaped like an evil genie, and this was the result.

"Good God!" said Havilland.

He was the passenger. He had been lying on the couch in the chart-room reading an old yellow-backed copy of It's Never Too Late to Mend, when all this had come like a thunder-clap. He felt stunned, but Seldon, a small man, red and sharp as a ferret, leaning over the rail with the heavy Colt automatic in his hand, seemed unmoved.

As far as the bridge went, he was master of the situation. The fellows below had heard the shooting, and as long as the man on the bridge held his hand they were content to get on with their work and leave him alone.

"They're after the opium," he explained to Havilland. "The old man had it hid in those rice mats— they never knew of that automatic, or they'd have nicked it before the fun began. It's a frame-up, and it's clicked to the minute. Y'see, the Formosa coast is only a few miles away. You'd see it only for that haze— clever devils, clever devils, I must say."

He brooded over the scene below. Havilland watched without speaking.

The steam had been shut off, and the Nan Shan lay wallowing in the gentle swell that ran away oilily to be lost in the haze that hid Formosa.

"THEY'VE left the dinghy," said Seldon, as they watched the boats away and making for the east. "That comes of being hurried on a job. They should have stove her and opened the seacocks and wiped us and the old hooker clean out. but they were working against time and the headsman, and they haven't done their job so badly, b'gosh!"

Havilland know little of Seldon; he had only known him during the few days out from Canton on the northward run to Amoy. He had net cared for him particularly, and this detached way of his of talking about the murderers and their work, this air of what one might almost call sympathetic criticism, did not appeal.

"We've nothing to do but stick and let her drift," said the mate. "The current runs north, and is setting us towards the Pescadores; we ought to sight one of the southern islands to-morrow. Before that something may overhaul us, and we may be able to pick up enough hands to take her to Swatow, or maybe get a tow— there's no telling."

They came down from the bridge. It was funny to be on board a ship like that, engines stopped, decks vacant, bridge deserted— and the silence! Now and then, as the Nan Shan rolled to the gentle swell, came the rattle of the rudder-chain, and now and then the creak of spar or structure; occasionally she groaned, as if thinking of her sins against Customs and Humanity, but all these sounds broke nothing of the spell that held her or the silence which was the silence of the dead.

It wanted three hours of sunset, the boats now almost beyond sight had no more interest, and Havilland, who had dipped down to his cabin and found his few belongings intact, was smoking a pipe, seated on the edge of the main hatch and wondering, not at the terrible things he had seen, but at his insensibility to their terror— they did not seem part of reality.

Seldon had gone below; now he was on deck again, now on the bridge, now vanished into the chart-room. He was flitting about the ship like an uneasy spirit, in a purposeless, purposeful way that made Havilland wonder.

Coming down from the bridge, he found that Seldon had lugged up some bunk bedding from the cabins, also all their dunnage and some provisions and water, in case of accident.

They slept on deck, taking watch and watch, and when Havilland awoke it was to find the sun just breaking above the sea and the mate calling him to lend a hand with the dinghy.

The Nan Shan was sinking. Whether the Chinks had opened a seacock or whether Seldon had attended to that business for reasons of his own, who can say, but the old tub was preparing for her last act in life, and Havilland, half-awake and galvanised by the shouts and orders of the mate, found himself helping to get the dinghy afloat and the stuff into her.

As they pushed off, stepping the mast and raising the sail, Havilland's eyes followed the direction in which the mate was pointing. A ring of sea-birds showed, touched by the just-risen sun, and, a bit to westward of the birds, the hump of an island.

It was the southern outlier of the Pescadores. No one ever goes there of set purpose; there is nothing to go for or to be had except water and a small amount of fruit, and yet, on its southern side, it has a little harbor made by nature as if for a joke. Two curving reefs run out, forming the two piers, but the entrance between the pier heads is not more than thirty feet broad.

Broad enough, however, for the dinghy and broad enough for the craft already anchored by the western pier, a little, ratty-looking old yawl of about ten tons, whose owner, naked as Noah, except for a loincloth, stood waiting to receive them on the sandy beach. Waiting and shouting quite unnecessary directions and laughing as he helped to run the boat up— a most extraordinary sea individual, wild-looking as a molly mawk, brown as a hickory nut, well-proportioned, and not seeming more than twenty-five or so. After asking where in the hell they'd blown in from, and scarcely listening to the reply, he brought them along up to the shack he had built among the trees and started hospitality by making tea for them in a billy, chattering all the time thirteen to a dozen.

Australian. Yes, indeed, he was Australian-born, Royd by name. Used to work with his father at Thursday Island before the pearling went into the hands of the Japs. Father died, and then he worked alone with the old yawl— that was her at anchor— and a blackfellow; they pushed up north, sea-scraping, picking up things here and there; there was money to be made that way; precious coral; pearls sometimes; sea-shells— orange cowries were worth a couple of pounds apiece in the Sydney market— and such like. Last three years he had been in China waters and done a bit with a bêche-de-mer. He liked the Chinks. Did they know Swatow? He went there to bank his money when he made any— but he didn't count much on money; it only meant tobacco and grub. God's good air was money enough for any man— still, he wanted a new boat; the old Lone Jack wasn't going to hold together much longer, and he wanted a new boat, and he reckoned he was going to have one, too. The black-fellow had skipped two years ago, but he'd got a new mate.

He lay on his back on the sand most of the time he was talking, in absolute indolence of the absolutely perfect animal at ease. Sometimes he would turn and prop himself on his elbow, and sometimes turn his head towards the trees as though he were expecting or waiting for someone— possibly the mate he had spoken of, and, sure enough, this was so, for presently, to the rustle of giant Japonica leaves pushed aside, out from the trees stepped the mate.

Not a wild-looking scallywag like himself, but a slip of a brown girl, almost a child, and naked but for a yard and a half of Japanese chiramen; she was carrying a net bag holding some fruit she had picked, and as she came up to them, hailed by Royd, she threw the bag and its contents down beside him and then stood while he talked to her. Chinese? No, she seemed to Havilland of some mixed race, picturesque enough; wonderful eyes, luminous and dark, at once far-seeing and unseeing, like those of some spirit from another world. After a few words, she went and sat down apart from them near the trees.

"That's her," said Royd. "Picked her up as a pup two years ago. Met in with an old drifted sampan. She was in it with a woman.

"Woman was dead. Her mother, most like. I've called her Chayla, because it was off Chayla Island I met in with them. Well, as I was saying, if you like to stick here till I leave, I can take you along with me over to Swatow. I shan't be here more than a week longer. I'll have cleaned up by then, and there's grub enough between fish and turtles' eggs and such and rice; no, I don't want being paid for the job. I reckon well leave it at that."

He whistled between his teeth and looked seaward as he leaned on his elbow. He had never bothered to ask details as to how they had been wrecked. Seldon had in a few words given him a vague indication that it was through mutiny and foul play on board of a coasting steamer; that was enough for Royd. His life was so filled with marvels and happenings, between weather, natives, reefs, and sharks, such an entire and whole-time gamble with Luck and Death, that the happenings occurring to others left him cold.

"And now," said he, sitting upright, "I'll show you what I have been doing here, if you'll come along with me." He got up, and they followed him along the sands in the direction of the eastern reef that made one of the piers of the little harbor.

Some three fathoms down lay the wreck of a junk. A strange sight, clear to be seen through the diamond-bright water; all sunlit and gay with colored coral and waving sea fans, and frequented by painted fish popping in and out of the shadows. A picture vaguely moving with the gentle undulations of the swell. It had evidently been a fighting junk; on the white sand beside the half-shattered timbers lay a gun. a small cannon so thickly coral-crusted as to look like a sausage. No sign of masts, and the deck was fractured where the great break had occurred, showing the gloom of the hold occupied now only by squids and congers.

"Pirate junk," said Royd, "and she's been there twenty years. I know all about her. Me and the girl"— he always spoke of her as the girl— "were down last year behind Hal Chuen Island; there's a place there where the junks put in for repair, a bit of a harbor not much bigger than this one, but the tide falls tremendous there, and they've fixed up a dry dock of sorts, but good enough for me, for they work dirt cheap if you pick your season when business is slack.

"I'd got the boat docked for an overhaul when I met in with an old one-eyed Chink. His left leg was the size of the trunk of a tree with that disease, whatever they call it, and he told me he'd been a sailor, and we used to have a talk, and I'd give him tobacco, and we got pretty friendly, me and him and the girl, till it came to one afternoon when he let go his mind and told me of this place and this old junk and all about her.

"She'd broke her back on the reef In a big storm and then gone down just as you see her. Only one of the crew got on the reef, and when he was taken off from here he said nothing about her, knowing she had treasure on board and reckoning to come back for it. He'd had the thing up his sleeve for years.

"I fixed with him to come here and have a look and to give him half of whatever I found, and I got my chart of these waters and he marked the spot, but I had no chance to get here till a month ago."

"Did you find anything?" asked Seldon.

"I've been diving every day since I came here," said he, "and I've picked up lots of things. I'll show you some to-night. This is how it's done."

He took from where it was lying on the reef a little scoop net of the sort used for prawns, only smaller, and then, just as he was, he dived. The wreck below shivered to pieces as the impact broke the surface into ripples; then, when the water became smooth again, it showed, with Royd close beside it filling the net with sand. The third lot of sand held a coin thick and black and almost featureless.

"Silver, I reckon," said Royd, coming on to the reef. "And now you see what it's like, plenty of hard work, same as pearling, and most of it chance."

"I expect you've cleaned up pretty well," said Seldon.

"Oh, I'm not grumbling," said Royd. "I've done fair, and I reckon my half profits will give me that new boat, but, as I said, I'm sticking here awhile yet. I reckon another week's diving may be worth the while. There's stuff in that sand still, though to get it all you'd want a dredger."

"How much do you reckon she had on board when she broke up?" asked Seldon.

"Well, the Chink told me she had the worth of two scoops on board," replied Royd. "They used to work it by putting a pirate crew on board a steamer; when the pirates had taken possession, this old hooker would be on the spot to take over the stuff— sort of floating treasure-chest."

THAT night, under the light of a great full moon. Royd, leaving the others with whom he had been seated on the sands, went to the shack amidst the trees and returned with an old battered tin cash-box tied round with a length of signal halyard line.

"Here's the takings," said he. He sat down and untied the line and raised the lid, and produced, first, a little leather bag of coins. Sixty-two brass-yellow Australian sovereigns. He poured a few into the palm of his hand.

"Found them, bag and all," said he. "They'd gone a bit dark, but I polished them up. Sixty-two of them— not bad for a start."

He put them aside, and produced a cross that glittered in the moonlight. It was set with diamonds. Seldon took it and looked at it.

"That's worth something," said he; "hundreds — twenty stones and every one a beauty." He handed it to Havilland, who looked at it and gave it back to Royd, who bad produced another little bag of leather containing rings. There were thirty, some just hoops of plain gold, some valuable, containing stones, one was a nose ring set with a pearl, and every one doubtless with a tragic story attached to it. There remained only in the box some coins, a few American dollars, and some gold coins which Seldon pronounced old Portuguese.

"A good haul," said he, "but you run the chance of being swindled when you try to get rid of them."

"Oh, I reckon I know a man who'll take the lot," said Royd, "and keep a shut head— they don't belong to no one, been sunk twenty years, and God knows who they were taken off, but I don't want any Government butting in and stealing them off me. No, I've got the man for the business; he's a Jew at Amoy."

"You'll have to give half what you get to that Chink you told us of," said Seldon.

"Of course," said Royd. He tied up the box and took it back to the Royd had rigged them up a tent from some old canvas be brought over from the yawl, and presently, having finished their pipes, they retired to rest, and the great full moon took guard of the island, where all was peace in a silence broken only by the sound of the wind in the trees and the eternal murmur of the sea.

TWO days passed, during which Royd fished up a few coins, Chinese, mostly, but nothing of any value. But that did not make Royd cut his work short; it is the chance of another pearl that keeps the pearl-diver diving, even when he knows that the beds, are exhausted. He would stay another week, he told them, and, as for Havilland, he was content. Not only did Royd and his work interest him, but also the girl. Her absolute devotion contrasted strangely with his indifference, or seeming indifference. It seemed to Havilland like the love of a dog for a man and the attitude of the man towards the dog. On the evening of the third day, Seldon, who was taking a stroll with his companion along the bit of sand that lies beyond the western pier of reef, turned to look back, as though to make sure no one was in hearing, and then spoke.

"It would be a joke If old man Royd went to scratch up the stuff and found it gone," said Seldon, "and us with it."

"I don't see where the joke would come in," replied the other. "Besides, it wouldn't be possible."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, suppose we wanted to nick the stuff—"

"Don't talk vulgar," said Seldon, with a laugh. "That thing is a box, isn't it? And what's to-day, twenty-fourth of December, if my tablets ain't wrong. Call it a Christmas box and shut your eyes and call me old man Santa Claus, and take what's given you— or the half of it."

"If you mean what you are saying," replied the other, "what I'd call you would be a damn robber."

Seldon laughed. "Ain't got no more sense of humor than a turkey," said he.

"Maybe," replied Havilland, "and we'll leave it at that."

In the tent that night the problem of Seldon kept Havilland awake long after they had retired to rest. One thing seemed certain, the mate could not act single-handed in any attempt at robbery. Fortunately, he had not got the automatic pistol; he had left it on the ship in the hurry of getting away, and had remarked on the fact in the boat. On this comforting fact Havilland after a while fell asleep.

I AM NOW going to let the Man from Sulu (he was Havilland) finish the story in his own words.

"I WOKE UP somewhere about midnight and found the chap gone from the tent. I listened, but I couldn't hear anything but the sea on the rocks. Then I looked under the canvas on the side of the tent where he had been sleeping, and I saw the blighter in full moonlight.

"That side of the tent gave a view of the trees, and there he was with the box he'd just dug up from the sand. He came hurrying along towards the sea edge, and he hadn't got more than a few yards when I saw the girl come out of the shack like an eel.... She picked up one of the fish spears that lay by the shack, and next moment was after him.

"I scrambled out of the tent. When I got out Seldon had passed me, running, and she was just passing with the spear in her hand like a javelin. She got him not more than a few yards from tide mark. Before starting to steal the stuff he had got the dinghy down nearly afloat and some grub in her, everything ready for the fade-away, but she got him through the back with the spear before he could reach the boat.

"Then she saw me, and turned to get the spear out to do me in, too, but couldn't, because of the barb. She turned in a flash and raced back to the tent, and I knew she'd gone for another spear.

"I didn't wait.

"I shoved the dinghy off and tumbled in and took to the sculls and began rowing for all I was worth towards the harbor mouth.

"I reckoned I was safe, for the canvas boat Royd used for the yawl, and which was lying on the beach, would be no use chasing the dinghy.

"She didn't bother about the canvas boat; she knew better than that. She came tearing along the pier made by the western reef to cut me off at the opening.

"The opening was only thirty feet or so wide.

"Rowed! Good Lord! I should think I rowed, and I was just passing through when she was only five yards from the pier-end. Then came the spear whimpering past my head. I can hear that thing still, sometimes.

"I got clear away and made Formosa, and what became of that girl and her fancy man I don't know. Hers wasn't what you might call strictly Christmas behavior, as you might say, but then, you see, she was a pagan and didn't know anything about our traditions and ways."

THE MAN FROM SULU flung the stump of his cigar over the rail and rose up from his chair. The luncheon bugle had just gone.

3: Under The Flame Trees

The Story-teller, July 1922

I WAS SITTING in front of Thibaud's Café one evening when I saw Lewishon, whom I had not met for years.

Thibaud's Café, I must tell you first, is situated on Coconut Square, Noumea. Noumea has a bad name, but it is not at all a bad place if you are not a convict. Neither is New Caledonia, take it all together, and that evening, sitting and smoking and listening to the band and watching the crowd, and the dusk taking the flame trees, it seemed to me for a moment that Tragedy had withdrawn, that there was no such place as the Isle Nou out there in the harbor and that the musicians making the echoes ring to the Sambre-et-Meuse were primarily musicians, not convicts.