The Sapphire E-Book

A. E. W. Mason

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Major Alfred Edward Woodley Mason (7 May 1865 Dulwich, London – 22 November 1948 London) was a British author and politician. He is best remembered for his 1902 novel „The Four Feathers”. His short story „The Sapphire” follows a Sapphire given to a Captain Michael Crowther by his Burmese wife who he is deserting. When he finally decides to return to them he finds them now out of his reach and so he becomes a Buddhist Monk. However, the Sapphire that now adorns a temple is stolen and so begins an adventure to track down the missing gem. Sometimes violence or threatened violence accompanies it. Also, love and adventure followed Sapphire’s trail across half the world...

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER I. IN THE FOREST

CHAPTER II. THE PACKET

CHAPTER III. FIRST APPEARANCE OF THE SAPPHIRE

CHAPTER IV. PRISONERS OF THE SUN

CHAPTER V. THE DOOR CLOSES

CHAPTER VI. CHILDREN AT PLAY

CHAPTER VII. UNCLE SUNDAY

CHAPTER VIII. THE FIRST ASCENT OF THE DENT DU PAGODA

CHAPTER IX. ON ADAM’S PEAK

CHAPTER X. AGAIN THE SHADOW

CHAPTER XI. THE MAGIC PIPE

CHAPTER XII. FEAR AND IMOGEN

CHAPTER XIII. THE INDIAN

CHAPTER XIV. A COUNCIL AT THE ROCK TEMPLE

CHAPTER XV. THE LAST OF THE PEAK

CHAPTER XVI. THE SILENT ROOM

CHAPTER XVII. THE MAN FROM LIMOGES

CHAPTER XVIII. IMOGEN ASKS QUESTIONS

CHAPTER XIX. JILL LESLIE

CHAPTER XX. THE FIRST NIGHT OF DIDO

CHAPTER XXI. A SUMMARY

CHAPTER XXII. AT THE MASQUERADE BALL

CHAPTER XXIII. LETTY RANSOME’S HANDBAG

CHAPTER XXIV. THE FOURTH THEFT

CHAPTER XXV. THE CROWN JEWEL

CHAPTER XXVI. CROOKS ALL

CHAPTER XXVII. THE LAST

CHAPTER I. IN THE FOREST

I CANNOT pretend that the world is waiting for this story, for the world knows nothing about it. But I want to tell it. No one knows it better than I do, except Michael Crowther, and he, nowadays, has time for nothing but his soul.

And for only the future of that. He is not concerned with its past history. The days of his unregenerate activities lie hidden in a cloud behind his back. He watches another cloud in front of him lit with the silver–I can’t call it the gold–of the most extraordinary hope which ever warmed a myriad of human beings. But it is in that past history of his soul and in those activities that the heart of this story lies. I was at once near enough to the man and far enough away from him to accept and understand his startling metamorphoses. I took my part in that dangerous game of Hunt the Slipper which was played across half the earth. Dangerous, because the slipper was a precious stone set in those circumstances of crime and death which attend upon so many jewels. I saw the affair grow from its trumpery beginnings until, like some mighty comet, it swept into its blaze everyone whom it approached. It roared across the skies carrying us all with it, bringing happiness to some and disaster to others. I am Christian enough to believe that there was a pattern and an order in its course; though Michael Crowther thought such a doctrine to be mystical and a sin. Finally, after these fine words, I was at the core of these events from the beginning. Indeed I felt the wind of them before it blew.

Thus:

My father held a high position in the Forest Company and I was learning the business from the bottom so that when the time came I might take his place. I had been for the last six months travelling with the overseer whose province it was to girdle those teak trees which were ripe for felling. The life was lonely, but to a youth of twenty-two the most enviable in the world. There was the perpetual wonder of the forest; the changes of light upon branch and leaf which told the hours like the hands of a clock; the fascination to a novice of the rudiments of tree-knowledge, the silence and the space; and some very good shooting besides. Apart from game for the pot, I had got one big white tiger ten feet long as he lay, a t’sine, and a few sambur with excellent heads. I had the pleasant prospect, too, of returning to England for the months of the rainy season, and giving the girls there a treat they seldom got.

I parted from the overseer in order to make the Irrawaddy at Sawadi, a little station on the left bank of the river below Bhamo, but above the vast cliff which marks the entrance to the Second Defile. The distance was greater than a long day’s march, but one of the Company’s rest-houses was built conveniently a few miles from the station. I reached it with my small baggage train and my terrier, about seven o’clock of the evening. A small bungalow was raised upon piles with steps leading up to the door, and a hut with the kitchen and a sleeping-place for the servants was built close by. Both the buildings were set in a small clearing. I ate my dinner, smoked a cheroot, put myself into my camp bed and slept as tired twenty-two should sleep, with the immobility of the dead.

But towards morning some instinct alert in a subconscious cell began to ring its tiny bells and telegraph a warning to my nerve centres that it would be wise to wake up. I resisted, but the bells were ringing too loudly–and suddenly I was awake. I was lying upon my left side with my face towards the open door, and fortunately I had not moved when I awaked. The moon rode high and the clearing to the edge of the trees lay in a blaze of silver light. Against that clear bright background at the top of the steps, on the very threshold of the door, a huge black panther sat up like a cat. His tail switched slowly from side to side and his eyes stared savagely into the dark room. They were like huge emeralds, except that no emerald ever held such fire.

“He wants my terrier dog, Dick,” I explained to myself. I could hear the poor beast shivering under the bed. “But that won’t help me if he crouches and springs.”

My rifle lay on a table across the room. To jump out of bed and make a dash for it was merely to precipitate the brute’s attack. Moreover, even were I to reach it, it was unloaded. So I lay still except for my heart; and the panther sat still except for his tail. He was working out his tactics; I was hoping that I was not shivering quite so cravenly as my unhappy little terrier dog beneath my bed. As I watched, to my utter horror the panther began to crouch, very slowly, pushing back his haunches, settling himself down upon them for a spring. And that spring would land him surely on the top of the bed and me.

I found myself saying silently to myself, and stupidly:

“Here I finish. This is where I get off. I hope it won’t hurt.... People who have been mauled say that it doesn’t. I shall know about that, however. He’ll probably smash my face in. Beastly!”

But while my thoughts were stupid, my right hand was acting very cleverly. It slipped down to the floor on the far side of my narrow camp bedstead. It sought, found, and grasped one of my heavy walking shoes. Until that moment it seemed to have been acting quite independently of me. But as I felt the weight of the shoe, I took command of it. I sat up suddenly, yelled with all my voice and threw with all my strength. By good fortune my aim was straight. The heavy, nailed heel struck the beast hard between the shining eyes when he was on the very point of springing. No doubt the shoe hurt, but the panther even so was more startled than hurt. He uttered one yelp, turned tail, and streaked across the clearing into the forest, black and swift as some incarnation of Satan overtaken by the dawn. I was out of bed the next instant; I slipped a dressing-gown over my pyjamas, put on my shoes, and fixed a clip of cartridges in my rifle.

I fumbled over that proceeding. For now that the moment of danger had passed, I felt the animal’s great pad slapping down on my face and wiping it away. I smelt its fetid breath. And I probably felt and smelt more acutely than I should have done had it actually leaped. However, the clip was shot into its sockets at last. Then I waited on the verandah in the hope that my panther might return. And I waited. And I waited.

I had an odd feeling that the forest was waiting for him too, listening for the tiniest rustle of its undergrowth, watching for him to charge out of that tangled wall. I had never known silence so complete. I was prepared, of course, for my camp servants to sleep through that or any other racket. It would have needed the last trump to rouse them and they might have overslept themselves even then. But the hush was so deep that I was aware of it less as a negation of sound than as a new form of activity. I tried my pulse; it was now perfectly steady. I was not excited. There was not a drop of sweat upon my forehead. Nor do I think that I am particularly vain. But for the rest of that night I felt myself to be the axis of a world in suspense.

The panther did not return. My fox-terrier crept out, and still whimpering and shivering, nestled close against my side. The glamour of the moonlight took on a shade of grey. The clearing, the crowded boles of the great teak trees were bathed now in a spectral and unearthly light. Then darkness came, black and blinding, like a cloak flung over the head. There was no longer forest or clearing. There was nothing but one man with a rifle across his knees of which he could only see the speck of its ivory foresight. But during all these changes my sense of expectation never lifted. It changed, however, as the night changed. I no longer waited for my panther. My mind had lost sight of him, as my eyes had lost sight of the forest. What it was I waited for I had no idea. But it was for something big, forming somewhere out of the reach of knowledge. Nor did the morning help me. I marched into the little village of Sawadi merely conscious that I had passed the oddest night in all my experience.

On the stern-wheel steamer Dagonet I made the acquaintance of its Captain, Michael Crowther.

CHAPTER II. THE PACKET

DURING the morning Captain Crowther stood beside his helmsman at the high wheel on the roof of the steamer. The Second Defile with its monstrous, high cliff, its racing waters, and the unmanageable great rafts of teak wood floating down to Rangoon presented always a delicate problem in navigation. But Captain Crowther certainly knew his business. He edged his steamer in here, thrust a raft aside there, and by lunch-time the hills had fallen back and we were thrashing down the broader waterway to Schwegu. At luncheon Crowther took the head of the table and I found that a place had been laid for me at his elbow. He was a man of thirty-six years or so, and he had the sort of hard, leering, and wicked face the early craftsmen were so fond of carving on the groins and pillars of French cathedrals. I took a dislike to him at my first glance.

“You are Mr. Martin Legatt of the Forest Corporation,” he said to me as I took my seat.

“Yes.”

“I am Michael D. Crowther, the Captain of the Dagonet”; and he spoke with so violent an American accent that I felt sure at once that he was an Englishman.

“Press the flesh,” said I, extending my hand, and equal, I hoped, to the occasion.

The stewards placed great basins of soup in front of each of us. There were eight passengers besides myself, so far as I remember. Michael Crowther consumed his soup with a little finger crooked from a suburban past and almost an excess of good breeding. When he had finished–and he deserved every drop of it for his skill in wriggling so quickly through the Second Defile–he said:

“A solitary life yours, Mr. Legatt. Gee, I don’t think that I could stick it for a week.”

I had all a young man’s inclination to make his ways look magnificent and unusual; and the presence of the eight tourists was a temptation to embroidery. But Captain Crowther was the last man in the world to whom I would have tried to explain the magic which forest life then held for me. So I answered with a show of indifference:

“There are compensations, Captain. I don’t suppose, for instance, that there is a single person on board who is feeling half the pleasure I am at this moment from simply stretching my legs out under a civilised dining-table with the knowledge that I have nothing to do all the afternoon except lounge in a long chair and watch the river-banks go by.”

“Well, each man to his taste,” Captain Crowther remarked. He was kind enough to look me over with approval. “I should have thought that a young fellow like you, however–why, holy snakes! I reckon you never came across a bird from one end of the month to the other.”

For a moment I was mystified, but the knowing wink with which Crowther supported his remark was a sufficiently explanatory footnote.

“Nary a bird,” I answered.

The tourists looked up intelligently. They were going to obtain information at first hand about the forests of Burma. Two ladies of middle age sat opposite to me–the two inevitable English ladies to be met with on any steamer and any train within the world’s circumference. One of them, the younger I suppose by a couple of years, said eagerly:

“Not a bird! Now isn’t that strange? Would you say that that was particularly Oriental?”

“My dear!” the friend chided her by the right of, say, her two years’ seniority. “After all, we have our birdless grove at Goodwood–or rather the Duke has his.”

She was standing up gallantly for her country. Privately she might think it was down and out, publicly you couldn’t beat it. Even if it came to a comparison of birdlessness, the gorgeous East had nothing on England. Wasn’t there the famous Grove?

The junior of the pair, however, objected to corrections at the dinner-table. She bridled and answered with a definite tartness.

“I have heard grave doubts thrown upon that story–” she began, but I thought it time to stop a rift which might in the end split a pleasant fellowship. I interrupted her.

“I am afraid that the birds of Captain Crowther’s vocabulary are not the birds which nest in trees.”

The ladies were puzzled; Captain Crowther was noisily delighted. He slapped the flat of his hand upon the table.

“That’s a good one! That’s a witticism, that is, Mr. Legatt!” He felt in his pockets. “I keep a little book to jot down the wise-cracks I hear. “Not the birds...’ ” And pulling out his book he wrote my poor little remark down, with a final stab of his pencil at the end which no doubt it deserved. “And not a pal to hobnob with over a glass of something?” he continued.

“A pal to hobnob with from time to time, yes, but not a glass of something. And talking of glasses”–I turned towards the steward–“I would like a whisky and soda.”

“With me,” said the Captain.

I sat up.

“Oh no, please!”

“With me,” Crowther repeated, waving a hand to the steward; and there was an end of the matter. I couldn’t make a scene, of course, but I grew hot with resentment and I talked no more until the end of the banquet. All the meals upon the Irrawaddy steamers are banquets, even the breakfasts which are little trifles of four set courses. I watched, however, and noticed that the other passengers were as uncomfortable as myself. Michael Crowther was behaving like a profiteer pressing drinks upon his poorer friends in his new nickel-plated yacht. I should have to come to an understanding with him before the hour of dinner.

All through the afternoon, however, Captain Crowther stood by the high wheel driving his steamer down the stream. It was very pleasant on the great triangular porch in front of the saloon. The chant of the two men with the sounding-poles announcing the depth of the water, the thud and thunder of the great stern-wheel; the banks now falling back in flat, green rice-fields, now closing up with jungle-clothed hills, and perhaps a great white-legged buffalo knee-deep in the water; a village here, a village there, and always a pagoda; the red poles marking the channel upon the one side and the white poles upon the other; the long rafts where the steersman seated on a high throne with an immense sweep in his hands looked like the steersman of a Greek trireme in a picture; all the accessories of sound and prospect filled the long afternoon for me with enchantment.

But towards evening Crowther came down from his sentry-box on the roof to the second wheel on the porch. Here was my opportunity, but for the moment I was too lazy to take it. The huge headlight in the bows was turned on. For the moment it threw merely a grey and rather ghostly beam down the river, a beam hardly noticeable except when it struck a sand-bank. Then it became a radiance. But the darkness rushed upon us, the sky blazed with stars and the beam became a thick column of bright gold along which myriads of white moths, like the flakes of a heavy snow-storm driven by a high wind, streamed to their death on the burning glass of the projector.

I got up from my chair then and went to the Captain. He was standing by the wheel, but the First Officer was steering so that he was free. I said:

“Captain, I want to be clear about this. I’m a passenger on an Irrawaddy steamer, and if I ask you at some odd time to have a drink with me or you ask me to have one with you–that’s all in order. But if you insist on paying for what I drink with my meals you’re going to force me to drink nothing but water till we reach Mandalay, and I’m tired of water.”

I expect that it sounded rather priggish, but most young men have a touch of the prig in them and I like the others. Captain Crowther was certainly taken aback, but he had no time to answer me. For at that moment we rounded a bend of the river and a petrol storm-lamp upon the bank lit up a little square of sand, a group of people in bright silk skirts, and a few booths backed by trees.

“Tagaung,” said the First Officer. He rang the engine-room bell, set the indicator at half-speed and put his helm up. I had said my say and was glad to pass on to another subject.

“We stay the night here, I suppose?” I said.

Captain Crowther looked at me quickly and queerly. The First Officer grinned.

“No,” Captain Crowther replied curtly.

“It looks as if there were a good many rice-bags waiting, sir,” said the First Officer.

The First Officer was puzzled now. There was indeed a parapet of rice-bags built up on the shore.

“All the more for the next boat then,” said Crowther sharply. “I’ll wait half an hour here. I have orders to reach Mandalay as early as possible to-morrow, so I shall push on to Thabeikyin to-night.”

The First Officer was utterly at a loss. His eyebrows went up to the roots of his hair. I thought indeed that he was on the point of protesting. But Michael Crowther stood with his underlip thrust out and a black look upon his face which would have stopped any subordinate from questioning his commands.

“Very well, sir,” said the officer, and the Dagonet sidled up to the bank and was made fast. The great headlight was swung round towards the shore and lighted up the little settlement, the great tamarinds and fig-trees behind it and the groups in the open square. It was like a tiny scene upon a stage fantastically bright, set in a proscenium of ebony. A general scene of coloured movement to prepare us for the appearance of the principal characters. I walked aft and, leaning upon the rail of the ship, watched it; the long prison wall of the brown rice-bags melting down to a garden wall and then here and there without any order, to a terrace parapet as though a bombardment had blown breaches through it; a procession of men tramping down the mud-bank and up the gangway to the lower deck with the bags upon their heads, and then back again with no bags at all, purposeful as ants. I lifted my eyes to the illuminated square and I suddenly saw the principals take the stage.

Captain Crowther first. He came from the darkness of the huts behind the square and for a moment I doubted whether it could be he, so imperceptibly had he vanished from his ship, and so completely had my attention been engrossed by the busy spectacle. But it was the man. I recognised the shortish, thick-set figure; I could see the gold badge upon his cap and count the gold stripes upon his sleeve. He was not alone. The First Officer’s grin when I asked whether we were to stay the night at Tagaung and his perplexity when the Captain definitely answered “No,” were explained to me. For here was Captain Crowther the centre of a small family group. A young and pretty Burmese woman in a gay tartan skirt of silk with a rose in her black hair, walked at his side. And she held by the hand a little girl whose hair was fairer than her own and her skin less brown. The pretty Burmese woman was pleading earnestly at one moment, and coaxing daintily the next with a small, appealing hand laid upon his arm. The little girl whom I took to be about eight years old, every now and then added her entreaties, setting the palms of her hands together in prayer, catching hold of the hem of his jacket and jumping up and down on her toes. There could not be a doubt of their relationship. The mother, though her feet were bare, had put the child into white socks and little brown shoes to emphasise that she was white, and their supplications were as easy to understand as they would have been had they been uttered within my hearing. They were all in the one word: “Stay!”

I looked at Crowther. He was a picture of compunction and regret. He looked at his ship. He took off his cap and scratched his head and shook it. I could see his face clearly now. He was the most woebegone man one could ever see. A martyr to duty. He would stay if he could, but he was only a servant. He had his orders. He must go. On the next trip he would not be so hurried. Et cetera. And et cetera.

I should have thought it the prettiest little romantic scene of happiness deferred if I had not had a conviction that Michael Crowther was merely giving a performance. I had no belief in those orders. He had only to make an early start on the next morning and running downstream he could reach Mandalay before noon. The young woman ceased to plead, her face lost its vivacity and then crumpled like a child’s when the tears come. A movement of irritation and a sharp order from the Captain checked her, and the next moment the child plucked at her skirt. It seemed to me that she was reminding her mother of something which, in her distress, she had forgotten. Certainly the trio turned aside from the lighted space. They were just visible still but they were amongst the shadows and I could no longer distinguish their movements or the expressions upon their faces. They stood thus for a few minutes and then Captain Crowther emerged again into the light, but alone. He walked quickly down the slope of the bank to the gangway and he carried a small package in his hand. It should have been a box and the name of the lady who gave it to him should have been Pandora. So many troubles and misfortunes tumbled out of it for all of us.

CHAPTER III. FIRST APPEARANCE OF THE SAPPHIRE

THE great headlight was switched on to the channel, the Dagonet shook and rumbled from stem to stern, the gap widened between it and the shore. I stood by the rail of the ship aft of the saloon. In a few minutes nothing of Tagaung was visible but the storm-lamp on the ground in the tiny square. It diminished to a spark. A cool wind blew through the ship. The spark on the shore flickered. I suppose that I had been more deeply moved by the odd episode than I was aware; and there’s always, I think, a particular sadness, not of separations but of leaving people behind. Anyway, that little shaking flame in the heart of the darkness seemed to me the very image and symbol of a soul in great distress. I turned to find Michael Crowther at my elbow. He, too, was watching the tiny flame wavering, pleading, desperately calling. A bend of the river hid it from our sight.

I wondered what Crowther’s reactions would be to its utter disappearance. I turned and looked at him. His face was one wide smile of gross content.

“That’s that,” said he, and followed his words with a great gasp of relief. He slapped the pocket of his jacket and I noticed that it bulged unnaturally. He winked cheerfully at me and strode forward through the saloon. He took the wheel himself, smiling like a man fresh out of prison, and between the white poles and the red he drove his steamer down to Thabeikyin. The river was low and now and again the steamer grounded with a bump upon a sand-bank and must go astern and wriggle itself clear.

“I’ll dine afterwards,” Crowther said to the steward when the dinner-bell rang; and the dinner for the passengers was over when the ship was moored to the bank. Thabeikyin is bigger than most of the villages along the upper river. It is the port of the Ruby Mines sixty miles away over the hills at Mogok. It has a Government rest-house, a telegraph office and a row of shops along the river’s edge. The other passengers accordingly trooped on shore, leaving the saloon to the Captain and the cool, dark porch to me. But I was not to enjoy my solitude for long. Crowther was laughing aloud whilst he ate. He was in one of those moods of high spirits and relief when he must confide or burst. Anyone with a pair of ears would have served, and mine were the only pair handy. He turned round towards the open door and called to me.

“Won’t you join me, Mr. Legatt?” he asked.

I rose reluctantly.

“If you’ll take a liqueur with me,” I answered.

“A double one, if that’ll make you easy.” Was there a hint of contempt in his voice? There was. “You’re a very sensitive, delicate-minded young man, aren’t you?” he continued, and then shouted to the steward.

“At Mr. Legatt’s expense,” he shouted.

I was all at sea with this man. I spoke to him like a meticulous prig and he showed me that he thought me one, and there I sat with no more power of repartee than an owl. I ordered a cup of coffee and a glass of brandy for myself, and for a while Crowther forgot me. He wagged his head and chuckled and winked, and every now and then his hand stole secretly down to his side pocket and felt it. The side pocket still bulged. The little packet which I had seen in his hand at Tagaung was still concealed there. I had not a doubt of it and I became possessed suddenly by a quite unreasonable curiosity to know what it contained. I did not have to ask, however. For as I leaned upon the table Crowther nudged my elbow with his.

“Tagaung!” said he. “I saw you on the deck and you saw me on the beach. You can put two to two and make four, eh? Well, this time you’ve only to make three.”

It dawned upon Crowther that he had cracked a joke.

“By Jiminy, that’s a good one!” he roared, and he flapped his hand upon the table. “Two and two make three! I call that wit, Mr. Legatt. Cripes, I do! Just as smart as your birds in the trees, what? Two and two make three. Me and Ma Shwe At and little Ma Sein.”

“Ma Sein’s the child, I suppose?”

“That’s so, Mr. Legatt. Little Miss Diamond. Pretty kid, eh?”

He cocked his head sideways at me, seeking admiration not so much for little Miss Diamond as for himself, who had been clever enough to beget her.

“Yours?” I asked indifferently.

Michael D. Crowther was hurt.

“Well, what do you think?” he cried indignantly. “Didn’t I tell you she was a pretty little kid? Of course she’s mine.”

One day or another, nine or ten years ago, young Crowther, newly appointed to the Irrawaddy Service with a single gold stripe upon his sleeve, had made the acquaintance of Ma Shwe At. He may have been the Junior Officer on one of the Bazaar boats, those travelling shops which, while carrying passengers, supply the river-side population. And Ma Shwe At may have come aboard to haggle merrily and daintily and very firmly for a strip of silk to make a new skirt or for some household implement. He may have been attached to a mail-boat which tied up at Tagaung for the night, and stepping ashore when his duty was done, have bought some trifle at her booth. I do not remember ever to have heard how the ill-assorted pair began its fateful courtship. It was difficult for me at the time to picture Michael Crowther without his arrogance and his leer, his loud laugh and his essential vulgarity. But no doubt youth had lent him its seemly mask and Ma Shwe At was flattered by the white man’s attentions. A trip or two more up and down the river and they contracted a Burmese marriage, as the phrase runs. Marriage has no ceremonial in that country. The religion of Buddha sets no seal upon it and offers no obstacle to divorce. Both states are matters of consent between the parties. The worldly wisdom of the village headman and the wishes of parents have in practice an influence, but there is no binding authority behind them.

“Of course she’s mine,” Crowther repeated. He drank a little of his brandy. I should be painting an untrue picture of the man if I did not state clearly that at that time when he was at his worst he was always a temperate drinker. He just took a sip of his brandy and his mind slipped away from this trifle of his fatherhood. He nudged me again with his elbow.

“I’ll give you a word of advice, Mr. Legatt. Watch out! You haven’t got my authority, of course, behind you. On the other hand you have some looks I haven’t got,” he was kind enough to say. “These Burmese girls with their white teeth and the roses in their dark hair. Pretty little playthings, all right, all right! But passionate, too! Take care they don’t get their hooks into you! The taste of the flesh, what?” And he drew in his breath with a long, sucking sound which was simply revolting. He drew a line with a stumpy forefinger on the cloth. “Toys on this side! The things of life and death on the other!”

Very sound advice, no doubt; but whilst he was speaking I was wondering with all the conceit of my youth how incredible it was that this blatant, leering creature should have inspired passion into any woman. But the vision of Ma Shwe At with her flower of a face crumpling into tears and ugliness rose before my eyes. It was not incredible. It was intolerable.

“Full of fun, too!” Captain Michael D. Crowther continued. “The tricks of a kitten! Make you laugh till your sides ache. But, by Jiminy–!” And he let himself go in a paroxysm of mirth, a gross and shaking figure. He rolled in his chair, he choked and he bellowed till the tears ran down his cheeks. If there had been any real heartiness or geniality in his laughter I might have called it Homeric, it was so loud and encompassing. But he was applauding himself for his cunning and congratulating himself upon his astonishing good luck.

“Of all the good laughs Ma Shwe At ever gave me,” he explained, “the best she gave me to-night.”

He pushed his coffee-cup and his glass away. He slipped his hand at last into the bulging side pocket which had so provoked my curiosity and drew out of it a little bag of pink silk with the mouth knotted tight by a pink silk string. He laid it on the table in front of him and it rattled as he set it down.

“This surely is my lucky day,” he said. “Who could have guessed that just at this time–when we’re on this trip–not the last one and not the next one, a band of dacoits should start in robbing the houses round Tagaung? Fairly providential, I call it.”

He fell to chuckling again and to pushing about the little bag with the tip of his forefinger like a cat playing with a mouse.

“Can you tell me what this little silk bag holds, Mr. Legatt?”

I had an idea of what it held. For his words had given me a clue. But he wanted to tell me, not to hear me guess correctly. So I merely shook my head. Michael D. Crowther was pleased. He looked at me tantalisingly.

“Not a notion, eh?”

“I can’t say that. I’ve got a notion.”

But Crowther did not propose to hear it. He interrupted me quickly:

“Well, I had better tell you at once and put you out of your misery, Mr. Legatt. This bag holds all the little bits of jewellery and ornament which I have given to Ma Shwe At during the last ten years.”

He looked at me for an exclamation. So I made it.

“Really?”

It was not very adequate, but then Michael D. Crowther’s generosity had not been very adequate either.

“Yes,” said he.

“And since there were dacoits busy in her neighbourhood Ma Shwe At gave them to you to keep safe for her?”

He sat back in his chair and his shoulders heaved with his merriment. It was a very dainty affair, that little bag, made from a piece of silk woven, no doubt, by Ma Shwe At herself, and then delicately embroidered with her name and fitted with a silk string to match; all so that it might make a fitting tabernacle to hold the gifts of her lover. It seemed to me shameful that after so many hours and so much loving care spent upon it, it should serve only for mocking laughter in the saloon of the Dagonet.

“Just made on purpose!” Crowther exclaimed. “Don’t that add to the joke!”

“Yes, I want to hear that joke,” said I.

Captain Crowther wiped his eyes.

“It’s a corker of a joke. A pound to a penny you’ll never guess it, quick as you are.”

“That’s very probable,” said I.

“Well, it’s this!” cried Crowther, and once more the humour of the situation overwhelmed him. “I’m never going back to Tagaung. I’ve resigned from the service. This is my last passage. I’m for home.”

The news did take me by surprise. I pushed my chair back.

“You’re going to England!”

“I am that, and by the first boat, sir. I’ve been here sixteen mortal years and I’ve got to run or I’ll never get away.” And I found myself looking at a stranger. The Crowther I knew had already run away. The triumph had gone from him. His laughter had died away. His arrogance had dwindled to a pin’s point. Behind the sham and the shoddy I suddenly touched something real and big–fear. Fear was bright in his eyes. His voice was uneasy. His shoulders took black care upon them and threw it off again and took it on again blacker than ever. I was never to forget the startling change in him.

“It turns my heart right over when I remember the young fellows I’ve seen come out to the East slappin’ their chests, going to found great business houses and make great fortunes, and in a few years the sun and the indolence and the ease have melted their bones to putty. Prisoners, Mr. Legatt! Prisoners of the sun!”

“Lots succeed,” I rejoined.

Crowther nodded his head gloomily.

“The to-and-fro people. The men who can go up into the hills. A few of the others too, extra hardwood men. But for the ruck and run of us–we’re the little grey flower Ouida used to write about. We flourish above the snow line. Look here!”

He took out of his breast pocket a short stubby nigger-black cheroot.

“Do you see that? A cheroot. A Watson Number One. Twenty for twopence. That’s the proper emblem of Burma–not a pagoda nor an elephant nor an image of Buddha nor a pretty-pretty girl in a silk skirt–but just this, a cheap, ugly, strong black cheroot. For why? Because once you’ve got the taste for it, the finest cigar out of Havana’ll be nothing to you but brown paper in a schoolboy’s pipe. This is what you’ll want. No, sir, I’m not going to wander up and down the Irrawaddy in the sunshine any more. I’m afraid. What with my commissions and my pay and a lucky speculation or two I’ve made a bit. Often there’s a tourist on board who’ll put you on to a good thing. So whilst Michael D. Crowther still remembers the flavour of a Havana, he’s going to quit the cheroot.”

He stopped, struck a match, lit his cheroot and inhaled deeply the smoke of it. I do not know what vague association of ideas made me ask idiotically:

“What does D. stand for?”

He looked at me blankly.

“Eh?”

“Michael D. Crowther,” I said, throwing all my weight on to the D. Upon my word, he didn’t know. His ignorance suddenly enlightened me. His over-emphasised American accent, his use of American colloquialisms, the Michael D. Crowther–they were all tokens of his enthusiasm for the great legend of American hustle. For myself, I have never been able to believe that when things had to be done the Americans are really much slippier than other races. People still make a song about it, but I have been to New York. You may see two gentlemen any morning hurrying along Fifth Avenue to keep an appointment. But it does not necessarily follow that they are so bolstered and crammed with business that they have not a moment to spare. It may just mean that they have been drinking a cocktail in the office. And I know no country where it takes longer to cash a cheque except France. However, Captain Michael D. Crowther was obsessed by the notion of an abnormally slick, swift race of men, whose methods he meant to transplant in London.

“I’m going to be a hundred per cent Englishman. Got me?” he said. “I’m going to be an outside broker. I am going to rattle up that old Stock Exchange in Throgmorton Street till it’s dizzy. See here, Mr. Legatt! When you read a fine notice of a company put on the market by Michael D. you come along to me and you’ll hit the sky. I’ve taken a liking to you.”

I could not respond in the same hearty spirit but I did my best, for I was grateful for the odd little glimpse he had given me of another man whom, as yet, I did not know at all.

“That’s very kind of you, Captain,” I returned. “But meanwhile, what of Ma Shwe At and Ma Sein?”

Captain Crowther stared at me.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re going to leave them in the lurch?”

“I bequeath them here and now to you,” he replied with a grin.

His anxieties had slipped off his shoulders. He was back again in all the enjoyment of his impish vulgarity. “But you must make your own presents. I can’t have you handing out mine as if you had paid for them, can I now? It wouldn’t be reasonable.”

He turned his eyes again to the little silk bag. He took it up and untied the strings and dipped his fingers into it as if it were a lucky bag at a bazaar. He brought out a filigree bracelet. “I bought that at Mandalay.” Then came a silver necklet. “I bought that cheap from a pedlar in Rangoon, so cheap that I reckon he stole it.” A pair of nadoungs of gold, the plugs with which the women ornament their ears, followed; then a jade pendant and an acorn of a deep red amber slung upon a gilt chain. “I bought those at Bhamo. Cost me a sovereign the lot.” He drew out an anklet next, then an elephant, that, too, carved from amber, with a dead fly in the middle of it, and finally, tiring of his examination, he emptied the bag on to the cloth. It was, after all, a trumpery collection of trinkets hardly worth stealing from a girl by a man who proposed to go home and upset Throgmorton Street. But Michael Crowther gloated over it, pushing the shining, tinkling little gifts of his about as if he had recovered the lost treasure of the Cocos Islands. Suddenly he bent forward. He made a wall about the heap with his hands. He sat with his mouth open and his eyes staring out of his head like the eyes of a fish.

“My Gawd!” he whispered.

Then he scattered the trinkets here, there and everywhere with a sweep of the palms, and sat back. Burning on the white cloth by itself lay a big sapphire. It was certainly, if not the most precious, the most lovely stone which I had ever seen. By some miracle of nature it was a perfect square; it was thick through; and in colour it was the deep bright blue of tropical seas. Crowther lifted it reverently, stood up and held it against the lamp swinging above the table. It was flawless. Crowther’s limited vocabulary of oaths held nothing which could cope with his amazement. He could only sit down again and stare, speechless.

“Well, one thing’s clear,” said I. “That’s not one of your presents to Ma Shwe At.”

Crowther looked at me as if he knew me for a born fool.

“I give her that! Why, Mr. Legatt, that stone’s worth money.” He pulled at his moustache for a moment. “It comes from one of the native workings up to Mogok, I’ll bet.” He jerked his thumb landwards. Sixty miles away on the far side of the mountain chain lay the great ruby mines, where sapphires, spinels, zircons and all sorts of minor gems were to be found amongst the rubies. As you drew near to the town on that undulating road through the forest where the monkeys played, you passed on this side and on that, native claims with their primitive equipments. But, nevertheless, every now and then some stone of real value was retrieved by those native equipments from the earth. “Yes, that’s where it comes from,” Captain Crowther repeated, and his face darkened. “Only, who gave it to her?” He thumped the table with his fist and added to the natural unpleasantness of his face another degree of unpleasantness. “Who gave a stone like that to Ma Shwe At? By gum, I’d like to know that!” And his voice descended to a whisper or rather a hiss between his closed teeth. “Jiminy, but I would!”

He sat, obviously trying to remember the people who might have made the gift, and brooding over their names like a man with a crime to be committed upon his mind. He shook his head in the end and made a statement which, coming from him, paralysed me by its stupendous simplicity.

“Anyway, these Burmese girls have no morals,” he said.