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Title: The Sapphire
Author: Mason, A. E. W. [Alfred Edward Woodley] (1865-1948)
Date of first publication: 1933
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1933
   [first edition]
Date first posted: 29 January 2016
Date last updated: 29 January 2016
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1298

This ebook was produced by
Al Haines, Cindy Beyer, Mark Akrigg
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.






                              THE SAPPHIRE

                                   BY
                             A. E. W. MASON

                              L O N D O N
                       HODDER & STOUGHTON LIMITED
                                  1933




         _The characters in this book are entirely imaginary,_
              _and have no relation to any living person._

      _Printed in Great Britain for Hodder & Stoughton, Limited,_
         _by Wyman & Sons, Ltd., London. Fakenham and Reading._




                                CONTENTS


              I. IN THE FOREST
             II. THE PACKET
            III. FIRST APPEARANCE OF THE SAPPHIRE
             IV. PRISONERS OF THE SUN
              V. THE DOOR CLOSES
             VI. CHILDREN AT PLAY
            VII. UNCLE SUNDAY
           VIII. THE FIRST ASCENT OF THE DENT DU PAGODA
             IX. ON ADAM'S PEAK
              X. AGAIN THE SHADOW
             XI. THE MAGIC PIPE
            XII. FEAR AND IMOGEN
           XIII. THE INDIAN
            XIV. A COUNCIL AT THE ROCK TEMPLE
             XV. THE LAST OF THE PEAK
            XVI. THE SILENT ROOM
           XVII. THE MAN FROM LIMOGES
          XVIII. IMOGEN ASKS QUESTIONS
            XIX. JILL LESLIE
             XX. THE FIRST NIGHT OF _DIDO_
            XXI. A SUMMARY
           XXII. AT THE MASQUERADE BALL
          XXIII. LETTY RANSOME'S HANDBAG
           XXIV. THE FOURTH THEFT
            XXV. THE CROWN JEWEL
           XXVI. CROOKS ALL
          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.

But his mood relaxed. He smacked his lips noisily. He had discovered a
compensation for their deplorable deficiency, and he added:

"But I am bound to say they're lousy with sex appeal."

As soon as I had recovered my balance I remarked:

"The problem is, how are you going to return the sapphire to her?"

Michael D. had looked at me before as if I was a fool. He now recoiled
from me as if I was a dangerous lunatic.

"But she give it to me!" he cried. "You were on the deck when I was on
the shore. You saw her. She give it me with her own hands."

I rose from my chair. I looked at him with dignity and cold disdain--or,
to speak truly, with as much of both those manifestations as I could
produce. It was the moment for one final annihilating phrase.
Unfortunately Captain Crowther discovered it before I did.

"You're spluttering, Mr. Legatt," he said pleasantly.

I was, too. The man was just a common thief. But so many epithets were
tumbling over one another in my mouth that not one of them would give
right of way to the other. I stood and spluttered and was saved by a
chirrup of voices from the beach.

The passengers were returning from their explorations. Captain Crowther
hurriedly swept his trinkets together and dropped them back into the
silk bag. He tore a scrap of linen from his napkin, wrapped the sapphire
in it, and put that into the bag more carefully. Then he tied the pink
strings tight about the mouth and back went the bag into his pocket. He
went out of the saloon and in a moment or two I heard him giving a
cheery welcome to his passengers as they climbed the companion from the
lower deck to the porch. I had no further speech with him that night.
After all, I argued, it was really no concern of mine whether he stole
the sapphire or returned it to its owner. But my argument left me still
uncomfortable and I did not sleep in my cabin until late.

Long before I awaked the next morning, the _Dagonet_ was rumbling down
the river to Mandalay. I was slow in coming to the breakfast-table, for
I did not wish to meet Captain Crowther. But I need not have been at so
much pains. He was long since perched beside the helmsman at the upper
steering house, and though the water was low he never touched a
sand-bank. We reached the big town before noon and I confess to some
disappointment at Michael D.'s proficiency at his job. I should have
liked him to have run plump on a sand-bank in midstream in full sight of
all the water-side people and to have wriggled there helplessly like a
butterfly with a pin through its body, an offence to his Company and a
joke to the rest of the world. But he ran neatly up to the river port.
It was crowded, steamer upon steamer moored to the bank and just one
small space half-way down the line. I did not think that Crowther could
possibly sidle into it without doing a lot of damage. But he did. He
might have been commanding an ocean-going mail-boat with twin screws, so
easily did he gentle his stern-wheel machine up to the bank. There she
was moored, her bows almost touching the stern of the steamer ahead, and
her stem almost touching the bows of the steamer abaft.

"Not so bad, Mr. Legatt," said Crowther genially, as he descended to the
porch. I was waiting for my baggage to be taken ashore. "Have a drink
before you go?"

"I think not," said I, towering frostily.

I caught a gleam of amusement in Crowther's eye.

"I believe you've got a come-over against me, Mr. Legatt," he said. "You
think I've not treated that girl up the river as a gentleman should. You
do indeed! I fancy you'll appreciate me better when you have more
experience of this country. But it's clear you don't appreciate me at
all now and I have a real respect for you, Mr. Legatt. I want you to
have the same for me."

"That's quite out of the question," I returned, looking him in the eye.

Crowther poked his head forward very earnestly.

"No, Mr. Legatt, you're wrong there. I can prove to you that you
misjudge me."

I laughed, scathingly I hoped.

"How?"

"This way."

Crowther took the small silk bag from his side pocket and balanced it on
the palm of his left hand. He made it dance a little so that the
trinkets which it held tinkled.

"I'll hand this bag over to you with all its contents, here and now, on
condition that you with your own hands return it to Ma Shwe At at
Tagaung."

He was as impressive as a man working the confidence trick, but I was
not to be taken in so easily. I shook my head.

"With all its contents--yes. But without the sapphire."

Captain Crowther drew himself up. He was dignified, he was hurt that
anyone should hold so low an opinion of his probity. With the neatness
of a conjuror demonstrating that there was no trickery in his magic, he
untied with his right hand the string of the bag and opened the mouth.

"Please, see for yourself, Mr. Legatt."

"I don't wish to."

"You accuse me. I ask you to be fair."

I had let myself in for this test. I did not see what else I could do
but obey him. I shrugged my shoulders and dipped my fingers into the
bag. The first thing which I pulled out was a stone wrapped in a strip
of linen.

"Will you open the wrapping and make sure that I haven't tricked you?"

I had not a doubt now that it was the sapphire which I held. The stone
was square, about the right thickness and the right size. Yet I felt
that I had been tricked--tricked into making a fool of myself. I dropped
the stone back into the bag.

"That's all right," I said reluctantly, and still more reluctantly: "I
am sorry."

"Now will you take it back to Tagaung?"

"I will not," I cried.

I was angry. I was on my way home. I had a few days' work waiting for me
in the office at Rangoon which I must complete before I started.

"I'll have nothing to do with it," I added.

"One day and one night upstream," said he.

"Your affairs are no concern of mine, Captain Crowther."

Captain Crowther appeared to be perplexed. He tilted his cap back with
his right hand and scratched his forehead.

"Yet you seemed to take a very definite interest in them, Mr. Legatt.
Come! Oblige me!"

He was still holding the little bag balanced on his outstretched palm. I
could not help wondering what would happen if I then and there took it
and agreed to return it. It was possible that Crowther had thought over
his conduct during the night and come to a more honest mind. I might be
wrong and hasty in my judgement. He had already surprised me once by his
fear of this easy and indolent country. Why not a second time? I was
tempted. I could not, however, sail upstream until to-morrow. It would
take me a day and a night to reach Tagaung, and there I should have to
wait perhaps the best part of a week for a steamer to bring me back
again. No, certainly not! Besides, though I seemed to recognise a sign
of grace in this proposal of Captain Crowther's, I wished that no link
of any kind should bind us together. I thrust my hands into my pockets.

"You've a surer way to return those ornaments."

"How?" Crowther asked earnestly.

"By handing them to your First Officer." I remembered the smile with
which the First Officer had heard my remark to Crowther that I supposed
that he was meaning to tie up at Tagaung for the night. "He'll recognise
Ma Shwe At, and I shouldn't. Give the bag to him."

"With that fine sapphire in it? Not on your life, Mr. Legatt."

"Seal up the bag then and trust it to one of your brother captains."

"To no one but you, Mr. Legatt. I don't want the whole world to think me
dippy just as I'm stepping off on a new career. It's up to you or up to
no one."

He shook the bag again at me till the ornaments inside of it clinked and
tinkled. Then with a sigh of resignation he dropped it again into his
pocket.

"Here's to-day's good deed sticking out a yard and we're both of us
turning our backs upon it. You were in such a taking last night, Mr.
Legatt, that I felt sure you'd oblige me this morning. However, I can't
say I'm sorry," and he suddenly burst into a laugh and made a
gutter-boy's grimace at me. My word, he had been laughing at me the
whole time! He had seen my baggage being taken on shore and carried up
the beach. He was confident that I would never turn round and go back to
Tagaung.

"Captain Crowther," I said, "I think that you are the most detestable
person I have ever met."

"Well, you do surprise me," replied Captain Crowther.

It was odd, but it was true. I must suppose that he expected me to take
him for a humorist. He was not speaking with any sarcasm. He really was
surprised.




                               CHAPTER IV
                          PRISONERS OF THE SUN


I SPENT the first year after my return to England in the London office
of my Company, acquiring knowledge of its internal economy, and enjoying
myself in the intervals. But the forest had set its seal on me and I
could never hear the wind rustling the leaves in a town square without
flying back upon the carpet of my dreams to the vast woodlands of the
Irrawaddy and seeing the elephants carry and arrange the huge teak logs.
At the beginning of the second year my father died, and what with the
settlement of his estate and the new dispositions which his death
entailed, I could not hope to find my way back again to Burma for
another eighteen months. I was thus two years and a half in England and
chiefly in London. Yet during all that time I neither met nor heard of
Michael Crowther. For all I knew he might be entertaining the great
world in Mayfair or occupying a cell in Maidstone Gaol. I thought the
latter alternative the more likely. If he had rattled the Stock
Exchange, as he promised to do, he had done it very quietly. But I could
never quite forget him, for from time to time I felt a foolish twinge of
remorse in that I had not taken him at his word and carried the silken
bag with its trinkets and its sapphire back to Ma Shwe At at Tagaung. I
did have the time, and I might at all events have sustained her pride by
pretending that in the interval Michael Crowther had died. But that
small opportunity had gone.

It was not, then, until the decline of the third year that I could with
any honesty towards my Company propose another visit to Burma. I made my
plans to leave England during the second week of December, being
persuaded to that date chiefly because it would save me from the
festivities of Christmas, an uncomfortable season for a man without a
family. My luggage was packed days before it was to be collected by the
Shipping Company's agents; and on the afternoon of a dank, raw Sunday,
the darkness beginning to fall and the air heavy with mist, I wandered
out from my lodging into a small neighbouring street of garages and
reconstructed houses much favoured by film stars. The hub of that
street, however, is a mighty church, and as I passed its door the
thunder of its organ called me in.

I stood at the back, facing the great altar ablaze with the golden light
of its many candles; and a tall priest with a red stole upon his
shoulders mounted into a pulpit set aloft above the congregation against
the farthest pillar of the nave. He preached in a high, clear voice upon
a text from Hosea about the valley of Achor and the door of hope. So
much I remember, and then my attention was diverted. For in front of
where I stood, at the end of the last row of benches, separated from me
by an open passage-way, sat Michael Crowther. It was the last place in
the world I should have expected to find him. I could only imagine that,
like myself, he had wandered by chance into the church as a refuge from
the chill and gloom outside. I noticed, however, that he sat very still,
like a man enthralled, and I wondered whether he had got religion, as
the saying goes. His head, with its thick and bristly hair, stood out in
relief against the distant candles on the altar and never moved. His
face was turned towards the preacher so that I could just see his heavy
jaw thrust out as I had seen it when he was feeling his way amongst the
sand-banks on the porch of the _Dagonet_. I made up my mind to speak to
him as soon as the service was over. But I did not get the chance. For
as the offertory plates began to be handed along the benches and the
chink of coins to be heard, Michael Crowther rose without shame to his
feet, and stalked past me out of the church. I said to myself: "That's
Michael D. He may not have rattled the Stock Exchange, but he's true to
type."

Towards the end of the week I travelled overland to Marseilles and
embarked for Rangoon with two complete years ahead of me before I needed
to return. I spent the first year in the forests of the Salween River.
But at the beginning of the second, I had occasion to travel again to
the upper waters of the Irrawaddy. I took the night train from Rangoon
to Mandalay, saw my baggage placed in my cabin on the steamer and then,
having still a few hours to spare, I took the usual walk towards the
Zegyo Bazaar. I say "towards," for I never reached it. In the street of
shops which led to it, a name upon a board caught my eye. The board
stretched above a shop and I should probably not have noticed it at all
but for the queer circumstance that at this very busy hour of the
morning a boy was putting up the shutters. Once I had noticed it I could
not turn my eyes away. For the name painted in bold white letters on a
black ground was:

                           MICHAEL CROWTHER.

There might be two Michael Crowthers of course, and both linked with
some sort of shackle to Mandalay. Coincidences are after all more usual
in life than in fiction. Or the great assault upon the Stock Exchange
had failed and its strategist had fled back to the lines he knew. It
occurred to me that if that were the case, the sooner I pushed along to
the Bazaar the less risk I had of being annoyed. To this day I don't
know why I loitered. But I did. I waited amongst the creaking
bullock-carts and the streams of passers-by: now a Shan from the hills
with an enormous hat upon his head, now a group of girls with tuberoses
in their black hair and silken skirts, and more gaiety in their laughter
than even in their clothes, a monk in his yellow robe with a shaven
head, a party of tourists holding above their helmeted heads white
umbrellas which would have condemned them to the stocks in King Thibaw's
day. I waited there in the blazing sunlight, and gradually and slowly I
was bewitched by an intense and inexplicable expectation. The feeling
was vaguely familiar to me. Yes, some where and when I had experienced
it before. It could really have nothing to do with Crowther's name upon
a board, I argued, for I had seen Crowther himself in the Farm Street
Church and not a nerve in me had thrilled. Yet here was I in a street of
Mandalay--enthralled. A man with a terrier dog at his heels pushed by
me, and I remembered when this same sense of expectation had possessed
and controlled me. It was in a moonlit clearing of the forest north of
the Second Defile. There I had waited for a panther--and something else.
Here I waited for Michael D. Crowther--and something else. There nothing
had happened. Here Michael D. Crowther did. For as I stood and waited,
he came bouncing out of his shop.

"Of all people, you!" he cried, and I drew back with a little jump. It
was perhaps the oddest circumstance, at all events at that time in our
acquaintanceship, that though he was often in my thoughts, the moment I
heard his voice I wanted to break away. "Now isn't that a piece of
luck?" he continued eagerly.

"Is it?" I asked. "For whom?"

Michael D. grinned.

"Cold!" he said, wagging his head at me. "Oh, very cold and biting, Mr.
Legatt. You know all the talk there is of Gandhi and his Untouchables.
Well, when I read of the Untouchables I always think of you."

"Thank you!" said I. "Good morning!"

As I moved on all the truculence left him. He ran after me and caught me
by the arm, and his hand shook as he held me.

"Please don't go!" he implored, with so notable a change of voice and so
humble a prayer in his eyes that I could not but stop. "I withdraw every
word. My tongue ran away with me. It often does with witty people. But
I've got to speak to you. I'll get a hat and give an order to my boy. I
won't be a second."

He was back in his shop almost before the sound of his words had ceased.
I thought: "What a fool I was not to slide past the shop with my head
turned the other way!" I asked myself immediately upon that: "After all,
aren't you a bit of a prig? Why shouldn't you stop and listen to him?"
And by the time I had put those questions Crowther had rejoined me.

He led me to a caf. We sat in the open under an awning. In front of us
across the road the wide, lily-starred moat slept about the walls of
Fort Dufferin; and as each of us drank a cool lime squash Crowther went
back with a curious eagerness and flurry to the last conversation we had
held four years before.

"You must have been surprised to see me here, Mr. Legatt?"

It was a difficult question to answer. I sought unwisely to put him at
his ease by suggesting that he had suffered no more than the common lot.

"Oh, I don't know," I answered. He was up in arms in a second. You might
disapprove of him, but you must not forget him. Above all you must not
find him uninteresting and become indifferent as to whether he failed or
succeeded.

"You can't have forgotten all those ambitions of mine," he cried
indignantly.

I in my turn was a little nettled.

"I really don't see why I shouldn't have."

He glared at me. Then he chuckled.

"But you haven't, anyway."

I laughed and climbed down.

"No, I haven't."

"Then you must have been surprised to see me," he insisted with some
petulance.

"All right. I _was_ surprised. I ought not to have been, but I was," I
acknowledged.

But Crowther was not appeased.

"And why oughtn't you to have been surprised, if you please, Mr.
Legatt?"

"Because I have been three years in London and never once in business or
any other circles did I hear your name."

Here was something Crowther could not question. He sat back in his chair
and nodded his head gloomily.

"I've been a great disappointment to myself, Mr. Legatt. I had stayed in
the East too long. I was a prisoner of the sun after all. Funny!
Governors and soldiers and big business chiefs can go back and hold
their own--men really of the same calibre as myself. I suppose that I am
more sensitive than most people, what?" I was careful not to interrupt
and to keep a very straight face. "Yes, I had got the habit of the
cheroot, and Havanas made me ill. I didn't realise it at first. No. I
hired a little flat in South Kensington and stood in Piccadilly Circus
and made a noise like Dick Whittington. I looked up all the smart
fellows I had any sort of link with. Queer thing! Most of them were a
good deal more cordial to me as a Captain on the Irrawaddy than as a man
starting in their own line of big business. There was one, the head of a
great financial family, who fairly sickened me, Mr. Legatt. I sent in my
card one morning and I was shown into the holy of holies, and he sat
back in his chair and looked at me without a word. I said to myself:
'That's good! That's the way! I'll make a note of that. He puts me at a
disadvantage.' So I started in on him. I had come home to put a little
pep into English methods, and he just looked at me. I could help him and
he could help me; I said Michael D. Crowther was going to get to work;
and he looked at me. I reckon I lost my head a bit then, but he only
looked at me, and I just had to come away. And he had never spoken one
word. I tell you I wondered for a moment whether pep didn't really mean
simply saying nothing. However, others put bits of business in my way.
But here's the amazing thing. They were little bits of business, but I
didn't bring them off. No, sir, I didn't succeed."

He was now merely Michael Crowther, a woebegone Englishman consoling
himself by the recital of his experiences. He had meant to be the big
noise; he was not even the baby's gurgle. He had planned to hit the
skies; he had not even flapped up off the earth.

"Other things besides the hustle made me shudder. The east wind, the
clear brown fog ten foot high and the miles of black soot on the top of
it, the cars bearing down on you and hooting death at you, and above all
the utterly damnable, chilly, disobliging loneliness of it all. I began
to pine for the colour and the ease and the good humour of the life I
knew here under skies which really laugh and a sun which really warms. I
wanted to hear the copper-smith bird tell me a real summer is coming.
Yes, Mr. Legatt, I had Burma in my bones, and the want of it made me
ache from head to foot. I'd have given all the hooting motor-cars in
Piccadilly for the creak of one bullock-wagon in Mandalay. The Havana
cigar--you can have the crop. What I wanted was a Watson Number One";
and as though he had forgotten it in the need to pour himself out from a
bottle and hold himself up in a glass against the light, he pulled a
cheroot from the pocket of his white drill jacket and lit it.

"I can understand all that," I said. "I am not so deeply rooted in
England myself. What bewilders me a little is not your return, but your
name over a shop."

Before now Michael Crowther had looked at me as if I was not all there.
I hate to be taken for a congenital idiot when I am making a perfectly
reasonable remark; and mine was a reasonable remark--in spite of Michael
Crowther and his question.

"Why should that bewilder you, Mr. Legatt?"

"Because"--I was huffy but I meant to be fair--"because from what I
remember of your navigation, you could have got another steamer by
asking for it. Or if there wasn't a steamer, an agency to keep you going
until there was."

Crowther's manner changed completely. There was a warmth in his voice, a
gratitude in his eyes.

"That's kind of you, Mr. Legatt. It is indeed. When your self-esteem has
had the bumps which mine has, an unexpected bouquet here and there is
very welcome."

"What are you going to sell, Captain?" I continued. "Antiquities? You?
You're the last man to be interested in dead and gone things. If I were
you I shouldn't drop down to a shop."

Crowther remained silent for a little while. He looked straight across
the moat to the machicolated walls of the Fort. I thought that he must
be considering my advice. But I was wrong. He was merely considering me;
happily, however, from a new angle. I say happily, because on looking
back, I can see that our acquaintanceship took a turn at this corner. It
is too early to say that friendship began here, but at all events we
were on the road to it.

"I am going to sell nothing at all," he said. "We'd better have another
drink. We have got time"; and when the cool lime squashes stood on the
little table between us, he continued: "I have been brooding by myself
so long over my story that I have come to think the world knows it as
well as I do. Just wait a second!"

He put his thoughts into an order of words before he spoke them. He was
not selecting what he should tell me and what he should keep to himself.
Reticence was a word omitted from his dictionary. He was so interested
in himself that everyone within his reach must know all about him and
exactly.

"I was a failure. I hadn't made any friends. I was cold. I used to
wander about on Sunday afternoons into the Park to listen to the
spouters and then through the dead streets to get myself dog-tired.
Well, one dreadful afternoon, so damp that you felt your bones were wet
inside you and as cold as the Poles and South Ken in one, I found myself
in a queer little street, garages and oldy Englishy houses and a
church."

I sat forward.

"Farm Street," I said.

"Oh? May be. I never knew its name. But there were lights in the church
windows, and there would be people in there and it'd be warm. So I went
in. A man preached about a valley. He was a sensible sort of man--that's
what made me listen. He said this valley bloomed once and was desolate
for a few hundred years. You could work out the chronology for yourself
if you liked--for himself he wasn't interested very much in
chronology--that's what took me in the man--a very few hundred years
would do for him--sensible, what?--after that it bloomed again, a door
of hope."

"The valley of Achor," I interrupted.

"Very likely," said Crowther. "I didn't catch on to the name." Suddenly
he stopped and stared at me. "Say! You know a lot about the Bible."

"I was there that afternoon," I said.

"You?"

"Yes."

"In that church?"

I nodded my head.

"A little more than a year ago. I saw you in the back pew."

"That's right. Now isn't that odd?" He looked at me reproachfully. "You
might have spoken to me, Mr. Legatt."

"I hadn't a chance to. You nipped out before the collection reached
you."

"Instinct, Mr. Legatt," said Crowther smiling. "Nothing more than
instinct. But in that case you can realise how hard that sermon hit me."

"I'm afraid that I can't," I answered. "I wasn't listening closely. I
was watching you."

That seemed to Crowther very natural. No further explanation was
required, and he went on:

"Then I must tell you something about it. The valley of Achor was a door
of hope. It had bloomed once and hundreds of years afterwards a second
time under the smile of God. That was the phrase which took me by storm.
A valley all a-bloom under the smile of God. The valley of the
Irrawaddy, eh? Where everyone smiles--not only God. I suppose that every
feeling I had of darkness and failure and loneliness and cold, had been
working up to this moment, had become so much tinder waiting for a spark
to set it ablaze. And here was the spark--a phrase spoken by a preacher
on a black, dreary afternoon in Farm Street--a valley under the smile of
God. I went back to my little furnished flat in a back lane of South Ken
like a man who has had a call--a call to lovely things instead of away
from them. I sat in my dingy sitting-room with its ugly deal furniture
and its bit of Brussels carpet, and I tell you, Mr. Legatt. I heard
music. I was going to wind things up and go back."

He could hardly spare the time that evening to eat his dinner. He had
the table cleared the moment the meal was over, and going into his
bedroom rummaged in his big trunk. At the bottom of it lay Ma Shwe At's
little silk bag with its embroidery and its pink string and its jingling
trinkets. In his hurry to set his foot on the neck of London, he had
tucked it away amongst his odds and ends and forgotten all about it. Now
he carried it back into his sitting-room and rolled out the ornaments on
to his red baize table-cloth, just as he had three years before on to
the white linen of the _Dagonet_. They were all there even to the
sapphire in its strip of napkin. The ornaments were tarnished and dull
as pewter, but the sapphire glowed with a spark of fire striking up
through the blue of tropical seas; and the walls of his room fell away;
and a lorry which passed and shook the house was the rumble of his
stern-wheel as it thrashed the water of the Irrawaddy.

"Jiminy! I was glad that you hadn't taken me at my word, Mr. Legatt, and
carried the bag back to Tagaung. I knew that I ran a risk, but you
carried your nose so high that I could almost see the vocal cords--now
didn't you?--and I had got to show you you were thinking of yourself all
the time like everybody else. But you gave me a jar, Mr. Legatt, I won't
deny. You did stand hesitating whether you'd behave like a medieval
knight in an opera or not."

Frankly I did not like his simile. I had no wish to be a knight in an
opera, medieval or otherwise. I prided myself upon my actuality. I was a
young man of my age with a fair share of hard common sense. I might have
gone to Oxford or Cambridge. But I had gone to the forest instead. Homer
and heroics meant nothing to me. Wild beasts and the loneliness of great
woods meant a great deal. I was annoyed with Crowther absurdly. For I
had been on the point of starting back for Tagaung to return to a
Burmese girl I didn't know the presents of a man I detested; and if
there's one thing a man's heartily ashamed of it's an experiment in
quixotics. I grew a little hot and uncomfortable. I felt at a
disadvantage with Crowther, as I had done on one or two occasions
before.

"You might get on with your story and leave me out of it," I said
tartly.

The momentary gleam of his old-time impishness faded out from Crowther's
eyes.

"No offence intended, Mr. Legatt," he cried hurriedly. "I resoom. There
were the ornaments in front of me and I spent the evening polishing them
until they shone like a lady's nails before she's dabbed the blood on
them--the silver ring which Ma Shwe At wore round her tiny ankle, the
filigree bracelets for her wrists. I tell you, the warmth of her was
there in my drab little sitting-room with the red baize table-cloth. I
could feel her arms round my neck and see her dark eyes and white teeth
laughing at me an inch off my nose. The taste of the flesh, eh?"

Crowther leaned back in his chair, his teeth closed over his lower lip
and sucking in his breath.

"You wouldn't know, but these Burmese girls have got a trick of sending
a little ripple down their arms from their shoulders to their
finger-tips, and when their arms are round your neck at the time"--he
relapsed into his Americanisms and rubbed his hands together--"oh boy,
oh boy!"

I hope that the tip of my nose didn't rise priggishly into the air. But
Crowther certainly hurried on.

"But there was ever so much besides. The fun of her, the chatter, and
little Ma Sein dancing up and down on her feet as if she was a
puff-ball."

Yes, I too remembered little Miss Diamond dancing up and down on the
sand of the little square at Tagaung. I saw the tiny village, booths and
square and pagoda, and the great tamarinds behind lighted up with the
golden brilliancy of the headlight and rounded into a circle by the
headlight's shape. I saw it as one sees a scene of marionettes through
the spy-hole of a peep-show.

"I remember," I answered with a smile.

"And even that wasn't all." He turned sideways in his chair and leaned
across the table, once more surprised by himself. "Do you know that I
had been wanting her desperately all this time without knowing it? There
was an ache somewhere inside me, something missing, always missing, like
someone you have dearly loved, who has been dead for a long while, but
you don't think what it is that's missing until now and then some
association brings you full-face with the knowledge. Well, Ma Shwe At
wasn't dead. I hugged myself when I had worked back to that one vital
fact. Ma Shwe At and Ma Sein--Mrs. Golden Needle and Miss Diamond--were
still at Tagaung. Those presents were a promise--the preacher's door of
hope. My mind took a hop, skip and a jump--there I was landing from the
gang-plank. There they were laughing and waving their hands. The anklet
was warm with the warmth of Ma Shwe At as I held it in my hand. I heard
myself saying: 'Beloved Golden Needle, born of the lotus and the
moon'--you know the sort of thing--'here is the treasure you asked me to
keep safe for you.'"

"Oh ho!" said I. Here was a Michael Crowther whom I did not know, proud
of his cunning--that was old--but eager to make restitution--that was
new.

"So you are going back to Tagaung!" I said.

"To be sure. That's why I've opened a shop."

"That's why you've closed a shop," I corrected.

Crowther raised his eyebrows. He was always astonished if I did not
follow at once the working of his mind. He explained compassionately:

"You haven't got it at all, Mr. Legatt. I'm not going to stay at
Tagaung, nor is the shop for me. I've got money enough to wait until a
good job comes my way. I'm going to bring Ma Shwe At and little Miss
Diamond down to Mandalay, and then there's a shop here to amuse them.
All these little Burmese girls love keeping shop. If you trotted into
the big Bazaar over there you'd find lots of them selling silks and
spices who could well afford to stay at home. They adore having a little
business of their own. They make it pay too, I can tell you."

He laughed with a heartiness which I had never heard in his voice
before. It had a ring of enjoyment like the laugh of a friendly man
watching children playing cleverly.

"When do you go?" I asked suddenly.

"This morning. On the _Moulmein_."

"So do I."

"I guessed that," he returned, and to my amazement I caught a note of
wistfulness in his voice. "You won't object, will you? Or call me down
if I offer you a drink?"

It was my turn to laugh. Michael Crowther could not live without
explaining himself. Conversation was a mirror in which he saw a very
interesting person experiencing strange adventures and developing in odd
ways through unexpected phases of life.

"I shan't object at all," I said. "On the contrary! I find you very much
more human than I did before."

Michael Crowther stared at me and slapped his hand down upon the table.

"That's the most extraordinary thing," he cried. "For I was going to say
precisely the same thing of you."

We settled our bill. Crowther's boy brought to him the key of the shop,
and said:

"Master's bag on board."

"Good," said Crowther, and we walked together to the gangway of the
_Moulmein_.

"The door of hope," said he. "A sensible fellow, that padre," and he
went forward on to the lower deck.




                               CHAPTER V
                             THE DOOR CLOSES


THE _Moulmein_ was a Bazaar boat. It dragged, lashed alongside of it,
a big double-decked lighter furnished with shops and stalls and occupied
by steerage passengers. It put in at the smaller villages and stayed
long enough for the villagers to make their purchases. It was,
therefore, not until the forenoon of the second day after we left
Mandalay that we tied up against the bank at Tagaung. No storm-lamp
flickered a welcome; no headlight transformed the village into a golden
spot of fairyland. It was a little place of thatched hovels enclosed by
great tamarinds, and fig-trees, with a glimpse of a few bigger houses in
a grove at the back. And a miserable, puny pagoda of bamboo and straw at
the corner of the square indicated to all men the extremity of its
indigence.

The _Moulmein_ with its travelling shops was expected; for the central
space was thronged. Michael Crowther stood at my side on the open deck,
shifting his weight from one foot to the other and running his eyes
eagerly over the crowd. A look of disappointment clouded his face.

"I don't see them," he said. "Do you?"

"No."

"Yet they would naturally have met the Bazaar boat. Even if they didn't
want to buy anything, it's the place for gossip. Of course I wasn't
expected."

He repeated that consolation as, leaning over the rail, he watched the
men and women file along the gangway on to the steamer and across the
lower deck on to the lighter beyond.

"I wasn't expected. That's it, of course." But he was uneasy. It looked
as if the whole valley had turned out with the exception of Mrs. Golden
Needle and Miss Diamond. Crowther turned to me. "Are you coming?"

I had not meant to go ashore at all. But Crowther wanted support and bad
news might be awaiting him. After all, young people did die in the
villages of the Irrawaddy as elsewhere in the world.

"Yes, I'll come," I replied, and then, less carelessly, I added! "I
certainly will come with you, Captain."

For when my eyes moved from him to the shore it suddenly struck me there
was something unusual in the aspect of the place. There were no women
left by the landing-place. That was to be expected. They were all by
this time chattering and bargaining upon the lighter. But there was a
large group of men, and these men, instead of sitting about on the sand
indolently talking according to their habit, stood and watched the
steamer in silence.

Crowther descended to the lower deck and I followed him.

"Of course I wasn't expected," he repeated.

But he was wrong. I had an impression that he was expected even before
he stepped off the gangway. But the moment he did, the impression became
a certainty. For at once the group moved and according to a plan. It
spread out, deploying into a line at the edge of the bank and as
Crowther walked up the slope, the flanks of the line moved forwards and
inwards, enclosing him and barring him from the village. They were all
so far quite silent and their faces were quite impassive. Perhaps it was
for those reasons that I felt the whole position to be dangerous. I was
walking just behind Michael Crowther's shoulder. And from a slight
hesitation in his movements, I realised that he, too, was disturbed.
When he reached the top of the bank and could go no farther without
jostling one of these sentinels, an old man with a thin straggling white
beard spoke, smiling softly:

"We are happy to see the thakin again. It is a long time since the
thakin was here and it does us good to see him. And now he will shake
hands with us and go back again upon the steamer."

Crowther looked from one face to another.

"You expected me?"

"A friend brought us word by the last boat that the thakin was coming to
see us."

"To see Ma Shwe At."

Michael Crowther corrected the old man in a loud and rising voice, so
that the name of his mistress rang out across the hovels and the booths.
It was a call to her, wherever she was hidden, the call to the mate,
heard in forest and jungle and trimmed garden, and wherever manners have
not cloaked passion. But it was a cry for help too, so sudden, so
poignant that it took my breath away. A dreadful terror of loneliness
inspired it. I suppose that it was because I was behind Crowther and
could not see his face. But I almost believed that someone else had
uttered the cry, some unknown man breaking under the compulsion of pain
and fear. Then he stood still, listening with both his ears, and it
seemed to me with every tense nerve in his body, for an answer, however
distant, however faint.

But no answer came--unless a quiet constriction of the circle about him
could be called an answer.

"Ma Shwe At will not hear," the old man said gently. "It is four years
since the thakin went away and in four years many things must happen. Ma
Shwe At suffered and was unhappy. Ma Sein cried through many nights. But
all that is over now."

"Over? But I am here to fetch them both to my home----" began Crowther.

The old man shook his head.

"Ma Shwe At is married to a man with many rice-fields. She is happy
again. I beg the thakin to shake hands with us all and go away."

Crowther looked from face to face. There were young men there and there
were old. There was no ill-will in their looks; but they pressed about
him, not touching him but hampering him. He was shut within a round wall
of living people. He could not have burst through that close-drawn
cordon had he possessed the strength of Hercules, so near they stood and
ready. But he didn't try. He drew back a step and his right hand flashed
down into the side pocket of his jacket.

I gasped at his folly. He could not have made a more dangerous mistake.
Even I knew that these pleasant, peaceable village folk would retaliate
with the cruelty of children. From the beginning of the interview it had
been obvious that behind the old man's smooth words was a quiet threat.
Policy should have heard the threat, and as a rule Crowther had at his
command a blatant but effective policy. He was now a prisoner. For in a
twinkling a man upon each side of him seized his arm. Not one of the
group but held a stick in his hand, although no one raised it. A boy
plunged a hand into Crowther's pocket. Had he pulled out a pistol,
Crowther--I haven't a doubt of it although not a stick as yet was
raised--would have been beaten out of human shape then and there by wild
men dancing in a frenzy. All that the boy did pull out, however, was a
little soiled bag of pink silk tied at the mouth with a pink silk
cord--a bag which rattled as he pulled it out.

The turmoil died down as quickly as it had spurted into life.

"Is that all?" the old man asked.

"That's all," the boy answered; and the old man took the bag and
balanced it upon his palm, just as Crowther himself had done in the
porch of the _Dagonet_.

"That small bag was worked by Ma Shwe At," said Crowther in a queer,
broken voice. He could not but know how near he had been to a cruel and
horrible death but the break in his voice was not caused by fear. "She
gave it to me to keep for her. There was a dacoity in the neighbourhood.
It holds the presents I had given to her. I wish to return it."

"Ma Shwe At no longer needs the thakin's presents. I beg him to take
them again."

Crowther put his hands behind his back.

"There is more than my presents in the bag," Crowther protested. "There
is a jewel worth them all a hundred times."

The old man smiled.

"We are all happy that the thakin should keep it."

He gave the bag back to the boy who slipped it again into Crowther's
pocket.

It was just then that the steamer blew its warning; and Crowther,
without another word, turned upon his heel and walked down the bank to
the gangway. He looked straight in front of him. His face was grey and
fixed like the face of a paralytic. I did not wonder. Apart from the
danger which he had run, who within so short a time has endured
humiliation so deep? But humiliation was only one part of his distress.
Possess a thing, it dwindles to nothing. Lose it, it grows into a world.
Against his corroding failure and his four desolate years he had set the
mirage of Ma Shwe At and the child Ma Sein. Than Ma Shwe At with her
laughing face and small, flower-like hands, and Ma Sein jumping up and
down in her glee, nothing was ever so passionately desired by the
one-time Captain of the _Dagonet_. But he had lost them. The door of
hope had closed.




                               CHAPTER VI
                            CHILDREN AT PLAY


A GOOD many pairs of inquisitive eyes watched Michael Crowther as he
came on board. But he never returned a look. People were so much ship's
furniture to him. He walked in and out amongst them, unaware of anyone,
and marched through the saloon on to the deck behind it. He sat down
there on a seat by the side of the rail; and after I had given him a
little time I wandered aft myself and stood beside him. He lifted his
head and pleaded:

"You won't talk for a bit, will you?"

"I didn't come along to talk," I answered.

"I know that. Thank you for coming."

I cannot put into words the dejection of the man. I had nothing to say
which could help him. He had failed as the hundred per cent Englishman
he had boasted himself to be, who was going to trample in hobnails over
his inefficient countrymen. Now he had failed again as the orientalised
European. I could not imagine a future ahead of him. The shop in
Mandalay would be ridiculous as an occupation for him; and he was not
the man to take to drink. All I could do was to offer him the sympathy
of a silent companionship.

It was he, therefore, who spoke first. The _Moulmein_ had edged out
clear of the bank. Its great wheel was thrashing the yellow water into
foam.

"That was a bad affair, wasn't it?" he said with a rather pitiful
bravado and an attempt at a smile. But he could not keep to that
pretence. "The smile of God!" he cried in a voice of such bitterness as
I had never heard. Then his head drooped again and he clenched his hands
so tightly together that the skin beneath the tips of his fingers was
white.

"What am I going to do now?" he asked in a whisper, and repeated his
question: "What am I going to do?"

I answered him foolishly. He was not thinking of an occupation but of
how he was going to live through the succession of days until the day of
his death.

"You ought to try to get another ship in the Irrawaddy Flotilla," I
said.

"Perhaps so," he answered listlessly; but he only knew that I was
speaking and did not hear what I said. It was just as well. For no
career in the world could have been so repugnant to him at this moment.

The steamer beat upstream past a wall of rice-bags and began to round a
low bluff which reached out into the river. I saw Crowther rise slowly
to his feet and grasp the rail with both his hands; and I drew closer to
him. I had a fear that he was going to fling himself headlong overboard
to be beaten to death by the great stern-wheel; he stood poised upon his
toes in so tense an attitude. But his eyes turned towards the headland
and at once were riveted there; and from that moment, whilst it remained
in sight, he had no thought but for what was happening on its broad,
flat top.

"My God!" he whispered, as though his throat was parched, and again, but
on so low a note that the whisper died away and only his lips finished
it: "My God!"

His body relaxed, a great weakness overtook him so that his knees
sagged, and though his hands still clung to the rail, they clung to keep
him standing, not to give spring to a leap. If he had a thought of
jumping overboard he had given it up and I could, myself, safely turn my
eyes to the bank.

On the headland a group of children was playing a round game under the
instructions of one of them; and the noise of their young voices and
shrill laughter floated across the water very happily. It couldn't be
that Crowther grudged them their glee. It might be that they brought
back to him with an intolerable poignancy the memory of Ma Sein dancing
up and down upon her toes. But it seemed to me that a grief deeper than
that of memory gave to his face its look of anguish. There had been some
one final shattering blow to deal him, and God had not forgotten it.

The steamer was now abreast of the promontory and I distinguished at
last the small significant circumstance which had caught Crowther's eye
from afar and laid yet one more trouble upon his troubled soul. The game
which the children played involved a winding in and out in the pattern
of a dance. Many mistakes were made and corrected amidst peals of
laughter. But the little girl who corrected the mistakes and set all the
players once more in their order wore a sun-helmet upon her head and
white socks and brown shoes upon her feet. I remembered suddenly that
four years ago little Miss Diamond had decked herself out just in that
way. She had worn a sun-helmet even after the sun had set, even after
darkness had come, and shoes and socks into the bargain. She had been
establishing the whiteness of her blood. She had been showing off to all
with eyes to see and brains to understand that she was the daughter of
the white Captain of the Irrawaddy Company. All the other little girls
might skewer their hair to the tops of their heads and come to no harm
even at midday. She, Ma Sein, must wear a helmet even after dark to keep
off sunstroke. The others might run barefoot over hard-baked ground and
take no bruise. She must wear socks and shoes according to the habit and
necessity of her race. Ma Sein had been eight years old then, and the
little girl now laying down the law with unquestioned authority was
older than that. Twelve? I was not very experienced in judging
children's ages, but twelve would be right or near to right.

No wonder Crowther was clinging to the rail of the _Moulmein_ with his
eyes fixed upon the group of children. It was Miss Diamond who was the
Beau Nash of the ceremonies at Tagaung--the little daughter whom he had
come to fetch and whom he was never to see again. She had cried all
night, the old man upon the river-bank had told us, but all that was
over now. It certainly was over. Ma Sein, lording it delightfully over
her friends, was enjoying her game as though the tiniest memory of her
father had been obliterated from her thoughts.

Crowther suddenly turned his back and fixed his eyes upon the seams of
the deck so that this last and unendurable vision might pass from them
the sooner.

"Tell me when----" he said.

"I will," I answered.

The steamer rounded the bend of the river. The land crept forward like a
screen between the headland and the ship. The sound of the treble voices
ceased to pluck at his heart-strings. In another minute there were no
laughing children to sear his eyes.

"It's all right," I said.

"Thank you."

He sat down again upon the bench, but even so hardly daring to look
towards the shore. We were quite alone. The luncheon-bell had rung as we
moved away from the bank. The passengers were all in the saloon. And a
curiously subtle change crept over Crowther. There was a gentleness in
his face, a submission in his bowed shoulders which astonished me.
Michael D. had ceased to live. And when he spoke, as he did to himself
and not to me, it was on a note of pure remorse.

"They were right.... Of course they were right.... I made a
mistake.... I hadn't thought of it."

The words were so much Greek to me. I touched him on the shoulder.

"Come and lunch!"

Crowther shook his head.

"Not hungry."

"Please!"

"No! You run along. I'll stay here by myself for a little while."

I left him there and went forward to the saloon wondering what was this
mistake which he had made and what it was that he had not thought out.

I got some part of the answer from the Captain of the _Moulmein_.
Luncheon was half over when I took my seat at his elbow and in a little
while he and I were alone. He said:

"You had an awkward moment down there at Tagaung, hadn't you?"

"Yes," I answered.

"I was keeping an eye on you both," he continued. "But we shouldn't have
had time to do much for Crowther. Crowther ought to have known better."

I pricked up my ears at that statement. It might hold the secret of
Crowther's riddle.

"He might not have thought it out," I rejoined.

The Captain of the _Moulmein_ smiled.

"He might, you mean, have refused to remember," he returned. I offered
him a cigar, and after he had lit it, he resumed: "Crowther's story is,
of course, known to a good many of us on these steamers. These Burmese
marriages, as they call them, are not such simple affairs on the upper
reaches of the river as you might think. They have their own primitive
ethics. The Burmese girl who lives with a white man acquires prestige.
It isn't a life of sin, as we should call it, in the eyes of her own
people. Not a bit. She is the more honourable and--the important
thing--more sought after in marriage when she and her white man have
agreed to differ. Odd, isn't it?"

"Yes," said I.

"Well, Mr. Legatt, here's something still odder. She's still more
marriageable, her social position, if one may use such a phrase, is
still higher, if she has a child by a white man. It was fairly certain,
then, that Crowther, coming back to Tagaung after deserting his girl for
four years, would find her comfortably married to someone worth while."

All this topsy-turvydom was news to me, but I was not fool enough to
disbelieve it. The Captain of the _Moulmein_ knew very much more of the
people on the upper Irrawaddy than I should ever know if I lived to be a
hundred.

"Crowther was only ignorant of that because he wanted to be." The
Captain smoked his cigar for a moment or two and asked:

"Did you notice some children playing on the top of a bit of a hill just
outside the village?"

"Yes, I did," I answered, sitting up. "Ma Sein with the sun-helmet on
her head was their leader."

"Ma Sein. Is that her name? I didn't know. Crowther's child, anyway."

"Yes."

"You were right, Mr. Legatt. She was their leader. She gave the law. She
was IT. Prestige, you see. An odd thing, prestige! Ma Sein will have it
all through her life, that is, of course, if she remains on the upper
river." And with the utterance of that proviso he climbed up to the
wheel upon the roof.

I had there the answer to my riddle. The thing of which Crowther had not
thought--prestige. The mistake which Crowther had made--his
forgetfulness of its importance on the higher water of the Irrawaddy.
Yes, but I was not content, not by any means. If Crowther had forgotten
the importance of prestige he had been roughly reminded of it on the
beach of Tagaung. He could not have been unaware of it when he returned
along the gangway and climbed to the upper deck. There he had sprung to
his feet and poised himself for a leap. The more I recalled the scene
the more confident I felt that he had meant to dive headlong over the
rail and finish with everything. But he had not. He had caught sight of
the children on their playground and he had changed his mind. Something
had changed it--some gentler thought had touched him, some new concern
for the happiness of that gay dancing little daughter of his, Miss
Diamond, who had cried all night--"only that was over now."

"They were right.... Of course... they were right."

I had only heard remorse in his voice. But in that remorse there was
renunciation, too. Could any facet of prestige shine with a light so
revealing? I wondered.

If I set out my speculations so fully it is because I am now sure that
the picture of those children playing on the headland under the
leadership of little Miss Diamond marked a moment of revolution in
Crowther to which the incidents of four years had been tending. "Things
had worked together," he had told me, to produce his little hour of
inspiration when the words of the preacher in Farm Street had smitten
his ears. Now other things had been added and amongst them this last
little baffling circumstance.

I slept ill that night, but Crowther slept worse. The _Moulmein_ was
moored that night at Katha, the headquarters of the district, and
Crowther went off by himself on shore and came back again when everyone
was in bed. I did not in fact see him until my baggage had gone ashore
and I myself was saying good-bye to the Captain. He waited on one side
until the farewells were spoken. Then he came forward, his eyes heavy,
his face ravaged.

"You're getting off here?"

"Yes. I'm going up by train to Myitkyina."

"I'm sorry." He was silent for a second or two. "For myself, I shall go
up to Bhamo on this boat and straight down again."

"To Mandalay?" I asked.

"Yes."

"And then?"

"I don't know. I haven't an idea."

He drifted along with me to the companion and suddenly turned round and
faced me.

"They were quite right, Mr. Legatt, those men at Tagaung," he said, in a
subdued and gentle voice. "I should have been a brute--shouldn't I?--if
I had taken Ma Sein away with me. I never thought of it until I saw her
playing up there on the hill. But it was clear enough then. What would
she have been back there at Mandalay? A despised little half-caste
bastard. Plain language, Mr. Legatt," he added, as I rather flinched at
his description. "But that's what she would have been, and in a year or
two every pomatum-smeared clerk would have been leering at her over the
counter of her shop, thinking her easy fruit. But up there at Tagaung
she's the Great White Queen." He even smiled as he spoke, finding
pleasure and consolation and--yes!--even a trifle of amusement in the
child's magnificence. For the moment Ma Shwe At and the humiliating end
of his love affair with her were out of his mind. Little Miss Diamond
held his thoughts and his heart in the hollow of her tiny hand.

"The Great White Queen," he repeated, and now he laughed openly. I shook
him by the hand and went off down the gangway. I turned and waved to him
once I was on land. The humour, however, had all gone from his looks. It
seemed to me that again there was death in his mind and in his face. So
there was, too, but it turned out to be not the kind of death which I
expected.




                              CHAPTER VII
                              UNCLE SUNDAY


I DESCENDED the Irrawaddy a few months later, just in time to avoid
the rains; and though Mandalay was intolerably hot, I stayed a day there
in the hope that I should run across Michael Crowther. But the board was
down from his shop and the shop sold. I made enquiries of the new
tenant, a little Chinaman who was selling what Crowther, in his
_Dagonet_ days, would have called "notions." The Chinaman had no
knowledge whatever of Crowther, for he had bought the shop from agents.

"Do you remember the name of the firm?" I asked.

"I lemember till I die," said he, and he allotted to the firm's female
ancestry an extremely degraded rank in the animals' order of merit.

I felt that I was immediately upon the heels of my friend. Crowther
might be sunk in woe, but woe wouldn't stop him from driving as hard a
business bargain as he could. I drove in a ticca-gharri to the address
in Hodgkinson Road, and called on Mr. Styles. Mr. Styles was a little
round man, very hot, but not busy.

"What can I do for you, sir?" he asked.

"I want to find Michael Crowther."

The little man looked at me with a sudden interest and tilted his chair
back against the wall.

"Do you, now?" said he. "But I can't help you. For I don't myself know
where he is."

"You sold a shop of his near the Bazaar."

"But that was some months ago, Mr.----I haven't got your name, I think."

"Legatt," said I, and he brought the forelegs of his chair down upon the
floor with a bang and stared at me open-mouthed.

"Mr. Martin Legatt?"

"Yes."

He looked me over as if he already had a description of me in his mind.

"Yes," said he, satisfied at last. "Well, I'll tell you what you ought
to do. You ought to run along to the bank in B Street. You see, Crowther
was a close-fisted sort of fellow and bought little bits of land in
Mandalay when it was a good deal cheaper than it is now. I know, for
I've realised all of it for him----"

"All of it?" I interrupted.

"Yes."

"And lately?"

"Within the last few months."

"And yet you don't know where he is?"

"I haven't one idea. But I'll tell you what," said Mr. Styles
comfortably. "I think that when you do find him, you'll find he's barmy.
Brain all gone to greengage jam, you know. Yes, the sooner you do find
him, Mr. Legatt, the better. For an ex-captain of a steamer he's a
pretty warm man, you know."

I went on to B Street, wondering why the announcement of my name should
have so startled Mr. Styles, and discovered that it produced just the
same effect upon the manager of the bank. He came hurriedly from his
private room.

"Mr. Martin Legatt?"

"The same," said I.

He took me into his office, seated me in a chair.

"I am glad to see you, Mr. Legatt," he said genially. "Upon my word, I
am very glad to see you."

All this excitement and cordiality was very mysterious to me. The
manager was a fair-haired, youngish man, who could hardly have reached
his position without ability. Why, then, the hysteria?

"It's very nice of you to welcome me like this," I said. "But I really
only came to ask you where I could find Michael Crowther."

The bank manager--as far as I remember, his name was Halfin--Mr. Halfin,
stared at me.

"You mean to say that you don't know where he is?" he gasped
incredulously.

"I do not," I answered.

"Well, that's very disappointing," said Mr. Halfin. "For I don't,
either. You see, we hold a good deal of money of his on deposit. I think
he realised everything, and it had been growing in value for some time."

"But didn't he spend a good deal in England?" I asked.

Mr. Halfin shook his head.

"I think he cut things pretty fine there. Might have done better very
likely if he hadn't."

I got up from my chair.

"Well, thank you, Mr. Halfin," I said.

"But you'll leave me an address, won't you, Mr. Legatt?" he pleaded
rather than asked. "I might want it in a hurry, for all I know."

I gave Mr. Halfin my address in London and the address of our office at
Rangoon. But I do not like mysteries. So when he had neatly blotted his
book, I asked:

"Will you tell me why you all go up in the air when you hear my name?"

I see no reason why I should be taken for a lunatic more often than
other people, but I do seem to find myself continually suffering from
that misconception. Mr. Halfin gaped at me, and then reassured himself.

"You are joking, Mr. Legatt. Ha! ha!" and he joined in the joke.

"I'm not joking at all, Mr. Halfin."

"You mean to say that you don't know?"

"I definitely don't know."

Mr. Halfin at last accepted my statement.

"Very well, then," said he. He became precise, formal, a creature of
limitations and prohibitions.

"Yes?" said I, encouragingly.

"I can't tell you, Mr. Legatt. Good morning!"

By the merest chance, just outside the door of the bank, I ran into the
Captain of the _Moulmein_.

"Here! Stop!" I cried, catching hold of his arm. "Why does everybody go
off the deep end when I ask them about Crowther?"

"Don't you know----" began the Captain, goggle-eyed in a second, like
the rest of them.

"No! No! No!" I exclaimed. "I don't know, and though I'm not off my
head, I shall be unless you answer me."

At last the answer came.

"Crowther's left you all his money in his will. I know, because I was
one of the witnesses, and Styles, the agent, was the other. The bank
manager has got it with, I believe, a letter of instructions to be
delivered to you after Crowther's death."

So that was the secret. I am bound to say that I was a little staggered
myself.

"When did he make his will?" I asked.

"After that trip up to Bhamo."

"And where is he now?"

The Captain of the _Moulmein_ pushed back his helmet and reflected.

"I did hear that he had been seen at Prome, down towards Rangoon--you
know--the place with the Shwe Tsan-Dau Pagoda, but I haven't run across
him for months and months."

And ask questions as I might, I could learn no more of Crowther than
that. A total eclipse had hidden that shattered man, and I, a little
annoyed that I should be so pestered by troublesome recollections of
him, followed his example and vanished out of Burma.

I remained for the next eighteen months in England, dividing my time
between the office in London and a house which I had bought near
Woodbridge, in Suffolk. At the end of that time we were negotiating for
a new lease with the Government of Burma, and it was necessary that a
representative of the Company should go out and come to terms on the
spot. I claimed the right to go. Internal questions of administration
delayed the settlement of my business, and finding that I had a couple
of months with nothing to do, I decided to spend them in the forest
country which had never ceased to appeal to me. Thus once more I found
myself with a brace of rifles and a shotgun, heading for the upper
reaches of the Irrawaddy. I was twenty-nine years of age, heart-free and
foolishly proud of my freedom. I could and did say to myself, adapting
Crowther's derisive phrase; "I am one of the Untouchables." This was to
be the last holiday of the kind which I should have for many years and I
determined to make the most of it before settling down to the humdrum
life which apparently awaited me.

I travelled on the old _Moulmein_. She had a lighter alongside and we
stopped at many villages; and I noticed that at each stopping-place now
one, now two monks in their yellow robes, came on board with their
sleeping-mats, their beggar bowls and their acolytes, and squatted upon
the lighter's deck. I was astonished at this unusual traffic and the
Captain explained it to me.

"There's to be a great pongyi byan up at Schwegu. An old gaingok died
there last year, and since he was a very holy abbot, they have kept him
in honey--by the way, you don't eat honey whilst you are in Burma, do
you?--until they could collect enough money to give him a proper
send-off. They've got it now and there'll be three days' gaming and
play-acting and dancing, and the big fireworks at the end when the
body's burnt."

A new idea occurred to the Captain. He looked at me curiously and
smiled.

"Yes, you travelled with me nearly two years ago, didn't you?"

"As far as Katha."

"Yes, and I met you afterwards in Mandalay."

"Outside the bank."

"That's right, Mr. Legatt, isn't it? Take a walk!"

He led me forward and pointed to a monk on the lighter who sat a little
apart with his boy servant in front of him. His back was towards us and
he was as immobile as a coloured figure in stone. His Talapot fan and
his rosary of Indian shot seeds lay on the edge of his mat at his side.
His eyes were fixed upon a great palm-leaf book which he held upon his
knees, but whether he was reading it or lost in contemplation I could
not tell. Certainly he never turned a page whilst we watched him. In a
word he was as orthodox as a monk could be.

"There's a friend of yours," said the Captain.

I had an acquaintanceship, by now, with a good many Buddhist monks up
and down the country, but I could not remember any one of them whom I
had the right to call a friend. I shook my head.

"I'm right, Mr. Legatt," the Captain repeated with a laugh.

I moved to one side so that I might catch a glimpse of my friend's face.
It was square and rather fleshless and in a vague way familiar. But even
so I didn't recognise him until I began to ask how did the Captain of
the _Moulmein_ know that the monk was my friend. I had only once
travelled on the _Moulmein_ and there had only been one man on board of
her whom its Captain could call my friend. I ran down to the lower deck
and crossed on to the lighter. I ran up the companion to its upper deck,
and there, wrapped in the yellow robe, reading his great book, sat
Michael Crowther.

I leaned against the rail by the side of him.

"Good morning, Michael," I said.

"Good morning, Mr. Legatt," he returned, lifting his eyes from his book
and laying a finger on the passage at which his reading broke off. But
he looked ahead of him and not at me. "I saw you come on board
yesterday."

"You might have given me a sign."

"My name is U Wisaya now," he said, explaining in this simple way that
with his new world I had nothing whatever to do.

But I was not to be put off so easily. I sat down on the deck by the
side of him. I found that I was not so astonished by this new evolution
of his character as I had expected to be. Michael Crowther was naturally
violent. He swung between the extremes, but never hung between them. He
would be at one or the other before you could wink. He was all England
one day, and all Burma the next, and for anything I could be sure about,
in a month's time he might have enlisted in the Foreign Legion and
already have deserted from it.

"You may call yourself whatever you like, Michael. Uncle Sunday is a
very good name too," I said comfortably. "But you'll excuse me if I talk
the lingo you used to like. I'm from Missouri and you've got to show
me."

Crowther, still keeping his finger on the paragraph of his book,
explained.

"There was an American a good many years ago. Just a tourist. He came
out sightseeing. The River, Mandalay, the Shwe Dagon and pagodas
generally--that sort of thing. But he didn't go away. The country took
him, the sun, the good humour, the pleasant lazy life. He came up the
Irrawaddy several times with me on the old _Dagonet_. He was always
going back, but he never did. He shot for a season or two and then gave
it up. He travelled out to the Shan States, then up the Chindwin to the
jade mines. Just seeing the place--before he went away for good. But
after the country, the religion took him--see, Mr. Legatt? I knew that
he was in a monastery down at Prome or Pagan; and after you got off at
Katha I began to wonder about him--yes, and about me. I had come to the
end of things--see?"

So Crowther, on his return to Mandalay, had liquidated his belongings
and set off for Prome and from Prome again to Pagan, that dead city of
pagodas. There his search had ended.

"The American was a full-blown pongyi and learned! I was ashamed after
all my years on the Irrawaddy to realise how little I knew," Crowther
stated. "He talked to me. I was very unhappy. To be nothing at all--not
even a separate conscious soul. That sounded pretty good, and worth a
thousand existences if so many were needed to fit one. All life was
misery. All passions dragged you further and further from the Great
Peace. To feel compassion for all living creatures, but to know no
closer ties. He lent me some books. He preached to me the great
Allegory. Do you know it?"

"No," said I.

"You should," and a gleam of humour shone about his mouth. "There's a
forest in it. A forest of glades and flickering lights and white, big,
heavily-scented flowers, and golden-coloured fruits, and one rock path
out of it, and a Keeper with a whip, Time. He lets no one rest in those
glades. Lie down and the lash falls. All must run and run nowhere but
where they ran before. The fruits have thorns which wound and the scent
of the flowers cloys and the lights flickering between the trees dazzle,
and fatigue comes and there's no end to it but to follow the rock path
and the steady star, as at the last all men must."

I felt a little bewildered and no doubt my face showed it. For he turned
to me with a real smile.

"You're thinking, Mr. Legatt, that you might hear just the same kind of
allegory at a Revivalist meeting in the East End of London, aren't you,
now?"

"Yes," I admitted.

"But you're wrong. All men must at the last take the rock path and see
the steady star and escape the lashes of the whip. There's the
difference. It may be after ages in hell, a thousand lives as animal or
woman, but in the end all--do you follow that?--all--all without
exception will make the great Renunciation and enter into the Great
Peace."

Crowther was speaking with so quiet a simplicity and a sincerity so
obvious that I began to wonder whether my easy judgement of him as a man
who must rush from pole to pole and back again was correct.

"But who am I to expound the law?" he continued. "I, a mere upazin and
novice who has not yet mastered the two hundred and twenty-seven
precepts of the Book of Enfranchisement."

He tapped the big palm-leaf volume upon his knees and at that moment a
girl with a silk scarf about her shoulders and her lustrous hair secured
with a jewelled pin passed him on her way to the bows of the ship. She
was powdered with thanakah, she wore gold tubes in the lobes of her
ears, she smoked a big green cheroot, and as she passed she gave that
odd little kick of the heel which knocks upon the heart of so many
Burmese gallants. But Michael Crowther did not see it. At the first
glimpse of her up went his palm-leaf fan before his face in the orthodox
way, so that no fleeting desire might disturb his meditations and set
him back a mile or so on his rock path.

"She has gone, Michael," I said, and some imp nipped me till I asked:

"And what of the sapphire, Uncle?"

Michael Crowther's body stiffened, and he remained silent, looking on
the ground six feet ahead of him according to the rules. Oh, that
American monk at Pagan had grounded his neophyte very well! I began to
feel remorseful at awakening old memories, but so far from taking my
question amiss, he answered gently:

"I am glad that you asked that question, Mr. Legatt. The sapphire and
all the other ornaments hang round the spire of a pagoda in the
monastery grounds at Pagan, high up, and just under the swelling
diamond-bud at the very top."

I felt ashamed of my question now. It is not, as the world knows,
uncommon for the devout to give such votive offerings for the decoration
of their temples. But I was still a little under the persuasion that I
was merely a witness of one of Michael Crowther's more violent
agitations; and was not prepared for his consecration of these
ornaments.

"I'm sorry," I mumbled.

"There is no need for regret," he continued. "I shall tell you the plan
in my mind. I live a mendicant with my begging bowl and pledged never to
handle gold and silver for any of my needs, I, U Wisaya. But meanwhile
there is money in the bank at Mandalay standing in the name of Michael
Crowther. There it will stand and grow."

"For what purpose?" I asked.

"In ten years' time when I am admitted into the class of pongyis I shall
take all that money and build at Tagaung a white pagoda decorated with
gold----"

"To the glory of Ma Shwe At," I suggested with a smile.

"To the glory of our Lord Buddha," he answered seriously. "And when that
is done I shall ask permission to remove the sapphire and the ornaments
and I shall hang them high on the spire of my pagoda at Tagaung amongst
the little silver bells. I shall rest in its shadow, hearing those bells
ring with every breath of wind, until I pass on into another life if I
needs must."

I understood now why Michael had bequeathed to me his little fortune.
The tenor of his letter of instructions was as clear to me as if I had
broken the seal and read the words. If Michael died before he was a
fully-fledged monk, I was to build his pagoda for him at Tagaung. To
tell the truth I was a little moved by his trust in me. I had not
covered myself with dignity during this conversation, and conscious of
it, I was trying to fix the blame on Michael. But I had not discovered a
pretext when the _Moulmein_ swept in sight of the island of Schwegu with
its golden spires gleaming against a background of dark trees like a
city in a fairy tale.

But as we drew near to it, it became gaudy as a fair. On a wide, open
space between the river and the town, booths with sides of matting and
thatched roofs and projecting eaves had been built. There would be
gaming and feasting and a play which would take the three days at the
last to perform. At one side of the space stood a new pagoda of
pasteboard and gilt-paper, on the upper floor of which the abbot and his
coffin would finally be burnt. Close by the side of this glistening
outrage was a tiny temple in the same appalling taste which would carry
the coffin on guy ropes up to the place of burning. A little apart stood
a painted truck with a great rope of jungle grass at each end, on which
the coffin in its tiny temple would first be placed for the
tug-of-war--the great attraction of the festival. Anybody might join in
and on either side, and anybody might leave off at any moment and take a
rest. It would be very much like the race in _Alice in Wonderland_. At
one end there would be cries of "We must bury our dead!"; at the other
"You shall not take our friend from us!" The tug-of-war might last for
three hours or for the whole three days, with an armistice at each
nightfall. In the end, of course, the burial party would win, and those
who had the luck or the foresight to be hanging on to the grass rope at
that end of the truck would achieve great merit and shorten the number
of the lives which stood between them and Nirvana. Around this open
space rockets were planted ready to be touched off on the evening of the
third day. They were aimed more or less at the gilt-paper pagoda and one
of them no doubt would start the cremation; though to be sure several
people might be killed first. There the whole construction stood in the
blazing sun, as complete an affair of gimcrack and gingerbread as a
primitive imagination could devise.

I glanced at Michael as he picked up his rosary and handed his mat to
his acolyte. How in the world could he reconcile this showman's stuff
with the simple faith he had been explaining? I was careful this time
not to ask my question, but Michael answered it without so much as a
look at me.

"All religions collect tinsel," he said, "just as all ships collect
molluscs. The ships and the religions are not hurt. They just want
cleaning from time to time."

I put it down to his fasting and his abstinence. But he was becoming
uncomfortably quick in understanding the unspoken thoughts in a
companion's mind. He walked along the gangway to the shore, his eyes
fixed on the ground six feet ahead of him, as indifferent to the crowd
which thronged the bank as to me. But his indifference affected me not
at all. For once more the old spell was upon me. As I climbed back from
the lighter on to the _Moulmein_, I was as certain as he was of his new
Faith that I had not done with him nor he with me.




                              CHAPTER VIII
                 THE FIRST ASCENT OF THE DENT DU PAGODA


THE decision, indeed, was taken out of our hands. It was made for us
during the previous night whilst our steamer had been lying at Katha;
and by men whom Uncle Sunday would have pitied and I should have
arraigned.

A few days before, whilst Michael was still sitting at the feet of the
American monk at Pagan, two men came to the monastery. They had shaven
heads and both wore the yellow robe. No one challenged them. They
declared themselves to be students and novices, and they were both of an
age in the late twenties. They had the right to lodge there, so long as
they observed the Ten Commandments, just as they had the right to depart
whensoever they wished; and without question or complaint. They spread
their sleeping-mats on the floor of the great hall and, rising with the
others at the time when there was just light enough to see the veins of
the hands, they lined up behind the abbot before the image of Buddha in
the order of their degree in the brotherhood, and joined in chanting the
morning service. They then helped in the household work, filtering the
drinking-water so that no living thing might be destroyed when it was
drunk, sweeping the floors and watering the plants in the enclosure; all
very dutifully and neatly. They then studied the book of Weenee which
describes the Whole Duty of the Monk. This for an hour. Towards eight
o'clock they took their begging bowls, and in single file behind the
abbot and again in their due order of precedence, they marched round the
town, receiving, with a proper absence of gratitude, the food which the
charitable, acquiring merit, heaped high in their bowls. Their last meal
of the day eaten before noon, or, let us say, supposed to be eaten
before noon, they passed the long afternoons in study and meditation. If
a head nodded, who should notice it? If eyelids closed, was not
abstraction more complete? Were not all thoughts fixed upon the Law and
the Assembly and the attainment of Nirvana? A slow and pensive walk for
health's sake followed upon the afternoon. And while you contemplated
such majestic opacities, would a voice in your ear call you back to
earth or even the nudge of an elbow in your ribs? Not a well-fed pongyi
anyway. Towards evening, meditation lost its hold. From time to time the
bow must be unbent or it will snap.

These two new-comers received monastic names. They were called in the
secular tongue Nga Pyu and Nga Than; and they were very, very glad to be
called something else, since the prefix Nga has associations to which
they were anxious not to draw attention. They were two very bad men but
they became Pyinya and Thoukkya, excellent names for a pair of jugglers
in a music hall or for novices in a brotherhood.

Their great moments were after nightfall, when the great doors of the
teak stockade were closed and perhaps the abbot or the American monk,
Nageinda, or one of the elders, would discourse. Pyinya and Thoukkya
were second to none in their attention. And when the evensong was
intoned at nine before the image of the Buddha, they were second to none
in the humility of their voices. They would ask, thereafter, devout
questions about the new white pagoda in the compound, which reared its
two hundred glistening feet of spire to the golden, umbrella-shaped Hti.

"A great lady gave it? Surely in her next life she will have deserved to
be a man?" one of them would ask.

"Or perhaps she will enter at once into Peace?" asked the other.

"Who shall say?" would be the answer. "The noble lady has acquired great
merit."

"Is it true that a great diamond is set in the Hti?" Pyinya enquired
with awe.

"Gifts have the same value if they are equally proportioned to the means
of the giver," U Nageinda answered. "Thus, the sapphire and the silver
ornaments of our brother U Wisaya confer no less merit upon him than the
great diamond upon the lady."

"And those too are on the Hti?" asked Thoukkya with a glance of
admiration towards Michael, reading his book in a corner.

"They encircle the spire like a bracelet just below the Hti," said U
Nageinda proudly. He was still unregenerate enough to dislike any
depreciation of his own particular convent.

Pyinya and Thoukkya wandered out on to the wide platform and, sitting on
the steps, gazed upwards to the top of the soaring spire. There was
still a scaffolding about it, for the great lady was decorating it with
a string of electric light bulbs, which on dark nights, to people on the
river far below, would glow amongst the stars.

But the nights were not dark now. The moon lit up the enclosure, the two
pagoda slaves who watched the night through whilst the scaffolding
stood, and the palm trees, till all was as light as day.

"To-morrow the scaffolding will be down," said Pyinya in a whisper, lest
he should disturb the serenity of the night.

"And the pagoda servants in their huts on the river-bank," replied
Thoukkya.

"We shall see the pagoda in its beauty," said Pyinya joyfully.

"For a week, Brother," Thoukkya warned him with a regretful shake of the
head. "Only for a week. Then there will be no moon."

Pyinya sighed, and then, like a man who has a happy thought, he smiled.

"But even if there is no moon, there will be the chain of electric
lights from the top of the pagoda to the ground. It will be a comfort to
us all to see it still."

Thoukkya was very sorry to dash the pious hopes of his fellow novice.
But it was better that he should know the truth. Thoukkya had made
discreet enquiries. Economy had been considered.

"The lights will not burn after nine," he said.

The two men gazed upwards to the Hti two hundred feet above the ground.

"The bulbs are hung upon a strong wire rope," said Thoukkya.

"A doubled rope," Pyinya added; "so that when one of the lamps fails it
can be lowered and replaced."

"Yes," Thoukkya agreed. "It is all very beautiful."

And both men, in spite of their concentrated meditations, had been very
observant.

"It is a pity that we cannot see from so far below the great lady's
diamond sparkling in the moonlight and thus understand the better the
greatness of her merit," said Thoukkya after a pause.

"Yes, it is a pity," Pyinya agreed. "But at all events we know that it
is there. Instead of regretting, shall we not hope that the workmen too
have achieved merit by setting it irremovably in the Hti?"

Thoukkya bowed his head.

"Yes, we must hope for that. But we know that workmen scamp even the
most meritorious work."

"Alas and alas!" said Pyinya. "But we shall learn the truth of all this
when the moon has hidden her face."

Thoukkya looked upwards to the soaring spire and thought how strange the
world must look, if you were perched upon the top of it.

"I am dizzy," he said. "I think that I am going to be sick."

"These long meditations," said Pyinya sympathetically.

It was nine o'clock now and behind them the lights were being
extinguished in the hall. The two men rose and went within and unrolled
their mats; and but for the blaze of moonlight at the open doorway the
monastery was given over to darkness and to sleep.

But in a week there was no moon and only a star or two entangled in the
branches of a tree showed to any wakeful monk that there was an open
doorway at all. But the monks, with the exception of two, were not
wakeful. These two, certainly, made up for the rest, for they were very
busy indeed. Very quietly--one might have thought that they had been
trained in stealthiness--Pyinya and Thoukkya would slip on hands and
knees through the doorway and meet in a corner of the enclosure behind a
great banyan-tree. There a long bamboo pole, detached, surely by pious
hands for a pious purpose, from the scaffolding before it was removed
from the enclosure, lay hidden under leaves. It was twenty-five feet
long, and for a couple of hours on two consecutive nights these devout
novices worked upon it, splicing to one end a strong iron hook and
strengthening the pole and making it easier to handle by coiling it
tightly about with cord at intervals of three feet.

"It will be for to-morrow," said Pyinya in a whisper; and the two men
put their heads together for a little while.

"Muhammed Ghalli, the Indian, will meet us in the morning. It will all
be easy," Thoukkya said in conclusion, and they crept back like shadows
to their mats in the great hall.

The next night was as dark as any marauder could have wished for. At two
o'clock in the morning Pyinya and Thoukkya carried their pole to the
foot of the pagoda. Seven small ledges, representing the sacred seven
roofs of the great monasteries, broke the line of the cone at intervals
of twenty-five feet, and from the topmost of them the final spire of
gilded iron sprang with an ever-diminishing girth for fifteen feet and
at that height expanded to its umbrella top. Pyinya dropped his robe and
his waist-cloth on the ground. He rested the claw of his pole upon the
lowest ledge near to the wire rope on which the lamps were hung. He was
as lithe and silent as a lizard. With one hand holding the wire rope and
the other grasping the bamboo, he crawled up, his toes clinging to the
stone of the pagoda. On the first of the seven ledges he rested and
breathed, his face and his body flat against the cone. So far the
expedition had made no great demands upon him. A few minutes later a
sound of breathing beneath his feet, a quiver of the wire rope at his
side, and a rattle of an electric globe against the stone, and Thoukkya
stood beside him.

It needed the strength of both to draw up the pole, steady the butt of
it upon the ledge on which they stood and catch the hook on to the ledge
above them. Then they mounted to the next stage.

The great cone tapered as they climbed. Both men blessed the darkness
which hid from their eyes the height to which they had reached. They had
emptiness now on each side of them as well as behind them. Their breath
came in labouring spasms which threatened to burst heart and lungs;
their bodies ran with their sweat. Upon each one of them in turn came
the almost irresistible impulse to let go, plunge down to earth with a
shriek of fear, and so finish, meat, not man. Had there been one, so he
would have died. But every now and then, a whisper or a touch kept them
astoundedly aware that they were still alive, clinging like lizards to
the spire. And above all their natural fears, there was this: At the
very apex might there not be waiting a guardian spirit, the Nat of the
pagoda, who would smite them with a colic, cramping their stomachs in an
agony which no strength could resist?

They stood on the last tiny ledge, clinging to the final spear of gilded
iron which rose fifteen feet to the gold mushroom at the top. And as
Thoukkya whispered in a sobbing voice: "I am finished. I dare not," they
heard in a faint stir of wind the little gold bells tinkling above them,
so near now, so near! To Pyinya they were a call, an encouragement. They
tinkled so prettily! If there was a Nat up there, he was on their side.
Very likely there was one. Very likely the great lady had offended it.
Nats were very easy to offend and never forgot to let you have a nasty
upper-cut in return.

"I'll go, Nga Than," he said. "Cling tight! A few minutes and we can buy
Rangoon."

The iron lance shook as he swarmed up it with knees and feet and hands.
Every inch of his body seemed to cling close to it and support him. He
mounted by the friction of muscle and flesh rather than by foothold and
handhold. Thoukkya, gasping, and clinging with bruised hands on the tiny
shelf below, suddenly heard above him a jangle of bells, as though they
tossed in a storm. So loud they seemed to him that he glanced down in
terror, expecting to see a lamp glimmer far beneath him in the compound,
to hear a cry tear the still night. But no light shone, no cry was
heard. There was nothing but the black emptiness below him and about
him. His stomach was turned upside-down within him. Once let him feel
solid earth beneath the soles of his feet and see it stretching out all
round him--which he would never, never do--he would not even climb the
smallest of garden trees for a diamond as big as an abbot's paunch.
Thoukkya sobbed. He waited for a thousand years and then a scuffling
noise sounded just above his head. He looked up; against the dark sky a
dark bulk was just visible. Pyinya slid down beside him.

Thoukkya asked no questions. For around his companion's arm ornaments
glistened. For a little while Pyinya leaned against the iron spear
breathing and catching his breath like a man who has run a race and
reached the end of his strength. Then he said:

"Let us go down, very carefully. For I am very tired." But Thoukkya was
more tired by fear than Pyinya by exertion.

The descent, however, was easy compared with the climb. The coils of
cord about the pole gave grips for hands and feet. So long as neither
leaned back and dragged the hook from the ledge there was no danger for
these men. But between the fourth and the third ledge a small mischance
occurred. Pyinya knocked with his elbow one of the glass bulbs on the
wire rope. It clashed too hard against the stone of the pagoda and
tinkled down to the ground in fragments. Both men stopped where they
were, their hearts in their mouths, one on the ledge flattened against
the pagoda, the other clinging like a monkey. As each thin sliver of
curved glass leaped against the spire and was shattered again, it seemed
to them that cymbals clashed and loud enough to wake the dead.

"Be quick!" Thoukkya whispered from the ledge, his teeth chattering, his
belly turned to water. "Oh, be quick, Nga Pyu!" And indeed on such a
night sound travelled like voices over water.

"It is well," answered Nga Pyu. "It will not be noticed until the lights
are turned on to-morrow night, and by then we shall be very far away."

They were at the base of the pagoda on the ground. Thoukkya felt the
soil with his toes. It was incredible. He stretched out a foot gingerly.
Surely it would touch nothing. It touched soil. He was like a man who
comes down to the lowest tread of a flight of stairs in the dark. The
floor jars him.

At the base of the pagoda they put on again their waist-cloths and their
robes. Silently they carried the bamboo pole back to its hiding-place.
They waited in the darkness of the compound until the violence of their
breathing ceased. Then they wriggled through the monastery doorway to
their corner of the hall and in a few moments were asleep.

When the keeper of the monastery at daybreak beat upon his wooden gong
and roused the monks, the two devout novices performed the sacred
offices with the others. Only when all had scattered upon their
household duties did they move quietly to the open gate of the stockade.
They passed out, and with their eyes dutifully fixed upon the ground six
feet ahead of them, but their ears most unmeditatively alert, they paced
down a narrow lane to the river's edge. On the bank one man squatted, a
large bundle by his side. The two novices paid no heed to him. They
dropped their robes upon the ground close to him and bathed in the
river. As yet no one else was abroad. The hovels of the pagoda slaves
were still shuttered and a mist hung upon the water. There were just
those three, the two novices bathing and the third man who spread out
his bundle. In the bundle were two skirts of pink cotton, two white
jackets. He wrapped in his bundle in their place the yellow robes, laid
upon them a heavy stone and tied up all securely. He stood on the brink
of the stream and looked this way and that. Then he flung the bundle in.
The men of the pagoda mounted the slope. Nga Pyu and Nga Than warmly
greeted their old fellow-convict, Muhammed Ghalli, the Indian, and
dressed themselves in the usual cheap garments of the poor.

When Uncle Sunday returned from the burial of the Abbot of Schwegu he
saw from the steamer's deck, with a throb of alarm, that the scaffolding
was once more erected about the pagoda. He hurried to the monastery in a
growing agitation. His American friend, U Nageinda, was waiting for him
and drew him aside.

"They were released convicts, of course," he said. "None but monks and
convicts have shaven heads. It is a common practice for convicts on
their release to take the yellow robe. Then, after a few days, they can
go back to the world saying they had no vocation for the priesthood, and
no one can point the finger at them. They are novices who have found
themselves unequal to the monastic life."

"They stole, then?"

U Nageinda looked upwards to the spire.

"They were men of great strength and daring. The great diamond they
could not reach. It is inset on the very summit above the overhang of
the Hti. But your offering was suspended like a girdle below."

"And that they have?" said Crowther.

"Yes."

He sat on the ground, his hands clasped together and the fingers
working, his eyes moody and his face like a mask.

"Nga Pyu... Nga Than..." he said very softly, and again:
"Nga Than... Nga Pyu...."

U Nageinda shook his head. He seemed to hear a note in that soft
repetition of the names which was anything but monastic. He said gently:

"Let us remember that for so great a crime against our Lord Buddha and
the Law, those two poor creatures may live for a thousand years in each
of the eight Hells."

Apparently the words brought no consolation to Michael Crowther. He sat
by himself and brooded for the greater part of that day, and just before
nightfall he got to his feet. U Nageinda observed the movement and was
in two minds whether he should himself stir a finger or no. Each man
must follow the steady star along the rock path of his own volition. To
proffer advice was not within the four corners of his creed. Moreover,
it could amount to nothing more than a plea that his pupil should not
sully this newly-found soul of his by any passion, whether it be to
recover a stolen thing or to avenge the theft. But his glance, lowered
though it was, warned that such advice would be unprofitable. There
stood Uncle Sunday hardening before his eyes into Michael Crowther, his
head lifting, his shoulders squaring. But U Nageinda could help a little
out of his long experience--if he would. He saw Michael take a step and
he did. With a most unpriestly hurry he bustled to Michael's side.

"Our monks travel far," he said, "and they hear much, and they carry
their tidings to other monasteries. Wherever you go you will find eyes
and ears and tongues which will aid you. Use them so that you may come
back to us the sooner."

Michael turned to the old American with a smile.

"I thank you," he said; and he strode through the gateway of the
stockade and was gone.




                               CHAPTER IX
                             ON ADAM'S PEAK


I HAVE described the rape of the sapphire in its order of time,
although I only heard of it later, and of the perils and terrors which
beset the robbers later still. But its proper place in the story is, I
think, where I have put it. For in that way only a few circumstances in
which at the time I saw no danger can carry their true meaning. In a
sentence, I believed Ma Shwe At's anklets and Ma Sein's filigree
bracelet and the sapphire still to be decorating the empty air two
hundred feet above the earth; and my business finished, I returned to
Rangoon on the date arranged under that belief.

I had left myself a clear month to do with as I chose. I could shudder
over the _un aprs_ at Monte Carlo, or simply luxuriate in Paris. I did
neither of these things. It was clear to me that many years must pass
before I could again find myself eastward of the Gulf of Aden, and I
determined to realise a dream which on every voyage had beset me, whilst
I still had the strength and zest for such adventures. I sailed for
Ceylon. I spent a couple of days at the Galle Face outside Colombo, made
my arrangements, hired a car and rode inland to Hatton in Dickoya, the
little capital of the tea district. There a great wonder awaited me. I
booked my room at the hotel and had hardly moved a couple of yards from
the door when a clear, rather high voice suddenly called out on a note
of welcome and surprise:

"Darling!"

I knew the voice. A snake couldn't have turned quicker than I did
towards it. There, on the opposite side of the road, her arms stretched
wide apart, stood Imogen Cloud, her face one adorable smile. All
Imogen's friends were darlings, and I, alas! no more so than any other.

"Imogen!"

I ran across to her, took her hands and laughed. "This is the world's
birthday. Let me look at you!"--and I held her away from me.

Imogen Cloud was always amusing to look at. In London, some queer little
tip-tilted hat or another trickery of the fashion tickled one
pleasantly. Here it was something else. The sun was low and Imogen wore
no hat. The glossy ripple of her golden, shingled head and the vermilion
of her lips were deliciously at odds with her small sun-browned face.

"Martin!" she cried. "What are you doing here?"

"What you are, I hope," I answered. "I am going up Adam's Peak
to-morrow."

It was indeed that mountain, seen so often from the deck of a steamer
afar and apart in the light of an evening sky, which had brought me to
Ceylon. I had read all the descriptions of it upon which I could lay my
hands. I was well grounded in its romantic and immemorial associations.
It had become important to me. But I had never dreamed how real that
importance was to become, or what unforgettable associations of my own I
was now to add to those which history recorded in the books.

"Lovely!" said Imogen. "So are we."

She slipped her arm through mine and took possession of me. How many
friends of hers--again, alas!--had I seen swell with pride at the
flattery of this annexation! Also, she danced up and down a little as
lightly as the eight-year-old Miss Diamond in the sandy square of
Tagaung.

"Yes," she said. "I am here with Pamela Brayburn. We ran away from the
fogs together." Pamela Brayburn was a girl of Imogen's age, twenty-two
or thereabouts. They were both among the livelier spirits of the day:
Imogen, the daughter of a West Country squire who had put his money into
ships in the great age of shipping and had retired in time to keep it,
and Pamela Brayburn, her cousin and the child of a famous judge.

"We shall start at midnight," said Imogen.

"And go to bed at nine," I added.

"Carefully putting on our bed-socks first," said she.

We were standing in the road outside the door of the hotel. I have a
vague recollection now that I did see someone, a native of the island
perhaps, a man of the East, anyway, slip by us from the direction of the
servants' quarters. I was hardly aware of him, or indeed of anyone
except Imogen. But the next moment my attention was attracted, as any
small familiar thing happening in an unfamiliar place will attract it
whether it's my attention or another's. I heard some words spoken behind
me, and I spun round on my heel. The words meant nothing at all to me.
They were as commonplace as words could be.

"Muhammed is already at Ratnapura."

That was all. Ratnapura had a sound of Ceylon even to one who had
disembarked at Colombo only three days before. But I had never seen the
place, and the name of Muhammed, of course, east of Cape Spartel was as
one grain of sand in a Sahara. But the words were spoken in Talaing, the
language of the old kingdom of Pegu, still the vernacular of a quarter
of a million people in Lower Burma. We were after all four days'
steaming from Rangoon. It seemed odd that I should hear this tongue
immediately in this upland town of Dickoya. I only saw the backs of two
men, however. They were moving away, but one of them was reading a
telegram--a telegram, no doubt, from one Muhammed who had arrived at
Ratnapura.

"Do you know those men?" Imogen asked curiously.

"No. But they are from Burma."

Then an explanation of their presence occurred to me.

"The guide-books tell us that Hatton is the headquarters of the tea
district. There are likely to be a good many coolies of all races here
from the plantations."

"I don't think they are coolies," said Imogen. "They are more probably
pilgrims for the Peak."

"Why?" I asked, only interested because Imogen was too.

"I rather think that I saw them in Kandy," said she.

There is a mark on the flat summit of the mountain which vaguely
resembles the imprint of a giant's foot. Who first discovered it, no one
knows. But the Buddhists claim it for a footstep of Gautama, the Hindus
hold that Siva passed that way, the Mohammedans say quite simply that
Adam made it. Thus eight hundred million Eastern men venerate Adam's
Peak for one of three reasons and send their annual contingents to watch
the dawn break upon that high shrine. It was very likely that the two
Burmans were bound upon the same journey as ourselves.

"Of course, that's it!" I agreed. "Why were you curious about them?"

"I was thinking that we shall want a man or two, shan't we?" Imogen
replied. "I'm told that before morning it is very cold up on the top.
One or two to carry wraps. If they're from Burma you might prefer to
have them. They would make their pilgrimage and earn a little money at
the same time."

"That's true."

It would be an advantage to have them. For I could talk their language
and I could not do that in the case of a Cingalese. I turned about again
to call to the men. But they had disappeared into some alley. We waited
for a few moments on the chance that they might reappear and then walked
on again.

"It can't be helped, my dear," I said. "After all, if we take a guide
from the hotel, he'll know the way and be reliable besides."

But I did not finish the word "besides." I broke off with a cry.

"Imogen!"

"Yes."

She stopped and faced me, puzzled, as indeed she well might be. For I
have no doubt that my face spoke my consternation as loudly as my voice.

"Martin! What's the matter?"

Imogen was wearing a coat and skirt of a thin tussore silk with a white
silk shirt open at the neck so that her slender throat rose free. Round
it was fastened a light platinum chain, and dangling as a pendant to the
chain was a large square sapphire, a quite flawless stone of a deep and
lovely blue. I had not noticed it until this moment. I don't think,
indeed, that it could have been noticeable. It must have lain against
Imogen's breast underneath her shirt, and some movement must have now
revealed it. But there it hung, darkly gleaming, with just that spark of
fire in its depths which had burned in the stone that Crowther had
rolled on to the table-cloth of the _Dagonet_ from Ma Shwe At's pink
silk bag. Of course, it was not the same stone. I told myself that over
and over again. It could not be. That one hung far out of reach on the
spire of a pagoda a couple of thousand miles away. And Crowther sat at
the foot of it reading in his big Book of Enfranchisement. But this
sapphire about Imogen's throat was its very twin, even to the fire-spark
like some tiny lantern shining sharply in the deep of Indian seas. It
was its twin--yes--discovered, very likely, in the same native claim on
the road to Mogok--but not the same. I would not have it so--no, not for
the world.

"Where did you get that sapphire?... Please!" I asked, a little
breathlessly.

"Darling!" she answered. Some trifle of concern caused by my agitation
clouded her face for a moment. Her fingers closed upon the stone. Even
though I knew it to be merely the sister stone, I hated to see Imogen
touch and hold and claim it. "Darling, I bought it."

"Where?"

"At Kandy."

"When?"

"A week ago."

"You are sure?"

"Of course I'm sure. You don't think sapphires like this are lying about
in heaps. I saw it in a jeweller's shop under the hotel, and since there
was no generous young man within range of my flashing eyes, I gave
myself a present."

I drew a breath of relief. It was not so long ago since I had parted
from Michael at Schwegu; and Michael within that time had assuredly not
recanted. Besides, Crowther's stone was unset. I remembered that
clearly. It was still unset when Crowther had discovered it still
wrapped in its strip of napkin at the bottom of his trunk after his
return from Farm Street. Imogen's sapphire, on the other hand, was set
simply and beautifully in a perfectly plain, thin, square frame of
platinum. No, they couldn't be the same stone. I was catching at every
possible argument, you see, which would dissociate the sapphire which
Crowther had stolen from Ma Shwe At from that which now gleamed against
Imogen's breast.

"I am very glad," I stammered. "I mean that I should have adored to have
given it to you--if you would have taken it. But I'm glad that it was
bought at Kandy.... Oh, you must think me a perfect idiot."

I was furious with myself. The sight of that duplicate stone--on no
account would I allow that it could be anything but a duplicate--hanging
from Imogen's neck had given me a sharper shock than I was ready to
meet. Crowther and his sapphire had been growing to be elements rather
too disturbing to suit me. I didn't want to meet them at every corner of
the road. I was all for an equable level life if I could get it--or
rather if I could keep it. Storms of the soul, whirlpools of passion
which sucked the heart down in dizzy spirals and then flung it up and up
into thin air--anyone might have my share of these raptures who wanted
it. I did not want to be disturbed by Crowther and his sapphire. The
jewel had brought nothing but unhappiness to little Mrs. Golden Needle
and Miss Diamond, to Crowther himself, and it had seemed in a queer,
sinister way to be trying to entangle me. As though some malignant
spirit lived in its blue loveliness--that spark of fire, for instance,
shooting out always its tiny ray. I had been getting obsessed by it in
Burma. It was setting a spell upon me; and all the way to Ceylon I had
been growing more and more conscious of relief, like a man throwing off
a malady. Fear--yes, I will be frank--fear had begun to fall away from
me as we dropped down the river from Rangoon; and each new day upon the
sea was another door to freedom. Miles away Crowther and his sapphire,
and more miles with every hour. And now, suddenly, here in Ceylon, was
the very image of that stone, resting lovely and menacing against the
breast of the last person in the world whom I wished unhappiness to
threaten. Oh, yes, I was troubled, and no doubt my face showed it. It
was as if the original sapphire spoke:

"You don't get away from me like that! See where I am? Here's a friend
of yours going to do some work for me now."

Not if I could help it!

But it was Imogen who spoke and not the sapphire. She used those very
words. She glanced at me. No doubt I had spoken rather strenuously. She
tucked her arm again through mine and gave it a little squeeze.

"You can't get away from me like that. I shall want to hear about this
sapphire," she said.

"When we are back in England."

Imogen shook her head decidedly.

"Before that!"

"I am going to refuse," said I.

"Martin, darling"--she was apparently arguing with an unreasonable
child--"you can't keep jewel-stories to yourself when there's a young
woman at your elbow."

I knew that it would be difficult when the young woman was Imogen Cloud.
Did I say that she was lovely? She had a broad, low forehead, eyes of a
golden brown which grew bigger and bigger the longer you looked at them,
with long eyelashes which had an upward curl at the end of them and were
set there to entangle hearts. Her eyes were set wide apart, with a
delicately-chiselled nose between them. She had a short upper lip, rows
of white teeth and a little firm chin. She was slender and supple and
just the right height; tall enough not to look small, and small enough
not to over-tower you; and her ankles and wrists were sculpture at its
best. But a description of her features is no more than a catalogue. It
is perhaps more illuminating to say that young men went down before her
like so many ninepins; that the middle-aged at the sight of her thought
of the fine things which they had done and wished that she could know of
them; and that the aged, in the same position, thanked their stars that
modern hygiene had turned senility into a legend of the past. The truth
is there was a grace of soul in her which matched the grace of her
limbs. Though she had a quick eye for a foible and a sense of humour
which made play of it, she was kind. Those who talked with her
understood very soon that she considered them. But I make no further
excuses for the deplorable exhibition which I made later on that
evening. We dined together, Imogen, Pamela Brayburn and myself. Imogen
did not harry me until dinner was finished and we were smoking over our
coffee.

"Now," she said.

"No," said I.

"What?" asked Pamela Brayburn.

"Nothing," said I.

Imogen turned to Pamela.

"Martin's all up in the air about this sapphire I bought at Kandy," she
said. "He has got a story about it and wants to keep it to himself."

"I haven't got a story about it," I declared in desperation. "I have got
a story about a quite different sapphire."

My declaration did not help me at all. For Imogen rejoined:

"Then we'll hear the story about the different sapphire."

"Not now," I answered. "It's a very long story--very, very long and
tedious. Some afternoon when we're half-way across the Indian Ocean I'll
tell it you."

"I don't think that we can all go home on the same ship unless we're
told this jewel-story to-night," said Pamela Brayburn. She was a
brown-haired girl of Imogen's age and no doubt attractive. At the moment
I resented her.

"Very well, we'll go on different ships," I returned.

Pamela looked at me. I might have been a nonesuch. She smiled at Imogen.

"I think Martin's stupid," she said sweetly.

What can you do with people like that? Argument was out of the question.
There was a big clock upon the wall and I pointed to it.

"It's nine o'clock," I said. "The difference between enjoyment and
fatigue to-morrow means two and a half hours in bed now with your
clothes off."

Pamela looked at me broodingly, and turned with a nod to Imogen.

"He's a sexual maniac, I suppose."

"I'm nothing of the sort," I cried hotly, and stopped. I was not going
to be betrayed into behaving still more like an idiot than I had been
doing for Pamela Brayburn's amusement.

"But, Martin, darling," Imogen asked, "how can you expect us to go to
bed and sleep with that untold story upon our minds?"

"You must put it out of your heads altogether," I explained with perhaps
an accent of the instructor. For I saw Imogen's cheeks dimple suddenly.
"And the best way is five minutes' general conversation and then to
bed."

"Yes," said Pamela.

"Yes," said Imogen.

And they both waited, with their eyes round and serious upon my face,
for me to begin. They were baiting me--these two girls. If they had been
tigers in the jungle they wouldn't have dared to do it. But I couldn't
say that. It would have sounded boastful and it wouldn't have been
general conversation. I had to think of something which would set the
ball rolling and so I made as lamentable a remark as any man gravelled
for lack of a subject could have let slip. I said:

"Is not the peacock a beautiful bird?"

The reaction of my companions was immediate. Imogen clapped her
handkerchief to her mouth and rolled and shook in her chair. Pamela
openly screamed her delight so that everyone in the room looked at us.
It was the end of my resistance. I began to think that I was after all
making too much of a coincidence. I had no wish to infect the girls with
my forebodings. So out the whole story came, the history of the sapphire
and Ma Shwe At and Ma Sein at Tagaung and the evolution of Michael D.
into Uncle Sunday.

"I think that I should like to meet your Uncle Sunday," Imogen said in a
very quiet voice when I had finished.

"I hope that you won't," I exclaimed fervently.

Imogen's eyes rested for a moment upon my face.

"But you think I will," she replied quietly.

"No! I don't!" I cried.

But did I? Was the violence of my denial due to an unacknowledged fear
that she would at some destined time meet Michael Crowther and be swept
up into a web of peril and misfortune, at the heart of which the deep
blue of a sapphire softly gleamed? I cannot tell. All I know is that I
felt a chill creep along my spine and I shuddered. Somebody was walking
over my grave. "Let us go," I said, and I got up.

We met again in the dining-room at a quarter to twelve, drank some
coffee, and started as the clock struck midnight. We took a guide from
the hotel to show the way and carry the wraps, and we drove in my hired
car the first fourteen miles to Laxapana. There we left the car and
walking up a glen with a river rushing down it like a Highland valley,
we mounted by the rock steps and jungle paths towards Oosamalle at the
foot of the final peak. It was a clear and moonless night with the sky
one soft blaze of stars; and above us and below us in the zigzag paths
were little bands of pilgrims, their lanterns flashing in and out
amongst the trees, their voices chanting as they went.

"I have never known anything so lovely," said Imogen.

She and Pamela Brayburn had given their warm cloaks to the guide. They
were both dressed in shirts open at the throat, shorts, stockings
gartered below the knees, and stout shoes. They had the look of a couple
of schoolboys. Our guide carried the lantern just ahead of us, Imogen
behind him and I at the tail. Here and there the steps cut in the solid
rock were steep and disappeared into caverns; here and there were
chains. The mountain-side was alive with lights and vocal with hymns.
The hymns floated down to us airy and delicate as though they were sung
by the spirits of the Peak, and rose up from the valley reverberating
like the music of water. We left the trees beneath us. The Peak towered
straight above us now, a huge blunt mass of rock, hiding from us half
the starlit sky. We traversed a ledge with a chain for a hand-rail; a
scramble up over broken rocks; at the end a rough ladder clamped to a
cliff face, and we stepped over a low brick wall on to the flat summit
of the mountain.

I never saw anything stranger or more memorable than the top of Adam's
Peak. To men with their blood thinned by the tropics, the air at that
height was cold as an Arctic night; and on the flat, square surface, of
a hundred and fifty feet, great bonfires flung their sparks and flames
into the darkness. They blazed at the corners, in front of the wooden
canopy which sheltered the sacred footprint, and here and there in no
sort of order upon the platform. Above, the stars bright as diamonds
crowded the skies; around us stretched the empty black of the night; and
this little square, eight thousand feet above the sea, was one
flickering crimson glare in which shifted and crossed and halted, as
though engaged in some fantastic dance, a throng of coolies in rags,
Mussulmen in snow-white robes, Buddhist monks in yellow gowns and three
Europeans--ourselves. For there were no other Europeans but ourselves
upon the Peak that night.

The two girls hurried towards one of these fires, Pamela taking her
cloak from the guide as she hurried. The men about the fire made way for
them. I held Imogen's thick sable coat for her and as she thrust an arm
into a sleeve, the red light played not only upon her face but upon a
blue jewel gleaming darkly against her throat. I buttoned the coat close
about her neck.

"Better keep warm," I said.

"And hide the sapphire," she added with a slow smile.

"Yes, I meant that too," I said, and I turned to Pamela Brayburn. She
was already muffled to the ears.

"We shan't have long to wait," I said, and I suddenly felt Imogen's hand
cling to my arm. I blamed myself for a fool. In my haste to hide the
jewel at her throat I had really alarmed her, and no doubt to a girl
fresh from the guarded ways of England, the throng of strange, dark
people upon that lonely summit might well have been alarming.

"It's all right," I said.

This bonfire was towards the eastern corner of the platform and there
the crowd was thickest. I drew Imogen and her cousin away. Along the
southern parapet there were empty spaces, and we walked across to one of
them. From this parapet the mountain dropped in a precipice; to our left
a spur projected and that spur was gemmed with the lights of moving
lanterns and articulate with hymns.

"You are not giddy?" I asked of the two girls. Pamela stood a foot or
two behind, Imogen was at my side, her knees touching the low parapet.

"No," she said.

But where we stood, we looked down a sheer wall. Our guide was with us.
He stood beside us, so that we were all four looking down the
mountain-side.

"That is the more difficult path," he said. "Those who come that way
acquire a greater merit."

"Where do they come from?" I asked idly.

"From Ratnapura!" he answered, stretching out his arm. "It lies far away
in the jungle."

Ratnapura? I had heard the name, and as I was remembering where I had
heard it, a great wave of crimson colour swept across the mountain-top
and someone stumbled against Imogen. Stumbled so roughly that she was
lifted off her feet. Fortunately, too, she uttered a cry, and as she
pitched forward I flung my right arm across the front of her waist and
held her. I set her again upon her feet. The man who had stumbled was on
his knees on the ground behind us. But before I could lay a hand on him,
he had mumbled some words and slipped away into the darkness. But I had
caught the words. They asked for pardon; they talked of an accident. But
they were spoken in the Burmese tongue.

I should not have followed the man if I could. I should have stayed with
Imogen and her cousin in any case. But I could not have caught him even
if I had pursued him. For at that moment a great clamour rang out from
end to end of the rock and there was a rush towards the eastern corner.
A faint and tender light was welling out of the east. A moment or two
more and the sky was broken. Broad bars of cloud edged with gold stood
out against a glowing crimson radiance. Prison bars above the mountains
of Kandy. The whole effect was violent and lurid. Not a soul upon the
Peak but turned his face towards them and so stood immobile and silent
whilst the sun rose and the daylight came.

I looked at the rock surface on which we stood. There was not a fissure
nor a ridge which could make a man stumble. Then I turned again and
leaned over the southern wall. I heard Imogen shiver behind me, and I
felt the clutch of her hand. But there was no one near to us now.

"There's no danger," I said.

And there was none. But the cliff plunged sheer for hundreds of feet to
a sloping eave which overhung the ground below. Had Imogen fallen from
that parapet she must have been dashed to pieces in the fall!

Behind me she gasped and uttered a cry. I had been holding her away so
that she should not see. Even if she had now seen, I turned about and
stood between her and the wall so that she should see no more. But she
was not looking down the precipice. She was looking straight outwards to
the west and her eyes were filled with wonder instead of fear.

I, too, gasped when I saw what Imogen saw--the miracle of the shadow. It
was flung out across the white morning mists in the shape of a perfect
cone. It was gigantic and lay across the world, its apex touching the
distant clouds. It was transparent, for the mists thinned away
underneath and green jungle and brown rock and the sparkle of the sea
swam into view. There it rested whilst the sun rose behind our
shoulders, a pyramid of gauze so exactly edged and pointed that it might
have been carved out of stone. Then at a certain moment it began not so
much to fade as to foreshorten. It came back on us as we watched it from
the wall; and quicker with each second which passed. It was as though
the Peak drew it in and consumed it impatiently. In the end it rushed
like a shutter which a spring releases and was gone. Below us stretched
rock and shining forest, and far away the sparkle of the sea.

Imogen caught Pamela with one hand and me with the other.

"I am glad I saw that," she cried. "The shadow! Everyone has talked of
it. But I couldn't imagine it was anything so wonderful!"

"Nor I," said Pamela.

The shadow had been lifted too from Imogen. The bonfires had died down
and though the air was sharp the sunlight lit up the platform from end
to end. The pilgrims, their pilgrimage over, were crowded about the
ladder. We moved to the chain which guarded the sacred footprint, in the
very centre of the flat summit.

"Well, I'll say this for his nibs"--thus Pamela irreverently referred to
Gautama or Siva or Adam--"he didn't pinch his feet."

Since the foot was five feet long and thirty inches broad, we could all
agree with her.

"And I'll say this for myself," Pamela added. "If the whole of him
matched his feet, he still couldn't want his breakfast more than I do!
My mother gave me two pieces of advice when I left home. 'Darling
Pamela,' she said, 'first, never go without your breakfast, for if you
do your gastric juices will eat you like alligators; and secondly, if
you find yourself with four kings in a little poker game on board a
liner, throw your hand in for the dealer has four aces.'"

"I should like to meet your mother," I said.

Pamela shook her head.

"You would not. For if mother heard that you had taken two weak, lonely
girls up to the top of a mountain without so much as a sandwich in a
newspaper, she'd drive you screaming from the house."

I nodded my head two or three times.

"You'll eat those harsh words before the morning's out."

"They'll be something to eat, anyway," said Pamela.

We laughed. Imogen seemed quite to have forgotten her moment of danger.
Pamela Brayburn, it seemed to me, was forcing her humour in order to
obliterate that moment and, judging from the steadiness of Imogen's
face, was successful.

"Shall we go?" she asked.

The enclosure was emptying fast, and we could hear, already far down the
hill-side, the cries of the pilgrims returning to the valleys.

"In a second," I answered. In spite of Pamela's appetite we might as
well be the last to go. But Pamela raised no objection. We were all, I
think, determined that no other accident should imperil Imogen, and a
little alarmed, too, by a sort of composite recollection of all the
legends which attribute curses to jewels. However, dawdle as we might,
we were still not the last to leave. The guide climbed down the ladder
first, Imogen followed him, next came Pamela, and I last, taking very
good care that no one should pass me. In the same order we made our
traverse across the ledge and descended to the tree-line. Half an hour
lower down the interminable steps were interrupted by a path and a glade
with one or two enormous images of stone scattered about it. I never
learned how they came to be there. It looked as if a thousand slaves of
a bygone king when Rome was young, being bidden to carry these images to
the mountain-top had got so bored with their task that they had thrown
them down and preferred there and then to die. However, I recognised the
place of these monstrosities in the long chain of purpose when I saw
Imogen and Pamela spreading their cloaks on the ground in front of one
of them. The slaves might not have known what final cause made them
cease to do, and die, but I hoped that looking down from Paradise they
now saw Imogen and Pamela leaning their backs restfully against a huge
stone gentleman and understood the wise order of events and were
content. Trees made a pleasant shade above our heads. Outside the ring
of their foliage every pebble flashed like glass. Within our view and
call stood a row of huts and along the path in front of them passed
family after family of pilgrims, happy in the consciousness of the great
merit which that day they had achieved.

"Breakfast," said I rather proudly.

"Such as?" asked Pamela, turning up her nose.

I had selected the breakfast and the guide had carried it. I thought
very well of it. Without a rejoinder I spread it out in front of them.
It consisted of sardines, a loaf, chicken, _pt de foie gras_, fruit,
and a bottle of champagne. And when we had finished them, we, too, were
conscious of merit. Pamela reclined on her elbow smoking a cigarette,
and nodded her head at me.

"You may meet my mother after all. When I was a baby she always said to
me: '_Pt de foie gras_ is more nourishing than Glaxo.'" Then she
stretched herself.

"Think of all the other tourists!" she cried with an infinite
compassion. "Poor people! I shall express my pity to them over and over
again in no uncertain terms."

"You will be popular," said I.

"They'll hate me," Pamela returned, with a glow of satisfaction.

Imogen was lying stretched upon her back, her head resting upon her
hands, her face upturned to the shading trees. She looked more like a
slim schoolboy than ever.

"We might drive down to Kandy this afternoon and begin the good work,"
she drawled.

I sat up and looked at her. She had tucked her sapphire well out of
sight. I had an intuition that she was really anxious to get away from
the neighbourhood, however carelessly she spoke. She had, after all,
been within a hand's breadth of a quite horrible death. Nothing could be
more natural than that she should wish to put a wide distance between
herself and the spot where an accident so nearly fatal had happened.

"I'll drive you both down," I said, and from under her half-closed
eyelids her eyes shot me a glance of gratitude. "You have a maid with
you?"

"Yes."

"She can take your luggage by train."

So it was arranged and we descended the rest of the steps and tramped
down the glen to the car by the bridge across the tumbling stream. I had
left a second bottle of champagne hidden amongst the cushions; and thus,
more conscious of our high merit than ever, we reached Hatton by eleven
and Kandy before the night fell.

Over dinner that night we debated plans. At least I debated and they
decided. I suppose that if people in love can possibly make a mess of
their love-making in the early days of their courtship, they generally
do. I followed that rule.

"Couldn't we keep together?"

That was good and asked with a modest eagerness. But I must spoil it all
by adding:

"We must, of course, give a day or two to Kandy."

"You can 'ave Kandy," said Pamela, adapting the unforgettable aphorism
of the lamented moneylender almost before I had finished.

"We are going to Anuradhapura by car in the morning," Imogen said in the
same breath. "You see we've already spent some time in Kandy."

Imogen had the nerve to say that.

"Ah, yes," I said slowly. "Yes, I see."

"We've got to have a look at that old brass palace and the big man's
bo-tree," Pamela continued.

"Of course you have," I agreed, as heartily as I could.

To tell the truth I was terribly hurt. The two girls had been looking up
the guide-books whilst they changed for dinner. They had made their
plan; they had come down prepared to declare it at the first moment and
rather aggressively. And their purpose would have been plain to a blind
man. They did not want to see any bo-tree. The brass palace could be a
mass of iron junk so far as they were concerned. No, they wanted to be
free of me. So they put quite definitely as many miles as possible
between us. Very well! They certainly should not be prevented. I had no
wish to be their parasite.

"I am sorry," I said, rather proud of the indifference of my tone. "But
we shall meet, no doubt, one day in London."

There was a definite interval of silence. Pamela looked at Imogen and
Imogen looked at Pamela. Pamela lifted her eyebrows. A question: "Shall
I?" Ever so slightly Imogen shook her head. I was not going to distress
myself. They had tried me out for a day and found me wanting. They were
quite entitled to. There was no need for Pamela to ask of her friend
whether they oughtn't to be civil. Not the slightest, and Imogen was
perfectly right to answer "No." I had no wish to be let down easily by
Pamela Brayburn. In the end it was Imogen who spoke.

"But, Martin, you'll be coming to Anuradhapura. You can't come to Ceylon
and not see one of the Buried Cities, especially when I ask you to
come!"

A little too late that final clause. Still, it was rather like her hand
on my sleeve. But I shook it off. No cajolements for me!

"No doubt I shall roll along there some time," I replied. "I have
promised to put in a couple of days with a friend here."

There was not a word of truth in what I said. I had no friend in Kandy,
and if I had had one I should have broken every promise to him at a real
nod from Imogen. I was aching to go on to Anuradhapura. But I did not
get that real nod. I just got a conventional politeness. She said:

"Very well, we'll wait for you there. You'll be two days here, you say."

"Two or three," I answered. "You'll want three, I am sure."

Now Imogen was offended, although, upon my word, I couldn't see the
slightest excuse for offence in my words or my manner. I was careful to
be studiously polite. But none the less we passed a stiff and
uncomfortable evening. They retired early, as indeed after this long day
was to be expected. But I did not expect the outburst of indignation
from Pamela which followed upon our formal "Good night."

Imogen was half-way up the stairs, and Pamela just behind her. I was
standing in the lounge, wondering whether after all Crowther wasn't
right, and to cease to exist as a separate entity wasn't the final ideal
one could aim at. Suddenly Pamela stopped. She turned, she came running
down the stairs, her face in a flame. She ran straight up to me and
stamped her foot.

"Can't you see an inch before your nose?" she asked. "Can't you guess
what happened this morning?"

"What happened this morning?" I repeated, and as I stared at her
blankly, she flung at me:

"I think you are the world's perfect idiot."

I was staggered. I could think of no rejoinder but one which Captain
Crowther had used to me. I said:

"You do surprise me."

And like Captain Crowther I really was surprised.




                               CHAPTER X
                            AGAIN THE SHADOW


I SULKED about Kandy for three days. I did every proper thing. I saw
the sacred Tooth and I visited the Peradeniya Gardens and I drove along
Lady Horton's road under the arches of high bamboos. I admired the lake
and the library and the opulence of the flowers and the fire-flies at
night and the blue of the afternoons. At intervals of five minutes I
said to myself with determination: "I wouldn't have missed this for
worlds. The only way to see things really is to be alone." And at the
end of the third day I could have wept.

On the morning of the fourth day I awoke with a curious exhilaration. I
explained it to myself very reasonably.

"That means that I am looking forward immensely to seeing at last the
famous Brazen Palace at Anuradhapura."

I dressed quickly, ate my breakfast more quickly still, ordered my car
to be brought round and strolled out of the hotel. There I suffered the
worst shock of my life. For on the stone parapet which bordered the
lakes, at a point just opposite to the door of the hotel, sat Uncle
Sunday--no, I am wrong--sat Michael Crowther--no, I am wrong again--sat
Michael D. I was so dumbfounded that I had to pass through these
successive phases of recognition before I could place this odd
apparition in its proper class. It was Michael D. at his worst. Michael
D. in a mufti which dubbed him Michael D. as surely as a king's sword
dubs a squire a knight.

I had never seen a panoply so outrageous. Yet no passer-by was even
annoyed by it. I had to remember that the miracles of the West are the
commonplaces of the East. He wore a sun-helmet, of course, like the rest
of us, but nothing else like the rest of us. He was clothed in a jacket
of dark tweed so thick and heavy that it made me perspire to look at it,
a white cotton shirt very open at the throat, with enormous wings to the
collar which covered the lapels of his coat. The Moore and Burgess shirt
was caught in at the waist by a cricket belt of the I. Zingari colours
and below the belt white drill knickerbockers decorated his knees and
thighs. He wore, with the white knickerbockers, thick, dark woollen
stockings and--horrible, most horrible--white canvas shoes with
patent-leather toe-caps and patent-leather fancy strappings.

At the first glance I could not believe my eyes. At the second I did not
want to. For the first time I rejoiced that Imogen was eighty miles away
at Anuradhapura. For the second time I feared that neither distance nor
effort could keep her out of this man's orbit. I was going to do what I
could, however. I set off at a brisk pace down the road as if I had not
recognised him--a foolish manoeuvre, for I should have to come back for
my car, and Michael D. would still be waiting on the parapet above the
water. So I stopped in front of a jeweller's window and pretended to
examine its contents. Out of the tail of my eye I saw my car brought to
the hotel door and my baggage placed in the back of it. Then I strolled
back. Michael D. sat still, quietly and absolutely certain that I should
be compelled to approach him. I had no such intention. I grew hot over
his conceit. If he imagined himself to be a magnet, I knew that I was
the silver churn. He could not attract me. I took my seat in the car and
then he rose from the balustrade and crossed the road to me. It gave me
a little pleasure that he had to make the move. It encouraged me, too. I
said to myself: "You take me for a pongyi's acolyte, do you? I'll show
you." But I saw his face now, and both my resentment and my satisfaction
became, in a second, trivial and mean. For it was not Michael D. who
looked at me, but Uncle Sunday--Uncle Sunday all the more Uncle Sunday
because of his absurd clothes--and with so poignant a distress in his
sharpened face that pity must go out to him. I had not the heart even to
be witty about his dress.

"I was waiting for you," he said.

"So I saw," I replied.

I sat in my seat for a moment. There was nothing for it. I nodded my
head and got down from the car.

"I shall be a little while," I said resignedly to the porter. "Please
look after the car."

We walked away from the lake across the green square to the precinct of
the Garden Temple, and sitting down upon a stone bench amongst the
pagodas and the banyan-trees, Crowther told me of how he had returned
from Schwegu to find his votive offering stolen from the high spire at
the monastery door.

His story was a dreadful shock to me. I heard it with a distress not to
be stilled by any argument that there might be two sapphires of exactly
the same shape and size and colour. The sapphire which Imogen possessed
was the sapphire from the pagoda spire at Pagan. I was convinced of it
and on the top of that conviction a cloud of dim fears moved across my
mind. I had as yet no details. I had drawn no deductions. I had not
reasoned. I was simply frightened. Imogen had been drawn into the orbit
of the sapphire. And my fear, although I am not more sensitive than
other people and very probably not as sensitive as most, showed itself
to me in a succession of the vague, rather meaningless and altogether
alarming pictures which are apt to afflict the dreams of children.
Before I could put a question to Crowther, he added as a corollary to
his story:

"You will understand, then, Mr. Legatt, that I am obligated to repair
that sacrilege."

I was on edge. I turned upon him. It ought, of course, to have been his
smug concentration upon himself which made me turn. But if you are on
edge, it's the trumpery irrelevance which suddenly makes life
impossible.

"You mustn't talk like that, Michael D.," I shouted violently.

"Long ago I dropped the D.," Crowther answered meekly.

"You can't," I insisted. "You're obligated to keep it, so long as you're
obligated to anything."

Crowther was penitent. There was less of Michael D. in him than there
had been at any time.

"I should, no doubt, have said obliged. I think that probably the
clothes I am wearing--I bought them without much thought at
Rangoon--have lent some of their vulgarity to my speech. What I meant
was that I felt bound to restore my offering to its place."

I had cooled down by then.

"Believe me, Michael, I should be very pleased to hear that you had
restored it," I said cordially.

Michael was moved by my warmth of tone, but utterly misunderstood it.

"A kind thought confers merit upon the thinker," he replied.

"It wasn't kind. It was purely selfish."

For the last shape which my fear had taken was oddly enough the shadow
of Adam's Peak, and it seemed to stretch not westwards to the sea, but
northwards to a buried city in the jungle, and was now less a shadow
than a pointing finger.

I asked for details of the theft and I got them. They made my heart jump
into my mouth.

"There were two convicts in the monastery?" I asked.

"Yes. Nga Pyu and Nga Than."

"Burmese, then?"

"Yes," said Crowther. "But there was an accomplice who was not."

I sat up stiff on the bench.

"What's that, Michael? There was a third, then?"

"Yes."

"And a foreigner?"

"An Indian. Muhammed Ghalli."

Of course, there were millions of Muhammeds, I said to myself, and I
kept on saying it until the words meant nothing at all. Millions of
them! Millions of them!

"You are quite sure there was a third accomplice?" I darted at him
hopefully.

"Quite. He was with the other two in the same prison. He was released
with them. He went up the river on the same steamer with them to
Nyaungu. He had the clothes they changed into on the river-bank. They
were together in Prome and took the train from there to Rangoon. They
sailed from Rangoon on the same ship for Ceylon."

I began to think with a little burst of relief that Crowther was
romancing. He was as detailed in his story as Robinson Crusoe. Surely
vigils and fasting had made him fanciful. The objection to my theory was
that neither vigils nor fasting have any place in the routine of a
Buddhist monastery.

"How do you know all this?" I asked.

Crowther smiled.

"There are many monasteries and many monks moving from one to the other.
There are many visitors and much talk during the afternoons. If we want
to know anything it is not so difficult."

"I see. A secret service ready made."

I had no doubt of the explanation. The ramifications of the brotherhood
were everywhere. There were thousands of pairs of eyes with the time to
watch and of ears with the time to listen.

"They came to Ceylon, then! Yes--the three of them, Nga Pyu, Nga Than
and Muhammed Ghalli," I agreed.

"After I landed," Crowther continued, "I traced them up from Colombo to
Kandy by the same means."

"Yes?"

"At Kandy they sold what they had stolen."

I turned to him quickly.

"To whom?"

"To the jeweller under the hotel. You were looking into his shop window
a few minutes ago."

I thought that I saw a flaw here in the link of his story.

"But how could you know that all the ornaments were sold to him? The
monks could hardly help you there. They buy nothing. They have no money
to spend at jewellers' shops."

"I didn't need them," Crowther replied. "I saw the filigree bracelet and
the amber acorn myself, displayed in the window. I went into the shop.
He had all the presents I had given to Ma Shwe At. I bought them all
back."

I jumped up in an excitement of relief.

"All! That's fine!" I cried.

"All that I had given to Ma Shwe At," he repeated, spacing his words to
signify that he meant just what he said and no more. "The sapphire had
been sold."

My heart sank again. The sapphire was not one of Crowther's presents.
They were all insignificant--images in amber, bits of jade, trinkets of
filigree silver. The sapphire was the one thing of value amongst the
lot.

"To whom had it been sold?" I cried. "No doubt you asked."

"Oh, yes, I asked all right!" Crowther returned. "He sold it to a young
English lady. She had another young lady with her. She said to him that
she was going to give herself a present."

There could be no longer, then, the least doubt in my mind that the
sapphire which had shone on Imogen's throat was the sapphire from
Tagaung. I had never really disbelieved it. But I did not want to
believe it. No doubt I was allowing myself to be tormented by the merest
fancy. But I could not help myself. I was sure that there was misfortune
in that stolen jewel, and if Imogen possessed it, the misfortune would
be hers too. There would be attacks which would look like
accidents--nay, had not one example happened already? I could after all
put two and two together. Two Burmese ex-convicts and an Indian named
Muhammed Ghalli for a third--two of them at Hatton and the third coming
up from Ratnapura to the foot of the precipice below Adam's Peak. Might
not the next one succeed and be fatal? I had got to be sure that Imogen
had Crowther's sapphire--sure beyond the slightest possibility of a
doubt--so much danger shone in it, so much menace made its setting.
Common sense, of course, declared that the question whether Imogen
possessed Crowther's sapphire or its twin sister made no difference
whatever. Imogen ran precisely the same risk in either case. But I had
in front of me Crowther--the bumptious, thieving, ignoble Michael D.
evolving through failure and disappointment and loneliness and misery
into Uncle Sunday of the yellow robe. Common sense had a very tiny
unconvincing voice to my hearing in that precinct of the Garden Temple
under the great trees. I had to be sure about that sapphire. I got up.

"Let us go to the jeweller."

Michael nodded and we walked quickly across the space of green to the
hotel and down the slope beside it. The jeweller was a stout,
bespectacled, comfortable, greasy Cingalese, with long hair dressed high
on his head and held so by a big tortoise-shell comb. He described
Imogen sufficiently. I made a last effort to dissociate her from the
jewel.

"How was the sapphire set when you sold it to the young lady?" I asked.

The jeweller explained that he had bought it without any setting at all.

"It was plain--like a sweetmeat that you pop in your mouth. I myself
mounted it according to the young lady's wishes. I fixed a tight plain
band of platinum round the rim and hung it as a pendant to a platinum
chain."

No wish, however urgent, could argue against that statement. Imogen's
sapphire was the sapphire given long ago by Ma Shwe At to the Captain of
the _Dagonet_ that it might be kept safe from the dacoits.

"Thank you," I said, and after buying a small trinket in gratitude for
the man's amiability, I went out of the shop and sat with Michael on the
balustrade above the water.

"There were two men who spoke Burmese at Hatton," I said slowly.

"Two men," Crowther repeated. He was not very interested.

"Yes. I took them to be coolies from the plantations or pilgrims."

"Did they wear turbans?" Crowther asked. He was kicking the heels of his
appalling shoes against the stone parapet as he sat bent forward, with
his elbows on his knees. But he was still really unconcerned.

I looked at him sharply. The point to me suddenly became of crucial
importance. Burmans wore long hair, skewered up on their heads. But
turbans, no! If these two had worn turbans they would have been wearing
them to hide a stubble of new hair on a shaven scalp. They would be the
ex-convicts for a certainty. But had they worn turbans? I tried to
visualise the scene--the hotel at Hatton, the broad street outside,
Imogen with her arms stretched wide--Imogen without a turban, the two of
us standing side by side--I could feel the pressure of her hand in the
crook of my elbow--one man pushing past us, the other saying: "Muhammed
is at Ratnapura," my turn-about, and the two men walking away, their
backs towards us and one of them reading a telegram. Yes, they had worn
turbans. I had not seen their faces, but their backs--yes.

"They did wear turbans," I replied. "Thank you, Michael! That's a very
important point."

"I don't think it's important at all," Michael rejoined, still knocking
the backs of his shoes against the parapet. They would not stand very
much of that usage, but I did not stop him. They were an offence against
the world and the sooner he kicked them on to the dust-heap the more
merit he would acquire.

"They talked of a third man," I went on. "An Indian, already at
Ratnapura--an Indian Muhammed."

"You are not following me, Mr. Legatt," Crowther explained with a quite
human testiness. "What does it matter whether the Burmese were at Hatton
and the Indian at Ratnapura?"

"It matters a very great deal to me," I said.

"But the Burmese had sold the sapphire. We have been to the shop where
it was sold. We know it. They and the Indian are now out of the picture
altogether."

"I wish they were," I answered gravely.

"You have your wish," said Crowther. "The important question is: Who is
the young lady who bought it?"

"That's an easy one," said I.

Crowther turned incredulously towards me.

"You can answer it?"

"Of course."

"You know her, perhaps?"

"I do."

It was his turn now to jump with excitement, mine to remain impassive.

"And you can sit there as cold as an icicle," he began, staring at me in
his indignation.

We were completely at cross-purposes. He was occupied only with his
self-imposed mission. He thought only of the restoration of his offering
to its high place on the pagoda spire in far-away Pagan. I was troubled
with a more immediate problem.

"You have given me very bad news this morning, Michael," I said.

That stumble on the top of Adam's Peak took on a very ugly look in the
light of what he had told me--all the uglier because there had been no
excuse for the stumble. I had looked at the spot where it had occurred
immediately Imogen was safe. There was no break in the smooth surface of
the rock--not a pebble to stub a toe upon. Had those two men been on the
Peak with us that morning? Was one of them the man who stumbled?

"Two men on the Peak waiting for their opportunity." I put the case
aloud for my own benefit rather than for Crowther's. "The third man
coming up from Ratnapura and he, too, waiting--at the foot of the
precipice below the overhang.... They knew the stone could be
marketed. They had sold it once. They could sell it again--if they could
steal it again. A crude way of stealing it? Yes. A rather childish way?
Yes. And murder? Yes. But that's Burma.... And it nearly came off."

I shut my eyes and in that hot sunlight shivered. The next moment I was
sitting up stiff and straight with one question clamouring for an
answer. Had Imogen understood at once what had been made clear to me
only now? I saw the two girls side by side in the hotel on the evening
after the ascent. I heard them speaking almost in one breath and
according to plan. They must go to Anuradhapura first thing in the
morning. To see the Brazen Palace? As if it was likely to uproot itself
and fly away? No. To put as quickly as possible as wide a distance as
possible between the robbers and themselves? Yes. Surely, yes! And I had
taken offence! The world's perfect idiot, said Pamela.... Well,
Pamela was right. I jumped down from the parapet.

"I'm off," I said, and I crossed the road to my car.

Crowther ran after me.

"But you'll tell me the young lady's name?" he pleaded.

"I will not," I replied.

"Where she is, at all events?"

"Nor that," I cried and I slipped behind the wheel into the
driving-seat. "But listen to me, Michael! I want you to have that
sapphire back. I want it tremendously. There's only one thing in the
world which I want more. I'm going to try to get it back for you. And I
think I can--and at once, too."

I shut the door of the car with a bang. Crowther's face cleared as
magically as a summer's day. He must not thank me, of course. That would
have been altogether improper and absurd. I should be acquiring enormous
merit for myself by restoring to him the stolen jewel. I might save
myself a hundred existences by this good deed. But he had thanks on the
tip of his tongue and was in quite a bother to keep them unspoken.

"I am going north," I continued. "I'll meet you the day after to-morrow
in the morning. At some quiet place."

I did not want Michael Crowther to march in upon Imogen and Pamela and
myself at Anuradhapura. For if I would not allow that he was a magnet to
me, he might very well be one to Nga Pyu and Nga Than and Muhammed
Ghalli; and in his reach-me-downs a conspicuous magnet, too.

"I'll be at the Rock Temple at Dhambulla," he said.

The Rock Temple, as all the world knows, is a famous resort of tourists.
If you travel to Ceylon you must visit it or endure derision upon your
return and some scepticism as to whether you ever got beyond Paris on
your journey out. It would be, therefore, a natural place for me to
journey to. I could meet Michael Crowther upon its terrace without
arousing any attention.

"It is to the north?" I asked.

"Half-way between Kandy and Anuradhapura," said he.

"You have been there?"

Michael nodded his head, or rather bowed it. For there was a reverence
in his gesture.

"Once. It is very wonderful. It stands high above the forest and aloof."

"The very place then," I cried. "I'll meet you there at eleven in the
morning."

I shot the clutch in and started. The best of the day had gone and I had
eighty-four miles to cover. I was in a desperate hurry now, for I had
suddenly become aware that I must reach Anuradhapura before dark. The
Brazen Palace was a very long way from the top of Adam's Peak, no doubt,
but a fact overlooked till this moment had disclosed itself whilst
Michael was speaking and with every minute took on a more enormous
importance. Nga Pyu and Nga Than and Muhammed Ghalli had money. They had
sold the stolen sapphire. They were rich. If they wanted to travel
swiftly, they could. If they knew where Imogen and Pamela Brayburn had
sought refuge, they would. And away in the north of the island were
those two girls alone and defenceless against them and confident that
the eighty-four miles between Kandy and the Buried City meant safety. I
drove down from the hills in a panic to the flat country and on through
a land of shining green.




                               CHAPTER XI
                             THE MAGIC PIPE


BUT I did not, after all, see the Brazen Palace; nor the great
moonstone at the steps to the Queen's door; nor the oldest tree in the
world. A tyre burst on account of the great heat when I had been an hour
upon the road, and at four o'clock in the afternoon I was still some
thirty-odd miles this side of Anuradhapura. The road ran through the
heart of the jungle between shrubs of scarlet lantana. Creepers with
great flowers like painted trumpets laid their stranglehold upon the
trees, and butterflies more richly blue than Imogen's sapphire flickered
in squadrons through the sunlight and the forest gloom. The car was
running silently and to my surprise I heard suddenly from somewhere upon
my left, but very near at hand, the music of a pipe. It sounded oddly in
that lonely place and perhaps, had there been no further reason, I
should still have slowed down my car in spite of the hurry I was in. But
the music had a singularly delicate and airy pitch. There was an
enchantment in it, a purity and--I have no other word--a singleness, and
in addition a compulsion, so that I must go gently and listen as I went.
Thus, I thought, Paris must have piped upon Ida. I peered into the
forest but the undergrowth was so thick and so blazed with colour that
my eyes could not pierce the screen. I drove on again and after a few
yards the road swung round to the left in a wide curve, and I lost the
music. But I came upon a long, low, rest-house, set back behind a white
gate in a green twilight. The tallest tamarinds I had ever seen
sheltered it and only here and there through the thick foliage broke a
lance of gold. No halting-place more charming could be imagined; and as
I looked at it, I used Pamela's phrase:

"You can 'ave the Brass Palace. It's here that I should find Imogen."

On the instant a voice in front of me cried: "Stop!" and there, in the
middle of the road, stood Pamela Brayburn, with a kodak in her hands. I
stopped the car, slipped out of my long dust-coat, got out, and crossed
to her.

"You are staying here?" I cried.

"Yes."

"You and Imogen?"

"Yes. We took a car and came here yesterday."

I was immensely relieved. The two girls were safe. The shadow which had
hung over my spirits vanished as swiftly as the shadow of the Peak.

"But I might have missed you!" I cried.

"And whose fault would that have been?" she exclaimed unpleasantly.

"Mine?" I asked. "I like that! I was to join you at Anuradhapura."

Pamela drew in a long breath.

"Heaven keep me from falling in love, if it's going to make me such a
simpleton!" she prayed earnestly.

I felt that I was growing red. I think that I shouted at her.

"Who says that I am a simpleton?"

Pamela hardly let me finish the sentence.

"No one, little boy," she rejoined. She seemed to be exasperated. "No
one has any need to. It's sticking out like an ectoplasm at a sance."

She changed her style then and attacked me.

"Why didn't you come with us to Anuradhapura?" she cried.

I was indignant. Pamela was too unreasonable for words.

"How could I?" I exclaimed. "You made it impossible. The moment I
suggested that we might spend a day or so at Kandy----"

"Looking at an old horse's tooth!" she interrupted irreverently.

"--You both cried in one voice: 'We're off the first thing in the
morning to see the bo-tree'."

"We neither of us could have said anything so ridiculous," said Pamela.

"Well, words to that effect," I answered. "It seemed obvious that you
wanted to be rid of me."

Pamela shook a finger at me triumphantly.

"That's vanity--that is," she said. "But men are terribly vain."

I laughed--sardonically is the right word.

"Men don't examine themselves in looking-glasses all day."

"They daren't," said Pamela. "They'd cut their throats if they did."

I laughed. It only amounted to a snigger after all, and it seemed even
as a snigger rather contemptible even to me. Pamela leaned towards me
with a superfluity of kindliness.

"Did you ever," she asked, "see any of those pictures which newspapers
are always publishing of men in the eighties and early nineties--men
with big sprawly beards and short frock-coats and stiff straw
hats--boaters you call them, I think."

"Awful!" I said, falling into her trap.

"Yes, awful," she agreed. "But are you quite sure that the awfulness
ended with that era? To put it plainly--may I put it plainly?" Her voice
was full of honey.

"Yes," I said.

"Looking at things objectively, aren't men awful now? Spats, for
instance. Will you consider spats, Martin, as a method of adornment? Big
feet in shiny boots and glaring white spats to wrap them up and crinkly
trousers above them? Are you really sure, looking down through the ages,
that men aren't always awful?"

I felt myself to be a fit subject for pathos. For whenever I was not
worried out of my life by Imogen, I was quarrelling with Pamela. But I
had the better of her in this argument. I could afford to laugh
disdainfully.

"My dear Pamela, you must go to Burma," I said.

Pamela answered rudely.

"To get my wits polished," said she sarcastically.

"To learn a very bitter home truth," I rejoined. "You will have to be
re-born a man as a first step towards entering into the Great Peace."

"Then give me the Great Hullaballoo!" said Pamela.

I must admit that as I looked her slim figure up and down, I recognised
a certain attractiveness in her appearance which made me doubt the
desirability of Buddha's rules. However, it seemed that there was
nothing to be gained by pursuing the controversy. I had put Pamela in
her place--or I had not. I should get no change out of it anyway. I
started off briskly upon a different topic.

"Anyway, Pamela, I hope that you enjoyed yourselves in Anuradhapura."

"We didn't," Pamela answered uncompromisingly. "We haven't enjoyed
ourselves since you deserted us at Kandy----"

"Well, of all the----" I could not go on. Pamela's serene distortion of
the truth took my breath away.

"Except," she continued, "for one hour this afternoon when a conjurer
with several cobras in a bottle turned up here and made them dance for
us."

"Cobras!" I exclaimed. I have hated all snakes all my life, anyway.

"Cobras de capello," Pamela repeated firmly. "They were charming. He
blew a little pipe and they wiggled their heads about and they lay flat
on the ground when he told them to, and he beat the ground close to them
with his stick and they never moved. He was a magician."

I stood up straight.

"I heard his pipe, I think, just before I came round the corner there."

"Then he was repeating his performance for the chauffeur and the
servants behind the bungalow," said Pamela. "He had finished with us an
hour ago."

I looked back along the road. Yes, it bent round the bungalow to its
front. I could not hear a sound of the piping where I stood. No doubt he
had repeated his performance in the service quarters behind.

"An hour ago? Where's Imogen, then?" I asked.

"She went to lie down in her room as soon as the snake-charmer had
finished," Pamela answered. She looked at me, her eyes hard with
accusation. "Imogen didn't sleep last night."

"Oh!"

But I must suppose that I expressed in that exclamation distress and not
contrition. For again she shook a finger and there was steel in her
voice now as well as in her eyes.

"Of course she didn't."

My heart made a foolish jump. She had missed someone, then. Who? It was
not for me to say.

"Why didn't she sleep?" I asked, as innocent as a man could be.

Pamela flung up her hands.

"Have you no idea why we bolted from Kandy?"

Yes, I had an idea to account for that--an idea which had only lost its
terror since I had found the two girls safe in this forest bungalow. But
I could not see what in the world that could have to do with Imogen's
inability to sleep at Anuradhapura.

"Then you did bolt!" I cried.

"Then you knew we had bolted," cried Pamela.

"No, I didn't," I returned hotly. "I may be an idiot but I don't cart my
friends. I hadn't a suspicion that you were bolting until this morning.
Even now it's only a suspicion."

Pamela looked at me for a few moments.

"Very well. If you'll drive your car into the enclosure and secure a
room--we're alone here now, but some other party of tourists may come
along at any moment--I'll tell you."

I got into the car again, drove between the gate-posts and handed over
my baggage to the keeper of the rest-house, whilst Pamela followed me.

"It's just as well that you should know before Imogen joins us," she
said. We sat down in long chairs on the verandah. Pamela drank lemonade,
I something with lemon in it and no "ade." We sat in cool shadows. Far
away great rocks like huge uncut blue jewels cropped up above a sea of
green and gold. The very peace of the scene was enough to take the heart
of terror out of any tale however terrible. And the danger was over. I
stretched out my legs on the long wooden arm of the chair. Pamela was
here. Imogen was asleep. I was at my ease. But I was sitting up straight
before she had half finished her story of what had actually happened on
Adam's Peak and I was on my feet when she had reached the end.

"You told us over dinner at Hatton of the marvellous resemblance of
Imogen's sapphire to the sapphire of your friend, Crowther. But you
weren't comfortable. You were afraid, and fear's horribly contagious.
Although we both made light of the resemblance we were a little
frightened, too. And we had more reason to be frightened than you. Yes,
we had. For you had pointed out before two men in the street who were
talking Burmese. And we had seen those two men outside the shop in Kandy
where Imogen bought the sapphire. Now they were outside our hotel at
Hatton. We were alarmed."

I interrupted her here.

"Yet Imogen wore the sapphire the next morning when we climbed the
mountain," I said.

"I know. You see she had worn it always, ever since she had bought it,
and not to wear it now was to own to fear. And Imogen didn't want to do
that. It wasn't bravado. It was a feeling that once you acknowledge
fear, you're likely to crumble altogether. Can you follow that? So she
wore it. No doubt she thought, too, that since you were with us we
should be safe"--Pamela put her nose in the air--"the poor simp!"

"Well, you were safe," said I indignantly.

"Hansard reports at these words, sardonic cheers from the Opposition,"
Pamela continued. "Do you remember that when we stepped out on to the
Peak we stood in front of a great bonfire to warm ourselves?"

"I do."

"Has it dawned upon you--but it must have; you're as quick as a little
snake, aren't you? Then it must have dawned upon you that as Imogen
slipped on her cloak--and honest to goodness, I've never seen a cloak so
clumsily held in all my long life--the sapphire was showing at her
throat."

"I did notice that," I exclaimed. "I buttoned Imogen's coat high under
her chin on purpose."

"But too late," said Pamela.

It was then that I began to sit up in my chair.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Opposite to her on the far side of the bonfire," Pamela explained,
"were the two men who spoke Burmese. Something of a shock, eh?" Pamela
nodded her head at me. She was serious, like one who has seen a great
danger just avoided. "You see? The two men outside the shop at Kandy
when Imogen came out with the chain round her neck, then outside the
hotel at Hatton, then on the top of the mountain--and your story of the
sapphire. Imogen hadn't a doubt that your friend's sapphire had been
stolen and sold and was to be stolen again. But even then she was only
afraid. She hadn't a suspicion as to how for the second time it was to
be stolen."

For a moment I did not answer. I saw the broad surface of the
mountain-top, the flames of the bonfires licking the black air, the
waves of red colour lighting up the throng of dark faces and white
robes. I drew Imogen and Pamela again to the empty space at the
precipice's edge. I cried:

"Then the pilgrim who stumbled against Imogen----"

"He was one of the two. He didn't stumble at all. He was making sure of
her and of the sapphire. If you hadn't been there close beside her, he
would have made sure."

"How?"

"He took her by the ankle and flung her forward off her feet."

"What!" I cried.

"Nothing could have been more deliberate than that stumble. The man
wasn't trying to save himself. His hand closed round Imogen's ankle as
tight as a band and she was thrown--up and out."

And the third man--the man from Ratnapura, was waiting below the
overhang at the foot of the precipice. I did not mention the third man
to Pamela, partly because I did not wish the two girls to visualise any
more clearly than they already did the cruel murder from which Imogen
had been saved, but chiefly because I was marvelling at Imogen's courage
and spirit. Of the three of us, she was the only one who had a
suspicion--and she was certain--that an attempt had been made upon her
life. She must have seen herself whizzing downwards, must have felt in
all her nerves the smash of bone and flesh upon the pent-house slope of
rock, the destruction in a moment of her grace and beauty.

"And yet Imogen never said a word."

There she had stood whilst the dawn broke and the shadow ran out over
jungle and sea, and hung there, and raced back again into the mountain.
There Imogen had stood without a glance behind her, and so far as I
could remember without a tremor of her hand upon my arm.

"Oh, Imogen was in a panic," Pamela explained. "But we were alone up
there, Imogen, you and I--just the three of us on a terrace crowded with
fanatics. She dared not be afraid. She _had_ to keep her head."

"Bless her, she did!" I answered.

How long had we stayed after the attempt upon the Peak? An hour? An hour
and a half? We had certainly not started down until the day was broad.
Then there was a rickety ladder against a cliff to be descended and a
traverse across the face of the rock and a pathway of rough, steep rock
steps through a cavern of trees, which made a twilight even of noonday.

"Even afterwards she didn't make a sign, didn't say a word, of the
ordeal she had been through!"

I pictured her again lying upon her back after breakfast, the smoke of
her cigarette floating upwards under the trees.

"There was no use in talking about it," said Pamela. "Talking about it
meant fear, and fear mustn't be. That's Imogen's creed. Once be afraid
and you have nothing under your feet. You're a straw in the air. You
must show yourself you're not afraid and then perhaps you won't be.
That's why Imogen wore the sapphire up the mountain. You must show
everybody else, too, that you're not afraid, otherwise you will be.
That's why she wouldn't let me ask you to come along with us to
Anuradhapura. You must come on your own suggestion entirely."

"You didn't give me much encouragement," I grumbled.

"You were too prickly for words," Pamela rejoined calmly. "And after
all, in my day young men didn't want encouragement. We couldn't keep
them off with a gatling gun."

"Said she modestly," I added.

But I was not proud of my performance or my perspicacity at our dinner
in the Hatton Hotel. I was anxious to get away from the subject
altogether.

"Well, however much you may blame me, you were all right at
Anuradhapura," I said comfortably.

"Were we?" Pamela asked. "Oh, I am so glad to know that!"

"Weren't you?" I asked anxiously.

I could never be sure whether to take her words as a statement of fact
or a provocation to battle.

"Then why are we here?" she demanded, and with a sweep of her arm she
dramatised the isolation of the bungalow. "What do you take us for,
Martin? Shy nudists?"

"I do not," I said firmly. "I can't accept the 'shy'."

Pamela laughed. Then in a quieter voice she explained: "We were followed
to Anuradhapura"--and I jumped.

"By the same men?"

Pamela nodded.

"The two men of Kandy and Hatton and the mountain. I don't suppose we
were difficult to trace. The servants at the hotel in Kandy knew. So did
the people at the garage where we hired our car. Imogen saw them at
Anuradhapura from the balcony outside her window the night before last.
They were standing on the grass outside the hotel. The light from a lamp
fell upon their faces."

Imogen had turned out her light and had called Pamela into her room.
Together they had recognised the two men, watched them from the darkness
as they whispered together on the plot of grass below. The hotel was
outside the city with a tiny park in front of it, and beyond this open
space a high grove of rain-trees.

"I would have liked Imogen to throw the sapphire and the chain out to
them and have done with it," Pamela related. "But Imogen wouldn't give
in. She clasped the chain about her throat."

The two girls had stayed in the same room that night, behind their
locked doors, and kept watch in turn until the daylight came.

"It was no use complaining," said Pamela. "We had no real evidence of
the attack on Imogen on the mountain; we couldn't even prove that we had
been followed. We should just have looked like a couple of bright young
spirits advertising themselves in the usual way. We had noticed this
rest-house on the way to Anuradhapura. We went sightseeing in the
morning as if we were settled in the place for some days. Then in the
afternoon we bolted again."

The rest-house was certainly a place of secrecy and peace. And yet was
it not a trifle too secret--too peaceful? Here was the afternoon waning
and never a glimpse of Imogen. I was beginning to be tormented by
anxiety.

"How many men followed you to Anuradhapura?" I asked.

Pamela stared at me frowning.

"Two, of course. I told you two. The two outside the jeweller's shop and
outside the hotel at Hatton."

"Yes, but there was a third," I said.

"A third--accomplice?" Pamela asked, holding her breath.

"Yes. A man who was to come up to the foot of the Peak from
Ratnapura--who was waiting at the foot of that precipice."

Pamela started back in her chair. Then she rejected my statement.

"Too childish a plot!" she said.

"Yes," I agreed. "Too childish and too cruel. In fact, thoroughly
Burmese."

And whilst Pamela, her face pale, her forehead drawn, sat in startled
silence, I said to myself: "Yes, but the third partner in this crime was
not a Burman"--and suddenly I seemed to hear again the airy music of a
pipe. I heard it only in my memory. For there could never be a deeper
silence than the silence which here held bough and bird and the wind
itself in thrall. In another hour the jungle would be shrill with
cicadas, and the murmur of innumerable insects would throb with the
thunder of a drum. But now there was silence and more than silence.
There was suspense. Once, years before, in a clearing of the teak wood
by the Irrawaddy and again in a street of Mandalay I had been conscious
of it, a sharer in the expectancy which hushed all nature.

"Tell me!" I said. "Who was this conjurer with the cobras."

"I don't know."

"A Cingalese?"

Pamela shook her head.

"No. He wore a turban. He told us that he was an Indian from
Coromandel."

It was then that I started to my feet.

"An Indian? Did he give you a name?"

"No."

The two Burmese at Hatton and Muhammed Ghalli at Ratnapura. The two
Burmese at Anuradhapura and Muhammed Ghalli at the forest bungalow.
Snake-charming--not so rare a gift! Cingalese, Indians, Egyptians--who
that has ever travelled hasn't seen one of them at his work?

"You are so still," said Pamela uneasily.

"Don't you think," I asked--and I tried to give to my voice the most
level and commonplace of notes--"don't you think that we might rouse
Imogen?"

Apparently I had not succeeded. I did not look at Pamela lest my face
should betray the terror of my heart. But I heard her draw in her breath
in a long, fluttering sigh.

"You know her room, of course?" I said.

We both stood up, and with a pitiable mimicry of nonchalance we walked
into the passage of the house.




                              CHAPTER XII
                             FEAR AND IMOGEN


ON our left as we entered the bungalow was the big living-room. Once
beyond it the corridor ran to right and left, like the cross-bar of a
capital T. Pamela turned to the left, and facing us at the end of the
building was a closed door.

"That's Imogen's room," she said. "Mine is just this side of it beyond
the living-room."

We walked to it. My shoes were soled with crpe rubber; Pamela's light
feet made no noise whatever. At the door we halted. It was so still that
the sudden hum of a dragon-fly, flashing in from the verandah and out
again with a gleam of metal, startled us both like artillery. Pamela
stood for a moment with her hand at her heart, catching her breath; and
I leaned back against the wall no better off. Pamela, indeed, was the
first to recover.

"Imogen may be still asleep," she said in a whisper; and very carefully
she turned the handle of the door and pressed. But it did not open.

"It's locked," she said in the same low voice, and she leaned an ear
against the panel. I saw a look of bewilderment overspread her face and
she turned the handle back, so that the latch fitted again into its
socket, without a sound. She drew back a step or two, and as I joined
her she said:

"I don't understand. Imogen's there in the room, but she might have been
running a mile."

Could there be a statement more alarming? She might have been running a
mile. That might mean unconsciousness, pain, terror--anything but
natural sleep. In my turn I stepped forward, but my heart was beating so
noisily that I could hear nothing else. I called quietly, my mouth
against the panel of the door.

"Imogen! Imogen!"

I was answered by a sob and even that was subdued, as though someone
listened, someone who was blind, and dangerous. I flung my shoulders
against the door, but the lock held, and above the rattle and thud
Imogen's voice rose in a broken scream.

"Don't, Martin! It's no good! Please! Please!"

There was such urgency and such panic as I had never heard in human
voice. If Imogen had held fear at arm's length on Adam's Peak, it had
got her by the throat now--and by the limbs. For there had not been the
sound of a movement within the room. I swung round to Pamela.

"Which way does Imogen's window look?" I whispered.

"To the back of the bungalow," said Pamela.

I was aghast. It was from the back of the bungalow that the thin, faint
music of the snake-charmer's pipe had reached my ears.

I called again through the door:

"Hold on, my dear, for a second," and again Imogen's voice ran up and
down the scale of terror.

"No, Martin. You can't do a thing!"

I beckoned to Pamela. We hurried back along the corridor and on to the
verandah and round the corner of the rest-house to the rear of it. A
great hedge of lantana shut us off from the outbuildings. In front of us
was a window with its shutters closed. I moved forward and touched them.
At the touch they fell apart. They had not been bolted from
within--therefore not bolted at all; and the window was open. I looked
into the room.

There was a bedstead on my right hand with its mosquito curtains folded
on the top of the frame; and no one had rested on the bed. There was the
usual furniture, a sun-helmet on a table, a mat by the side of the bed,
a brown teak floor--and Imogen. I shall never forget the sight of her.
She was standing upright against the wall opposite to the bed, with her
arms a little outspread and the palms of her hands pressed against the
panelling to keep herself upright. She had thrown off her hat. She was
wearing a dark blue coat and skirt, with a white shirt, beige stockings
and blue shoes to match her dress, and the shoes and her ankles were
pressed tightly together, to occupy as little room as was possible. Her
eyes were wide open and fixed upon some spot on the floor a yard or so
in front of her. She was in a trance, if terror can cause a trance. For
from head to foot she was bound fast by terror.

As the shutters opened she cast one swift glance towards them. Then her
eyes went back to the floor.

"Martin," she whispered. "Don't move, Martin! It'll strike if you do. He
warned me. Move and it'll strike!"

And there was nothing at all on the floor.

I sprang over the window-sill.

"Imogen----" I began.

"Keep away! Keep away!"

She had leaned a little forward and her voice rose to a scream. So I
took a stride and stood deliberately on the very spot on which her eyes
were fixed. For a second she giggled like a schoolgirl--I never heard a
sound more distressing--and then, without any warning, slid sideways
down the wall. I was just in time to catch her as she fell.

I carried her to the bed and laid her upon it. Then I unlocked the door
and called to Pamela. Pamela bathed her forehead whilst I got some
brandy from my flask; and in a few minutes Imogen opened her eyes. She
looked at us both as if we were strangers. Next she made a mocking
little grimace at us and reaching out her hand smoothed it down my arm
and gave me a squeeze. Apparently she was now satisfied that she had
done enough for us. For she turned over on her side with her back
towards us, stretched out her slim long legs and immediately was fast
asleep. I searched the room--it was easy enough with its bare floor and
scanty furniture--and I found nothing. There was nothing there to find.
Pamela pushed me out, managed, somehow, to undress her Sleeping Beauty
and get her into bed. Imogen slept without a break in her slumber until
the sun was high on the next morning. There had been no need for either
of us to keep a watch. For the platinum chain with its sapphire pendant
had gone.

"For good and all, I hope," I said to Pamela Brayburn as we breakfasted
together in the cool of the morning. I had no thought for Michael
Crowther at that moment. Never before or since have I uttered a prayer
more sincere.

"I, too," returned Pamela, but her voice trailed off as if she hardly
believed that good fortune so marvellous could befall us. "Imogen will
tell us when she's up."

Upon Pamela Brayburn in her turn the shadow of the sapphire had spread
its canopy.




                              CHAPTER XIII
                               THE INDIAN


WHAT had happened? Imogen, lying in a low and restful chair, told us a
part of it on the verandah after luncheon. All that she knew she told,
but it was not all that there was to be told; and we who listened had to
put the rest of it together as best we could, in the belief that the
commonplaces of one race are the miracles of another. Imogen's long
sleep had restored the colour to her cheeks and the buoyancy to her
spirits. And if once or twice she flinched in her narrative, she
recovered her spirits the next instant with a shake of the head which
reminded me of a swimmer coming up into the sunlight after a deep dive
beneath the water. She smoked a cigarette whilst she talked. Her mind
was smoothed out. She, at all events, was now free from the shadow of
the sapphire.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Imogen had stayed on the verandah after the snake-charmer's departure.
She and Pamela had discussed the performance, wondering whether the
cobras were tame and whether their poison-ducts had been extracted; and
what qualities a little rod of nagatharana could have so to frighten
them; and if the dark, porous snake-stone which had been shown to them
was a genuine antidote for a snakebite. The Indian was an old,
unbelievably lean, tall man with a grizzled beard, who wore nothing in
the way of clothes except a loin-cloth and a turban; and certainly there
were twin scars upon his wrists and upon his breast which only the fangs
of a serpent seemed able to account for.

"We were perhaps twenty minutes talking about these things," said
Imogen. "Not more. Then I got up and went away to my room. I was very
sleepy."

She opened the door or, more exactly, turned the handle and threw it
open. The door was set in the wall opposite to the wall against which
the bed was placed, and at the inner end of the room. It opened inwards
and downwards, that is, towards the window. Thus, if you entered the
room you had a wall upon your left, the window at the end of the room on
your right, and the bed upon the right of the window at a diagonal with
the door. Imogen, then, flung open the door and walked in. She had her
solar topee in her hand and she laid it on a round table which stood
against the upper wall opposite to the window. The window was open, but
the shutters were closed, and since that side of the bungalow was in
shadow and the eaves of the roof were wide, little more than twilight
crept through the lattices into the room. Imogen, coming straight from
the verandah and the prospect of a green ocean of forest shining in the
sun, was for a second or two blinded. She stood still for the darkness
to clear away, but it had not quite cleared when she began again to
move. She took two or three steps towards the window in order to open
the shutters. And something flickered behind her and quite noiselessly.

Imogen felt her heart jump into her throat. The Indian had been waiting
for her, hidden behind the door. As she turned she saw him close the
door and slide the bolt into its socket. She did not scream, although
she was about to scream. For as her mouth opened something else
flickered in the dusk of the room and Imogen's heart whirled down within
her. In the uncertain light it might have been taken for the neck and
flat head of a swan; and it hissed as an angry swan will hiss. It was
almost white, too, but it had the sheen of hard scales rather than the
softness of down.

"Miss Sahib not to scream," the Indian said softly. "Or I make cobra
punish her."

Imogen could not have screamed now. Her throat was dry, her nerves
paralysed by terror. She had felt her heart leap into her throat as the
Indian bolted the door; it stood still now in her horror of the snake.
The passage of a minute had altered the world. She had walked lightly
from the verandah, quite free from the anxiety of these last days. She
had opened a door and fear bound her limbs, and death was an inch from
her throat.

She was not aware that she had moved, but she found herself upright
against the wall, between the window and the door, her small feet in the
blue shoes making themselves smaller, the palms of her hands pressed
against the panels to keep herself from falling. Had the cobra slithered
an inch towards her across the floor, she must have fallen, and in
falling must have screamed.

But the reptile merely swayed its head from side to side, a venomous
flower upon a white stalk. In the gloom its eyes were bright as diamonds
and held her, so that her eyes, too, must swing from side to side in a
horrid slavery. Suddenly the sound of the Indian's pipe, playing a music
which was plaintive and yet had a cadence curiously voluptuous, was
heard in the room. The music was low. It reached me in my car because I
was just passing on that winding road the corner of the bungalow whence
the music floated. The Indian was kneeling upon one knee facing the
cobra and close by Imogen's side. From the fold of his knee his little
stick of nagatharana stuck out ready for use. And he piped. And Imogen,
her wits all scattered, swung her head from right to left and from left
to right in a synchronism with the head of the dancing cobra, brown eyes
riveted upon diamond eyes glittering evilly beneath the expanded hood.

"I remembered, in a meaningless way," said Imogen, "what I had read in
books on the voyage to Ceylon. That the cobra--even the king-cobra with
the silvery neck and head which this one had--was a coward; that little
vedda boys would think nothing of capturing one and taming it; that
cobras had been kept by Cingalese as house-dogs, fatal to thieves and
harmless to the inmates. But with those little eyes glancing like
fire-flies in the twilit room, yet never, like fire-flies, vanishing, I
could not believe."

The piping stopped. The Indian snatched his little stick from the grip
of his knee and stretched it out. The cobra ceased to sway. It seemed to
the girl clamped by her danger against the wall, that its eyes dimmed.
It sank and uncoiled and with a thud its head hit the teak floor. It lay
stretched out, a knotted branch fallen from a tree but a branch with
eyes.

The Indian spoke in a low voice:

"The Miss Sahib will raise her hands gently and unclasp the jewel from
her throat and drop it in my hand."

Imogen obeyed him. He held the stick in his left hand over the snake's
head, and the palm of his right hand was cupped at Imogen's side. Into
that cup she dropped the sapphire and the Indian tied it in a knot of
his loin-cloth, using but the right hand.

"I leave my cobra to guard the Miss Sahib," he continued.

"Oh, no," Imogen moaned, and at the sound of her voice the eyes of the
reptile brightened.

"The Miss Sahib no speak, no move and no hurt. In a little whiles I call
my servant and he follow."

He chanted in a low sing-song some hymn or order which Imogen did not
understand. Then he slipped out of the window as if he were a snake
himself. He left the cobra behind him on the floor of the room--Imogen
swore to it. When he opened the shutters, and let in for the flash of a
second the afternoon light, she saw the snake like the bough of a silver
birch--plain as plain could be against the rich brown of the teak
planks. It remained there and never moved--just as she never moved.
Imogen swore to it. It was on that same spot--again she swore to
it--when near upon an hour later I threw open the shutters. It was there
when she warned me not to move. It was there till the very moment when I
stood on the exact spot where it was supposed to lie. I have known a man
ride his camel knee-deep into the waters of a mirage before the water
vanished and he rode over a desert of pebbles. In the same swift magical
way the cobra had vanished from Imogen's sight.

This was her story. At what point had the Indian lured his cobra back
into his wicker-work bottle? Had he left it behind him and called to it
to follow? Had he taken it away with him, and yet left her with the
vision of it stretched on the floor like a branch and its diamond eyes
claiming hers, binding her hand and foot in the paralysis of fear? None
of us could answer these questions. We talked a little of the famous
rope-trick and whether any living being had really seen it and of a
wagon-load of illusions. But when we had comforted ourselves with our
Western superiorities and proved that that which had been could not be,
I retained, nevertheless, very vividly the terrible picture of a girl
crucified by fear, her small white face and startled eyes fixed, as
though they had been moulded in wax a second after an agonising death.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Anyway, the sapphire had gone, and if I could manage it it would keep
gone. Crowther could chase it if he liked. That was his affair. But we
three here in the rest-house in the jungle were emancipated, and were
going to remain emancipated. Imogen, it was true, had lost a lovely
jewel and friends of hers might have been expected to show some regret
at her loss. I had no such feeling. The stone was compacted by an
earthquake on a night of eclipse. It was accursed. Its setting was
misery, not platinum, and the spark which gleamed in it was the very
soul of malevolence. In other words I was elated to know that never
again would Imogen wear it about her slender throat. She had bought it
and paid for it--that was true enough. But on the other hand I had not a
doubt that she would have given it back to Michael if he had talked to
her for five minutes.

But even that conversation was not going to happen if I could help it. I
should have to tread delicately, of course. A certain amount of
diplomacy would be needed. But whilst we had been talking I had thought
of a plan.

"About to-morrow," I said. "There's one place you've got to see, of
course--the city on the mountain, Sigiri. It's on the way from here to
the south. I must tell you about it. There was a King----"

"Darling," Imogen interrupted plaintively, "we, too, have a guide-book."

"Then that makes it all right," I said heartily. "I'll leave you both to
go up by the gallery whilst I roll along to see a friend of mine, and
come back again for you."

I saw the two girls sit up straight. They looked at me intently. I lit a
cigarette with great indifference.

"Yes, that's the plan," I said.

"I suppose it's the same friend you had to put in two days with at
Kandy," Pamela suggested sweetly.

"Not at all. I have lots of friends," said I.

Pamela went off to her bedroom and came back with her Murray's Handbook.

"It's the map we want," said Imogen.

The unfolding of the map made me uneasy. For on a bare white space in
print distressingly clear, there were marked, fairly close together,
Sigiri and Dhambulla. Imogen put her finger on a spot.

"That's the place, I think," she said cheerfully, and then she turned to
me. "For how long do you propose to leave us at Sigiri, Martin? An
hour?"

"No," I answered.

"Less than that?"

"More than that. About two hours altogether," I said indifferently.

The two girls stared as though I had committed some enormity. Then they
bent their heads again over the map.

"That's the place," said Imogen, dabbing the tip of her finger on the
map as if she were smashing a mosquito.

"Yes," Pamela agreed, "he's got a date at Dhambulla with a coloured
lady."

"I have nothing of the sort," I cried.

"But you're going to Dhambulla," cried Imogen.

I suppose that an intellectual would have found a way out of the ditch I
had jumped into. My reply was simply fatuous. I said:

"Well, I might look in at Dhambulla."

After that they played animal, vegetable, mineral with me until
Crowther's name was yielded up.

"You have seen him?" they both cried with one voice.

"At Kandy."

"It was his sapphire, then?"

"Yes. It was stolen from the top of the pagoda."

"And he has come after it?"

"Yes."

"And what time is your appointment to-morrow?" asked Imogen.

"Eleven o'clock."

"We'll go with you to Dhambulla," said Pamela.

I had to make the best of it.

"I'm delighted, of course," I said. "My business won't take a minute.
I'll leave you both in the car--it's a bit of a climb to the
terrace----"

"As steep as the gallery at Sigiri, Martin?" Imogen asked innocently.

"I don't know. I haven't seen either one or the other," I replied
firmly. "But it's steep, and I'll run up and tell Crowther the
sapphire's stolen again and then the three of us can roll along to
Sigiri."

Imogen and Pamela exchanged glances of amusement.

"But, darling Martin," Imogen said sweetly. "You don't think that you're
going to put it over us like that, do you? We're both going to see the
Rock Temple and we're both going to see your Mr. Crowther."

I wanted to keep them both apart from Michael Crowther. I did! There was
no longer, of course, any reason for uneasiness. The only link which
could have caused them trouble--and, indeed, it had caused trouble
enough already--was broken. Still, I did not want them to meet.

"Oh, Crowther's nothing to write home about," I grumbled.

"But, Martin, we don't want to write home about him," said Imogen
gently. "We're just going to meet him to-morrow on the terrace of the
Rock Temple at Dhambulla."

"But you haven't an idea what you're going to meet," I exclaimed. "I
know him of old, so it doesn't matter to me what he looks like. But he's
too awful"--and I gave them a description of Michael as I remembered him
kicking his heels against the parapet of the lake at Kandy. I thought my
description to be sufficiently humorous, but not a smile illuminated
their faces; and when I had done Pamela declared:

"My mother used to say to me: 'Pamela, darling, when the moment comes to
select one of your innumerable suitors, always remember that if you
choose a man wearing an I. Zingari belt, you have chosen a gentleman.'"

I threw up the sponge.

"Very well. We start at nine."

Anyway, the sapphire had gone. Nothing could alter that.




                              CHAPTER XIV
                      A COUNCIL AT THE ROCK TEMPLE


THE way led upwards over bare shelving slabs of gneiss. As we mounted,
the blue hills of Kandy came into view in the south, a coronet of sharp
peaks encircling the royal city. We wound about the mountain and climbed
a short flight of steps with a lantern fixed upon a pillar at the side.
Now a slender satin-wood tree with delicate foliage sprang here and
there from a crevice in the slabs like a plume of lace. We came out
again upon the crest of the ridge and the vast jungle streamed away
before us to the north. It was broken by great rocks with the bloom of
plums, and by vivid patches of fresh green where some primeval village
hid; and across ten miles of it the huge rounded pebble of Sigiri rose
like an island from the sea. A few trees grew now on that high summit
where once a king had built his capital, and the line of the long
gallery, which alone had given access to the gates, ran plainly along
the pebble's side like a fissure in the rock. Now the steps which we
mounted broadened and rose in a welcome shade of trees.

"Listen!" said Imogen, and we stopped; and we heard a wild elephant
trumpeting far away in the jungle.

We crossed more slabs and passed between the white-washed pillars, and
beneath the brown-tiled canopy of the temple's gates. A bell hung within
a stand upon our left. A bo-tree stood in a stone enclosure protected by
a parapet. A long wall, above which two high tamarinds rose, enclosed
the five temples and the terrace in front of them. And as we stepped on
to the terrace a man rose from a stone seat in the wall and came quickly
towards us.

"Crowther," said I.

He had changed his dress since I had last seen him. Gone were the white
knickerbockers and the vivid glory of his belt and the worsted
stockings. He wore a thin grey suit and brown shoes, a silk shirt with a
small collar and a restful tie. He was vastly improved but not improved
enough to appease me. All the resentment under which I used to labour on
his steamer on the Irrawaddy had returned to me during the last two
days. I blamed him for all the anxiety and the peril to which Imogen had
been put; and I was quite logical in my censure. If he had been honest
with Ma Shwe At he would not have deserted her without a word, he would
not have taken back his trumpery presents, and the sapphire would never
have gleamed darkly on the white table-cloth of the _Dagonet_ or been
stolen from the spire of the pagoda at Pagan. I was altogether against
Crowther this morning, and with a foolish hope that I could keep the
girls apart from him, I stepped forward as he approached.

"At all events you don't make me hot to look at you, Michael," I began
grudgingly. "That's a blessing"; and, of course, Imogen and Pamela were
already one on each side of me.

"This is Miss Pamela Brayburn," I said reluctantly, "and this is Miss
Imogen Cloud who bought your sapphire at Kandy----Oh!"

The "Oh" was an exclamation of annoyance. Although the sun was high
above the rock, we were standing in the shade of one of the great trees
and Crowther had taken off his helmet. I had meant to say all in one
breath:

"This is Miss Imogen Cloud who bought your sapphire at Kandy and it was
stolen from her yesterday at a rest-house and I wish you good morning."

But I found that I could not say it. I wanted to believe that since, in
his pursuit of his sapphire, he had discarded his yellow robe, he had
passed completely out of another phase of his violent career. But now I
could not believe it. He had taken his hat off. I suppose that we have
all known men devoted to one calling, to whom the slow sculpture of the
years has given dignity, breeding, even beauty. But I have never known
anyone in whom the change has been so swift, so definite, so obviously
permanent. There was no trace left of Michael D. Even with the stubble
of new stiff hair upon his crown he had the look of a saintly, ascetic
and prayer-worn Cardinal. I said gently:

"I am sorry, Michael. I have no good news for you. The sapphire was
stolen yesterday from Imogen and by the Indian."

Crowther looked down upon the ground. He made no movement. He uttered no
word. His very impassivity made the fullness of his disappointment clear
to us as no outcry could have done.

Imogen broke into an account of the robbery. Crowther listened to the
end with his eyes set hungrily upon her face.

"Yes," he said with resignation. "Muhammed Ghalli is bad. He is known.
He has great powers and uses them wickedly. It will be long before he
finds his way out of the forest to the rocky path."

Imogen looked puzzled, as well she might. She had never heard of that
allegory which Michael Crowther had related to me on the deck of the
lighter, lashed to the side of the _Moulmein_ steamer on the way to
Schwegu.

"But if you still had the sapphire," he asked, "you would have given it
back to me in return for the price you paid?"

"I would have given it back to you gladly," Imogen answered quietly.
"But I would not have taken a farthing of the price I paid."

A very disarming smile took all the severity from Michael's face.

"The wish will be counted to you, Miss Cloud," he replied.

I intervened at this point hurriedly. I had a fear that he was going to
point out to her that as a reward for her goodwill she might find
herself a man in her next life, and by this change of sex ever so much
nearer to her great Release. And I did not think that this point of view
would commend itself to her at all. I said:

"Look here, Michael. I've got something to say about all this. Let's sit
down!"

We sat down on one of the stone seats cut out of the wall. There was
just room for the four of us. We were high above the world. In front of
us the temple carved out of the hill-side. On our right hand rose the
monstrous pebble of the Lion Rock of Sigiri where for eighteen years, in
the last days of the Roman Empire, a parricide reigned splendidly and
well. And below us to our left and our right spread the vast green ocean
of the jungle. I began to argue.

"What I think is this. Your sapphire, Michael. It's a symbol of
renunciation. A symbol of your renunciation. But in the end it's just a
sapphire found in a native working near Mogok. It has no real sanctity
of its own and no history. That's what I mean. It's not a great diamond
stolen out of the forehead of an image of Krishna, for instance. It has
no romance, no curse upon it"--that, by the way, I did not
believe--"it's just a very beautiful sapphire. Do you follow me?"

"You are my friend," replied Crowther, and it was a very disturbing
reply. It might just mean that "the obligations of friendship compel me
to listen to any idiotic remarks you may feel disposed to make." Or
again it might mean that whatever a friend says has a decided worth. I
preferred the latter alternative and resumed:

"Secondly----"

Pamela broke in with a wail:

"Martin, you are not going to preach a sermon, are you?"

I crushed her with a look. At least, I meant to; and since she did not
meet my look but was gazing at Michael Crowther, I claim that I did.

"Secondly," I repeated firmly, and went on: "The sapphire, however
lovely, is not one of the premier stones. It does not compete with the
pearl and the diamond and the emerald and the ruby. It is of the second
cru. Allowed? Allowed?" I turned from one girl to the other to bear me
out. Neither answered, and indeed I noticed traces of impatience in
Pamela Brayburn.

"Well, then, since your sapphire, Michael, is first of all a secondary
stone----"

"No, no," said Pamela wearily. "It was secondly a secondary stone. If
you must be dogmatic, Martin, you should also be correct."

I was exasperated, but Imogen took a side now.

"Pamela's right, Martin. It was firstly a stone without associations."

"And even that," Crowther added with a smile, "is not quite correct. For
it has very definite associations for me."

"Very likely," I cried with some triumph. Here was my chance to get a
little of my own back. I wagged my finger at him. "But not the sort of
associations you ought to be thinking about nowadays."

"Oh!"

"Oh!"

Two shocked feminine voices protested in one breath.

"Martin!"

Imogen was gently reproachful.

"Not nice."

Pamela was quite definite about my bad taste. I ought never to have told
these girls as much as I had done about Crowther's murky past. That was
my fault. My good or bad taste was my affair.

"I wanted to come up here alone," I exclaimed. "I wanted to talk to
Michael without any interruption. And I am going to say what I meant to
say in spite of you. Michael can buy another sapphire and string it up
on his hti. Michael has money. Michael's going to build a pagoda at
Tagaung and live by the side of it."

I was very much in earnest about this. I did with all my heart desire
that Ma Shwe At's sapphire should vanish as utterly as if it had been
flung by somebody blindfolded into the middle of the sea. There was a
shadow to it. Its deep clear blue which had no clouds meant clouds for
those who handled it. I was afraid of it.

"Buy another, Michael. Buy one like it. It's merely a matter of looking
about a bit."

Imogen scanned my face with anxiety.

"But, Martin, darling," she remonstrated with the upward inflexion of
extreme surprise, "you are not on the map at all."

"I won't be baited," I said, digging my toes in.

"Baited! You're not a horse," said Pamela scornfully, "although there is
an animal I could mention, if I had not been well brought up."

They were both siding with Michael, of course, against me. I might have
known that they would. This was my unlucky day.

Then Crowther himself intervened.

"For me," he said with a smile of rare sweetness, "there can be no other
sapphire. Firstly,"--and his lips twitched again--"it is a symbol of
renunciation. You yourself, Mr. Legatt, used the phrase and it is so,
believe me!--a true description. But that jewel is the symbol, not
another jewel like it. Secondly, there is that bad thought of mine to
build a pagoda for myself."

I threw up my hands. I could not keep pace with the variations of
Michael's belief.

"So that's a bad thought now!" I exclaimed.

"It always was a bad thought," Michael answered; and at this point
Pamela must chip in and add to the confusion.

"It certainly was," she agreed serenely. "My mother used to say to me:
'Pamela, dearest, if I had got to do one or the other, I'd build an
aquarium.'"

Uncle Sunday beamed upon her.

"Did she say that?" he asked admiringly; and for the first time in our
acquaintanceship I saw Pamela Brayburn disconcerted. She had not an idea
how to take the question. Was Crowther chaffing her? But his manner was
too simple and sincere. Was he asking seriously a literal question? But
the question was too idiotic. Pamela was unaware that in Michael's creed
the destruction of life was a great sin, and the preservation of it a
great merit. An aquarium preserved fish from being gobbled by bigger
fish or caught in nets or hooked on lines--a highly deserving business.
Michael was asking his question in absolute innocence. I am bound to say
that I had noticed already that his new religion had killed his sense of
humour. He continued quite eagerly:

"And did your mother build many?"

"What?" Pamela asked, still more at a loss. She looked towards me for
help. I grinned at her with pleasure. I wasn't going to get her out of
her trouble.

"Build many aquariums?" said Michael.

Whatever qualities Pamela possessed, effrontery was the chief of them.

"Only two," she answered calmly. "One at Brighton and the other under
the shadow of Westminster Abbey." And she got away with it. By some
lucky chance Michael, during his three years in London, had never heard
of the one or the other.

"But to build even two was most meritorious," said he. "On the other
hand, to build a pagoda and a tiny monastery beside it for myself? No
man may do so overweening a thing. A monastery for others--yes. A
pagoda, too--for the greater glory of Gautama. But to feed a man's
conceit, to sit by the side of it and hear men say: 'That is U Wisaya
who built it, sitting there in the shade'--no, a thousand times. It is
forbidden. The mere thought of it a sin--one amongst many to be atoned
for. And the recovery of this sapphire is for me the way of atonement."

If Crowther had used one false note or one fantastic phrase which
suggested that his little speech had been made up to deceive us, if he
had licked his chops over his bygone wickedness or dished up his
repentance with a garnish of oil, I should have been very much obliged
to him. We should have been free of him. But he was so simple and direct
and effortless that no one could misdoubt him.

"It's laid upon me, as a task, a penance. I would much rather go back to
that safe harbour I had found at Pagan and sit down there and meditate
until I got at the truth of the eternal laws and became blended with the
ultimate soul. But it seems to me that all the passions and desires of
that earlier life of mine, of which you, Mr. Legatt, know, are buried in
the heart of that sapphire and may wake again unless I hang it once more
high in its consecrated place."

He looked so forlorn that I was not surprised to hear Imogen encouraging
him.

"We will all help if we can," she said.

"But what can we do?" I cried. "Tell us!" Yes, I too had somehow fallen
under the old compulsion. "The sapphire has gone."

"It will reappear," said Crowther. "It will be sold again--not in Kandy,
I think, but in Colombo."

"To a passenger on a ship," I added, and Crowther nodded.

That, without doubt, was the likeliest way of disposing of it. To offer
it for sale for a second time in Kandy within so short a period might
easily provoke enquiries. Colombo, with the great tourist liners coming
in and going out, flinging ashore for a few hours their cargoes of
wealthy sightseers eager for mementoes of their voyage--Colombo was the
place now where the sapphire must be looked for.

"The first thing to do, then," Pamela argued, "is to inform the police
at Colombo."

This was the common-sense point of view, but it ignored Crowther. The
brotherhood of Buddha had nothing to do with the social framework. It
brought no actions, fought in no wars, asked for nothing at any time
from anyone. How in the world Crowther now hoped to get his sapphire
back I could not imagine.

But it would not be by prosecuting a criminal.

"No," he said.

Then he rose from his seat and inclined his head.

"As a man, I thank you all," he said with a smile. "As a monk, I do not
thank you. But I say that by your goodwill you have acquired merit which
will surely be rewarded."

He turned away from us more abruptly than any of us had expected. I
think that he was alarmed by Pamela's suggestion that we should call in
the Civil power. Vague as, in many of its details, the creed he followed
was, this, at all events, was clear. He could pursue no criminal and
bear no witness against one. According to the immutable laws, the
criminal would be punished without his puny help or ours. He walked
across the terrace to the door of the first shrine, wherein lies hidden
in the darkness the vast, recumbent image of Buddha the Saviour as he
entered into his eternal rest.

But Michael Crowther was not the only one of the party to disappear. A
group of visitors was clustered about the entrance to the Great-King
Cavern, the glory of Dhambulla, and Pamela Brayburn joined herself on to
it. In another moment the great double doors were opened and Imogen and
I had the terrace to ourselves. It suddenly occurred to me that this
might, perhaps--after all--not be my unlucky day. I stood up.

"Imogen!" I said.

"Yes?" said she, and in her turn she stood up.

I looked at her and she looked at me.

"Imogen!" I repeated.

She nodded her head. Then she laughed with a lovely lilt in her voice, a
lilt of pure joy.

"I've got to be told," she said. "Even in these days that's necessary."

"I love you," I said. "I love you very dearly"--and she was in my arms.
I could feel the throb of her heart against my breast and the sweetness
of her lips upon mine. Blue mountains and green forest, the great pebble
of Sigiri and the high terrace of Dhambulla--it _was_ my lucky day.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Some time afterwards, how long I cannot tell, Pamela rejoined us. She
looked at Imogen and she looked at me.

"My mother used to remark----" she began, and I interrupted her.

"I have my doubts about your mother," I said, nodding darkly.

Both the girls rounded upon me at once.

"Oh!" cried Pamela.

"For shame, Martin," said Imogen.

"He's calling me a war-baby," exclaimed Pamela.

"I never heard anything so ridiculous! I said nothing of the kind."

"Practically you did, Martin," Imogen reproached me sorrowfully.

"I couldn't have. Pamela's too old. Much too old. Years and years too
old."

They did what they always did when I refused to be brow-beaten. They
turned their backs on me and made derogatory allusions. This time it was
about jungle-folk and how they must be uncouth. "But, of course," said
Pamela, "if he'd go up into trees and swing from branch to branch by his
arms, he'd be too fascinating."

I rose and walked down the slabs to the car. But they caught me up
before I reached the bottom.

"Your Crowther's a darling," said Pamela. "He's the first man I have
ever heard say that it was meritorious to build the Westminster
Aquarium."

We lunched at the rest-house, drove over to Sigiri and came back to
Dhambulla for the night. Imogen slipped her arm under mine as we sat in
the car.

"What fun we're having, Martin, aren't we?" she cried. "A lot of foolish
little jokes, silly to other people, lovely to us, because behind them
there's the great peace."




                               CHAPTER XV
                          THE LAST OF THE PEAK


IT was curious to notice how deep an impression upon so small an
acquaintance Michael Crowther had made upon the minds of my companions.
It was disturbing, too. For however loudly I might crow over our present
freedom from the tyranny of his sapphire, I had all along a secret
presentiment that its shadow would run out over our heads again; and
this presentiment was, willy-nilly, strengthened by the clear
recollection which the two girls retained of its owner.

We arranged to sail for home on the same ship in a fortnight's time, and
during the fortnight we travelled together, wandering from marvel to
marvel of that glossy and multifarious island. But nothing that we saw
effaced the picture of Uncle Sunday in his mufti; he was surrounded with
so visible an aura of loneliness and disappointment.

We played a round of golf on the English-summer land of Nuwara Eliya,
and as we sat at luncheon in the hotel, Imogen, after a few moments of
silence, cried out in a little voice of exasperation:

"I never saw a face so thin."

Pamela Brayburn explained it.

"Fastings and vigils and visions."

"You're all wrong," I protested. "I once made that mistake. Pongyis
don't fast. They mustn't fast. They mustn't eat after midday--that's
true. But they can make up for it in the morning. They've got to keep
fit."

"To get their Blues, I suppose," said Pamela sardonically.

"Well, Michael has got his, anyway," I exclaimed.

"Oh, Martin!"

"Oh!"

Again those shocked interjections reproached me. I was not nice. But I
didn't care. I went on:

"And as for vigils, they don't keep them. They have long, lovely nights
of sleep without fatigue from yesterday or anxiety for to-morrow. They
don't even have the bother of undressing and no one knows better than
two girls dolled up like you, how long that takes. And as for visions,
if any one of them saw a ghost he'd be drummed out of the monastery in
the morning."

"Yes, darling," said Imogen soothingly.

We drove down from Nuwara Eliya and bought tortoise-shell presents at
Galle. And Imogen asked--and this, too, after an interval of two days:

"Why, then, _is_ he so thin, Martin?"

"Because he's like Martha," I answered, "if it was Martha. He's troubled
about many things."

"One of those things we ought to have helped him to get back," said
Pamela; and that was that.

Towards the end of the fortnight we returned to the Galle Face Hotel
outside Colombo, and went over, one afternoon, to bathe at Mount Lavinia
amongst the catamarans. We were drinking tea in the garden of the hotel
afterwards when I said:

"We could only have helped him to get it back by going to the police,
and that he wouldn't have at any price."

Both girls burst out laughing with sheer pleasure.

"Now you've begun it, Martin," cried Imogen; and to my surprise I had,
indeed.

I had been wondering, now that we were again in Colombo, whether we
should run across Michael and hear whether or no he had brought the
thieves to bay and recovered his treasure. I had a sneaking hope that we
should and an outspoken prayer that we should not. It was the prayer
which was answered. We were in and out of the town for a couple of days
and not one of us set eyes on him or the Indian or Nga Pyu or Nga Than.
We embarked on the Motor Ship _Rutlandshire_ of the Bibby Line and moved
out of the harbour late in the afternoon. Imogen stood by my side on the
upper deck. We saw Adam's Peak rising up into the sky in a cleft of the
mountains. We watched the evening clouds swathe it about and withdraw it
from our eyes. Once I used to watch for it with a ridiculous eagerness.
Now I was glad to see the last of it. For it seemed to me that with its
shadow went the shadow of the sapphire.

There would be many years now before either Imogen or I saw it again, if
ever we did see it.

"Yet we owe it a farewell," said Imogen waving her hand towards it. "You
saved my life upon that mountain, Martin."

I shrugged my shoulders.

"Since I was up there with you, I was bound to do the little I could to
look after you."

Imogen slipped her hand under my arm.

"Those who look after people sometimes find that looking after ends in
loving," she said gently.

What she said was true, I think--at all events, so far as we were
concerned. I looked back. I had seen her in London at dances, at
dinner-parties, at theatres. I had never been in her immediate circle,
but there had been a word or two here, a smile only, perhaps, there, a
moment when her hand had rested on my arm as it did now. I had always
known her for a friend as, I think, she had known me. But it had needed
that moment above the precipice of Adam's Peak, when she hung in my arm
and her life depended upon the strength of it, to warn me that my great
need was the need of her.

"Ends in loving," I said. "And in being loved?"

Imogen laughed and said the most lovely thing which a man could hear.

"Oh, me? You were a little bit blind, Martin. I, on the other hand, used
always to know you were about, when you were about."

The island disappeared. The lights blazed forth upon the deck. The
water, sparkling with points of fire, swished past the ship's sides. The
stars were strung like lamps across the sky.

"You and I, Imogen," I said.

I thought with pity of the man who sought only to replace his offering
on the spire of his pagoda and then meditate in a hopeful solitude upon
the extinction of his soul.

                 *        *        *        *        *

We were four days out from Colombo. It was, and I suppose is, the
practice of the Bibby Line to convert its fore-deck into a skittle
alley. We were starting upon a competition which must end before we
reached Suez. It was my turn and, owing to a happy lurch of the ship at
the right moment, I knocked all the ninepins over with one shot. There
was applause and I looked upwards to the higher deck as eager as any
champion in a tourney that my lady should smile her acknowledgement of
my prowess. But, alas! though many ladies hung over the forward rail,
watching us for want of something better to do, my lady was not one of
them. My first thought was:

"What a pity. I shall never do that again."

My second had a touch of grievance.

"Imogen, darling, you might somehow have been there."

My third was one of sheer amazement and dejection. The ship, I should
say, had its full complement of passengers. Apart from the usual
tourists, there were young men from the Burma Oil Corporation Settlement
at Yenangyaung going home on leave, servants of the Forest Company,
judges and barristers and Civil servants and commercial men with their
wives; so that even now one had not got them all definitely recognised
and named. Moreover, there was but one class so that we all had the run
of the ship and it was possible for a passenger to find a corner upon
one of the decks where he could remain unnoticed even by those assiduous
people who go conscripting for the games. So for the first time since we
had left Ceylon I saw Michael Crowther. He was leaning over the forward
rail in a line of spectators and watching the players in the
skittle-alley with a friendly amusement.

I did not seek him and I was careful not to say a word about him, but I
had no hope that neither I nor my companions would remain free of him.
He was my Old Man of the Sea and I began to think of him as clamped on
to my shoulders for the rest of my life. I should have liked to have run
across him in Colombo and to have learned that he had recovered his
sapphire and was on his way back with it to Pagan. But since he was on
our steamer he had not recovered it and he was chasing it certainly as
far as Suez. And a day later Imogen ran across him. He had a cabin on
the small after-deck and for the greater part of the day remained in his
chair beside it. Imogen found me leaning over the forward rail.

"Martin, guess who's on board?" she cried.

"I know," I answered gloomily. "He saw me knock all those ninepins over
with one shot."

"When I didn't," Imogen added remorsefully. I suppose that I had told
the story once or twice to her and had managed to suggest in telling it
that a world could not be really well organised where such achievements
were not inevitably witnessed by one's womenfolk.

"You must come and talk to him," said Imogen.

"I suppose that I must," I answered.

"And shall we do it gracefully and with good manners, or shall we not?"
said Pamela.

We did it at all events with what grace we could. We sought him out the
next morning.

"I'm the bad ha'penny, Mr. Legatt," he said.

"You're going as far as Suez, I suppose," I remarked.

"I'm going to England," said he.

Michael Crowther, however, took no more pleasure in his destination than
I did. England was another word in his vocabulary for failure and
loneliness and cold.

"I have got to," he said. "I ran those men down at Colombo. I did a bad
thing. I threatened them with the law. They described to me, boastfully,
how they had climbed the pagoda, failed to loosen the diamond and in the
end must content themselves with my chaplet of gifts."

"They had the sapphire still, then!" I cried.

"No," Crowther answered. "They had sold it. A girl--very young--not
twenty I should think--came off a ship on one of the Round-the-World
voyages with a man--I should think a little older than you. They went
along to the Galle Face Hotel for luncheon. Just outside the hotel the
thieves offered them the sapphire with its platinum chain, and after the
usual bargaining the man bought it and gave it to his companion."

"You found out who they were?" I asked.

"One of the porters remembered them."

"And you are following them?" Pamela asked.

"Yes."

"Like the Saracen girl who only knew her lover's Christian name," I
observed. "It doesn't sound to me a likely proposition."

"But didn't the Saracen girl find him?" Crowther asked.

"One for his nob," said Pamela softly.

"London was smaller in those days," I returned.

"And we don't even know that they were going to London," said Imogen.

I was grateful to Imogen for her support against Pamela's quite
uncalled-for jape, but I definitely disliked the "we." Imogen had
obviously decided that we--she and I, at all events, and probably
Pamela--were, upon our arrival in England, to spend our time and our
efforts in searching through the country for a man and a girl who had
bought a sapphire in Colombo.

"You know their names, perhaps?" Pamela asked.

"Yes, that's about all I do know," Crowther replied. "I got them from
the hotel."

"What was hers?" Imogen enquired.

Crowther looked doubtfully at Imogen. He was disinclined to answer. He
shook his head.

"From what I could gather you wouldn't be likely to know her, Miss
Cloud," he said rather stiffly.

It seemed a curious consequence of adopting the yellow robe that a
devotee to American slang should become the primmest of Victorians. But
he little knew Imogen who had a catholicity in her friendships which was
apt to stagger even her own generation.

"You never can tell," she remarked. "What's her name?"

"Jill Leslie," said Crowther.

"No, I don't know her," said Imogen.

"And what's his?" I asked.

"Robin Calhoun."

None of us knew a Robin Calhoun.

"Of course," said Pamela, who really could leave nothing alone, "he
might have been the girl's uncle."

For a second or two Michael Crowther tried desperately not to smile. But
he failed. And having begun to smile he went on to laugh. There were
moments when Michael became very human.

"He might," he answered. "On the other hand he wasn't. As I told you, I
made discreet enquiries at the hotel. I did not, after all, navigate the
Irrawaddy River for nothing. If I didn't acquire merit I acquired
knowledge, and you can take it from me that Robin Calhoun is not the
uncle of Jill Leslie."

The luncheon-gong was beaten at that moment.




                              CHAPTER XVI
                             THE SILENT ROOM


WE travelled straight through upon one ship to the Port of London,
arriving there on the morning of the last day of April. Then we
scattered with the usual indifference of our race to the
fellow-passengers with whom accident had cooped us for a month; and
comfortably confident that in a week's time we should not recognise one
another in the street. I drove with Imogen and her cousin across London
to Paddington, saw them off to the West of England and returned to my
own lodging in Savile Row. I had not seen Michael Crowther that morning,
and what with a press of work and the arrangements for my wedding which
we had agreed should take place at the end of the Season, for some time
I hardly gave a thought to him at all. Moreover, Imogen's parents opened
their London house in Hill Street, and taking one thing with another I
was a thoroughly busy man.

I made it a rule, therefore, whenever it was possible, to walk to and
from my engagements for the sake of exercise; and it happened in
consequence, on a good many occasions when returning from a supper-party
or a dance, that I passed on foot along Savile Row. There was a house in
the row which intrigued me; to be more correct, there was an upper part
of a house. For the ground floor and basement were occupied by a tailor,
as, of course, was the case with most of the houses. But at whatever
hour I returned home, the first floor was usually alight, and discreetly
alight. I mean that the blinds and curtains were carefully drawn and the
light only leaked out at the sides or the tops of the two large flat
windows. But it was burning. I do not indeed remember more than two or
three occasions when late at night that first floor was dark. Several
times, however, I saw people arrive in small groups, women and men, and
all of them dressed as though they had come from a theatre or an
entertainment. I do not remember that I ever saw anyone going away. At
my latest I was still too early for the homing of these gay pigeons.

But the most singular circumstance in connection with this mysterious
apartment was its silence. No noise whatever broke from it, no sound of
music, no babble of voices, never a song, never a cry. I did not notice
that peculiarity for some time; but once I had noticed it, it forced
itself upon me afterwards each time that I passed the house. I wanted to
hear something--anything; a signal that the company assembled behind the
curtains and the blinds was enjoying its presence there and was
associated in some pleasant fellowship; or even in some fantastic
conspiracy. But I never did, and the quiet of the place became to me in
the end sinister and a little alarming.

By this time May had turned London into a garden of lilac and sunlight
and it was, I think, during the third week of the month and at seven in
the evening when my servant told me that a Mr. Crowther would like to
see me. He was shown up, of course, at once.

"Michael, have a cocktail," I said.

Michael shook his head with a smile.

"In a little while I shall have to, Mr. Legatt, I expect," he said. "But
to you I am still a monk."

"Well, sit down and watch me."

As I drank mine, he laughed.

"Do you remember, Mr. Legatt, how angry you were when I insisted on
paying for your drink on the _Dagonet_?"

"How I hated you!" I cried.

"I reckon that I was hateful," he replied with equanimity.

Michael had now a thick growth of hair _en brosse_, flecked with grey,
which gave to his thin, ecclesiastical face an incongruous and comical
finish.

"I wonder whether you will do something for me," he asked, and I smiled
rather sourly. I knew that question was coming, just as I knew that I
should help him if I could and that there would be no possibility of
doubt that I could. The pertinacity of a man with a single end in view
would twist the stars from their courses.

"Of course I will," I answered, with more of acquiescence that I should
than of eagerness that I would.

"Do you know a Mr. Jack Sanford?"

"I don't, Michael."

It seemed astonishing to me that I didn't, since Michael obviously
wanted me to know him.

"He lives in this street."

"He might live in Mandalay for all that means."

Crowther got up from his chair and wandered about the room, touching an
ornament here and a book there. He was very restless.

"What you want, Michael, is a Watson Number One," I said.

Michael laughed.

"I shall have, some day, to tell you what happens to Tempters. It is not
pleasant." He turned and planted himself in front of me. "So you can't
help me."

"I can't introduce you to Mr. Jack Sanford, if that's what you mean."

He nodded his stubbly head.

"I thought that since you run about London at night you might have the
right of entry there," he said, and I sat up in my chair.

"Oh! Has he got the upper part of a house about six doors down?"

"He has."

"Rather a mysterious place, isn't it?"

"No," said Crowther simply. "It's just a gambling hell."

I was not surprised. I had not been able to see what else it could be.

"Something like Schwegu, in fact, when they are burning an abbot?" I
said.

Happily Imogen and her cousin were not present. Had they been, I should
have had to listen to a chorus of: "Oh, Martin!" and reproaches that I
was not nice.

"But I suppose," I continued reluctantly, "that if you gave me a little
time I could get myself presented."

Michael's face lit up with hope.

"And me, too?"

"Really, really," I began, and stopped abruptly. Michael was looking at
himself in the mirror above the mantelshelf, with a wry smile upon his
mouth.

"I should look odd," he said.

I was stricken with remorse. It was obvious that he wanted immensely to
go to Mr. Jack Sanford's, as obvious, indeed, as the difficulty I should
have in explaining him.

"Oh, dolled up in our best gent's dinner-jacket with trouserings to
match, you'll look fine, Michael," I said. "Where can I find you?"

He gave me the address of a private hotel in Bayswater, shook me by the
hand and went out of the door. He did not thank me for the trouble I was
going to be put to. I was serving myself by any act of kindness I might
do to him, though what kindness there could be in introducing a monk
into a London tripot I was not at this time able to imagine, except, of
course, that by some means or another he hoped there to get on to the
track of his stolen sapphire.

However, I was taking Imogen that night to dinner at a restaurant and a
theatre and I put the problem to her. She overleaped in a second the
obstacle of an introduction and cried:

"I can manage that all right, and I am coming, too!"

"Imogen, it's no place for you," I protested.

"It's more a place for me than it is for Michael," she replied.

"Damn Michael!" said I heartily.

"Oh, Martin!" said she, and for the moment that was the end of the
matter.

But two nights later she brought up to me at a dance an infinitely kind
young man who regarded my elderly bufferdom of thirty years as something
which demanded from him every consideration. He called me "sir," and the
title cut me to the quick.

"This is Lord Salcombe," said Imogen.

"Imogen tells me, sir, you want one evening to trot along to Jack
Sanford's," he said.

Did he look down at my legs wondering whether I should need two sticks
to get me there?

"I should love to," said I.

"Well, we might make a party, what? The three of us!"

"But there's to be----" A fourth, I was on the point of saying when a
look of incredulous amazement from Imogen brought me to an inconclusive
stutter. Lord Salcombe, however, put it all down to senility, if he
noticed anything out of the way at all.

"We'll dine and go to a cinema. Then we'll drop round to Savile Row and
try to draw the Muses. Pretty good, what?" And since I looked puzzled:
"No? Cryptic, perhaps. I mean the nine." He seized--really seized by
both elbows, a very pretty astonished girl who was passing him. "Our
dance, Esmeralda! Not your name? You don't say! Never mind! Our dance,
what?"

And in a moment they were half-way across the room. Imogen and I went
downstairs to supper.

"You see, darling," she said sweetly, "what was wanted was a little
finesse. Oh, of course, you have lots of finesse, really, and I am sure
when you were out in the jungle there wasn't an elephant that could
match you. But the noblest of men drop a brick from time to time, and if
I hadn't stared you would have dropped St. Paul's."

"How?" I asked humbly.

"The Salcombe boy wouldn't have thanked me for Michael. When he had seen
Michael he would probably have suggested that we tour London by night in
a charabanc. But if we go with the Salcombe boy by ourselves or with
Pamela, we shall get the entre to Jack Sanford's and then we can take
Michael."

"Imogen, you're a marvel," I said. "You ought to be an Ambassador."

Imogen turned over a menu card and pushed it towards me.

"Please write that down and sign it," she said. "I'd like to show it to
father."

If I have chosen too often to present Imogen in her laughing mood, I beg
your pardon. The prolonged and viscous kisses of the films teach me that
reticence is out of the fashion and I shall try to amend. But, in fact,
we did keep a public reticence which was the very salt of our private
meetings. Passion and a lovely comradeship went hand in hand with fun in
Imogen, and if my picture of her lacks those deeper qualities, set the
blame upon the painter rather than upon his subject.

We went to the house in Savile Row one evening of the next week--a party
of four after all. But the fourth was Pamela Brayburn. Salcombe had no
doubt prepared the way, for we were admitted without question into a
dark hall and thence to a lighted one where we left our hats and coats.
A large and portly butler--Crowther in other days would have called him
an oldy Englishy butler--ushered us up a short flight of stairs into a
beautiful oblong room. The inner wall of this room was broken by double
doors which stood open, disclosing a second room at the back with a long
buffet. At once the silence which had so perplexed me was explained. For
although there was a buzz of talk from Mr. Jack Sanford's guests, it was
contained within that inner room. The outer one with the windows on the
street was the place of business, and there quiet and decorum reigned,
broken only by the phrases of the tables--"_En cartes_," "_Baccara_,"
"_Rien ne va plus_," "_La main passe_."

Mr. Jack Sanford stepped forward and Salcombe presented us in turn. Mr.
Sanford was a plump, sandy little man with a few long fair hairs running
from front to back of his head. He had a white face, a button for a
nose, a heavy chin and a pair of shrewd small blue eyes.

"Lord Salcombe's friends are very welcome," he said. "There is a buffet,
as you see, and you will play or not as you feel disposed. There are two
tables, you will notice, one for baccara and the other for a smaller
game of chemin-de-fer. When I play myself, it is usually at the smaller
table"--and with that he left us to our own devices.

We watched the big table for a little while where the play certainly ran
high. I recognised one or two racing men, a proprietor of theatres, some
well-known figures from the City, a Cabinet Minister and a young
Frenchman who was seated by a pretty girl with a rope of pearls about
her neck and some valuable rings upon her fingers. The banker was a
dark, good-looking fellow with a thatch of black sleek hair and a quick
eye, and it seemed to me that the luck was running against him. But I
had no great opportunity of making sure, for Salcombe said:

"I think we ought to play a little at the shimmy table. I see there are
some places vacant now."

We sat down, staked a little, took the bank in turn and did very little
damage either to ourselves or our fellow-players. Imogen won twenty
pounds; Pamela, after losing a five-pound note, wandered off with
Salcombe to the buffet. I sat by Imogen's side, watching the clock and
wondering what in the world Michael Crowther would be doing on this
galley. The rooms certainly were as hot as Burma, but there must be some
other attraction. But we couldn't see it.

It was three o'clock in the morning before Imogen and I discovered it.
We discovered it at the same moment. Imogen was on my left hand and the
shoe of cards had come round to her. She put five pounds in as her bank
and I added another five, making the whole bank ten pounds.

"_Banco_," cried a voice across the table and both Imogen and I jumped
as if we had been shot, to the amusement of the company. But we did not
jump at the brusque voice across the table. Between the croupier's
announcement that there was a bank of ten pounds and the challenge of
the man across the table we had heard another voice, Jack Sanford's, and
he was addressing the banker at the big table behind us.

"I think when you have exhausted those cards, Robin, we ought to close."

It was the name Robin which startled us. Robin was the key word to the
enigma of Crowther's intentions. Robin must be that Robin Calhoun who
had bought Crowther's jewel for his lady-love outside the Galle Face
Hotel at Colombo. Here he was taking the big bank at Jack Sanford's
little hell in Savile Row and no doubt Jack Sanford's partner. Imogen
slipped the cards quickly out of the box.

"We'll go and look," she said quietly, "as soon as my bank's over."

I agreed with a nod of the head. We would go into the room with the
buffet and look for a pretty girl with a beautiful sapphire on a
platinum chain. But as chance would have it, Imogen's bank went piling
up. It rose to sixty pounds and she thought it too mean a business to
take her winnings and let the hand go, though she was now in a fever to
have done with it. The bank ran four more times and then she lost when
there was very little money staked against her. She passed the shoe,
stuffed her winnings into her bag and got up. We crossed to the buffet,
and with a sandwich and a glass of champagne as an excuse, we examined
our fellow-guests. There were pretty girls certainly, but not one of
them wore a sapphire on a platinum chain.

"We may have better luck next time," said Imogen. She led me by the
sleeve to Mr. Jack Sanford, thanked him and asked: "May we come again?"
in so wistful a voice that no man could have resisted her.

"We have a little chemin-de-fer game every evening," said Jack, his
white, plump face dimpling with smiles. "And three times a week we have
a table of baccara--Sundays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. I shall be happy
to see you and Mr. Legatt whenever you have the time."

I drove Imogen to her house. As she took leave of me at the door she
said:

"Your Michael's a clever old bird. I wonder what he's up to?"

We were both inclined to imagine that Michael had devised some subtle
scheme by which his sapphire was to be restored to him without the
commission of any crime. But we were quite out of our reckoning. Michael
had the simplest scheme in the world, if scheme it could be called at
all.




                              CHAPTER XVII
                          THE MAN FROM LIMOGES


"YOU must see that he's properly dressed, Martin! And pay attention to
his shoes! If he looks like a policeman out of uniform, we shall be
asked to go. I think you had better take him to your bootmaker. And then
you must give him a few lessons in chemin-de-fer. He'll have to play a
little, else why did we bring him? And he must have a few pounds to play
with. And above all, whatever he's after, he must promise not to make a
scene."

Thus Imogen under the trees by the Row, on a morning in the first week
of June. We had returned twice to Jack Sanford's apartment since
Salcombe had introduced us. We had not seen any girl wearing the
sapphire or one answering to the name of Jill Leslie. We had learned
that the young Frenchman was the Vicomte de Craix and that he had been
losing heavily. We had struck up a sort of gambling-room acquaintance
with him and with a few of the other habitual visitors--the pretty girl
with the rope of pearls amongst them. She seemed to have a large circle
of friends, for she brought a new one each time, and everybody called
her Robbie. In a word, we had established ourselves and acquired the
right to bring a visitor.

I followed out my instructions dutifully, and on the Wednesday
appointed, Michael, dressed by my tailor and shod by my bootmaker, with
his hair now long enough to lie down upon his head, met Imogen and
myself in the grill-room of the Semiramis Hotel at half-past eight of
the evening. We dined together and Michael was the least excited of the
three of us. I think that those of us who had willy-nilly fallen under
the compulsion to help him in his quest of the sapphire always found him
an exciting personage--yes, even when he was most still.

"You must have no fear on my account, Miss Cloud," he said with a smile.
"I shall make no scene, and I can play chemin-de-fer and baccara, and I
have money enough."

"You are sure of that?" Imogen insisted.

"Quite. Don't forget that I had money enough to build a pagoda. And I
think that I am not so far now from the end of my search but that it
will last me out."

We were curious to know how he had discovered the whereabouts of Robin
Calhoun and he told us as we ate.

"I went among my old acquaintances in the City. They were of the flashy
kind, I regret to say, Miss Cloud, and I had an idea that it was
possible that I might pick up a line on Calhoun amongst them. I was
lucky. They knew quite a lot about Jack Sanford and his partner and how
well they were doing."

Imogen was a little restless throughout the dinner and it was not until
we were half-way through that she explained her restlessness. Michael
was drinking water.

"Don't you think that a glass of champagne would be helpful?" she asked;
and Michael beamed at her.

"I might just as well, Miss Cloud," he said, "since I am eating at this
forbidden hour. I have laid aside my yellow robe for the time being, as
I have quite a right to do, and I am committing no fault, whatever I eat
and drink. But I claim the right of our race to be illogical and I'll go
on drinking water."

He insisted that there was no demand to be made upon any of us that
evening, no scandal in which our names would figure.

"I want to see my man, perhaps the lady too, so that I may know them
again. I want to scrape an acquaintance with one of them at all events,
if I can. I haven't a gun or a mask or a car to make a getaway. There'll
be no thrills, Miss Cloud, to-night."

But he was wrong. There were to be thrills, though they were not caused
by Michael Crowther, and no man was more surprised than he when they
occurred. The quest of the sapphire indeed was proceeding on the
ordinary plane of human affairs. Sometimes chance helped him, sometimes
it thwarted him; and on this night it was unexpectedly to help him,
although at the time not one of us was able to recognise any signs of
his good fortune.

                 *        *        *        *        *

We went early to Savile Row in order to give Michael a chance of finding
a seat at the big table. It was eleven when we entered the room and the
table was being actually made up, so that Michael could only find a
place at one end. There had been no trouble about his admission; and
once in the room he did not even provoke the least curiosity. The play
was the thing and, anyway, odder birds than he had found a welcome at
Jack Sanford's little casino. Imogen and I stood behind Crowther's chair
and watched. We noticed that Monsieur de Craix had brought a couple of
friends with him, one a thin, finicking, timorous, dilettante person
whom I heard addressed as Mr. Julius Ricardo, and the other a burly
middle-aged Frenchman with a blue shaven skin, inclined to be a trifle
boisterous. Both of them seemed to me astonishing companions for so
obvious a member of the French Jockey Club as the spruce young Vicomte
de Craix. Or rather, they would have seemed astonishing companions in
any other gathering. But if misfortune makes strange bed-fellows, a
gambling-house makes stranger. Monsieur de Craix, who was seated next to
the croupier, introduced the Frenchman to Robin Calhoun across the
table.

"This is my very good friend, Monsieur Chaunard. I marked the place for
him next to you, Mr. Calhoun," and he laughed, adding: "He likes a game,
I can tell you."

Robin Calhoun bowed to this new-comer upon his right, smiled, ran a
shrewd eye over him and was content.

"You are of Paris?" he asked, and Monsieur Chaunard shook his head
vigorously.

"No, no, my friend, look at me! I am of the Provinces. I make the china
pots at Limoges. Now I take my holiday from the business." He sat down
in his chair and rubbed his hands together loudly. Close by my side I
heard a little prim voice:

"Vulgar! Vulgar!" and I saw that this new Mr. Ricardo was standing at my
side and in quite a twitter lest the man from Limoges should misbehave.

The cards were brought in to Robin Calhoun who tore the wrappers from
the packs and handed them across the table for the croupier to shuffle.
By the side of the croupier on the one side, as I have said, was the
Vicomte de Craix, and on the other, exactly opposite to Monsieur
Chaunard, sat a man in the early forties whom I had seen and talked to
once or twice before, a partner in a famous firm of stockbrokers named
Arnold Mann and a very level-headed person. Chaunard turned to his
neighbour on his right.

"You have the good fortune? Yes? No? For me, I think you shall see
something to-night. Yes. I feel that I am in my veins."

"Oh, dear, oh, dear," murmured Mr. Ricardo. "In the vein."

The murmur reached Monsieur Chaunard's ears, and he smiled blandly at
his twittering Ricardo.

"No, no, you are wrong, my friend," he said simply. "It is a phrase. I
am in my veins. It means I am not the weathercock which turns South and
East and North and West. No, I go plong for the nine," and he slapped
his hand down on the table as though he pinned the famous card down
there for good. Mr. Ricardo was, I think, dazed by that wondrous
confusion of veins and vanes. He had no words and we no eyes for him.
For the game was beginning.

We saw the cards, now one thick pack, passed back to Robin Calhoun. He
held them tightly between his thumb and his fingers and extended them to
the right and the left across the table, offering at the same time with
his left hand a blank red card so that anyone could slip it into the
pack and make a cut wherever he or she chose. I think the pack was cut
six times. There was an air of expectation in the room that night which
passed from one to the other of us and held certainly those who stood
about the table in a curious suspense. We waited for a great _duello_
between the manufacturer from Limoges and Robin Calhoun. Imogen at my
side, for instance, was standing with her lips parted, her eyes fixed on
Robin Calhoun. There was something in her gaze which reminded me faintly
of the afternoon in the rest-house on the road to Anuradhapura, when I
had seen her upright against the wall. Mr. Ricardo on the other side of
me was breathing hard and lifting himself ridiculously on his toes and
so down again. I, too, was waiting for a curtain to go up. Or, rather,
the curtain had gone up and I was waiting for the action to begin. There
were the characters brightly illuminated; Jack Sanford looking on
comfortably with a big cigar between his lips; Robin Calhoun glancing
round the table once with a question: "Is that staked?" when a chip was
a little too near the line; the impassive croupier opposite with his
long broad blade of very thin black wood; the young Vicomte de Craix
next to him with his eyeglass; and opposite, the big black man from
Limoges, his thumbs in the armholes of his white waistcoat, at his ease,
completely in his veins, with a vast smile upon his face as though he
wanted to kiss the world.

"I begin with the moderation," he said and pushed a ten-pound chip over
the line. Mr. Ricardo gulped audibly. It might have been his money which
was pushed over the line. "Afterwards we shall see."

We did see. The man from Limoges took the cards for the right-hand
tableau, a financier from the Argentine those upon the left. I did not
notice the value of the cards, but I remember that the bank won from the
first or right-hand tableau and was on an equality with the second. At
the second coup he won from both tableaux. The bank had started with
five hundred pounds and it must now have amounted to double that sum. As
Robin Calhoun began to deal the third coup, the man from Limoges began
his antics.

Calhoun dealt two cards to each tableau and two to himself. He dealt
them one by one, face downwards in the usual way, one to the right, one
to the left, one to himself, and so again. It was the croupier's
business to lift the two cards for the right and left tableaux in turn
on his long blade, still face downwards, and present them to the player
whose turn it was to hold them. The two cards for the right hand were
thus in the first instance dealt in front of Monsieur Chaunard, although
it was the second player to his right who would handle them. Monsieur
Chaunard did not touch them. It was not his right. He was leaning back
in his chair perfectly correctly. But he looked at the backs of them and
said gently but clearly, so clearly that the croupier who had already
stretched forward his blade to pass the cards on, stopped in the middle
of his movement:

"Aha, we lose again. We have a _bche_ and a one. And our friends on the
left they have an eight and three, also making one. And the dealer he
has a _bche_ and a six. We must draw a card on our side, by the law."
He looked round at an assemblage outraged into silence. "We shall draw
again the one, making us two. Our friend on the left, he too must draw.
He will draw a two making him three. And the dealer having six will not
draw. So, as I say, he will win."

The silence was broken by the indignant voice of Mr. Jack Sanford.

"Really, Mossoo le Vicomte, your friend----"

"He has the bad flavour--yes," said the man from Limoges genially, and
at my side Mr. Ricardo in a sort of agony:

"Taste! Taste!"

Robin Calhoun turned with a smile to Chaunard.

"You agree?" said he. "Not quite out of the top drawer, what?"

Chaunard moved his head forward quickly, and there was for a second a
flutter of alarm about the table. But it seemed to me that as yet, at
all events, there was no chance of trouble. Chaunard was not so much
goaded by the insult as interested in the phrase. He, in fact, and Robin
Calhoun were the coolest people present. Robin was marvellous.

"It is, of course, impossible to continue the game. I beg you all to
withdraw your stakes."

He reached his hand out to the stack of cards leaning against the rest
in front of him. It was like good acting, quicker than life and very
neat but without any appearance of hurry. In a fraction of a second he
would have picked up the pack and scattered it in confusion over the
table. But he did not get that second. Monsieur Chaunard who, with his
blue chin, really looked like an actor, was by a fraction of a second
quicker. A very strong hand pounced upon Robin's wrist.

"Let the cards stay as they are," said Chaunard, and such authority rang
in his voice that we were all taken by surprise--even Robin Calhoun. For
he shrugged his shoulders and sat back in his chair. Then from the
opposite side of the table, where, in fact, we were standing, another
voice, very cool and quiet, was raised, Mr. Arnold Mann's.

"Yes, let the cards stay as they are, and, Jack, perhaps you had better
close the doors to the buffet."

I never saw anything more sinister than the aspect of that table, with
the company still as a set of images and their eyes watching lest
Calhoun's fingers should touch the stack of cards in front of him or the
croupier's blade the four cards still face downwards upon the table. In
the other room voices were being raised, questions were being asked,
there was an excited surge of people towards the double doors. Mr. Jack
Sanford was just in time to prevent a rush into this quiet room.

"Just a moment!" he cried. "It is a little question. Stand back, please.
In a moment I open again."

He managed to close the doors but he did not open again. The stockbroker
with the cool voice continued:

"Let us see whether this gentleman is right. You said that your cards
were a ten and a one. Will you turn them up?"

Monsieur Chaunard obeyed. They were a ten and a one.

"And the second tableau was an eight and a three. Let us see them."

He reached across the table and turned them up himself.

"Yes, they are an eight and a three. Now let us see the dealer's."

But Calhoun did not move. To upset the big stack now would have been a
confession of guilt to a charge which no one had formulated. With his
own two cards he was not concerned.

"They may be any two out of the pack," said he.

"And what do you say they are, Monsieur Chaunard?" Arnold Mann asked.

"A _bche_ and a six."

Arnold Mann himself took the scoop from the croupier, and using infinite
care not to touch the big pack stacked against the rest, lifted daintily
upon the blade the two cards in front of Robin, and turning them over
dropped them in the middle of the table. There they were, a King and a
six.

Again there was a stir about the table. I wondered that Robin Calhoun
sat in his place so still. If he scattered the big pack even now, we
should take it as a confession, no doubt, but we should have no proof.
But I think now that he was afraid. The stir was no longer to be put
down to fear. There was anger--yes, even amongst those well-dressed
unobtrusive people of good manner, the dangerous anger of the mass.

"And the next cards to be turned up?" Mann asked, looking at Chaunard.

Chaunard looked round the table.

"With your consent..." he said, and with such light fingers that one
could hardly believe they belonged to such big strong hands, he picked
up the stack of cards and held them out to the stockbroker.

"The first card for our tableau here will be an ace and for the
left-hand tableau a two," he said.

Amidst a deadly silence Arnold Mann exposed the two top cards, an ace
and a two. Here and there a cry of anger rose. It looked as though the
storm must burst. But the stockbroker and the man from Limoges between
them held the gathering in control.

"I think you should explain," said the stockbroker.

"I will do better. I will make you an experiment first. I will tell you
the cards you hold one by one, and one by one you shall turn them up."

No one had eyes now for either Jack Sanford who stood by the door as
white as a perspiring ghost, if so strange a thing could be, or for
Robin Calhoun who sat in his place with a mask for a face, a mask
without an expression. Chaunard gave the value of a card and a card of
that value the stockbroker turned up. So it went on in a monotonous
exactitude until the pack was exhausted.

Our admiration of such a feat was immense, but Monsieur Chaunard did not
wait for its expression. He beamed on us. He handed himself bouquets on
the instant--Caruso after singing "_La donna  mobile_" to an Italian
audience.

"That was good? Yes? Worthy of the bravos? I think so. Aha, Mister
Banker," and he swung round upon Robin Calhoun. "Me--it may be--I do not
come out of the top of my drawers, but the memory, he does!"

"Revolting!" twittered Mr. Ricardo.

Imogen leaned forward right across me.

"Nonsense! He's an absolute darling!"

"Silence, if you please," said Mr. Mann.

"Yes, the silence, whilst I talk," Chaunard agreed enthusiastically.
"Monsieur de Craix, he comes to see me in Paris."

"At Limoges," said the stockbroker.

"I make the apologies. We are the mugs here to-night but I do not make
us at Limoges. No. I inhabit Paris. At times I come to stay with a
friend in London"--and here Mr. Ricardo shifted his feet
uncomfortably--"just to keep myself fresh in the idioms of your
language. But that is all. M. de Craix, he says to me: 'There is a game
of baccara. Often it is--oblong.'"

"Square," said Mr. Ricardo.

"Well, square or oblong. 'But now and then there is a big killing.' So
having a holiday I come and I am lucky. For the first time I come there
is to be the big killing--the 705 system, as the old chief of my
establishment used to call it. I beg your attention."

He rose and walked across the room to a desk upon which some packs of
cards lay in their wrappers. As he rose Robin Calhoun rose, too, and at
once Arnold Mann, the stockbroker, spoke sharply.

"You will wait, if you please, Mr. Calhoun."

"Yes," said the Frenchman over his shoulder. "Certainly the gentleman
should wait. Both the gentlemen should wait. For there may be
restitutions."

Decorous as the whole conduct of this scandalous affair had been, that
one word restitutions sent a wave of brightness and hope throughout the
company. Mr. Robin Calhoun resumed his seat with a shrug of the
shoulders and a contemptuous face. Mr. Jack Sanford, holding tight to
the handles of the double doors, looked as if he were going to faint.

Monsieur Chaunard, no longer of Limoges, brought a pack of cards to the
baccara table and resumed his seat. He stripped the wrapper from the
pack.

"I will arrange the cards in an order," and he turned over the top card.
It was a seven. He looked at the second--it was a ten. He laughed and
looked at the third--it was a five. He rose and bowed with great
ceremony to Jack Sanford.

"I thank you. My work is done for me, and then the wrapper replaced."

He laid out the cards face upwards in four lines of thirteen cards to a
line. Counting the Court cards and the tens of no value, the object of
the game being to get nine or as near to it as possible, the values ran
as follows. For I made a note of them as the cards were turned up.

                       7 0 5 9 0 2 6 0 4 1 3 6 0
                       8 0 1 2 6 9 0 8 7 0 9 7 0
                       4 9 0 2 5 0 4 8 0 3 2 0 8
                       1 1 3 5 5 3 4 0 0 0 6 0 7

Monsieur Chaunard contemplated the cards with a smile.

"This is the combination known to a famous chief of my establishment,
Monsieur Goron, as 705. You see the very good reason," and he pointed to
the first three cards of the top row. "Yes, it is all correct. I have
him by the heart. Now I gather the cards all up in that order, beginning
at the top row and working from left to right like the grousers from the
moors in your illustrated papers. So!"

I had never seen a man so completely savouring the enjoyment of the
leading part. He was Mounet-Sully and Coquelin and Henry Irving and
Lucien Guitry all rolled into one. He beamed, he--I find no other word
for it--he listened to the deep silence of the room, he watched the eyes
riveted upon his hands. He was happy.

"So!"

He had the pack in his hand, the cards now face upwards and the last
card picked up showing a seven of spades. He turned the pack over so
that now the backs were uppermost and the top card, of course, was the
first seven.

"Now," he said, "in that order, which was the order of the pack when it
lay upon the desk there, the banker cannot lose one coup. Once or twice
there may be an equality. Every other time he wins."

Robin Calhoun laughed sarcastically.

"I think our unusual visitor is forgetting that the cards were
shuffled," he said.

To my amazement, and to Mr. Ricardo's disgust, the big visitor became
playful. He turned and dug his long middle finger into Robin's white
waistcoat at the level of his waist.

"That is the good one!"

"Ah," murmured Mr. Ricardo. "A good one."

"No, no, my friend," Chaunard continued, taking no notice whatever of
Mr. Ricardo. "It is you who do the shuffle now with the words, and your
croupier who did not do the shuffle with the cards then. I watch him.
With my eyes, I watch him."

"Well, I don't suppose you watched him with your feet," said Robin
sourly.

"Yes, I watch him. And he shuffle as a hundred tenth-rate conjurers can
shuffle, without altering the lie of one card."

"But I cut the pack afterwards," cried a woman towards the end of the
table.

"So did I!"

"So did I!"

Other voices joined in but they left Monsieur Chaunard quite unmoved.

"And so you shall again, madame. And you! And you! And you!"

With an excellent mimicry of Robin Calhoun, he daintily extended the
pack held tight between the fingers and thumb of one hand, and the red
card for the cut with the other. "As many as will. The cut, it makes no
difference. The 705 is a work of genius. Now you, monsieur! Now you!"

I think that he had the pack cut seven times.

"Will someone sweep those old packs off the table?" he asked, and as
soon as that was done he moved the rest across from in front of Robin to
in front of Arnold Mann.

"You are the banker. And you cannot lose!"

Arnold Mann slipped the cards off the pack to right and to left and to
himself, turned them face upwards, refused cards or drew cards as the
hands required, when the pack was exhausted sat back.

"It is true. The banker wins every coup." He looked steadily for a
moment or two at Monsieur Chaunard. "And what is this establishment of
yours of which you spoke?"

Monsieur Chaunard shrugged his shoulders.

"The Sret of Paris," he replied, and a movement rippled swiftly about
the table like a flaw of wind about a pond. "You have an establishment
of the same kind here. You call it the Q.E.D."

"No, no!" Mr. Ricardo was of too precise a mind to endure so ridiculous
a variation. "The C.I.D.," he cried like a man suffering grievously from
the toothache. "The C.I.D.," and he repeated the initials, spacing them,
so that never such a mistake might occur again.

Monsieur Chaunard was charming, not at all annoyed by the unnecessary
interruption, just dignified and firm, if I may use his admirable
phrase, a man in his veins. He looked rather sorrowfully at Mr. Ricardo.

"My friend, you overstep a little. In the socialities I am at your feet.
But in the matters of police, I know. I read your papers. I see great
riddles solved and at the end--what? Q.E.D. Ah, a fine tribute! The
Press--it gives us no such recognition in France."

"Very well," said Arnold Mann a trifle impatiently, "you belong to the
Q.E.D. of France."

"It is so."

"And your name?"

"I am Hanaud." The reply was made with a superb simplicity. "In every
generation our police has a Hanaud. I am he of this one."

There seemed to be nothing further to be said and Hanaud rose from his
chair.

"You will understand, Mr. Sanford, Mr. Calhoun, that I am not here
officially. If ever you came to France that would be another matter. But
here I am the friend of Monsieur de Craix and all that I can do is to
repeat one little word--restitutions."

He bowed ceremoniously and in a dead silence he went out of the room
with Mr. Ricardo at his heels. He had hardly closed the door behind him
before the spell was broken. A veritable clamour broke out. Those
imprisoned in the buffet added their voices and their strength. The
double doors bent and broke. Jack Sanford was swept aside; a wave of
curious, angry people surged in to mingle with the others. And all at
once that decorous assemblage became a mob, ugly, raw, deadly. Jack
Sanford, shaking with fear, cowered against the wall. In front of him a
throng of hysterical women and excited men threatened him. Fine clothes
went for nothing. It was mob-passion working up to the fling of the
first stone; and of the two sexes it seemed to me that the women were
the more alarming.

"Ladies--gentlemen--we will put all right. It was a mistake--someone has
tricked us all," Jack Sanford screamed in a high shrill feminine scream
which made me feel sick. And at once jeers and cries interrupted him.
But amongst them all was one in the room who kept his head. I caught
Imogen to my side and drew her away towards the windows upon Savile Row.
I looked about for Michael Crowther. He had disappeared. I said to
myself bitterly: "He has bolted. Pongyis don't fight even to protect the
women they are with," and as the thought flashed into my mind, the door
on to the staircase was thrown open and Michael stood upon the
threshold. He cried in a voice which overtopped the tumult so that not a
man nor a woman but must hear him:

"The police!"

It was a word of magic.

"The police!" he cried again and his voice rang with authority. He was
again as in old days the captain of a ship and the ship in danger. The
shouts were hushed, the abuse and the threats died away in growls. No
one wanted the police brought into the affair. All turned towards the
door; and with a spontaneous single movement the women fell back, the
men ranged themselves in front of them. A bare space of floor littered
with fragments of lace was left between the men and Crowther at the
door.

"You?" said Arnold Mann. "You are of the police?"

Michael shook his head.

"There are no police," he answered quietly. "But in five minutes there
would have been."

A gasp of relief followed upon his words. A woman here and there even
began to repair her face and her toilet. There was suddenly a sense of
shame. In the midst of the silence Crowther stalked across the room. He
looked at Imogen and myself.

"You and I, at all events, have no reason to stay."

We followed him down the stairs without a word. Imogen and I got our
coats from the cloak-room and went out. Even in that quiet street a tiny
crowd had gathered. For once the silent room had spoken but it was
silent again now. I had parked my car a few houses away. Crowther was
still in command. We drove away.




                             CHAPTER XVIII
                          IMOGEN ASKS QUESTIONS


AT the corner where Clifford Street runs into Bond Street Crowther
asked to be put down. I stopped the car but Imogen said:

"Please wait a moment, Michael."

It was a small car and we were all together on the one seat with Imogen
between Michael and myself. She turned her face towards him.

"Didn't you feel to-night that you had a place in the world?" she asked.

Michael was silent.

"In this world--here?"

Michael moved his legs uncomfortably.

"And rather a fine place if you chose."

"I think I'll get down," said Crowther.

But he did not open the door. Imogen was still looking at him. I was
remembering small, long-forgotten things--not his bumptiousness nor his
dishonesty--but how completely he was master of his ship amongst the
swirls and sand-banks of the Irrawaddy and with what neatness and
certainty he had edged her into the one tiny vacant space in the line of
steamers at Mandalay. Thus we sat without speaking for a few moments.
Then Imogen continued her questioning.

"How old are you, Crowther?"

"Forty-three," he answered.

"Not too old," said Imogen.

"To lose one's soul again? No. Not too old for that," he replied. His
hand moved towards the catch of the door, but Imogen had not done with
him.

"You were sure of yourself to-night, Crowther. One could tell it from
your voice. You had authority. You were the Centurion who says unto one,
Go, and he goeth and to another, Come, and he cometh."

Crowther's hand fell to his side again. It seemed to me that Imogen was
pressing him rather cruelly.

"You enjoyed your moment to-night, Crowther."

Crowther did not answer, but Imogen pressed him.

"I could hear that, too, in your voice. You enjoyed it."

"Yes, I did."

Crowther made the admission reluctantly, remorsefully.

"Well, then!" cried Imogen.

"The more blame to me," Crowther answered. "It was vanity."

"It was power."

And with his next words Crowther's calmness broke up like the face of a
pool in a sudden storm. His voice was low but vibrant with passion.

"No! I tried here. I failed here. I was more unhappy here than I
believed it possible that a man could be."

Imogen caught him up.

"You tried... you failed... you were unhappy...." She repeated,
weighing his words. Were there ever reasons so feeble? They sounded all
the more lamentable in that there was no contempt in Imogen's voice. A
note of surprise, perhaps, that the man who had dominated a room full of
hysterical and violent people should use such excuses, but no more than
that.

"Service means nothing, then," she said gently, and Crowther started as
though she had slapped his face.

"I have only one thing to do here and then I'm through. Through! Do you
hear that?" And in a gust of bitterness he added: "I hope I won't see
you again."

He snatched at the handle of the door and flung himself out of the car.
He banged the door to and stood for a moment on the kerb. The light of a
street-lamp showed us his face. It was white and his eyes were
smouldering with resentment. Then he turned on his heel and went back by
the way we had come--up Clifford Street towards Savile Row.

Imogen looked straight in front of her with her face set. She was hurt,
and deeply hurt. I felt a swift unreasonable stab of jealousy. Why
should Imogen be so concerned? Why should Crowther so disquiet us with
his lost sapphire?

"It might be the Kohinoor," I grumbled.

Imogen shook her head.

"It isn't a jewel at all. It's an idea," she answered.

It was at all events the symbol of an idea. But the idea had given us
nothing but trouble and to Imogen had brought actual danger. It
stretched over our heads as the shadow of Adam's Peak stretched over
Ratnapura. I drove on slowly, wishing that I had never set foot on the
gangway of the _Dagonet_ nor made the acquaintance of her Captain.

Suddenly Imogen laid her hand upon my arm.

"Do you mean that, Martin?" she asked.

"I never said a word," I answered.

"You didn't have to. I knew what you were wishing and I don't want you
to wish it. For I think we found our way to one another sooner than we
otherwise should have done because of Michael's sapphire."

I had no answer to that. The morning on Adam's Peak, the day at the
rest-house in the jungle, the meeting on the terrace of the Rock-Temple
at Dhambulla--they had made a whole world of difference to both of us.

"You're right, sweetheart," I said, and since at this time of night I
could drive across Mayfair with one hand, I slipped my left arm about
her waist. "We'll do what we can."

But I never looked upon Crowther with the same eyes afterwards, nor
thought of him with the same regard. A little while ago he had grown
into an aloof and romantic figure--the man who must recognise no ties,
be moved by no love, and owe no duty. But four words spoken by Imogen
had stripped the romance from him. "Service means nothing, then?" I
wanted to be fair. I knew that the monks taught and taught well, but
there was no obligation upon them to teach. Their monastery grounds were
school-rooms but they need not keep them open. Service was no part of
their creed. Service meant nothing and I could not remember anything
worth devoting a life to into which service did not enter.

And Crowther bristled with anger. For he had no answer.




                              CHAPTER XIX
                               JILL LESLIE


THE establishment of Jack Sanford was open for the last time on the
night when the man from Limoges had the bad flavour to demonstrate the
705 formula. I might go home as late as I would, I saw no light slip
past the edges of the curtains into Savile Row. All was dark in that
upper apartment. A board announced that a commodious flat was to let and
one day the big vans of an auctioneer carried all the furniture away to
a sales-room. Robin Calhoun had vanished. Michael Crowther and his
troubles passed for a little time out of my knowledge and might,
perhaps, have done so altogether but for one of Imogen's idiosyncrasies.

It was one of her pleasures to discover a new restaurant, and the
smaller the better. At once all her friends must try it. The cooking was
the best in London, the cellar stocked with unparalleled vintages. There
never had been a restaurant so choice, though there was certain to be
another one just a tiny bit better when in the course of a month or two
another discovery was made. Late in June of this year Imogen discovered
such a paragon of a place in that capital of little restaurants, Soho.
It was a long, low, frenchified room with cushioned benches against the
wall and scrubby menus written out in copying ink, and it was called Le
Buisson. Two little green trees in two little green tubs stood outside
the window upon the pavement. There was a patron and several
_spcialitis_ of the _maison_ which were quite marvellous; and, in
fact, it was quite indistinguishable from half a dozen similar
restaurants within a radius of a hundred yards. To Le Buisson I was
accordingly taken on the very last day of June. We dined there at eight
o'clock intending to go to a cinema afterwards, and as we took our seats
I noticed, a little way down the room, a young singer who was beginning
to make her mark in the world. Letty Ransome. She was of a quite
lustrous beauty with black hair and a pale, clear face romantic in
repose. She gave an entertainment single-handed with a piano to help
her.

"Won't she be late?" I asked of Imogen.

"No. She comes on late nowadays. I saw her at the Corinth a couple of
days ago," Imogen answered. "You see who's with her?"

I had not seen more than the back of her head, for she was talking
earnestly to Letty Ransome, but she turned her face towards us at that
moment.

"Why, it's the girl who was with De Craix at Jack Sanford's----" And
then I stopped with a gasp. "Do you see what she's wearing?"

"Yes," said Imogen without any surprise whatever.

The girl carried about her neck the platinum chain with the sapphire
pendant. "Yes, that's Jill Leslie." And as she spoke the names she
smiled at the girl and gave her a nod of recognition.

"How in the world did you learn that?" I asked. "She was never with
Robin Calhoun."

I remembered, indeed, that on the last evening she had come to the house
at the same time as ourselves, with a stranger.

"Yes, I know," Imogen agreed. "But she always had a word or two once or
twice with Robin Calhoun, a look or two more often. So I guessed even
before the night when Ricardo and his detective appeared. But that night
made me certain."

Jill Leslie, meanwhile, had opened her big eyes with surprise at
Imogen's recognition of her, had flushed up to the top of her forehead
and then returned a little bow and a smile of thanks. Taken feature by
feature she could not have answered to any canon of beauty, I suppose,
except for her eyes, which were big and clear and dark as pools in a
wood. Her hair was the most ordinary brown, her nose a trifle
tip-tilted, her mouth generously wide. But she had beautiful teeth and a
Madonna-like oval of a face. What gave her charm was the contrast
between this placid contour of a devotee and her humour and high
spirits. She was quick in the uptake and had enjoyment ready at her
fingers' ends. The right word, and the demure face was a tom-boy's--with
a sparkle of champagne. At this moment in the restaurant, it was
grateful and a little bewildered.

I asked Imogen what she would eat.

"Grapefruit, a trout _meunire_ and a cheese _souffl_," said she. "I
told you, Martin, darling, didn't I, that she was the one I was sorry
for?"

"You did, Imogen," I answered. "You have a catholic heart and the most
narrow-minded appetite I ever came across."

"You see all her rings are gone."

I looked again at Jill Leslie.

"Now I see. There was a rope of big pearls, too, wasn't there?"

As we ate our dinner I began to be curious. I asked:

"You guessed that this girl was Jill Leslie pretty quickly?"

"Well--I don't know about that," Imogen replied.

"Sooner than I did, anyway."

"Darling, you didn't guess it at all. I had to tell you. You hadn't the
slightest idea. Oh, I'm not disheartened about it. I've no doubt that
you were thinking of higher things--how many elephants can push how many
logs into the Irrawaddy, if there was Summer Time in Burma. No, I am
delighted that you shouldn't see what's under your nose. It gives me
great hopes for our married life."

"When you've done," I said, "I should like to ask you a question."

"My other name's Sibyl," said Imogen. "My spiritual home is Delphi."

"Very well. You want Michael to get back his sapphire and hang it up on
his pagoda?"

"I certainly do," Imogen answered firmly. "I had a foolish moment or two
when I tried to argue him out of his plan. But I was wrong. He has got a
belief and that's much too tremendous a thing for little people to
meddle with. I've got an idea that Michael without his belief would be
very like a Pekinese dog close shaved, nothing very much to look at
anyway. But with his belief he's the milk in the cocoanut. I shouldn't
wonder if that big voice of authority which brought us all to our senses
in the house in Savile Row was nothing more than--what shall I say?--a
by-product--I know that's a good word--of his belief."

I had not been prepared for this treatise on faith. I had to revise my
own views a little by the light of it. I had lightly put down that voice
of authority to a renascent habit of command, a readiness for an
emergency which the Captain of a ship must have. But, after all, the
swirls and shallows of the Irrawaddy did not make such very heavy
demands upon the quality of a Commander, whilst the manoeuvre of edging a
steamer into a vacant space against the bank at Mandalay must fall
within the routine of every voyage. No, I must look to something else
than the command of a river steamer for the power which had come out of
Michael Crowther in volume enough to stop a riot.

"Very well," I said. "Then here's my question."

"Yes, darling?"

Imogen spoke indulgently like a schoolmistress encouraging the first
signs of intelligence in a pupil.

"You didn't tell Michael which of the young women at Jack Sanford's was
Jill Leslie?"

"No, darling."

"But you want Michael to get back his sapphire?"

"Yes, dear."

"Then why didn't you tell him who had it?"

Imogen looked at the wall across the room. There was a short silence.
Then she said:

"Is not the peacock a beautiful bird?"

I expected that there would at all events be the picture of a peacock
painted on the opposite wall. But it was quite blank. Then I remembered
my own attempt at general conversation after dinner at Hatton.

"The Socratic method of enquiry seems unpopular," I reflected aloud.

"And unreasonable," said Imogen. "Women are often right but seldom
logical."

At the table further down the room a waiter was presenting a bill, and
Letty Ransome was redecorating her lips with the help of a little
hand-mirror. Imogen wrote a few lines on the menu, folded it, wrote a
name upon it and handed it to our waiter.

"I've asked Jill Leslie to have coffee with us. You don't mind, Martin,
do you? I'm curious about her--rather moved by her." Imogen laughed as
she added: "Besides, I'd like to find out for my own satisfaction why I
didn't tell Michael that she was the girl who had his sapphire."

The two girls walked down the room towards the door. As they reached our
table I stood up and made a place for Jill Leslie by the side of Imogen
on the bench against the wall. Letty Ransome said: "Good night! I must
hurry," and passed along and out. The waiter brought a chair for me
which he placed at the end of our little table. And Jill the next moment
was seated between us. I think that she had not meant to sit down. She
had intended to make an excuse and go away with Letty Ransome. But she
had been taken by surprise and she looked from one to the other of us
with a wild fear. She was between us, she had been captured, she half
rose and sat down again. She cried out in a sharp, low voice:

"It's no good. There's nothing more. The others stripped us to the
skin."

"We want nothing at all. Neither of us ever played at the big table," I
said. "Imogen would like you to have coffee with us. That's all."

"Why?" asked Jill Leslie. She was still looking from one to the other of
us, less afraid but more bewildered. She gave me the impression of an
animal caught in a trap.

"Why? Why?" she repeated, and for answer Imogen laid a hand upon her arm
and ordered the coffee. Jill Leslie set her elbows on the table and
buried her face in her hands.

"All those people there--most of them, anyway--they were horrible. They
threatened us. Prison! Oh!" and her shoulders worked. "And lots of them
had won.... It was only now and then that Robin... Oh, why be kind
to me?" She turned to Imogen. "I brought people there.... Yes, you
guessed it.... But they had it all back... and more, too. They had
everything."

"Your pearls, too?" said Imogen gently.

"Of course," answered Jill Leslie. "You see, there was Robin.... They
threatened him. Everything had to go."

"Except the sapphire," said Imogen, and Jill Leslie's hand darted up to
her throat to make sure that the chain was still about her neck.

"I meant to keep that if I could," she said in a low voice. "You don't
know. Oh!----"

Jill Leslie was labouring under an excitement which I did not
understand. Her hands fluttered, her eyes shone unnaturally bright. The
little restaurant was almost empty now, and Jill Leslie, moved by
Imogen's tenderness, poured out the strangest story to us, the strangers
of an hour ago.

"I was in a convent school in Kensington--it's only two years ago. I was
studying music. I can sing--I can really sing. I was eighteen. I used to
go out, of course, for my singing lessons. A girl at one of my classes
introduced Robin to me. It wasn't just the sort of thing a schoolgirl
dreams about. At once it wasn't. From the first I knew that this was my
man. He might be anything--all that the fine people in the room at
Savile Row called him--it didn't matter. I belonged to him if he wanted
me. And he did want me."

She had been talking under her breath with her hands pressed to her
forehead and her head bent. But she lifted it up now. There were tears
upon her cheeks, but the glimmer of a smile about her lips.

"We had no plans. I suppose we felt that the world would fall down on
its knees and make a path for us. I was allowed to go out at night every
now and then to concerts and the opera with my singing mistress. She was
a darling. One night, without telling her anything--I used a concert at
the Queen's Hall as an excuse and said that some friends had invited me.
I went with Robin to a musical play at the Hippodrome. It was divine to
me. I had all the colour and the bright dresses and the dancing and the
music in front of me, and Robin at my side. I was off the earth
altogether. There are times, an hour, a moment, when you live." She
looked again from one to the other of us, but no longer in fear. "I
expect both of you know--something like music itself--beyond words,
beyond even thought which you can understand. We went on to a supper
club afterwards, Robin all fine in a white tie and shiny shoes, and me
in a little schoolgirl's evening dress. The waiters knew him. My, but I
was proud! There were lovely grown-up women in gorgeous gowns and
jewels. I had to keep hold of Robin's arm, I was so sure one of them
would snatch him away from me. And my heart kept thumping away until I
thought I'd die. We danced. I was afraid to get up in my little white
silk frock amongst all those goddesses. But Robin said that they'd all
give me their jewels and gowns in exchange for my youth and freshness
and have much the better of the bargain. So we danced. Oh, dear!--the
moment we danced there was nothing anywhere but us two dancing. No
supper-room, no people, just a sort of lovely swooning music and we two
dancing to it in a mist. When we went back to our table... there was
a clock over the door exactly opposite to us--a big clock like a sun
with gold rays sticking out all round it. I looked at the clock. It was
two in the morning."

Jill Leslie stopped to take breath. She had been pouring out her story
in a seething jumble of words. She had to tell it to the first pair of
sympathetic ears she met with; and here was Imogen, her friendly soul
inviting confessions, her frank and lovely eyes promising at once
secrecy and understanding. I offered a cigarette to Jill and handed to
her a red lighter out of my pocket. The little flame lit up the girl's
face with its odd look of strain and wildness. Her hand so shook that
she could hardly hold her cigarette still and the flame wavered so that
I thought she would never light it at all.

"Could I have something to drink?" she asked.

There was still a glass of champagne left in our bottle. I poured it out
for her.

"Will that do?"

Jill Leslie nodded her thanks and drank the wine down, throwing up her
head as though her throat were parched.

"I was frightened out of my wits for a moment. I couldn't go back to the
convent. It was too late. If I had gone, I might not have got in. If I
had got in I should have been expelled the next morning," Jill resumed.
"But the next morning I was glad. It was up to Robin, you see. He took
me home with him. The flat in Savile Row was his then. He had lots of
money. I suppose he had made it in the same way. I didn't know. I didn't
care. I was with him. He sent out for clothes for me the next morning.
We went to Paris. He gave me my pearls there. In the autumn we started
off round the world. We went to the West Indies, Panama, the South Seas,
Tokio, Java--it was wonderful. We were two years on the journey. Imagine
it! No school, no nuns, colour and heat and light, and new amusing
things to see every day. And at Colombo he bought me this sapphire----"

She broke off at this point abruptly.

"You brought a man with you to Savile Row," she said.

"Michael Crowther," said I.

"I didn't like him."

"Why?"

"He was"--Jill searched for a word--"secret. He was thinking all the
time of one thing but you weren't to know what it was until he sprung it
on you."

I laughed.

"That's a pretty good description of Michael."

"I like people to be natural and friendly. I don't want them to crab
other people or be sarcastic or mysterious. I like them to fit in and
take their part with the rest. They needn't be clever so long as they're
bright. But that man! He was an iceberg."

"But, my dear," said Imogen, "you hardly spoke to him. He went away with
us."

"But he came back," said Jill.

I was startled.

"That night?"

"Yes."

"But he had lost nothing. One small stake, perhaps."

"He didn't come back for money," said Jill. "I didn't at that time know
why he had come back. He made an excuse downstairs that he had left his
hat and coat behind. Otherwise the door-keeper wouldn't have let him in
again. When he came upstairs I was standing by Robin. I couldn't leave
Robin to face all that riot of people with only poor Jack Sanford. Jack
was just like a suet pudding, wasn't he? So I stood by Robin and whilst
the others were demanding their money your friend asked me if I was Jill
Leslie, and when I said that I was, he thought that if I gave him our
address he might be able to help us. I was sure there was a snag
somewhere, but we were up against it, anyway. Jack Sanford owned the
flat. We two were living in Berkeley Street and I gave him the address.
Of course, we have moved since. We are down and out."

She turned to Imogen.

"Do you know what he wants?"

"Yes," said Imogen.

"What?"

"The sapphire."

Jill nodded her head.

"Funny, isn't it? He offered quite a price for it. But it'll be the last
thing I'll let go. I never took it to Jack Sanford's because I was
afraid that I might lose it. I have only got to take it in my hand and I
can go all round the world again. And I'm hoping now that I shan't have
to let it go at all."

"So things are better," I suggested.

"A little. I told you I could sing, didn't I? I've got a small part in a
new comic opera called _Dido_."

The newspapers had during the last week or two been discreetly peppered
with details of that stupendous production to be. We were all on edge
for it, or supposed to be. We certainly should be when the night of the
first performance came. We knew of the famous comedian who was to play
the pious neas, of the great producer already on his way from Berlin,
of the witty libretto which had actually arrived from Hammersmith, of
the dresses and scenery to be designed by the modish young artist from
Chelsea. We had heard of the music--we were to have melodies instead of
a rhythm with a saxophone--and how all Europe was being ransacked for a
singer who would graft on the wildness of lovely Dido the sparkle of an
exquisite gaiety.

"You're to be in _Dido_?" I cried. "We'll come on the first night and
cheer you."

"You won't notice me," said Jill. "I've a little bit of a part and just
enough of a salary, I think, to allow me to keep my sapphire."

She got up; and all at once the life had gone out of her. Her face had
lost its colour, her mouth drooped, her eyes were dull.

"I must go," she said. She held out a hand to each of us. "You have been
very kind. I thank you both very much. You have been sweet to me. But we
begin to rehearse to-morrow, and I must go home and rest."

She went off with a listless step and passed out by the door into the
tiny porch. Through the upper glass panel of the door we saw her open
her handbag. She spilled something upon her thumbnail and then raised it
to her nostrils.

"I was sure of it," said Imogen.

"Cocaine?"

Imogen nodded.

"Poor little girl!" said she.

Imogen was silent for a few moments afterwards. We were quite alone in
the little restaurant now and rather in the way. For a waiter in his
shirt-sleeves was removing the table-cloths and piling the tables one
upon the other with a quite unnecessary noise. Imogen, however, was
unaware of these resounding hints. She said:

"You'll understand now, Martin, why I didn't tell Crowther that she was
the girl who had the sapphire. I wanted to have a talk with her."

"And now that you have talked with her?" I asked.

"Yes, there we are," said Imogen.

And there, indeed, we were. On the one side Michael and his far-away
pagoda and the compulsion we were all under to help him in his quest. On
the other hand this little unhappy girl who had only to hold the
sapphire in her hand to live again in the warmth and joy of her tropical
adventure.

"What are we to do?" cried Imogen. "I believe that she's the sort of
girl who wouldn't sell but would give that sapphire back, once she knew
Michael's story. And then be heart-broken because she had done it." She
was troubled. "What are we to do, Martin?"

I looked at the wall opposite and said:

"Is not the peacock a beautiful bird?"




                               CHAPTER XX
                        THE FIRST NIGHT OF _DIDO_


JILL LESLIE had gone before it struck either Imogen or myself how much
of her story she had left out. Her life might have begun at her convent
school for all that she had told us. There had not been a word of a home
or of parents or of other friends that she had made for herself. After
she had gone off with her Robin, no enquiry seemed to have been made for
her, and certainly no search. It was not as though she had been
deliberately separating one phase of her youth for us, and keeping the
rest secret. She had been talking without control. We could speculate
about it as we chose, but I was persuaded that Jill knew no more than
what she had told us, that outside the school she had no home and was
acknowledged by no parents. And we never did know any more. Jill stood
in a solitary relief against the social web with its infinite threads.
She must make her own path and find her own counsellors. It was this
circumstance, dimly surmised at once by Imogen and only now understood
by me, which so keenly enlisted our sympathies and rather dulled our
enthusiasm in Michael Crowther's behalf. Jill was no doubt a wayward and
wicked little girl, but she was a good fighter, she was constant to her
lover through good fortune and through ill, and for whatever harm she
did, she paid.

Jill, then, went off to her rehearsals, Imogen and I to the settlement
of our affairs and Michael Crowther dropped once more out of sight. Our
marriage was to take place towards the end of July.

"You see, if we arrange that," said Imogen, "we might go to Munich,
mightn't we, for the first fortnight of August and the Wagner Festival
and then run down to Venice?"

"We might certainly do that," said I.

"Martin, why don't you suggest something?" she asked.

"Because, my darling, if anything goes wrong with our honeymoon, I want
to be able to blame you and not you me," I answered.

"I think I shall have to turn Pamela on to you," said Imogen
thoughtfully. "She knows the right words."

Pamela was to be a bridesmaid, so I was not alarmed. I had the whip hand
of the bridesmaids. One word of insolence--even the right word--and they
got a bouquet instead of a diamond buckle.

It was just a week before the wedding when Michael Crowther paid me a
visit. He was looking thoroughly discouraged. It was seven o'clock in
the evening. He would take nothing but a seat, and he dropped into that
as if he would never get up out of it again.

"You're tired," I said.

He nodded his head.

"Walking about." He bent forward with his hands clasped between his
knees. "I don't know what I am going to do."

"I can tell you one thing you can do," I replied briskly. "You can come
to my wedding."

Crowther shook his head.

"No, I can't do that."

His answer was immediate and decided.

"Oh, indeed! My mistake!" said I, and I suppose that my face and voice
both showed that I had taken offence. For he hastened to add:

"You're not misunderstanding me, Mr. Legatt. If I were to go to a
wedding it would surely be to yours. But, of course, it's out of the
question that I should go to any."

That, for a moment, puzzled me. Here were we in London with the sunlight
pouring into the room and the low roar of the streets floating through
the open windows. Here was Michael dressed in a dark lounge suit like
any other man of my acquaintance. It was difficult for one so full of
his affairs as I was to realise that half a world stood between us two
and our creeds. I sat down opposite to him.

"Wait a moment, Michael."

I transported myself to Burma. The priests of his creed were in no sense
ministers. Their concern was with their own souls and the smoothest path
to extinction. They neither sat by the beds of the sick nor shared in
their rejoicings. And of all festivals to be avoided a marriage was the
first. They looked forward to the cessation of life that is and not the
creation of life to be. Of course Michael would never come to my
wedding.

"Yes, I understand now. But I am sorry."

Ever since the night when Imogen had tempted him to renounce his purpose
I had had a suspicion that he might do so. He had so brusquely and
definitely fled from her questions and her company. I am sure that he
was shaken, that he had savoured his moment of authority with a thrill
of keen pleasure. But the weakness had passed. He was the man of the
yellow robe masquerading as a denizen of the world and seeing his corner
in his monastery at Pagan still barred away from him like a harbour
behind a reef.

"You tried to buy back your sapphire," I said.

"And I failed. To-day I am farther away from it than ever."

"How's that?" I asked.

He drew out of a pocket a folded evening paper. He unfolded it and
handed it to me.

"Read!"

The first item of the issue which leaped to my eye was a picture of Jill
Leslie. Side by side were the pleasant chubby features of the famous
manager who was responsible for the production of _Dido_. Across the top
of the two columns of letterpress which these pictures adorned was
printed in large capitals:

                            DIDO DISCOVERED.

                 AN INTERVIEW WITH MR. DAVID C. DONALD.

I read that the discovery had really been made some while ago. Miss Jill
Leslie off the stage had all the qualities which the leading part
required, a lovely voice, humour, liveliness, a note of passion and a
grace of movement. If she could reproduce these gifts behind the
footlights Mr. Donald would have earned the gratitude of the public by
presenting to it a new young _prima donna_.

                 *        *        *        *        *

"'But,' said Mr. Donald smiling, 'to quote a manager who has preceded
me, there was the rub. Would Miss Leslie come over the footlights? If
so, I had the ideal representative of Dido. In order not to alarm her by
too big a task and perhaps dishearten her in the end, I engaged her for
a small part. Then I asked her to oblige me, whilst I was negotiating
for a leading lady, to read Dido's part at our rehearsals and in return
I would give her the understudy.'"

Miss Leslie, it appeared, obliged with the greatest success, triumphed
over the nervousness natural to one in her position and gave Mr. Donald
confidence that he need look no further.

"'Yesterday evening, just before our first dress rehearsal,' Mr. Donald
continued, 'I told her that she was to play the part and, of course,
receive a salary commensurate with its importance. We open at Manchester
on Monday night, play the opera for a month in that town and come to
London early in September.'"

                 *        *        *        *        *

I folded the paper again and handed it back. Jill Leslie was to have her
chance and I was delighted, as Imogen would be when she heard the news.
I was anxious, indeed, that Michael should go away so that I could
telephone to Imogen. But on the other hand, if Jill made a success of
it, Michael was further from his sapphire than ever. I saw again Jill
Leslie clasping the jewel tight in the palm of her hand. It would only
be dire want which would induce her to sell it.

"Of course," I said--I did not think it, I did not want it; but with
Crowther's woebegone face in front of me I said what I could to comfort
him--"Donald may be wrong. Jill Leslie may fail----"

"But I don't want her to fail," cried Crowther, lifting up his face
towards me. "That would be an evil wish."

He was very energetic in his repulsion of the idea and very sincere. It
might mean a dozen more lives in a degraded form, for all he knew, were
he to let that meanness creep into his soul.

"I want her to succeed, of course," he exclaimed. "But what am I going
to do? I daren't fail again."

I did not like that phrase at all. Nor the look upon his face. He was
living over again the three years of loneliness and defeat, his
confidence and self-esteem draining from him like blood from his veins.
No, he daren't fail again--lest he should find himself face to face with
a way out which he must not follow. For he must take no life, not even
his own.

I thought for a little while what answer to make to that question. There
was an answer, but I felt more and more certain that it must not be
given now.

"I'll tell you what I think, Michael," I said. "You must wait. Jill
Leslie won't listen to you at the moment. She'll be taken up with her
part. She'll probably hate you for your persistency if you approach her
again. You are very likely to persuade her that she has got a talisman
in that sapphire and you are trying to take it away from her. You have
just got to lie low until she has made her appearance in London. I
reckon that Imogen will want to go on the opening night. So we shall be
back in town. We haven't got a house yet and we shall stay at some
hotel. But we'll let you know. After all, if you remain another two
months in England you'll miss the whole of the rains in Burma."

Michael Crowther took himself off and I rang down the curtain upon the
Quest of the Sapphire for an interval of two months. At least, I thought
I did. But that night there were still some words to be spoken which
were to throw an unexpected but a most illuminating light upon one of
the minor characters in our play.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Imogen and I dined in the grill-room of the Semiramis Hotel--a corner
where all the tides of London met. At one table you might see the
leaders of Finance bending their heads in unison like the Mandarins of a
nursery. At another would be a party dining on its way to a theatre. At
a third, men from the north who had backed a play, with managers, all
smiles, who meant that they should never see again one farthing of the
capital which--let us use the blessed word--they had invested. There
would be authors with a play in their pockets, and actresses and actors
on the top of the flood, and people who just enjoyed a good dinner and
the to-and-fro of famous persons and infamous persons, and the vivid
enjoyment of country folk up for a few nights in town. We had a table
near to the entrance with a pillar at our backs, and we had hardly taken
our seats before a voice which had a vague familiarity reached our ears.

"It's just one of Donald's stunts."

Certainly the words could not provoke my curiosity. Donald's stunts were
a normal element in the Londoner's life. If the lady had said: "Donald
can't think of a stunt," then the metropolis would have held its breath
until he did; and I should have looked up... as I did. But it was the
sharp indignation in this faintly familiar voice which made me do it. I
looked up and saw a pale, lovely, dark-haired girl standing by a table
near to ours. Of course... Letty Ransome. I had heard her performance
only yesterday. She was wrapped to the throat in sables and was speaking
to the table's occupants.

"It's absurd, of course," she went on. "Jill will never play the part in
London. You can take it from me."

Imogen had spoken of Letty Ransome as Jill Leslie's friend when we had
seen them dining together in Soho. Not much more than skin-deep, that
friendship! But however frail, it did not account for the rancour in
Letty's voice.

"You finished last night, didn't you, Letty?" asked the lady at the
table who was being addressed and in a voice which, perhaps, was a
trifle too sweet. So there were claws at the table, too.

"Yes. Just for the moment. I am working out a new sketch." But the new
sketch was not in her thoughts. "Yes, Jill opens in Manchester on
Monday. It's rough on her, really. What can she do, with her
inexperience, except something too tragic for words?" She suddenly swept
round. "Oh, darling," she cried enthusiastically, "I was afraid that you
had forgotten."

Jill Leslie had just entered the big room.

"I couldn't get away," said Jill, and she saw Imogen. Her face lightened
and as I stood up to greet her, I noticed with satisfaction the
discomfort which showed on Letty Ransome's face. She was probably not
aware of the malevolence which had made her face ugly, and of the
jealousy which had sharpened her voice till it rasped like an old saw.
But she could not but know that we had heard every word that she had
spoken.

Meanwhile Jill had moved forward to our table and was speaking to
Imogen.

"If I can do it!" she said in a whisper.

"You will," answered Imogen. "I'll send you a telegram on Monday. I am
really, really delighted. So is Martin."

"You're good friends," said Jill Leslie. "I shall love to think that you
are wishing me a little of your happiness."

She looked from one to the other of us and shook our hands.

"Letty, I've had nothing to eat all day," she said.

We heard Letty Ransome answer: "Poor darling, you must be starved!" and
as they moved away: "Miaow!" said Imogen.

                 *        *        *        *        *

A few days afterwards we were married. We went to Paris, Fontainebleau,
Munich, Venice. I am not to be blamed. Imogen must carry all the
reproaches. She was definite.

"Forests, tigers and panthers are for bachelors," she declared. "If they
are clawed it's their affair and serves them right. Adam's Peak is for
matrimonial possibles. But for honeymoons luxuries are required and
luxuries are conventional."

So we travelled on Blue Trains and occupied royal suites in Grand
Hotels, and bathed in tepid seas from fashionable beaches, and knew
ourselves to be incredibly blessed. But all the more we were visited
with twinges of remorse on account of the two troubled ones we left
behind--Michael Crowther obsessed by his idea, Jill Leslie with the
ordeal of her debut in front of her. We returned to London, indeed,
before our time in order to be present at the first performance of
_Dido_.

There are many who will remember that first night. It was a riot--a riot
of colour, of melodies, of dancing and broad comedy. From the opening
chorus which began, so far as I can remember, thus:

               Pious neas took his Daddy on his back--
                 Bless my soul what a lad!
               He groaned: "It's too bad
                 My infernal old Dad
                 He swears that he's Troy
                 But he's avoirdupoy
               And I'd dump him on the sand for a drach--
                   Ma! Ma! Ma!"

to the finale of the fireworks at the Carthaginian Crystal Palace, it
was a tumult and it ended in a tumult of an audience wild with
enthusiasm. As Imogen and I made our slow way from the auditorium to the
street, on all sides we heard:

"It'll run for a year."

"Sure thing."

"Wasn't that little girl good?"

And indeed from all the riot Jill Leslie had stood out daintily demure
and exquisite, a Queen Dido without majesty, an Offenbach Dido, a Dido
in high-heeled shoes. Whatever her faults she could sing, she appealed
and she came right over the footlights with something oddly virginal
about her which took her audience by storm.

"Did you see?" said Imogen as we sidled this way and that through the
crowd which had gathered about the doors. I had seen very distinctly.
All through the performance Jill Leslie had worn, shining darkly against
the satin of her breast, the blue tablet of the sapphire.

"She'll never sell it to him," said Imogen.

"Not after to-night," I agreed.

There rose in front of me a picture of Michael Crowther's tortured face.
I heard him saying: "I daren't fail again." Absurd? Yes. One particular
dark sapphire. Whether it hung round the hti of a pagoda in Burma, or
round the throat of a charming, vivacious little _prima donna_ of Comic
Opera in London--what in the world did it matter? But it did matter and
enormously. It mattered to Michael, for it was an expiation. It mattered
to Jill, for it was the token of her passion and the epitome of her
happiest days.

"I remember what you once said about it, Imogen," I observed.

"That Michael's only chance was to ask for it as a gift?"

"Yes."

"But I am a great deal less confident that Jill would give it to him
now," said Imogen thoughtfully. "You see, Martin, now it's an idea to
her, too."

I did see--and I was afraid. For if Michael did not repossess himself of
it, he was as likely as not to destroy himself. Yes, I faced that
contingency honestly for the first tune. There was no adequate reason,
to be sure. But is there ever an adequate reason? Adequate, that is, to
you and me who stand apart and look on. I had once asked Michael what he
did with himself during these months of waiting.

"I take long walks in the City late at night, when the City's empty and
the streets are as hollow as a cavern," he had answered.

I could see him tramping restlessly along those narrow corridors so
thronged by day, so silent by night that every footfall would
reverberate and deride; trying to tire brain and muscle; trying to numb
the dreadful temptation to draw a razor across his throat and have done
with it.

"Yes, Michael might kill himself," I reflected, but I reflected aloud
and Imogen turned to me with horror in her eyes.

"You don't mean that!"

"I do."

"Martin!" she whispered; and she stood in the side street whither we had
gone in search of our car, jostled by the passers-by and unaware that
she was jostled. That tragic possibility had not occurred to her till
this moment, but now that it did it frightened her almost as much as it
did me.

I say almost. For I was haunted by an odd sort of conjecture. Suppose
that each man's creed were true for him, if he really believed in it!
Suppose that belief actually created truth instead of coming out of it!
Suppose, for instance--we had found our car now--that just at this
junction where Whitehall and the Strand, the Mall and Northumberland
Avenue flung their traffic into Charing Cross, some huge machine bore
down on us and I believed, as I did believe, that we should still be
together--why, it would make very little difference. The finding of a
path in a new world. The work of adapting ourselves to new surroundings.
But if for Michael his creed were the truth, and he killed
himself--there would be ten thousand degraded lives to be lived through
as an expiation.

"We have got to stop that," I said with a shiver, and the next morning I
sent for Michael.

"You have got to tell your story and ask for that sapphire as a gift," I
said to him. "It's your only chance."

Michael Crowther looked at me gloomily. He was so worn with
sleeplessness and anxiety that his skin had something of that
transparent look which the dying wear.

"Imogen once told me that you might very likely succeed. She thought
Jill had just that generosity which would give when it wouldn't sell."

I did not tell him that since last night her confidence had diminished.
Michael's face lightened wonderfully.

"She thinks that?"

"She thought that, when she spoke to me," I said correcting him; and
hurried on to add: "But you must wait for the right moment. You can only
ask once."

Michael drew in a deep breath.

"Yes, I can only ask once. I understand that." He stood in a thoughtful
silence with his eyes upon the floor. "Yes, I'll choose my time. Will
you thank her from me?"




                              CHAPTER XXI
                                A SUMMARY


I NEED only summarise now the weeks which elapsed before a swift
succession of events brought the history of this sapphire to a
remarkable conclusion. After the resounding success of _Dido_, Robin
Calhoun slowly emerged from his hiding-place. At the first he was rather
like a turtle which pokes its head out from its shell, watching on this
side and that for an enemy. But he took courage in the end and sat sleek
and debonair by the side of Jill Leslie in public places. She was the
bread-winner now and in the more honest way. There was a small group of
people amongst whom Jill Leslie, Letty Ransome and Robin Calhoun were,
if not all the most prominent, the most frequent. Letty Ransome had made
a success with her new sketch, and seemed to have quite reconciled
herself to the idea that her friend might have a success, too. They made
their headquarters at the grill-room of the Semiramis Hotel, and more to
my amusement than my astonishment, I saw Michael Crowther enrolled in
their group. They were obviously not difficult. It was a society of gay
spirits and light hearts rather than of brilliant wits. If you were
noisy, that helped a little, but you might sit quiet if you chose. You
must do your share of the entertaining--no great matter, anyway--you
must not put on any airs and above all you must not be mordant at the
expense of your companions. They hated sarcasm like a British soldier.
Amongst them Crowther sat, kindly and gentle. He became something of a
pet.

I remember that one day in early October, when Imogen and I were taking
our luncheon in the grill-room, Jill Leslie drifted across the room to
us. Imogen asked her how Michael got along with them and her face
dimpled into smiles.

"He's a lonesome old dear, isn't he?" she said. "Whoever of us makes him
laugh counts one."

"And the play?" I asked.

"Fine," said she, and she went off to her matine.

Michael was very wisely taking his time. He had made friends and in that
sort of company, generous and accustomed to incomes with lengthy
intermezzos, friendship had the predominant claim. Michael was at that
moment paying the bill. He was sitting against the glass screen in the
inner part of the grill-room and he had as his guests Letty Ransome,
Robin Calhoun, Jill Leslie who had run off to the theatre and a young
author who this year had risen out of the waters.

"I wonder," I said as I looked at Michael.

"So do I," said Imogen. "I have been wondering some time."

"That settles it, then," said I, and I scribbled a line on the card
which had reserved our table and sent it across the restaurant. Michael
looked towards us and nodded, and when the little party had broken up he
came over and sat down with us.

"We are both a trifle worried," I said.

"Yes?"

"You've been in England some time now?"

"Five months."

"Longer than you expected?"

Michael saw now the drift of these questions. He smiled at us with a
sweetness of expression--I can find no other phrase, though I gladly
would--which wiped away as though with a sponge the customary gravity of
his face.

"Not longer than I was prepared for," he said.

"You are quite sure of that?" Imogen asked--I think that I should say
pleaded. "You see, we can help in that way."

Michael raised his eyebrows and wrinkled his forehead and said with a
whimsical air:

"If I stay in this country much longer--I shall fall into the gross
error of thanking you. That would be altogether wrong. You are acquiring
so much merit that you may be a king and a queen in your next life."

"Or we may even never marry at all," I cried enthusiastically.

"Or, if we did, we may by this time have got our divorce," cried Imogen
with an even greater fervour. "Any of these great blessings may be ours,
Michael. Therefore, if your bowl is empty, you need only hold it out
behind you."

"But it isn't empty, Imogen," said he.

"Thank you, Michael," said she very prettily.

It was the first time he had called her by her Christian name, and she
was very pleased.

"It is still just full enough," he continued, "to last me out and carry
me back to Pagan. For now I think that I shall not be long." He drew in
his breath with a gasp as he pictured to himself the moment when he must
put all to the test of a girl's generosity and whim. "One way or
another, I shall know very soon."

He spoke with so much certainty that I cried out to him:

"I believe that you have fixed a date."

"I have," he answered. "I could hope for no more likely moment for my
petition to succeed."

There was a confidence in his manner and a tiny note of boastfulness in
his speech. I must suppose that such trifles soothed my vanity, as
indicating that we poor humans lived on a plane not so noticeably lower
than Michael's. For indications that Michael was really one of us always
amused and delighted me. Imogen, however, was of the more practical
mind. She leaned across the table very earnestly.

"Take care, Michael! There's one amongst your new friends who won't let
you get away with that sapphire as a present, if she can help it."

"Letty Ransome," said Michael, pressing his thin lips together.

"Yes, Letty Ransome," Imogen agreed. "She's not quite the type to let a
sapphire as good as Jill's go out of the family without making a fight
for it. I don't fancy that you could persuade her that Jill was
acquiring merit by letting it hang round the top of a spire two hundred
feet from the ground."

"I have not mentioned the stone to her," Michael answered, "although she
has spoken of it to me."

"Oh, she has," Imogen said slowly. "She admires it?"

"Yes."

"Then more than ever I beg you to take care."

Nothing could exceed the earnestness with which Imogen spoke. We had
both learnt to love Michael Crowther, queer as it must appear to anyone
who remembers him when he strutted the deck of the _Dagonet_. But we
loved him with the kind of love which one gives to a child. We did not
expect his mind to work along the ordinary lines nor his heart to long
for the ordinary things. And since, to fulfil a penance which no one but
himself had imposed, he wanted this sapphire of Jill Leslie's, he must
have it as a child must have a toy. Otherwise there would be--yes,
there, as Mr. Donald's predecessor had said, was the rub. In the case of
a child there would be a crumpled face, clenched fists, a torrent of
tears and a wailing as of sea-gulls about an island of the Hebrides. In
the case of Michael we could not even conjecture. We could only fear. He
had said: "I dare not fail." We knew no more than that of what was
passing in his mind, but it was enough to light the way to some very
dark and terrible conjectures.

"I am glad that we don't know exactly when he is going to ask," said
Imogen as she watched him depart from the grill-room.

It was a cowardly thought. Then I was a coward, too. For I shared it
whole-heartedly. I had the apprehension which one feels for a dear
friend who must suffer the surgeon's knife. I was glad not to know the
moment when the patient would be stretched upon the table, or to linger
in the waiting-room until the result should be announced.




                              CHAPTER XXII
                         AT THE MASQUERADE BALL


BUT we were present when the moment struck. On the last day of the
month a ball for some charity was held in the Albert Hall. It was a
masquerade ball, and those who attended it were bidden to dress in the
Waterloo period or wear a domino. Imogen had a mind to return some of
the hospitality which had been showered upon us during our engagement.
So we hired a box and arranged for supper to be served in it. At three
in the morning she was leaning over the edge of the box watching the
throng below and she turned round and called to me:

"Martin! Come here!"

She was excited by some incident happening upon the floor. I went to her
and she caught me by the arm.

"Look! Look! Do you see?"

I saw many things and many people, and amongst the things, that people
dressed anyhow in the Waterloo period. I am all for liberty myself and
if a warrior likes to wear plates of armour in a day of cannon-balls, by
all means. Nor did I mind Henry the Eighth coming to life again and
multiplying himself six times, so long as none of him tried to snatch my
Imogen. I never saw such a medley of dresses. There were Greek goddesses
and Sultans with scimitars; Mandarins who should have been nodding upon
mantelpieces danced with girls from Alsace in satin clogs; Crusaders and
Tyrolese mixed amicably with Zulus and Cossacks.

"There! There!" cried Imogen, twitching my sleeve, and looking, I
perceived Letty Ransome dressed as a _vivandire_ dancing with Thomas 
Becket.

"It seems to me a very happy combination," I said.

"No, no, darling, I don't mean there. I mean there," cried Imogen, as
she nodded vigorously in exactly the same direction. I moved my eyes to
the right and then I moved them to the left, and at last I took in the
tiny point in that huge scene at which I was intended to look. I saw
Jill Leslie with a man in a yellow domino. They were not dancing, nor
was Jill talking. She was listening with a puckered forehead to
something impossible to understand. They were standing, and every now
and then they took a few steps towards us and stopped again. Once I
laughed and Imogen asked:

"What's amusing you, Martin?"

It would have taken days to explain. Jill was dressed in an impossibly
dainty frock, Marie Antoinette down to her knees--or rather Madame de
Lamotte--her pretty shoulders already bared for the branding, the
sapphire a great blot of blue fire upon her breast, and below the knees
her own slender and twinkling legs. And just at that moment she jumped
up and down on her toes with her feet together and with her hands
clasped, just as little Miss Diamond had done long since on the beach of
Tagaung, to this same man who was so eagerly talking to her. He was
wearing a yellow domino now. He had been wearing the uniform of a
Captain in the Flotilla Company then. But it was he. For he had looked
up and I had seen his face. Miss Diamond had been trying to detain him.
Miss Sapphire was trying to understand him.

"Crowther," I said. "Crowther at a masked ball at the Albert Hall!"

"He has chosen this time of all times--why?" Imogen asked.

It did seem unreasonable. Yet without a doubt he had Jill's attention.

"He has some queer reason at the back of his head," I answered, and,
remembering a word he had dropped here and there: "This was a date he
had planned."

They came to a halt just beneath our box. I leaned over, but there was
such a hubbub of voices that not one word of what Crowther was saying
rose as high as our ears. Something of real significance occurred,
however, for we saw Jill lift the blot of blue fire from her breast and
look at it, and from it to Michael. And then a fisherman or an
ice--anyway, a Neapolitan, ran forward to claim her for a dance. She
nodded her head and had actually started to dance. But she stopped, and
running to Michael laid a hand upon his arm. She spoke a few quick
words, waved her hand at him with a smile, and was off with her partner
across the floor. Imogen leaned over the edge of the balcony.

"Michael!"

In a momentary lull her voice reached to him, and he looked up.

"Come up, Michael," and she gave the number of our box. Neither of us
dared to put a question to him when he did come. Was that parting smile
of Jill's a consolation or a promise, or a vague encouragement to hope?
Michael for a time gave us no enlightenment. He sat, his chin propped
upon his hand, his eyes roaming over the fantastic scene, and every now
and again his breath catching in his throat as though he saw--what? The
white spire of his pagoda across that foam of dancers, or death stalking
amidst them with his scythe.

Imogen filled a glass of champagne and took it to him. He smiled and put
it aside.

Imogen thrust her small face forward--and I knew that Michael was going
to add an extra life or two to his tally, however earnestly he might
resist.

"Drink it!" said Imogen. She took the glass and put it into Michael's
hand.

"It's a sin," he answered.

"Commit it!" said Imogen.

"I disobey the Law," he pleaded.

"Well, I get fined for leaving my car about," said Imogen. "Drink!"

Michael looked at the glass winking invitingly in his hand, and looked
at Imogen, and his face broke up in a smile.

"Imogen, here's your very good health." And he drank the glass dry. A
little colour came into his face and the tension of his body relaxed.

"Now, Michael, we want your news," said Imogen, and she took a seat
beside him.

"There isn't any," Michael returned. "But there will be to-morrow. I
don't think Jill Leslie understood what I meant quite. I mean I don't
think she understood the reason why I made a petition so unusual."

"I'm sure she didn't," I interrupted. "I was watching you both from this
box."

"It was my fault," Michael continued. "When you have had for a long time
one idea in your head, you begin to think other people are familiar with
it. You leave out the necessary details. I expect that writing a book
must be always presenting that sort of difficulty."

"But Jill didn't turn you down?" Imogen asked anxiously.

"No!" Michael returned. "But she couldn't hear me out. There was too
much noise and too much whirl for her to give her attention. I can
understand that, can't you?"

"What I can't understand is why you ever chose a time and a place like
this," said Imogen.

"Perhaps I was wrong," Michael replied slowly. "But I thought, to-night
she will be at her happiest. She has her success, her love, all this
colour and light and gaiety, and she'll look a picture in her pretty
frock and know it and she is kind. With all that dark hard time just
behind her, within reach of her memory, she'll be in the most likely
mood."

"What's the result then?" asked Imogen.

"She said that I was to call upon her to-morrow afternoon at half-past
three and she would have no one there. I wonder whether----" And all his
fears came back upon him and he looked from one to the other of us, his
eyes as wistful as a dog's.

"Where does Jill live now?" Imogen asked.

"She has for the moment one of the small flats in the Semiramis Court."

"Very well," Imogen continued. "You shall lunch with us at half-past one
at the Semiramis Grill Room."

"Wait a moment," said I. "Let me look at my diary!"

"Darling," Imogen observed gently, "don't be absurd! Michael will lunch
with us at half-past one at the Semiramis Grill. Afterwards, at
half-past three o'clock, you might go up with Michael to Jill's flat,
and I'm quite sure that your tact will tell you at once whether you may
stay and help Michael or not."

Michael stood up with every expression of relief upon his face.

"That's what I wanted desperately. Thank you!"

He shook us warmly by the hand and went off. I looked grimly at Imogen.

"Coward!" I said.

"Well, you wanted to get out of it, too. You go about in forests and
shoot harmless little tigers. You're the strong man and very persuasive,
dearest, too."

Thus mingling sarcasm with flattery Imogen had her way. It was not quite
so unusual as you might think. We were to give Michael luncheon on the
morrow, and afterwards he would learn his news. Our work was done. We
went down on to the floor, danced, and Imogen disgraced herself. We were
waltzing and approached the steps of one of the gangways to the floor.
On the second of these steps a fat, red, pompous, bald man stood,
dressed elaborately as a Roman Emperor--golden greaves upon his legs, a
purple toga with the end flung across his shoulder and a wreath of
laurels upon his crown. He had come in state, for two lictors with the
paraphernalia of their office stood behind him. One could not imagine a
man more conscious of the perfection of his dress or of his fitness to
wear it. The Emperor surveyed the Albert Hall with a placid satisfaction
as though he had just built it with slave-labour brought from a
successful campaign upon the Danube. As we came close to him Imogen
stopped. She was dressed as Columbine and in white from the flower in
her hair to her feet. There were others in the hall pretending to be
Columbine--that was to be expected--but Imogen was Columbine.

"Just wait a minute," she said, and leaving my arm she ran up to the
Emperor with the most eager expression upon her face.

"You'll excuse me, sir," she said very clearly, "but can you tell me at
what hour you're to be thrown to the lions?"

The fat man who had begun to listen with a smile, turned away with a
snort of disgust. He was furious at the gibe. On the other hand it made
Imogen's evening for her. She gurgled with pleasure as we resumed our
broken waltz and her anxieties for the morrow were forgotten.




                             CHAPTER XXIII
                         LETTY RANSOME'S HANDBAG


THERE were, after all, four who took their luncheon the next day at
our table in the grill-room of the Semiramis. But we began as three,
assembling in our proper order of unpunctuality: Michael Crowther to the
minute, myself next, Imogen last. We sat for five minutes or so in the
lounge, I with a Bacardi cocktail, Imogen drinking it and Michael
looking on benevolently. Then, through the swing doors Letty Ransome
burst in. She was in a fluster but there was nothing discomposing in
that. A fluster was as much a complement of Letty Ransome as her skirt.
She could not move about in public without either. She swung into the
grill-room and out again, she jingled some bracelets at Michael and
poured out some ecstatic words to another group. Imogen whispered
quickly:

"Ask her to have a cocktail, Michael!" and since he hesitated, she added
an imperious: "Be quick or I'll make you drink one yourself."

Michael rose and, blushing--he who had once been Michael D., the Captain
of the _Dagonet_!--said timidly: "Letty, will you join us?"

Letty was at the age which thrives on long nights in dusty rooms. She
was radiant of face, and for the rest of her, shiny as lacquer from her
smooth hair to the points of her shoes. She was introduced to Imogen and
myself and was kind to us; and I ordered a large clover-club for her.

"I saw you both at the ball. Wasn't it wonderful?" she cried. "I never
enjoyed myself so much. Have you seen Jill?"

"No," said I.

"I thought that Jill and I might lunch together," said Letty.

"I don't think that she's coming down for luncheon," Imogen observed.

"Oh?" Letty was a trifle put out. She looked about the small lounge, and
Imogen said:

"Won't you lunch with us? We're going in now."

"I'd love to," said Letty. "But I must run up to Jill's flat." A shadow
of annoyance flitted across Imogen's face. It was just to avoid such a
contingency that Imogen had asked her to lunch with us. Once let Letty
Ransome offer her advice about the destination of the sapphire and
Michael Crowther went out at a hundred to one. Ideas, the vitamins of
the soul, meant nothing to her practical mind. Imogen might call a
sapphire an idea, if she were crazy enough to think it one. Letty knew
it for a colourful piece of corundum with a definite market value.

"You see," Letty explained, "a party of us drove back to Jill's flat at
seven o'clock this morning. Jill had a bath and went to bed and then we
all had breakfast in her bedroom. I left my handbag there when we went
home. I won't be a second."

She sprang up and ran out into the hall; and she was away a longer time
than we expected. We all watched the hands of the electric clock jump as
a minute elapsed, then wait ever so long, then jump again.

"Oh, I do hope----" said Imogen and stopped there lest Michael should be
distressed by her fears. But, oddly enough, Michael was the least
troubled of the three of us. He had ascended to some plane of faith
whither neither of us could follow him.

"If I were to describe Letty Ransome and Jill Leslie," he said with a
smile, "I should quote Monsieur Chaunard's difference between himself
and his memory."

He made us laugh, anyway, and got us over one of the clock's jumps.

It was a quarter to two when Letty Ransome left us and ten times the
minute hand made its tiny leap before Letty reappeared and when she did
we were all a little shocked at the change in her. She was breathing as
though her lungs were choked, she was distracted with the effort to
breathe. Her colour was patchy; where the rouge did not flare, her skin
was the hue of tallow and the scarlet of her lips was not an ornament
but a parody. She dropped into her chair.

"I was a fool," she said with a gasp. "The lift was up at the top of the
building. I didn't want to keep you. I ran up the stairs. It's only the
third floor but I've been warned against stairs." She smiled
appealingly. Her beauty had all gone, so it was, perhaps, the more
natural that she should pray:

"Will you give me a moment?"

"Take your time, of course," said I. "We're in no hurry. Michael has an
appointment at half-past three----Oh!" My grunt was due to a lusty kick
on the ankle delivered by the small but capable foot of my wife.

"This is the bag?" she asked. "It's pretty."

It was lying on the small table between them. Imogen was not at all
interested in the bag nor did she think it especially pretty. But she
had to keep her blundering husband quiet if she could. She reached out
her hand and took the bag up just a second before Letty Ransome reached
out hers; though Letty's movement was a swift dart made in a spasm of
fear. She drew back her hand at once when the movement had failed, but
the fear remained in her eyes. "It's just an ordinary bag," she said
with a little catch in her voice. But it was not quite an ordinary bag.
It was a charming affair of old tapestry, and a medallion of blue enamel
was let into the centre of it on each side. Imogen turned it over,
admired it, and put it back on the table again.

"Shall we go in now?" she asked, and she led the way into the
grill-room. She turned round at the door and looked at Letty. "Ah!" she
remarked. "You haven't forgotten it this time. I was afraid that you had
left it on the table."

She nodded towards the bag which Letty was now carrying clasped tightly
in her hand.

"Not twice in twenty-four hours," Letty returned with a laugh. "I am too
helpless for words without it."

I asked them in turn what they would like for luncheon.

"Something simple," said Imogen.

"Me, too, please," said Letty.

"Quite so," said I, and knowing the sort of simple food which would
appeal to Letty, I ordered blinis, Homard  l'Americaine, cold grouse
with a salad and an apple flan. Letty had by now quite recovered her
spirits and she rattled away about the ball and how much she had enjoyed
it. I could not bring myself to believe that in reality she ever enjoyed
anything. Spite was so large an element in all her thoughts. Every
comment must carry its little stab, planted viciously with however
little dexterity. We were told that Carrie Baines looked lovely, and if
she had only dared to smile she would not have given everyone the
impression that her loveliness was a mask of enamel. As for dear old
Lord Pollant, wasn't he a marvel? When he danced his _rtelier_ so
chattered that the castanets in the orchestra weren't wanted at all,
were they? And having had my fill of this talk, I broke in rather
abruptly:

"Did you find Jill awake when you went up?"

Letty Ransome was in the middle of saying: "Minnie Cartwright--they tell
me she used to be lovely," and she repeated with a stammer: "--used to
be lovely--" and then the clatter of her voice died away altogether and
once more her face was as patchy as a Spanish shawl.

Something had happened then up the stairs in Jill's flat whilst the
minute hand of the clock jumped ten times. All that agitation under
which Letty had laboured when she re-entered the lounge was not due to
hurry nor to any malady of the heart. For here it was, renewed.
Something terrible had happened. Silence for a little while held us all.
We tried not to look at Letty's terror-stricken face. Then I repeated my
question.

"Was Jill awake?"

"I don't know," Letty Ransome answered sullenly. "I had left my bag in
the sitting-room on a chair by the door. I snatched it up and ran down
again."

But she had been ten minutes away. Three would have sufficed for all
that she had done; even if she had not hurried. Letty was lying.

"Had the maid who let you in called her?"

"Nobody let me in," Letty replied. "The outer door was on the latch.
Jill told the maid to leave it like that and asked us to see to it, when
we left her this morning. The waiters don't have keys. Jill said that
she might need something and didn't want to get out of bed to unfasten
the door. I fixed the bolt back myself."

Letty was on surer ground here. She spoke with a growing confidence. It
was eight o'clock, or near to it, before Jill's friends had left her.
She was very likely, at that hour of the morning when the servants would
be about the corridors, to leave her door so that she should not be
disturbed to open it if she wanted anything. Letty was speaking the
truth now. We were all certain of it--and all the more certain,
therefore, that we had been right in believing that she had lied before.
Suddenly Letty began to babble in a low, quick voice:

"I want you to do something for me. I shall have to go in a minute. I
have a matine this morning--and I think something of importance is
coming along. Someone is coming to see my show and I want a little time
alone before I appear. If it comes off it's going to make a great
difference to me. And I want to keep myself up, if you understand." She
was fairly babbling now. "If people hear that you're running about all
night and get home at eight in the morning, you lose it again. You lose
their respect. They won't take you seriously. That's what I mean. They
won't believe you're a serious actress."

She was asking us to believe her now. I had no idea of what was coming
but she was speaking or rather pleading very earnestly. It was clear
that something was at stake for her--something important; just as it was
clear that something terrible had happened during her ten minutes'
absence from the lounge.

"What do you want us to do?" I asked.

"I want you not to mention to anyone that I left my bag up in Jill's
flat this morning," she said.

The prayer sounded rather an anticlimax to the careful preparation for
it. None of us was likely to go about advertising that the brilliant
young actress, Letty Ransome, had left her handbag behind her in a
girl-friend's flat at eight o'clock in the morning after a ball. Nor
could I see that it would have done her all the damage she feared if we
had. I told her that she was exaggerating but she would not have it.

"No," she argued. "The suburbs for one thing and the managements for
another, would say at once: 'Oh, she's just like the rest. Anything for
a good time.' I should lose caste. It would do me actual harm if it was
known that I had left my bag behind me in Jill's flat at eight o'clock
this morning."

I disbelieved every word she was saying. She had not been at all
disturbed by any such fears as those which she was now expressing when
she had announced in the lounge her intention of running up to Jill's
flat. It was only since she had come down from it that we had been
showered under with these excuses. It seemed to me better to be clear
about it all.

"What you want is that we shouldn't say you had run up for it at a
quarter to two this afternoon," I suggested.

Letty Ransome got suddenly very red. She shrugged her shoulders
impatiently and turned a pair of dark eyes on me which were hard as
steel and as angry as a wild-cat's.

"Of course," she said pettishly. "It's the same thing. If I hadn't left
my bag upstairs this morning I couldn't have run up to fetch it this
afternoon, could I? I should have thought anyone might have seen that."

She got up as she spoke. She was holding her bag in her hand. She
composed her face to a semblance of civility as she turned to me.

"I thank you for my very good lunch," she said.

"But you have had no coffee," said I.

"I can't wait. I daren't."

She was now in a hurry to be off.

"Good-bye!" And as she moved she turned again towards us.

"You'll remember what I asked--won't you? It's nothing, of course, but
still--you'll remember."

Fear and an effort to make light of her fear--a not very successful
effort--then she was gone. The waiter brought coffee for the three of us
who were left and we sat wondering what we should do. I was uneasy and
inclined to go up at once to Jill Leslie's flat. On the other hand,
Michael's appointment was for half-past three and it was only a quarter
past now. If he went up before his time he might very well seem a trifle
too importunate and receive in consequence a blank "No" to his petition.
On the other hand--there was Letty Ransome's face as she came back into
the lounge and again as she appeared towards the end of our luncheon. I
think we were all of us in a quandary. Meanwhile the minutes passed. I
called the waiter and ordered the bill and paid it--and meanwhile the
minutes passed. I turned to Imogen.

"We might go up now," I suggested. "Michael and I?"

Imogen looked at the clock on the wall. There were still eight minutes
to the half-hour.

"Yes," she said, "but wait outside the door until the exact time."

Neither Michael nor I had thought of that most excellent device.
Michael, indeed, was thinking of nothing but his petition. All through
luncheon he had been framing sentences and selecting words. I had seen
his lips moving at other moments than when he was eating and drinking.

"Very well."

I got up and touched Michael on the shoulder.

"Let us go!"

We went through the lounge into the hall. I said to the porter:

"Mrs. Legatt's car, please."

He ordered a chasseur to fetch it and Imogen bade us go upon our errand.

"But I'd like to see you afterwards," she added. "I shall expect you,
Michael. You'll bring him along, Martin."

"Right!" said I.

Michael and I turned to the lift in the corner.

"The third floor, please," said I.

The liftman looked sharply at each of us in turn. But he said nothing.
He ran us up to the third floor and we walked along the corridor.

At the door of Jill's flat stood a policeman.




                              CHAPTER XXIV
                            THE FOURTH THEFT


THE policeman barred the way.

"I am sorry, gentlemen."

We were utterly taken aback. Of all the possibilities which had crept in
and out of my mind during the last hour and three-quarters, that we
should be stopped by a policeman was certainly not one.

"We have an appointment with Miss Leslie," I said.

The policeman looked at us for a moment or two without speaking. He was
slow rather than suspicious and it was impossible to infer from his
expression whether the reason for his presence at the door was trifling
or serious.

"Will you give me your names?"

We gave them and he continued:

"If I take them in I must rely upon you to see that no one enters while
I am away."

"We promise," I said.

"Thank you."

Beyond the door a narrow passage stretched to another door. An electric
light burned in the passage. The policeman passed in and closed the
outer door upon us. He was away for five minutes at the least. Then he
opened the door again, admitted us, and himself went out, once more to
stand on guard. In the sitting-room a man in a black frock-coat with a
white edge to the opening of his waistcoat was looking out of the
window. He turned as we entered and bowed to us.

"I am the manager of the hotel," he said. But the explanation was hardly
necessary. His dress declared him.

"Mr. Walmer," said I.

"Yes."

He was a young man, distressed but not flurried.

"This is a dreadful business," he said quietly. "If you wouldn't mind
waiting for a minute, the inspector would like to speak to you."

"Inspector?" I cried in dismay.

"Yes."

It was clear that he meant to answer no questions. So I put none. I
looked at Michael. He, too, was completely at a loss. But I think that
he was harassed by a doubt whether after all he would be able to make
his carefully rehearsed petition. We remained thus in the greatest
uneasiness for the space of five minutes, and then the inner door, which
I presumed gave on to the bedroom, was opened just wide enough to allow
a complete stranger to pass through. He was a thick-set, middle-aged man
with a rugged face, dressed in a double-breasted blue suit, and he spoke
with a note of culture in his voice which I had hardly expected from his
appearance.

"Mr. Legatt?" he asked looking from Michael to me.

"Yes," said I.

"Mr. Crowther?"

"Yes," said Crowther.

"I am Inspector Carruthers."

We bowed and waited.

"I understand that you gentlemen had an appointment here with Miss
Leslie."

"At half-past three," said I.

"Will you tell me when the appointment was made?"

"Last night at the Albert Hall."

"Can you give me any idea of the nature of the appointment?"

"It was of a private nature."

The inspector nodded his head as if he found that statement quite
sufficient.

"I am afraid that the appointment cannot be kept," he said gravely.

Michael made a startled movement.

"But it was of the greatest importance," he protested.

"Death cancels even appointments of the greatest importance," said the
inspector.

"Death!"

It was Michael who repeated the word. I must do him the credit of
stating that though his cry had the very note of despair, the selfish
fear that he had thereby lost his sapphire had nothing to do with
inspiring it. It was too deep and true. And just because it was deep and
true it astonished me. For I seemed to hear the very abnegation of his
creed. Here was the man who, by the annulment of his own life, had
proclaimed louder than words could do that existence was misery and
death release, now bewailing death as the immitigable ill. But I was
wrong. I looked more closely into that tortuous mind. Grief at the
elimination of a life young and bright and generous accounted for not
the smallest element in his distress. But that she should not have done
the good deed of repairing a great sacrilege before she died--that,
indeed, was matter for tears. By your good deeds you cease to live.

For my part, I was thinking of Jill as we had seen her last night, a gay
and sparkling little figure. Then another picture rose in front of me,
one rather sinister and not to be obliterated--the picture of Letty
Ransome's haggard face when she had joined us in the lounge below after
running up to these rooms.

"When did Jill die?" I asked.

"Half an hour ago, perhaps. Not more," the inspector answered. "Miss
Leslie gave orders that she should be called at half-past two. The maid
found the door ajar at that hour and went into the bedroom. She was
alarmed, and telephoned to the manager here, Mr. Walmer. Miss Leslie was
still alive when the doctor arrived. You would not wish to make any
statement about the nature of your appointment?" Inspector Carruthers
repeated his question almost casually.

"I don't think so," I answered.

"No, I suppose not," Carruthers agreed.

"Of what did Jill Leslie die?" I asked.

"The doctors will tell us. There is a police-surgeon in with the hotel
doctor. Meanwhile, do you know who are her relations?"

"No," I said.

"She will have friends who might know, I suppose."

"I rather doubt it," I replied. "Her nearest friend is Mr. Robin
Calhoun."

The inspector held a pencil poised above a little note-book for an
appreciable time. Then he wrote the name down.

"Thank you! I think we know that name, don't we?"

"I shouldn't wonder," said I.

"His address?"

I looked towards Michael, for I had not an idea where Robin Calhoun
lodged now that Savile Row knew him no more. Crowther, however, knew and
he gave the number of a house in a street of Bloomsbury.

"A friend of his?" Carruthers asked.

"An acquaintance," answered Michael.

Carruthers turned to the manager.

"Perhaps, Mr. Walmer, you would telephone and see if you can get hold of
him."

"I'll see to it at once," and Mr. Walmer went out into the corridor.
Inspector Carruthers took his place at the window and drummed with his
knuckles on the window-pane. "Curious that the maid found the front door
open, isn't it?" he asked of the world in general. "Curious, and one
would have thought a little dangerous, eh? A big hotel. All sorts of
people staying in it. Asking for trouble, what?"

I made a tiny movement with my hand to check any impulse to reply which
Michael might be feeling. For if ever I had seen the net spread in the
sight of the bird, it was now. Let one of us answer: "The door was left
open at eight this morning by Jill's own wish," and round the inspector
would swing. "Yes, I know that, because I asked the maid who attended to
Jill Leslie when she got back to the Semiramis at seven o'clock this
morning. But how did you know?" and out must come the story of Letty
Ransome's handbag and all the complications which that might involve. I
was not prepared to tell that story yet. I was not sure that it would
ever be necessary to tell it. I wanted to know a little more as to how
poor Jill Leslie died, before it was told; so I made my little signal to
Michael Crowther to walk delicately.

The indolent inspector at the window noticed it, however. He strolled
across the room and planted himself in front of Michael, legs apart and
hands behind his back.

"Could you explain that to me?" the quiet, cultured voice pleaded. "It
would be so helpful if you could. A girl in a big hotel or
apartment-house going to bed and leaving her front door open all
night--yes, all night, mark you, Mr. Crowther. Odd, eh? Yes, and risky?"

He lifted himself on to his toes and let himself down again. His eyes
rested upon Michael's face hopefully. He was asking for help from a
friend. Every moment I expected Michael to answer eagerly and helpfully:
"Yes, but Inspector, the door wasn't open all night. Jill Leslie didn't
get back until seven, when the servants were about." But Michael was not
such an innocent as I was assuming him to be. Imogen and I had fallen
into the habit of construing Michael as a child. But we were wrong. He
had moments, such as this one, when he was once more the Captain of the
_Dagonet_. He looked quite stolidly at Inspector Carruthers.

"Young people, Inspector! They don't take the precautions which we
elders do. They don't expect danger."

"No, I suppose not," Inspector Carruthers agreed.

If he was disappointed he betrayed not a sign of it.

"We shall be clearer about the position when the doctors have finished,"
he added.

The doctors nearly had finished. We heard the water running into the
wash-basin in the bathroom a minute or two afterwards, and after a
minute or two more they came into the room--the hotel doctor, a small
dapper fellow, the police-surgeon, a tall loose-limbed man with a grey
moustache and a powerful, clean-cut face.

"Dr. Williams," Carruthers introduced to us the hotel doctor, "and our
surgeon, Mr. Notch."

I was very interested to see Mr. Notch. He was one of my heroes, a
pioneer in the early days of Alpine exploration, to whom one of the
great Aiguilles of the Mont Blanc range had fallen on his nineteenth
attempt.

"We shall have to make a post-mortem," said Mr. Notch. "But we have very
little doubt as to the cause of death."

"Very little," Dr. Williams agreed.

"Yes?" said Carruthers.

"It seems to be a clear case of cocaine poisoning," said Mr. Notch.

Carruthers nodded his head.

"In that case the question of the open door ceases to be of importance,
doesn't it?" he remarked, his eyes sliding carelessly from my face to
Michael's. Did he look for a sign of relief? He certainly did not get
it.

"There will have to be an inquest, of course," Mr. Notch continued. "And
it may as well be held as soon as possible, if you agree, Inspector."

"Certainly."

"The day after to-morrow, then. I'll arrange with the Coroner and send
for an ambulance at once. If you don't want me any more I'll go down and
tell the manager now."

He was already at the door. As he opened it I repeated a question which
I had already put to Inspector Carruthers.

"At what hour did Jill Leslie die, Mr. Notch?"

"She was dead before I arrived," and he looked at Dr. Williams.

"About a quarter past three," Dr. Williams declared.

"And up to what hour could she have been saved?"

The surgeon and the doctor both shook their heads.

"That's too difficult for us," Mr. Notch replied. "There are no fixed
rules, you know. It depends on a number of things. I have known some who
were certainly dying three or four hours before they died. Some, on the
other hand, have been brought back to life certainly within an hour and
a half of the moment when they would have died if they had not been
attended to." He stood for a moment or two. "Poor little girl! What a
waste, eh? I saw her the other night in her comic opera. She was so
pretty in it, so engaging!"

He nodded to the inspector and went out into the passage. I was
disappointed. It was ridiculous to be disappointed, especially at this
moment. But the ridiculous, unsuitable idea always does seem to occur at
moments made for tears. I certainly did not expect Mr. Notch to open a
window and climb down a rain-pipe. None the less, for him, a hero of the
high Alps, just to go out by the door like all the rest of us
earth-clinging people, seemed to me an insufficient exit. I was roused
from this foolish reflection by Inspector Carruthers.

"I wish you would tell me why you asked that last question--up to what
hour could she have been saved?" he said.

I replied:

"I was uneasy, you see. I was wondering whether Jill could have been
saved if we had come up to this flat before our time. We had an
appointment at half-past three. We have been kicking our heels
downstairs with nothing to do. We were just marking time until half-past
three."

Certainly that possibility had crept uncomfortably into my mind. But it
was the recollection of Letty Ransome with her face as patchy as a
Spanish shawl which had prompted my question. Letty Ransome had been in
this room at ten minutes to two--an hour and a half before Jill Leslie
died. She had just snatched up her bag, she had said, from a chair by
the door... only the knowledge that the indolent inspector seemed
indolently to remark every ripple of my muscles stopped me from an
obvious jerk. For there was no chair by the door. More, there could have
been no chair by the door. The room was rectangular, and the door at the
end of a wall within the angle. Open it and at your right elbow a side
wall ran straight forward to the windows. There was no place for a chair
there. It would have blocked the entrance had it stood there. Behind the
door on the other side stood a long sideboard which occupied the whole
space of the wall. Letty had lied. She had not picked up her bag from a
chair by the door. From the table in the centre of the room, then? If
she had, wouldn't she have been contented just to say that and no more?
Why embroider and falsify so natural and likely an action? I began to
suspect that the bag had not been left behind in this room at all, but
in the bedroom where Jill now lay dead and had then lain dying.

"You gentlemen did not breakfast here with Miss Leslie, I suppose," said
Carruthers.

So he knew about the breakfast-party! Then he knew, too, that Jill had
not left her outer door open during the night. He had undoubtedly been
setting a trap for us.

"No," I answered.

"Several people did, and I want their names. For they will have to give
evidence at the inquest."

"Mr. Calhoun is the most likely person to be able to give them to you,"
I said.

"But you both saw this young lady at the ball?" the inspector continued.

"Yes."

"Well, then--I don't like to ask it--but there is something which
troubles me in spite of the doctors, who seem very confident."
Carruthers opened the door of the bedroom and looked in. Then he came
back to us.

"Yes. I must trouble you, I am afraid. I want you to remember what Miss
Leslie wore at the Albert Hall and to tell me anything which you
notice."

He led the way into Jill Leslie's bedroom. The doctors had drawn a sheet
up over her head. For the rest the room was in disorder. Jill's gay
frock and underclothes were thrown on to a couch, her stockings were
tossed on to a chest of drawers, her shoes lay on their sides and apart
as she had kicked them off, and about her bed chairs had been thrust
aside as though the doctors had found them drawn up for the
breakfast-party and had pushed them away. I looked at the
dressing-table. There were pots of cream, a great crystal powder-bowl
with a big puff on the top of the powder, bottles of scent, combs and
hairbrushes all in disarray; and one open, empty, jewel-case. But what
I, and no doubt Michael, looked for upon that dressing-table was not
there. Inspector Carruthers made no suggestions and pointed to nothing.
He left us to survey the room for ourselves, and when we had finished he
took us back into the sitting-room.

"I wonder," he said, "whether you gentlemen noticed what I noticed."

"There were no ornaments," said I.

"Exactly. Not one piece of jewellery however small or inexpensive. It
doesn't seem to me reasonable."

"But there is a reason," I explained. "Jill Leslie had a good deal of
jewellery a few months ago. But Calhoun got into difficulties and she
sold it."

"Did she indeed? Calhoun was her lover?"

"Yes."

"I remember something of Mr. Calhoun's difficulties. We heard of them
officially. You relieve my mind, Mr. Legatt, when you tell me that she
sold everything to get him out of his scrape."

The inspector laid just enough emphasis upon the "everything" to make
sure that I could not disregard it. The question I had been anxious to
avoid ever since I had looked about the bedroom was actually put to me
and I had to answer.

"I didn't say everything, Inspector."

The inspector smiled.

"No, I did."

"She kept one thing back."

"Only one?"

"So far as I know, only one," I replied.

"There was only one jewel-case on the dressing-table," Carruthers
agreed. "What was it she kept back?"

"A large square sapphire on a platinum chain."

"Did Miss Leslie wear it last night?"

"Yes."

Carruthers turned to Michael Crowther.

"Did you, too, notice it?"

"Yes," said Crowther.

"And it has gone now," said Carruthers.

There certainly had not been a sign of that blue stone on Jill's
dressing-table.

"I don't like that," said Inspector Carruthers. "Not one little bit."

"Jill may have lost it," I suggested. "At the ball, or on the way home."

"Do you think she did?" the inspector asked.

I wished that he would not ask me questions like that. I expected him to
say: "Yes, that is a possibility," or "As an advertisement, isn't that
played out?"--something, at all events, which would lead us away on to
the safe ground of general conversation. But he would not thus indulge
me. We were not to ride off on the method of: "Is not the peacock a
beautiful bird?" No--he must put the most inconvenient and direct
question, and wait dumb until he got his answer.

"No," I answered. "I do not think she did. I heard her once speaking of
it. I saw her as she spoke of it. I am certain that if she had lost it
she wouldn't have gone to bed until she found it."

"It was a valuable stone?" he asked.

Now, since my marriage I had learned a good deal more about the value of
jewels than I had known previously. It was natural, therefore, that I
should put on a few airs. One's prestige as a man can be more or less
measured by one's knowledge of the value of things which women love. So
I preened myself and answered:

"In the order of stones the sapphire stands below the pearl and the
emerald and the diamond. It is nearest to the ruby. But if it is big
enough and flawless, it can compete with any of them. Now, this
particular sapphire was very big and quite flawless."

"And of a beautiful colour, I suppose," said Carruthers.

I smiled importantly.

"It was. But I must point out to you, Mr. Carruthers, what you with your
experience must, indeed, already know, that the synthetic sapphire worth
a shilling a carat may have a lovelier depth of colour than the genuine
stone."

"Oh!" said the inspector. I hoped that he was going at once to take out
his pocket-book and make a note of that valuable fact. But he did not.
He lifted himself once or twice upon his toes.

"It was valuable, then," he said, "and Miss Leslie wore it last night,
and Miss Leslie is dead this afternoon, and the valuable thing has
disappeared."

"And from that you infer----" I said.

"That we mustn't infer," he replied. Then he flung out his hands and
slapped them against his thighs. "Only we must hope that the doctors'
post-mortem confirms their first examination, and that we have only to
deal with a case of theft."

I was in one respect like Carruthers. I could say: "I don't like that.
Not one little bit." For if the sapphire had been stolen again, I knew
quite well who had stolen it.




                              CHAPTER XXV
                             THE CROWN JEWEL


CARRUTHERS opened the door of the sitting-room and went out to the
uniformed policeman in the corridor.

"Armstrong!"

"Yes, sir."

"I shall want to see the man who was in charge of the lift when Miss
Leslie and her friends came back from the ball, and, if he was relieved
afterwards, the liftman who has been on duty since. I shall also want to
put a few more questions, now, to the chambermaid in charge of this
room. Will you get those people here as soon as possible?"

"Very well, sir."

Armstrong hurried off upon his errand and Carruthers turned towards us.
A subtle change had come over the man since this plain and simple case
had been complicated by the certainty of a theft and the possibility of
a murder. His movements were quicker, his eye brighter, he was vitalised
body and mind. He looked dangerous now.

"I want to know from you two gentlemen----" he began briskly, but we
were spared the question. For the door was burst open and Robin Calhoun
tumbled rather than ran into the room.

My first sensation was one of relief. I felt sure that I could put into
words the inspector's interrupted demand. "I want to know from you two
gentlemen whether you know of anyone else besides yourselves who had an
appointment with the dead girl or any reason to visit her this morning."
It was not that I had any desire to spare Letty Ransome the consequences
of what must have been on the most lenient view, a cruel and beastly
crime. But I saw tremendous difficulties ahead for Michael Crowther and
I wanted to talk them over with Imogen before I was forced into a
decisive statement.

But when I saw Robin Calhoun's face that sense of relief vanished
altogether. It was ravaged with grief. He was unshaven, unwashed, and
the colour of lead. His clothes were all tumbled as though he had jumped
out of bed and slung on to his body the first habiliments which were
handy. Of the sleek and debonair adventurer, neatly trimmed for the
trimming of mankind, nothing was left. He was just an ordinary poor
devil of a lover struck down by the death of his mistress. His words,
too, were the words of melodrama.

"I can't believe it. If such things can happen, there's no God! But it's
not true, is it? This is a joke, of course. Jill's played me up. We
shall have a laugh over it--in a minute--shan't we?" And he broke away
from his pleading. "My God, how can you three stand staring at me like
mummies? Hasn't one of you a tongue?"

The inspector looked at me.

"Mr. Calhoun?"

"Yes," I answered.

There was a good deal of curiosity in the inspector's glance as his eyes
turned again to Robin Calhoun. He obviously knew more than a little
about Robin Calhoun and expected to find in his relations with Jill
Leslie a business partnership rather than a union of passion.

"I am sorry to say that it's true, Mr. Calhoun," he said gently.

Calhoun dropped into a chair at the table and buried his face in his
hands. Then he drew his hands down until his eyes looked over the tips
of his fingers at the bedroom door.

"Jill's in there?" he asked, and now very quietly.

"Yes."

"Can I see her?"

The inspector opened the door and Calhoun rose and walked towards it. In
the doorway he swayed a little as he caught sight of the small, shrouded
figure upon the bed.

"Will you leave me here alone, please?"

"For a little while, Mr. Calhoun," said Carruthers, and Calhoun went
into the room and closed the door behind him.

By this time Armstrong, the policeman, had assembled two liftmen and the
chambermaid in the corridor; and at a word from Carruthers he brought
them into the room. But their evidence from the inspector's point of
view was unhelpful. One of the liftmen had come on duty at seven in the
morning. He remembered taking up Jill Leslie and a party of friends soon
after seven, to the third floor. No, he did not know any of their names,
but one of the gentlemen he had taken up several times before and one of
the ladies. He had been on duty until one o'clock. Although he had,
during the six hours, taken up several people to the third floor, he had
taken up no one who gave the number of Jill Leslie's flat or asked in
what direction it lay.

The second liftman had come on duty at one. He knew Miss Leslie by
sight, of course, and some of her friends by sight and by name. Mr.
Calhoun, for instance, Miss Ransome the entertainer, and this gentleman
here, Mr. Crowther. He had brought none of them up since he had come on
duty until just now.

The chambermaid, as she had told Mr. Carruthers already, had left the
outer door open at Miss Leslie's request. As far as her work had allowed
her, she had kept an eye upon it, and she had seen no one at all enter
it. But she had a number of flats to attend to and it was only now and
then that she was within sight of it.

"Did you go in at all?" the inspector asked.

"No, sir. Miss Leslie did not wish to be disturbed."

Inspector Carruthers nodded his head.

"That all seems clear enough. You will probably be wanted at the
inquest. You'll receive a notice."

He dismissed the servants and sat down at the table and took his
note-book from his pocket. He made a few notes in shorthand and looking
up at Crowther, remarked:

"You said, I think, that you were not present at the breakfast-party."

"I was not," Crowther answered.

"Right," said Carruthers.

He continued to write, and as I watched his fingers and the
hieroglyphics forming on the page, I took the courage to make a
suggestion.

"The sapphire might have been hidden by Jill Leslie in the chest of
drawers amongst her linen."

Inspector Carruthers observed:

"You are married, I take it, Mr. Legatt," and he went on writing.

I drew myself up a little.

"I am. And what, then?"

"This, then. If the young lady had hidden it away in a drawer amongst
her linen, wouldn't she have put it back in its case first?"

The question stumped me.

"I suppose she would--unless she was too tired." I saw an argument
there. "And she must have been tired after dancing all night."

"Tired enough, certainly, to take her bath and jump into bed before she
had her breakfast. Where were her friends, do you think, when she was
hiding her sapphire?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"All over the flat, I expect."

Carruthers smiled--a rare thing with him that afternoon.

"I should think that's just about the truth." He looked up at me. "Do
you really believe that she hid the jewel and left the jewel-case out?"

"I don't say that I do," I answered. "It's only a suggestion and if it's
unwelcome, I withdraw it."

Inspector Carruthers leaned back in his chair.

"You may be right, Mr. Legatt. But neither you nor I believe it. I
certainly shouldn't have left Mr. Calhoun in there alone if I had," he
said watching me shrewdly. "Anyway, we shall know very soon. As soon as
that poor girl is taken away there will be the usual routine: search,
finger-prints, photographs. If the sapphire is tucked away anywhere in
that room it will be found this afternoon."

He turned a page of his note-book and became at once very businesslike
and brisk.

"And now, gentlemen, if you will kindly sit down, I'll take from you a
statement of the nature of the private business with Jill Leslie which
brought you up to this flat at half-past three this afternoon."

There was no question any longer of whether we would like to make a
statement. We had to make it. Michael Crowther recognised the necessity
as clearly as I did. And with the utmost simplicity of voice and word,
he told the story of the sapphire, tracing it from Tagaung to the pagoda
at Pagan, through Ceylon from Kandy to the rest-house on the road to
Anuradhapura, and from the rest-house to England and Jill Leslie.
Inspector Carruthers took it all down in shorthand, filling page after
page of his book and lifting his eyes from time to time with a wondering
glance at Michael Crowther.

"That brings us down to three o'clock this morning when you last saw the
stone hanging on the chain round Miss Leslie's neck." He looked at me.
"You have nothing to add, Mr. Legatt?"

"No. Michael has told you everything."

"Very well. I will have a copy of this statement made in longhand and
I'll ask you to sign it, Mr. Crowther, and you to witness it, Mr.
Legatt. I have your addresses, I think. Yes. Then I need not detain you
any longer."

But we were not done with yet. For Robin Calhoun's voice spoke from the
doorway:

"Wait a minute, please."

Crowther had been so occupied with the telling of his story, I so
attentive to check it, and Carruthers at so much pains to keep his
fingers up to the pace of it that not one of us had an idea how long the
bedroom door had been opened and Calhoun listening. Calhoun came forward
and drew a fourth chair up to the table. He was very quiet now, and his
face a better colour. The greatness of his distress had draped him in a
dignity which, I felt sure, he had never worn before. He commanded our
respect.

He leaned forward on his elbows clasping his hands together, and he
spoke to Michael Crowther.

"I heard everything," he said. "It's as queer a story as I've ever
heard. But it comes out of the East where our standards don't run. And
hearing you we must know that what you said is true----"

He looked down upon the table unwilling that we should see his face, and
distrustful of his voice; and none of us interrupted him or hurried him.

"If Jill had been alive she would have given you her sapphire. She was
the loveliest little girl... quick of heart... and too good for
me. But in this one little thing which I can do, I shall do what she
would have done. I shall give you her sapphire very willingly."

And the man had not a farthing--and he had been living on Jill's
salary--and his prospects were of the poorest. If there were truth in
Michael's creed, surely Jill had earned the Great Release.

"But we think it has been stolen," said Carruthers.

"It must be recovered," Robin Calhoun replied.

The inspector folded up his note-book.

"Then Miss Leslie made a will," he said, and Robin Calhoun stared at
him.

"A will?"

"Yes, leaving all that she possessed to you."

"A will!" Calhoun repeated scornfully. "Of course she made no will. I
should have heard of it if she had." For a moment he smiled. "Jill
making her last will and testament! I can see her sitting on one foot
with her tongue in her cheek, writing out her will like a schoolgirl
writing an essay----" And as the picture which he described rose up in
front of him, he broke off with a sob.

Carruthers, however, could not leave the matter there.

"If she made no will," he said, "the sapphire will go of necessity to
her next of kin."

"She has no next of kin," cried Calhoun. "Who they are I don't know. She
didn't know. Someone paid for her schooling in the convent--we don't
know who it was. Since she came away with me none but the friends she
herself made have had anything to do with her. Not a visit. Not a
letter. She was alone."

Inspector Carruthers was troubled. He frowned, he drummed on the table
with the butt of his pencil in a real exasperation.

"The position becomes more difficult than ever," he said.

"Why?" Robin Calhoun demanded.

"Because, you see----" I never expected to see Carruthers so
uncomfortable as he was then. "You see, Mr. Calhoun, if Miss Leslie made
no will and has no next of kin, the sapphire, with everything else which
she possesses, belongs to the Crown."

We all sat back in our chairs. Michael's high, slender pagoda spire
which had just begun to show white with a gleam of sunshine in a cavern
of the clouds, faded again behind the mists.




                              CHAPTER XXVI
                               CROOKS ALL


MICHAEL and I walked away from the Semiramis in a gloomy mood and were
near to the top of the Haymarket before either of us spoke.

"Do all the jewels left to the Crown go to the Tower?" he asked.

"Oh, Michael! Michael!" I said. "Even Nga Pyu and Nga Than would fight
shy of the Tower. The days of Captain Blood are past."

History was not Michael's long suit. Mundane history, I mean, for he was
thoroughly well up in the history of the bo-tree and its ramifications.

"You haven't answered my question," he said simply. "Do all the jewels
which fall to the Crown go to the Tower?"

"No, Michael. Very few of them. Most of them go to Christie's."

Michael stopped.

"To be sold?" he cried, his face lighting up.

"To the highest bidder," I answered, and gloom resumed its sway. "We'll
go and talk it over with Imogen."

We were still living in the hotel by the Green Park, and whilst Imogen
gave us some tea we told her of Jill's death and the disappearance of
the sapphire. Imogen was shocked by our narrative.

"Jill was a child," she said, "and just when her troubles, for the
moment at all events, were over----" She did not finish the sentence and
was silent until Crowther took his leave. She went with him to the door
of our set of rooms.

"You needn't be down-hearted, Michael," she said as she let him out.
"This is our affair now. We'll see what we can do."

But though she spoke valiantly, there was something quite mouselike in
her quietude when she returned. She threw that off, however, very soon.

"Martin, let's push it all away for a few hours. Couldn't we go out and
dine together alone--not too early--nineish? And we could talk things
all over and hammer out what we are to do."

"Splendid, darling. Where shall we dine?" And I had a brain-wave. "Oh, I
know!"

"Where, then?" Imogen asked.

"Le Buisson," I replied triumphantly. For was it not at that little
discovery of Imogen's in Soho that we had first got to know Jill Leslie?

But Imogen frowned. Le Buisson had ceased to mean anything to her for
many a week. It was just one in a monotonous row of restaurants, all
low-roofed and narrow and frowsty, all with little green trees in little
green tubs at the door, all once, each in turn, declared to be the last
word of Bohemian witchery, all now condemned as tedious and shoddy.

"Not Le Buisson," she said. "No, Martin."

I waited for her choice with some anxiety. There was a new bar in Oxford
Street, painted bright red, with high stools and a counter. Imogen had
lately been setting her friends up on those high stools and forcing them
to munch sandwiches and drink dark beer. I was determined not to dine
that way even if my refusal involved a divorce on the ground of mental
cruelty. Happily Imogen was in a mood for fine clothes and chose the
Embassy.

"Meanwhile, Martin, dear, before you sit down to lose money at your
stuffy old Club, do you think that you could find out where Letty
Ransome lives?"

"I'll try," said I.

Periodicals and newspapers exist in which the people of the stage
advertise their addresses. A dramatic _Who's Who_ is published each
year. If these means should fail me, Michael Crowther might help, and,
indeed, in the end it was from Michael Crowther that I got the
information. Letty Ransome had rooms in Cambridge Terrace.

I had this piece of news to my credit at dinner. We talked ways of using
it through the meal and after it. We came to two definite conclusions.
We must at all costs see Letty Ransome before the inquest and we must
leave our line of argument to be settled after we knew whether we or one
of us was to be called into the witness-box, or whether neither of us
was wanted at all.

This latter question was settled for us the next morning. I received a
letter from Inspector Carruthers, stating that the post-mortem
examination proved conclusively that Jill Leslie had died from cocaine
poisoning and that since the inquest was only concerned with the manner
of her death, it was proposed to call only those who had been present at
the breakfast-party.

"Letty Ransome, then," said Imogen.

"Yes, surely," said I. "Now, how to get hold of her?"

"I think that you had better leave that to me, darling," said Imogen.

"I will, indeed," I agreed fervently.

Leave the dirty work to the woman is the golden rule of married life,
and I went off to my bath. I heard the telephone at work whilst I was
soaking in hot water, and I was still wrapped in towels when Imogen
began to shout through the door.

"Martin! Martin! Letty Ransome's coming here after her rehearsal."

"When's that?"

"At five this afternoon."

"But, Imogen, I'm not sure that I can get away."

"Don't be absurd," said Imogen. "Darling, if half a dozen old teak trees
stand up one day more, it can't really matter so very much."

Imogen's conceptions of the work of my very important Company were at
once primitive and contemptuous. But I consented to be at home by five
and actually Letty Ransome and I met on the stroke of the hour at the
entrance to the hotel. It was an embarrassing moment for both of us but
Letty carried it off the better of the two. She had more nerve or less
shame.

"Come up and have some tea, won't you?" I said brightly as though we had
met by the merest chance and this grand idea had suddenly dawned on me.

"But I can only stay for a moment, I'm afraid. I'm so busy," Letty
answered, all smiles and dimples. She was looking pretty enough to melt
an iron heart and though her tailored suit, the fur round her neck, her
shoes and stockings and the rest of her dress were just what other girls
were wearing, she herself made them different. She gave them a special
distinction. Imogen's judgement failed to recognise the distinction
although, believe me, it was there. People turned and gazed when Letty
passed. Imogen used barbed words instead--words spoken with the gentlest
voice, but definitely barbed. However, the barbed words were reserved
for me; to Letty Ransome she was sweet. For instance, as she poured out
the tea, she said to Letty--she said, her voice dropping sugar:

"You came up in the lift this time, I suppose."

Letty turned pale and pushed her chair back. If I could have sidled
unnoticed from the room I should certainly have done so. The only one of
the three who was at ease was Imogen. And she had battle in her eyes,
and enjoyment in her face.

"You haven't mentioned that!" said Letty leaning forward, her face
strained, her fingers twitching.

"No! No!" said I.

"Not yet," said Imogen.

Letty chose to ignore the "yet."

At the same time she took no notice of me whatever.

"I was sure of that," she declared.

"Why?" asked Imogen.

"You wouldn't have sent for me if you had," Letty replied rather
shrewdly, I thought. The invitation would never have been sent had not
some accommodation been contemplated. It was a threat and an offer to
deal in one. Letty had scored a small point for what it was worth. But
she must needs spoil it. For she added:

"Besides, you wouldn't break a promise."

"I hope not, if I made one," Imogen answered. "I remember that you asked
for one. I can't remember that we gave one."

Letty now turned appealingly to me but before she could speak Imogen got
in something very nasty.

"On important occasions, of course, my husband speaks for himself. On a
trumpery little sordid affair like this, I venture to speak for him. He
gave you no promise. Did you, darling?"

"I did not, Imogen," I said stoutly in the tone of one who adds: "And
God defend the right!"

"No promise was made," Imogen resumed.

Letty changed her ground. She took the way of pathos but I cannot think
that she was wise. If a woman wants to act pathos to anyone she should
select a man. Letty's eyes filled with tears. She said in a voice of
studious resignation:

"You must do what you think best, of course, but you can't have realised
what this affair means to me. I am beginning to make a little position
for myself----"

"So you told us," Imogen interrupted, never without a sweet kind smile.

"And if it's known that I was mixed up with a little singing-girl who
doped--well, you can see the harm it must do me."

Imogen looked at once utterly perplexed.

"But I can't see," she said. She hitched her chair forward. She was just
asking earnestly and innocently for a little information which--oh, she
was certain about it--would clear away all her mystifications in a
second. "You are going to give evidence at the inquest, anyway."

Letty stood up as though a spring had been released. But the spring had
no strength and she sank down again.

"Oh, you know that!" she said.

"Of course I know that," Imogen returned. "How could I help knowing it?"

There was a delicate suggestion here that she was being called herself.

"You have to allow that you had breakfast with--what did you call
her?--the little singing-girl who doped. What additional harm to you
could it do to admit that you left your handbag behind and went to fetch
it at luncheon-time?"

"I can't admit that," said Letty stubbornly.

"But why?" Never was a woman at such a loss to understand. "You must see
how awkward it is going to make it for me! What am I to say?"

Oh, Imogen, Imogen! I admired her nerve and deplored her duplicity. So
frank and ingenuous she was, Letty Ransome could not but believe that
she was to be summoned as a witness.

"Say nothing," said Letty Ransome.

"To a coroner as busy as a little bee? My dear! And a jury of
ironmongers sniffing at a scandal in theatrical life? Not so easy to say
nothing. I should just be seeing you in front of me as you joined us
with your bag in the grill-room. You haven't an idea how strange you
looked! And on top of that, your asking us to promise never to mention
it! You see, they would be certain to ask why we hadn't told the
inspector-man about it at once. Of course, if we understood--but as
things are, it's bewildering."

All the natural colour ebbed from Letty Ransome's face. From a pair of
frightened eyes she stared at Imogen.

"I see," she said slowly.

And we all saw. No one was puzzled any more. Imogen's last sentences
meant nothing if they did not mean a threat. Letty Ransome, to borrow
the jargon suitable to the subject, had got to come across with a
history of what she did between a quarter and five minutes to two on the
afternoon before at the Semiramis Hotel. If she held her tongue she must
run whatever risk there was to run that we should inform the police and
the coroner of her visit to Jill Leslie's flat.

Letty Ransome came across.

"I think that I had better tell you everything," she said, passing her
tongue between her lips.

"It would be wise, I think," said Imogen.

"When I went into Jill's flat she was still living."

It was the statement which we expected, yet it shocked us both as if it
had been some dreadful news flung at us unexpectedly over the wireless.

"Yes," said Imogen. "Then you went into Jill's bedroom."

"I had left my handbag there," Letty answered.

"Yes," Imogen agreed. "There wasn't any chair near the door of the
sitting-room."

"I didn't look," said Letty Ransome. "I told you a chair by the door as,
at that moment in the lounge, I would have told you anything."

"Except the truth," Imogen remarked.

"I was frightened out of my life," Letty pleaded.

"Naturally," Imogen explained to her, "since you had left your friend to
die alone without calling for help."

Letty Ransome shrank back in her chair. I got an impression that the
chair had widened and grown higher and that Letty had dwindled. She
looked so small, so diminished from the arresting figure I had seen not
half an hour ago on the door-step of the hotel.

"It would ruin me if that were known," she whispered; and some
comprehension of the abominable nature of her excuse entered her mind as
she heard herself utter it. "Oh, there was nothing to be done," she
cried. "Jill was unconscious. She was breathing--horribly. Her breath
was roaring--yes, roaring in great long gasps, and her chest rose and
fell beneath the bedclothes with a violence which I didn't think any
heart could stand. I didn't dare to go near her. For a few moments, too,
I couldn't run away. I was held there as if my feet were chained. It was
awful. That room--the sun outside--and the horrible sound from the
bed--I was frightened out of my wits. I was suddenly mad to get away. I
snatched up my bag from the dressing-table----"

"Oh!" Imogen interrupted. "It was on the dressing-table?"

"Yes," Letty ran on, hardly noticing the interruption. "I snatched it
up. I remember that I had seen no one in the corridor, that I had run up
the stairs instead of using the lift. I wondered if I could get away. I
looked into the corridor round the edge of the front door. It was still
empty. So I ran--oh, I ran! I didn't say anything to you. It couldn't
have done any good."

"Why not?" asked Imogen.

"Jill was actually dying."

"How do you know?" asked Imogen. "How do you know that she wouldn't be
alive now if you had called for help at once?"

Letty did not answer. She sat and stared and stared at Imogen, and then
a little sigh fluttered from her lips. I was just in time, I think. In
another second she would have slipped off the chair on to the floor.

"We must get her some water," I said, and Imogen ran for it.

"She'd better have some brandy, too," said Imogen.

We had, therefore, an adjournment of the witness's cross-examination
whilst the waiter was summoned, sent to fetch brandy and brought back
with it. During that adjournment, Imogen and I both and quite separately
came to the conclusion that Letty Ransome had not realised in the
slightest degree that there might, by prompt action, have been a chance
of saving Jill Leslie's life. I don't even know that there was a chance.
The police-surgeon, with all his experience, would not commit himself. I
had no doubt that Letty, standing in that room with the sunlight coming
in at the window and all the summer sounds of birds and insects, and
with the shrouded figure on the bed gasping out its life like some
overwrought machine, never dreamed but that Jill was actually dying and
beyond recall. The conviction certainly made a difference in our
judgement of Letty. We were able, if not to believe, to assume that had
Letty imagined that Jill could have been saved, she would have roused
the whole of the Semiramis Court rather than let her friend die. Letty's
next words, indeed, strengthened our assumption.

"Do you mean to say that Jill could have been saved?" she asked in a
shaking voice.

"No one can say that," Imogen answered gently; and at once our
assumption began to lose its strength. For with the utterance of those
words Letty's assurance began to return. Her eyes became less guilty and
more wary.

"Then I don't think you ought to have suggested it," she cried on a note
of indignation.

"Let's go back to the handbag," said Imogen coldly; and the suggestion
brought Letty Ransome low.

"Why the--the handbag?" she stammered, and was lost.

"Because Jill's big sapphire was stolen from her dressing-table that
morning, and the police know it," said Imogen, deftly mingling fact and
probability to make one convincing indictment.

"Jill's big sapphire!" Letty repeated with round, incredulous eyes.

"And the platinum chain," said Imogen.

Letty shrugged her shoulders.

"They had better search the chambermaid's trunks," she said
disdainfully. I had been somehow quite sure that this would be Letty
Ransome's reply. No doubt Imogen was prepared for it too, for she was
ready with her rejoinder.

"And your handbag, Letty."

"You think I stole it!"

"I'm sure you stole it."

"You dare----" Letty Ransome rose to her feet. "I'll not stay here
another moment." She whisked across to the door. "It's outrageous!" She
laid a hand upon the door-knob, and then she stopped and looked round.
She saw me drawing the telephone instrument nearer to me. It stood upon
a side table and I had only to turn my chair to reach it.

"Who are you going to telephone to?" she demanded.

"Need you ask?" I returned.

"You see, Letty," Imogen resumed, "you fetched your bag from Jill's
dressing-table and you came back to us in the lounge, not quite
yourself. You told us that you found it on a chair in the sitting-room.
That wasn't true. You asked us not to mention your visit to the room.
You asked us very urgently, and you gave us a ridiculous reason. When I
picked up the bag to admire it I could see you were so nervous that your
fingers were twitching. You were afraid that I was going to open it,
Letty. When we went in to luncheon you sat on it. When you went away you
were clutching it--just as you are now."

Slowly and very sullenly Letty Ransome came back into the room.

"I didn't mean to leave the bag behind again," she answered. "It's my
only one."

Neither Imogen nor I made any rejoinder. As a matter of fact we were not
too comfortable. Now that the police were quite certain that Jill had
died from an overdose of cocaine, a drug to which she was addicted, they
were not really interested in the theft of the sapphire. No one had
moved them to take any action. It had nothing to do with the inquest. A
direct threat to raise it at the inquest might be beating the air. Our
hope was that Letty dare not run the risk of allowing us to try.

"Why do you want the sapphire?" she asked.

It would, of course, have been too ridiculous to have tried to explain
to Letty Ransome the dreams and hopes which had gathered about that
stone. She would not have understood them in a thousand years, and when
she had understood them she would have thought us all liars. Imogen took
the simplest way.

"That's our affair," she said, and I saw Letty Ransome's face change.
She looked from one to the other of us with an easiness which she had
not shown before. A smile glimmered on her lips and spread. She began to
laugh with a real amusement.

"I see," she remarked. "Birds of a feather, what? I must now have your
promise."

"You'll have it, but you won't need it," I answered. "What can we say,
if we've got the sapphire?"

Letty Ransome thought that over and it seemed to her reasonable. Thieves
betray thieves, certainly, but not to convict themselves. She suddenly
opened her bag, took out of it a twist of tissue-paper and laid it on
the table. In the twist of paper lay the sapphire and its chain.
Imogen's hand darted out and grasped it--oh, greedily enough to persuade
Letty Ransome that she had nothing any longer to fear from us. She shut
up her bag with a snap. She looked at us derisively.

"You make me tired, you two," she said, and she sauntered out of the
room.




                             CHAPTER XXVII
                                THE LAST


I WAS indignant. Letty Ransome had hardly closed the door before I
cried:

"Did you hear that, Imogen?"

"Of course I did, darling," she answered.

"She thinks we are a couple of crooks," I said.

"Well, aren't we?" she asked, playing with the sapphire.

"We are not. Just listen to me!"

"I will. But, dearest, don't you think you had better have a whisky and
soda first?"

The advice was sound and I always take sound advice. But I was not to be
diverted. I had lunched at my club which was conveniently placed between
the officialdom of the West and the solid interests of the East. I had
sat beside a King's Counsel to whom I had put our problem; and now
reinforced by his judgement, I was prepared to prove to Imogen that my
capacities were not limited to cutting down half a dozen old teak trees
in a forest. Over my whisky and soda I expounded the law.

"The sapphire is not the property of the Crown. If Jill died intestate
and without kin, the property of which she died possessed would belong
to the Crown. But the sapphire was taken from her whilst she was alive.
Therefore she was not possessed of it when she died."

Imogen nodded.

"I was always certain that if we went down to the House of Commons and
sent for the Chancellor of the Exchequer and told him that there was a
sapphire for him to sell, he would be bored to tears," she said.

"I don't think you are quite following my argument, Imogen," I said.

"Word by word, darling," Imogen insisted.

"Very well."

I took a drink and Imogen sat with her eyes upon my face and her hands
in her lap, suspiciously dutiful.

"The only person really in a position to take action is Jill herself;
and she's dead. The sapphire's in the air. To establish ownership to it
amongst the living would be impossible."

"I think you're marvellous, Martin," said Imogen. "It's such a comfort
to know that we shall not be acting illegally when we do what we are
going to do, anyway."

We took the sapphire with its chain to a jeweller the next day and got
him to put a price upon it. Then we sent for Robin Calhoun and persuaded
him to take the price. He made a little show of a fight against taking
it, but Jill was gone and he had the cost of her burial to discharge and
his circumstances were distressful. In the end he took it and went his
way. After he had gone:

"I think," I said, "that we had better buy a passage to Rangoon and give
it to Michael with the sapphire, don't you?"

Imogen agreed.

"So you, too, noticed that his clothes were getting shabby and his shoes
wanted heeling, and his face was longer every day," she said tucking her
hand through my arm.

"I shouldn't think that there's much to spare in Michael's pocket
nowadays," I said.

I think that Michael had actually a narrower margin than we imagined. We
telephoned to his address in Bayswater the day after the inquest, asking
him to call. I shall never forget the look upon his face when Imogen
handed to him his sapphire and his steamer-ticket and he knew that his
long pilgrimage was at an end. It was like a clean, clear morning after
a hopeless night of rain. He could not speak. He made a few little
whimpering noises of joy and the water stood in his eyes. I thought that
he would burst into tears. He made a forward movement with his head
towards Imogen and checked himself.

"You may, Michael," Imogen said with a smile, and she lifted her cheek
to him.

But he passed the privilege by. He stood up straight, although with an
effort. His face lost--not all at once but by subtle gradations--the
warmer human looks which it had worn during his quest and our endeavours
to help him. We saw Galatea returning to stone. He became not stern but
aloof, an ecclesiastic set apart amongst his solitary imaginings. So I
had seen him twice--once on the steamer at Schwegu and once on the
terrace of the Rock Temple at Dhambulla. So Imogen had seen him once.
Michael D. had gone long ago. Michael went now. Uncle Sunday remained.
He did not thank us. Why should he? The little we had done in obedience
to the inexorable Laws would be of immense advantage to ourselves. He
just said: "Good-bye!" and went away.

As soon as he had gone Imogen did what was for her the rarest thing. She
sat down and cried--really cried, with the great tears rolling down her
cheeks.

"I had an idea," she said between her sobs, "--I am too ridiculous and I
am making myself hideous--I had an idea that we might have gone down to
the docks and seen him off. But he doesn't want us." She turned and
clung to me whilst I slipped an arm about her. "Oh, Martin, you must
never go back to Burma. I can't have you sitting about any old pagoda
and perfectly happy. No, I can't!"

I reassured her as best I could. We did the wise thing we had learnt to
do in conditions of stress. We went out and dined together alone in a
restaurant gay with lights and lovely people. But in the midst of the
gaiety and the lights we had glimpses of another and a distant
world--the shadow stretching out over earth and sea from the summit of
Adam's Peak, the bungalow in a glistening jungle where Imogen had
crouched against a wall with the terror of death at her heart, and the
high terrace above Sigiri where I had first held her in my arms.

                                THE END






[End of The Sapphire, by A. E. W. Mason]
