The Argus Pheasant Part 13

MYNHEER MULLER WORRIES

Seated in a low-framed rattan chair on the broad veranda of his cottage, Mynheer Hendrik Muller, _controlleur_, and acting resident of Bulungan, awaited in perspiring impatience the appearance of his military a.s.sociate, Captain Gerrit Van Slyck.

State regulations required daily conferences, that the civil arm of the government might lay its commands upon the military and the military make its requisitions upon the civil. An additional incentive to prompt attendance upon these was that _mynheer_ the resident rarely failed to produce a bottle of Hollands, which, compounded with certain odorous and acidulated products of the tropics, made a drink that cooled the fevered brow and mellowed the human heart, made a hundred and twenty in the shade seem like seventy, and chased away the home-sickness of folk pining for the damp and fog of their native Amsterdam.

It was no urgent affair of state, however, that made Muller fume and fuss like a washerwoman on a rainy Monday at Van Slyck's dilatoriness. A bit of gossip, casually dropped by the master of a trading schooner who had called for clearance papers an hour before, was responsible for his agitation.

"When does your new resident arrive?" the visiting skipper had asked.

"The new resident?" Muller returned blankly. "What new resident?"

The skipper perceived that he was the bearer of unpleasant tidings and diplomatically minimized the importance of his news.

"Somebody down to Batavia told me you were going to have a new resident here," he replied lightly. "It's only talk, I s'pose. You hear so many yarns in port."

"There is nothing official--yet," Muller declared. He had the air of one who could tell much if he chose. But when the sailor had gone back to his ship he hurriedly sent Cho Seng to the stockade with an urgent request to Van Slyck to come to his house at once.

Van Slyck was putting the finishing touches to an exquisite toilet when he received the message.

"What ails the doddering old fool now?" he growled irritably as he read Muller's appeal. "Another Malay run amuck, I suppose. Every time a few of these _bruinevels_ (brown-skins) get krissed he thinks the whole province is going to flame into revolt."

Tossing the note into an urn, he leisurely resumed his dressing. It was not until he was carefully barbered, his hair shampooed and perfumed, his nails manicured, and his mustache waxed and twisted to the exact angle that a two-months old French magazine of fashion dictated as the mode, that the dapper captain left the stockade. He was quite certain that the last living representative of the ancient house of Van Slyck of Amsterdam would never be seen in public in dirty linen and unwashed, regardless how far _mynheer the controlleur_ might forget his self-respect and the dignity of his office.

Van Slyck was leisurely strolling along the tree-lined lane that led from the iron-wood stockade to the cl.u.s.ter of houses colloquially designated "Amsterdam" when the impatient Muller perceived his approach.

"Devil take the man, why doesn't he hurry?" the _controlleur_ swore.

With a peremptory gesture he signaled Van Slyck to make haste.

"By the beard of Na.s.sau," the captain exclaimed. "Does that swine think he can make a Van Slyck skip like a butcher's boy? Things have come to a pretty pa.s.s in the colonies when a Celebes half-breed imagines he can make the best blood of Amsterdam fetch and carry for him."

Deliberately turning his back on the _controlleur_, he affected to admire the surpa.s.singly beautiful bay of Bulungan, heaven's own blue melting into green on the shingly sh.o.r.e, with a thousand sabres of iridescent foam stabbing the morning horizon. Muller was fuming when the commandant finally sauntered on the veranda, selected a fat, black cigar from the humidor, and gracefully lounged in an easy chair.

"_Donder en bliksem! kapitein_, but you lie abed later every morning,"

he growled.

Van Slyck's thin lips curled with aristocratic scorn.

"We cannot all be such conscientious public servants as you, _mynheer_,"

he observed ironically.

Muller was in that state of nervous agitation that a single jarring word would have roused an unrestricted torrent of abuse. Fortunately for Van Slyck, however, he was obtuse to irony. He took the remark literally and for the moment, like oil on troubled waters, it calmed the rising tide of his wrath at what he deemed the governor-general's black ingrat.i.tude.

"Well, _kapitein, gij kebt gelijk_ (you are right, captain)" he a.s.sented heavily. The blubbery folds under his chin crimsoned with his cheeks in complacent self-esteem. "There are not many men who would have done so well as I have under the conditions I had to face--under the conditions I had to face--_kapitein_. _Ja!_ Not many men. I have worked and slaved to build up this residency. For two years now I have done a double duty--I have been both resident and _controlleur_. _Jawel!_"

Recollection of the skipper's unpleasant news recurred to him. His face darkened like a tropic sky before a cloudburst.

"And what is my reward, _kapitein_? What is my reward? To have some _Amsterdamsche papegaai_ (parrot) put over me." His fist came down wrathily on the arm of his chair. "Ten thousand devils! It is enough to make a man turn pirate."

Van Slyck's cynical face lit with a sudden interest.

"You have heard from Ah Sing?" he inquired.

"Ah Sing? No. _Drommel noch toe!_" Muller swore. "Who mentioned Ah Sing?

That thieving Deutscher who runs the schooner we had in port over-night told me this not an hour ago. The whole of Batavia knows it. They are talking it in every _rumah makan_. And we sit here and know nothing.

That is the kind of friends we have in Batavia."

Van Slyck, apprehensive that the impending change might affect him, speculated swiftly how much the _controlleur_ knew.

"It is strange that Ah Sing hasn't let us know," he remarked.

"Ah Sing?" Muller growled. "Ah Sing? That bloodsucker is all for himself. He would sell us out to Van Schouten in a minute if he thought he saw any profit in it. _Ja!_ I have even put money into his ventures, and this is how he treats me."

"d.a.m.nably, I must say," Van Slyck agreed sympathetically. "That is, if he knows."

"If he knows, _mynheer kapitein_? Of course he knows. Has he not _agenten_ in every corner of this archipelago? Has he not a spy in the _paleis_ itself?"

"He should have sent us word," Van Slyck agreed. "Unless _mynheer_, the new resident, is one of us. Who did you say it is, _mynheer_?"

"How the devil should I know?" Muller growled irritably. "All I know is what I told you--that the whole of Batavia says Bulungan is to have a new resident."

Van Slyck's face fell. He had hoped that the _controlleur_ knew at least the ident.i.ty of the new executive of the province. Having extracted all the information Muller had, he dropped the cloak of sympathy and remarked with cool insolence:

"Since you don't know, I think you had better make it your business to find out, _mynheer_."

Muller looked at him doubtfully. "You might make an effort also, _kapitein_," he suggested. "You have friends in Batavia. It is your concern as well as mine, a new resident would ruin our business."

"I don't think he will," Van Slyck replied coolly. "If he isn't one of us he won't bother us long. Ah Sing won't let any prying reformer interfere with business while the profits are coming in as well as they are."

A shadow of anxiety crossed Muller's face. He cast a troubled look at Van Slyck, who affected to admire the multi-tinted color display of jungle, sun, and sea.

"What--what do you mean, _kapitein_?" he asked hesitantly.

"People sometimes begin voyages they do not finish," Van Slyck observed.

"A man might eat a pomegranate that didn't agree with him--pouf--the colic, and it is all over. There is nothing so uncertain as life, _mynheer_."

The captain replaced his cigar between his teeth with a flourish.

Muller's pudgy hands caught each other convulsively. The folds under his chin flutterred. He licked his lips before he spoke.

"_Kapitein_--you mean he might come to an unhappy end on the way?" he faltered.

"Why not?" Van Slyck concentrated his attention on his cigar.

"_Neen, neen_, let us have no bloodshed," Muller vetoed anxiously. "We have had enough--" He looked around nervously as though he feared someone might be overhearing him. "Let him alone. We shall find some way to get rid of him. But let there be no killing."

Van Slyck turned his attention from the landscape to the _controlleur_.

There was a look in the captain's face that made Muller wince and shift his eyes, a look of cyincal contempt, calm, frank, and unconcealed. It was the mask lifting, for Van Slyck despised his a.s.sociate. Bold and unscrupulous, sticking at nothing that might achieve his end, he had no patience with the timid, faltering, often conscience-stricken _controlleur_.

"Well, _mynheer_," Van Slyck observed at length, "you are getting remarkably thin-skinned all of a sudden."